Europe After 8:15

H >> H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright >> Europe After 8:15

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But as he walks down the Kaerntnerstrasse, encircles the Ring and stands
with bulging inquisitive eyes on the corner of the Wiedner Hauptstrasse
and Karlsplatz, he wonders what can be the matter. Where, indeed, is
that prodigality of flowers and spangled satin he has heard so much
about? Where are those super-orchestras sweating over the scores of
seductive waltzes? Where the silken ankles and the glittering eyes, the
kisses and the flutes, the beery laughter and the delirious leg shaking?
The excesses of merrymaking are nowhere discoverable. Des Moines, Iowa,
or Camden, New Jersey, would present quite as festive a spectacle, he
thinks, as he gazes up at the sepulchral shadows on the gigantic
Opernhaus before him. He cannot understand the nocturnal solitude of the
streets. There is actual desolation about him. A chlorotic girl, her
cheeks unskilfully painted, brushes up to him with a careless "_Geh
Rudl, gib ma a Spreitzn._" But that might happen in Cleveland, Ohio--and
Cleveland is not framed as a modern Tyre. He is puzzled and distressed.
He feels like a Heliogabalus on a desert isle. He consults his watch. It
is past midnight. He has searched for hours. No famous thoroughfare has
escaped him. He has reconnoitred diligently and thoroughly, as only a
pious tourist bent on forbidden pleasures knows how. He is the arch-type
of American traveller; the God-fearing deacon on the loose; the
vestryman returning from Jerusalem. Hopefully, yet fearfully, he has
pushed his search. He has traversed the Kaerntnerring, the Kolowratring,
peered into Stadt Park, hit the Stubenring, scouted Franz Josefs Kai,
searched the Rotenturmstrasse, zigzagged over to the Schottenring,
followed the Franz, Burg and Opern-Rings, and is back on the Karlsplatz,
still virtuous, still sober!

Not a houri. Nary a carnival. No strain of the "Blaue Donau" has wooed
his ear. No one has nailed him with sachet eggs. He has not been choked
by quarts of confetti. His conscience is as pure as the brews of Munich.
He is still in a beneficent state of primeval and exquisite prophylaxis,
of benign chemical purity, of protean moral asepsis. He came prepared
for deluges of wine and concerted onslaughts from ineffable
_freimaderln_. But he might as well have attended a drama by Charles
Klein for all the rakish romance he has unearthed. His evening has gone.
His legs are weary. And nothing has happened to astound or flabbergast
him, to send him sprawling with Cheyne-Stokes breathing. In all his
promenading he has seen nothing to affect his vasomotor centres or to
produce Argyll-Robertson pupils.

Can it be true, he wonders, that, after all, Viennese gaiety is an
illusion, a base fabrication? Is the _Wiener blut_, like Iowan blood,
calm and sluggish? Is Vienna's reputation bogus, a snare for tourists, a
delusion for the unsophisticated? Where is that far-renowned
_gemuethlichkeit_? Has an American press agent had his foul hand in the
advertising of Austria's capital? Perhaps--perhaps!... But what of those
Viennese operas? What of those sensuous waltzes, those lubric bits of
_schramm-musik_ which have come from Vienna? And has he not seen
pictures of Viennese women--angels _a la mode_, miracles of beauty,
Loreleis _de luxe_? Even Baedeker, the papa of the travelling
schoolmarms, has admitted Vienna to be a bit frivolous.

A puzzle, to be sure. A problem for Copernicus--a paradox, a theorem
with many decimal points. So thinks the tourist, retiring to his hotel.
And figuring thus, he falls to sleep, enveloped in a caressing miasma of
almost unearthly respectability.

