The Collected Drama of H L Mencken
Page 3
THE BRIDEGROOM
Well, let that happen at somebody else’s wedding. As for me, I want everything to go off smoothly, and without unnecessary humor.
THE BEST MAN
Just trust to me. I am the old, original professor. Some call me the greatest living master of wedding technique. I never make a mistake.
THE BRIDEGROOM
(Mopping his brow) Whew! How hot! I am dying!
THE BEST MAN
(Maliciously) It’ll be ten times as bad at the reception. It always is. Just imagine a small room packed to the doors with fat women and old maids! What are they going to have to drink?
THE BRIDEGROOM
Nothing, I suppose. (Apologetically) The Old Lady, you know, is one of those anti-rum fanatics.
THE BEST MAN
Stung! And that’s to be my reward for all this torture!
THE BRIDEGROOM
(Virtuously) Oh, well, it won’t kill you. On the level, I think it would do you a lot of good to put the soft pedal on the rum. You talk as if alcohol were actually a necessity.
THE BEST MAN
(Pricking up his ears) Har, har! So the fair young bridegroom has turned over a new leaf! On the wagon now, are you?
THE BRIDEGROOM
My own idea, I assure you. It seems to me that when a man takes on responsibilities he should give up bad habits. In fact, it goes without saying.
THE BEST MAN
All the same, I venture to bet that it has been said.
THE BRIDEGROOM
What do you mean?
THE BEST MAN
I mean that ma-in-law has been whispering into your shell-like ear.
THE BRIDEGROOM
(Hotly) Ma-in-law be d——!
THE BEST MAN
(Interrupting) Sacrilege! Treason!
THE BRIDEGROOM
(Defiantly) Let me tell you this: If that excellent lady ever attempts—
(The first notes of the wedding march are heard and the sound of general rustling comes from the church. THE BRIDEGROOM and BEST MAN jump to their feet, struggle into their coats, tug at their collars and go to the door. THE BRIDEGROOM rushes back for his hat and claps it on.)
THE BEST MAN
Here, you ass, take off that hat!
THE BRIDEGROOM
(Nervously) What am I to do with it?
THE BEST MAN
Leave it on the table.
THE BRIDEGROOM
But how am I to get it again?
THE BEST MAN
(Humorously) You never will get it—if the preacher sees it first.
THE BRIDEGROOM
Hang it all, I’m going to take it along.
THE BEST MAN
Leave it, I tell you! The sexton’ll bring it around to the night hack.
THE BRIDEGROOM
(Growing more and more agitated) Where is the ring? (He plows through his pockets in alarm.) I can’t find it.
THE BEST MAN
Well, we’ll use a cigar band.
THE BRIDEGROOM
Cigar band nothing! (Distracted) Where is that ring? (He begins to go through all his pockets again.)
THE BEST MAN
In your hand.
THE BRIDEGROOM
Aha!
THE BEST MAN
Now, just watch me and keep your nerve. Start off with your right foot and walk slowly! Now, then, here she goes! (He opens the door and the two start out. THE BRIDE ’s party, which has just started up the aisle, has monopolized all eyes. Only the preacher casts a kindly glance at the two neglected wayfarers. Both trip upon the carpet. THE BRIDEGROOM drops the ring and THE BEST MAN reaches down for it, like a cowboy picking up a handkerchief from horseback.)
THE BEST MAN
You pie-faced chimpanzee! You disgrace to the human race!
THE BRIDEGROOM
(The cold perspiration running down his nose) Go to the devil!
THE BEST MAN
Fool!
[CURTAIN.]
Seeing the World
The scene is the brow of the Hungerberg at Innsbruck. It is the half hour before sunset, and the whole lovely valley of the Inn— still wie die Nacht, tief wie das Meer1 —begins to glow with mauves and apple greens, apricots and silvery blues. Along the peaks of the great snowy mountains which shut it in, as if from the folly and misery of the world, there are touches of piercing primary colours—red, yellow, violet. Far below, hugging the winding river, lies little Innsbruck with its checkerboard parks and Christmas garden villas. A battalion of Austrian soldiers, drilling in the Exerzierplatz, appears as an army of gray ants, now barely visible. Somewhere to the left, beyond the broad flank of the Hungerberg, the night train for Venice labours toward the town.
