Part 10 (1/2)

That leaves only 2s. a month for the extra days of the month, and for small expenses, such as soda, matches, blacking, and condiments.

Breakfast may cost sixpence a day, and for this there is to be litre of milk, 4 small white rolls, lb. rye bread, 2 oz. of b.u.t.ter, 1 oz.

of coffee. Nothing is set down for sugar, and I think that most German families of this cla.s.s would not use sugar, and would eat their bread without b.u.t.ter. On Sunday they have a goose for dinner, and pay 4s.

6d. for it, and though 4s. 6d. is not much to pay for a goose, it seems an extravagant dish for this family, until you discover that they are still dining on it on Wednesday. Not only has the _Hausfrau_ brought home this costly bird, but she has laid in a whole pound of lard to roast with it, white bread for stuffing, and cabbage for a vegetable. Pudding is not considered necessary after goose, and for supper there is bread and milk for the children, and bread, b.u.t.ter, cheese, and beer for the parents. On Monday they have a rest from goose, and dine on _gehacktes Schweinefleisch_. German butchers sell raw minced meat very cheaply, and the _Hausfrau_ would probably get as much as she wanted for three-halfpence. On Tuesday they get back to the goose, and have a hash of the wings, neck, and liver with potatoes. For supper, rice cooked with milk and cinnamon. Germans use cinnamon rather as the Spaniards use garlic. They seem to think it improves everything, and they eat quant.i.ties of milky rice strewn with it. On Wednesday my family has soup for dinner, a solid soup made of goose, rice, and a pennyworth of carrots. For supper there is sausage, bread, and beer. By the way, this official is not really representative, for he spends nothing on tobacco, and only a penny every other day on beer. He cannot have been a Bavarian. His wife gives him cod with mustard sauce on Thursday, Sauerkraut and s.h.i.+n of beef on Friday, and on Sat.u.r.day lentil soup with sausages, an excellent dish when properly cooked for those who want solid nouris.h.i.+ng food. On the following Sunday 3 pounds of beef appears, and potato dumplings with stewed fruit, another good German mixture if the dumplings are as light as they should be. The husband has them warmed up for supper next day. One day he has bacon and vegetables for dinner, and another day only apple sauce and pancakes, but at every midday meal throughout the fortnight he has carefully planned food on which his wife spends considerable time and trouble. He never comes home from his work on a winter's day to have a mutton bone and watery potatoes set before him. In summer the bill of fare provides soups made with wine, milk, or cider; sometimes there are curds for supper, and if they have a chicken, rice and stewed fruit are eaten with it.

But a chicken only costs this _Hausfrau_ 1 mark 20 pf., so it must have been a small one. I have often bought pigeons for 25 pf. apiece in Germany, and stuffed in the Bavarian way with egg and bread crumbs they are good eating. Fruit is extremely cheap and plentiful in many parts of Germany, but not everywhere. We have Heine's word for it that the plums grown by the wayside between Jena and Weimar are good, for most of us know his story of his first interview with Goethe; how he had looked forward to the meeting with ecstasy and reflection, and how when he was face to face with the great man all he found to say was a word in praise of the plums he had eaten as he walked. In the fruit-growing districts most of the roads are set with an avenue of fruit trees, and so law-abiding are the boys of Germany, and so plentiful is fruit in its season, that no one seems to steal from them. I have talked with elderly Germans, who remembered buying 3 pounds of cherries for 6 kreuzers, a little more than a penny, when they were boys. But those days are over. The small sweet-water grapes from the vineyards of South Germany are to be had for the asking where they are grown, and apricots are plentiful in some districts, and the little golden plums called _Mirabellen_ that are dried in quant.i.ties and make the best winter compote there is. When I see English grocers'

shops loaded up with dried American apples and apricots that are not worth eating, however carefully they are cooked, I always wonder why we do not import _Mirabellen_ instead.

