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Three Men on the Bummel - Chapter 6

1. Chapter 1

2. Chapter 2

3. Chapter 3

4. Chapter 4

5. Chapter 5

6. Chapter 6

7. Chapter 7

8. Chapter 8

9. Chapter 9

10. Chapter 10

11. Chapter 11

12. Chapter 12

13. Chapter 13

14. Chapter 14







CHAPTER VI



Why we went to Hanover--Something they do better abroad--The art of
polite foreign conversation, as taught in English schools--A true
history, now told for the first time--The French joke, as provided
for the amusement of British youth--Fatherly instincts of Harris--
The road-waterer, considered as an artist--Patriotism of George--
What Harris ought to have done--What he did--We save Harris's life-
-A sleepless city--The cab-horse as a critic.

We arrived in Hamburg on Friday after a smooth and uneventful
voyage; and from Hamburg we travelled to Berlin by way of Hanover.
It is not the most direct route. I can only account for our visit
to Hanover as the nigger accounted to the magistrate for his
appearance in the Deacon's poultry-yard.

"Well?"

"Yes, sar, what the constable sez is quite true, sar; I was dar,
sar."

"Oh, so you admit it? And what were you doing with a sack, pray,
in Deacon Abraham's poultry-yard at twelve o'clock at night?"

"I'se gwine ter tell yer, sar; yes, sar. I'd been to Massa
Jordan's wid a sack of melons. Yes, sar; an' Massa Jordan he wuz
very 'greeable, an' axed me for ter come in."

"Yes, sar, very 'greeable man is Massa Jordan. An' dar we sat a
talking an' a talking--"

"Very likely. What we want to know is what you were doing in the
Deacon's poultry-yard?"

"Yes, sar, dat's what I'se cumming to. It wuz ver' late 'fore I
left Massa Jordan's, an' den I sez ter mysel', sez I, now yer jest
step out with yer best leg foremost, Ulysses, case yer gets into
trouble wid de ole woman. Ver' talkative woman she is, sar, very--
"

"Yes, never mind her; there are other people very talkative in this
town besides your wife. Deacon Abraham's house is half a mile out
of your way home from Mr. Jordan's. How did you get there?"

"Dat's what I'm a-gwine ter explain, sar."

"I am glad of that. And how do you propose to do it?"

"Well, I'se thinkin', sar, I must ha' digressed."

I take it we digressed a little.

At first, from some reason or other, Hanover strikes you as an
uninteresting town, but it grows upon you. It is in reality two
towns; a place of broad, modern, handsome streets and tasteful
gardens; side by side with a sixteenth-century town, where old
timbered houses overhang the narrow lanes; where through low
archways one catches glimpses of galleried courtyards, once often
thronged, no doubt, with troops of horse, or blocked with lumbering
coach and six, waiting its rich merchant owner, and his fat placid
Frau, but where now children and chickens scuttle at their will;
while over the carved balconies hang dingy clothes a-drying.

A singularly English atmosphere hovers over Hanover, especially on
Sundays, when its shuttered shops and clanging bells give to it the
suggestion of a sunnier London. Nor was this British Sunday
atmosphere apparent only to myself, else I might have attributed it
to imagination; even George felt it. Harris and I, returning from
a short stroll with our cigars after lunch on the Sunday afternoon,
found him peacefully slumbering in the smoke-room's easiest chair.

"After all," said Harris, "there is something about the British
Sunday that appeals to the man with English blood in his veins. I
should be sorry to see it altogether done away with, let the new
generation say what it will."

And taking one each end of the ample settee, we kept George
company.

