Home Life in Germany

CHAPTER XIIToC

HOUSEWIVES

"Frenchwomen are the best housewives in Europe," said a German lady who knew most European countries well; "the next best are the English; Germans come third." The lady speaking was one whose opinions were always uttered with much charm, but ex-cathedra; so that you found it impossible to disagree with her ... until you got home. But to hear the supreme excellence of the Hausfrau contested takes the breath away; to see her deposed from the first place by one of her own countrywomen dazzles the eyes. It was a new idea to me that any women in the world except the Germans kept house at all. If you live amongst Germans when you are young you adopt this view quite insensibly and without argument.

"My son is in England," you hear a German mother say. "I am uneasy about him. I fear he may marry an Englishwoman."

"They sometimes do," says her gossip, shaking her head.

"It would break my heart. The women of that nation know nothing of housekeeping. They sit in their drawing-rooms all day, while their husband's hard-earned money is wasted in the kitchen. Besides ... mein armer Karl—he loves Nudelsuppe and Küken mit Spargel. What does an Englishwoman know of such things? She would give him cold mutton to eat, and he would die of an indigestion. I was once in England in my youth, and when I got back we had a Frikassee von Hähnchen mit Krebsen for dinner, and I wept with pleasure."

"Perhaps," says the gossip consolingly, "your Karl will remember these things and fetch himself a German wife."

"Poor girl!" says Karl's not-to-be-consoled mother, "she would have to live in England and keep house there. It happened to my niece Greta Löhring. She had a new cook every fortnight, and each one was worse than the one before. In England when a cook spoils a pudding she puts it in the fire and makes another. Imagine the eggs that are used under such circumstances."

I remember this little dialogue, because I was young and ignorant enough at the time to ask what a German did when she spoilt a pudding, and was promptly informed that in Germany such things could not happen. A cook was not allowed to make puddings unless her mistress stood by and saw that she made them properly; "unless she is a perfekte Köchin," added Karl's mother, "and then she does not spoil things."

A German friend, not the travelled one, but a real home-baked domestic German, took me one hot afternoon this summer to pay a call, and at once fell to talking to the mistress of the house about the washing of lace curtains. There were eight windows in front of the flat, and each window had a pair of stiff spotless lace curtains, and each curtain had been washed by the lady's own hands. My friend had just washed hers, and they both approached the subject as keenly as two gardeners will approach a question of bulbs or Alpines. There are different ways of washing a white curtain, you know, and different methods of rinsing and drying it, and various soaps. Starch is used too at some stage of the process; at least, I think so. But the afternoon was hot and the argument involved. The starch I will not swear to, but I will swear to ten waters—ten successive cleansings in fresh water before the soul of the housewife was at rest.

"And how do you wash yours?" said one of them, turning to me.

"Oh—I!" I stammered, taken aback, for I had been nearly asleep; "I send a post-card to Whiteley's, and they fetch them one week and bring them back the next. They cost 1s. a pair."

The two German ladies looked at each other and smiled. Then they politely changed the subject.

This trivial story is not told for its intrinsic merits, but because it illustrates the difference of method between English and German women. The German with much wear and tear of body and spirit washes her own lace curtains. She saves a little money, and spends a great deal of time over them. The Englishwoman, when she possibly can, likes to spend her time in a different way. In both countries there are admirable housekeepers, and middling housekeepers, and extremely bad ones. The German who goes the wrong way about it sends her husband to the Kneipe by her eternal fussing and fidgeting. She is not his companion mentally, but the cook's, for her mind has sunk to the cook's level, while her temper through constant fault-finding is on a lower one. The Englishwoman sends her husband to the club or the public house, according to his social station, because she is incapable of giving him eatable food. But the English belief that German housewives are invariably dull and stodgy is not a whit more ignorant and untrue than the German belief that all Englishwomen are neglectful, extravagant housekeepers. The Englishwoman keeps house in her own way, and it is different from the German way, but it is often admirable. The comfort, the organisation, and the unbroken peace of a well-managed English household are not surpassed, in some details not equalled, anywhere in the world.

The German ideal (for women) is one of service and self-sacrifice. Let her learn betimes to serve, says Goethe, for by service only shall she attain to command and to the authority in the house that is her due.

She is to serve her brothers and parents. Her whole life is to be a going and coming, a lifting and carrying, a preparing and acting for others. Well for her if she treads her way unweariedly, if night is as day to her, if no task seems too small and no needle too fine. She is to forget herself altogether and live in others.

