Kitabı oku: «My Life», sayfa 10

Later, when showing him a written copy of our political interview, I had to look him up in his famous den, in the Pathological Institute, I think it was. The room was so full of skulls, bones and "pickled" things that it was all one could do not to knock something over when moving about. I had to leave the manuscript with him for correction. He sent it to me a few days afterward with neatly written marginal notes in his own handwriting. Of all the men I met at the university, he was distinctly the most famous and affable.

His famous political antagonist, Bismarck, a man that Virchow seemed to hate, judging by his manner when discussing him, I saw but once. It was not long before his dismissal from office, and he was returning from the Emperor's palace, where he had gone to give him birthday congratulations. I was standing in front of the Café Bauer on the Unter den Linden just as Bismarck's carriage came by. I shall always remember his strong face and remarkable big eyes, but this was about all that I saw. A woman recognized Bismarck just as I did, and ran toward his carriage, crying: "Oh, Prince Bismarck! Prince Bismarck!" There was something in her manner which made one think that she wanted to ask some favor of the great man, and had been waiting for his appearance. The mournful note in her voice might have meant anything – a son in prison, a dying soldier husband, a mere request for bread. The driver of the horses was taking no chances, however, and the great chancellor was whisked away toward Wilhelm Strasse.

The diminutive and modest Virchow could reconstruct our notions about pathology and medicine and at the same time be a great Liberal, but he could not tolerate Bismarck. The monstrous chancellor could reunite Germany, dictate her foreign policy for years, and hold his own, in and out of parliament, as a master mind, but he could not associate with Virchow. Two great Germans, both iconoclasts and builders, both dwellers in the same city, and both much admired and criticised – but they needed separate sides of the street when abroad – a fact, by the way, which goes much to help out the other fact demonstrating German Kleinlich Kelt– smallness.

When all is said and done about my university career I think that the good it did me was accomplished mainly in the Royal Library and in the Thiergarten – a natural park in the center of the city, where I could invite my soul comfortably in the winter, say at ten degrees above zero, and in summer at about seventy degrees of heat – all this —a la Fahrenheit, by the way, who has no following in Germany, either zero-wards or otherwise. The library advanced me ten books at a draw in any language I felt equal to, and the Thiergarten helped me to ponder over what I had read and did not understand. Certainly no professor ever felt more learned than I did when I tramped through the park to my home, with the ten books slung over my shoulder. My mother used to love to see me come into the house after this fashion, and even my fox-terrier, Spicer, put on a learned look peculiarly her own when she deigned to observe my studious tendencies. More anon about this almost human little creature, but I must say right here that, in her early days, she did not take kindly to my "shortening-up" habits. She believed in beer, much food and exercise, Uferlos pow-wowing.

What it was, in the Library or Thiergarten, that switched me, when reading, from Political Economy to Africa, Livingstone, Burton, Speke and Stanley, it is a little difficult to explain. In the final analysis I suppose it was mere temperament. By my third semester I knew ten times more about Africa than I knew about my own country, and an unfathomable number of times more than I ever will know about Political Economy. Burton was the man I particularly took to, and to this day he remains on a very high pinnacle in my estimation of men.

This kind of reading naturally did not bring me any nearer my Ph. D. But it taught me to keep quiet, dodge Die Ferne, and to take an interest in what other men had done – to remember that all the traveling in the world was never intended to be done by me. Of course, I had dreams of becoming an explorer, but they were harmless arm-chair efforts, that gave my mother no anxiety, and were profitable in so far as I seriously studied geography. Possibly, had a berth in an exploring expedition been offered me, I should have been tempted to take it; but no such opportunity came to hand.

My companions in the university were nearly all Streber, young men who were determined to promoviren. A more mixed collection of friends I have never had. My most intimate "pal" was a Japanese, the others next intimate were a Greek, a German-American, a British-American, some bona fide Teutons, and my dog Spicer – the latter being in the university by proxy, so to speak. In the early semesters we did pretty much what all students at German universities do. Here in the United States there are minute observers of college morals who would have said that we were all bound devil-wards. We attended Kneipen, spent our Sundays in the Gruhewald, and would schwänzen– omit attendance at lectures, when convenient. But all of my friends except one have done well. The unfortunate exception was probably the most strenuous streber in the company. He took his degree with all sails set for a promised professorship at home, went home, was disappointed in what he had been led to think he was to teach, became discouraged and despondent, and finally tossed himself in front of a train. Poor "Zink"! He had studied History and wanted to give lectures about it. The western college trustees, who had promised him a chair in History, insisted on his teaching Grammar also, or some other subject that he had paid no attention to since college days, and his sense of the fitness of things revolted. He had specialized honestly and fearlessly, and he desired to continue as a specialist. The college trustees wanted a complete faculty in one or two men, and "Zink" would not submit. If any man deserved fairer treatment, this old university friend did.

