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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The real business of the evening came later. The coffee drinking, the
theatre and the dining had been so many preliminaries for that form of
amusement which forms the basis of all Viennese night life--dancing. The
Viennese dance more than any people in the world. During _Faschingzeit_
there are at least fifty large public balls every night. These balls
become gay at one o'clock and last through the entire night. For the
most part they are masked, and range from the low to the high, from
those where the entrance fee is but two kronen to the elaborate ones
whose demand is thirty kronen. Every night in Vienna during the season
fifty thousand people are dancing. Nor are these balls the suave and
conventional dances of less frank nations. By the mere presentation of a
flower any one may dance with any one else. In every phase of night life
in Vienna flowers play an important part. They constitute the language
of the carnival. To such an extent is this true that, though you may ask
for a dance by presenting a flower, you may not ask verbally, though
your tongue be polished and your soul ablaze with poetry. And while you
are dancing you may not talk to your partner. She is yours for that
dance--but she is yours in silence. Should you meet her the following
afternoon in the Prater or on parade in the Kaerntnerstrasse, her eyes
will look past you, for the night has gone, carrying with it its
memories and its intoxications.
It is this spirit of evanescence, this youthful buoyancy, snatched out
of the passing years, lived for a moment and then forgot, which
constitutes the genuine gaiety of Vienna. It is an unconscious gaiety,
sensed but not analysed, in the very soul of the people. It keeps the
Viennese young and makes him resent, intuitively, the invasion of other
nations to whom gaiety is artificial. That is why the dances are open to
all, why the formality of introductions would be scoffed at. Their blood
has all been tapped from the same fountain head. There are affinities
between all Viennese phagocytes. The basis of all romance is ephemeral
in its nature, and in no people in the world do we find so great an
element of transitoriness in pleasure-taking as in the Viennese.
A description of one of the masked balls would tell you the whole of
the night life in Vienna, but until you have become a part of one of
them you would not understand them. Not until you yourself had
accompanied the fair Bianca and watched her for a whole evening, could
you appreciate how these dances differ from those of other cities.
Externally they would appear the same. Photographed, they would look
like any other carnival ball. But there are things which a photographic
plate could never catch, and the spirit of merriment which runs through
these dances is one. If you care to see them, go to the Blumensaele or to
the Wimberger. The crowds here are typical. However, if you care for a
more lavish or elaborate gathering, you will find it at the
Musikvereinsaele or the Sofiensaele. These latter two are more
fashionable, though no one remains at any of the _maskenbaelle_ the whole
evening. The dancers go from one ball to another; and should you, at
five in the morning, return to a _balhaus_ where you had been earlier in
the evening, you would find an entirely new set of dancers.
Let us then take our departure, with the masked ball still in full
progress, our hearts still thumping to the measures of an intoxicating
waltz, the golden confetti still glistening in our hair, perfumed powder
on our clothes, the murmuring of clandestine whispers still in our ears,
the rhythm of swaying girls still in our blood. As we pass out into the
bleak street, the first faint flush of dawn is in the east. The
_waesserer_ are washing off the cabs; a helmeted _hauptmann_ salutes
lazily as we pass, and we drive home full of the intoxications of that
pagan gaiety which the Viennese, more than any other people, have
preserved in all its innocence, its sensuous splendour, its spontaneity
and youth.
Bianca? By now she has forgotten with whom she came to the dance. Next
week my name will be but one of her innumerable memories--if, indeed, it
does not altogether pass away. For Bianca is Vienna, lavish and joyous
and buoyant--and forgetful. I danced with her three times, but my three
roses, along with scores of others, have long since been lost in the
swirl of the evening.
I wish I might think only of Bianca as the shadows dissolve from the
streets and the grey morning light strikes the great steeple of
Stefans-Dom. But another picture presents itself. I see a little French
girl, out of touch with all the merriment around her, sipping her
Dubonnet in solitude--a forlorn girl with pink cheeks, pale blue eyes
and hair the colour of wet straw.