It is a beautiful passage, and an unabashed magnificent masculine egotism speaks in every line of it. Whenever I read it I think of the little girl in Punch whose little brother called to her, "Come here, Effie. I wants you." And Effie answered, "Thank you, Archie, but I wants myself!" Herr Riehl quotes the passage at the end of his own exhortations to his countrywomen, which are all in the same spirit, and were not needed by them. German women have always been devoted to their homes and their families, and they are as subservient to their menfolk as the Japanese. They do not actually fall on their knees before their lords, but the tone of voice in which a woman of the old school speaks of die Herren is enough to make a French, American, or Englishwoman think there is something to be said for the modern revolt against men. For any woman with a spice of feminine perversity in her nature will be driven to the other camp when she meets extremes; so that in Germany she feels ready to rise against overbearing males; whilst in America she misses some of the regard for masculine judgment and authority that German women show in excess. At least, it seems an excess of duty to us when we hear of a German bride who will not go down to dinner with the man appointed by her hostess till she has asked her husband's permission; and when we hear of another writing from Germany that, although in England she had ardently believed in total abstention, she had now changed her opinion because her husband drank beer and desired her to approve of it. But it was an Englishwoman who, when asked about some question of politics, said quite simply and honestly, "I think what Jack thinks."

The truth is, that the women of the two great Germanic races are kin. There are differences, chiefly those of history, manners, and environment. The likeness is profound.

"Par une rencontre singulière," says M. Taine, "les femmes sont plus femmes et les hommes plus hommes ici qu'ailleurs. Les deux natures vont chacune à son extrême; chez les uns vers l'audace, l'esprit d'entreprise et de resistance, le caractère guerrier, impérieux et rude; chez les autres vers la douceur, l'abnégation, la patience, l'affection inépuisable; chose inconnue dans les pays lointains, surtout en France, la femme ici se donne sans se reprendre et met sa gloire et son devoir à obeir, à pardonner, à adorer, sans souhaiter ni pretendre autre chose que se fondre et s'absorber chaque jour davantage en celui qu'elle a volontairement et pour toujours choisi. C'est cet instinct, un antique instinct Germanique, que ces grands peintres de l'instinct mettent tous ici en lumière!... L'âme dans cette race, est à la fois primitive et serieuse. La candeur chez les femmes y subsiste plus longtemps qu'ailleurs. Elles perdent moins vite le respect, elles pèsent moins vite les valeurs et les caractères: elles sont moins promptes à deviner le mal et à mesurer leurs maris.... Elles n'ont pas la netteté, la hardiesse d'idées, l'assurance de conduite, la précocité qui chez nous en six mois font d'une jeune fille une femme d'intrigue et une reine de salon. La vie enfermée et l'obéissance leur sont plus faciles. Plus pliantes et plus sédentaires elles sont en même temps plus concentrées, plus intérieures, plus disposées à suivre des yeux le noble rêve qu'on nomme le devoir...."

I cannot imagine what M. Taine means by saying that Englishwomen lead a more sedentary and sequestered life than Frenchwomen, but the rest of his description presents a well-known type in England and Germany. "Voir la peinture de ce caractère dans toute la littérature anglaise et allemande," he says in a footnote. "Le plus grand des observateurs, Stendhal tout imprégné des moeurs et des idées Italiennes et françaises, est stupéfait à cette vue. Il ne comprend rien à cette espèce de dévouement, 'à cette servitude, que les maris Anglais, sous le nom de devoir, out eu l'esprit d'imposer à leurs femmes.' Ce sont 'des moeurs de sérail.'"

Here the "greatest of all observers" seems to talk nonsense, for marriage in the seraglio does not hinge on the submission of one wife to one husband, but on a plurality of wives that English and German women have only endured in certain historic cases. In both western countries marriage has its roots in the fidelity of one man and one woman to each other. A well-known English novelist once said quite truly that an Englishman very rarely distrusts his wife, and never by any chance distrusts the girl who is to become his wife; and just the same may be said of the German of the better classes. In both countries you will find sections of society above and below where morals are lax and manners corrupt. German professors write sketches of London in which our busy grimy city is held up to a virtuous Germania as the modern Sodom and Gomorrah; and the Continental Anglophobe likes nothing better than to entertain you with pictures of our decadent society, pictures that really do credit to the vividness and detail of his imagination. Meanwhile our press assures the respectable Briton that Berlin is the most profligate city in Europe, and that scurrilous German novels about the German army will show him what the rotten state of things really is in that much over-rated organisation. But these national amenities are misleading. The bulk of the nation in both countries is sound, and family life still flourishes both here and there. The men of the race, in spite of Herr Riehl's prognostications, still have the whip hand, as much as is good for them in England, a little more than is good for them in Germany. If you go to Germany you must not expect a man to open a door for you, or to wait on you at afternoon tea, or to carry a parcel for you in the street. He will kiss your hand when he greets you, he will address you as gracious lady or gracious miss, he will put his heels together and make you beautiful bows, he will pay you compliments that are manifestly, almost admittedly, artificial. That at least is one type of man. He may leave out the kisses and the bows and the compliments and be quite undisguisedly bearish; or he may be something betwixt and between, kindly, concerned for your pleasure and welfare. But whatever he is he will never forget for a moment that you are "only a woman." If you marry him he will expect to rule everywhere except in the kitchen, and as you value a quiet life you had better take care that the kitchen produces what pleases him. On occasion he will assert his authority with some violence and naïveté. No one can be long amongst Germans, or even read many German novels, without coming across instances of what I mean. For example, there was once a quarrel between lovers that all turned upon a second glass of champagne. The girl did not want it, and the man insisted that she should drink it whether she wanted it or not. What happened in the end is forgotten and does not matter. It is the comment of the historian that remains in the memory.

