Europe After 8:15
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H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright >> Europe After 8:15
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[Illustration: EUROPE AFTER 8:15]
[Illustration: BERLIN]
EUROPE AFTER 8:15
BY
H. L. MENCKEN
GEORGE JEAN NATHAN
WILLARD HUNTINGTON WRIGHT
WITH DECORATIONS
_By_ THOMAS H. BENTON
NEW YORK--JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO--BELL & COCKBURN--MCMXIV
Copyright, 1914
BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE IN THE SOCRATIC MANNER 7
VIENNA 35
MUNICH 71
BERLIN 111
LONDON 145
PARIS 189
PREFACE IN THE SOCRATIC MANNER
"Nothing broadens and mellows the mind so much as foreign
travel."--_Dr. Orison Swett Marden._
The scene is the brow of the Hungerberg at Innsbruck. It is the
half-hour before sunset, and the whole lovely valley of the Inn--_still
wie die Nacht, tief wie das Meer_--begins to glow with mauves and apple
greens, apricots and silvery blues. Along the peaks of the great snowy
mountains which shut it in, as if from the folly and misery of the
world, there are touches of piercing primary colours--red, yellow,
violet--the palette of a synchromist. Far below, hugging the winding
river, lies little Innsbruck, with its checkerboard parks and Christmas
garden villas. A battalion of Austrian soldiers, drilling in the
Exerzierplatz, appears as an army of grey ants, now barely visible.
Somewhere to the left, beyond the broad flank of the Hungerberg, the
night train for Venice labours toward the town.
It is a superbly beautiful scene, perhaps the most beautiful in all
Europe. It has colour, dignity, repose. The Alps here come down a bit
and so increase their spell. They are not the harsh precipices of
Switzerland, nor the too charming stage mountains of Northern Italy, but
rolling billows of clouds and snow, the high-flung waves of some titanic
but stricken ocean. Now and then comes a faint clank of metal from the
funicular railway, but the tracks themselves are hidden among the trees
of the lower slopes. The tinkle of an angelus bell (or maybe it is only
a sheep bell) is heard from afar. A great bird, an eagle or a falcon,
sweeps across the crystal spaces.
Here where we are is a shelf on the mountainside, and the hand of man
has converted it into a terrace. To the rear, clinging to the mountain,
is an Alpine _gasthaus_--a bit overdone, perhaps, with its red-framed
windows and elaborate fretwork, but still genuinely of the Alps. Along
the front of the terrace, protecting sightseers from the sheer drop of a
thousand feet, is a stout wooden rail.
A man in an American sack suit, with a bowler hat on his head, lounges
against this rail. His elbows rest upon it, his legs are crossed in the
fashion of a figure four, and his face is buried in the red book of Herr
Baedeker. It is the volume on Southern Germany, and he is reading the
list of Munich hotels. Now and then he stops to mark one with a pencil,
which he wets at his lips each time. While he is thus engaged, another
man comes ambling along the terrace, apparently from the direction of
the funicular railway station. He, too, carries a red book. It is
Baedeker on Austria-Hungary. After gaping around him a bit, this second
man approaches the rail near the other and leans his elbows upon it.
Presently he takes a package of chewing gum from his coat pocket,
selects two pieces, puts them into his mouth and begins to chew. Then he
spits idly into space, idly but homerically, a truly stupendous
expectoration, a staggering discharge from the Alps to the first shelf
of the Lombard plain! The first man, startled by the report, glances up.
Their eyes meet and there is a vague glimmer of recognition.
The First Man--"American?"
The Second Man--"Yes: St. Louis."
"Been over long?"
"A couple of months."
"What ship'd you come over in?"
"The _Kronprinz Friedrich_."
"Aha, the German line! I guess you found the grub all right."
"Oh, in the main. I have eaten better, but then again, I have eaten
worse."
"Well, they charge you enough for it, whether you get it or not. A man
could live at the Plaza cheaper."
"I should _say_ he could. What boat did _you_ come over in?"
"The _Maurentic_."
"How is she?"
"Oh, so-so."
"I hear the meals on those English ships are nothing to what they used
to be."
"That's what everybody tells me. But, as for me, I can't say I found
them so bad. I had to send back the potatoes twice and the breakfast
bacon once, but they had very good lima beans."
"Isn't that English bacon awful stuff to get down?"
