Fine wines are a perquisite of money. The fortunate aristocrat and the house of Israel, which everywhere waxes fat on the needs of travellers, may sip their champagne, their Lachrymæ Christi, and their Hockheimer, while less favored humanity contents itself with sour vin ordinaire; but beer is the same for all, and in some breweries each one must search for a glass, rinse it, and present himself in his turn at the shank window, to which there is no royal road. "La bière," which a great writer calls "ce vin de la réforme," is essentially a democratic drink. It became popular at a time when a fatal blow had been struck at class privileges and priestly exclusiveness.
Manfully does a true-hearted Bavarian stand by his brewery, in ill as well as good report. If the beer turns out badly, he does not find it a sufficient reason to desert his local for some other, but rather remains with touching devotion, and anticipates the approaching end of the old beer and the advent of new, with implicit trust and confidence in the future. Some years ago the Bavarian post and railway conductors distinguished themselves by the mournful zeal with which they notified to the passengers the nearing of the frontier. At each station they were sorrowfully communicative.
"The last Bairischer[B] but four, gentlemen! Gentlemen, there are only two more real Bairischers! Gentlemen," with tears in the voice, "the last Bairischer."
The passengers rushed to the buffet and drank.
Even now, with that curious affection with which every Bavarian's heart turns to his Mecca of beer, the salutation to a stranger is, "Are you going to Munich? Da werden sie gutes Bier trinken."[C]
"You came from Munich! Ach! da haben sie gutes Bier getrunken."[D]
Even in Beerland there are different kinds of beer, like the federal union, one in many and many in one. Between them are sometimes irreconcilable differences, as for example, between the white and Actiens beer of Berlin. The former is made of wheat, and is exclusively a summer beverage, and a glass of it is fondly termed a "kleine Weisse" (a little white one), perhaps in irony, for it is served in excentric mammoth tumblers, which require both hands to lift.
Then there is the Vienna beer, the antipodes of the Bavarian. The latter must be drunk soon after it is made, while the former must lie many months in the cellar before it is ready for use. In Austria, that forcible union of States of clashing interests and nationalities, which is not a nation, but only a government reposing on bayonets, the population is divided between the partisans of King Gambrinus and those of Bacchus.
As little as an artist could maintain that he was familiar with the works of the great masters when he had not visited Italy, so little could a beer drinker assert that he had seen beer rightly drunk when he had not been in Munich. All over the world beer is regarded as a refreshment, but in Munich it is the elixir of life, the fabled fountain of youth and happiness. It is looked upon as nourishment by the lower classes, who drink for dinner two masses[E] of it, with soup and black bread. For the price of the beer they could procure a good portion of meat, but they universally maintain that they are best nourished with beer and bread.
The Bavarian drinks to satisfy his "thirst, that beautiful German gift of God." If he is healthy, he drinks because it keeps his life juices in their normal state; if he is sick and in pain, because it is a soothing and harmless narcotic; if he is hungry, because beer is nourishment; if he has already eaten, because beer promotes digestion; if he is warm, because it is cooling and refreshing; if he is cold, because it warms him; if he is fatigued, because it is a tonic and sovereign strength renewer; if he is angry, because beer soothes him and gives him time to consider; if he needs courage, because beer is precisely the right stimulant. Where the Americans fly to their bitters "to tone up the system and enliven the secretions," the Germans resort to beer; and many are of opinion that frequent trips to the bock stalls in the spring are more healing than a visit to Carlsbad or Baden Baden, where one drinks disgusting water. In all circumstances and all moods they drink and are comforted.