"Her family had spoilt her," said he. "When they are married and my friend gets her to himself she will not behave so."

"But why should she drink a second glass of champagne if she did not want it?" I asked.

"Because he commanded her to," said this Petruchio, beginning to bristle at once; and he straightway told me another story about a man who threw his lady-love's dog into a pond, not because the dog needed a bath, but in assertion of his authority. The lady had wished to keep her dog out of the water.

"Did she ever forgive the man?" said I.

"Forgive!—What was there to forgive? The man wished to put the dog in the pond. A man must know how to enforce his will ... or he is no man."

I nearly said "Lor!" like Mr. Tweddle in The Tinted Venus, but in Germany it's a serious matter, a sort of lèse majesté, to laugh at the rightful rule of man. You must expect to see them waited on hand and foot, and to take this service as a matter of course. I have known Englishmen embarrassed by this state of affairs.

"They will get me chairs," complained one, "and at table the daughters jump up and wait on me. It's horrid."

"Not at all," said I. "It's your due. You must behave as if you were used to it."

"I can't. The other day I got the daughters of the house to sit still while I handed about cups of tea, and if some of the old boys didn't jump down their throats and tell them they'd no business to let me forget my dignity. Bless my dignity ... if it's such a tender plant as that...."

"Sh!" I said. "They must have been old-fashioned people. In some houses young men hand cups."

"They look jolly self-conscious while they're doing it, ... as if they didn't half like it. You bet, they take it out of their womenfolk when they get home. Look at that chap Müller!"

"Where is he?"

"In Dresden, where I lived last winter. He stormed the house down because his wife took up his glass of beer and drank before he did. Nearly had a fit. Said his dignity as a husband was damaged. Then he turned to me and asked whether even in England a wife would be so bold and bad?"

"What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything. I looked sick."

"That's no use. You should say a great deal, and wave your arms about and hammer on the table. You don't know how to show emotion."

"I should hope not," says the Englishman. "But German women are always telling me they envy the women in our country."

"That's their politeness," I assure him. "They don't mean it. They're as happy as the day is long. Besides, Germans don't get drunk and beat their wives with pokers. You know perfectly well that most Englishmen——"

But, of course, whatever you say about German women of the present day can be contradicted by anybody who chooses to describe one at either end of the scale, for the contrasts there are violent. You will find in the same street a woman who exercises a profession, lives more or less at her club, and is as independent as her brother; and women who are household drudges, with neither leisure nor spirit for any occupation that would enrich their minds.

CHAPTER XIIIToC

HOUSEWIVES (Continued)

In Germany the home is furnished by the bride's parents, and the household linen forms part of her trousseau and is marked by her monogram. In describing the furniture of a German flat, you must first decide whether you are going to choose one furnished to-day by a fashionable young woman in Berlin or Hamburg; or one furnished by her parents twenty to twenty-five years ago. Modern German furniture is quite easily suggested to the English imagination, because some of it looks as if the artist had visited our Arts and Crafts Exhibitions and then made his own designs in a nightmare; while some has accepted English inspiration and adapted itself wisely and cleverly to German needs. To-day a German bride will have in her bedroom a wardrobe with a big mirror, a toilet table or chest, a marble-topped washstand and two narrow bedsteads, all of fumed wood. If she has money and understanding the things have probably come from England, not from an emporium, but from one of our artists in furniture whom the Germans know better and value more highly than we do ourselves. But if she has money only she can buy florid pretentious stuff that outdoes in ugliness the worst productions of our "suite" sellers. Her mother, however, probably did without any kind of toilet table or glass in her wardrobe. Twenty years ago you occasionally saw such things in the houses of rich people, but they were quite unusual. A small hanging glass behind the washstand was considered enough for any ordentliche Frau. Nowadays in rare cases the ordentliche Frau actually has silver brushes and powder pots and trinket boxes. But as a rule she still does without such things; she brushes her beautiful hair with an ivory or a wooden brush, and leaves paint and powder to ladies who are presumably not ordentlich. At one time narrow brass or iron bedsteads were introduced from England, and were used a great deal in Germany. I remember seeing one all forlorn in a vast magnificent palace bedroom where a fourposter hung with brocade or tapestry would have looked more at home. But the real old-fashioned bedstead, still much liked and formerly seen everywhere was always of wood, single and with deep sides to hold the heavy box mattress. In Mariana Starcke's Travels in Europe, published in 1833, she says of an inn in Villach, "tall people cannot sleep comfortably here or in any part of Germany; the beds, which are very narrow, being placed in wooden frames or boxes, so short that any person who happened to be above five feet high must absolutely sit up all night supported by pillows; and this, in fact, is the way in which the Germans sleep."