MUNICH
[Illustration: MUNICH]
MUNICH
Let the most important facts come first. The best beer in Munich is
Spatenbraeu; the best place to get it is at the Hoftheatre Cafe in the
Residenzstrasse; the best time to drink it is after 10 P.M., and the
best of all girls to serve it is Fraeulein Sophie, that tall and
resilient creature, with her appetizing smile, her distinguished bearing
and her superbly manicured hands.
I have, in my time, sat under many and many superior _kellnerinen_,
some as regal as grand duchesses, some as demure as shoplifters, some as
graceful as _prime ballerini_, but none reaching so high a general level
of merit, none so thoroughly satisfying to eye and soul as Fraeulein
Sophie. She is a lady, every inch of her, a lady presenting to all
gentlemanly clients the ideal blend of cordiality and dignity, and she
serves the best beer in Christendom. Take away that beer, and it is
possible, of course, that Sophie would lose some minute granule or
globule of her charm; but take away Sophie and I fear the beer would
lose even more.
In fact, I know it, for I have drunk that same beer in the
Spatenbraeukeller in the Bayerstrasse, at all hours of the day and night,
and always the ultimate thrill was missing. Good beer, to be sure, and a
hundred times better than the common brews, even in Munich, but not
perfect beer, not beer _de luxe_, not super-beer. It is the human
equation that counts, in the _bierhalle_ as on the battlefield. One
resents, somehow a _kellnerin_ with the figure of a taxicab, no matter
how good her intentions and fluent her technique, just as one resents a
trained nurse with a double chin or a glass eye. When a personal office
that a man might perform, or even an intelligent machine, is put into
the hands of a woman, it is put there simply and solely because the
woman can bring charm to it and irradiate it with romance. If, now, she
fails to do so--if she brings, not charm, not beauty, not romance, but
the gross curves of an aurochs and a voice of brass--if she offers bulk
when the heart cries for grace and adenoids when the order is for music,
then the whole thing becomes a hissing and a mocking, and a grey fog is
on the world.
But to get back to the Hoftheatre Cafe. It stands, as I have said, in
the Residenzstrasse, where that narrow street bulges out into the
Max-Joseph-platz, and facing it, as its name suggests, is the
Hoftheatre, the most solemn-looking playhouse in Europe, but the scene
of appalling tone debaucheries within. The supreme idea at the
Hoftheatre is to get the curtain down at ten o'clock. If the bill
happens to be a short one, say "Haensel and Gretel" or "Elektra," the
three thumps of the starting mallet may not come until eight o'clock or
even 8:30, but if it is a long one, say "Parsifal" or "Les Huguenots," a
beginning is made far back in the afternoon. Always the end arrives at
ten, with perhaps a moment or two leeway in one direction or the other.
And two minutes afterward, without further ceremony or delay, the truly
epicurean auditor has his feet under the mahogany at the Hoftheatre Cafe
across the platz, with a seidel of that incomparable brew tilted
elegantly toward his face and his glad eyes smiling at Fraeulein Sophie
through the glass bottom.
How many women could stand that test? How many could bear the ribald
distortions of that lens-like seidel bottom and yet keep their charm?
How many thus caricatured and vivisected, could command this free
reading notice from a casual American, dictating against time and space
to a red-haired stenographer, three thousand and five hundred miles
away? And yet Sophie does it, and not only Sophie, but also Frida, Elsa,
Lili, Kunigunde, Maertchen, Therese and Lottchen, her confreres and
aides, and even little Rosa, who is half Bavarian and half Japanese, and
one of the prettiest girls in Munich, in or out of uniform. It is a
pleasure to say a kind word for little Rosa, with her coal black hair
and her slanting eyes, for she is too fragile a fraeulein to be toting
around those gigantic German schnitzels and bifsteks, those mighty
double portions of sauerbraten and rostbif, those staggering drinking
urns, overballasted and awash.
