An equally irritating custom is the one that ordains that in restaurants three waiters must be tipped in certain fixed proportions. The "Piccolo," who brings the wine and bread, receives one quarter of the tip; the "Speisetrager," who brings the actual food, gets one half; the "Zahlkellner," who brings the bill, gets one quarter. All these must be given separately, so not only does it entail a hideous amount of mental arithmetic, but it also necessitates the perpetual carrying about of pocketfuls of small change.
The Vienna restaurants were quite excellent, with a local cuisine of extraordinary succulence, and more extraordinary names. A universal Austrian custom, not only in restaurants but in private houses as well, is to serve a glass of the delicious light Vienna beer with the soup. Even at State dinners at the Hof-Burg, a glass of beer was always offered with the soup. The red wine, Voslauer, grown in the immediate vicinity of the city, is so good, and has such a distinctive flavour, that I wonder it has never been exported. The restaurants naturally suggest the matchless Viennese orchestras. They were a source of never-ending delight to me. The distinction they manage to give to quite commonplace little airs is extraordinary. The popular songs, "Wiener-Couplets," melodious, airy nothings, little light soap-bubbles of tunes, are one of the distinctive features of Vienna. Played by an Austrian band as only an Austrian band can play them, with astonishing vim and fire, and supremely dainty execution, these little fragile melodies are quite charming and irresistibly attractive. We live in a progressive age. In the place of these Austrian bands with their finished execution and consummately musicianly feeling, the twentieth century has invented the Jazz band with its ear-splitting, chaotic din.
There is a place in Vienna known as the Heiden-Schuss, or "Shooting of the heathens." The origin of this is quite interesting.
In 1683 the Turks invaded Hungary, and, completely overrunning the country, reached Vienna, to which they laid siege, for the second time in its history. Incidentally, they nearly succeeded in capturing it. During the siege bakers' apprentices were at work one night in underground bakehouses, preparing the bread for next day's consumption. The lads heard a rhythmic "thump, thump, thump," and were much puzzled by it. Two of the apprentices, more intelligent than the rest, guessed that the Turks were driving a mine, and ran off to the Commandant of Vienna with their news. They saw the principal engineer officer and told him of their discovery. He accompanied them back to the underground bakehouse, and at once determined that the boys were right. Having got the direction from the sound, the Austrians drove a second tunnel, and exploded a powerful counter-mine. Great numbers of Turks were killed, and the siege was temporarily raised. On September 12 of the same year (1683) John Sobieski, King of Poland, utterly routed the Turks, drove them back into their own country, and Vienna was saved. As a reward for the intelligence shown by the baker-boys, they were granted the privilege of making and selling a rich kind of roll (into the composition of which butter entered largely) in the shape of the Turkish emblem, the crescent. These rolls became enormously popular amongst the Viennese, who called them Kipfeln. When Marie Antoinette married Louis XVI of France, she missed her Kipfel, and sent to Vienna for an Austrian baker to teach his Paris confrères the art of making them. These rolls, which retained their original shape, became as popular in Paris as they had been in Vienna, and were known as Croissants, and that is the reason why one of the rolls which are brought you with your morning coffee in Paris will be baked in the form of a crescent.
The extraordinary number of good-looking women, of all classes to be seen in the streets of Vienna was most striking, especially after Berlin, where a lower standard of feminine beauty prevailed. Particularly noticeable were the admirable figures with which most Austrian women are endowed. In the far-off "'seventies" ladies did not huddle themselves into a shapeless mass of abbreviated oddments of material—they dressed, and their clothes fitted them; and a woman on whom Nature (or Art) had bestowed a good figure was able to display her gifts to the world. In the same way, Fashion did not compel a pretty girl to smother up her features in unbecoming tangles of tortured hair. The usual fault of Austrian faces is their breadth across the cheek-bones; the Viennese too have a decided tendency to embonpoint, but in youth these defects are not accentuated. Amongst the Austrian aristocracy the great beauty of the girls was very noticeable, as was their height, in marked contrast to the short stature of most of the men. I have always heard that one of the first outward signs of the decadence of a race is that the girls grow taller, whilst the men get shorter.