I think this is a statement that will be as surprising to any German who reads it as the statements made by Germans about England have often been to me. It is true, however, that tall people do find the old-fashioned German bedsteads short; and it is true that the big square downy pillows are supported by a wedge-shaped bolster called a Keilkissen. But the Plumeau is what the German loves, and the Briton hates above all things: the mountain of down or feathers that tumbles off on cold nights and stays on on hot ones. You hate it all the year round, because in winter it is too short and in summer it is an oppression. Sometimes the sheet is buttoned to it, and then though you are a traveller you are less than ever content. At the best you never succumb to its attractions. Every spring the good German housewife takes her maid and her Plumeaux to a cleaner and sits there while the feathers are purified by machinery and returned to their bags. In this way she makes sure of getting back her own feathers both in quality and quantity. Except for the Plumeaux and the want of a dressing-table and proper mirror, an ordinary German bedroom is very comfortable and always very clean. However plain it is you can use it partly as a sitting-room, because a sofa and a good sized table in front of it are considered an indispensable part of its furniture. When Germans come to England and have to live in lodgings or poorly furnished inns, the bedrooms seem to them most comfortless and ill provided. The poor Idealist who lived as an exile in London in the early Victorian age describes her forlorn room with nothing in it but a "colossal" bed, a washstand, and a chest of drawers, and though she does not describe them, you who know London from that side can see the half-dirty honey-combed counterpane, the untempting cotton sheets, the worn uncleanly carpet, the grained or painted furniture with doors and drawers that will not shut; and if you know Germany too you must in honesty compare with it the pleasant rooms you have inhabited there for less rent than she paid her Mrs. Quickly,—rooms with cool clean painted floors, solid old dark elm cupboards, and bedsteads that when you had pitched the Plumeau on the floor or the sofa were inviting because they were made with spotless home-spun linen.

What we call the drawing-room used to be extremely chill and formal in Germany, but it has never been as hideously overloaded as English drawing-rooms belonging to people who do not know better. The "suite" of furniture covered with rep or brocade was everywhere, and the rep was frequently grass-green or magenta. There was invariably a sofa and a table in front of the sofa, and a rug or a small carpet under the table. Even in these days this arrangement prevails and must continue to do so while the sofa is considered the place of honour to which the hostess invites her leading guest. If you go to Germany in ignorance of the social importance attached to the sofa, you may blunder quite absurdly and sit down uninvited or when your age or your sex does not entitle you to a seat there. I was once present when an English girl innocently chose a corner of the sofa instead of a chair, though there were older women in the room. The hostess promptly and audibly told her to get up, for she knew it was not an affair to pass off as a joke. In England the question of precedence comes up chiefly at the dinner-table. The host and hostess must send the right people together and place them correctly too. In Germany you have to know as hostess who is to sit on the sofa; and your decision may be complicated by the absurd titles of your guests. For instance, one Frau Direktor may be the wife of a post office official who had a university education, and in Germany a university education counts; while another Frau Direktor, though she can afford better clothes, is merely the wife of the man who manages the factory in the next village. I have heard a story of a Frau Kreisrichter and a Frau Actuar that ended in a life-long feud, and it all turned on a Kaffee Klatsch and the wrong woman on the sofa. It is not easy to know what to do about these ridiculous titles in Germany, because some people insist on them and some laugh at them as much as we do. I once asked a lady who had the best right to know, about using military titles instead of names: Herr Lieutenant, Herr Major, and so on. She was quite explicit. "Mir ist es ein Greuel," she said, and went on to tell me that it was only done as one might expect by people who did not know better, and of course by servants. All the same, it is well to be careful and study the individual case. I know of an American who addressed his professor as Professor Lachs.

"Where are your manners, mein Herr?" said the professor in a fury, "I am Herr Professor Dr. Lachs to every student in this laboratory."

But when it comes to Mrs. Tax-Collector and Mrs. Organist and Mrs. Head Master, and it does come to this quite seriously, it is difficult for the foreigner to appraise values. The length of the titles, too, is a stumbling-block. You may marry a harmless Herr Braun, and in course of time become Frau Wirklichergeheimerober regierungsrath. In this case I don't think your friends would use the whole of your title every time they addressed you; but you would undoubtedly have a seat on the sofa before all the small fry.