Sweetbreads in the Berlin markets were about 1 mark 10 pf. each last year, small tongues were 1 mark 10 pf. _Morscheln_, a poor kind of fungus much used in Germany, were 65 pf. a pound, real mushrooms were 1 mark 50 pf., and the dried ones used for flavouring sauces were the same price. b.u.t.ter and milk are usually about the same price as with us, but eggs are cheaper. You get twenty for a mark still in spring, and I remember making an English plumcake once in a Bavarian village and being charged 6 pf. for the three eggs I used. A rye loaf weighing 4 pounds costs 50 pf., the little white rolls cost 3 pf. each. In Berlin last year vegetables were nearly as dear as in London, but in many parts of Germany they are much cheaper. I know of one housewife who fed her family largely on vegetables, and would not spend more than 10 pf. a day on them, but she lived in a small country town where green stuff was a drug in the market. Asparagus is cheaper than here, for it costs 35 pf. to 40 pf. a pound, and is eaten in such quant.i.ties that even an asparagus lover gets tired of it. Meat has risen terribly in price of late years. In the open market you can get fillet of beef for 1 mark 60 pf., sirloin for 90 pf., good cuts of mutton for 90 pf.

to 1 mark, and veal for 1 mark, but all these prices are higher at a butcher's shop. Fillet of beef, for instance, is 2 marks 40 pf. a pound there.

The budget of a family living on 250 a year does not call for so much comment as the smaller one, because 250 is a fairly comfortable income in Germany. Either a schoolmaster or a soldier must have risen in his profession before he gets it; but the following estimate is made out for a business man who does not get a house free or any other aid from outside:--

s. d.

Rent 50 0 0 Fuel 7 10 0 Light 5 0 0 Clothes--husband 6 0 0 ” wife 4 0 0 ” children 2 10 0 Shoes 4 0 0 School fees 5 0 0 Was.h.i.+ng 5 0 0 Repairs to linen 2 10 0 Doctor and dentist 5 0 0 Newspapers and magazines 2 0 0 Servant's wages 9 0 0 Servant's insurance and Christmas present 2 0 0 Taxes 6 0 0 Postage 1 10 0 Insurances 5 0 0 Housekeeping 90 0 0 Amus.e.m.e.nts and travelling 25 0 0 Christmas and presents 10 0 0 Sundries 3 0 0 ----------- 250 0 0 ===========

On examining this budget it will occur to most people that the poor _Hausfrau_ might spend a little more on her clothes and a little less on her presents, and as a matter of fact even in Germany, where Christmas is a burden as well as a pleasure, this would be done. The next budget is the most interesting, because it is not an ideal one drawn up for anyone's guidance, but is taken without the alteration of one penny from the beautifully kept account book of a friend. There were no children in the family, so nothing appears for school fees or children's clothes. The household consisted of husband and wife and one maid. They lived in one of the largest and dearest of German cities, and the husband's work as well as their social position forced certain expenses on them. For instance, they had to live in a good street and on the ground floor; and they had to entertain a good deal.

M. Pf.

Bread 180 -- Meat 310 95 Fish and poultry 98 55 Aufschnitt 67 25 Potatoes 19 10 Vegetables 110 50 Fruit 87 95 Eggs 83 90 Milk 121 85 b.u.t.ter 195 -- Lard 36 55 Flour, Gries, etc. 25 60 Sugar and treacle 66 20 Groceries 22 50 Coffee 67 -- Tea and chocolate 17 95 Drinks 159 10 Lights 30 55 Was.h.i.+ng 126 80 Laundress 32 25 Ice 10 20 Coal and wood 170 10 Turf and other fuel 159 25 Matches 3 -- Cleaning 60 -- Furniture 4 55 Repairs 19 50 Crockery and kitchenware 38 -- Repairs 49 -- China and gla.s.s 30 5 Clothes--husband 181 20 ” wife 452 85 Boots--husband 24 10 ” wife 60 35 Linen 17 5 Charities 232 20 Rent 2150 -- Rent of husband's share of professional rooms 318 70 ---- -- Carry forward 5839 45

M. Pf.

Brought forward 5839 45 Fares 46 10 Books 64 25 Writing materials 30 50 Charwoman and tips 85 95 Wages and servants' presents 335 50 Papers 35 25 Carpenter 125 -- Tobacco and cigars 165 90 Sundries 39 35 Photography and fis.h.i.+ng tackle 141 10 Music lessons 15 10 Medicine 13 80 Hairdresser 2 40 Presents--family 291 75 ” friends 119 -- Amus.e.m.e.nts 137 25 Travelling 736 40 Stamps 99 65 Entertaining (at Home) 232 -- Charities[2] 24 -- Subscriptions 119 80 Fire insurance 12 30 Old age insurance 10 40 ---- -- 8722 20 ==== ==