Let us not, however, be unjust to the estimable Herr Wirt of the
Hoftheatre Cafe, with his pneumatic tread, his chaste side whiskers and
his long-tailed coat, for his drinking urns, when all is said and done,
are quite the smallest in Munich. And not only the smallest, but also
the shapeliest. In the Hofbraeuhaus and in the open air _bierkneipen_
(for instance, the Mathaeser joint, of which more anon) one drinks out of
earthen cylinders which resemble nothing so much as the gaunt towers of
Munich cathedral; and elsewhere the orthodox goblet is a glass edifice
following the lines of an old-fashioned silver water pitcher--you know
the sort the innocently criminal used to give as wedding presents!--but
at the Hoftheatre there is a vessel of special design, hexagonal in
cross section and unusually graceful in general aspect. On top, a pewter
lid, ground to an optical fit and highly polished--by Sophie, Rosa _et
al._, poor girls! To starboard, a stout handle, apparently of reinforced
onyx. Above the handle, and attached to the lid, a metal flange or
thumbpiece. Grasp the handle, press your thumb on the thumbpiece--and
presto, the lid heaves up. And then, to the tune of a Strauss waltz,
played passionately by tone artists in oleaginous dress suits, down goes
the Spatenbraeu--gurgle, gurgle--burble, burble--down goes the
Spatenbraeu--exquisite, ineffable!--to drench the heart in its nut brown
flood and fill the arteries with its benign alkaloids and antitoxins.
Well, well, maybe I grow too eloquent! Such memories loose and craze
the tongue. A man pulls himself up suddenly, to find that he has been
vulgar. If so here, so be it! I refuse to plead to the indictment;
sentence me and be hanged to you! I am by nature a vulgar fellow. I
prefer "Tom Jones" to "The Rosary," Rabelais to the Elsie books, the Old
Testament to the New, the expurgated parts of "Gulliver's Travels" to
those that are left. I delight in beef stews, limericks, burlesque
shows, New York City and the music of Haydn, that beery and delightful
old rascal! I swear in the presence of ladies and archdeacons. When the
mercury is above ninety-five I dine in my shirt sleeves and write poetry
naked. I associate habitually with dramatists, bartenders, medical men
and musicians. I once, in early youth, kissed a waitress at Dennett's.
So don't accuse me of vulgarity; I admit it and flout you. Not, of
course, that I have no pruderies, no fastidious metes and bounds. Far
from it. Babies, for example, are too vulgar for me; I cannot bring
myself to touch them. And actors. And evangelists. And the obstetrical
anecdotes of ancient dames. But in general, as I have said, I joy in
vulgarity, whether it take the form of divorce proceedings or of
"Tristan und Isolde," of an Odd Fellows' funeral or of Munich beer.
But here, perhaps, I go too far again. That is to say, I have no right
to admit that Munich beer is vulgar. On the contrary, it is my obvious
duty to deny it, and not only to deny it but also to support my denial
with an overwhelming mass of evidence and a shrill cadenza of casuistry.
But the time and the place, unluckily enough, are not quite fit for the
dialectic, and so I content myself with a few pertinent observations.
_Imprimis_, a thing that is unique, incomparable, _sui generis_, cannot
be vulgar. Munich beer is unique, incomparable, _sui generis_. More, it
is consummate, transcendental, _uebernatuerlich_. Therefore it cannot be
vulgar. Secondly, the folk who drink it day after day do not die of
vulgar diseases. Turn to the subhead _Todesursachen_ in the instructive
_Statistischer Monatsbericht der Stadt Muenchen_, and you will find
records of few if any deaths from delirium tremens, boils, hookworm,
smallpox, distemper, measles or what the _Monatsbericht_ calls "liver
sickness." The Muencheners perish more elegantly, more charmingly than
that. When their time comes it is gout that fetches them, or
appendicitis, or neurasthenia, or angina pectoris; or perchance they cut
their throats.
