In this respect Vienna is different from any other large city in Europe. The joys of Parisian night life are as artificial as cosmetics. They are organised and executed by technicians subtly schooled in the psychology of the Puritan mind. To the American, all forms of pleasure are excesses, to be indulged in only at rare intervals; and Paris supplies him with the opportunities. Berlin, and even Munich, makes a business of gaiety. St. Petersburg, patterning after Paris, excites the visitor with visions of gaudy glory; and London, outwardly chaste, maintains a series of supper clubs which in the dishonesty of their subterranean pleasures surpass in downright immorality any city in Europe. Budapest is a miniature Babylon burning incense by night which assails the visitor's nostrils and sends him into delirious ecstasies. San Francisco and New York are both equipped with opportunities for all-night indulgences. In not one of these cities does the sight seeker or the joy hunter find difficulty in sampling the syrups of sin. Mysterious guides assail him on the street corners, pouring libidinous tales into his furry ears, tempting him with descriptions like Suetonius's account of the Roman circuses. Automobiles with megaphones and placards summon him from the street corners. Electric signs—debauches of writhing colour—intoxicate his mind and point the way to haunts of Caracalla.
But Vienna! He will search in vain for a key to the night life. By bribery he may wring an admission or obtain an address from the hotel clerk; but the ménage to which he is directed is, alas, not what he seeks. He may plead with cabmen or buy the honour of taxicab drivers, but little information will he obtain. For these gentlemen, strange as it may seem, are almost as ignorant of the gaiety of Vienna as he himself. And at last, in the early morning, after ineffectual searching, after hours of assiduous nosing, he ends up at some kaffeehaus near the Schillerplatz, partakes of a chaste ice with Wiener gebäck and goes dolorously home—a virgin of circumstance, an unwilling and despondent Parsifal, a lofty and exquisite creature through lack of opportunity, the chaste victim of a killjoy conspiracy. He is that most tragic figure—an enforced pietist, a thwarted voluptuary. Eheu! Eheu! Dies faustus!
In order to come into intimate touch with the night life of Vienna one must live there and become a part of it. It is not for spectators and it is not public. It involves every family in the city. It is inextricably woven into the home life. It is elaborate because it is genuine, because it is not looked upon as a mere outlet for the repressions of puritanism. From an Anglo-Saxon point of view Vienna is perhaps the most degenerate city in the world. But degeneracy is geographical; morals are temperamental. This is why the Viennese resents intrusion and spying. His night life involves the national spirit. His gaiety is not a prerogative of the demi-monde, but the usufruct of all classes. Joy is not exclusive or solitary with the Viennese. He is not ashamed of his frolics and hilarities. He does not take his pleasures hypocritically after the manner of the Occidental moralist. He is a gay bird, a sybarite, a modern Lucullus, a Baron Chevrial—and admits it.
To be sure, there is in Vienna a miniature night life not unlike that of the other European capitals, but it requires constant attention and assiduous coddling to keep it alive. The better class Viennese will have none of it. It is a by-product of the underworld and is no more characteristic of Vienna than the gilded cafés chantants which cluster round the Place Pigalle on Montmartre are characteristic of Paris. These places correspond to the Palais de Danse and the Admirals Palast in Berlin; to the Villa Villa and the Astor Club in London; to Reisenweber's in New York; to L'Abbaye and the Rat Mort in Paris—allowing of course for the temperamental influences (and legal restrictions) of the different nations.
Let us arouse a snoring cabman and make the rounds. Why not? All merrymaking is shot through with youth, no matter how dolorous the joy or how expensive the indulgence. So let us partake of the feast before us. Our first encounter is with the Tabarin, in the Annagasse, an establishment not unlike the Bal Tabarin in Paris. We hesitate at the entrance, but being assured by the doorkeeper, garbed like Louis Seize, that it is "ein äusserst feines und modernes nacht etablissement" we enter, partake of a bottle of champagne (thirty kronen—New York prices) and pass out and on to Le Chapeau Rouge, where we buy more champagne. From there we go to the Rauhensteingasse and enter Maxim's, brazenly heralded as the Montmartre of Vienna. Then on to the Wallfischgasse to mingle with the confused visitors of the Trocadero, where we are urged to have supper. But time is fleeting. The cabmeter is going round like a tortured turbine. So we hasten out and seek the Wiehburggasse, where we discover a "Palais de Danse"—seductive phrase, suggestive of ancient orgies. But we cannot tarry—in spite of Mimi Lobner (Ah, lovely lady!) who sings to us "Liebliche Kleine Dingerchen" from "Kino-Königin," and makes us buy her a peach bowle in payment. One more place and we are ready for the resort in the Prater, the Coney Island of Vienna. This last place has no embroidered name. Its existence is emblazoned across the blue skies by an electric sign reading "Etablissement Parisien." It is in the Schellinggasse and justifies itself by the possession of a very fine orchestra whose militär-kapellmeister knows naught but inebriate tanzmusik.
