i spent the christmas holidays, after leaving eton, at membland. i had had another little book of poems printed privately as a christmas present for my mother, and i was still making discoveries in english literature, and of these the most important of all: shakespeare and milton’s paradise lost. we travelled up in january to london, and it was settled that i was to go to germany to learn german. my father heard of a family in hanover where english boys were taken, but there was no room there. someone then gave him the address of a dr. timme who lived at hildesheim, near hanover, and also took in englishmen. it was settled that i was to go there. i started at the end of the month, and at victoria station i met hubert cornish, who was going to dresden to learn german. we travelled together to hanover via flushing, and we were both of us seasick, and both swore that we would never cross the channel again. we arrived at hanover the next evening and stayed at kasten’s hotel. the next morning we went on by the same train. i got out at hildesheim, and hubert cornish went on to dresden. hubert cornish had just left eton, but he was older than i was, and i had only seen him in the distance, and at his father’s house at picnics. we made great friends at once. hildesheim was a charming little old town. one part of it was really old, and straight out of a fairy-tale, with houses with high gabled roofs, and medi?val carvings on them, and there were many quaint and interesting churches, including the old cathedral with its ravishingly beautiful cloister behind it, and a rose-tree said to be a thousand years old. dr. timme had a small house in the weissenburger-strasse on the edge of the modern town. it was a two-storied, square, grey house with a flat roof, looking out on to the street on one side, and on to a garden at the back. i was received by[119] frau doktor timme. her husband was a master at the real gymnasium, and he was at school when i arrived. i could not speak a word of german. it was a curious sensation to live with a family and partake of their daily life and not to be able to understand a word they said; to go out for walks and pretend to be joining in and following a conversation when one had not the remotest idea of the drift of it. i started lessons at once, and bought a small heine, which i used to read to myself, and i soon understood that. it was bitterly cold. there was still snow on the ground.

there were three children in the house: a dear little girl called aenna, and a little boy called kurt, and an older boy, about twelve, called atho. dr. timme had two spinster sisters who lived in a house not far off with another old lady who was called die alte tante, and frau timme had a brother who was called onkel adolf, and who had fought in the franco-prussian war, and her mother was alive.

i found life interesting in spite of not understanding the language. in the early morning i used to go downstairs and have coffee and apfelgelee. we had mittagessen at one, and after that the household indulged in a mittagschl?fchen. at four in the afternoon we again drank coffee and ate apfelgelee, and we had supper at half-past seven, at which there would generally be some delicacy like bratkartoffel or leberwurst or h?ringsalat. many english boys had been there before; and frau timme told me that we english, as a rule, disliked german dishes. the first german phrase i remember understanding was when frau timme announced to one of the aunts a surprising fact about me that i ate everything (“er isst alles”). in the evening the aunts and other people used to visit us, and sometimes we would go to a concert. the timmes were great friends with the family of herr musik-direktor nick, who was a musician, and all his family played; they had entrancing musical evenings of trios and duets for violin, pianoforte, and viola. herr musik-direktor nick’s nephew, wunnibald, gave me lessons on the pianoforte. i had german lessons with dr. timme.

in the afternoon, i used to go for long walks with dr. timme and his brother-in-law, and we walked to the galgenberg, to the steinberg, and the moritzberg, rather bleak hills of fir-trees, stopping as a rule at a small wirtshaus, where we used to drink[120] beer or coffee. in the house there was a small drawing-room downstairs, where the guest of honour always sat on the sofa. a smart drawing-room or the gute stube, which was only opened on rare and state occasions. frau timme told me one day that she knew this room was a useless extravagance, but it gave her, she said, such great pleasure that she could not sacrifice it. upstairs, dr. timme had a sitting-room, where i took my lessons with him, and i had a sitting-room where i did my work. after about a month i could understand what was being said, and in about two months’ time i could make myself understood and carry on a conversation. i used sometimes to go to the theatre at hanover, coming back by train afterwards. the first time i saw schiller’s wallenstein’s tod i did not understand a word of it. one night i went to hear tannh?user. wagner was only a name to me, and meant something vaguely noisy. i had no idea he wrote about interesting or romantic subjects. i had no idea of what tannh?user was about. i went expecting a tedious evening of dry and ultra-classical, unintelligible music. as soon as the orchestra began the overture, i was overwhelmed. i did not know that music was capable of so tremendous an effect. the venusberg music and the “pilgrims’ chorus” opened a new world, and i was so excited afterwards that i could not sleep a wink. i was stunned by these magnetic effects of sound. curiously enough, i left it at that, and made no further effort to go and hear any more wagner. i was almost afraid of repeating the experience for fear of being disappointed, and the next time i went to the opera it was to hear verdi’s otello.