But is it true that Vienna is the home of purity, of early retirers, of
phlegmatic and virtuous souls? Are its gaieties mere febrile imaginings
of liquorish dreamers? Is it, after all, the Los Angeles of Europe? Or,
despite its appearances, is it truly the gayest city in the world,
redolent of romance, bristling with intrigue, polluted with perfume? It
is. And, furthermore, it is far gayer than its reputation; for all has
never been told. Gaiety in Vienna is an end, not a means. It is born in
the blood of the people. The carnival spirit reigns. There are almost no
restrictions, no engines of repression. Alongside the real Viennese
night life, the blatant and spectacular caprices of Paris are so much
tinsel. The life on the Friedrichstrasse, the brightest and most active
street in Europe, becomes tawdry when compared with the secret glories
of the Kaerntnerring. In the one instance we have gaiety on parade, in
strumpet garb--the simulacrum of sin--gaiety dramatised. In the other
instance, it is an ineradicable factor of the city's life.

To appreciate these differences, one must understand the temperamental
appeals of the Viennese. With them gaiety comes under the same
physiological category as chilblains, hunger and fatigue. It is accepted
as one of the natural and necessary adjuncts of life like eating and
sleeping and lovemaking. It is an item in their pharmacopoeia. They do
not make a business of pleasure any more than the Englishman makes a
business of walking, or the American of drinking Peruna or the German of
beerbibbing. For this reason, pleasure in Vienna is not elaborate and
external. It is a private, intimate thing in which every citizen
participates according to his standing and his pocketbook. The Austrians
do not commercialize their pleasure in the hope of wheedling dollars
from American pockets. Such is not their nature. And so the slumming
traveller, lusting for obscure and fascinating debaucheries, finds
little in Vienna to attract him.

Vienna is perhaps the one city in the world which maintains a
consistent attitude of genuine indifference toward the outsider, which
resents the intrusion of snoopers from these pallid States, which
deliberately makes it difficult for foreign Florizels to find diversion.
The liveliest places in Vienna present the gloomiest exteriors. The
official guides maintain a cloistered silence regarding those addresses
at which Viennese society disports itself when the ledgers are closed
and the courts have adjourned. The Viennese, resenting the intrusion of
outsiders upon his midnight romances, holds out no encouragement for
globe-trotting Don Juans. He refuses to be inspected and criticised by
the inquisitive sensation hunters of other nations. Money will not tempt
him to commercialize his gaiety and regulate it to meet the morbid
demands of the interloper. Hence the external aspect of sobriety. Hence
the veneer of piety. Hence the sepulchral silence of the midnight
thoroughfares. Hence the silence and the desolation which meet the
roaming tourist.

In this respect Vienna is different from any other large city in
Europe. The joys of Parisian night life are as artificial as cosmetics.
They are organised and executed by technicians subtly schooled in the
psychology of the Puritan mind. To the American, all forms of pleasure
are excesses, to be indulged in only at rare intervals; and Paris
supplies him with the opportunities. Berlin, and even Munich, makes a
business of gaiety. St. Petersburg, patterning after Paris, excites the
visitor with visions of gaudy glory; and London, outwardly chaste,
maintains a series of supper clubs which in the dishonesty of their
subterranean pleasures surpass in downright immorality any city in
Europe. Budapest is a miniature Babylon burning incense by night which
assails the visitor's nostrils and sends him into delirious ecstasies.
San Francisco and New York are both equipped with opportunities for
all-night indulgences. In not one of these cities does the sight seeker
or the joy hunter find difficulty in sampling the syrups of sin.
Mysterious guides assail him on the street corners, pouring libidinous
tales into his furry ears, tempting him with descriptions like
Suetonius's account of the Roman circuses. Automobiles with megaphones
and placards summon him from the street corners. Electric
signs--debauches of writhing colour--intoxicate his mind and point the
way to haunts of Caracalla.