Again in the open air, headed for the Kaisergarten, we reflect on our evening's search for nachtvergnügungen. With the lone exception of our half-hour with Mimi, it has been a sad chase. All the places (with the possible exception of the Trocadero) have been cheaply imitative of Paris, with the usual appurtenances of arduous waiters, gorgeously dressed women dancing on red velvet carpets, fortissimo orchestras, expensive wines, blumenmädl, hothouse strawberries and other accessories of manufactured pleasure. But compared with Paris these places have been second rate. The damen (I except thee, lovely Mimi!) have not inflamed us either with their beauty or with manifestations of their esprit gaulois. For the most part they have been stodgy women with voluminous bosoms, Eiffel towers of bought hair—bison with astonishing hyperboles and parabolas, dressed in all of the voluptuous splendour but possessing none of the grace of the Rue de la Paix. Furthermore, these establishments have lacked the deportmental abandon which saves their prototypes in Paris from downright banality. All of their deviltries have been muted, as if the guests suffered from a pathological fear of pleasure. Strangers we were when we entered. As strangers we take our departure.
Why do I linger thus, you ask, over these hothouse caperings? For the same reason that we are now going to inspect the Kaisergarten. Because this phase of life represents an unnatural development in the Viennese mode of pleasure, something grafted, yet something characteristic of the impressionability of the Viennese mind. The Viennese are a hybrid and imitative people. They have annexed characteristics distinctly French. In the Kaisergarten these characteristics are more evident than elsewhere. Here is a people's playground in which all manner of amusements are thrown together, from the balhaus, where nothing but expensive champagne is sold, to the scenic railway, on which one may ride for fifty heller. This park presents a bizarre and chaotic mingling of outdoor concerts, variety theatres, bierkabaretts, moving picture halls, promenades and sideshow attractions of the Atlantic City type. The Kaisergarten is the rendezvous of the bourgeoisie, the heaven of hoi polloi—rotund merchants with walrus moustachios, dapper young clerks with flowing ties, high-chokered soldiers, their boots polished into ebony mirrors, fat-jowled maidens in rainbow garb.... There is lovemaking under the Linden trees, beer drinking on the midway, schnitzel eating in the restaurants. Homely pleasantries are thrown from heavy German youths to the promenading mädchen. One catches such greetings and whisperings as "Du bist oba heut' fesch g'scholnt" and "Ko do net so lang umananderbandln." There exists a spirit of buoyant and genuine fellowship. But here again it is a private and personal brand of gaiety. Let the obvious stranger whisper "Schatz'rl" to a powdered Fritzi on the bench next to him, and he will be ignored for his impertinence. The same salutation from a Viennese will call forth a coquettish "Raubersbua." Even the Amerikan-bar in the centre of the Kaisergarten (in charge of no less a celebrity than Herr Pohnstingl!) will not offer the tourist the hospitality he hopes to find. He will find neither Americans nor American drinks. The cocktail—that boon to all refined palates, when mixed with artistry and true poetic feeling—circulates incognito at Herr Pohnstingl's. Such febrifuges as masquerade under that name are barely recognisable by authentic connoisseurs, by Rabelaises of sensitive esophagi, by true lovers of subtly concocted gin and vermouth and bitters. But the Viennese, soggy with acid beer, his throat astringentized by strong coffee, knows not the difference. And so the Amerikan-bar flourishes.
It was here that I discovered Gabrielle, a sad little French girl, alone and forsaken in the midst of merriment, drinking Dubonnet and dreaming of the Boulevard Montparnasse. I bought her another Dubonnet—what stranger would have done less? In her was epitomized the sadness of the stranger in Vienna. Lured by lavish tales of gaiety, she had left Paris, to seek an unsavoury fortune in the love marts of Vienna. But her dream had been broken. She was lonely as only a Parisian can be, stranded in an alien country. She knew scarcely a score of German words, in fact no language but her own. Her youth and coquetry did not avail. She was an outsider, a deserted onlooker. She spoke tenderly of the Café du Dôme, of Fouquet's, the Café d'Harcourt, Marigny and the Luxembourg. She inquired sentimentally about the Bal Bullier. She was pretty, after the anæmic French type of beauty, with pink cheeks, pale blue eyes and hair the colour of wet straw. She had the slender, shapely feet of the French cocotte. Her stockings were of thin pink silk. Her slender, soft fingers were without a ring. Her jewelry, no doubt, had long since gone to the money lender. She seemed childishly happy because I sat and talked to her. Poor little Gabrielle! Her tragedy was one of genuine bereavement, or perhaps the worst of all tragedies—loneliness. I shall never think again of Vienna without picturing that stranded girl, sipping at her reddish drink in the Amerikan-bar in the Kaisergarten. But her case is typical. The Viennese are not hospitable to strangers. They are an intimate, self-sufficient people.
Let us turn, however, from the little Gabrielle to a more fascinating and exquisite creature, to a happier and more buoyant denizen of Viennese night life, to a lady of more elegant attire. In short, behold Fräulein Bianca Weise. In her are the alkaloids of gaiety. She irradiates the joyfulness of the city. In her infancy she was hummed to sleep with snatches from the "Wiener Blut," the booziest waltz in all Christendom. Bianca is tall and catlike, but deliciously proportioned. Her hair is an alloy of bronze and gold. Her skin is pale, and in her cheeks there is the barest bit of rose, like a flame seen through ivory. Her eyes are large, and their blue is almost primary. Her face is a perfect oval. Her lips are full and abnormally red. Her slender, conical hands are always active like those of a child, and she wears but little jewelry. Her gowns come from Paquin's and seem almost a part of her body.