Difficulty of Keeping this Diary.--A Big Wash.--The German Bed.--Its Goings On.--Manners and Customs of the German Army.--B.'s Besetting Sin.--Cologne Cathedral.--Thoughts Without Words.--A Curious Custom.
This diary is getting mixed. The truth is, I am not living as a man who keeps a diary should live. I ought, of course, to sit down in front of this diary at eleven o'clock at night, and write down all that has occurred to me during the day. But at eleven o'clock at night, I am in the middle of a long railway journey, or have just got up, or am just going to bed for a couple of hours. We go to bed at odd moments, when we happen to come across a bed, and have a few minutes to spare. We have been to bed this afternoon, and are now having another breakfast; and I am not quite sure whether it is yesterday or to-morrow, or what day it is.
I shall not attempt to write up this diary in the orthodox manner, therefore; but shall fix in a few lines whenever I have half-an-hour with nothing better to do.
We washed ourselves in the Rhine at Cologne (we had not had a wash since we had left our happy home in England). We started with the idea of washing ourselves at the hotel; but on seeing the basin and water and towel provided, I decided not to waste my time playing with them. As well might Hercules have attempted to tidy up the Augean stables with a squirt.
We appealed to the chambermaid. We explained to her that we wanted to wash--to clean ourselves--not to blow bubbles. Could we not have bigger basins and more water and more extensive towels? The chambermaid (a staid old lady of about fifty) did not think that anything better could be done for us by the hotel fraternity of Cologne, and seemed to think that the river was more what we wanted.
I fancied that the old soul was speaking sarcastically, but B. said "No;" she was thinking of the baths alongside the river, and suggested that we should go there. I agreed. It seemed to me that the river--the Rhine--would, if anything could, meet the case.
There ought to be plenty of water in it now, after the heavy spring rains.
When I saw it, I felt satisfied. I said to B.: "That's all right, old man; that's the sort of thing we need. That is just the sized river I feel I can get myself clean in this afternoon."
I have heard a good deal in praise of the Rhine, and I am glad to be able to speak well of it myself. I found it most refreshing.
I was, however, sorry that we had washed in it afterwards. I have heard from friends who have travelled since in Germany that we completely spoiled that river for the rest of the season. Not for business purposes, I do not mean. The barge traffic has been, comparatively speaking, uninterfered with. But the tourist trade has suffered terribly. Parties who usually go up the Rhine by steamer have, after looking at the river, gone by train this year.
The boat agents have tried to persuade them that the Rhine is always that colour: that it gets like that owing to the dirt and refuse washed down into it during its course among the mountains.
But the tourists have refused to accept this explanation. They have said: "No. Mountains will account for a good deal, we admit, but not for all THAT. We are acquainted with the ordinary condition of the Rhine, and although muddy, and at times unpleasant, it is passable.
As it is this summer, however, we would prefer not to travel upon it. We will wait until after next year's spring-floods."
We went to bed after our wash. To the blase English bed-goer, accustomed all his life to the same old hackneyed style of bed night after night, there is something very pleasantly piquant about the experience of trying to sleep in a German bed. He does not know it is a bed at first. He thinks that someone has been going round the room, collecting all the sacks and cushions and antimacassars and such articles that he has happened to find about, and has piled them up on a wooden tray ready for moving. He rings for the chambermaid, and explains to her that she has shown him into the wrong room. He wanted a bedroom.
She says: "This IS a bedroom."
He says: "Where's the bed?"
"There!" she says, pointing to the box on which the sacks and antimacassars and cushions lie piled.
"That!" he cries. "How am I going to sleep in that?"
The chambermaid does not know how he is going to sleep there, never having seen a gentleman go to sleep anywhere, and not knowing how they set about it; but suggests that he might try lying down flat, and shutting his eyes.
"But it is not long enough," he says.
The chambermaid thinks he will be able to manage, if he tucks his legs up.
He sees that he will not get anything better, and that he must put up with it.
"Oh, very well!" he says. "Look sharp and get it made, then."
She says: "It is made."
He turns and regards the girl sternly. Is she taking advantage of his being a lonely stranger, far from home and friends, to mock him?
He goes over to what she calls the bed, and snatching off the top-most sack from the pile and holding it up, says: "Perhaps you'll tell me what this is, then?"
"That," says the girl, "that's the bed!"
He is somewhat nonplussed at the unexpected reply.
"Oh!" he says. "Oh! the bed, is it? I thought it was a pincushion!
Well, if it is the bed, then what is it doing out here, on the top of everything else? You think that because I'm only a man, I don't understand a bed!"
"That's the proper place for it," responds the chambermaid.
"What! on top?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, then where are the clothes?"
"Underneath, sir."
"Look here, my good girl," he says; "you don't understand me, or I don't understand you, one or the other. When I go to sleep, I lie on a bed and pull the clothes over me. I don't want to lie on the clothes, and cover myself with the bed. This isn't a comic ballet, you know!"
The girl assures him that there is no mistake about the matter at all. There is the bed, made according to German notions of how a bed should be made. He can make the best of it and try to go to sleep upon it, or he can be sulky and go to sleep on the floor.