But Vienna! He will search in vain for a key to the night life. By
bribery he may wring an admission or obtain an address from the hotel
clerk; but the menage to which he is directed is, alas, not what he
seeks. He may plead with cabmen or buy the honour of taxicab drivers,
but little information will he obtain. For these gentlemen, strange as
it may seem, are almost as ignorant of the gaiety of Vienna as he
himself. And at last, in the early morning, after ineffectual searching,
after hours of assiduous nosing, he ends up at some _kaffeehaus_ near
the Schillerplatz, partakes of a chaste ice with _Wiener gebaeck_ and
goes dolorously home--a virgin of circumstance, an unwilling and
despondent Parsifal, a lofty and exquisite creature through lack of
opportunity, the chaste victim of a killjoy conspiracy. He is that most
tragic figure--an enforced pietist, a thwarted voluptuary. _Eheu! Eheu!
Dies faustus!_

In order to come into intimate touch with the night life of Vienna one
must live there and become a part of it. It is not for spectators and it
is not public. It involves every family in the city. It is inextricably
woven into the home life. It is elaborate because it is genuine, because
it is not looked upon as a mere outlet for the repressions of
puritanism. From an Anglo-Saxon point of view Vienna is perhaps the most
degenerate city in the world. But degeneracy is geographical; morals are
temperamental. This is why the Viennese resents intrusion and spying.
His night life involves the national spirit. His gaiety is not a
prerogative of the _demi-monde_, but the usufruct of all classes. Joy is
not exclusive or solitary with the Viennese. He is not ashamed of his
frolics and hilarities. He does not take his pleasures hypocritically
after the manner of the Occidental moralist. He is a gay bird, a
sybarite, a modern Lucullus, a Baron Chevrial--and admits it.

To be sure, there is in Vienna a miniature night life not unlike that
of the other European capitals, but it requires constant attention and
assiduous coddling to keep it alive. The better class Viennese will have
none of it. It is a by-product of the underworld and is no more
characteristic of Vienna than the gilded _cafes chantants_ which cluster
round the Place Pigalle on Montmartre are characteristic of Paris. These
places correspond to the Palais de Danse and the Admirals Palast in
Berlin; to the Villa Villa and the Astor Club in London; to
Reisenweber's in New York; to L'Abbaye and the Rat Mort in
Paris--allowing of course for the temperamental influences (and legal
restrictions) of the different nations.

Let us arouse a snoring cabman and make the rounds. Why not? All
merrymaking is shot through with youth, no matter how dolorous the joy
or how expensive the indulgence. So let us partake of the feast before
us. Our first encounter is with the Tabarin, in the Annagasse, an
establishment not unlike the Bal Tabarin in Paris. We hesitate at the
entrance, but being assured by the doorkeeper, garbed like Louis Seize,
that it is "_ein aeusserst feines und modernes nacht etablissement_" we
enter, partake of a bottle of champagne (thirty kronen--New York prices)
and pass out and on to Le Chapeau Rouge, where we buy more champagne.
From there we go to the Rauhensteingasse and enter Maxim's, brazenly
heralded as the Montmartre of Vienna. Then on to the Wallfischgasse to
mingle with the confused visitors of the Trocadero, where we are urged
to have supper. But time is fleeting. The cabmeter is going round like a
tortured turbine. So we hasten out and seek the Wiehburggasse, where we
discover a "Palais de Danse"--seductive phrase, suggestive of ancient
orgies. But we cannot tarry--in spite of Mimi Lobner (Ah, lovely lady!)
who sings to us "Liebliche Kleine Dingerchen" from "Kino-Koenigin," and
makes us buy her a peach _bowle_ in payment. One more place and we are
ready for the resort in the Prater, the Coney Island of Vienna. This
last place has no embroidered name. Its existence is emblazoned across
the blue skies by an electric sign reading "Etablissement Parisien." It
is in the Schellinggasse and justifies itself by the possession of a
very fine orchestra whose _militaer-kapellmeister_ knows naught but
inebriate _tanzmusik_.

