Europe in the Looking Glass (2 page)

IT WAS WITH DIFFICULTY
that we discovered the whereabouts of Finchley. The way out of London seemed to lie somewhere in the direction of the Wallace Collection and straight on. David was more or less familiar with the road, having once driven to Northallerton and back in the day. He had wished to see some panelling. On the way up he had offered a lift to a tramp, who said that he was making for York. When they reached York, the tramp expressed a wish to come on to Durham. Then, after going with David to admire the panelling, he thought that, after all, he would prefer to return to York. He eventually came the whole way back to London. It is a curious phenomenon, this passion that the unemployed display for motoring. They will willingly retrace a month’s hard walking for the sake of a day’s drive. Perhaps it enables them to forget their troubles.

Once through Finchley, the tramlines seemed as though they would never end. They stretched for miles into country, where there was not a house in sight. After the gates of Hatfield it became so cold that we stopped to put on overcoats. Then I fell asleep, to be wakened some time later by David’s backing on to the main road, having shot up the turning to Cambridge by mistake.

At one o’clock we reached the outskirts of Peterborough. Clumps of giant factory chimneys, silhouetted against the glow of furnaces, rose from the surrounding fields. The town was deserted but for one inarticulate policeman, who seemed unable to comprehend our very natural desire for a hotel. We, at length, discovered the Angel; but an angry landlord in grey and yellow flannel pyjamas informed us that it was full. So was
the Station Hotel. The Grand, however, though not possessing a garage, was able to offer us three separate rooms, each of which was furnished with a Bible stamped with the words ‘The Commercial Travellers’ Bible Association’. Thus hallowed, we retired to sleep, leaving Diana, containing everything we possessed, in the street.

The view next morning disclosed nothing but a waste of ruined brick, slightly charred, with the factory chimneys in the distance. In order to embark the car before the dockers stopped work, it was essential to be at Grimsby by eleven o’clock. Simon showed admirable firmness in helping David out of bed at half past seven. A bath did not offer itself. We left about nine, and as it became more and more apparent that we could not cover eighty miles in two hours we remembered that the next day was Sunday, and the day after that Bank Holiday, and pictured ourselves enjoying a healthy weekend romping about on the sands of the Humber. Diana had not been ‘run in’, and could not exceed a speed of forty miles an hour.

After leaving the fen country, we reached the wold country, reminiscent of perhaps the most picturesque of all our laureates. It was hard to think that we must miss that Gothic fireplace, standing but half-a-dozen miles from the main road, which young Alfred and his father had built with their own hands. But it was twelve o’clock before we reached the docks at Grimsby. These appeared to be completely empty. We drove endlessly in and out of bridges, cranes and railway lines, until we eventually found the ship unaided.

A corpulent man in a uniform then emerged from a shed. He said that there would be no difficulty, no difficulty whatever. David’s grandfather, it appeared, owned most of the line. No sooner was his name invoked than we were treated with embarrassing deference. After emptying Diana of her petrol, we picked our way back to the Royal Hotel to lunch, where the waitress, on being asked whether the sole was fresh, drew herself up and replied that she was not in the fish trade.

We returned to find the car safely on board, roped to a kind
of wooden tray. We were due to meet the customs man at two. He did not arrive until four. By that time the steward had gone on shore to tea, taking with him the key of the ladies’ lounge in which were locked our suitcases and the papers for the car. He was, therefore, unable to fill in the preliminary paragraphs of the
Carnet
, a sort of international motor pass – as distinct from the
triptyque
– which holds good for France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and one or two other countries. That the validity of the form depended entirely upon the declaration of the customs of the country from which the motor had originally come, this man did not mention.

Our ship, by name the
Accrington
, a small and slightly squalid boat, was obliged, owing to the vagaries of the tide, to leave the dock about five. We went off in a tender, half-
an-hour
later, having taken a taxi and done some shopping in the meanwhile. David, having left London in a bowler, provided himself with a high quality Panama; Simon purchased a library of Oppenheims; and I bought a postcard of a view of the docks taken from the air. In addition, we took on board the
Times,
the
Sketch
, the
Tatler, Vogue, John Bull
, the
Daily Express
, the
London Mail
, the
Methodist Times
, and the
Nation
.

