Two Or Three
Times A Day In Different Parts Of The City One Or Another Of Them
Will Be Playing Pro Bono Publico, And, In The Evening, They Are
Loaned Out By The Authorities To The Proprietors Of The Big Beer-
Gardens.
"Go" and dash are the chief characteristics of their method; but,
when needed, they can produce from the battered,
Time-worn trumpets,
which have been handed down from player to player since the regiment
was first formed, notes as soft and full and clear as any that could
start from the strings of some old violin.
The German band in Germany has to know its business to be listened
to by a German audience. The Bavarian artisan or shopkeeper
understands and appreciates good music, as he understands and
appreciates good beer. You cannot impose upon him with an inferior
article. A music-hall audience in Munich are very particular as to
how their beloved Wagner is rendered, and the trifles from Mozart
and Haydn that they love to take in with their sausages and salad,
and which, when performed to their satisfaction, they will
thunderously applaud, must not be taken liberties with, or they will
know the reason why.
The German beer-garden should be visited by everyone who would see
the German people as well as their churches and castles. It is here
that the workers of all kinds congregate in the evening. Here,
after the labours of the day, come the tradesman with his wife and
family, the young clerk with his betrothed and - also her mother,
alack and well-a-day! - the soldier with his sweetheart, the students
in twos and threes, the little grisette with her cousin, the shop-
boy and the workman.
Here come grey-haired Darby and Joan, and, over the mug of beer they
share between them, they sit thinking of the children - of little
Lisa, married to clever Karl, who is pushing his way in the far-off
land that lies across the great sea; of laughing Elsie, settled in
Hamburg, who has grandchildren of her own now; of fair-haired Franz,
his mother's pet, who fell in sunny France, fighting for the
fatherland. At the next table sits a blushing, happy little maid,
full of haughty airs and graces, such as may be excused to a little
maid who has just saved a no doubt promising, but at present
somewhat awkward-looking, youth from lifelong misery, if not madness
and suicide (depend upon it, that is the alternative he put before
her), by at last condescending to give him the plump little hand,
that he, thinking nobody sees him, holds so tightly beneath the
table-cloth. Opposite, a family group sit discussing omelettes and
a bottle of white wine. The father contented, good-humoured, and
laughing; the small child grave and solemn, eating and drinking in
business-like fashion; the mother smiling at both, yet not
forgetting to eat.
I think one would learn to love these German women if one lived
among them for long. There is something so sweet, so womanly, so
genuine about them. They seem to shed around them, from their
bright, good-tempered faces, a healthy atmosphere of all that is
homely, and simple, and good. Looking into their quiet, steadfast
eyes, one dreams of white household linen, folded in great presses;
of sweet-smelling herbs; of savoury, appetising things being cooked
for supper; of bright-polished furniture; of the patter of tiny
feet; of little high-pitched voices, asking silly questions; of
quiet talks in the lamp-lit parlour after the children are in bed,
upon important questions of house management and home politics,
while long stockings are being darned.
They are not the sort of women to turn a man's head, but they are
the sort of women to lay hold of a man's heart - very gently at
first, so that he hardly knows that they have touched it, and then,
with soft, clinging tendrils that wrap themselves tighter and
tighter year by year around it, and draw him closer and closer -
till, as, one by one, the false visions and hot passions of his
youth fade away, the plain homely figure fills more and more his
days - till it grows to mean for him all the better, more lasting,
true part of life - till he feels that the strong, gentle mother-
nature that has stood so long beside him has been welded firmly into
his own, and that they twain are now at last one finished whole.
We had our dinner at a beer-garden the day before yesterday. We
thought it would be pleasant to eat and drink to the accompaniment
of music, but we found that in practice this was not so. To dine
successfully to music needs a very strong digestion - especially in
Bavaria.
The band that performs at a Munich beer-garden is not the sort of
band that can be ignored. The members of a Munich military band are
big, broad-chested fellows, and they are not afraid of work. They
do not talk much, and they never whistle. They keep all their
breath to do their duty with. They do not blow their very hardest,
for fear of bursting their instruments; but whatever pressure to the
square inch the trumpet, cornet, or trombone, as the case may be, is
calculated to be capable of sustaining without permanent injury (and
they are tolerably sound and well-seasoned utensils), that pressure
the conscientious German bandsman puts upon each square inch of the
trumpet, cornet, or trombone, as the case may be.
If you are within a mile of a Munich military band, and are not
stone deaf, you listen to it, and do not think of much else. It
compels your attention by its mere noise; it dominates your whole
being by its sheer strength. Your mind has to follow it as the feet
of the little children followed the playing of the Pied Piper.
Whatever you do, you have to do in unison with the band.
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