Thirdly, and to make it short, lastly, the late Henrik Ibsen,
nourished upon Munich beer, wrote "Hedda Gabler," not to mention
"Rosmersholm" and "The Lady from the Sea"--wrote them in his flat in the
Maximilianstrasse overlooking the palace and the afternoon promenaders,
in the late eighties of the present, or Christian era--wrote them there
and then took them to the Cafe Luitpold, in the Briennerstrasse, to
ponder them, polish them and make them perfect. I myself have sat in old
Henrik's chair and victualed from the table. It is far back in the main
hall of the cafe, to the right as you come in, and hidden from the
incomer by the glass vestibule which guards the pantry. Ibsen used to
appear every afternoon at three o'clock, to drink his vahze of Loewenbraeu
and read the papers. The latter done, he would sit in silence, thinking,
thinking, planning, planning. Not often did he say a word, even to
Fraeulein Mizzi, his favourite _kellnerin_. So taciturn was he, in truth,
that his rare utterances were carefully entered in the archives of the
cafe and are now preserved there. By the courtesy of Dr. Adolph
Himmelheber, the present curator, I am permitted to transcribe a few,
the imperfect German of the poet being preserved:
November 18, 1889, 4:15 P.M.--_Giebt es kein Feuer in diese verfluchte
Bierstube? Meine Fuesse sind so kalt wie Eiszapfen!_
April 12, 1890, 5:20 P.M.--_Der Kerl is verrueckt!_ (Said of an American
who entered with the stars and stripes flying from his hat.)
May 22, 1890, 4:40 P.M.--_Sie sind so eselhaft wie ein Schauspieler!_
(To an assistant Herr Wirt who brought him a Socialist paper in mistake
for the London _Times_.)
Now and then the great man would condescend to play a game of billiards
in the hall to the rear, usually with some total stranger. He would
point out the stranger to Fraeulein Mizzi and she would carry his card.
The game would proceed, as a rule, in utter silence. But it was for the
Loewenbraeu and not for the billiards that Ibsen came to the Luitpold, for
the Loewenbraeu and the high flights of soul that it engendered. He had no
great liking for Munich as a city; his prime favourite was always
Vienna, with Rome second. But he knew that the incomparable malt liquor
of Munich was full of the inspiration that he needed, and so he kept
near it, not to bathe in it, not to frivol with it, but to take it
discreetly and prophylactically, and as the exigencies of his art
demanded.
Ibsen's inherent fastidiousness, a quality which urged him to spend
hours shining his shoes, was revealed by his choice of the Cafe
Luitpold, for of all the cafes in Munich the Luitpold is undoubtedly the
most elegant. Its walls are adorned with frescoes by Albrecht
Hildebrandt. The ceiling of the main hall is supported by columns of
coloured marble. The tables are of carved mahogany. The forks and
spoons, before Americans began to steal them, were of real silver. The
chocolate with whipped cream, served late in the afternoon, is famous
throughout Europe. The Herr Wirt has the suave sneak of John Drew and is
a privy councillor to the King of Bavaria. All the tables along the east
wall, which is one vast mirror, are reserved from 8 P.M. to 2 A.M.
nightly by the faculty of the University of Munich, which there
entertains the eminent scientists who constantly visit the city. No
orchestra arouses the baser passions with "Wiener Blut." The place has
calm, aloofness, intellectuality, aristocracy, distinction. It was the
scene foreordained for the hatching of "Hedda Gabler."
But don't imagine that Munich, when it comes to elegance, must stand or
fall with the Luitpold. Far from it, indeed. There are other cafes of
noble and elevating quality in that delectable town--plenty of them, you
may be sure. For example, the Odeon, across the street from the
Luitpold, a place lavish and luxurious, but with a certain touch of
dogginess, a taste of salt. The _piccolo_ who lights your cigar and
accepts your five pfennigs at the Odeon is an Ethiopian dwarf. Do you
sense the romance, the exotic _diablerie_, the suggestion of Levantine
mystery? And somewhat Levantine, too, are the ladies who sit upon the
plush benches along the wall and take Russian cigarettes with their
kirschenwasser. Not that the atmosphere is frankly one of Sin. No! No!
The Odeon is no cabaret. A leg flung in the air would bring the Herr
Wirt at a gallop, you may be sure--or, at any rate, his apoplectic
corpse. In all New York, I dare say, there is no public eating house so
near to the far-flung outposts, the Galapagos Islands of virtue. But one
somehow feels that for Munich, at least, the Odeon is just a bit
tolerant, just a bit philosophical, just a bit Bohemian. One even
imagines taking an American show girl there without being warned (by a
curt note in one's serviette) that the head waiter's family lives in the
house.