It is a superbly beautiful scene, perhaps the most beautiful in all Europe. It has colour, dignity, repose. The Alps here come down a bit and so increase their spell. They are not the harsh precipices of Switzerland, nor the too charming stage mountains of the Trentino, but rolling billows of clouds and snow, the high flung waves of some titanic but striken ocean. Now and then comes a faint clank of metal from the funicular railway, but the tracks themselves are hidden among the trees of the lower slopes. The tinkle of an angelus bell (or maybe it is only a sheep bell) is heard from afar. A great bird, an eagle or a falcon, sweeps across the crystal spaces.
Here where we are is a shelf on the mountainside, and the hand of man has converted it into a terrace. To the rear, clinging to the mountain, is an Alpine gasthaus —a bit overdone, perhaps, with its red-framed windows and elaborate fretwork, but still genuinely of the Alps. Along the front of the terrace, protecting sightseers from the sheer drop of a thousand feet, is a stout wooden rail.
A man in an American sack suit, with a bowler hat on his head, lounges against this rail. His elbows rest upon it, his legs are crossed in the fashion of a figure four, and his face is buried in the red book of Herr Baedeker.2 It is the volume on Southern Germany, and he is reading the list of Munich hotels. Now and then he stops to mark one with a pencil, which he wets at his lips each time. While he is thus engaged, another man comes ambling along the terrace, apparently from the direction of the funicular railway station. He, too, carries a red book. It is Baedeker on Austria-Hungary. After gaping around him a bit, this second man approaches the rail near the other and leans his elbows upon it. Presently he takes a package of chewing gum from his coat pocket, selects two pieces, puts them into his mouth and begins to chew. Then he spits idly into space, idly but homerically, a truly stupendous expectoration, a staggering discharge from the Alps to the first shelf of the Lombard plain! The first man, startled by the report, glances up. Their eyes meet and there is a vague glimmer of recognition.
THE FIRST MAN
American?
THE SECOND MAN
Yes; St. Louis.
THE FIRST MAN
Been over long?
THE SECOND MAN
A couple of months.
THE FIRST MAN
What ship’d you come over in?
THE SECOND MAN
The Kronprinz Friedrich.
THE FIRST MAN
Aha, the German line! I guess you found the grub all right.
THE SECOND MAN
Oh, in the main. I have eaten better, but then again, I have eaten worse.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, they charge you enough for it, whether you get it or not. A man could live at the Plaza cheaper.
THE SECOND MAN
I should say he could. What boat did you come over in?
THE FIRST MAN
The Maurentic.
THE SECOND MAN
How is she?
THE FIRST MAN
Oh, so-so.
THE SECOND MAN
I hear the meals on those English ships are nothing to what they used to be.
THE FIRST MAN
That’s what everybody tells me. But, as for me, I can’t say I found them so bad. I had to send back the potatoes twice and the breakf
ast bacon once, but they had very good lima beans.
THE SECOND MAN
Isn’t that English bacon awful stuff to get down?
THE FIRST MAN
It certainly is: all meat and gristle. I wonder what an Englishman would say if you put him next to a plate of genuine, crisp, American bacon.
THE SECOND MAN
I guess he would yell for the police—or choke to death.
THE FIRST MAN
Did you like the German cooking on the Kronprinz?
THE SECOND MAN
Well, I did and I didn’t. The chicken à la Maryland was very good, but they had it only once. I could eat it every day.
THE FIRST MAN
Why didn’t you order it?
THE SECOND MAN
It wasn’t on the bill.
THR FIRST MAN
Oh, bill be damned! You might have ordered it anyhow. Make a fuss and you’ll get what you want. These foreigners have to be bossed around. They’re used to it.
