An American Idyll by Cornelia Stratton Parker

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Such excitement! We had expected two hundred dollars at the least! We
tore out and bought ten cents' worth of doughnuts, to celebrate. When we
exclaimed to him over his goodness,--of course we paid the sixty-five
dollars,--all he said was: "Do you think a doctor is blind? And does a
man go steerage to Europe if he has a lot of money in the bank?" Bless
that doctor's heart! Bless all doctors' hearts! We went through our
married life in the days of our financial slimness, with kindness shown
us by every doctor we ever had. I remember our Heidelberg German doctor
sent us a bill for a year of a dollar and a half. And even in our more
prosperous days, at Carl's last illness, with that good Seattle doctor
calling day and night, and caring for me after Carl's death, he refused
to send any bill for anything. And a little later, when I paid a long
overdue bill to our blessed Oakland doctor for a tonsil operation, he
sent the check back torn in two. Bless doctors!

When we left for Harvard, we had an idea that perhaps one year of
graduate work would be sufficient. Naturally, about two months was
enough to show us that one year would get us nowhere. Could we finance
an added year at, perhaps, Wisconsin? And then, in November, Professor
Miller of Berkeley called to talk things over with Carl. Anon he
remarked, more or less casually, "The thing for you to do is to have a
year's study in Germany," and proceeded to enlarge on that idea. We sat
dumb, and the minute the door was closed after him, we flopped. "What
was the man thinking of--to suggest a year in Germany, when we have no
money and two babies, one not a year and a half, and one six weeks old!"
Preposterous!

That was Saturday afternoon. By Monday morning we had decided we would
go! Thereupon we wrote West to finance the plan, and got beautifully sat
upon for our "notions." If we needed money, we had better give up this
whole fool University idea and get a decent man-sized job. And then we
wrote my father,--or, rather, I wrote him without telling Carl till
after the letter was mailed,--and bless his heart! he replied with a fat
God-bless-you-my-children registered letter, with check enclosed,
agreeing to my stipulation that it should be a six-per-cent business
affair. Suppose we could not have raised that money--suppose our lives
had been minus that German experience! Bless fathers! They may scold and
fuss at romance, and have "good sensible ideas of their own" on such
matters, but--bless fathers!

CHAPTER V

We finished our year at Harvard, giving up the A.M. idea for the
present. Carl got A's in every subject and was asked to take a teaching
fellowship under Ripley; but it was Europe for us. We set forth February
22, 1909, in a big snowstorm, with two babies, and one thousand six
hundred and seventy-six bundles, bags, and presents. Jim was in one of
those fur-bags that babies use in the East. Everything we were about to
forget the last minute got shoved into that bag with Jim, and it surely
began to look as if we had brought a young and very lumpy mastodon into
the world!

We went by boat from Boston to New York, and sailed on the Pennsylvania
February 24. People wrote us in those days: "You two brave people--think
of starting to Europe with two babies!" Brave was the last word to use.
Had we worried or had fears over anything, and yet fared forth, we
should perhaps have been brave. As it was, I can feel again the
sensation of leaving New York, gazing back on the city buildings and
bridges bathed in sunshine after the storm. Exultant joy was in our
hearts, that was all. Not one worry, not one concern, not one small drop
of homesickness. We were to see Europe together, year before we had
dreamed it possible. It just seemed too glorious to be true. "Brave"?
Far from it. Simply eager, glowing, filled to the brim with a
determination to drain every day to the full.

I discovered that, while my husband had married a female who could not
cook rice (though she learned), I had taken unto myself a spouse who
curled up green half a day out on the ocean, and stayed that way for
about six days. He tried so desperately to help with the babies, but it
always made matters worse. If I had turned green, too--But babies and I
prospered without interruption, though some ants did try to eat Jim's
scalp off one night--"sugar ants" the doctor called them. "They knew
their business," our dad remarked. We were three days late getting into
Hamburg--fourteen days on the ocean, all told. And then to be in Hamburg
in Germany--in Europe! I remember our first meal in the queer little
cheap hotel we rooted out. "_Eier_" was the only word on the bill of
fare we could make out, so Carl brushed up his German and ordered four
for us, fried. And the waiter brought four each. He probably declared
for years that all Americans always eat four fried eggs each and every
night for supper.

