One of the chief attractions of the theatre and the operas in Munich is the fact that they begin early. The opera begins at six o’clock and is always over before ten, except in the case of a very long opera. The plays begin at seven-thirty and in nearly every instance are over at nine-thirty. In other words, the opera and theatres are run not for the benefit of members of a leisure class who do not have to get up the next morning but for the ordinary citizen and his family who are obliged to rise early and go to work. In New York, in Paris and in London theatre-going and opera-going are in the nature of a dissipation. The theatres in Paris do not close until midnight, and in New York and London one does not usually get to one’s domicile before that. The result is that one is exhausted, and, according to Kipling, “There is nothing certain but the morning head.” To go to the theatre or opera four nights in succession in London, Paris or New York—unless one is able to rise very late the next day—is an exhausting ordeal, but in Munich, during a period of seven months, I averaged five nights a week at the opera and theatre and never felt fatigue.
There is another advantage about beginning early. Instead of going to the opera or theatre stuffed with a soggy dinner and made somnolent by food, one takes tea before going and when the entertainment is over one goes into a cheerful café and has a hot supper in delightful company and is in bed before eleven.
What does going to the theatre mean in New York, London and Paris? It too often means something like this. One attends a dinner party where half the guests arrive late; one then has a long course dinner, hurried toward the end; the entire company is hustled into automobiles and arrives at the theatre or opera a half hour after the performance has begun and in a condition that precludes the possibility of mental concentration.
After one has spent two or three months in Munich, one falls in love with the place, with the temper of the town and with the people. I am frequently homesick for Munich. In one year, after I had spent four months there, I went in April to Italy—the land where the lemon trees bloom. There I lived in sunshine and enjoyed the glory and beauty of the romantic country. But after a while I became homesick for Munich and, although on the morning of my return it was raining and the weather in general was doing its worst, my heart was singing, for I was home again.
XL
TRADITIONS
Whether we like it or not, we are governed by the past. The books written by men long dead have the largest influence in shaping our minds and ruling our conduct; the laws that control our duties and our privileges as citizens were made by men whose names we cannot remember; spirit hands guide our footsteps; we think the thoughts of our ancestors and carry into execution conceptions formed by them. The muscles of our bodies and the swifter impulses of our minds are set in motion by thousands of men and women. We have been shaped by our traditions. We can ourselves add something to these traditions, but even if we would, we cannot annihilate them. They are as real as we are.
Many Americans have such a militant consciousness of independence that they cannot endure the thought of having America’s destiny in any way influenced by hands across the sea. “What! do you mean to say that foreigners shall tell us what we may and may not do?” Now the truth is, that not only men in foreign nations have a vital influence on our present conduct and future acts, but that this is especially true of those foreigners who have been dead for centuries. The situation is humiliating. Bad enough to have an absentee ruler alive—how much more insupportable when he has ceased to exist!
Nothing is more foolish than to despise the past or to attempt to arrange the future without a sound knowledge of history. The difficulty with some radical reformers is that they are deficient in historical knowledge. They do not know that the experiment they have in mind has been tried so many times without success that some lesson might possibly be gained by observation of previous results. “Histories make men wise,” said Bacon; they make us wise, not merely because history books were written by wise men, but because history itself is the accumulation of human wisdom gleaned from human folly. To sneer at the past is to sneer at wisdom. For despite the glib way in which the word evolution is used, despite the advances made in personal luxuries, housing and locomotion, despite the broad (rather than deep) diffusion of culture by which reading and writing have become no more conspicuous than breathing—there is not one scintilla of evidence to prove that the individual mind has advanced a single step in the power of thought, or in the ability to reason, or in the possession of wisdom. The men of ancient times—as represented by their leaders—were in every respect as able-minded as the best products of the twentieth century.
Reflexion makes us realise the imponderable worth of traditions; we know they come only from years. Even if every man had his price, which is not true, there are things beyond all price. A boy who goes to Cambridge or Oxford has something in his education beyond the price he pays for his tuition, or the instruction he receives in lectures, or the advantages of modern laboratories. The grey walls of the cloisters, the noble old towers, the enchanting beauty of the quadrangle, represent not only the best in architecture, but they are hallowed by thousands of ghosts. Lowell coined the phrase, “God’s passionless reformers, influences.” These influences, silently but chronically active, like a deep-flowing river, give something that no recently founded institution can bring; something that makes the so-called almighty dollar look impotent. Any well-disposed multi-millionaire can start a well-equipped university; in time it, too, will have its traditions; but many centuries give a tone and a stamp that cannot be bought or sold.
A certain independent humour accompanies those who live in ancient surroundings—and this humour is frequently the Anglo-Saxon way of expressing pride. After dining in hall with the dons one evening in a college at Oxford, we adjourned successively to three rooms. I asked one of my hosts if that had always been the custom. “No, indeed,” said he, with a smile; “in fact, it is comparatively recent. We have been doing this only since the seventeenth century.” He spoke as though it were a rather startling innovation. A wealthy American was so pleased with the velvet turf of the Oxford quadrangles that he asked a janitor how such turf was produced; it appeared that he wished his front lawn at home to wear a similar aspect. The janitor replied that the matter was simple; all that was necessary was to wait a thousand years. Age sometimes really comes before beauty.