The Vienna theatres are justly celebrated. At the Hof-Burg Theatre may be seen the most finished acting on the German stage. The Burg varied its programme almost nightly, and it was an amusing sight to see the troops of liveried footmen inquiring at the box-office, on behalf of their mistresses, whether the play to be given that night was or was not a Comtessen-Stück, i.e., a play fit for young girls to see. The box-keeper always gave a plain "Yes" or "No" in reply. After Charles Garnier's super-ornate pile in Paris, the Vienna Opera-house is the finest in Europe, and the musical standard reaches the highest possible level, completely eclipsing Paris in that respect. In the "'seventies" Johann Strauss's delightful comic operas still retained their vogue. Bubbling over with merriment, full of delicious ear-tickling melodies, and with a "go" and an irresistible intoxication about them that no French composer has ever succeeded in emulating, these operettas, "Die Fledermaus," "Prinz Methusalem," and "La Reine Indigo," would well stand revival. When the "Fledermaus" was revived in London some ten years ago it ran, if my memory serves me right, for nearly a year. Occasionally Strauss himself conducted one of his own operettas; then the orchestra, responding to his magical baton, played like very demons. Strauss had one peculiarity. Should he be dissatisfied with the vim the orchestra put into one of his favourite numbers, he would snatch the instrument from the first violin and play it himself. Then the orchestra answered like one man, and one left the theatre with the entrancing strains still tingling in one's ears.
The family houses of most of the Austrian nobility were in the Inner Town, the old walled city, where space was very limited. These fine old houses, built for the greater part in the Italian baroque style, though splendid for entertaining, were almost pitch dark and very airless in the daytime. Judging, too, from the awful smells in them, they must have been singularly insanitary dwellings. The Lobkowitz Palace, afterwards the French Embassy, was so dark by day that artificial light had always to be used. In the great seventeenth century ball-room of the Lobkowitz Palace there was a railed off oak-panelled alcove containing a bust of Beethoven, an oak table, and three chairs. It was in that alcove, and at that table, that Beethoven, when librarian to Prince Lobkowitz, composed some of his greatest works.
Our own Embassy in the Metternichgasse, built by the British Government, was rather cramped and could in no way compare with the Berlin house.
I remember well a ball given by Prince S——, head of one of the greatest Austrian families, in his fine but extremely dark house in the Inner Town. It was Prince S——'s custom on these occasions to have three hundred young peasants sent up from his country estates, and to have them all thrust into the family livery. These bucolic youths, looking very sheepish in their unfamiliar plush breeches and stockings, with their unkempt heads powdered, and with swords at their sides, stood motionless on every step of the staircase. I counted one hundred of these rustic retainers on the staircase alone. They would have looked better had their liveries occasionally fitted them. The ball-room at Prince S——'s was hung with splendid Brussels seventeenth century tapestry framed in mahogany panels, heavily carved and gilt. I have never seen this combination of mahogany, gilding, and tapestry anywhere else. It was wonderfully decorative, and with the elaborate painted ceiling made a fine setting for an entertainment. It was a real pleasure to see how whole-heartedly the Austrians threw themselves into the dancing. I think they all managed to retain a child's power of enjoyment, and they never detracted from this by any unnecessary brainwork. Still they were delightfully friendly, easy-going people. A distinctive feature of every Vienna ball was the "Comtessen-Zimmer," or room reserved for girls. At the end of every dance they all trooped in there, giggling and gossiping, and remained there till the music for the next dance struck up. No married woman dared intrude into the "Comtessen-Zimmer," and I shudder to think of what would have befallen the rash male who ventured to cross that jealously-guarded threshold. I imagine that the charming and beautifully-dressed Austrian married women welcomed this custom, for between the dances at all events they could still hold the field, free from the competition of a younger and fresher generation.
At Prince S——'s, at midnight, armies of rustic retainers, in their temporary disguise, brought battalions of supper tables into the ball-room, and all the guests sat down to a hot supper at the same time. As an instance of how Austrians blended simplicity with a great love of externals, I see from my diary that the supper consisted of bouillon, of plain-boiled carp with horse-radish, of thick slices of hot roast beef, and a lemon ice—and nothing else whatever. A sufficiently substantial repast, but hardly in accordance with modern ideas as to what a ball-supper should consist of. The young peasants, considering that it was their first attempt at waiting, did not break an undue number of plates; they tripped at times, though, over their unaccustomed swords, and gaped vacantly, or would get hitched up with each other, when more dishes crashed to their doom.