Home Life in Germany

by Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

If you choose to leave the railroad you may still travel by diligence in Germany, and rumble along the roads in its stuffy interior. As you pass through a village the driver blows his horn, old and young run out to enjoy the sensation of the day, the geese cackle and flutter from you in the dust, you catch glimpses of a cobble-stoned market-place, a square church-tower with a stork's nest on its summit, Noah's Ark-like houses with thatched or gabled roofs, tumble-down balconies, and outside staircases of wood. Sometimes when the official coach is crowded you may have an open carriage given you without extra charge, but you cannot expect that to happen often; nor will you often be driven by postillion nowadays. Indeed, for all I know the last one may have vanished and been replaced by a motor bus. You can take one to a mountain inn in the Black Forest nowadays, over a pass I travelled a few years ago in a mail coach. In those times it was a jog-trot journey occupying the long lazy hours of a summer morning. I suppose that now you whizz and hustle through the lovely forest scenery pursued by clouds of dust and offended by the fumes of petrol, but no doubt you get to your destination quicker than you used. The pleasantest way to travel in Germany, if you are young and strong, is on your feet. It is enchanting to walk day after day through the cool scented forest and sleep at night in one of the clean country inns. You must choose your district and your inn, for if you went right off the traveller's track and came to a peasant's house you would find nothing approaching the civilisation of an English farmhouse. But in most of the beautiful country districts of Germany there are fine inns, and there are invariably good roads leading to them. This way of travelling is too tame for English people as a rule. They laugh at the broad well-made path winding up the side of a German mountain, and still more at the hotel or restaurant to be found at the top. From the English point of view a walk of this kind is too tame and easy either for health or pleasure. But the beauty of it, especially in early summer, can never be forgotten; and so it is worth while, even if you are young and cherish a proper scorn for broad roads and good dinners. You would probably come across some dinners that were not good, tough veal, for instance, and greasy vegetables. The roads you would have to accept, and walk them if you choose in tennis shoes. Indeed, you would forget the road and eat the dinner unattending; for all that's made would be a green thought in a green shade for you by the end of the day, and as you shut your eyes at night you would see forest, forest with the sunlight on the young tips of the pines, forest unfolding itself from earth to sky as you climbed hour after hour close to the ferns and boulders of the foaming mountain stream your pathway followed, forest too on the opposite side of the valley, with wastes of golden broom here and there, and fields of rye and barley swept gently by the breeze. You may walk day by day in Germany through such a paradise as this, and meet no one but a couple of children gathering wild strawberries, or an old peasant carrying faggots, or the goose-girl herding her fussy flock. You may even spend your summer holiday in a crowded watering-place, and yet escape quite easily into the heart of the forest where the crowd never comes. The crowd sits about on benches planted by a Verschönerungsverein within a mile of their hotel, or on the verandah of the hotel itself. Some of the benches will command a view, and these will be most in demand. Those that are nearly a mile away will be reached by energetic elderly ladies, and at dinner you will hear that they have been to the Rabenstein this morning, and that the Aussicht was prachtvoll and the Luft herrlich, but that they must decline to go farther afield this afternoon as the morning's exertions have tired them. But some of die Herren say they are ready for anything, and even propose to scale the mountain behind the hotel and drink a glass of beer at the top. You readily agree to go with them, for by this time you know that even if you are a poor walker you can toddle half way up a German hill and down again; and the hotel itself has been built high above the valley. But after dinner you find that nearly everyone disappears for a siesta, while the few who keep outside are asleep over their coffee and cigar. Even Skat hardly keeps awake the three Herren who proposed a walk; and your friend the Frau Geheimrath Schultze warns you solemnly against the insanity of stirring a step before sundown; for summer in South Germany is summer indeed. The sun comes suddenly with power and glory, bursting every sheathed bud and ripening crops in such a hurry that you walk through new mown hayfields while your English calendar tells you it is still spring. Later in the year the heat is often intense all through the middle of the day, and the young men who make their excursions on foot start at dawn, so that they may arrive at a resting place by ten or eleven. "For many years our boys have wandered cheaply and simply through their German Fatherland," says a leaflet advertising a society that organises walking tours for girls; Saturday afternoon walks, Sunday walks, and holiday walks extending over six or eight days. "Simplicity, cheerful friendly intercourse, gaiety in fresh air, these are the companions of our pilgrimage.... We wish to provide the German nation with mothers who are at home in woods and meadows, who have learned to observe the beauties of nature, who have strengthened their health and their perceptions of everything that is great and beautiful by happy walks.... Anyone wanderfroh who has been at a higher school or who is still attending one is eligible. The card of membership only costs 3 marks for a single member and 4 marks for a whole family. Some of the excursions are planned to include brother pilgrims, and their character is gay and cheerful, without flirting or coquetry, a genuine friendly intercourse between girls and boys, young men and maidens, a pure and beautiful companionship such as no dancing lesson and no ballroom can create, and which is nevertheless the best training for life." So nowadays gangs of girls, and even mixed gangs of boys and girls, are to swarm through the pleasant forests of Germany, ascend the easy pathways of her mountains, and fill her country inns to overflowing. How horrified the little Backfisch would have been at such a suggestion, how unmaidenly her excellent aunt would have deemed it, how profoundly they would both have disapproved of any exercise that heightens the colour or disturbs the neatness of a young lady's toilet. I myself have heard German men become quite violent in their condemnation of Englishwomen who play games or take walks that make them temporarily dishevelled. It never seemed to occur to them that a woman might think their displeasure at her appearance of less account than her own enjoyment. "No," they said, "ask not that we should admire Miss Smith. She has just come in from a six hours' walk with her brother. Her face is as red as a poppy, her blouse is torn, and her boots are thick and muddy."