To Hanover one should go, they say, to learn the best German. The
disadvantage is that outside Hanover, which is only a small
province, nobody understands this best German. Thus you have to
decide whether to speak good German and remain in Hanover, or bad
German and travel about. Germany being separated so many centuries
into a dozen principalities, is unfortunate in possessing a variety
of dialects. Germans from Posen wishful to converse with men of
Wurtemburg, have to talk as often as not in French or English; and
young ladies who have received an expensive education in Westphalia
surprise and disappoint their parents by being unable to understand
a word said to them in Mechlenberg. An English-speaking foreigner,
it is true, would find himself equally nonplussed among the
Yorkshire wolds, or in the purlieus of Whitechapel; but the cases
are not on all fours. Throughout Germany it is not only in the
country districts and among the uneducated that dialects are
maintained. Every province has practically its own language, of
which it is proud and retentive. An educated Bavarian will admit
to you that, academically speaking, the North German is more
correct; but he will continue to speak South German and to teach it
to his children.

In the course of the century, I am inclined to think that Germany
will solve her difficulty in this respect by speaking English.
Every boy and girl in Germany, above the peasant class, speaks
English. Were English pronunciation less arbitrary, there is not
the slightest doubt but that in the course of a very few years,
comparatively speaking, it would become the language of the world.
All foreigners agree that, grammatically, it is the easiest
language of any to learn. A German, comparing it with his own
language, where every word in every sentence is governed by at
least four distinct and separate rules, tells you that English has
no grammar. A good many English people would seem to have come to
the same conclusion; but they are wrong. As a matter of fact,
there is an English grammar, and one of these days our schools will
recognise the fact, and it will be taught to our children,
penetrating maybe even into literary and journalistic circles. But
at present we appear to agree with the foreigner that it is a
quantity neglectable. English pronunciation is the stumbling-block
to our progress. English spelling would seem to have been designed
chiefly as a disguise to pronunciation. It is a clever idea,
calculated to check presumption on the part of the foreigner; but
for that he would learn it in a year.

For they have a way of teaching languages in Germany that is not
our way, and the consequence is that when the German youth or
maiden leaves the gymnasium or high school at fifteen, "it" (as in
Germany one conveniently may say) can understand and speak the
tongue it has been learning. In England we have a method that for
obtaining the least possible result at the greatest possible
expenditure of time and money is perhaps unequalled. An English
boy who has been through a good middle-class school in England can
talk to a Frenchman, slowly and with difficulty, about female
gardeners and aunts; conversation which, to a man possessed perhaps
of neither, is liable to pall. Possibly, if he be a bright
exception, he may be able to tell the time, or make a few guarded
observations concerning the weather. No doubt he could repeat a
goodly number of irregular verbs by heart; only, as a matter of
fact, few foreigners care to listen to their own irregular verbs,
recited by young Englishmen. Likewise he might be able to remember
a choice selection of grotesquely involved French idioms, such as
no modern Frenchman has ever heard or understands when he does
hear.

The explanation is that, in nine cases out of ten, he has learnt
French from an "Ahn's First-Course." The history of this famous
work is remarkable and instructive. The book was originally
written for a joke, by a witty Frenchman who had resided for some
years in England. He intended it as a satire upon the
conversational powers of British society. From this point of view
it was distinctly good. He submitted it to a London publishing
firm. The manager was a shrewd man. He read the book through.
Then he sent for the author.

"This book of yours," said he to the author, "is very clever. I
have laughed over it myself till the tears came."

"I am delighted to hear you say so," replied the pleased Frenchman.
"I tried to be truthful without being unnecessarily offensive."

"It is most amusing," concurred the manager; "and yet published as
a harmless joke, I feel it would fail."

The author's face fell.

"Its humour," proceeded the manager, "would be denounced as forced
and extravagant. It would amuse the thoughtful and intelligent,
but from a business point of view that portion of the public are
never worth considering. But I have an idea," continued the
manager. He glanced round the room to be sure they were alone,
and leaning forward sunk his voice to a whisper. "My notion is to
publish it as a serious work for the use of schools!"

The author stared, speechless.

"I know the English schoolman," said the manager; "this book will
appeal to him. It will exactly fit in with his method. Nothing
sillier, nothing more useless for the purpose will he ever
discover. He will smack his lips over the book, as a puppy licks
up blacking."

The author, sacrificing art to greed, consented. They altered the
title and added a vocabulary, but left the book otherwise as it
was.

The result is known to every schoolboy. "Ahn" became the palladium
of English philological education. If it no longer retains its
ubiquity, it is because something even less adaptable to the object
in view has been since invented.