I believe that Spicer, my fox-terrier, is the only other member of the class that has quit the game completely. She stayed with my family for nine years, never comprehending the Germans as a people – she was English – and apparently never wanting to. Pilsner beer was the only German product she would succumb to. Three saucerfuls after each afternoon tramp constituted her portion. As she never staggered, and never misbehaved herself otherwise under the Pilsner influence, I think it agreed with her. In saying that she succumbed to the three saucerfuls, I merely mean that she knew when she had had enough.

If I could tell what "Pizey," as she was called later, meant to my family in ways that are dear and affectionate, and what she stood for in the "Colony," a great dog book would be the result. She came to us in a basket, after a serious tossing in the North Sea – a fat, pudgy little thing, full of John Bullism and herself. My mother and younger sister brought her to Berlin, and mother presented her to me, in the same language as in former days when she had given me "Major" – "Josiah, I've brought you a dog!" I rejoiced at twenty-two over such a gift as much as I did in my early teens. Little did I reckon then what it means to train a pup in a Berlin flat. With "Pizey" I would gladly go through the whole business again, but it is a task I feel that I must save my countrymen against. Even in Oskaloosa there are trying months ahead of him who rears a pup three flights up. (Fire escapes don't help a bit.)

"Pizey's" main interests were her own short tail and her long-tailed pups. When mother had nothing better to offer her guests by way of entertainment, "Pizey" was requisitioned, called into the parlor and made to chase her stub of a tail. If her guests were looking for other amusement they were disappointed, but "Pizey" wasn't, and I think that mother enjoyed the fracas. She once told the family physician that under no circumstances, no matter whether "Pizey" committed lesé majesté, would she destroy "Pizey," because she reminded her of Josiah, "when he was away from home."

"Pizey's" distinction as a member of the "Colony" lay almost entirely in her disregard of the Malthusian dream. She increased the Anglo-German entente by at least forty-seven little "Pizeys." Some of her progeny found their way into American homes and are trying to do right – perhaps a half-dozen. The remaining forty-one are auf der Wanderschaft.

"Pizey's" death was mysterious. I had long since left Berlin, and heard only infrequently about her. Finally the entire family moved away, and the dog was left in the old home, but under a new régime; she absolutely refused to emigrate. They say that she was stricken with asthma, and had to be put out of the way. I only hope that she was put out of the way in a square deal. The German scientists are very much given to dissecting dogs like "Pizey" while they are yet alive. If any German scientist perpetrated such an outrage on Spicer, I trust that his science will fall to pieces – certainly those parts of it based on "Pizey's" evidence.

CHAPTER XI
WANDERINGS IN GERMANY

Years and years ago, when Luther was giving us, or rather demanding of us, two strong legs and an obstinate "No" when it was our duty to say "No," there were thousands of young men in Germany who had wheelbarrows, and, I trust, the two strong legs; they were called Handwerksburschen, traveling apprentices, a name that remains intact with their counterpart of our day. The apprentices in honorably quitting their masters – I fear, sometimes before honor had become a definite part of their moral baggage – would put their bits of tools into the wheelbarrows, the masters would give them a glückauf, and away the young men would go over Europe, studying their trades in different countries, and getting acquainted with life in towns, villages and fields. In the main, they were earnest inquirers of their kind, seeking comparative wisdom and a friendly acquaintance with the Chaussee.

Luther has long since gone, and with him the Handwerksbursch of his time. The Chaussee has given away to the fourth-class railway car, and the wheelbarrow and kit of tools to a stingy knapsack. The Handwerksbursch still has two legs, as a rule, but he hates to use them.

Such good nature and fellowship as must have prevailed among Luther's traveling apprentices could also be found among the students of the time. They took to the Chaussee, saw men, cities and things, and their vacation over, returned to their lectures and books. Like the Handwerksbursch, however, they have found their accounting with the present, and to-day are quite as much at home in the fourth-class car as were their predecessors on the Chaussee.

In course of time it came my turn to make one of the students' tours of Germany. The Semester was over, a friendly companion was at hand, and, for a Rundreise excursion, we had sufficient money in our pockets. It may or may not have been a sop to Die Ferne that I undertook this jaunt, but I think now that it was merely a well-timed outing in order that Die Ferne should not be consciously considered. Here again, as so often before and since, credit must be given to my mother. She seemed to know to the hour almost, the time when it was necessary for me to jump out of harness and take to the open again.