THE SECOND MAN
I guess you’re right. There was a fellow near me who set up a holler about his room the minute he saw it—said it was dark and musty and not fit to pen a hog in—and they gave him one twice as large, and the chief steward bowed and scraped to him, and the room stewards danced around him as if he was a duke. And yet I heard later that he was nothing but a Bismarck herring importer from Hoboken.
THE FIRST MAN
Yes, that’s the way to get what you want. Did you have any nobility on board?
THE SECOND MAN
Yes, there was a Hungarian baron in the automobile business, and two English sirs. The baron was quite a decent fellow: I had a talk with him in the smoking room one night. He didn’t put on any airs at all. You would have thought he was an ordinary man. But the sirs kept to themselves. All they did the whole voyage was to write letters, wear their dress suits and curse the stewards.
THE FIRST MAN
They tell me over here that the best eating is on the French lines.
THE SECOND MAN
Yes, so I hear. But some say, too, that the Scandinavian lines are best, and then again I have heard people boosting the Italian lines.
THE FIRST MAN
I guess each one has its points. They say that you get wine free with meals on the French boats.
THE SECOND MAN
But I hear it’s fourth-rate wine.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, you don’t have to drink it.
THE SECOND MAN
That’s so. But, as for me, I can’t stand a Frenchman. I’d rather do without the wine and travel with the Dutch. Paris is dead compared with Berlin.
THE FIRST MAN
So it is. But those Germans are awful sharks. The way they charge in Berlin is enough to make you sick.
THE SECOND MAN
Don’t tell me. I have been there. No longer ago than last Tuesday—or was it last Monday?—I went into one of those big restaurants on the Unter den Linden and ordered a small steak, French fried potatoes, a piece of pie and a cup of coffee—and what do you think those thieves charged me for it? Three marks fifty. That’s eighty-seven and a half cents. Why, a man could have got the same meal at home for a dollar. These Germans are running wild. American money has gone to their heads. They think every American they get hold of is a millionaire.
THE FIRST MAN
The French are worse. I went into a hotel in Paris and paid ten francs a day for a room for myself and wife, and when we left they charged me one franc forty a day extra for sweeping it out and making the bed!
THE SECOND MAN
That’s nothing. Here in Innsbruck they charge you half a krone a day taxes.
THE FIRST MAN
What! You don’t say!
THE SECOND MAN
Sure thing. And if you don’t eat breakfast in the hotel they charge you a krone for it anyhow.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, well, what next? But, after all, you can’t blame them. We Americans come over here and hand them our pocket-books, and we ought to be glad if we get anything back at all. The way a man has to tip is something fearful.
THE SECOND MAN
Isn’t it, though! I stayed in Dresden a week, and when I left there were six grafters lined up with their claws out. First came the porteer. Then came—
THE FIRST MAN
How much did you give the porteer?
THE SECOND MAN
Five marks.
THE FIRST MAN
You gave him too much. You ought to have given him about three marks, or, say, two marks fifty. How much was your hotel bill?
THE SECOND MAN
Including everything?
THE FIRST MAN
No, just your bill for your room.
THE SECOND MAN
I paid six marks a day.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, that made forty-two marks for the week. Now the way to figure out how much the porteer ought to get is easy: a fellow I met in Baden-Baden showed me how to do it. First, you multiply your hotel bill by two, then you divide it by twenty-seven, and then you knock off half a mark. Twice forty-two is eighty-four. Twenty-seven into eighty-four goes about three times, and half from three leaves two and a half. See how easy it is?
THE SECOND MAN
It look s easy, anyhow. But you haven’t got much time to do all that figuring.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, let the porteer wait. The longer he has to wait the more he appreciates you.
THE SECOND MAN
But how about the others?
THE FIRST MAN
It’s just as simple. Your chambermaid gets a quarter of a mark for every day you have been in the hotel. But if you stay less than four days she gets a whole mark anyhow. If there are two in the party she gets half a mark a day, but no more than three marks in any one week.
THE SECOND MAN
But suppose there are two chambermaids? In Dresden there was one on day duty and one on night duty. I left at six o’clock in the evening, and so they were both on the job.