On the table in front of the sofa there used always to be a heavy coloured cloth, and then put diamond-wise a light embroidered or lace one. A vase of artificial or real flowers, according to taste, stood exactly in the middle, and a few books in ornamental bindings on either side. There would be very few ornaments, but these few would be good of their kind, though probably hideous. Luckily the family did not assemble here on State occasions. For every-day use there was a Wohnzimmer soberly furnished with solid well made chairs and cupboards. Here the mistress of the house kept her palms, her work-table, and her pet birds. Here her husband smoked his after-dinner cigar and drank his coffee before going to his work again. Here the elder children did their lessons for next day's school, and here at night the family sat round one lamp,—the father smoking, the mother probably mending, the children playing games. For German fathers do not live at the Kneipe. They are occasionally to be found with their families. When the flat was not large enough to furnish a third sitting-room, the dining-room was used in this way. A modern German family still lives in any room rather than the drawing-room, but it has learned how to make a drawing-room attractive. The odious "suite" has been abolished or dispersed, and a lighter, less formal scheme of decoration is making its way. You see charming rooms in Germany nowadays, but they are never quite like English ones, even when your friends point to a wicker chair or an Eastern carpet and tell you that they love everything English and have furnished in the English fashion. In the first place, you do not see piles of magazines and papers or of library books in a German drawing-room. They would be considered scandalously untidy, and put away in a cupboard at once. If there are cut flowers they are not arranged as they are here. On ceremonial occasions and anniversaries great quantities of flowers are presented, but they are mostly wired and probably arranged in a fanciful shape. The favourite shape changes with the season and the fashion of the moment. One year those who wish to honour you and have plenty of money, will send you lyres and harps made of violets, pansies, pinks, cornflowers, any flower that will lend itself meekly to popular design. The favourite design in Berlin one spring was a large flat sofa cushion of Guelder roses with tall sprays of roses or carnations dancing from it. On ordinary occasions market bunches are put into water as an English cottager puts in his flowers, level and tightly packed. But on a festive occasion in a rich man's house you hear of a long dinner table strewn with branches of pink hawthorn and peonies. In fact, a riot of flowers is now considered correct by wealthy people, but you do not find them here and there and everywhere, whether people are wealthy or not, as you do in England. That is partly because there are so few private gardens.

The extreme tidiness of German rooms is a constant source of surprise. They are as guiltless of "litter" as the showrooms of a furniture emporium. You would think that the people who live in them were never employed if you did not know that Germans were never idle. Every bit of embroidery has its use and its own corner. The article now being embroidered is neatly folded inside the work-basket or work-table when it is not in the lady's hands. The one book she is reading will be near. Any other books she possesses will be on shelves, and probably behind glass doors. Each chair has its place, each cushion, each ornament. Even where there are children German rooms never look disarranged. I can truly say I have only once seen a German room untidy and dusty, and that was in a house with no one but a "Mamsell" in charge; and she apologised and explained that it was to be spring cleaned next day. There is, by the way, a curious litter of things kept on a German sideboard in many houses,—coffee machines, silver, useful and ornamental glass, great blue beer jugs, and suchlike; but they are kept there with intention and not by neglectful accident. Then the narrow corridor of a German flat is often uncomfortably choked with articles of household use: lamps, for instance, and a refrigerator, and the safe in which the mistress locks her food; spare cupboards too, and neat piles of papers and magazines. It will be inelegant, but it will be orderly and clean.

It is the way in this country to laugh at the German Hausfrau, and pity her for a drudge; and it is the way with many Germans to talk as if all Englishwomen were pleasure loving and incompetent. The less people know of a foreign nation the greater nonsense they talk in general, and the more cocksure they are about their own opinions. A year ago, when I was in Germany, I asked a friend I could trust if there really was much Anglophobia abroad except in the newspapers. She reflected a little before she answered, for she was honest and intelligent.

"There is none amongst people like ourselves," she said,—"people who know the world a little. But you come across it?" She turned to her husband.

"There are others like G.," she said. "He turns green if anyone speaks of England, and he says Shakespeare is dumm. You see, he has never been out of Germany, and has never met any English people."

So I told her about my English cook, who snorted with scorn when I assured her Germans considered rabbits vermin and would not eat them.

"H ... ph!" she said, "I shouldn't have thought foreigners were so particular."

The average German housewife has to keep the house going on exceedingly small means and with inefficient help. It is her pride and pleasure to make a little go a long way, and she can only achieve this by working with her hands. Probably her servant cannot cook, but she can, and it would never occur to her to let her husband and children eat ill-prepared food because servants do not like ladies in the kitchen. A German lady, like a princess of ancient Greece, considers that it becomes her to do anything she chooses in her own house, and that the most convenient household workshop is the kitchen. The Idealist from whom I have quoted before was the daughter of a well-known German diplomatist, and she had been used since childhood to the atmosphere of Courts. She was an accomplished well-born woman of the world, but she had not been a week in her sordid London lodgings with the woman she calls Mrs. Quickly, before she blundered in her innocent German way—into the lodging-house kitchen. Figure to yourself the stupefaction and the indignation of Mrs. Quickly, probably engaged, though the Idealist does not say so, in dining off the foreign woman's beef. "I went down to the kitchen," says Fräulein von Meysenbug, "with a muslin gown on my arm to ask for an iron so that I could iron my gown there. The kitchen was Mrs. Quickly's true kingdom; here she alone reigned at the hearth, for the servant was not allowed to approach the saucepans. Mrs. Quickly looked at me with unconcealed astonishment as I came in, but when I proffered my request her astonishment turned to wrath. 'What!' she shrieked, 'a lady ironing in the kitchen? That is impossible.' And with the mien of offended majesty she snatched the gown from me, and ordered the little maid servant to put an iron in the fire and to iron the gown; then she turned to me and said with tragic emphasis, 'You are a foreigner. You don't understand our English ways: we consider it extremely unladylike for a lady to enter the kitchen, and worse still if she wants to iron her own gown. No, ma'am, please to ring the bell when you require anything; otherwise you will ruin my servants.' Much ashamed of my ignorance on this higher plane of English custom," continues the Idealist, "I crept back to my parlour and laughed heartily as I looked round the dirty, wretchedly furnished room, and reflected on the abyss set by prejudice between the ground-floor and the basement."