i happened to mention casually that it was my birthday on 27th april, and when i came down that morning i found in the drawing-room a beautiful cake or apfeltorte with eighteen candles burning on it and a present from every member of the family. i could talk german quite fluently by this time. frau timme suggested that i should make the acquaintance of some of the boys at the schools. there were two large schools at hildesheim, a gymnasium, and a real gymnasium. the real gymnasium concentrated on the modern. the gymnasium was more classical in its programme. for the purpose of getting to know the boys i was introduced to a grown-up boy called braun, who was, i think, a native of hildesheim. most of the boys at both schools came from different parts of germany and lived en pension in different families. the boys from both[121] schools used to meet in the evening before supper at a restaurant called hasse, where a special room was kept for them. braun was an earnest and extremely well-educated youth, a student of geology. before i was taken to hasse, he said i must be instructed in the rules of the bierkomment,[6] that is to say, the rules for drinking beer in company, which were, as i found out afterwards, the basis of the social system. these rules were intricate, and when braun explained them to me, which he did with the utmost thoroughness, the explanation taking nearly two hours, i did not know what it was all about. i did not know it had anything to do with drinking beer. i afterwards learned, by the evidence of my senses and by experience, the numerous and various points of this complicated ritual, but the first evening i was introduced to hasse i was bewildered by finding a crowd of grown-up boys seated at a table; each one introduced himself to me by standing to attention and saying his name (“mein name ist so-and-so”). after which they sat down and seemed to be engaged in a game of cross-purposes.

the main principles which underlay this form of social intercourse were these. you first of all ordered a half-litre of beer, stating whether you wanted light or dark beer (dunkles or helles). it was given to you in a glass mug with a metal top. this mug had to remain closed whatever happened, otherwise the others put this mug on yours, and you had to pay for every mug which was piled on your own. having received your beer, you must not drink it quietly by yourself, when you were thirsty; but every single draught had to be taken with a purpose, and directed towards someone else, and accompanied by a formula. the formula was an opening, and called for the correct answer, which was either final and ended the matter, or which was of a kind to provoke a counter-move, in the form of a further formula, which, in its turn, necessitated a final answer. you were, in fact, engaged in toasting each other according to system. when you had a fresh mug, with foam on the top of it, that was called die blume, and you had to choose someone who was in the same situation; someone who had a blume. you then said his name, not his real name but his beer name, which was generally a monosyllable like pfiff (my beer name was hash, pronounced hush), and you said[122] to him: “prosit blume.” his answer to this was: “prosit,” and you both drank. to pretend to drink and not drink was an infringement of the rules. if he had no beer at the time he would say so (“ich habe keinen stoff”), but would be careful to return you your blume as soon as he received it, saying: “ich komme die blume nach” (“i drink back to you your blume”). then, perhaps, having disposed of the blume, you singled out someone else, or someone perhaps singled you out, and said: “ich komme ihnen etwas” (“i drink something to you”). when you got to know someone well, he suggested that you should drink bruderschaft with him. this you did by entwining your arm under his arm, draining a whole glass, and then saying: “prosit bruder.” after that you called each other “du.” very well. after having said “ich komme ihnen” or “ich komme dir etwas,” he, in the space of three beer minutes, which were equivalent to four ordinary minutes, was obliged to answer. he might either say: “ich komme dir nach” or “ich komme nach” (“i drink back”). that settled that proceeding. or he might prolong the interchange of toasts by saying: “uebers kreuz,” in which case you had to wait a little and say: “unters kreuz,” and every time the one said this, the other in drinking had to say: “prosit.” then the person who had said “uebers kreuz” had the last word, and had to say: “ich komme definitiv nach” (“i drink back to you finally”), and that ended the matter. if you had very little beer left in your mug you chose someone else who was in the same predicament, and said: “prosit rest.” it was uncivil if you had a rest to choose someone who had plenty of beer left. if you wanted to honour someone or to pay him a compliment, you said “speziell” after your toast, which meant the other person was not obliged to drink back. you could also say: “ich komme dir einen halben” (“i drink you a half glass”), or even “einen ganzen” (“a whole glass”). the other person could then double you by saying: “prosit doppelt.” in which case he drank back a whole glass to you and you then drank back a whole glass to him.