There are some interesting points about this budget as compared with an English one of 436. It will be seen that although meat is so dear in Germany the weekly butcher's bill for three people was only 6s., fish and poultry together only 2s., and the ham sausage, etc. from the provision shop under 1s. 6d. a week. The was.h.i.+ng bill for the year is low, because nearly everything was washed at home, and dear as fuel is in Germany this household spent about 16, where an English one presenting the same front would spend 20 to 25. Observe, too, the amount spent on servants' wages by people who lived in a large charmingly furnished flat, and had a long visiting list. The wife, too, a very pretty woman and always well dressed, spent much less on her toilet than anyone would have guessed from its finish and variety, for she came from one of the German cities where women do dress well.

There is nearly as much difference amongst German cities in this respect as there is amongst nations. Berlin is far behind either Hamburg or Frankfurt, for instance. The middle-cla.s.s women of Berlin have an extraordinary affection all through the summer season for collarless blouses, b.a.s.t.a.r.d tartans, and white cotton gloves with thumbs but no fingers. In England the force of custom drives women to uncover their necks in the evening, whether it becomes them or not, and it is not a custom for which sensible elderly women can have much to say. But pneumonia blouses have never been universal wear in any country, and it is impossible to explain their apparently irresistible attraction for all ages and sizes of women in the Berlin electric cars. Those who were not wearing pneumonia blouses a year ago were wearing _Reform-Kleider_, shapeless ill-cut garments usually of grey tweed. The oddest combination, and quite a common one, was a sack-like _Reform-Kleid_, with a saucy little coloured bolero worn over it, fingerless gloves, and a madly tilted beflowered hat perched on a dowdy coiffure. These are rude remarks to make about the looks of foreign ladies, but the _Reform-Kleid_ is just as hideous and absurd in Germany now as our bilious green draperies were on the wrong people twenty-five years ago, and I am sure every foreigner who came to England must have laughed at them. On the whole, I would say of German women in general what a Frenchwoman once said to me in the most matter-of-fact tone of Englishwomen, _Elles s'habillent si mal_.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Probably private charities.

CHAPTER XVIII

HOSPITALITY

If a German cannot afford to ask you to dinner he asks you to supper, and makes his supper inviting. At least, he does if he is sensible, and if he lives where an inexpensive form of entertainment is in vogue. But even in Germany people are not sensible everywhere. The headmaster of a school in a small East Prussian town told me that his colleagues, the higher officials and other persons of local importance, felt bound to entertain their friends at least once a year, and that their way was to invite everyone together to a dinner given at the chief hotel in the town; and that to do this a family would stint itself for months beforehand. He spoke with knowledge, so I record what he said; but I have never been amongst Germans who were hospitable in this painful way. Hotels are used for large entertainments, just as they are in England, but most people receive their friends in their homes, and only hire servants for some special function, like a wedding or a public dinner.

The form of hospitality most popular in England now, the visit of two or three days' duration, is hardly known in Germany, and I believe that they have not begun yet to supply their guests with small cakes of soap labelled ”Visitors,” and meant to last for a week-end but not longer. In towns no one dreams of having a constant succession of staying guests, and either in town or country when a German family expects a guest at all it is more often than not for the whole summer or winter. You do not find a German girl arranging, as her English cousin will, for a round of visits, fitting in dates, writing here and there to know if people can take her in, and by the same post answering those who are planning a pilgrimage for themselves and wish to be taken. A visit in Germany is not the flighty affair it is with us.

”This winter,” says your friend, ”my niece from Posen will be with us,” and presently the niece arrives and stays about three months.

There is rarely more than one spare room on a flat, and that is often a room not easily spared. In country houses there are rows of rooms, but they are not filled by an everlasting procession of guests in the English way. When you stay in a country house at home you wonder how your hosts ever get anything done, and whether they don't sometimes wish they had a few days to themselves. To be sure, English hosts go about their business and leave you to yours, more than Germans think polite. I once spent six weeks, quite an ordinary visit as to length, with some friends who had several grown-up children. It was a most cheerful friendly household, but one day I got into a corner near the stove, rather glad for a change to be myself for a while with a novel for company. When I had been there a little time the second daughter looked in and at once apologised.