As a matter of fact, I had not asked them to admire Miss Smith. I knew that the lady they admired was arch, and had a persuasive giggle. Nevertheless I tried to break a lance for my countrywoman.

"You will see," I assured them, "she will remove the torn blouse and the muddy boots; and when she comes down her face will be quite pale."

"But she often looks like that," said one of the men. "At least once a day she plays a game or takes a walk that is more of a strain on her appearance than it should be. A young woman must always consider what effect things have on her appearance."

"Why?"

"Why?—Because she is a woman. There is no sense in a question like that. It goes back to the beginning of all things. It is unanswerable. Every young woman wishes to please."

"But is it not conceivable," I asked, "that a young woman may sometimes wish to please herself even at the expense of her appearance. Miss Smith assures me that she enjoys long walks and games,—oh, games that you have not seen her play here—hockey, for instance, and cricket."

"Verrückt!" said the men in chorus. "A young woman should not think of herself at all. The Almighty has created her to please us, and it does not please us when she wears muddy boots and is as red as a poppy; at least, not while she is young. When she is married, and her place is in the kitchen, she may be as red as she pleases. That is a different matter."

"Is it?" I said, and I wanted to ask why again; but I held my tongue. Some questions, as they said, lead one too far afield.

The majority of visitors at a German watering-place take very little exercise of any kind. They sit about the forest as our seaside visitors sit about the sands, and though they cannot fill in their mornings by sea bathing, there are often medicinal baths that take as much time. Then the Badearzt probably prescribes so many glasses of water from his favourite spring each day, and a short walk after each glass, and a long rest after the midday dinner. Dinner is the really serious business of the day, and often occupies two hours. Where there is still a table d'hôte it is a tedious, noisy affair, conducted in a stuffy room, and even if you are greedy enough to like the good things brought round you wish very soon that you were on a Cumberland fell-side with a mutton sandwich and a mountain stream. You wish it even although you hate mutton sandwiches and like meringues filled with Alpine strawberries and whipped cream; for the clatter and the clack going on around you, and the asphyxiating air, bring on a demoralising somnolence that you despise and cannot easily throw off. You sit about as lazily as anyone else half through the golden afternoon, drink a cup of coffee at four o'clock, look at mountains of cake, and then start for the restaurant, which is said to be eine gute Stunde from the hotel. You find, as you expected, that you saunter gently uphill on a broad winding road through the forest, and that you have a charming walk, but not what anyone in this country would call exercise till they were about seventy. In case you should be weary you pass seats every hundred yards or so, and when you have made your ascent you are received by a bustling waiter or a waitress in costume, who expects to serve you with beer or coffee before you venture down the hill again. By the time you get back to the hotel everyone is streaming in to supper, which is not as long as dinner, but quite as noisy. After supper everyone sits about the verandah or the garden. The men play cards, and smoke and drink coffee and Kirsch, the married women talk and do embroidery, the maidens stroll about in twos and threes or sit down to Halma. There are never many young men in these summer hotels, and the few there are herd with the older men or with each other more than young men do in this country. What we understand by flirtation is not encouraged, unless it is almost sure to lead to marriage; and what the Germans understand by flirtation is justly considered scandalous and reprehensible. For the Germans have taken the word into use, but taken away the levity and innocence of its meaning. They make it a term of serious reproach, and those who dislike us condemn the shocking prevalence of Flirt (they make a noun of the verb) in our decadent society.