You still find Byron in every German household where English is read at all, and no one seems to have found out what fustian most of his poetry really was. Ruskin and Oscar Wilde are the two popular modern authors, and the novel-reading public chooses, so several booksellers assured me, Marion Crawford and Mrs. Croker. I could not hear a word anywhere of Stevenson or Rudyard Kipling, but I did come across one person who had enjoyed Richard Feverel.
"Your English novels are rather better than they used to be, are they not?" said a lady to me in good faith, and I found it a difficult question to answer, because I had always believed that we had a long roll of great novelists; but then, I had also thought that England had a few poets.
The most popular German novels are mostly translated into English, and all German novels of importance are reviewed in our papers. So English people who read German know what a strong reaction there is against the moonshine of fifty years ago. The novels most in vogue exhibit the same coarse, but often thoughtful and impressive, realism that prevails on the stage and in the conversation and conduct of some sets of people in the big cities. The Tagebuch einer Verlorenen has sold 75,000 copies, and it is the story of a German Kamelliendame compared with whom Dumas' lady is moonshine. It is a haunting picture of a woman sinning against the moral and social law, and no one with the least sense or judgment could put it on the low level of certain English novels that sell because they are offensive, and for no other reason in the world. Aus guter Familie, by Gabrielle Reuter, is another remarkable novel, and I believe it has never been translated into English. It presents the poignant tragedy of a woman's life suffocated by the social conditions obtaining in a small German town where a woman has no hope but marriage, and if she is poor no chance of marriage. It is one of the most sincere books I ever read. Das Tägliche Brot, Klara Viebig's story of servant-life in Berlin, is another typical novel of the present day, and that has been translated for those amongst us who do not read German. I choose these three novels for mention because they are written by women, and because they are brilliant examples of the modern tone amongst women. If you want the traditional German qualities of sentiment, poetry, formlessness, and dreamy childlike charm, you must read novels written by men.
I have said very little about music in Germany, because we all know and admit that it reaches heights there no other nation can approach. An Englishman writing about Germany lately says that you often hear very bad music there, but I think his experience must have been exceptional and unfortunate. I am sure that Germans do not tolerate the vapid dreary drawing-room songs we listen to complacently in this country; for in England people often have beautiful voices without any musical understanding, or technical facility without charm. I suppose such cases must occur amongst Germans too, and in the end one speaks of a foreign nation partly from personal experience, which must be narrow, and partly from hearsay. I have met Germans who were not musical, but I have never met any who were pleased with downright bad music. On the whole, it is the art they understand best, the one in which their instinctive taste is sure and good. You would not find that the Byron amongst composers, whoever he may be, was the one they set up for worship. Nor do you find the street of a German city or suburb infested with barrel-organs. There is some kind of low dancing saloon or café chantant called a Tingl-Tangl where I imagine they have organs and gramaphones and suchlike horrors, but then unless you chance to pass their open windows you need not endure their strains. In England, even if we are fond of music, and therefore sensitive to jarring sounds and maudlin melodies, yet in the street we cannot escape the barrel-organ nor in the house the drawing-room songs. As if these were not enough, we now invite each other to listen to the pianotist and the pianola.
"I will explain my country to you," said the artist one day when I had expressed myself puzzled by the curious gaps in German taste, and even in German knowledge; by their enthusiasm for the second rate in poetry and literature, and by their amazing uncertain mixture of information and blank complacent ignorance. For when an Englishman says "Goethe! Schiller!—Was is das?" you are not surprised. It is just what you expect of an Englishman, and for all that he may know how to build bridges and keep his temper in games and argument. But when a German teacher of literature tells you Byron is the only English poet, and when the whole nation neglects some of our big men but runs wild over certain little ones, you listen eagerly for any explanation forthcoming. "We have Wissen," said the artist, "we have Kunst; but we have no Kultur."
I did not recover from the shock he gave me till the evening, when I saw the professor of philosophy and æsthetics.
"The artist says that you have no Kultur," I told him; for I wanted to see how he received a shock.
"The artist speaks the truth," said the professor calmly. I have never met anyone more civilised and scholarly then he was himself; and I set a high value on his opinion.
"What is Kultur?" I asked.
"One result of it is a fine discrimination," he replied, "a fine discrimination in art, in conduct, and in manner."