My companion on this first exploration of Germany was a gentleman considerably older than myself. He was a stalwart Norwegian, perhaps forty years of age, with a burly blond beard, a great "bundle of hair," as the tramps say, and a pugnacious belief in the prohibition of the liquor traffic. Physically, Nietzsche's guter grosser blondes Mensch was found in him to a nicety. Some months before my arrival in Berlin, he appeared at my mother's door one evening and said in a western nasal drawl: "Glad to meet you. Believed in your sister-in-law's principles, and thought I'd come around and call."

My mother saw in him at first merely the typical Prohibitionist with a long rehearsal of the reasons why, if need be, one should go dry in a waterless, but alcoholic neighborhood. A partial rehearsal there was, and then the tall, blond man from "Minnesoty" got to talking most interestingly about the university, philosophy, religion, Norway – and Ibsen. He spoke also of his native language, of literature in general, and of men in "Minnesoty" who were trying to make a new Norwegian literature.

Ibsen was much discussed at the time, and "Nora" was the talk of the town. It had become almost an affair of state whether Nora did right in leaving her home, and decidedly a matter of etiquette whether a husband should, or should not, offer a disappearing wife an umbrella on a rainy night. (The "Doll's House," as I saw it, presumed a storm outside.) Ibsen was living in Munich in those days.

Our friend, the Norwegian, wrote to Ibsen, and asked him whether he would receive two Americans anxious to pay their respects to him. It had been decided that the Norwegian and I should make Rundreise together, and Munich was included in our itinerary. Ibsen replied to the Norwegian's letter in very neat handwriting, that he was usually at home in the Maximilian strasse at eleven o'clock, and that callers usually looked in on him at that hour. There was no conventional etiquette about the note; we were not even told that we should be welcome. The small missive might have been a dentist's "time card" so far as it expressed any sentiment. But scrupulously to the point it certainly was. Later Ibsen told us that so many people wrote to him that he had been compelled to boil his correspondence down as much as possible.

The journey to Munich in company with the Norwegian was very similar to all students' outings, and need not be described in detail here. The talk with Ibsen, our unheard of abstemiousness in restaurants, and the pains that we were at to see everything on a five pfennig tipping basis, were the only special features of the trip.

On leaving Berlin we resolved to go as far as our allowance would permit, into the Tyrol if possible, and we thought that our mileage could be prodigiously increased if we drank water with our meals, and "looked the other way" when more than five pfennigs was wanted as Trinkgeld. The Norwegian never once swerved in living up to this programme, but I fell from grace at times. The looks and "faces" that we got from guides, palace lackeys and waiters were specimens that, could we have drawn them, would make a very interesting gallery to look over to-day. But, alas! neither one of us could sketch, all that we have now is the remembrance. During the six weeks or more that we traveled we saw disappointment, distrust, hatred[Pg 169][Pg 170] and pugnaciousness in all the different shades and colorings which the German countenance is equal to. The Norwegian said that he enjoyed such sights, but there were moments when I begged off, and tipped as I saw fit. It made no difference to the Norwegian, however, whether the service rendered was a two-hour chaperoning through a great castle, or a mere response to a question. Five pfennigs remained his limit in the tipping line to the end, and I doubt whether his entire bill on this score came to over three marks. His non-alcoholic régime nearly got us into serious trouble in Nürnberg. As had been our custom in other towns, we had selected a modest restaurant at the noon hour, and called for the regular meal. Although we did not order beer, it was served to us, but left untouched. When we came to pay our reckoning we called the waiter's attention to the beer item, saying that we would not pay it as the beer had not been asked for. Such a hubbub and pow-wowing as then began I have never seen over two glasses of beer. The proprietor came, the other waiters also, and even some of the guests labored with us in the matter.

"But it is the custom, Meine Herren," the landlord kept saying, to all of which the Norwegian returned a determined "No." It might or might not be the custom, and whether it was or not, did not make a particle of difference; he was not going to pay for something that he had neither wanted nor asked for.

The upshot of the arguing was that we picked up our grips and started to leave. The burly proprietor snatched my bag away from me in the hallway. The Norwegian sprang at him with an oath – the first and last I ever heard him use.

"Damn you!" he hissed through his teeth. "I'll break every bone in your body," and I think he would have fulfilled the contract had the proprietor given him a chance. The latter dropped my bag, and fled back into the restaurant for reinforcements. But, by the time he was ready for war again, we were in the street, and the landlord contented himself with calling us swindlers and pigs. I make no doubt that later there was a protracted discussion in the restaurant about the matter, and that for many a day afterward the Starumgäste, who had witnessed the affair, made beery conjectures as to our nationality and education. Whatever their final decision may have been, the Norwegian had carried his point. Alone, I doubt whether my independence would have been so assertive, but I was glad at the time to have witnessed a successful revolt against the tyrannical German Getränkezwang.