We headed for Leipzig at once, and there Carl unearthed the Pension
Schroeter on Sophien Platz. There we had two rooms and all the food we
could eat,--far too much for us to eat, and oh! so delicious,--for
fifty-five dollars a month for the entire family, although Jim hardly
ranked as yet, economically speaking, as part of the consuming public.
We drained Leipzig to the dregs--a good German idiom. Carl worked at his
German steadily, almost frantically, with a lesson every day along with
all his university work--a seven o'clock lecture by Buecher every morning
being the cheery start for the day, and we blocks and blocks from the
University. I think of Carl through those days with extra pride, though
it is hard to decide that I was ever prouder of him at one time than
another. But he strained and labored without ceasing at such an
uninspiring job. All his hard study that broken-hearted summer at
Freiburg had given him no single word of an economic vocabulary. In
Leipzig he listened hour by hour to the lectures of his German
professors, sometimes not understanding an important word for several
days, yet exerting every intellectual muscle to get some light in his
darkness. Then, for, hours each day and almost every evening, it was
grammar, grammar, grammar, till he wondered at times if all life meant
an understanding of the subjunctive. Then, little by little, rays of
hope. "I caught five words in ----'s lecture to-day!" Then it was ten,
then twenty. Never a lecture of any day did he miss.

We stole moments for joy along the way. First, of course, there was the
opera--grand opera at twenty-five cents a seat. How Wagner bored us at
first--except the parts here and there that we had known all our lives.
Neither of us had had any musical education to speak of; each of us got
great joy out of what we considered "good" music, but which was
evidently low-brow. And Wagner at first was too much for us. That night
in Leipzig we heard the "Walkuere!"--utterly aghast and rather impatient
at so much non-understandable noise. Then we would drop down to
"Carmen," "La Boheme," Hoffman's "Erzaeblung," and think, "This is life!"
Each night that we spared for a spree we sought out some beer-hall--as
unfrequented a one as possible, to get all the local color we could.

Once Carl decided that, as long as we had come so far, I must get a
glimpse of real European night-life--it might startle me a bit, but
would do no harm. So, after due deliberation, he led me to the Cafe
Bauer, the reputed wild and questionable resort of Leipzig night-life,
though the pension glanced ceiling-wards and sighed and shook their
heads. I do not know just what I did expect to see, but I know that what
I saw was countless stolid family parties--on all sides grandmas and
grandpas and sons and daughters, and the babies in high chairs beating
the tables with spoons. It was quite the most moral atmosphere we ever
found ourselves in. That is what you get for deliberately setting out to
see the wickedness of the world!

From Leipzig we went to Berlin. We did not want to go to Berlin--Jena
was the spot we had in mind. Just as a few months at Harvard showed us
that one year there would be but a mere start, so one semester in
Germany showed us that one year there would get us nowhere. We must stay
longer,--from one to two years longer,--but how, alas, how finance it?
That eternal question! We finally decided that, if we took the next
semester or so in Berlin, Carl could earn money enough coaching to keep
us going without having to borrow more. So to Berlin we went. We
accomplished our financial purpose, but at too great a cost.

In Berlin we found a small furnished apartment on the ground floor of a
Gartenhaus in Charlottenburg--Mommsen Strasse it was. At once Carl
started out to find coaching; and how he found it always seemed to me an
illustration of the way he could succeed at anything anywhere. We knew
no one in Berlin. First he went to the minister of the American church;
he in turn gave him names of Americans who might want coaching, and then
Carl looked up those people. In about two months he had all the coaching
he could possibly handle, and we could have stayed indefinitely in
Berlin in comfort, for Carl was making over one hundred dollars a month,
and that in his spare time.

But the agony of those months: to be in Germany and yet get so little
Germany out of it! We had splendid letters of introduction to German
people, from German friends we had made in Leipzig, but we could not
find a chance even to present them. Carl coached three youngsters in the
three R's; he was preparing two of the age just above, for college; he
had one American youth, who had ambitions to burst out monthly in the
"Saturday Evening Post" stories; there was a class of five middle-aged
women, who wanted Shakespeare, and got it; two classes in Current
Events; one group of Christian Scientists, who put in a modest demand
for the history of the world. I remember Carl had led them up to Pepin
the Short when we left Berlin. He contracted everything and anything
except one group who desired a course of lectures in Pragmatism. I do
not think he had ever heard of the term then, but he took one look at
the lay of the land and said--not so! In his last years, when he became
such a worshiper at the shrine of William James and John Dewey, we often
used to laugh at his Berlin profanity over the very idea of ever getting
a word of such "bunk" into his head.