Again in the open air, headed for the Kaisergarten, we reflect on our
evening's search for _nachtvergnuegungen_. With the lone exception of our
half-hour with Mimi, it has been a sad chase. All the places (with the
possible exception of the Trocadero) have been cheaply imitative of
Paris, with the usual appurtenances of arduous waiters, gorgeously
dressed women dancing on red velvet carpets, fortissimo orchestras,
expensive wines, _blumenmaedl_, hothouse strawberries and other
accessories of manufactured pleasure. But compared with Paris these
places have been second rate. The _damen_ (I except thee, lovely Mimi!)
have not inflamed us either with their beauty or with manifestations of
their _esprit gaulois_. For the most part they have been stodgy women
with voluminous bosoms, Eiffel towers of bought hair--bison with
astonishing hyperboles and parabolas, dressed in all of the voluptuous
splendour but possessing none of the grace of the Rue de la Paix.
Furthermore, these establishments have lacked the deportmental abandon
which saves their prototypes in Paris from downright banality. All of
their deviltries have been muted, as if the guests suffered from a
pathological fear of pleasure. Strangers we were when we entered. As
strangers we take our departure.

Why do I linger thus, you ask, over these hothouse caperings? For the
same reason that we are now going to inspect the Kaisergarten. Because
this phase of life represents an unnatural development in the Viennese
mode of pleasure, something grafted, yet something characteristic of the
impressionability of the Viennese mind. The Viennese are a hybrid and
imitative people. They have annexed characteristics distinctly French.
In the Kaisergarten these characteristics are more evident than
elsewhere. Here is a people's playground in which all manner of
amusements are thrown together, from the _balhaus_, where nothing but
expensive champagne is sold, to the scenic railway, on which one may
ride for fifty heller. This park presents a bizarre and chaotic mingling
of outdoor concerts, variety theatres, _bierkabaretts_, moving picture
halls, promenades and sideshow attractions of the Atlantic City type.
The Kaisergarten is the rendezvous of the bourgeoisie, the heaven of hoi
polloi--rotund merchants with walrus moustachios, dapper young clerks
with flowing ties, high-chokered soldiers, their boots polished into
ebony mirrors, fat-jowled maidens in rainbow garb.... There is
lovemaking under the Linden trees, beer drinking on the midway,
_schnitzel_ eating in the restaurants. Homely pleasantries are thrown
from heavy German youths to the promenading _maedchen_. One catches such
greetings and whisperings as "_Du bist oba heut' fesch g'scholnt_" and
"_Ko do net so lang umananderbandln_." There exists a spirit of buoyant
and genuine fellowship. But here again it is a private and personal
brand of gaiety. Let the obvious stranger whisper "_Schatz'rl_" to a
powdered Fritzi on the bench next to him, and he will be ignored for his
impertinence. The same salutation from a Viennese will call forth a
coquettish "_Raubersbua_." Even the _Amerikan-bar_ in the centre of the
Kaisergarten (in charge of no less a celebrity than Herr Pohnstingl!)
will not offer the tourist the hospitality he hopes to find. He will
find neither Americans nor American drinks. The cocktail--that boon to
all refined palates, when mixed with artistry and true poetic
feeling--circulates _incognito_ at Herr Pohnstingl's. Such febrifuges as
masquerade under that name are barely recognisable by authentic
connoisseurs, by Rabelaises of sensitive esophagi, by true lovers of
subtly concocted gin and vermouth and bitters. But the Viennese, soggy
with acid beer, his throat astringentized by strong coffee, knows not
the difference. And so the _Amerikan-bar_ flourishes.

[Illustration: VIENNA]