Once safely aboard, it was not long before David received a visit from the Dock Superintendent, a horsey-looking man in his anecdotage, with the usual grievance against the authorities. He hoped we were comfortable. At dinner we were ushered to seats opposite him, and he and David kept up a vivacious chatter about fishing rights off the Iceland coast. About
half-past
eight he left. We drank a little beer to settle the stomach and went to bed at eleven. David and Simon shared the
state-room
. I had an ordinary cabin to myself. The state-room had brass beds, not berths.

The morning of Sunday dawned sunny, but rough. The sea was a deep blue, flecked with white. For the moment I felt rather peculiar as I clung to my brass railings or fell heavily against the iron-studded side of the ship. At nine the steward, all attention, appeared with tea and toast. This enabled us to
dress for lunch. The day passed without event. We went and lay up in the forepart of the ship, and David made offering to Neptune down the anchor-hole when no-one was looking. This may have been due to the nauseous odour of the fish manure with which the hold was filled. Fish manure, so the steward informed us, was the most flourishing export industry of modern times. As pleasure traffic to Germany was still non-existent, it was the only means by which the ships were enabled to pay their way at all. Towards evening it became even rougher, and two odious little boys, who had formerly stalked about the ship calling one another ‘old chap’, were now conspicuous by their absence – or rather by the noises that emerged from their cabin, which adjoined the smoking-room.

At length, land was sighted on the right. This was followed by Heligoland on the left. Then it grew dark and we went to bed. Gradually we passed Cuxhaven and entered the mouth of the Elbe, and lights shone out from either shore. I must confess to a childish excitement when arriving anywhere by ship, and was perpetually poking my head out of the porthole at the sound of a whistle or the flash of a signal lamp. Naturally, therefore, just as it was becoming light, I fell asleep and did not awaken till we were moored fast to the quay at Hamburg.

The scene was one of tremendous activity. All around towered vast warehouses in the German manner, great expanses of blank brick, surmounted by stretch upon stretch of shining roofs in irregular triangles, like the settings of a modern film. In the air was the tang of salt water and that clear, fresh smell of towns on early summer mornings that is quite distinct from the proverbial freshness of the country dawn. Great long timber barges, with squat black, shingled roofs, were hurried past by tiny little tugs. On the quay, stalwart dockers were busy manoeuvring enormous packing-cases, rained on them by innumerable cranes. Motor-boats, containing pilots and harbour police, were flying in all directions. And in the distance, red, black, and white, loomed the funnels of the great liners, softened through a faint haze of smoke.

By eight o’clock, save for us and a swarm of German stevedores and officials, the
Accrington
was empty. German bureaucracy had risen to the occasion of Diana’s arrival. Each official spoke perfect English and displayed a paternal kindness, which contrasted strongly with the disobligingness that usually distinguishes the ports of France. A benign figure in uniform, facially the image of the Kaiser, busied himself with our passports as soon as we had bathed; while a living replica of the Crown Prince, bearing his lunch in a crocodile bag, had been deputed by the RAC to attend to the car. After many unpleasant moments, and a reformation of the whole dock in order that ship and crane might meet, Diana was landed uninjured on dry land. We bade the steward goodbye, and accompanied by the Crown Prince and the Kaiser, marched on shore. The latter, radiating good-fellowship, guided us by the arm and made little jokes.

‘You will now ’ave to drrive to the rright. This is no longerr England. Ha, ha, ha. He, he, he!’

We all piled on the car and motored round the corner to a customs yard. There we remained for three hours.

We were now in the midst of the warehouses. Cliffs of unrelieved brick hemmed us in on every side, till the sky was scarcely visible. Incident was forthcoming in the cruelties of the waggon-drivers, one of whom, finding his horses unable to get a huge load of barrels started, beat them so unmercifully that they fell to the ground in a sheet of flame caused by the contact of hoof and paving-stone. Naturally our British blood boiled, and in company with other drivers, we ran to the rescue. The unfortunate animals, however, seemed better able to rise to their feet unaided. At the same time, nowhere in England could one have found cart-horses so well tended or in such good condition.