"How do you like your new German governess?" I once asked an English friend who lived in the country and had just engaged a German lady for her only daughter.

"Oh! I like her," said my friend without enthusiasm. "She is a brilliant musician and a fine linguist and all that. But she has such odd ideas about what a girl ought to know. The other day I actually caught her teaching Patricia to dust."

"If you don't watch her," I said, "she'll probably teach Patricia to cook."

My friend looked anxious first, and then relieved.

"I don't see how she could do that," she said. "The cook would never have them in the kitchen for five minutes. But now you mention it, I believe she can cook. When things go wrong she seems to know what has been done or not done."

"That might be useful," I suggested.

"I don't see it. I expect my cook to know her work, and to do it and not to rely on me. I've other fish to fry."

But the German housewife expects to have her fingers literally in every pie even when by rights they should be employed elsewhere. You hear, for instance, of a great Court functionary whose wife is so devoted to cooking that though she has a large staff of servants she cannot be persuaded to spend the day anywhere but in her kitchen. Mistresses of this kind breed incapable servants, and you find, in fact, that German maids cannot compare with our English ones in qualities of self-reliance, method, and initiative. They mostly expect to be told from hour to hour what to do, and very often to lend a hand to the ladies of the household rather than to do the thing themselves. Indeed, though the servants are on duty from morning till night more than English servants are, in some ways they have an easier time of it than ours, because they are used so much to run errands and go to market. Everyone who has been in German towns can remember the hordes of servants with baskets and big umbrellas strolling in twos and threes along the streets in the early morning. They are never in any hurry to get home to work again, and a good many doubtless know that what they leave undone will be done by their mistress. The German kitchen with its beautiful cleanliness and brightly polished copper pans I have described, but I have not said anything yet about the fidgety housewife who carries her Tüchtigkeit to such a pitch that she ties every wooden spoon and twirler with a coloured ribbon to hang by against the wall. In England you hear of ladies who tie every bottle of scent on the toilet table with a different ribbon, and that really has more sense in it, because it must be trying to a cook's nerves to use spoons tied with delicate ribbons that must not be spoiled. Every housewife has dainty little holders for the handles of saucepans when they are hot. You see them, all different shapes and sizes, on view with the piles of kitchen cloths and the various aprons that form part of every lady's trousseau, and if you have German friends they probably present you with a few from time to time. I have never noticed any pictures in a German kitchen, but there are nearly always Sprüche both in the kitchen, and the dining-room and sometimes in the hall: rhyming maxims that are done in poker work or painted on wood and hung in conspicuous positions—

is a nice one; and so is

There was one in the Lette-Haus or some other big institution about an hour in the morning being worth several hours later in the day, which would prick our English consciences more sharply than it can most German ones, for they are a nation of early risers. Schools and offices all open so early that a household must of necessity be up betimes to feed its menfolk and children with bread and coffee before their day's work. In most German towns the tradespeople do not call for orders, but they do in Hamburg; and a friend born there told me in a whisper, so that her husband should not hear the awful confession, that she would never be a good "provider" in consequence. She went to market regularly, for many housewives will not delegate this most important business to a cook, but she had not the same eye for a tough goose or a poor fish, perhaps not the same backbone for a bargain, as a housewife used from childhood to these sorties. In some towns the butcher calls over night for orders. The baker's boy brings rolls before anyone is up, and hangs them outside the flat in one of two bags every household possesses. After the early breakfast either the mistress or the cook fetches what is required for the day.

When the good German housewife is not in her kitchen, English tradition believes her to be at her linen cupboard.

"I am going to write a humble little gossiping book about German Home Life," I said to a learned but kindly professor last spring.

"German Home Life," he said, rather aghast at my daring, for we had only just made each other's acquaintance, and I believe he thought that this was my first visit to Germany and that I had been there a week. "It is a wide field," he went on. "However ... if you want to understand our Home Life ... just look at that...."