Again, pursuing these haunts of the baroque and arabesque, there is the
restaurant of the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, a masterpiece of the Munich
glass cutters and upholsterers. It is in the very heart of things, with
the royal riding school directly opposite, the palace a block away and
the green of the Englischer Garten glimmering down the street. Here, of
a fine afternoon, the society is the best between Vienna and Paris. One
may share the vinegar cruet with a countess, and see a general of
cavalry eat peas with a knife (hollow ground, like a razor; a Bavarian
trick!) and stand aghast while a great tone artist dusts his shoes with
a napkin, and observe a Russian grand duke at the herculean labour of
drinking himself to death.
The Vier Jahreszeiten is no place for the common people; such trade is
not encouraged. The dominant note of the establishment is that of proud
retirement, of elegant sanctuary. One enters, not from the garish
Maximilianstrasse, with its motor cars and its sinners, but from the
Marstallstrasse, a sedate and aristocratic side street. The Vier
Jahreszeiten, in its time, has given food, alcohol and lodgings for the
night to twenty crowned heads and a whole shipload of lesser
magnificoes, and despite the rise of other hotels it retains its ancient
supremacy. It is the peer of Shepheard's at Cairo, of the Cecil in
London, of the old Inglaterra at Havana, of the St. Charles at New
Orleans. It is one of the distinguished hotels of the world.
I could give you a long list of other Munich restaurants of a kingly
order--the great breakfast room of the Bayrischer Hof, with its polyglot
waiters and its amazing repertoire of English jams; the tea and liquor
atelier of the same hostelry, with its high dome and its sheltering
palms; the pretty little open air restaurant of the Kuenstlerhaus in the
Lenbachplatz; the huge catacomb of the Rathaus, with its mediaeval arches
and its vintage wines; the lovely _al fresco_ cafe on Isar Island, with
the green cascades of the Isar winging on lazy afternoons; the cafe in
the Hofgarten, gay with birds and lovers; that in the Tiergarten, from
the terrace of which one watches lions and tigers gamboling in the
woods; and so on, and so on. There is even, I hear, a temperance
restaurant in Munich, the Jungbrunnen in the Arcostrasse, where water is
served with meals, but that is only rumour. I myself have never visited
it, nor do I know any one who has.
All this, however, is far from the point. I am here hired to discourse
of Munich beer, and not of vintage wines, bogus cocktails, afternoon
chocolate and well water. We are on a beeriad. Avaunt, ye grapes, ye
maraschino cherries, ye puerile H_{2}O!
And so, resuming that beeriad, it appears that we are once again in the
Hoftheatre Cafe in the Residenzstrasse, and that Fraeulein Sophie, that
pleasing creature, has just arrived with two ewers of Spatenbraeu--two
ewers fresh from the wood--woody, nutty, incomparable! Ah, those
elegantly manicured hands! Ah, that Mona Lisa smile! Ah, that so
graceful waist! Ah, malt! Ah, hops! _Ach, Muenchen, wie bist du so
schoen!_
But even Paradise has its nuisances, its scandals, its lacks. The
Hoftheatre Cafe, alas, is not the place to eat sauerkraut--not the
place, at any rate, to eat sauerkraut _de luxe_, the supreme and
singular masterpiece of the Bavarian uplands, the perfect grass embalmed
to perfection. The place for that is the Pschorrbraeu in the
Neuhauserstrasse, a devious and confusing journey, down past the
Pompeian post office, into the narrow Schrammerstrasse, around the old
cathedral, and then due south to the Neuhauserstrasse. _Sapperment!_ The
Neuhauserstrasse is here called the Kaufingerstrasse! Well, well, don't
let it fool you. A bit further to the east it is called the Marienplatz,
and further still the Thal, and then the Isarthorplatz, and then the
Zweibrueckenstrasse, and then the Isarbruecke, and then the Ludwigbruecke,
and finally, beyond the river, the Gasteig or the Rosenheimerstrasse,
according as one takes its left branch or its right.