any infringement of these rules, or any levity in the manner the ritual was performed, was punished by your being told to “einsteigen”[7] (or by the words, “in die kanne”), which meant you had to go on drinking till the offended party said “geschenkt.” if you disobeyed this rule or did anything[123] else equally grave, you were declared by whoever was in authority to be in b.v., which meant in a state of beer ostracism. nobody might then drink to you or talk to you. to emerge from this state of exile, you had to stand up, and someone else stood up and declared that “der in einfacher b.v. sich befindender” (“the in-simple-beer-banishment-finding-himself so-and-so”) will now drink himself back into bierehrlichkeit (beer-honourability) once again. he does it. at the words, “er thut es,” you set a glass to your lips and drank it all. the other man then said: “so-and-so ist wieder bierehrlich” (“so-and-so is once more beer honourable”). any dispute on a point of ritual was settled by what was called a bierjunge. an umpire was appointed, and three glasses of beer were brought. the umpire saw that the quantity in each of the glasses was exactly equal, pouring a little beer perhaps from one or the other into his own glass. a word was then chosen, for choice a long and difficult word. the umpire then said: “stosst an,” and on these words the rivals clinked glasses; he then said: “setzt an,” and they set the glasses to their lips. he then said: “loss,” and the rivals drained the glasses as fast as they could, and the man who finished first said: “bierjunge,” or whatever word had been chosen. the umpire then declared the winner. all these proceedings, as can be imagined, would be a little difficult to understand if one didn’t know that they involved drinking beer. such had been my plight when the ritual was explained to me by mr. braun. i found the first evening extremely bewildering, but i soon became an expert in the ritual, and took much pleasure in raising difficult points.

these gatherings used to happen every evening. if you wished to celebrate a special occasion you ordered what was called a tunnemann, which was a huge glass as big as a small barrel which was circulated round the table, everyone drinking in turn as out of a loving-cup. a record was kept of these ceremonies in a book. the boys who attended these gatherings were mostly eighteen or nineteen years old, and belonged to the first two classes of the school, the prima and the secunda. they belonged to a turnverein, a gymnastic association, and were divided into two classes—the juniors who were called füchse and the seniors who were not. the füchse had to obey the others.

another thing which i found more difficult than the bierkomment[124] was a card game which dr. timme tried to teach me. it was the game of skat, and was played by three people, one against two, with a possible fourth person cutting in, but only by three at a time. when dr. timme first explained it to me i understood german imperfectly, and i could not make head or tail of the game. this disgusted dr. timme, who said: “herr baring hat kein interesse dafür.” but at the end of five years, after repeated visits to germany, and with the help of an english book on the subject, i ended by mastering the principles of the game. i think it is the best game of cards ever invented, and by far the most difficult. i will not attempt to explain it, but it is a mixture of “solo-whist,” “préférence,” and “misery,” with a dash of “picquet” in it. everybody plays for his own hand and you have no partner; so you are responsible to yourself alone. i did not learn the game until several years later.

in the meantime, hubert cornish had left dresden and was established at professor ihne’s at the villa felseck, heidelberg. professor ihne, who knew my cousins, invited me to go there. i set out, and after travelling all day i arrived at one in the morning and found not only hubert but an american called mr. hazlitt alva cuppy, who was studying german, and who had come to the station in case i should want help with my luggage. the next morning i woke up and went to the window, and beheld one of the most beautiful sights it is possible to see: heidelberg castle and the hills of the neckar in spring. it was the beginning of may. it was fine and hot; the trees had just put on their most brilliant green; the lilac and laburnum were out. the fields, yellow with buttercups and scarlet with poppies, were like impressionist pictures of the newest school. after the slow spring and the bleak fir-tree-clad country of the north it was like coming suddenly into another world. at breakfast i was introduced to professor ihne, a large, comfortable professor with white hair and spectacles. i had met him once before at the norman tower. the two other inmates of the house besides hubert were mr. hazlitt alva cuppy and mr. otto kuhn, an austrian; both of them were attending the lectures of the university. the villa felseck was half-way up a hill covered with vines, and professor ihne made his own wine. in the garden there was a pergola under which we worked outdoors at a table. then a most blissful epoch began. in the morning[125] we went to lectures in the university and strolled about the town, and in the afternoons we went for walks in the woods or for expeditions on the river.

heidelberg was full of students, and our ambition was to get to know some of them, but we did not know how to set about doing this. we were too shy to take any steps, and every day we settled we would take a step, but the day passed, and nothing had been done. we confided our hesitations to a lady—a kind, motherly lady who kept a wirtshaus, and she said that the matter was simple. what she did i do not know, but that very day we received a visit from the representatives of a burschenschaft called the franconia, who asked us to visit their clubhouse with a view to our being received as guests. we went there the next morning, and the conditions under which we could be either konkneipante or kneipg?ste of the germania were read out to us.

a konkneipant was a kind of unofficial member, a kneipgas was simply a guest with certain obligations. the former, the konkneipant, seemed to be liable to many alarming possibilities and conditions, and he had to be prepared to fight duels, even if he did not do so, so we chose the latter status, and were enrolled as kneipg?ste.