We were having tea together in the dining-room in his wife's absence, and he suddenly got up from table and threw back both doors of an immense cupboard occupying the longest wall in the room. I gazed at the sight before me, and my thoughts were too deep for words. It was a small household, I knew. It comprised, in fact, the professor, his beautiful young wife, and one small maid-servant; and for their happiness they possessed all this linen: shelf upon shelf, pile upon pile of linen, exactly ordered, tied with lemon coloured ribbons, embroidered beyond doubt with the initials of the lady who brought it here as a bride. The lady, it may as well be said, is a celebrated musician who passes a great part of each winter fulfilling engagements away from home. "But what happens to the linen cupboard when you are away?" I asked her, later, for it was grievous to think of any servant, even a "pearl," making hay of those ordered shelves. "I come home for a few days in between and set things to rights again," she explained; and then, seeing that I was interested, she admitted that she had put up and made every blind and curtain, and had even carpentered and upholstered an empire sofa in her drawing-room. She showed me each cupboard and corner of the flat, and I saw everywhere the exquisite order and spotlessness the notable German housewife knows how to maintain. We even peeped into the professor's dressing-room.

"He must be a very tidy man," I said, sighing and reflecting that he could not be as other men are. "Do you never have to set things to rights here?"

"Every half hour," she said.

These enormous quantities of linen that are still the housewife's pride used to be necessary when house and table linen were only washed twice a year. A German friend who entertained a large party of children and grandchildren every week, pointed out to me that she used eighteen or twenty dinner napkins each time they came, and that when washing day arrived at the end of six months even her supply was nearly exhausted. The soiled linen was stored meanwhile in an attic at the top of the house. The wash itself and the drying and ironing all took place up there with the help of a hired laundress. In most German cities this custom of washing at home still prevails, but in these days it is usually done once a month. The large attics that serve as laundries are engaged for certain days by the families living in the house, and one servant assisted for one day by a laundry woman washes and irons all the house and body linen used by her employers and herself in four weeks. It sounds impossible, but in Germany nothing involving hard work is impossible. All the differences of life between England and Germany, in as far as expenses are concerned, seem to come to this in the end: that over there both men and women will work harder for less money. On the monthly washing day the ladies of the household do the cooking and housework, and on the following day they help to fold the clothes and iron them.

"I am very tired," confessed a little maid-servant who had been sent out at night to show me where to find a tram. "We got up at four o'clock this morning, and have been ironing all day. My mistress gets up as early, and works as hard as I do. She is very tüchtig, and where there are four children and only one servant there is a good deal to do."

Yet her mistress had asked me to supper, I reflected, and everything had been to time and well cooked and served. The rooms had looked as neat and orderly as usual. The Hausfrau had entertained me as pleasantly as if she had no reason to feel tired. We had talked of English novels, and of the invasion of England by Germany; for her husband was a soldier, and another guest present was a soldier too. The men had talked seriously, for they were as angry with certain English newspapers as we are over here with certain German ones. But the Hausfrau and I had laughed.

"When they come, I'm coming with them," she said.

"We will receive you with open arms," said I.

CHAPTER XIVToC

SERVANTS

The first thing that English people notice about German servants is, that they are allowed to dress anyhow, and that the results are most unpleasing. In Hamburg, the city that gives you ox-tail soup for dinner and has sirloins of beef much like English sirloins, the maids used to wear clean crackling, light print gowns with elbow sleeves. This was their full dress in which they waited at table, and fresh looking country girls from Holstein and thereabouts looked very well in it. This costume is being superseded in Hamburg to-day by the English livery of a black frock with a white cap and apron. But in other German cities, in the ordinary middle-class household, the servants wear what they choose on all occasions. In most places they are as fond of plaids as their betters, and in a house where everything else is methodical and well arranged, you will find the dishes plumped on the table by a young woman wearing a tartan blouse decidedly decolletée, and ornamented with a large cheap lace collar. I have dined with people whose silver, glass, and food were all luxurious; while the girl who waited on us wore a red and white checked blouse, a plaid neck-tie with floating ends, and an enormous brooch of sham diamonds. In South Germany the servants wear a great deal of indigo blue: stuff skirts of plain blue woollen, with blouses and aprons of blue cotton that has a small white pattern on it. Some ladies keep smart white aprons to lend their servants on state occasions, but the laciest apron will not do much for a girl in a sloppy coloured blouse with a plaid neck-tie. But these same girls who look such slovens usually have stores of tidy well-made body linen and knitted stockings. In England a servant of the better class will not be seen out of doors in her working-dress. "In London," says the Idealist in her Memoirs, "no woman of the people, no servant-girl will stir a step from the house without a hat on her head, and this is one of the ugliest of English prejudices. While the clean white cap worn by a French maid looks pretty and suitable, the Englishwoman's hat which makes her "respectable" is odious, for it is usually dirty, out of shape, and trimmed with faded flowers and ribbons." It gives me pleasure to quote this criticism made by an observant German on our English servants, partly because it is true, and it is good for us to hear it, and partly because it encourages me to continue my criticism of German as compared with English servants. For it ought to be possible to criticise without giving offence. The Idealist has a very poor opinion of English lodging-house bedrooms and lodging-house keepers, and she states her opinion quite plainly, but I cannot imagine that anyone in this country would be hurt by what she says. On the contrary, it is amusing to find the ills from which most of us have suffered at times recognised by the stranger within our gates. None of us admire the battered tawdry finery we see in our streets every day, and I cannot believe that German ladies admire the shocking garments in which their servants will come to the door and wait at table. But though these clothes are sloppy looking and unsuitable, they are never ragged; and the girl who puts on an impossible tie and blouse will also wear an impeccable long white apron with an embroidered monogram you can see across the room. In most towns servants go shopping or to market with a large basket and an umbrella. They do not consider a hat or a stuff gown necessary, for they are not in the least ashamed of being servants. Some years ago they made no attempt to dress like ladies when they went out for themselves, and even now what they do in this way is a trifle compared to the extravagant get-up of an English cook or parlour-maid on a Sunday afternoon. A German girl in service is always saving with might and main to buy her Aussteuer, and as she gets very low wages it takes her a long time. She needs about £30, so husbands are not expensive in Germany in that class. German servants get less wages than ours, and work longer hours. Speaking out of my own experience, I should say that they were indefatigable, amiable, and inefficient. They will do anything in the world for you, but they will not do their own work in a methodical way. A lady whose uncle at one time occupied an important diplomatic post in London, told me that her aunt was immensely surprised to find that every one of her English servants knew his or her work and did it without supervision, but that none of them would do anything else. The German lady, not knowing English ways, used to make the mistake at first of asking a servant to do what she wanted done instead of what the servant had engaged to do; but she soon found that the first housemaid would rather leave than fill a matchbox it was the second housemaid's "place" to fill; and what surprised her most was to find that her English friends sympathised with the housemaids and not with her. "We believe in everyone minding his own business," they said.