Lest, in spite of all, the British schoolboy should obtain, even
from the like of "Ahn," some glimmering of French, the British
educational method further handicaps him by bestowing upon him the
assistance of, what is termed in the prospectus, "A native
gentleman." This native French gentleman, who, by-the-by, is
generally a Belgian, is no doubt a most worthy person, and can, it
is true, understand and speak his own language with tolerable
fluency. There his qualifications cease. Invariably he is a man
with a quite remarkable inability to teach anybody anything.
Indeed, he would seem to be chosen not so much as an instructor as
an amuser of youth. He is always a comic figure. No Frenchman of
a dignified appearance would be engaged for any English school. If
he possess by nature a few harmless peculiarities, calculated to
cause merriment, so much the more is he esteemed by his employers.
The class naturally regards him as an animated joke. The two to
four hours a week that are deliberately wasted on this ancient
farce, are looked forward to by the boys as a merry interlude in an
otherwise monotonous existence. And then, when the proud parent
takes his son and heir to Dieppe merely to discover that the lad
does not know enough to call a cab, he abuses not the system, but
its innocent victim.

I confine my remarks to French, because that is the only language
we attempt to teach our youth. An English boy who could speak
German would be looked down upon as unpatriotic. Why we waste time
in teaching even French according to this method I have never been
able to understand. A perfect unacquaintance with a language is
respectable. But putting aside comic journalists and lady
novelists, for whom it is a business necessity, this smattering of
French which we are so proud to possess only serves to render us
ridiculous.

In the German school the method is somewhat different. One hour
every day is devoted to the same language. The idea is not to give
the lad time between each lesson to forget what he learned at the
last; the idea is for him to get on. There is no comic foreigner
provided for his amusement. The desired language is taught by a
German school-master who knows it inside and out as thoroughly as
he knows his own. Maybe this system does not provide the German
youth with that perfection of foreign accent for which the British
tourist is in every land remarkable, but it has other advantages.
The boy does not call his master "froggy," or "sausage," nor
prepare for the French or English hour any exhibition of homely wit
whatever. He just sits there, and for his own sake tries to learn
that foreign tongue with as little trouble to everybody concerned
as possible. When he has left school he can talk, not about
penknives and gardeners and aunts merely, but about European
politics, history, Shakespeare, or the musical glasses, according
to the turn the conversation may take.

Viewing the German people from an Anglo-Saxon standpoint, it may be
that in this book I shall find occasion to criticise them: but on
the other hand there is much that we might learn from them; and in
the matter of common sense, as applied to education, they can give
us ninety-nine in a hundred and beat us with one hand.

The beautiful wood of the Eilenriede bounds Hanover on the south
and west, and here occurred a sad drama in which Harris took a
prominent part.

We were riding our machines through this wood on the Monday
afternoon in the company of many other cyclists, for it is a
favourite resort with the Hanoverians on a sunny afternoon, and its
shady pathways are then filled with happy, thoughtless folk. Among
them rode a young and beautiful girl on a machine that was new.
She was evidently a novice on the bicycle. One felt instinctively
that there would come a moment when she would require help, and
Harris, with his accustomed chivalry, suggested we should keep near
her. Harris, as he occasionally explains to George and to myself,
has daughters of his own, or, to speak more correctly, a daughter,
who as the years progress will no doubt cease practising catherine
wheels in the front garden, and will grow up into a beautiful and
respectable young lady. This naturally gives Harris an interest in
all beautiful girls up to the age of thirty-five or thereabouts;
they remind him, so he says, of home.

We had ridden for about two miles, when we noticed, a little ahead
of us in a space where five ways met, a man with a hose, watering
the roads. The pipe, supported at each joint by a pair of tiny
wheels, writhed after him as he moved, suggesting a gigantic-worm,
from whose open neck, as the man, gripping it firmly in both hands,
pointing it now this way, and now that, now elevating it, now
depressing it, poured a strong stream of water at the rate of about
a gallon a second.