”Mamma sent me to see,” she explained,--”she feared you were by yourself.”

It is not easy to tell your German hosts that you like and wish to be by yourself sometimes; and if you say that you are used to it in England you won't impress them. The English are so inhospitable and unfriendly, they will say, for that is one of the many popular myths that are believed about us. I have been told of a German lady who has lived here most of her life, and complains to her German friends that she has never spent a night under an English roof; but then, she chooses to a.s.sociate exclusively with Germans, whose roofs she refuses to regard as English ones, even when they are in Kensington; and she cherishes such an invincible prejudice against the born English that she lives amongst them year after year without making a friend. It would be quite simple to perform the same feat in Paris, or even in Berlin, although there you would not have such a large foreign colony to stand between you and the detestable natives.

The real difficulty in writing about German hospitality is to find and express the ways in which it differs from our own; and certainly these lie little in qualities of kindness and generosity. Amongst both nations, if you have a friendly disposition you will find friends easily, and receive kindness on all sides. Perhaps, as one concrete instance is worth many a.s.sertions, I may describe a visit I paid many years ago to a family who invited me because a marriage had recently connected us. I had seen some of the family at the wedding, and had been surprised to receive a warm invitation, not for a week-end and a cake of visitors' soap, but for the rest of the winter; six weeks or two months at least. The family living at home consisted of the parents, a grown-up son and two grown-up daughters. Some of them met me at the station, for the German does not breathe who would let a guest arrive or depart alone. Your friends often give you flowers when you arrive, and invariably when you go away. I cannot remember about the flowers on this occasion, but I remember vividly that the day after my arrival the two married daughters living in the same town both called on me and brought me flowers. Week after week, too, they made it their pleasure to entertain me just as kindly as my immediate hosts, taking me to concerts or the opera, asking me to dinner or supper, including me on every occasion in the family festivities, which were numerous and lively. In some ways my hosts found me a disappointing guest, and said so. The trouble was that I liked plain rolls and b.u.t.ter for breakfast, while the daughters for days before I came had baked every size and variety of rich cake for me to eat first thing in the morning with my coffee. I never could eat enough to please anyone either. You never can in Germany, try as you may. Yet it was hungry weather, for the Rhine was frozen hard all the time I was there, and we used to skate every day in the harbour when the daughters of the house had finished their morning's work. Two maids were kept on the flat, but, like most German servants, they were supposed to require constant supervision, and when a room was turned out the young ladies in their morning wrappers helped to do it. They helped with the ironing too and the cooking, and did all the mending of linen and clothes. ”A child's time belongs to her parents,” said the father one day when the elder daughter wanted to skate, but was told that she could not be spared. ”I've had a heavenly time,” said a girl friend who had been laid up for some weeks with a sprained ankle; ”I've had nothing to do but read and amuse myself.” The household work, however, was usually done before the one o'clock dinner, and the afternoon was given up to skating, walks, and visits. There were not so many formal calls paid as in England, but there was a constant interchange of hospitality amongst the members of the family, the kind of intimate unceremonious entertaining described in Miss Austen's novels. Every time one of the many small children had a birthday there was a feast of chocolate and cakes, a gathering of the whole clan. The birthday cake had a sugared _Spruch_ on it, and a little lighted candle for each year of the child's age, and the birthday table had a present on it from everyone who came to the party, and many who did not. Once a week the married daughters and their husbands came to supper with my hosts, and every day when they were not coming to supper they called on their mother, and if she could coax them to stay drank their afternoon coffee with her. Sometimes one or two strangers were asked to coffee, for this household was an old-fas.h.i.+oned one, and gave you good coffee rather than wishy-washy tea. It made a point of honour of a _Meringuetorte_ when strangers came, and of the little chocolate cream cakes Germans call Oth.e.l.los. But it must not be supposed that one or two strangers const.i.tute a _Kaffee-Klatsch_, that celebrated form of entertainment where at every sip a reputation dies.