It was here that I discovered Gabrielle, a sad little French girl,
alone and forsaken in the midst of merriment, drinking Dubonnet and
dreaming of the Boulevard Montparnasse. I bought her another
Dubonnet--what stranger would have done less? In her was epitomized the
sadness of the stranger in Vienna. Lured by lavish tales of gaiety, she
had left Paris, to seek an unsavoury fortune in the love marts of
Vienna. But her dream had been broken. She was lonely as only a Parisian
can be, stranded in an alien country. She knew scarcely a score of
German words, in fact no language but her own. Her youth and coquetry
did not avail. She was an outsider, a deserted onlooker. She spoke
tenderly of the Cafe du Dome, of Fouquet's, the Cafe d'Harcourt, Marigny
and the Luxembourg. She inquired sentimentally about the Bal Bullier.
She was pretty, after the anaemic French type of beauty, with pink
cheeks, pale blue eyes and hair the colour of wet straw. She had the
slender, shapely feet of the French cocotte. Her stockings were of thin
pink silk. Her slender, soft fingers were without a ring. Her jewelry,
no doubt, had long since gone to the money lender. She seemed childishly
happy because I sat and talked to her. Poor little Gabrielle! Her
tragedy was one of genuine bereavement, or perhaps the worst of all
tragedies--loneliness. I shall never think again of Vienna without
picturing that stranded girl, sipping at her reddish drink in the
_Amerikan-bar_ in the Kaisergarten. But her case is typical. The
Viennese are not hospitable to strangers. They are an intimate,
self-sufficient people.

Let us turn, however, from the little Gabrielle to a more fascinating
and exquisite creature, to a happier and more buoyant denizen of
Viennese night life, to a lady of more elegant attire. In short, behold
Fraeulein Bianca Weise. In her are the alkaloids of gaiety. She
irradiates the joyfulness of the city. In her infancy she was hummed to
sleep with snatches from the "Wiener Blut," the booziest waltz in all
Christendom. Bianca is tall and catlike, but deliciously proportioned.
Her hair is an alloy of bronze and gold. Her skin is pale, and in her
cheeks there is the barest bit of rose, like a flame seen through ivory.
Her eyes are large, and their blue is almost primary. Her face is a
perfect oval. Her lips are full and abnormally red. Her slender, conical
hands are always active like those of a child, and she wears but little
jewelry. Her gowns come from Paquin's and seem almost a part of her
body.

This is Bianca, the most beautiful woman in all Europe. Do I seem to
rave? Then let me answer that perhaps you have not seen Bianca. And to
see her is to be her slave, her press agent. It was Bianca's picture
that went emblazoning over two continents a few years ago as the supreme
type of modern feminine beauty, according to the physiological experts
and the connoisseurs of pulchritude. But it is not because of the lady's
gift of beauty that I feature her here. It is because she so perfectly
typifies the romance of that whirling city, so accurately embodies the
spirit of Vienna's darkened hours. In the afternoon you will find her on
the Kaerntnerstrasse with her black-haired little maid. At five o'clock
she goes for _kaffeetsch'rl_ to Herr Reidl's Cafe de l'Europe, in the
Stefanplatz. With her are always two or three Beau Brummels chatting
incessantly about music and art, wooing her suavely with magnificent
technique, drinking coffee intermittently, and lavishly tipping the
_kellner_.

These _kaffeehaeuser_ are the leading public institutions of Vienna.
They take the place of private teas, culture clubs, dramatic readings
and sewing circles in other countries. All Vienna society turns out in
the afternoon to partake of _melange_, _kaffee mit schlagobers_,
_kapuziner_, _schwarzen_, _weckerln_ and _kaisersemmeln_. But no hard
drinks, no vulgar pretzels and wursts. Only Americans order beer and
cognac at the coffee houses, and generally, after once sampling them,
they follow the bibulous lead of the Viennese. Each _kaffeehaus_ has its
own coterie, its own habitues. Thus, at the Cafe de l'Europe one finds
the worldly set, the young bloods with artistic leanings. The Cafe de
l'Opera, in the Opernring, is patronised by the advocates and legal
attaches. At the Cafe Scheidl, in the Wallfischgasse, foregather the
governmental coterie, the army officers and burgomasters. The merchants
discuss their affairs at the Cafe Schwarzenberg, in the Kaerntnerring. At
the Cafe Heinrichshof, in the Opernring, one finds the leading actors
and musicians immersed in the small talk of their craft. Thus it goes.
In all the leading cafes--the Habsburg, Landtmann, Mokesch, Gartenbau,
Siller, Prueckl--the tables are filled, and the coffee drinking, the
_baunzerln_ eating and the gossiping go on till opera time.