"It certainly is: all meat and gristle. I wonder what an Englishman
would say if you put him next to a plate of genuine, crisp, _American_
bacon?"
"I guess he would yell for the police--or choke to death."
"Did you like the German cooking on the _Kronprinz_?"
"Well, I did and I didn't. The chicken _a la_ Maryland was very good,
but they had it only once. I could eat it every day."
"Why didn't you order it?"
"It wasn't on the bill."
"Oh, bill be damned! You might have ordered it anyhow. Make a fuss and
you'll get what you want. These foreigners have to be bossed around.
They're used to it."
"I guess you're right. There was a fellow near me who set up a holler
about his room the minute he saw it--said it was dark and musty and not
fit to pen a hog in--and they gave him one twice as large, and the chief
steward bowed and scraped to him, and the room stewards danced around
him as if he was a duke. And yet I heard later that he was nothing but a
Bismarck herring importer from Hoboken."
"Yes, that's the way to get what you want. Did you have any nobility on
board?"
"Yes, there was a Hungarian baron in the automobile business, and two
English sirs. The baron was quite a decent fellow: I had a talk with him
in the smoking room one night. He didn't put on any airs at all. You
would have thought he was an ordinary man. But the sirs kept to
themselves. All they did the whole voyage was to write letters, wear
their dress suits and curse the stewards."
"They tell me over here that the best eating is on the French lines."
"Yes, so I hear. But some say, too, that the Scandinavian lines are
best, and then again I have heard people boosting the Italian lines."
"I guess each one has its points. They say that you get wine free with
meals on the French boats."
"But I hear it's fourth rate wine."
"Well, you don't have to drink it."
"That's so. But, as for me, I can't stand a Frenchman. I'd rather do
without the wine and travel with the Dutch. Paris is dead compared with
Berlin."
"So it is. But those Germans are getting to be awful sharks. The way
they charge in Berlin is enough to make you sick."
"Don't tell _me_. I have been there. No longer ago than last
Tuesday--or was it last Monday?--I went into one of those big
restaurants on the Unter den Linden and ordered a small steak, French
fried potatoes, a piece of pie and a cup of coffee--and what do you
think those thieves charged me for it? Three marks fifty! Think of it!
That's eighty-seven and a half cents. Why, a man could have got the same
meal at home for a dollar. These Germans are running wild. American
money has gone to their heads. They think every American they get hold
of is a millionaire."
"The French are worse. I went into a hotel in Paris and paid ten francs
a day for a room for myself and wife, and when we left they charged me
one franc forty a day extra for sweeping it out and making the bed!"
"That's nothing. Here in Innsbruck they charge you half a krone a day
_taxes_."
"What! You don't say!"
"Sure thing. And if you don't eat breakfast in the hotel they charge you
a krone for it anyhow."
"Well, well, what next? But, after all, you can't blame them. We
Americans come over here and hand them our pocket-books, and we ought to
be glad if we get anything back at all. The way a man has to tip is
something fearful."
"Isn't it, though! I stayed in Dresden a week, and when I left there
were six grafters lined up with their claws out. First came the
port_eer_. Then came--"
"How much did you give the port_eer_?"
"Five marks."
"You gave him too much. You ought to have given him about three marks,
or, say, two marks fifty. How much was your hotel bill?"
"Including everything?"
"No, just your bill for your room."
"I paid six marks a day."
"Well, that made forty-two marks for the week. Now the way to figure out
how much the port_eer_ ought to get is easy: a fellow I met in
Baden-Baden showed me how to do it. First, you multiply your hotel bill
by two, then you divide by twenty-seven, and then you knock off half a
mark. Twice forty-two is eighty-four! Twenty-seven into eighty-four goes
about three times, and a half from three leaves two and a half. See how
easy it is?"
"It _looks_ easy, anyhow. But you haven't got much time to do all that
figuring."
"Well, let the port_eer_ wait. The longer he has to wait the more he
appreciates you."
"But how about the others?"
"It's just as simple. Your chambermaid gets a quarter of a mark for
every day you have been in the hotel. But if you stay less than four
days she gets a whole mark anyhow. If there are two in the party she
gets half a mark a day, but no more than three marks in any one week."
"But suppose there are two chambermaids? In Dresden there was one on day
duty and one on night duty. I left at six o'clock in the evening, and so
they were both on the job."