we attended a kneipe that night, i think. all the rules of the bierkomment, which i have already described, obtained. you sat at a table, and endless mugs of beer were brought in, and toasts were drunk, according to ritual, but the evening was enlivened by the singing of songs in chorus. someone accompanied the songs, everyone had a song-book, and the entertainment led off with goethe’s song, “ergo bibamus”; after that a song was sung about every quarter of an hour: “der mai ist gekommen,” “es hatten drei gesellen ein fein collegium,” or “es zogen drei burschen wohl über den rhein.”

the entertainment went on till about one in the morning. there was an official kneipe three nights a week (offiziell), and an unofficial kneipe (offizieuse) on the other nights. besides this, the members of the burschenschaft met in the morning for frühschoppen in the castle gardens, or elsewhere, and in the afternoon went expeditions together. in the morning they had fencing lessons. they never went to lectures. when they wanted to work they went for a term to another university,[126] and did nothing but work there. one morning hubert and i attended a lecture on philosophie, that is to say, history, and curiously enough the lecture was about england. the lecturer went through the gifts which different nations had bequeathed to the world as a legacy; how greece had given the arts to the world, and the romans had given it law; england’s gift to the world, he said, was freedom, and as he said the word freiheit, his voice rang, and we felt all of a tremble.

the country round heidelberg was at this time of year at its most glorious. the fields were sheets of the brightest yellow. at night choruses of nightingales sang; the air was heavy with the smell of the lilacs. sometimes we would go up the river and to the little town of neckarsteinar, which is like a toy city on the top of a green hill, with a wall round it, and is exactly what i imagined the “green hill far away” to be when i was a child, except that it had a wall. one evening—but this was later in the summer when i went back a second time to heidelberg—we had a kneipe in dr. ihne’s garden and invited the germania burschenschaft. professor ihne came and made a speech and then left us; songs were sung, and i made a speech in german, and we sang: “alt heidelberg du feine.”

besides all these events, hubert and i spent a good deal of time reading and discussing theories of life. we were intoxicated by swinburne, spellbound by kipling, and great devotees of meredith and hardy. we also read a certain amount of german, and i remember reading lewes’ life of goethe. i had already read a certain amount of goethe and schiller with dr. timme, including hermann und dorothea, iphegenie auf tauris, and tasso. faust and the lyrics i had read by myself as soon as i could spell out the letters. professor ihne used to discuss books with us. he admired byron enormously. he had no patience with the german infatuation for tennyson, especially for “enoch arden,” which he thought a childish poem. byron, he used to say, was a giant; tennyson a dwarf. shelley, he admitted, had written a fine philosophical poem: “prometheus unbound,” and swinburne could sch?ne versen machen. he could not abide the german cult for shakespeare. it was not that he did not admire shakespeare as a dramatist and a poet, but the german searching for meanings in the plays, and the philosophical theories deduced from them and spun round his work, made him impatient. this was a sound point of view, for[127] he approached shakespeare in much the same spirit as dryden and dr. johnson did. hamlet annoyed him. why, he used to ask, did hamlet presume to think he was born to set the world aright? nobody had asked him to do so. othello, he said, was stupid: ein dummer kerl. the tragedies hurt him too much. he preferred schiller.

he had no great love for milton’s paradise lost either; he thought there was a lot of tautology in the english language. he said the phrase, “assemble and meet together,” in the prayer book was an instance of this. he said the modern english writers used unnecessarily long latin words. he had actually seen the word to pullulate in a times leading article. swarm would have meant the same thing and been a thousand times better. he was broad-minded in politics and the contrary of a chauvinist. he had a hearty dislike of bismarck. there was something refreshingly johnsonian about him, and when mr. cuppy read him the thesis which he destined to show up to the heidelberg examiners for his degree, professor ihne repeated the first sentence, which ran thus: “ever since my earliest years i determined to be a great man,” and said: “pooh, pooh, you can’t say that here.” “but it’s true,” said mr. cuppy.

mr. cuppy was a charming character. he had been in about twenty-five professions before arriving at heidelberg, and he had been in a circus troop, a stoker in the railway, a clerk, a journalist, a farmer, and i don’t know how many other things, and he was now working hard for his degree. he was the kindest man i have ever met, and there was no trouble he would not take to do one a service, and there was no atom of selfishness in his composition.

