“Dot Pfarrer is not krank—sick, how you say?”
My dear, she actually sent the coffee away, and forbade the kellner ever to bring it to me again! The Schnells and I patronize the same fruit-stand, and we walk up and down after meals together, eating grapes out of brown paper bags. A certain forlorn Pole at our table interests me; he is called Count Chopski, or some such name. His nerves are shattered by too much cigarette smoking. Frau Schnell and I came upon him in the wood the other day, sitting behind a big tree smoking. Frau Schnell marched up to him, took the cigarette out of his hand, and gave him a scolding for smoking on the sly. He began to cry!
I am at the best hotel, which is of a simplicity! Big people and little people all sit down to the half-past-twelve dinner; only royalties (there are always some of them here) are allowed to keep any state. At the table next mine a bishop and a ballet-dancer sit side by side; it is an open joke to all of us, except the bishop, who doesn’t know, and nobody will tell him,—I call that nice feeling. In all my life I have never met with such simple kindliness as there is here; it’s a sort of Kingdom-come place, where everybody feels responsible for everybody else. Nothing of the am-I-my-brother’s-keeper feeling here! Of course, it is all Pfarrer Kneipp; the whole atmosphere of place and people is the expression of a great, ardent heart which beats for sick humanity, which rages against all shams and cruelties. His spirit is like my father’s, the atmosphere here more like that of the old Institution for the Blind in his day than anything I have ever known.
When Sebastian Kneipp was a young student preparing for the priesthood (he was the son of a poor weaver) his health broke down so completely that he was obliged to give up his studies. One day in a convent library he stumbled on a copy of Preissnitz’s book on water-cure. Impressed by the theory, he persuaded a fellow-student in the same predicament as himself to join him in putting it into practice. It was midwinter. The two lads broke the ice from a neighboring stream in which they took their baths. Heroic treatment, but it saved them; both soon regained their health. Kneipp finished his course of study, took orders, returned to his native village of Woerishoven as parish priest, and has remained here ever since.
From the beginning he seems to have been more interested in curing his parishioners’ bodies than in saving their souls. He tells of being called to administer the last sacrament to a dying man. The moment he saw him he threw away book and candle, called for a pail of water and a linen sheet, put the patient in a wet pack, and saved his life. For many years the Pfarrer only practised among his peasant neighbors. Gradually his fame spread to the surrounding villages, to the city of Munich, to other cities. People began to flock to Woerishoven from all over Germany, France, Europe, America, till finally this obscure Bavarian hamlet has become one of the world’s great Meccas of health.
The only person who makes any effort for society is an Austrian countess, a great court lady. She has taken a tiny cottage, brought her own cook, maid, and butler from Vienna, and tries to give “at homes.” I heard some good music at her rooms the other day. Somehow she had managed to draw together half a dozen people of the sort that can make “society” in the prison of La Jacquerie, on an ocean steamer, or even at a German cure,—an Austrian officer, an English diplomat, a French abbé, my Polish count, and the musician, who is a real artist. We walked with the gods for that hour; the pianist gave us whatever we asked for—Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Grieg. It was a Kaffee-klatsch without the coffee (all stimulants are forbidden, even tea and coffee); the butler handed—scornfully, I thought—milk and grapes. The party broke up rather hurriedly at sunset, everybody rushing away to get their Wassertreten before dark. Water treading is to wade up to one’s knees in one of the streams which run through the fields. Very pleasant, very comic—fortunately, there is a male stream and a female stream; such chippendales! such piano legs have I seen! It is all so strange, so echt deutsch! The countess does not harmonize with the rest, she is out of key. I meet her at seven o’clock in the morning, her feet, head, neck, and arms bare, strolling over the wet grass, a lovely, incongruous vision; her hair dressed and “ondulée” in the latest fashion; her parasol, rose-colored satin. Now, a rose-colored satin parasol at Woerishoven is a false note in a pastoral symphony. She worships Father Kneipp; they all say she owes him her life; he cannot endure her, has attacked her almost openly in his talks; he will not tolerate folly, vanity, or worldliness; she personifies—oh, so charmingly—all three! She wears the prescribed dress of coarse Kneipp linen with such a difference; the other women look like meal-sacks; she has the lines of a Greek goddess.
In the early morning all the patients walk barefoot through the wet grass. Those who have been here longest go without shoes and stockings all day. I am told it is delightful to walk bare foot in the new-fallen snow. Women’s skirts reach only to the ankles; men wear knickerbockers. The only foot-gear allowed at Woerishoven is the leather sandal, classic and comfortable. Newcomers begin by wearing the sandal over the stocking, then the stocking is left off for half an hour—an hour—finally for the whole day. An hour and a half after breakfast and dinner a cold douche is taken. The blitzguss (lightning douche) is for people who have been taking the cure for some time, the rumpf (body) douche is commonly prescribed for new arrivals. At the ladies’ bath attached to this hotel a rosy mädchen plays the hose upon the patient with skill and firmness. That ordeal over, the dripping victim scrambles hastily into her clothes—drying and rubbing are forbidden—and exercises vigorously until she is perfectly dry and warm. The exhilaration which follows is indescribable. In the exercise-room attached to the largest bath, I have seen a bishop capering, a princess sawing wood, a fat American millionaire pirouetting with a balancing pole. No one laughs; it is too grave a matter. You dance or prance, box, saw wood, or do calisthenics for your life—anything to get up the circulation!
Bavaria is enchanting, Bavarians are delightful, not at all like other Germans, more like the Tyrolese,—simple, kind, deeply religious. I cannot imagine becoming a “convert” in Rome, but here it would be easier. Why should the people of Catholic countries have better manners than those of Protestant lands? I know you will bring up some old saw about sincerity and truth not always being compatible with suavity! We can’t be all right and they all wrong, “and yet and yet” it is known that the Pope keeps his own private account at the Bank of Protestant England! Does this mean that he, like the Italians I meet every day, is readier to trust an Englishman or an American than his own countrymen?
I keep thinking of him, my neighbor in Rome, the Prisoner of the Vatican, shut up between the walls of his vast garden through all the long summer. I used to look at his windows and wonder if he felt the heat as much as I did in those last August days before we came away on our villeggiatura. No villeggiatura for him, he is still there! The “Black Pope” (as the power of the Jesuit is called) is his gaoler,—not good King Humbert, as you may have been led to suppose,—but a prison is a prison, whoever the gaoler may be.
I am learning all I can about the German Kaiser. I am inclined to think he plays the strongest game at the European card-table. The Bavarians I have talked with seem rather bored by him; they compare him unfavorably with poor, dear, mad King Ludwig and his father, great art patrons, both.