Europe Revised — 25 - Ch. XII: Night Life--with the Life Part Missing, pt. 1

Night Life--with the Life Part Missing In our consideration of this topic we come first to the night life of the English.

They have none.

Passing along to the next subject under the same heading, which is the night life of Paris, we find here so much night life, of such a delightfully transparent and counterfeit character; so much made-to-measure deviltry; so many members of the Madcaps' Union engaged on piece-work; so much delicious, hoydenish derring-do, all carefully stage-managed and expertly timed for the benefit of North and South American spenders, to the end that the deliriousness shall abate automatically in exact proportion as the spenders quit spending--in short, so much of what is typically Parisian that, really Paris, on its merits, is entitled to a couple of chapters of its own.

All of which naturally brings us to the two remaining great cities of Mid-Europe--Berlin and Vienna--and leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the Europeans, in common with all other peoples on the earth, only succeed--when they try to be desperately wicked--in being desperately dull; whereas when they seek their pleasures in a natural manner they present racial slants and angles that are very interesting to observe and very pleasant to have a hand in.

Take the Germans now: No less astute a world traveler than Samuel G.

Blythe is sponsor for the assertion that the Berliners follow the night-life route because the Kaiser found his capital did not attract the tourist types to the extent he had hoped, and so decreed that his faithful and devoted subjects, leaving their cozy hearths and inglenooks, should go forth at the hour when graveyards yawn--and who could blame them?

--to spend the dragging time until dawn in being merry and bright.

So saying His Majesty went to bed, leaving them to work while he slept.

After viewing the situation at first hand the present writer is of the opinion that Mr. Blythe was quite right in his statements.

Certainly nothing is more soothing to the eye of the onlooker, nothing more restful to his soul, than to behold a group of Germans enjoying themselves in a normal manner.

And absolutely nothing is quite so ghastly sad as the sight of those same well-flushed, well-fleshed Germans cavorting about between the hours of two and four-thirty A. M.

, trying, with all the pachydermic ponderosity of Barnum's Elephant Quadrille, to be professionally gay and cutuppish.

The Prussians must love their Kaiser dearly.

We sit up with our friends when they are dead;

they stay up for him until they are ready to die themselves.

As is well known Berlin abounds in pleasure palaces, so called.

Enormous places these are, where under one widespreading roof are three or four separate restaurants of augmented size, not to mention winecellars and beer-caves below-stairs, and a dancehall or so and a Turkish bath, and a bar, and a skating rink, and a concert hall--and any number of private dining rooms.

The German mind invariably associates size with enjoyment.

To these establishments, after his regular dinner, the Berliner repairs with his family, his friend or his guest.

There is one especially popular resort, a combination of restaurant and vaudeville theater, at which one eats an excellent dinner excellently served, and between courses witnesses the turns of a first-rate variety bill, always with the inevitable team of American coon shouters, either in fast colors or of the burnt-cork variety, sandwiched into the program somewhere.

In the Friedrichstrasse there is another place, called the Admiralspalast, which is even more attractive.

Here, inclosing a big, oval-shaped ice arena, balcony after balcony rises circling to the roof.

On one of these balconies you sit, and while you dine and after you have dined you look down on a most marvelous series of skating stunts.

In rapid and bewildering succession there are ballets on skates, solo skating numbers, skating carnivals and skating races.

Finally scenery is slid in on runners and the whole company, in costumes grotesque and beautiful, go through a burlesque that keeps you laughing when you are not applauding, and admiring when you are doing neither; while alternating lightwaves from overhead electric devices flood the picture with shifting, shimmering tides of color.

It is like seeing a Christmas pantomime under an aurora borealis.

In America we could not do these things--at least we never have done them.

Either the performance would be poor or the provender would be highly expensive, or both.

But here the show is wonderful, and the victuals are good and not extravagantly priced, and everybody has a bully time.

At eleven-thirty or thereabout the show at the ice palace is over--concluding with a push-ball match between teams of husky maidens who were apparently born on skates and raised on skates, and would not feel natural unless they were curveting about on skates.

Their skates seem as much a part of them as tails to mermaids.

It is bedtime now for sane folks, but at this moment a certain madness which does not at all fit in with the true German temperament descends on the crowd.

Some go upstairs to another part of the building, where there is a dancehall called the Admiralskasino; but, to the truly swagger, one should hasten to the Palais du Danse on the second floor of the big Metropolpalast in the Behrenstrasse.

This place opens promptly at midnight and closes promptly at two o'clock in the morning.

Inasmuch as the Palais du Danse is an institution borrowed outright from the French they have adopted a typically French custom here.

As the visitor enters--if he be a stranger--a flunky in gorgeous livery intercepts him and demands an entrance fee amounting to about a dollar and a quarter in our money, as I recall.

This tariff the American or Englishman pays, but the practiced Berliner merely suggests to the doorkeeper the expediency of his taking a long running start and jumping off into space, and stalks defiantly in without forking over a single pfennig to any person whatsoever.

The Palais du Danse is incomparably the most beautiful ballroom in the world--so people who have been all over the world agree--and it is spotlessly clean and free from brackish smells, which is more than can be said of any French establishment of similar character I have seen.

At the Palais du Danse the patron sits at a table--a table with something on it besides a cloth being an essential adjunct to complete enjoyment of an evening of German revelry; and as he sits and drinks he listens to the playing of a splendid band and looks on at the dancing.

Nothing is drunk except wine--and by wine I mainly mean champagne of the most sweetish and sickish brand obtainable.

Elsewhere, for one-twentieth the cost, the German could have the best and purest beer that is made; but he is out now for the big night.

Accordingly he saturates his tissues with the sugary bubble-water of France.

He does not join in the dancing himself.

The men dancers are nearly all paid dancers, I think, and the beautifully clad women who dance are either professionals, too, or else belong to a profession that is older even than dancing is.

They all dance with a profound German gravity and precision.

Here is music to set a wooden leg a-jigging; but these couples circle and glide and dip with an incomprehensible decorum and slowness.

When we were there, they were dancing the tango or one of its manifold variations.

All Europe, like all America, was, for the moment, tango mad.

While we were in Paris, M. Jean Richepin lectured before the Forty Immortals of the Five Academies assembled in solemn conclave at the Institute of France.

They are called the Forty Immortals because nobody can remember the names of more than five of them.

He took for his subject the tango--his motto, in short, being one borrowed from the conductors in the New York subway--"Mind your step!"

While he spoke, which was for an hour or more, the bebadged and beribboned bosoms of his illustrious compatriots heaved with emotion;

their faces--or such parts of their faces as were visible above the whiskerline--flushed with enthusiasm, and most vociferously they applauded his masterly phrasing and his tracing-out of the evolution of the tango, all the way from its Genesis, as it were, to its Revelation.

I judge the revelation particularly appealed to them--that part of it appeals to so many.

After that the tango seemed literally to trail us.

We could not escape it.

While we were in Berlin the emperor saw fit officially to forbid the dancing of the tango by officers of his navy and army.

We reached England just after the vogue for tango teas started.

Naturally we went to one of these affairs.

It took place at a theater.

Such is the English way of interpreting the poetry of motion--to hire some one else to do it for you, and--in order to get the worth of your money--sit and swizzle tea while the paid performer is doing it.

At the tango tea we patronized the tea was up to standard, but the dancing of the box-ankled professionals was a disappointment.

Beforehand I had been told that the scene on the stage would be a veritable picture.

And so it was--Rosa Bonheur's Horse Fair.