the students took us to the mensur to see the duels. the students fought with sharp rapiers, as sharp as a razor on one side, which they held high over their heads, all the fighting being done by the strength of the wrist; you could only, from the position that the rapier was held in, wound your adversary on the top of his head or on the side of his cheek, but lest your rapier should go astray, and wound some other vital part the duellists wore a padded jacket, and a protection for the neck. the wounds on the top of the head were formidable, and directly after a fight they were sewn up. the mensur reeked with iodoform. after the entertainment was over maibowle was[128] drunk, a delicious sort of cup in which wild strawberries floated. hubert used to have fencing lessons and found the exercise difficult.

the time came when i had to go back to hildesheim. shortly after i arrived there the timmes invited hubert cornish to come and stay with them, and he stayed with us for about ten days. during his visit we went for a short walking tour in the harz mountains and climbed up the brocken, a disappointing mountain, as, so far from meeting mephistopheles and the witches, you walk up a broad and intensely civilised and tidy road, with a plentiful array of notice-boards, till you get to the top, where it is uncomfortably cold. after he left us, it was settled, at my earnest request, that i should go to the school, the real gymnasium, and take part in some of the lessons. i was to be an oberprimaner: in the first class, that is to say; and to attend not all the lessons, but the english, german, and history classes. before entering upon this school career, frau doktor timme told me that i must make an official visit to all the masters with gloves. so i bought a pair of shiny glacé gloves and paid an official visit to the headmaster and the various undermasters. the first class i attended was a mathematical lesson, given by the headmaster. i sat next to a boy called schwerin, whom i met years later as the director of one of the berlin theatres. i was not meant to go to this lesson, and i went there by accident, but the headmaster told me i might stay and listen to it if i liked. it was so far above my head that i did not even know what it was about. at the english lesson i was more at home, and i was asked to give the english dictation. i did this, but the boys at once complained, as i did not read out the english with the german pronunciation, which they were accustomed to, and they could not understand me. the master said they were quite right, and that it was plain i did not know how to pronounce english. the lessons in german literature and in history were interesting. every week the boys had to write a german essay on the topic that was being discussed, or rather on the book that was being read and diagnosed. this essay was the main feature of the week’s work, just as latin verses were at eton. the writing of this essay took an enormous amount of time and trouble. i only wrote one, on schiller’s braut von messina. it had to be neatly copied out, on paper folded in a special way, and the subject[129] had to be divided into sections. the history master was fond of drawing parallels between ancient and modern history, and when he discussed the punic wars, he laid stress on the fact that sea power had been beaten by land power. that was, he said, the universal lesson of history, and let england lay this matter to heart. the napoleonic wars seemed to have escaped him.

after i had been at hildesheim a little time, frau timme told me one day that perhaps i was unaware how greatly englishmen were disliked in germany. this was a complete surprise to me, as i had always thought the relations between the two countries were supposed to be good, and that in a kind of way the germans were supposed to be our cousins. “no,” said frau timme; “there is a real prejudice against english people,” and timme added: “there had always been ein gewisser neid,” a certain envy of the english. they knew, they said, that individual englishmen were often admirable, but politically and collectively the english were disliked. one grievance was we supplied, they said, the french with coal during the franco-prussian war: another, the behaviour of the empress frederick, who was accused of redecorating frederick the great’s rooms at potsdam. i found afterwards the empress frederick’s doings were a universal topic, wherever i went in germany. frau timme’s brother, onkel adolph, deplored the relations between great britain and germany, which he said could not well be worse, although looking back on that time they were supposed then, i think, to be good. the timmes were hanoverians, and used still to reckon in thalers and speak of the prussians with dislike; in spite of this they were whole-hearted admirers of bismarck. i enjoyed my little bit of school life at hildesheim immensely. i used to get up at half-past six, walk to school and be there by seven, wear a red cap, take part in the few classes i attended, and then come back for luncheon. in the afternoon, i used to go for walks or bathe in the little river which ran through hildesheim, called the innerste. in the evenings before supper we met at hasse’s, and sometimes we used to walk to a distant village and hold a kneipe, after which the boys used to dance to the strains of donauwellen. it was difficult to believe that one had ever lived any other kind of life.

[130]

domestic life in the timme family was full of infinite charm and many amusing little incidents. dr. timme grew a melon, which he kept in a cucumber frame. it was not a satisfactory melon, for it never grew to be larger than a tennis ball. it was hard and green. nevertheless, one day dr. timme made the announcement that the melon would be ready for eating in a fortnight’s time. “in vierzehn tagen wird die melone gegessen,” were his actual words. frau doktor looked sceptical. when the fortnight had elapsed timme brought in the melon, which was still no bigger and no softer, and said, “heute essen wir die melone” (“to-day the melon will be eaten”), and he cut it with difficulty into twelve bits. frau doktor said it was unripe, and not fit to be eaten, and that it was quite hard and green. “no,” said timme, “dass ist die sorte, sie bleibt immer grün” (“it is that kind of melon: an evergreen”). he added later, “man sollte immer unreifes obst essen. die thiere suchen sich immer unreifes obst aus” (“one ought always to eat unripe fruit. animals eat unripe fruit for choice”).

