Directly these forms have been circulated, all the friends who have received one and live near enough pay a visit of congratulation to the bride's parents, and soon after the betrothed couple return these visits with some ceremony. It is quite impossible, by the way, to talk of Germans who are officially engaged without calling them the bride and bridegroom. They plight their troth with the plain gold rings that will be their wedding rings, and this stage of their union is celebrated with as much ceremony and merrymaking as the actual wedding. The Germans are giving up so many of their quaint poetical customs that the girl of to-day probably wears a fine diamond engagement ring instead of the old-fashioned gold one. But the ring with which her mother and grandmother plighted their troth was the ring with which they were wedded, and when Chamisso wrote Du Ring an meinem Finger he was not writing of diamonds. All the tenderness and poetry of Germany go out to lovers, and the thought of a German bride and bridegroom flashes through the mind with thoughts of flowers and moonlight and nightingales. At least, it does if you can associate them with the poems of Heine and Chamisso, with the songs of Schumann, and with the caressing intimate talk of the German tongue unloosed by love. But your experience is just as likely to play you the unkindest trick, and remind you of German lovers whose uncouth public endearments made everyone not to the manner born uncomfortable.
When the bride and bridegroom live in the same town, and know a large number of people, they are overdone with festivities from the moment of betrothal to the day of marriage. The round of entertainments begins with a gala dinner given by the bride's father, and this is followed by invitations from all the relatives and friends on either side. When you receive a German Brautpaar they should be the guests of honour, and if you can hang garlands near them so much the better. You must certainly present the Braut with a bouquet at some stage of the proceedings, and you will give pleasure if you can manufacture one or two mottoes in green stuff and put them in conspicuous places. For instance, I knew of a girl who got engaged away from home. Do you suppose that she was allowed to return to a bare and speechless front door as her English cousin would? Nothing of the kind. The whole family had set to work to twine laurel wreaths and garlands in her honour, and she was received with Wilkommen du glückseliges Kind done in ivy leaves by her grandmother. It was considered very rührend and innig. At some time during the engagement the betrothed couple are sure to get photographed together, and anyone who possesses a German family album will bear me out that the lady is nearly always standing, while her bearded lover is sitting down. When they are both standing they are arm in arm or hand in hand. I remember a collection possessing two photographs of a married daughter with her husband. One had been taken just before the wedding in the orthodox pose; he in an easy chair and she standing meekly by his side: the other represented them a year after marriage, when Heaven had sent them twins. They were both standing then, and they each had a baby in a Steckkissen in their arms.
If the bridegroom is not living in the same town with his bride her life is supposed to run rather quietly in his absence. She is not expected to dance with other men, for instance; but rather to spend her time in embroidering his monogram on every conceivable object he might use: on tobacco pouches, or slippers, on letter cases, on braces, on photograph frames, on luggage straps, on fine pocket handkerchiefs. If she is expert and possesses the true sentiment she will embroider things for him with her hair. In these degenerate days she does not make her own outfit. Formerly, when a German girl left school she began to make stores of body and house linen for future years. But in modern cities the Braut gets everything at one of the big "white" shops, from her own laces and muslins to the saucepan holders for the kitchen, and the bread bags her cook will hang outside the flat for the baker's boy. In Germany it is the bride, or rather her parents, who furnish the house and provide the household linen; and the linen is all embroidered with her initials. This custom extends to all classes, so that you constantly hear of a servant who is saving up for her Aussteuer, that is, the furniture and linen of a house as well as her own clothes. If you ask whether she is engaged you are told that the outfit is the thing. When the money for that is there it is easy to provide the bridegroom. In higher spheres much more is spent on a bride's trousseau than in England, taking class for class. Some years ago I had occasion to help in the choice of a trousseau bought in Hamburg, and to be often in and out of a great "white ware" business there. I cannot remember how many outfits were on view during those weeks, but they were all much alike. What some people call "undies" had been ordered in immense quantities, sometimes heavily trimmed with Madeira work, sometimes with a plain scollop of double linen warranted to wash and wear for ever. The material was also invariably of a kind to wear, a fine linen or a closely woven English longcloth. How any one woman could want some six dozen "nighties" (the silly slang sounds especially silly when I think of those solid highly respectable German garments) was a question no one seemed to ask. The bride's father could afford six dozen; it was the custom to have six dozen if you could pay for them, and there they were. The thin cambric garments French women were beginning to wear then were shown to you and tossed contemptuously aside as only fit for actresses. But this has all been changed. If you ask for "undies" in Berlin to-day, a supercilious shoplady brings you the last folly in gossamer, decolletée, and with elbow sleeves; and you wonder as you stare at it what a sane portly German housewife makes of such a garment. In this, as in other things, instead of abiding by his own sensible fashions, the German is imitating the French and the Americans; for it is the French and the Americans who have taught the women of other nations to buy clothes so fragile and so costly that they are only fit for the purse of a Chicago packer.
When the outfit is ready and the wedding day near, the bride returns all the entertainments given in her honour by inviting her girl friends to a Bride-chocolate or a Bean-coffee. This festivity is like a Kaffee-Klatsch, or what we should call an afternoon tea. In Germany, until quite lately, chocolate and coffee were preferred to tea, and the guests sat round a dining-table well spread with cakes. At a Bean-coffee the cake of honour had a bean in it, and the girl who got the bean in her slice would be Braut before the year was out. Another entertainment that takes place immediately before the marriage is given by the bride's best friend, who invites several other girls to help her weave the bridal wreath of myrtle. The bride does not help with it. She appears with the bridegroom later in the afternoon when the wreath is ready. It is presented to her with great ceremony on a cushion, and as they bring it the girls sing the well-known song from the Freischütz—
"Wir winden dir den Jungfernkranz
Mit veilchenblauer Seide;
Wir führen dich zu Spiel und Tanz
Zu Glück und Liebesfreude!
Lavendel, Myrt' und Thymian
Das wächst in meinen Garten;
Wie lang bleibt doch der Freiersmann?
Ich kann es kaum erwarten.
Sie hat gesponnen sieben Jahr
Den goldnen Flachs am Rocken;
Die Schleier sind wie Spinnweb klar,
Und grün der Kranz der Locken.
Und als der schmucke Freier kam,
War'n sieben Jahr verronnen:
Und weil sie der Herzliebste nahm
Hat sie den Kranz gewonnen."
The bridegroom receives a buttonhole, but no one sings him a song. In the opera he is not on the stage during the bridesmaids' chorus. I have not been able to find out whether the quaint pretty verses are by Friedrich Kind, who founded the libretto of the opera on a story by August Apel, or whether he borrowed them from an older source. German brides wore myrtle and their friends wove a wedding wreath for them long before 1820, when Der Freischütz appeared.