What Ibsen, whom we saw in his home a few days later, would have said to this episode, is hard to conjecture. Very possibly he might have told us that we were in the wrong in going to such a place, that we should have sought out a vegetarian eating-place – the teetotaler's refuge, when the Bierzwang is to be avoided. He very frankly told us, however, what he thought of Prohibition as a cure-all for the liquor traffic problem. The Norwegian had asked his opinion in the matter and he got it. This is about what Ibsen said:

"You can't make people good by law. Only that which a man does of his own free will and because he knows that it is the right thing to do, counts in this world. Legislating about morals is at best a sorry makeshift. Men will have to learn to legislate for themselves without any state interference, before human conduct is on a right basis."

This deliverance on the part of Ibsen came in its turn with other topics on which he expressed himself during our interview with him. We had called at his home at the suggested hour – eleven – and had been immediately shown into the parlor, I think it was. Pretty soon Ibsen strolled in. I should have recognized him without trouble anywhere. The long, defiant hair pushed back from his forehead, the silky side whiskers, the inevitable spectacles, the tightly closed lips, the long coat – these things had all been brought out prominently in his photographs, and were unmistakable. At the time he was the most famous literary man I had ever met, and he was easily the most talked about dramatist in Europe. I was much impressed by this fact, and for the moment probably looked at him as if it was the last chance to see a great public character that I was to have. The Norwegian took the event more calmly, walking up to Ibsen with his great hand outstretched as if to an older brother. The two men looked each other well in the eyes – their eyes were strikingly similar in color and shape – passed greetings in Norwegian, and then I was introduced.

"And what is it that you want?" Ibsen asked bluntly enough, motioning to the sofa, he himself taking a chair. From his manner and curtness of speech he might have been taken for a doctor during calling hours. He was friendly after a fashion, but the fashion was as if he had long since finished with making intimate acquaintances, and henceforth meant to hold the world at a distance. He looked "business" to the last degree.

As the conversation progressed he thawed a little, and was not quite so reserved. But throughout our two visits with him – there was a second call on the next day – he at least answered questions as if he were on the witness stand, and had been cautioned by his counsel not to overstate things.

When questioning us as well as when volunteering an opinion which was not in direct reply to a query, he was not so painfully cautious.

The Norwegian had prepared a list of questions threateningly long, to put to the old gentleman, but he religiously went through it from beginning to end. He quizzed him about everything and everybody, it seemed, from Prohibition, the Kaiser, Bismarck, Scandinavia, Russia and general European politics, to family matters, his manner of writing, his forthcoming play, and about numberless obscure passages in his earlier dramas. Ibsen took the blows as they fell, dodging, as I have said, when he felt like it, but receiving them in the main quite stolidly. Many of the questions were killed almost before they were delivered, by a frown or a gesture. Speaking about the alleged obscure passages in his books, he said: "They may be there, but I did not mean them to be obscure. For a time I used to answer letters from persons who wanted me to explain this or that sentence, but I had to give up the job – it got so enervating. I make my words as plain as I know how. Most of my readers comprehend me, I trust."

Ibsen used Norwegian when fencing with my companion, but with me he very kindly resorted to German, asking me in quite a fatherly way about my family, my travels and studies and my opinion of Germany. Occasionally he would smile, and then we saw the man at his best. Crabbed and curt he might be at times, but behind that genial smile there was without doubt a very kind nature, and I was sure of it then and have been ever since. In the years that are to come much will be written about Ibsen, the writer, the pessimist, the sociological surgeon, and what not, but nothing that has been or is still to be written about him will ever succeed in revealing to me the man, as that friendly chat in his home in Munich. An experience, by the way, which may possibly prove that my friend, Mr. Arthur Symons, was correct in an argument we had some years ago in London, about personal interviews or "sittings" with famous people, particularly writers. At the time I advanced the opinion that writers, if they were worth while at all, proved their worth best in what they wrote, and not in what they said, that their books and not their physical presence were what ought to interest. Symons held that he had never read an author who would not have been more interesting to him (Symons) had he been able to meet and talk with him. More about Symons later on. His books and personal friendship are both valuable to me, but for very different reasons. I seldom think of Symons, the man, when I read his essays and verses, and I only infrequently think of his books, or of him as a literary man at all, when we are together.