THE FIRST MAN
Don’t worry. They’d have been on the job anyhow, no matter when you left. But it’s just as easy to figure out the tip for two as for one. All you have to do is to add fifty per cent. and then divide it into two halves, and give one to each girl. Or, better still, give it all to one girl and tell her to give half to her pal. If there are three chambermaids, as you sometimes find in the swell hotels, you add another fifty per cent. and then divide by three. And so on.
THE SECOND MAN
I see. But how about the hall porter and the floor waiter?
THE FIRST MAN
Just as easy. The hall porter gets whatever the chambermaid gets, plus twenty-five per cent.—but no more than two marks in any one week. The floor waiter gets thirty pfennigs a day straight, but if you stay only one day he gets half a mark, and if you stay more than a week he gets two marks flat a week after the first week. In some hotels the hall porter don’t shine shoes. If he don’t he gets just as much as if he does, but then the actual “boots” has to be taken care of. He gets half a mark every two days. Every time you put out an extra pair of shoes he gets fifty per cent. more for that day. If you shine your own shoes, or go without shining them, the “boots” gets half his regular tip, but never less than a mark a week.
THE SECOND MAN
Certainly it seems simple enough. I never knew there was any such system.
THE FIRST MAN
I guess you didn’t. Very few do. But it’s just because Americans don’t know it that these foreign blackmailers shake ’em down. Once you let the porteer see that you know the ropes, he’ll pass the word on to the others, and you’ll be treated like a native.
THE SECOND MAN
I see. But how about the elevator boy? I gave the elevator boy in Dresden two marks and he almost fell on my neck, so I figured that I played the sucker.
THE FIRST MAN
So you did. The rule for elevator boys is sti
ll somewhat in the air, because so few of these bum hotels over here have elevators, but you can sort of reason the thing out if you put your mind on it. When you get on a street car in Germany, what tip do you give the conductor?
THE SECOND MAN
Five pfennigs.
THE FIRST MAN
Naturally. That’s the tip fixed by custom. You may almost say it’s the un-written law. If you gave the conductor more, he would hand you change. Well, how I reason it out is this way: If five pfennigs is enough for a car conductor, who may carry you three miles, why shouldn’t it be enough for the elevator boy, who may carry you only three stories?
THE SECOND MAN
It seems fair, certainly.
THE FIRST MAN
And it is fair. So all you have to do is to keep account of the number of times you go up and down in the elevator, and then give the elevator boy five pfennigs for each trip. Say you come down in the morning, go up in the evening, and average one other round trip a day. That makes twenty-eight trips a week. Five times twenty-eight is one mark forty—and there you are.
THE SECOND MAN
I see. By the way, what hotel are you stopping at?
THE FIRST MAN
The Goldene Esel.
THE SECOND MAN
How is it?
THE FIRST MAN
Oh, so-so. Ask for oatmeal at breakfast and they send to the livery stable for a peck of oats and ask you please to be so kind as to show them how to make it.
THE SECOND MAN
My hotel is even worse. Last night I got into such a sweat under the big German feather bed that I had to throw it off. But when I asked for a single blanket they didn’t have any, so I had to wrap up in bath towels.
THE FIRST MAN
Yes, and you used up every one in town. This morning, when I took a bath, the only towel the chambermaid could find wasn’t bigger than a wedding invitation. But while she was hunting around I dried off, so no harm was done.
THE SECOND MAN
Well, that’s what a man gets for running around in such one-horse countries. In Leipzig they sat a nigger down beside me at the table. In Amsterdam they had cheese for breakfast. In Munich the head waiter had never heard of buckwheat cakes. In Mannheim they charged me ten pfennigs extra for a cake of soap.
THE FIRST MAN
What do you think of the railroad trains over here?
THE SECOND MAN
Rotten. That compartment system is all wrong. If nobody comes into your compartment it’s lonesome, and if anybody does come in it’s too damn sociable. And if you try to stretch out and get some sleep, some ruffian begins singing in the next compartment, or the conductor keeps butting in and jabbering at you.