"What a much better method than ours," observed Harris,
enthusiastically. Harris is inclined to be chronically severe on
all British institutions. "How much simpler, quicker, and more
economical! You see, one man by this method can in five minutes
water a stretch of road that would take us with our clumsy
lumbering cart half an hour to cover."

George, who was riding behind me on the tandem, said, "Yes, and it
is also a method by which with a little carelessness a man could
cover a good many people in a good deal less time than they could
get out of the way."

George, the opposite to Harris, is British to the core. I remember
George quite patriotically indignant with Harris once for
suggesting the introduction of the guillotine into England.

"It is so much neater," said Harris.

"I don't care if it is," said George; "I'm an Englishman; hanging
is good enough for me."

"Our water-cart may have its disadvantages," continued George, "but
it can only make you uncomfortable about the legs, and you can
avoid it. This is the sort of machine with which a man can follow
you round the corner and upstairs."

"It fascinates me to watch them," said Harris. "They are so
skilful. I have seen a man from the corner of a crowded square in
Strassburg cover every inch of ground, and not so much as wet an
apron string. It is marvellous how they judge their distance.
They will send the water up to your toes, and then bring it over
your head so that it falls around your heels. They can--"

"Ease up a minute," said George. I said: "Why?"

He said: "I am going to get off and watch the rest of this show
from behind a tree. There may be great performers in this line, as
Harris says; this particular artist appears to me to lack
something. He has just soused a dog, and now he's busy watering a
sign-post. I am going to wait till he has finished."

"Nonsense," said Harris; "he won't wet you."

"That is precisely what I am going to make sure of," answered
George, saying which he jumped off, and, taking up a position
behind a remarkably fine elm, pulled out and commenced filling his
pipe.

I did not care to take the tandem on by myself, so I stepped off
and joined him, leaving the machine against a tree. Harris shouted
something or other about our being a disgrace to the land that gave
us birth, and rode on.

The next moment I heard a woman's cry of distress. Glancing round
the stem of the tree, I perceived that it proceeded from the young
and elegant lady before mentioned, whom, in our interest concerning
the road-waterer, we had forgotten. She was riding her machine
steadily and straightly through a drenching shower of water from
the hose. She appeared to be too paralysed either to get off or
turn her wheel aside. Every instant she was becoming wetter, while
the man with the hose, who was either drunk or blind, continued to
pour water upon her with utter indifference. A dozen voices yelled
imprecations upon him, but he took no heed whatever.

Harris, his fatherly nature stirred to its depths, did at this
point what, under the circumstances, was quite the right and proper
thing to do. Had he acted throughout with the same coolness and
judgment he then displayed, he would have emerged from that
incident the hero of the hour, instead of, as happened, riding away
followed by insult and threat. Without a moment's hesitation he
spurted at the man, sprang to the ground, and, seizing the hose by
the nozzle, attempted to wrest it away.

What he ought to have done, what any man retaining his common sense
would have done the moment he got his hands upon the thing, was to
turn off the tap. Then he might have played foot-ball with the
man, or battledore and shuttlecock as he pleased; and the twenty or
thirty people who had rushed forward to assist would have only
applauded. His idea, however, as he explained to us afterwards,
was to take away the hose from the man, and, for punishment, turn
it upon the fool himself. The waterman's idea appeared to be the
same, namely, to retain the hose as a weapon with which to soak
Harris. Of course, the result was that, between them, they soused
every dead and living thing within fifty yards, except themselves.
One furious man, too drenched to care what more happened to him,
leapt into the arena and also took a hand. The three among them
proceeded to sweep the compass with that hose. They pointed it to
heaven, and the water descended upon the people in the form of an
equinoctial storm. They pointed it downwards, and sent the water
in rushing streams that took people off their feet, or caught them
about the waist line, and doubled them up.

Not one of them would loosen his grip upon the hose, not one of
them thought to turn the water off. You might have concluded they
were struggling with some primeval force of nature. In forty-five
seconds, so George said, who was timing it, they had swept that
circus bare of every living thing except one dog, who, dripping
like a water nymph, rolled over by the force of water, now on this
side, now on that, still gallantly staggered again and again to its
feet to bark defiance at what it evidently regarded as the powers
of hell let loose.