"Don't worry. They'd have been on the job anyhow, no matter when you
left. But it's just as easy to figure out the tip for two as for one.
All you have to do is to add fifty per cent., and then divide it into
two halves, and give one to each girl. Or, better still, give it all to
one girl and tell her to give half to her pal. If there are three
chambermaids, as you sometimes find in the swell hotels, you add another
fifty per cent. and then divide by three. And so on."
"I see. But how about the hall porter and the floor waiter?"
"Just as easy. The hall porter gets whatever the chambermaid gets, plus
twenty-five per cent.--but no more than two marks in any one week. The
floor waiter gets thirty pfennigs a day straight, but if you stay only
one day he gets half a mark, and if you stay more than a week he gets
two marks flat a week after the first week. In some hotels the hall
porter don't shine shoes. If he don't he gets just as much as if he
does, but then the actual 'boots' has to be taken care of. He gets half
a mark every two days. Every time you put out an extra pair of shoes he
gets fifty per cent. more for that day. If you shine your own shoes, or
go without shining them, the 'boots' gets half his regular tip, but
never less than a mark a week."
"Certainly it seems simple enough. I never knew there was any such
system."
"I guess you didn't. Very few do. But it's just because Americans don't
know it that these foreign blackmailers shake 'em down. Once you let the
port_eer_ see that you know the ropes, he'll pass the word on to the
others, and you'll be treated like a native."
"I see. But how about the elevator boy? I gave the elevator boy in
Dresden two marks and he almost fell on my neck, so I figured that I
played the sucker."
"So you did. The rule for elevator boys is still somewhat in the air,
because so few of these bum hotels over here have elevators, but you can
sort of reason the thing out if you put your mind on it. When you get on
a street car in Germany, what tip do you give the conductor?"
"Five pfennigs."
"Naturally. That's the tip fixed by custom. You may almost say it's the
unwritten law. If you gave the conductor more, he would hand you change.
Well, how I reason it out is this way: If five pfennigs is enough for a
car conductor, who may carry you three miles, why shouldn't it be enough
for the elevator boy, who may carry you only three stories?"
"It _seems_ fair, certainly."
"And it _is_ fair. So all you have to do is to keep account of the
number of times you go up and down in the elevator, and then give the
elevator boy five pfennigs for each trip. Say you come down in the
morning, go up in the evening, and average one other round trip a day.
That makes twenty-eight trips a week. Five times twenty-eight is one
mark forty--and there you are."
"I see. By the way, what hotel are you stopping at?"
"The Goldene Esel."
"How is it?"
"Oh, so-so. Ask for oatmeal at breakfast and they send to the livery
stable for a peck of oats and ask you please to be so kind as to show
them how to make it."
"My hotel is even worse. Last night I got into such a sweat under the
big German feather bed that I had to throw it off. But when I asked for
a single blanket they didn't have any, so I had to wrap up in bath
towels."
"Yes, and you used up every one in town. This morning, when I took a
bath, the only towel the chambermaid could find wasn't bigger than a
wedding invitation. But while she was hunting around I dried off, so no
harm was done."
"Well, that's what a man gets for running around in such one-horse
countries. In Leipzig they sat a nigger down beside me at the table. In
Amsterdam they had cheese for breakfast. In Munich the head waiter had
never heard of buckwheat cakes. In Mannheim they charged me ten pfennigs
extra for a cake of soap."
"What do you think of the German railroad trains?"
"Rotten. That compartment system is all wrong. If nobody comes into your
compartment it's lonesome, and if anybody _does_ come in it's too damn
sociable. And if you try to stretch out and get some sleep, some ruffian
begins singing in the next compartment, or the conductor keeps butting
in and jabbering at you."
"But you can say _one_ thing for these German trains; they get in on
time."
"So they do, but no wonder! They run so slow they can't _help_ it. The
way I figure it, a German engineer must have a devil of a time holding
his engine in. The fact is, he usually can't, and so he has to wait
outside every big town until the schedule catches up to him. They say
they never have accidents, but is it any more than you expect? Did you
ever hear of a mud turtle having an accident?"
