Was he resigned when the dread
moment came? And how is the family bearing up? It is hours before
the place settles down again to that calm which will endure for
another month, until somebody else takes a bath on a physician's
prescription.
Even in the sanctity of a Paris hotel a bath is more or less a
public function unless you lock your door. All sorts of domestic
servitors drift in, filled with a morbid curiosity to see how a
foreigner deports himself when engaged in this strange, barbaric
rite. On the occasion of my first bath on French soil, after
several of the hired help had thus called on me informally, causing
me to cower low in my porcelain retreat, I took advantage of a
moment of comparative quiet to rise drippingly and draw the latch.
I judged the proprietor would be along next, and I was not dressed
for him. The Lady Susanna of whom mention has previously been
made must have stopped at a French hotel at some time of her life.
This helps us to understand why she remained so calm when the
elders happened in.
Even as now practiced, bathing still remains a comparative novelty
in the best French circles, I imagine. I base this presumption
on observations made during a visit to Versailles. I went to
Versailles; I trod with reverent step those historic precincts
adorned with art treasures uncountable, with curios magnificent,
with relics invaluable. I visited the little palace and the big;
I ventured deep into that splendid forest where, in the company
of ladies regarding whom there has been a good deal of talk
subsequently, France's Grandest and Merriest Monarch disported
himself. And I found out what made the Merriest Monarch merry - so
far as I could see, there was not a bathroom on the place. He was
a true Frenchman - was Louis the Fourteenth.
In Berlin, at the Imperial Palace, our experience was somewhat
similar. Led by a guide we walked through acres of state drawing
rooms and state dining rooms and state reception rooms and state
picture rooms; and we were told that most of them - or, at least,
many of them - were the handiwork of the late Andreas Schluter.
The deceased Schluter was an architect, a painter, a sculptor, a
woodcarver, a decorator, all rolled into one. He was the George
M. Cohan of his time; and I think he also played the clarinet,
being a German.
We traversed miles of these Schluter masterpieces. Eventually we
heard sounds of martial music without, and we went to a window
overlooking a paved courtyard; and from that point we presently
beheld a fine sight. For the moment the courtyard was empty,
except that in the center stood a great mass of bronze - by Schluter,
I think - a heroic equestrian statue of Saint George in the act of
destroying the first adulterated German sausage. But in a minute
the garrison turned out; and then in through an arched gateway
filed the relief guard headed by a splendid band, with bell-hung
standards jingling at the head of the column and young officers
stalking along as stiff as ramrods, and soldiers marching with the
goosestep.
In the German army the private who raises his knee the highest and
sticks his shank out ahead of him the straightest, and slams his
foot down the hardest and jars his brain the painfulest, is promoted
to be a corporal and given a much heavier pair of shoes, so that
he may make more noise and in time utterly destroy his reason.
The goosestep would be a great thing for destroying grasshoppers
or cutworms in a plague year in a Kansas wheatfield.
At the Kaiser's palace we witnessed all these sights, but we did
not run across any bathrooms or any bathtubs. However, we were
in the public end of the establishment and I regard it as probable
that in the other wing, where the Kaiser lives when at home, there
are plenty of bathrooms. I did not investigate personally. The
Kaiser was out at Potsdam and I did not care to call in his absence.
Bathrooms are plentiful at the hotel where we stopped at Berlin.
I had rather hoped to find the bedroom equipped with an old-fashioned
German feather bed. I had heard that one scaled the side of a
German bed on a stepladder and then fell headlong into its smothering
folds like a gallant fireman invading a burning rag warehouse; but
this hotel happened to be the best hotel that I ever saw outside
the United States. It had been built and it was managed on American
lines, plus German domestic service - which made an incomparable
combination - and it was furnished with modern beds and provided
with modern bathrooms.
Probably as a delicate compliment to the Kaiser, the bathtowels
were starched until the fringes at the ends bristled up stiffly
a-curl, like the ends of His Imperial Majesty's equally imperial
mustache. Just once - and once only - I made the mistake of rubbing
myself with one of those towels just as it was. I should have
softened it first by a hackling process, as we used to hackle the
hemp in Kentucky; but I did not. For two days I felt like an
etching. I looked something like one too.
In Vienna we could not get a bedroom with a bathroom attached
- they did not seem to have any - but we were told there was a
bathroom just across the hall which we might use with the utmost
freedom. This bathroom was a large, long, loftly, marble-walled
vault. It was as cold as a tomb and as gloomy as one, and very
smelly. Indeed it greatly resembled the pictures I have seen of
the sepulcher of an Egyptian king - only I would have said that
this particular king had been skimpily embalmed by the royal
undertakers in the first place, and then imperfectly packed.
