Europe in the Looking Glass Read Online Free PDF Page A

evening, after dining early, we drove out to Charlottenburg to a musical comedy called ‘Anna Marie’. The hotel had reserved us seats in the front row; but when we arrived late there were only two instead of three. David fell into the most extravagant rage and abused the officials, old men in pinces-nez, with such effect that they compelled a man to vacate his seat for one of us. Then Simon decided that it was too hot and that he would prefer to sit in the beer garden outside after all. So David and I went in alone, in the middle of the act, to the very audible annoyance of the audience.
    The cast consisted of five. The leading man was bald and dressed in tennis clothes, perfected by a college tie and leather belt. The leading lady was pretty, but her mass of fluffy yellow hair, done over one eye, and a set smile, redolent of the Victorian music hall stage, rather detracted from her charms. Her clothes were 1923. The phenomenal idea of an evening scarf attached to the dress had reached Berlin in the same breath as it had gone out of fashion elsewhere. At the end, with a wickedly indecent high kick, she disclosed a long pair of thick purple drawers reaching to the knee. But the favourite was a very fat old woman in a tight, sleeveless modern dress and bangles, her hair done in a chignon, who burlesqued the others, flinging her plump calves from side to side and singing in a high, raucous, and rather pathetic voice. The tunes were delightful and composed by the brothers Gilbert. At length the whole backcloth began to revolve, displaying an illuminated panorama of Berlin at night, and all five danced in front as it went round behind them. The plot was snobbish, Anna Marie being a girl of noble birth, which she conceals, in order to induce the bald man, the love of her life, to marry her in a suburban back garden. The transports of her husband’s family when they discovered her origin weretouching, and even her father, in a frock coat and top hat, was reconciled. This is a favourite theme for continental comedy and light opera. We saw it repeated several times in Italy and once on a film, in which the girls at a convent school bullied the life out of one of their number, because she was the daughter of a cocoa king – ‘uno cacao-re’.

    In the intervals we rejoined Simon in the garden; the band beneath the trees would repeat the tune of the act before; and it was a sight that filled the heart with pleasure to see the whole audience, mostly consisting of short, fat women in dark skirts and white blouses, swaying to and fro to the prevailing lilt, with pint mugs of yellow Pilsener beer held tightly in their right hands.
    About half-past eleven we drove to the Adlon Bar to meet Mr Hütten. He appeared in a bowler hat, with a friend. They were to show us the Berlin underworld. This was some way away and we went in a taxi, the driver of which was ashamed of us. Eventually we arrived at an orange door in the slums flanked by two box trees. Beyond it was a room that resembled the lounge of a station hotel in the Midlands. At one table at the back, David espied his friend, Henry Featherstonhaugh, attaché in Prague, seated with the son of a member of the German Cabinet, and some other more beautiful companions. The vigour of David’s recognition caused him some embarrassment. He combined incomparable pomp of manner with extreme cynicism. His friend, dark and sinister, purred suavely about the charm of travel. Other people collected, and we formed a larger and larger ring, finally returning to bed about half-past one.
    The next morning, in company with a large crowd, we gazed at Hindenburg’s windows. He did not appear. After a sleepy afternoon we dined at a Russian restaurant. This was not one of the up-to-date, semi-smart establishments that are so common in Paris, but a small, sordid, double room on the ground floor, run simply for the benefit of some of the three hundred thousand exiles in Berlin. The menu was printed in