Meanwhile David was arguing his way from one official to another, deeper and deeper into the warehouses, over the subject of paying a deposit on legitimate spare parts. After an interminable time, a compromise was arrived at, though even
this was expensive enough. It was nearly one o’clock by the time we had driven into the more fashionable quarter, where, after filling up with petrol, we had lunch at an hotel on the front of one of the large lakes round which the town is built. The decorations were modern and ugly, consisting of Prussian blue material and brass, the latter mostly fretted by a key pattern. The food was good. At half-past two we found our way to the suburbs and set off for Berlin.

THE NORTH GERMAN PLAIN
on that August afternoon wore an air of tranquil beauty, not usually connected with the popular visualization of its expressionless surface. Flat, and even in the golden light of sunset unavoidably grey, it exhibits all the agricultural features that make otherwise uninteresting country attractive. And the view offered by any slight rise in the land is infinite. The fields are small, with hedges; and, as it was harvest time, many were filled with corn-cocks that threw long shadows on the dry yellow stubble. Labourers, men and women, were working late into the evening, gleaning and carting. Here and there small pinewoods, perhaps surrounding an unpretentious country house, formed dark patches on the landscape. Everything seemed at right angles, the side roads to the main road, and the hedges and furrows to both. But once away from the main road, this regularity no longer prevailed.

The half-timbered, red-brick buildings of the villages and farmhouses were surmounted by immense moss-grown expanses of steep-sloping roof. Even those houses and barns that were modern had preserved this style, reminiscent of many of Durer’s etchings, particularly that of the Prodigal Son among the Swine, though Durer, in fact, came from the south. Each village contains a war memorial – or sometimes two, the first dating from 1870 – executed in the style of an advertisement for eugenics; and a parish church that has the appearance of having been designed by an architect who, though unable to draw, knew his way about a box of toy bricks.

The road, at first abominable, improved in the province of Brandenburg.
Pavé
and asphalt seemed to alternate, while at the side was left a ‘rotten row’ for carts, from one of which a fat wench threw an apple that hit Simon on the head, most part flanked on either side were rows of small trees, either chestnuts, elms that did not look like elms, or apples laden with fruit. These, by their continual dripping, had evidently destroyed any surface that the road might once have possessed. Every now and then a large stretch would be completely closed for repairs, which entailed either making circuitous detours by side roads, or removing barriers and blocks of stone in the face of protesting workmen. After one excursion into the countryside, which ended in a bog, the latter course seemed preferable, though even after the menders had left work there was always some officious cyclist to champion their violated rights.

At intervals couples of
Wandervögel
, open-necked youths with flaxen hair and khaki shirts and shorts, would wave a greeting as we passed. Some were carrying guitars. Our acquaintance with their species was destined to ripen into intimacy as we travelled further south.

Other motors were scarce. Benz, Mercedes, Austro-Daimler, and a few Italian cars, are almost the only makes to be seen in Germany. The light car is practically unknown.

After passing through Ludwigslust and Kyritz, we arrived in Spandau, an industrial suburb of Berlin, just as it was beginning to grow dark, having taken six hours to drive two hundred miles without a single stop. To David’s delight, we found ourselves upon a newly-made approach to the capital, as wide and as long as the Great West Road out of London, only more effective, inasmuch as it is perfectly straight, slopes downhill, and is for the most part flanked on either side by groups of high modern buildings, grey and rather ornamented, horrible in detail, but successful as a whole. Below us the lights of the city began to twinkle. About eight o’clock we drove through the Potsdammerplatz and up to the front door of the Esplanade Hotel, the staff of which was impressed by our
arrival. Large airy rooms on the first floor, looking out through French windows on a garden courtyard and containing every comfort known to science, had been reserved by telephone from Hamburg. We dressed and went down to dinner about half-past nine, to find the restaurant at its fullest. We ate caviare as large as frog spawn and blue trout that looked like Ming pottery. Afterwards we sauntered out, and, to Simon’s disgust, walked a long distance in search of a café that did not exist. Berlin’s amusements have been censored since the immediate postwar days. Very tired we at length returned to bed – or rather to an eiderdown buttoned on all sides to a sheet.

