"What could have induced these old fellows," I said to B., "to choose such very uninteresting subjects? Who on earth cares to look at the life-sized portrait of a cabbage and a peck of peas, or at these no doubt masterly representations of a cut from the joint with bread and vegetables? Look at that 'View in a ham-and-beef shop,'
No. 7063, size sixty feet by forty. It must have taken the artist a couple of years to paint. Who did he expect was going to buy it?
And that Christmas-hamper scene over in the corner; was it painted, do you think, by some poor, half-starved devil, who thought he would have something to eat in the house, if it were only a picture of it?"
B. said he thought that the explanation was that the ancient patrons of art were gentry with a very strong idea of the fitness of things.
For "their churches and cathedrals," said B., "they had painted all those virgins and martyrs and over-fed angels that you see everywhere about Europe. For their bedrooms, they ordered those--well, those bedroom sort of pictures, that you may have noticed here and there; and then I expect they used these victual-and-drink-scapes for their banqueting halls. It must have been like a gin-and-bitters to them, the sight of all that food."
In the new Pantechnicon is exhibited the modern art of Germany.
This appeared to me to be exceedingly poor stuff. It seemed to belong to the illustrated Christmas number school of art. It was good, sound, respectable work enough. There was plenty of colour about it, and you could tell what everything was meant for. But there seemed no imagination, no individuality, no thought, anywhere.
Each picture looked as though it could have been produced by anyone who had studied and practised art for the requisite number of years, and who was not a born fool. At all events, this is my opinion; and, as I know nothing whatever about art, I speak without prejudice.
One thing I have enjoyed at Munich very much, and that has been the music. The German band that you hear in the square in London while you are trying to compose an essay on the civilising influence of music, is not the sort of band that you hear in Germany. The German bands that come to London are bands that have fled from Germany, in order to save their lives. In Germany, these bands would be slaughtered at the public expense and their bodies given to the poor for sausages. The bands that the Germans keep for themselves are magnificent bands.
Munich of all places in the now united Fatherland, has, I suppose, the greatest reputation for its military bands, and the citizens are allowed, not only to pay for them, but to hear them. Two or three times a day in different parts of the city one or another of them will be playing pro bono publico, and, in the evening, they are loaned out by the authorities to the proprietors of the big beer-gardens.
"Go" and dash are the chief characteristics of their method; but, when needed, they can produce from the battered, time-worn trumpets, which have been handed down from player to player since the regiment was first formed, notes as soft and full and clear as any that could start from the strings of some old violin.
The German band in Germany has to know its business to be listened to by a German audience. The Bavarian artisan or shopkeeper understands and appreciates good music, as he understands and appreciates good beer. You cannot impose upon him with an inferior article. A music-hall audience in Munich are very particular as to how their beloved Wagner is rendered, and the trifles from Mozart and Haydn that they love to take in with their sausages and salad, and which, when performed to their satisfaction, they will thunderously applaud, must not be taken liberties with, or they will know the reason why.
The German beer-garden should be visited by everyone who would see the German people as well as their churches and castles. It is here that the workers of all kinds congregate in the evening. Here, after the labours of the day, come the tradesman with his wife and family, the young clerk with his betrothed and--also her mother, alack and well-a-day!--the soldier with his sweetheart, the students in twos and threes, the little grisette with her cousin, the shop-boy and the workman.
Here come grey-haired Darby and Joan, and, over the mug of beer they share between them, they sit thinking of the children--of little Lisa, married to clever Karl, who is pushing his way in the far-off land that lies across the great sea; of laughing Elsie, settled in Hamburg, who has grandchildren of her own now; of fair-haired Franz, his mother's pet, who fell in sunny France, fighting for the fatherland. At the next table sits a blushing, happy little maid, full of haughty airs and graces, such as may be excused to a little maid who has just saved a no doubt promising, but at present somewhat awkward-looking, youth from lifelong misery, if not madness and suicide (depend upon it, that is the alternative he put before her), by at last condescending to give him the plump little hand, that he, thinking nobody sees him, holds so tightly beneath the table-cloth. Opposite, a family group sit discussing omelettes and a bottle of white wine. The father contented, good-humoured, and laughing; the small child grave and solemn, eating and drinking in business-like fashion; the mother smiling at both, yet not forgetting to eat.