But think of the strain it all meant--lessons and lessons every day, on
every subject under heaven, and in every spare minute continued grinding
at his German, and, of course, every day numerous hours at the
University, and so little time for sprees together. We assumed in our
prosperity the luxury of a maid--the unparalleled Anna Bederke aus
Rothenburg, Kreis Bumps (?), Posen, at four dollars a month, who for a
year and a half was the amusement and desperation of ourselves and our
friends. Dear, crooked-nosed, one-good-eye Anna! She adored the ground
we walked on. Our German friends told us we had ruined her forever--she
would never be fit for the discipline of a German household again. Since
war was first declared we have lost all track of Anna. Was her Poland
home in the devastated country? Did she marry a soldier, and is she too,
perhaps, a widow? Faithful Anna, do not think for one minute you will
ever be forgotten by the Parkers.

With Anna to leave the young with now and then, I was able to get in two
sprees a week with Carl. Every Wednesday and Saturday noon I met him at
the University and we had lunch together. Usually on Wednesdays we ate
at the Cafe Rheingold, the spot I think of with most affection as I look
back on Berlin.

We used to eat in the "Shell Room"--an individual chicken-and-rice pie
(as much chicken as rice), a vegetable, and a glass of beer each, for
thirty-five cents for both. Saturdays we hunted for different smaller
out-of-the-way restaurants. Wednesday nights "Uncle K." of the
University of Wisconsin always came to supper, bringing a
thirty-five-cent rebate his landlady allowed him when he ate out; and we
had chicken every Wednesday night, which cost--a fat one--never more
than fifty cents. (It was Uncle K. who wrote, "The world is so different
with Carl gone!") Once we rented bicycles and rode all through the
Tiergarten, Carl and I, with the expected stiffness and soreness next
day.

Then there was Christmas in Berlin. Three friends traveled up from Rome
to be with us, two students came from Leipzig, and four from
Berlin--eleven for dinner, and four chairs all told. It was a regular
"La Boheme" festival--one guest appearing with a bottle of wine under
his arm, another with a jar of caviare sent him from Russia. We had a
gay week of it after Christmas, when the whole eleven of us went on some
Dutch-treat spree every night, before going back to our studies.

Then came those last grueling months in Berlin, when Carl had a
breakdown, and I got sick nursing him and had to go to a German
hospital; and while I was there Jim was threatened with pneumonia and
Nandy got tonsillitis. In the midst of it all the lease expired on our
Wohnung, and Carl and Anna had to move the family out. We decided that
we had had all we wanted of coaching in Berlin,--we came to that
conclusion before any of the breakdowns,--threw our pride to the winds,
borrowed more money from my good father, and as soon as the family was
well enough to travel, we made for our ever-to-be-adored Heidelberg.

CHAPTER VI

Here I sit back, and words fail me. I see that year as a kaleidoscope of
one joyful day after another, each rushing by and leaving the memory
that we both always had, of the most perfect year that was ever given to
mortals on earth. I remember our eighth wedding anniversary in Berkeley.
We had been going night after night until we were tired of going
anywhere,--engagements seemed to have heaped up,--so we decided that the
very happiest way we could celebrate that most-to-be-celebrated of all
dates was just to stay at home, plug the telephone, pull down the
blinds, and have an evening by ourselves. Then we got out everything
that we kept as mementos of our European days, and went over them--all
the postcards, memory-books, theatre and opera programmes, etc., and,
lastly, read my diary--I had kept a record of every day in Europe. When
we came to that year in Heidelberg, we just could not believe our own
eyes. How had we ever managed to pack a year so full, and live to tell
the tale? I wish I could write a story of just that year. We swore an
oath in Berlin that we would make Heidelberg mean Germany to us--no
English-speaking, no Americans. As far as it lay in our power, we lived
up to it. Carl and I spoke only German to each other and to the
children, and we shunned our fellow countrymen as if they had had the
plague. And Carl, in the characteristic way he had, set out to fill our
lives with all the real German life we could get into them, not waiting
for that life to come of itself--which it might never have done.