"Scarcely. As you say, these countries are far behind the times. I saw a
fire in Cologne; you would have laughed your head off! It was in a feed
store near my hotel, and I got there before the firemen. When they came
at last, in their tinpot hats, they got out half a dozen big squirts and
rushed into the building with them. Then, when it was out, they put the
squirts back into their little express wagon and drove off. You never
saw such child's play. Not a line of hose run out, not an engine
puffing, not a gong heard, not a soul letting out a whoop. It was more
like a Sunday school picnic than a fire. I guess if these Dutch ever
_did_ have a civilised blaze, it would scare them to death. But they
never have any."
"Well, what can you expect? A country where all the charwomen are men
and all the garbage men are women!"
For the moment the two have talked each other out, and so they lounge
upon the rail in silence and gaze out over the valley. Anon the
gumchewer spits. By now the sun has reached the skyline to the westward
and the tops of the ice mountains are in gorgeous conflagration.
Scarlets war with golden oranges, and vermilions fade into palpitating
pinks. Below, in the valley, the colours begin to fade slowly to a
uniform seashell grey. It is a scene of indescribable loveliness; the
wild reds of hades splashed riotously upon the cold whites and pale hues
of heaven. The night train for Venice, a long line of black coaches, is
entering the town. Somewhere below, apparently in the barracks, a sunset
gun is fired. After a silence of perhaps two or three minutes, the
Americans gather fresh inspiration and resume their conversation.
"I have seen worse scenery."
"Very pretty."
"Yes, sir; it's well worth the money."
"But the Rockies beat it all hollow."
"Oh, of course. They have nothing over here that we can't beat to a
whisper. Just consider the Rhine, for instance. The Hudson makes it look
like a country creek."
"Yes, you're right. Take away the castles, and not even a German would
give a hoot for it. It's not so much what a thing _is_ over here as what
_reputation_ it's got. The whole thing is a matter of press-agenting."
"I agree with you. There's the 'beautiful, blue Danube.' To me it looks
like a sewer. If _it's_ blue, then _I'm_ green. A man would hesitate to
drown himself in such a mud puddle."
"But you hear the bands playing that waltz all your life, and so you
spend your good money to come over here to see the river. And when you
get back home you don't want to admit that you've been a sucker, so you
start touting it from hell to breakfast. And then some other fellow
comes over and does the same, and so on and so on."
"Yes, it's all a matter of boosting. Day in and day out you hear about
Westminster Abbey. Every English book mentions it; it's in the
newspapers almost as much as William Jennings Bryan or Caruso. Well, one
day you pack your grip, put on your hat and come over to have a
look--and what do you find? A one-horse church full of statues! And
every statue crying for sapolio! You expect to see something
magnificent, something enormous, something to knock your eye out and
send you down for the count. What you _do_ see is a second-rate
graveyard under roof. And when you examine into it, you find that
two-thirds of the graves haven't even got a dead man in them. Whenever a
prominent Englishman dies, they put up a statue to him in Westminster
Abbey--_no matter where he happens to be buried_. I call that clever
advertising. That's the way to get the crowd."
"Yes, these foreigners know the game. They have made millions out of it
in Paris. Every time you go to see a musical comedy at home, the second
act is laid in Paris, and you see a whole stageful of girls doing the
hesitation, and a lot of old sports having the time of their lives. All
your life you hear that Paris is something rich and racy, something that
makes New York look like Roanoke, Virginia. Well, you fall for the
ballyhoo and come over to have your fling--and then you find that Paris
is largely bunk. I spent a whole week in Paris, trying to find something
really awful. I hired one of those Jew guides at five dollars a day and
told him to go the limit. I said to him: 'Don't mind _me_. I am
twenty-one years old. Let me have the genuine goods.' But the worst he
could show me wasn't half as bad as what I have seen in Chicago. Every
night I would say to that Jew: 'Come on, now Mr. Cohen; let's get away
from these tinhorn shows. Lead me to the real stuff.' Well, I believe
the fellow did his darndest, but he always fell down. I almost felt
sorry for him. In the end, when I paid him off, I said to him: 'Save up
your money, my boy, and come over to the States. Let me know when you
land. I'll show you the sights for nothing. You need a little
relaxation. This Baracca Class atmosphere is killing you.'
"And yet Paris is famous all over the world. No American ever came to
Europe without dropping off there to have a look. I once saw the Bal
Tabarin crowded with Sunday school superintendents returning from
Jerusalem. And when the sucker gets home he goes around winking and
hinting, and so the fake grows. I often think the government ought to
take a hand. If the beer is inspected and guaranteed in Germany, why
shouldn't the shows be inspected and guaranteed in Paris?"
