CHAPTER XXVI[ToC]
BERLIN
Once upon a time a German got hold of Aladdin's lamp, and he summoned the Djinn attendant on the lamp. "Build me a city of broad airy streets," he bade him, "and where several streets meet see that there is an open place set with trees and statues and fountains." All the houses, even those that the poor inhabit, are to be big and white and shining, like palaces; but the real palaces where princes shall live may be plain and grey. There are to be pleasure grounds in the midst of the city, but they are to be woods rather than parks, because even you and the lamp cannot make grass grow in this soil and climate. In the pleasure grounds, and especially on either side of one broad avenue, there are to be sculptured figures of kings and heroes, larger than life and as white as snow. The Djinn said it would be easy to build the city in a night as the German desired, but that the sculpture could not be hurried in this way, because artists would have to make it, and artists were people who would not work to order or to time. The German, however, said he was master of the lamp, and that the city must be ready when he wanted it early next morning. So the Djinn set to work and got the city ready in a night, sculpture and all. But when he had finished he had not used half the figures and garlands and other stone ornaments he had made. If he had been in England he might have reduced them in size, and given them to an Italian hawker to carry about on his head on a tray. But he knew that hawkers would not be allowed in the city he had built. So, as he was rather tired and anxious to be done, he quickly made one more long, broad street stretching all the way from the pleasure ground in the centre of the city to the forest that begins where the city ends; and on every house in the street he put figures and garlands and gilded balconies and ornamental turrets, as many as he could. The effect when he had finished pleased him vastly, and he said it was the finest street in the city, and should be called the Kurfürstendamm. His master and all the Germans who came to live in it agreed with him. They gave large rents for a flat in one of the houses, and when they went to London and saw the smoky dwarfish houses there they came away as quickly as possible and rubbed their hands and were happy, and said to each other, "How beautiful is our Kurfürstendamm. We have as many turrets as we have chimneys, and we have garlands on our balconies of green or gilded iron, and some of us have angelic figures made of red brick, so that the angelic faces are checked with white where the bricks are joined together."
"But it does not become anyone from England to criticise the architecture and sculpture of a foreign country," I said to the artist who told me the story of the lamp. "Our own is notoriously bad."
"It is not you who will criticise ours," he answered. "By your own confession, you know nothing whatever of architecture and sculpture, and when people know nothing they should either keep silence or ask for information in the best quarter. You have my authority for saying that the architects and sculptors of Berlin would have been better employed building dog-kennels."
"But I rather like your wide cheerful streets," I objected, "and your tall clean houses. Our houses...."
"Your houses are little black boxes in which people eat and sleep. They do not pretend to anything. Ours pretend to be beautiful, and are ridiculous. Moreover, in England there are men who can build beautiful houses. You do not employ them much. You prefer your ugly little boxes. But they are there. I know their names and their work."
"But what do you think of our statues?" I asked him.
"I don't think of them," he said; "I prefer to think of something pleasant. When I am in London I spend every hour I have at the docks."
"I like the Sieges-Allee," I said boldly,—"it is so clean and cheerful."