One afternoon, on his way home from the University, he discovered in a
back alley the Weiser Boch, a little restaurant and beer-hall so full of
local color that it "hollered." No, it did not holler: it was too real
for that. It was sombre and carved up--it whispered. Carl made immediate
friends, in the way he had, with the portly Frau and Herr who ran the
Weiser Boch: they desired to meet me, they desired to see the Kinder,
and would not the Herr Student like to have the Weiser Boch lady mention
his name to some of the German students who dropped in? Carl left his
card, and wondered if anything would come of it.

The very next afternoon,--such a glowing account of the Amerikaner the
Weiser Boch lady must have given,--a real truly German student, in his
corps cap and ribbons, called at our home--the stiffest, most decorous
heel-clicking German student I ever was to see. His embarrassment was
great when he discovered that Carl was out, and I seemed to take it
quite for granted that he was to sit down for a moment and visit with
me. He fell over everything. But we visited, and I was able to gather
that his corps wished Herr Student Par-r-r-ker to have beer with them
the following evening. Then he bowed himself backwards and out, and
fled.

I could scarce wait for Carl to get home--it was too good to be true.
And that was but the beginning. Invitation after invitation came to
Carl, first from one corps, then from another; almost every Saturday
night he saw German student-life first hand somewhere, and at least one
day a week he was invited to the duels in the Hirsch Gasse. Little by
little we got the students to our Wohnung; then we got chummier and
chummier, till we would walk up Haupt Strasse saluting here, passing a
word there, invited to some student function one night, another affair
another night. The students who lived in Heidelberg had us meet their
families, and those who were batching in Heidelberg often had us come to
their rooms. We made friendships during that year that nothing could
ever mar.

It is two years now since we received the last letter from any
Heidelberg chum. Are they all killed, perhaps? And when we can
communicate again, after the war, think of what I must write them! Carl
was a revelation to most of them--they would talk about him to me, and
ask if all Americans were like him, so fresh in spirit, so clean, so
sincere, so full of fun, and, with it all, doing the finest work of all
of them but one in the University.

The economics students tried to think of some way of influencing Alfred
Weber to give another course of lectures at the University. He was in
retirement at Heidelberg, but still the adored of the students. Finally,
they decided that a committee of three should represent them and make a
personal appeal. Carl was one of the three chosen. The report soon flew
around, how, in Weber's august presence, the Amerikaner had stood with
his hands in his pockets--even sat for a few moments on the edge of
Weber's desk. The two Germans, posed like ramrods, expected to see such
informality shoved out bodily. Instead, when they took their leave, the
Herr Professor had actually patted the Amerikaner on the shoulder, and
said he guessed he would give the lectures.

Then his report in Gothein's Seminar, which went so well that I fairly
burst with pride. He had worked day and night on that. I was to meet him
at eight after it had been given, and we were to have a celebration. I
was standing by the entrance to the University building when out came an
enthused group of jabbering German students, Carl in their midst. They
were patting him on the back, shaking his hands furiously; and when they
saw me, they rushed to tell me of Carl's success and how Gothein had
said before all that it had been the best paper presented that semester.

I find myself smiling as I write this--I was too happy that night to
eat.

The Sunday trips we made up the Neckar: each morning early we would take
the train and ride to where we had walked the Sunday previous; then we
would tramp as far as we could,--meaning until dark,--have lunch at some
untouristed inn along the road, or perhaps eat a picnic lunch of our own
in some old castle ruin, and then ride home. Oh, those Sundays! I tell
you no two people in all this world, since people were, have ever had
_one_ day like those Sundays. And we had them almost every week. It
would have been worth going to Germany for just one of those days.

There was the gay, glad party that the Economic students gave, out in
Handschusheim at the "zum Bachlenz"; first, the banquet, with a big
roomful of jovial young Germans; then the play, in which Carl and I both
took part. Carl appeared in a mixture of his Idaho outfit and a German
peasant's costume, beating a large drum. He represented "Materialindex,"
and called out loudly, "Ich bitte mich nicht zu vergessen. Ich bin auch
da." I was "Methode," which nobody wanted to claim; whereat I wept. I am
looking at the flashlight picture of us all at this moment. Then came
the dancing, and then at about four o'clock the walk home in the
moonlight, by the old castle ruin in Handschusheim, singing the German
student-songs.