i used often to visit the two aunts, dr. timme’s sisters. they had a charming little house and a conservatory. little aenchen said one day that many people in the summer went to switzerland or to italy, but die tante did no such thing—she merely moved into the conservatory. (sie zieht nur in die blumenstube.) one of the aunts had a passion for the opera, and knew the plot of every opera ever written, and kept the programmes, and was a mine of information on the subject. i once said something rather disparaging about switzerland to her, and she could not get over this, and for ever afterwards she would say that whenever she looked at her album of swiss photographs she used to say: “gott! nein! dass herr baring das nicht mag!” (“to think of mr. baring not liking that!”)

sometimes she would invite us to tea, and we would have an apfeltorte in the garden, and if it was fine the “alte tante” used to come down. kurt’s future used to be discussed, and the army was mentioned as a possible career. “no,” cried the alte tante; “an officer’s life is a brilliant misery” (“ein gl?nzendes elend”). i said that in other professions you had the elend without the glanz, the misery without the brilliance, and she was delighted with this mot.

my father, who finished his education in germany, at gotha (after having gone to school at bath at the age of six in a[131] stage-coach), used always to say that there was nothing in the world for simplicity and charm to compare with the life in a small unpretentious household in the germany of old days. he used to tell a story of some coburg royal lady whom he met at gotha saying to him after queen victoria’s marriage to prince albert, “wenn sie nach england kommen, suchen sie meinen vetter albrecht aus and grüssen sie ihn von mir” (“when you go back to england, look up my cousin albert and give him my love”).

the simplicity and the charm he described were to be found in the timme household at hildesheim. in the cosy winter evenings, in the little drawing-room with its warm stove, when the lamp used to be put on the table opposite the place of honour, the sofa, against the wall at the end of the room, a bottle of beer and glasses would be brought, and dr. timme would light his cigar and suggest a game of skat, and onkel adolph would stroll behind my chair and say: “nein, herr baring, das dürfen sie nicht spielen.” then perhaps frau timme’s mother would look in and occupy the place of honour, and perhaps tante agnes (who was an unappreciated poetess) or tante emile (the opera lover), and perhaps a neighbour, fr?ulein schultzen, who received english girls in her house, or frau ober-f?rster. then frau doktor’s mother would take out her knitting and the children would be discussed. “n?chsten monat,” someone would say: “bekomme ich neue m?dchen.” onkel adolph and dr. timme would talk mild politics, and faintly deprecate the present state of things; perhaps herr wunibald nick would be there and sing a song—“es liegt eine krone im tiefen rhein”—and deplore the amount of operas by well-known composers which were never performed. “wird nicht gegeben,” he would exclaim, after every item of his long list, or would almost weep from enthusiasm for the second act of tristan, although no wagnerite he. while this talk went on in the major key, in a subdued minor the aunts and frau doktor and frau ober-f?rster would tell the latest developments of a neighbour’s illness, and the climax of the tale would be reached by someone saying: “dann liess sie den arzt rufen” (“then she sent for the doctor”). there would be a pause, and someone else would inevitably ask, “welchen arzt?” (“which doctor?”), as there were many doctors in hildesheim, and opinions were sharply divided on their merits. the answer[132] would perhaps be: “brandes,” and then there would be a sigh of relief from some, a resigned shrug from others, as if to say: “poor things, they knew no better.”

and the conversation would be vernünftig, and the old people would say that the big towns were spoiling everything, that life was a hustle and a rush, that fr?ulein so-and-so was ein unversch?mtes wesen, and would bewail, as in heine’s lovely poem, that everything had been better in their time:

“wie lieb’ und treu’ und glauben

verschwunden aus der welt,

und wie so teuer der kaffee,

und wie so rar das geld!”

and over all this scene, and through this talk, there would hang an indefinable wrapping of cosiness and warmth and gemüthlichkeit, and one had the same sense of utter simplicity and intimate comfort that a fairy-tale of grimm gives one. i wonder whether the charm and the simplicity have disappeared from germany, and whether, in spite of imperialism, the war, frightfulness, or anything else, the same thing goes on in the same way, in hundreds of houses and families!

in any case, whether it exists now or not, it existed then; and i was privileged to experience it, to enjoy it to the full, and to look back on it now, after so many years and when so much that is irreparable has come between it and me, with undying affection and gratitude, and with an infinitely sad regret.