Men and women left their machines upon the ground, and flew into
the woods. From behind every tree of importance peeped out wet,
angry heads.

At last, there arrived upon the scene one man of sense. Braving
all things, he crept to the hydrant, where still stood the iron
key, and screwed it down. And then from forty trees began to creep
more or less soaked human beings, each one with something to say.

At first I fell to wondering whether a stretcher or a clothes
basket would be the more useful for the conveyance of Harris's
remains back to the hotel. I consider that George's promptness on
that occasion saved Harris's life. Being dry, and therefore able
to run quicker, he was there before the crowd. Harris was for
explaining things, but George cut him short.

"You get on that," said George, handing him his bicycle, "and go.
They don't know we belong to you, and you may trust us implicitly
not to reveal the secret. We'll hang about behind, and get in
their way. Ride zig-zag in case they shoot."

I wish this book to be a strict record of fact, unmarred by
exaggeration, and therefore I have shown my description of this
incident to Harris, lest anything beyond bald narrative may have
crept into it. Harris maintains it is exaggerated, but admits that
one or two people may have been "sprinkled." I have offered to
turn a street hose on him at a distance of five-and-twenty yards,
and take his opinion afterwards, as to whether "sprinkled" is the
adequate term, but he has declined the test. Again, he insists
there could not have been more than half a dozen people, at the
outside, involved in the catastrophe, that forty is a ridiculous
misstatement. I have offered to return with him to Hanover and
make strict inquiry into the matter, and this offer he has likewise
declined. Under these circumstances, I maintain that mine is a
true and restrained narrative of an event that is, by a certain
number of Hanoverians, remembered with bitterness unto this very
day.

We left Hanover that same evening, and arrived at Berlin in time
for supper and an evening stroll. Berlin is a disappointing town;
its centre over-crowded, its outlying parts lifeless; its one
famous street, Unter den Linden, an attempt to combine Oxford
Street with the Champs Elysee, singularly unimposing, being much
too wide for its size; its theatres dainty and charming, where
acting is considered of more importance than scenery or dress,
where long runs are unknown, successful pieces being played again
and again, but never consecutively, so that for a week running you
may go to the same Berlin theatre, and see a fresh play every
night; its opera house unworthy of it; its two music halls, with an
unnecessary suggestion of vulgarity and commonness about them, ill-
arranged and much too large for comfort. In the Berlin cafes and
restaurants, the busy time is from midnight on till three. Yet
most of the people who frequent them are up again at seven. Either
the Berliner has solved the great problem of modern life, how to do
without sleep, or, with Carlyle, he must be looking forward to
eternity.

Personally, I know of no other town where such late hours are the
vogue, except St. Petersburg. But your St. Petersburger does not
get up early in the morning. At St. Petersburg, the music halls,
which it is the fashionable thing to attend AFTER the theatre--a
drive to them taking half an hour in a swift sleigh--do not
practically begin till twelve. Through the Neva at four o'clock in
the morning you have to literally push your way; and the favourite
trains for travellers are those starting about five o'clock in the
morning. These trains save the Russian the trouble of getting up
early. He wishes his friends "Good-night," and drives down to the
station comfortably after supper, without putting the house to any
inconvenience.

Potsdam, the Versailles to Berlin, is a beautiful little town,
situate among lakes and woods. Here in the shady ways of its
quiet, far-stretching park of Sans Souci, it is easy to imagine
lean, snuffy Frederick "bummeling" with shrill Voltaire.

Acting on my advice, George and Harris consented not to stay long
in Berlin; but to push on to Dresden. Most that Berlin has to show
can be seen better elsewhere, and we decided to be content with a
drive through the town. The hotel porter introduced us to a
droschke driver, under whose guidance, so he assured us, we should
see everything worth seeing in the shortest possible time. The man
himself, who called for us at nine o'clock in the morning, was all
that could be desired. He was bright, intelligent, and well-
informed; his German was easy to understand, and he knew a little
English with which to eke it out on occasion. With the man himself
there was no fault to be found, but his horse was the most
unsympathetic brute I have ever sat behind.