There was little inducement to arise next morning, with a library of detective stories at hand and a
Berliner Tagblatt
included in the tray of breakfast. However, I was down before the others, with a view to changing some money at the
Deutsche Bank
. But in spite of the most precise and categorical directions, I was unable to find it. The hotel, therefore, supplied me with a diminutive page, who marched me through the streets with that pompous, measured tread that one usually connects with bishops in the rear of processions. This called forth hoots of ridicule from other boys engaged in
window-cleaning
and doorstep-scrubbing. Finally I was left in the hands of an obese commissionaire, from whose chin descended a luxuriant growth of grizzled beard parted in the middle. Instead of directing me to the Letter of Credit Department, he impelled me into the middle of the road, and with the gestures of a Franciscan preacher, proceeded to declaim the glories of his bank: not only was this side of the street all
Deutsche Bank
, but also that. What beautiful buildings! and what we saw here was not all; there was more round the corner. Round the corner we went; I changed my money; and taking a short cut for foot passengers only, came out on the Unter den Linden, next door to a barber’s, into which I went, as my hair needed cutting. It was with difficulty that the man could be persuaded to take enough off, so alarmed was he lest he should be thought to admire the ordinary shaven scalp of
his country. An English
Weekly Graphic
showed pictures of Simon’s expedition removing the stone engraved with an Inca inscription that Simon had discovered on the beach of some remote islet. Simon himself was not visible; nor did he appear to have accompanied the others in their friendly advances to the giant lizards six feet long, that had previously existed only in the illustrations to Wells’
History of the World.

After buying a piece of soap I walked down the Unter den Linden to the broad space at the end, and entered the Kaiser Frederick Museum. Being as yet unfamiliar with their native surroundings, the naturalism of the Greek sculptures seemed to convey to me little more than photography in three dimensions. The masterpiece of the collection is a superb head of Athene by Pheidias. Only the greatest sculptors have realised that one side of the human face is seldom a symmetrical counterpart of the other. The museum was full of family parties ranging from infancy to dotage, all doing their duty by the famous works of art and reading to one another analyses of the respective merits of the statues from out of large but closely-printed handbooks. The salient feature of the building was, however, a penetrating smell, reminiscent of washing hung to dry before the kitchen stove. This drove me out. Next door was the cathedral, which I tried to enter, but, unfortunately, by the wrong door, and found myself sitting in a queue of stranded mothers seeking charity. After a few minutes’ rest, I returned to the hotel on top of a ’bus. Simon and David were dressed, and we went to the Bristol Bar – where everyone in Berlin is said to drink cocktails before lunch.

‘Everyone’ consisted of an American in a straw hat talking business with another in a Lincoln Bennett Hamberg bound in white; an Englishman in chocolate suede shoes and a Guards’ moustache, who looked as if he had been turned out of England; and a Mr Hutten, London-tailored, a friend of David’s early days in Germany, who now conducts a furniture business in New York. I heard of him when I returned to England, from other sources. He told us to lunch at Pelzer’s. Simon explained that the plethora of ‘Bristol’ Hotels in Europe was due to the restlessness of a former Lord Bristol, also a bishop, who travelled so incessantly and in such magnificence, that the very fact of his having stopped at an hotel gave it a reputation which it could only preserve by assuming his name.

We lunched at Pelzer’s in a bower formed of gilded
trellis-work
and real vines, the back of which was decorated with scene-painters’ landscapes. I ate nothing. David had a haunch
of venison stuffed with foie gras and covered with cherries, but was too lazy to touch it. Afterwards Simon went home to read, while David and I scoured the city for a cinema. None were open till six o’clock. Berlin has not sunk to the depravity of afternoon amusements.