once during the war, i had luncheon with one of the r.f.c. squadron messes, where i met a pilot who had learnt german at the timmes’. we talked of them, of atho and of kurt, whom he had known grown-up, and at the end of luncheon that pilot, who was just off to fight the germans in the air, and who was so soon to meet with death in the air fighting the germans, said to me: “prosit timmes.”

in the summer, we would have tea in a little arbour in the garden, and in the mornings, both in winter and in the summer, towards eleven o’clock, when i was hungry, i would go and tell frau doktor, and she would take me to the kitchen and fry me herself some spiegeleier and speck. towards the beginning of my first summer at hildesheim a new lodger arrived in the shape of a german boy called hans wippern, the son of a neighbouring landowner, who had a large farm just outside hildesheim. hans was at the school and was always[133] hungry. one day he had a slight bilious attack and didn’t come down to mittagessen, although he was much better. frau doktor said she thought hans might fancy a pigeon. “nein,” said timme, “er soll hungern” (“he must fast”). but frau doktor surreptitiously sent up three pigeons to his bedroom. the food was delicious at the timmes’, and the great days were when we had kartoffeln-puffer for mittagessen, a sort of pancake made of potatoes, or as a great treat “g?nzebraten.” i used to go to the market in the lovely old markt-platz with frau doktor on the days when she would buy a goose, and on the way back we would stop at frau brandes’ confectionery and have a slice of apfeltorte. frau brandes was a warm, welcoming saleswoman, and her confectionery was perfect.

when the long holidays began it was settled that i would do best to go on a rundreise and see what i could of germany. dr. timme arranged my itinerary and i took a rundreise billet. i was to go to frankfort, nuremberg, dresden, leipzig, and perhaps berlin, and so home again. i went back to heidelberg first and found hubert cornish had become an expert fencer. we attended many a kneipe and saw a lot of the students, and once more i stayed with professor ihne.

my recollections of this second visit to heidelberg are merged with those of my first visit, and i cannot distinguish between the two. hubert cornish had to go home, and we settled to go to cologne by steamer down the rhine. we went past bingen and coblenz and bonn and the rocks of the lorelei, and we stayed a night at cologne. there hubert left me and went home, and i went back by train to frankfort. hubert had fired me with the desire to hear wagner. he had heard many operas at dresden. the result of his talk was that i decided to go to bayreuth. we went one night to mannheim to the opera, but i cannot recollect what we saw. at frankfort i heard the mikado, and the cavalleria rusticana, which i had already heard at hanover. from frankfort i went to nuremberg, and from nuremberg to bayreuth. i had tickets for one series of performances of the bayreuth festival, but when i arrived i found that there was a performance of the meistersinger that very day, and i got a ticket for it at the station. i took lodgings in a little room in the town. i went off to the theatre, and the first notes of the orchestra enlarged one’s conception of what an orchestra could be. it was a[134] wonderful experience to hear these operas for the first time, at the age of eighteen before hearing any discussions about them, before knowing what they were about, when every note of the music and every scene of the drama were a revelation and a surprise. i heard the meistersinger, parsifal, tristan und isolda, and tannh?user. after the meistersinger and tristan, tannh?user seemed tawdry and thin. these operas were all of them magnificently performed that year. scheidemantel, malten, materna, and other stars from vienna and dresden were taking part in the festival, but even then i thought the scenery ugly, especially the garden scene in parsifal, which was made of crude vermilion and yellow tulips; in the other operas, tristan and the meistersinger, the scenery was sober and adequate, and the lighting effects were wonderfully well managed, but all that was lost sight of in the orchestra conducted by mottl. i do not suppose there has ever been any finer orchestra playing in the world than that which i heard when tristan was performed that year. it seemed a pity the curtain ever went up, for tristan, although he sang well, was an old man (heinrich vogt), and isolda (rose sucher) was a little too massive. at bayreuth, during the first series i attended, there were some people i knew, and during that series and the others i made friends with many other people whom i had never seen before. one day, during the entr’acte, the crowd automatically divided as two people passed by—a lady and her husband—and a space was made round them. the lady had a small, flowerlike head, and the dividing crowd near her looked, as she passed, more commonplace and commoner than it did already. on one of the off-days i saw the same lady again sitting at a table in a restaurant garden and reading aloud out of a tauchnitz novel. at my table there were a frenchman and his wife. “dieu qu’elle est belle,” said the frenchman, staring. “je ne dis pas qu’elle ne soit pas jolie,” said the french lady, rather nettled. my best friend at bayreuth was one of the second violins in the orchestra. he thought the operas were far too long, especially the second act of tristan and isolda, which he said was for the players more than flesh and blood could bear. he said it would be no offence to wagner to cut it, and after the performance he used to come out from the theatre terribly exhausted. we often had dinner together, and he told me a great deal about musical life in germany. i[135] also made friends with an english musician who lived at sydenham, and we spent the off-days in the country together. i think i must have stayed for three series of performances, and i heard each of these operas three times. i went after this to dresden, where i enjoyed the picture gallery, and so back to hildesheim. in september i received a letter from professor ihne asking me to go back there. the duke of york was with him, learning german, so i went once more to heidelberg and stayed there over a fortnight. i went back to hildesheim, and i had not been there long when i got a telegram telling me to come home at once. i knew my mother was ill, but a letter giving me details just missed me, as it went to heidelberg. i found my brother-in-law, bobby spencer, in london. he took a special to bristol, as we had missed the ordinary night train, and we got to membland next morning. never had membland looked more beautiful. the days were cloudless and breathless; the foliage was intact but turned to gold, and bathed in the quiet october sunshine. i arrived just in time. a specialist came down from london, but there was nothing to be done. chérie came down from hampshire, and d., who had married mr. crosbie, came back and stayed in the house, but it was only for a few days.