He took a dislike to us the moment he saw us. I was the first to
come out of the hotel. He turned his head, and looked me up and
down with a cold, glassy eye; and then he looked across at another
horse, a friend of his that was standing facing him. I knew what
he said. He had an expressive head, and he made no attempt to
disguise his thought.

He said:

"Funny things one does come across in the summer time, don't one?"

George followed me out the next moment, and stood behind me. The
horse again turned his head and looked. I have never known a horse
that could twist himself as this horse did. I have seen a
camelopard do trick's with his neck that compelled one's attention,
but this animal was more like the thing one dreams of after a dusty
days at Ascot, followed by a dinner with six old chums. If I had
seen his eyes looking at me from between his own hind legs, I doubt
if I should have been surprised. He seemed more amused with George
if anything, than with myself. He turned to his friend again.

"Extraordinary, isn't it?" he remarked; "I suppose there must be
some place where they grow them"; and then he commenced licking
flies off his own left shoulder. I began to wonder whether he had
lost his mother when young, and had been brought up by a cat.

George and I climbed in, and sat waiting for Harris. He came a
moment later. Myself, I thought he looked rather neat. He wore a
white flannel knickerbocker suit, which he had had made specially
for bicycling in hot weather; his hat may have been a trifle out of
the common, but it did keep the sun off.

The horse gave one look at him, said "Gott in Himmel!" as plainly
as ever horse spoke, and started off down Friedrich Strasse at a
brisk walk, leaving Harris and the driver standing on the pavement.
His owner called to him to stop, but he took no notice. They ran
after us, and overtook us at the corner of the Dorotheen Strasse.
I could not catch what the man said to the horse, he spoke quickly
and excitedly; but I gathered a few phrases, such as:

"Got to earn my living somehow, haven't I? Who asked for your
opinion? Aye, little you care so long as you can guzzle."

The horse cut the conversation short by turning up the Dorotheen
Strasse on his own account. I think what he said was:

"Come on then; don't talk so much. Let's get the job over, and,
where possible, let's keep to the back streets."

Opposite the Brandenburger Thor our driver hitched the reins to the
whip, climbed down, and came round to explain things to us. He
pointed out the Thiergarten, and then descanted to us of the
Reichstag House. He informed us of its exact height, length, and
breadth, after the manner of guides. Then he turned his attention
to the Gate. He said it was constructed of sandstone, in imitation
of the "Properleer" in Athens.

At this point the horse, which had been occupying its leisure
licking its own legs, turned round its head. It did not say
anything, it just looked.

The man began again nervously. This time he said it was an
imitation of the "Propeyedliar."

Here the horse proceeded up the Linden, and nothing would persuade
him not to proceed up the Linden. His owner expostulated with him,
but he continued to trot on. From the way he hitched his shoulders
as he moved, I somehow felt he was saying:

"They've seen the Gate, haven' t they? Very well, that's enough.
As for the rest, you don't know what you are talking about, and
they wouldn't understand you if you did. You talk German."

It was the same throughout the length of the Linden. The horse
consented to stand still sufficiently long to enable us to have a
good look at each sight, and to hear the name of it. All
explanation and description he cut short by the simple process of
moving on.

"What these fellows want," he seemed to say to himself, "is to go
home and tell people they have seen these things. If I am doing
them an injustice, if they are more intelligent than they look,
they can get better information than this old fool of mine is
giving them from the guide book. Who wants to know how high a
steeple is? You don't remember it the next five minutes when you
are told, and if you do it is because you have got nothing else in
your head. He just tires me with his talk. Why doesn't he hurry
up, and let us all get home to lunch?"

Upon reflection, I am not sure that wall-eyed old brute had not
sense on its side. Anyhow, I know there have been occasions, with
a guide, when I would have been glad of its interference.

But one is apt to "sin one's mercies," as the Scotch say, and at
the time we cursed that horse instead of blessing it.




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