That evening, after dining early, we drove out to Charlottenburg to a musical comedy called ‘Anna Marie’. The hotel had reserved us seats in the front row; but when we arrived late there were only two instead of three. David fell into the most extravagant rage and abused the officials, old men in pinces-nez, with such effect that they compelled a man to vacate his seat for one of us. Then Simon decided that it was too hot and that he would prefer to sit in the beer garden outside after all. So David and I went in alone, in the middle of the act, to the very audible annoyance of the audience.

The cast consisted of five. The leading man was bald and dressed in tennis clothes, perfected by a college tie and leather belt. The leading lady was pretty, but her mass of fluffy yellow hair, done over one eye, and a set smile, redolent of the Victorian music hall stage, rather detracted from her charms. Her clothes were 1923. The phenomenal idea of an evening scarf attached to the dress had reached Berlin in the same breath as it had gone out of fashion elsewhere. At the end, with a wickedly indecent high kick, she disclosed a long pair of thick purple drawers reaching to the knee. But the favourite was a very fat old woman in a tight, sleeveless modern dress and bangles, her hair done in a chignon, who burlesqued the others, flinging her plump calves from side to side and singing in a high, raucous, and rather pathetic voice. The tunes were delightful and composed by the brothers Gilbert. At length the whole backcloth began to revolve, displaying an illuminated panorama of Berlin at night, and all five danced in front as it went round behind them. The plot was snobbish, Anna Marie being a girl of noble birth, which she conceals, in order to induce the bald man, the love of her life, to marry her in a suburban back garden. The transports of her husband’s family when they discovered her origin were
touching, and even her father, in a frock coat and top hat, was reconciled. This is a favourite theme for continental comedy and light opera. We saw it repeated several times in Italy and once on a film, in which the girls at a convent school bullied the life out of one of their number, because she was the daughter of a cocoa king –
‘uno cacao-re’.

In the intervals we rejoined Simon in the garden; the band beneath the trees would repeat the tune of the act before; and it was a sight that filled the heart with pleasure to see the whole audience, mostly consisting of short, fat women in dark skirts and white blouses, swaying to and fro to the prevailing lilt, with pint mugs of yellow Pilsener beer held tightly in their right hands.

About half-past eleven we drove to the Adlon Bar to meet Mr Hütten. He appeared in a bowler hat, with a friend. They were to show us the Berlin underworld. This was some way away and we went in a taxi, the driver of which was ashamed of us. Eventually we arrived at an orange door in the slums flanked by two box trees. Beyond it was a room that resembled the lounge of a station hotel in the Midlands. At one table at the back, David espied his friend, Henry Featherstonhaugh, attaché in Prague, seated with the son of a member of the German Cabinet, and some other more beautiful companions. The vigour of David’s recognition caused him some embarrassment. He combined incomparable pomp of manner with extreme cynicism. His friend, dark and sinister, purred suavely about the charm of travel. Other people collected, and we formed a larger and larger ring, finally returning to bed about half-past one.

The next morning, in company with a large crowd, we gazed at Hindenburg’s windows. He did not appear. After a sleepy afternoon we dined at a Russian restaurant. This was not one of the up-to-date, semi-smart establishments that are so common in Paris, but a small, sordid, double room on the ground floor, run simply for the benefit of some of the three hundred thousand exiles in Berlin. The menu was printed in Russian, and so were the newspapers. We ate the traditional salad and drank kwass and vodka, the former tasting like strong, but not dark, sweetened beer. After dinner we proceeded to the ‘Elysium’, of which we became members on the spot. Simon was good enough to consider that my having been posted that morning in the
Times
as recipient of
third-class
honours in history, warranted a bottle of champagne. This caused a sensation. Not only did the movable units of the band transplant themselves and their instruments to the backs of our chairs, but the proprietor himself arrived, extremely thirsty. He was followed by a ‘friend’. The ‘friend’ passed some champagne to another ‘friend’, who also joined the circle. Bottles arrived automatically. We were in evening dress and felt that we were raising the tone of Berlin.