i went to london and stayed a day or two in charles street with my brother john. i spent a night at king’s college, cambridge, and then i went to hildesheim on my way to berlin, where it was settled i was to go.

i was only a day or two at hildesheim. nothing could have been kinder than the timmes were to me then, and onkel adolph, when he heard i had lost my coat, said: “wenn alle menschen so harmlos wie sie w?ren, herr baring, so würde die welt ein reines paradies sein, aber! aber!”

in berlin i stayed at first at an hotel, and then i took two rooms on the top floor of a house in the unter den linden. i knew no one in the town at first, but a few days after i was settled in my rooms i met my cousin, arthur ponsonby, who was learning german there too, and who was staying at a pension in the potsdamer strasse. although i had seen him all my life i had not known him before, and we gradually made each other’s acquaintance. as we were both fond of the theatre we went to plays together and saw a great many[136] interesting things. ibsen’s doll’s house, which was admirably played at the berliner theater, and sudermann’s die ehre, some shakespeare performances, in which ludwig barnay played, and many plays translated from the french. at the residenz theater there was an excellent comic actor called alexander. one night we went to see faust, goethe’s faust, not gounod’s, performed at the schauspielhaus, and when the opening speech, “habe nun, ach, philosophie,” was declaimed the effect was tremendous. the scenes which followed were less effective on the stage, except those where gretchen appears. one day we heard that a famous italian actress was to perform in berlin. her name was eleonora duse. we had never heard her name mentioned, but the man who sold theatre tickets said she was a rival of sarah bernhardt. she was to open in the dame aux camélias. we took tickets, read the play beforehand in german, as we neither of us knew italian, and we went on the first night. to see a play in a language you do not understand, however well you know the story, takes away half the pleasure, but we never had a doubt about the quality of her art. the beauty and pathos of her death scene were so great as to be independent of words and speech. had she been acting in chinese the effect would have been just as great. we saw her afterwards in the doll’s house, in which she was equally remarkable, and the scathing irony with which she lashed helmer, the husband, was unforgettable.

we also went to concerts, and once or twice to the opera, but the opera in berlin was not a good one.

i knew hardly any germans while i was at berlin. i had a letter of introduction to a frau von arnim, and one night i had dinner at her house. there were five or six officers present, all in uniform, and one of them described a day’s hunting in england, and said that the meet was crowded with bildsch?ne frauen. the ambassador at berlin was sir edward mallet, and he asked us to dinner sometimes.

it had been my intention to attend the lectures of the berlin university, and i was formally enrolled as a student. i matriculated at the university, but the formalities before this was accomplished were so long, that by the time they were finished, i had little time left for a university career. however, i received a card which placed me outside the jurisdiction of the berlin police and under the jurisdiction of the university authorities,[137] but i only went to one lecture. i had private lessons in german throughout my stay.

i read a good many miscellaneous books during my stay in berlin, and arthur ponsonby introduced me to many new things, and opened many doors for me, especially in french literature. he gave me tolstoy and loti to read, and we both had a passion for ibsen. i, on the other hand, plied him with pater, stevenson, and swinburne. i was just at the age when one can digest anything in the way of books, and the sweeter it is the more one enjoys it. afterwards much of the stuff i was greedily devouring then was to seem like the almond paste on the top of a wedding-cake. but in those days nothing was too luscious or too sweet. arthur’s taste was already more sober and grown-up; the drama appealed to both of us, and we would spend hours discussing plays and players, and deploring the state of the english stage.

at the end of december i went back to england and spent the last christmas but one at membland i was ever to spend there.