"We believe that it is the servant's business to do what his employer wants," says the German.

"You must tell him what you want when you engage him," you say. "Then he can take your place or leave it."

"But that is impossible ... Unsinn ... Quatsch...." says the German indignantly. "How can I tell what I shall want my servant to do three months hence on a Monday morning. Das hat keinen Zweck."

"I know exactly what each one of my servants will do three months hence on a Monday morning," you say. "It is quite easy. You plan it all out...."

But you will never agree. The German has his or rather her own methods, and you will always think her unmethodical but thrifty and knowledgeable, and she will always think you extravagant and ignorant, but "chic," and on these terms you may be quite good friends. In most German households there is no such thing as the strict division of labour insisted on here. Your cook will be delighted to make a blouse for you, and your nurse will turn out the dining-room, and your chambermaid will take the child for an airing. They are more human in their relation to their employers. The English servant fixes a gulf between herself and the most democratic mistress. The German servant brings her intimate joys and sorrows to a good Herrschaft, and expects their sympathy. When a girl has bad luck and engages with a bad Herrschaft she is worse off than in England, partly because when German housekeeping is mean it sounds depths of meanness not unknown, but extremely rare here; and also because a German servant is more in the power of her employers and of the police than an English one. Anyone who has read Klara Viebig's remarkable novel, Das Tägliche Brot (a story of servant life in Berlin) will remember the mistress who kept every bit of dainty food under lock and key, and fed the kitchen on soup-meat all the year round. The chambermaid gives way in a moment of hunger and temptation, manages to get the key, and is discovered by the worthless son of the house stealing cakes. He threatens her with exposure if she will not listen to his love-making. Even if there was no son and no love-making, a girl who once steals cakes in Germany may go from place to place branded as a thief. Because every servant has to have a Dienstbuch, which is under the control of the police, and has to be shown to them whenever she leaves her situation. There is no give and take of personal character in Germany. Ladies do not see the last lady with whom a girl has lived. They advertise or they go to a registry office where servants are waiting to be engaged. In Berlin every third house seems to be a registry office, and you hear as many complaints of the people who keep them as you hear here. So the government has set up a large Public Registry in Charlottenberg, where both sides can get what they want without paying fees. But servants are not as scarce in Germany yet as they are here and in America. German ladies tell you they are scarce, but it is only true in comparison with a former state of things. In comparison with London, servants are still plentiful in Germany. When a lady finds a likely looking girl at an office, she either engages her at once on the strength of the good character in her Dienstbuch, or, if she is very particular, she takes her home and discusses things with her there. The engagement is not completed until the lady has filled in several forms for police inspection; while the servant has to take her Dienstbuch to the police station both when she leaves and when she enters a situation. It is hardly necessary to say that when a girl does anything seriously bad, and her employers record it in the book, the book gets "lost." Then the police interfere and make things extremely disagreeable for the girl. A friend told me that in the confusion of a removal her own highly valued servant lost her Dienstbuch, or rather my friend lost it, for employers usually keep it while a girl is in their service; and though she took the blame on herself, and explained that the book was lost, the police were most offensive about it. In the end the book was found, so I am not in a position to say what penalties my friend and her maid would have incurred if they had never been able to produce it. But Germans have often told me that servants as a class have real good reason to complain of police insolence and brutality. Here is an entry from a German servant's Dienstbuch, with nothing altered but the names. On the first page you found the following particulars:—