But don't be dismayed by all that versatility. Munich streets, like
London streets, change their names every two or three blocks. Once you
arrive between the two mediaeval arches of the Karlsthor and the
Sparkasse, you are in the Neuhauserstrasse, whatever the name on the
street sign, and if you move westward toward the Karlsthor you will come
inevitably to the Pschorrbraeu, and within you will find Fraeulein Tilde
(to whom my regards), who will laugh at your German with a fine show of
pearly teeth and the extreme vibration of her 195 pounds. Tilde, in
these godless states, would be called fat. But observe her in the
Pschorrbraeu, mellowed by that superb malt, glorified by that consummate
kraut, and you will blush to think her more than plump.
I give you the Pschorrbraeu as the one best eating bet in Munich--and
not forgetting, by any means, the Luitpold, the Rathaus, the Odeon and
all the other gilded hells of victualry to northward. Imagine it: every
skein of sauerkraut is cooked three times before it reaches your plate!
Once in plain water, once in Rhine wine and once in melted snow! A dish,
in this benighted republic, for stevedores and yodlers, a coarse fee for
violoncellists, barbers and reporters for the _Staats-Zeitung_--but the
delight, at the Pschorrbraeu, of diplomats, the literati and doctors of
philosophy. I myself, eating it three times a day, to the accompaniment
of _schweinersrippen_ and _bonensalat_, have composed triolets in the
Norwegian language, a feat not matched by Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson himself.
And I once met an American medical man, in Munich to sit under the
learned Prof. Dr. Mueller, who ate no less than five portions of it
nightly, after his twelve long hours of clinical prodding and hacking.
He found it more nourishing, he told me, than pure albumen, and more
stimulating to the jaded nerves than laparotomy.
But to many Americans, of course, sauerkraut does not appeal.
Prejudiced against the dish by ridicule and innuendo, they are unable to
differentiate between good and bad, and so it's useless to send them to
this or that _ausschank_. Well, let them then go to the Pschorrbraeu and
order bifstek from the grill, at M. 1.20 the ration. There may be
tenderer and more savoury bifsteks in the world, bifsteks which sizzle
more seductively upon red hot plates, bifsteks with more proteids and
manganese in them, bifsteks more humane to ancient and hyperesthetic
teeth, bifsteks from nobler cattle, more deftly cut, more passionately
grilled, more romantically served--but not, believe me, for M. 1.20!
Think of it: a cut of tenderloin for M. 1.20--say, 28.85364273x cents!
For a side order of sauerkraut, forty pfennigs extra. For potatoes,
twenty-five pfennigs. For a _mass_ of _dunkle_, thirty-two pfennigs. In
all, M. 2.17--an odd mill or so more or less than fifty-two cents. A
square meal, perfectly cooked, washed down with perfect beer and served
perfectly by Fraeulein Tilde--and all for the price of a shampoo!
From the Pschorrbraeu, if the winds be fair, the beeriad takes us
westward along the Neuhauserstrasse a distance of eighty feet and six
inches, and behold, we are at the Augustinerbraeu. Good beer--a trifle
pale, perhaps, and without much grip to it, but still good beer. After
all, however, there is something lacking here. Or, to be more accurate,
something jars. The orchestra plays Grieg and Moszkowski; a smell of
chocolate is in the air; that tall, pink lieutenant over there, with his
cropped head and his outstanding ears, his _backfisch_ waist and his
mudscow feet--that military gargoyle, half lout and half fop, offends
the roving eye. No doubt a handsome man, by German standards--even,
perhaps a celebrated seducer, a soldier with a future--but the mere
sight of him suffices to paralyse an American esophagus. Besides, there
is the smell of chocolate, sweet, sickly, effeminate, and at two in the
afternoon! Again, there is the music of Grieg, clammy, clinging, creepy.
Away to the Mathaeserbraeu, two long blocks by taxi! From the Munich of
Berlinish decadence and Prussian epaulettes to the Munich of honest
Bavarians! From chocolate and macaroons to pretzels and white radishes!
From Grieg to "Lachende Liebe!" From a boudoir to an inn yard! From pale
beer in fragile glasses to red beer in earthen pots!
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