"I guess the trouble is that the Frenchmen themselves never go to their
own shows. They don't know what is going on. They see thousands of
Americans starting out every night from the Place de l'Opera and coming
back in the morning all boozed up, and so they assume that everything is
up to the mark. You'll find the same thing in Washington. No
Washingtonian has ever been up to the top of the Washington monument.
Once the elevator in the monument was out of commission for two weeks,
and yet Washington knew nothing about it. When the news got into the
local papers at last, it came from Macon, Georgia. Some honeymooner from
down there had written home about it, roasting the government."
"Well, me for the good old U.S.A. These Alps are all right, I guess--but
I can't say I like the coffee."
"And it takes too long to get a letter from Jersey City."
"Yes, that reminds me. Just before I started up here this afternoon my
wife got the _Ladies' Home Journal_ of month before last. It had been
following us around for six weeks, from London to Paris, to Berlin, to
Munich, to Vienna, to a dozen other places. Now she's fixed for the
night. She won't let up until she's read every word--the advertisements
first. And she'll spend all day to-morrow sending off for things--new
collar hooks, breakfast foods, complexion soaps and all that sort of
junk. Are you married yourself?"
"No; not yet."
"Well, then, you don't know how it is. But I guess you play poker."
"Oh, to be sure."
"Well, let's go down into the town and hunt up some quiet barroom and
have a civilised evening. This scenery gives me the creeps."
"I'm with you. But where are we going to get any chips?"
"Don't worry. I carry a set with me. I made my wife put it in the
bottom of my trunk, along with a bottle of real whiskey and a couple of
porous plasters. A man can't be too careful when he's away from home."
They start along the terrace toward the station of the funicular
railway. The sun has now disappeared behind the great barrier of ice and
the colours of the scene are fast softening. All the scarlets and
vermilions are gone; a luminous pink bathes the whole scene in its fairy
light. The night train for Venice, leaving the town, appears as a long
string of blinking lights. A chill breeze comes from the Alpine vastness
to westward. The deep silence of an Alpine night settles down. The two
Americans continue their talk until they are out of hearing. The breeze
interrupts and obfuscates their words, but now and then half a sentence
comes clearly.
"Have you seen any American papers lately?"
"Nothing but the Paris _Herald_--if you call _that_ a paper."
"How are the Giants making out?"
"... badly as usual ... rotten ... slump ... shake up...."
"... John McGraw ... Connie Mack ... glass arm...."
"... homesick ... give five dollars for...."
"... whole continent without a single baseball cl...."
"... glad to get back ... damn tired...."
"... damn...."
"... _damn_...."
VIENNA
[Illustration: VIENNA]
VIENNA
The casual Sunday School superintendent, bursting with visions of
luxurious gaieties, his brain incited by references to _Wiener blut_,
his corpuscles tripping to the strains of some Viennese _schlagermusik_,
will suffer only disappointment as he sallies forth on his first night
in Vienna. He is gorgeously caparisoned with clean linen, talcumed,
exuding Jockey Club, prepared for surgical and psychic shock, his legs
drilled hollow to admit of precious fluids, his pockets bulging with
kronen. He is a lovely, mellow creature, a virtuoso of the domestic
virtues when home, but now, at large in Europe, he craves excitement.
His timid soul is bent on participating in the deviltries for which
Vienna is famous. His blood is thumping through his arteries in
three-four time. His mind is inflamed by such strophes as "_Es giebt nur
a Kaiserstadt; es giebt nur a Wien_" and "_Immer luste, fesch und
munter, und der Wiener geht nit unter_." But he is brought gradually to
the realisation that something is amiss. Can it be that the vice
crusaders have been at work? Have the militant moralists and the
professional women hunters, in their heated yearnings to flay the
transgressor, fallen foul of Vienna?
He expected to find a city which would be one roseate and romantic
revel, given over to joys of the flesh, to wine-drinking and
confetti-throwing, overrun with hussies, gone mad with lascivious
waltzes, reeking with Babylonish amours. He dreamed of Vienna as one
continual debauch, one never-ceasing saturnalia, an eternal tournament
of perfumed hilarities. His lewd dreams of the "gayest city in Europe"
have produced in him a marked hallucinosis with visions of Neronic
orgies, magnificently prodigal--deliriums of chromatic disorder.
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