The theatre in Vienna is a part of the life. It is not indulged in as a
mere amusement or diversion, like shooting the chutes or going to
church. It is an evening's obligation. This accounts for the large
number of Vienna theatres and for their architectural beauty. But do not
think that when you have attended a dozen such places as the
Hofoperntheatre, the Hofburgtheatre, the Deutsches Volkstheatre and the
Carltheatre you have sensed the entire theatrical appeal of Vienna. Far
from it. No city in the world is punctuated with so large a number of
semi-private intimate theatres and cabarets as Vienna--theatres with a
seating capacity of forty or fifty. You may know the Kleine Buehne and
the Max und Moritz and the Hoelle, but there are fifty others, and every
night finds them crowded.

Theatregoing is occasionally varied with lesser and more primitive
pastimes. Go out on the crooked Sieveringerstrasse and behold the
multitudes waxing mellow over the sweet red _heuriger_. Go to the
Volksgarten-Cafe Restaurant any summer night after seven, pay sixty
heller, and see the crowds gathered to hear the military band concerts;
or seek the halls in winter and join the audiences who come to wallow in
the florid polyphonies of the _Wiener Tonkuenstler Orchester_. Sundays
and holiday nights go to Grinsing and Nussdorf and watch the people at
play. Make the rounds of the wine houses--the Rathaus Keller, the
Nieder-Oesterreichisches Winzerhaus, the Tommasoni--and behold the
spooning and the rough joking.

All this is part of the night life of Vienna. But it is not the life in
which Bianca participates. Therefore we cannot tarry in the wine houses
or at the concerts. Instead let us attend the opera. We go early before
the sun has set. The curtain rises at six-thirty to permit of our
leaving by half past ten, for there is much to do before morning. After
the performance--dinner! The Viennese are adepts in the gustatory art.
Their meals have the heft of German victualty combined with the
delicacies and imaginative qualities of French cooking. An ideal and
seductive combination! A rich and toothsome blending!... Bianca touches
my arm and says we must make haste. This evening I am to be honoured
with dinner in her apartment. So we drive to her rooms on the
Franzenring overlooking the Volksgarten.

The Viennese dinner hour is eleven, and this is why the tourist,
fingering his guide book, looks in vain for the diners. Sacher's, the
Imperial, the Bristol and the Spatenbraeu are deserted in the early
evenings. Even after the Opera these restaurants present little of the
life found in the Paris, Berlin or London restaurants. The Viennese is
not a public diner; and here again we find an explanation for the
tourist's impressions. When the Viennese goes to dinner, he does so
privately. Bianca's dinner that night was typical. There were twelve at
table. There was music by a semi-professional pianist. The service was
perfect--it was more like a dinner in a _cabinet particulier_ at a
Parisian cafe than one in a private apartment. But here we catch the
spirit of Vienna, the transforming of what the other cities do publicly
into the intimacies of the home.

At one o'clock, the meal finished, the intimate theatre claimed us.
There the glorious Bianca met her lovers, her little following. At these
theatres every one knows every one else. It is the social lure as well
as the theatrical appeal that brings the people there. Bianca chats with
the actors, flirts with the admiring Lotharios and drinks champagne. At
her side sit the greatest artists and dramatists of the day, princes and
other celebrities. At one of these performances I saw her bewitching two
men--one a composer, the other a writer--whose names lead the artistic
activities of Southern Europe. But Bianca is prodigal with her charms,
and before the final curtain was dropped she had shed her fascinations
on every patron in the theatre. And I, whose thirty kronen had passed
her by the satin-pantalooned and lace-bosomed doorkeeper, was quite
forgot. But such is Viennese etiquette. An escort may pay the _fiacre_
charge and the entrance fee, but such a meagre, vulgar claim does not
suffice to obtain a lady's entire attention for the evening. Such
selfishness is not understood by the Viennese.

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