There was Carnival season, with its masque balls and frivolity, and
Faschings Dienstag, when Hauptstrasse was given over to merriment all
afternoon, every one trailing up and down the middle of the street
masked, and in fantastic costume, throwing confetti and tooting horns,
Carl and I tooting with the rest.

As time went on, we came to have one little group of nine students whom
we were with more than any others. As each of the men took his degree,
he gave a party to the rest of us to celebrate it, every one trying to
outdo the other in fun. Besides these most important degree
celebrations, there were less dazzling affairs, such as birthday
parties, dinners, or afternoon coffee in honor of visiting German
parents, or merely meeting together in our favorite cafe after a
Socialist lecture or a Max Reger concert. In addition to such functions,
Carl and I had our Wednesday night spree just by ourselves, when every
week we met after his seminar. Our budget allowed just twelve and a half
cents an evening for both of us. I put up a supper at home, and in good
weather we ate down by the river or in some park. When it rained and was
cold, we sat in a corner of the third-class waiting-room by the stove,
watching the people coming and going in the station. Then, for dessert,
we went every Wednesday to Tante's Conditorei, where, for two and a half
cents apiece, we got a large slice of a special brand of the most divine
cake ever baked. Then, for two and a half cents, we saw the movies--at a
reduced rate because we presented a certain number of street-car
transfers along with the cash, and then had to sit in the first three
rows. But you see, we used to remark, we have to sit so far away at the
opera, it's good to get up close at something! Those were real
movies--no danger of running into a night-long Robert W. Chambers
scenario. It was in the days before such developments. Then across the
street was an "Automat," and there, for a cent and a quarter apiece, we
could hold a glass under a little spigot, press a button, and
get--refreshments. Then we walked home.

O Heidelberg--I love your every tree, every stone, every blade of grass!

But at last our year came to an end. We left the town in a bower of
fruit-blossoms, as we had found it. Our dear, most faithful friends,
the Kecks, gave us a farewell luncheon; and with babies, bundles, and
baggage, we were off.

Heidelberg was the only spot I ever wept at leaving. I loved it then,
and I love it now, as I love no other place on earth and Carl felt the
same way. We were mournful, indeed, as that train pulled out.

CHAPTER VII

The next two weeks were filled with vicissitudes. The idea was for Carl
to settle the little family in some rural bit of Germany, while he did
research work in the industrial section of Essen, and thereabouts,
coming home week-ends. We stopped off first at Bonn. Carl spent several
days searching up and down the Rhine and through the Moselle country for
a place that would do, which meant a place we could afford that was fit
and suitable for the babies. There was nothing. The report always was:
pensions all expensive, and automobiles touring by at a mile a minute
where the children would be playing.

On a wild impulse we moved up to Clive, on the Dutch border. After Carl
went in search of a pension, it started to drizzle. The boys, baggage,
and I found the only nearby place of shelter in a stone-cutter's
inclosure, filled with new and ornate tombstones. What was my
impecunious horror, when I heard a small crash and discovered that Jim
had dislocated a loose figure of Christ (unconsciously Cubist in
execution) from the top of a tombstone! Eight marks charges! the cost of
sixteen Heidelberg sprees. On his return, Carl reported two pensions,
one quarantined for diphtheria, one for scarlet fever. We slept over a
beer-hall, with such a racket going on all night as never was; and next
morning took the first train out--this time for Duesseldorf.

It is a trifle momentous, traveling with two babies around a country you
know nothing about, and can find no one to enlighten you. At Duesseldorf
Carl searched through the town and suburbs for a spot to settle us in,
getting more and more depressed at the thought of leaving us anywhere.
That Freiburg summer had seared us both deep, and each of us dreaded
another separation more than either let the other know. And then, one
night, after another fruitless search, Carl came home and informed me
that the whole scheme was off. Instead of doing his research work, we
would all go to Munich, and he would take an unexpected semester there,
working with Brentano.

What rejoicings, oh, what rejoicings! As Carl remarked, it may be that
"He travels fastest who travels alone"; but speed was not the only thing
he was after. So the next day, babies, bundles, baggage, and parents
went down the Rhine, almost through Heidelberg, to Munich, with such joy
and contentment in our hearts as we could not describe. All those days
of unhappy searchings Carl had been through must have sunk deep, for in
his last days of fever he would tell me of a form of delirium in which
he searched again, with a heart of lead, for a place to leave the babies
and me.

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