My wife met me at the station. Peter was lying curled up in a nest I had made him inside my fur coat. He was then nine inches long, pure white with blue eyes. He looked half asleep: that was one of his tricks. Before I could warn her, my wife stooped to kiss him. Fortunately she was quick, and saved her nose by a hair's breadth. I remember her delight, two years later, when she ran back into the bedroom to tell me that Peter had let her kiss him. I would not believe it until I had seen it myself.
Yet he was an affectionate little beggar, in his cranky way. He would sit on my desk while I worked; and would never go to sleep unless he was lying on something belonging to one or another of us. One of the girls' hats would do as well as anything. He would take it on to a chair and curl himself up inside it; and his one answer to all their storming and raving was: “What I have, I hold; what I take, I keep.” Well, it taught them not to leave their things about. He would keep close enough to me in the country; but the town always confused him; and often I would lose him. He would make no attempt to find me, but would just sit down in the middle of the street where he had last noticed me, and howl. In Munich, he came to be known as: “The English dog that for his master screams.” Policemen would knock at my door to inform me that he was screaming in such and such a street; and that I must come immediately and fetch him home. His chief trouble was that big dogs, as a rule, would not fight him; and for little dogs he had too much contempt. I suppose it was inherited instinct. Something about the size of a bear was his idea of a worthy antagonist. One day at Freiburg, in the Black Forest, he succeeded in persuading a great Dane to take some notice of him. So long as Peter merely leapt about in front of him and tried to reach his throat to kill him, the Dane just walked on. Peter ran after him and bit his leg. He bit it hard; and the Dane turned. Peter's every hair bristled with delight. At last, he had found a gentleman willing to oblige him. But life brings disappointments both to dogs and men. The Dane was quicker than Peter had expected. He made a sudden dive and seized Peter by the scruff of the neck. I overtook them just as the Dane, with Peter cursing and kicking, reached the middle of a bridge crossing a small stream. The Dane put his front paws on the parapet and looked over. All was clear. So he dropped Peter into the middle of the stream, waited to see Peter's head come up again, and then trotted off.
The stream flowed between walls, and Peter had to swim quite a quarter of a mile before he found a landing-place. He was still looking for that great Dane when we left Freiburg for Dresden, some six months later.
Taking summer and winter together, Dresden is perhaps the most comfortable town to live in of all Europe. Before the war, quite a large English colony resided there. We had a club; and a church of our own, with debt and organ fund just as at home. A gemütliche town, as the Germans say, and cheap. One went to the opera, the finest in Europe, in a tramcar. It didn't land you in the mud a quarter of a mile away, but put you down outside the door. And when you came out at ten, in time for a cosy supper and so home to bed by twelve, it was waiting there for you. For the best seats you paid six marks. You did not have to get yourself up. Nobody did, except the King's relations. (A kindly old gentleman. He sent a special messenger round to me one morning to tell how much he had enjoyed my “Three Men on the Bummel.”) You just got up from the tea-table, and went. The only dress restriction was that ladies must take off their hats. You had no call to tap her on the shoulder, beg her with tears in your eyes to do so, and wonder if she would. The gentleman at the door, in a uniform suggestive of a Field-Marshal, had seen to all that. She was not bound to take off her hat. She could keep it on and go home again. It was only if she wanted to get in to hear the opera that she had to take it off, and leave it in the Garde-robe. But then the Garde-robe cost twopence, and was surrounded with looking-glasses. They think of these things, in Germany. Another Hunnish law that always shocked the English visitor at first, was one forbidding him to scatter dirty paper in the street. I once asked a Turkish celebrity I was interviewing for a newspaper what had most impressed him on his first arrival in England. We always asked them that. Generally they said it was the beauty of our women, or the greenness of our grass, or something of that sort. This ruffian was new to the business and answered without a moment's hesitation, “Dirty paper.”
A kindly, simple folk, the Saxons. We spent two years in Dresden and made many friends. On Sunday evenings we had music at each other's houses. Students from the great music schule would drop in, armed with their favourite instrument; also full-fledged members of the orchestra. Marie Hall was a student there—a shy, diffident little girl; and Mischa Elman.
The Military were gods, and everybody feared and loved them. Gaudy officers, with clanking swords, would walk the pavements two or three abreast, sweeping men, women and children into the gutter. But indoors, they could be quite human. We had a visit from the Kaiser, during the manœuvres. He was not popular in Saxony; and that year made himself still less so. The first-floor window of a country villa commanded a good view of the operations. It was five o'clock in the morning. The Kaiser would not wait a moment. A door was forced open and the Kaiser stamped upstairs, marched into the bedroom, and threw open the window. The Gnädiger Herr with his Gnädigen Frau were in bed. Both were furiously indignant, but had to lie there till it pleased the Kaiser to tramp out again, without so much as even an apology. He must always have been a tactless fool.
There was good skating at Dresden in the winter. Every night the lake in the Grosser Garten would be swept and flooded. In the afternoon a military band would play, and there was a comfortable restaurant in which one took one's tea and cakes. The Crown Princess would generally be there. She was a lovely woman. She mingled freely with the people, and was popular with all classes, except her own. She saw me waltzing one day, and sent for me; and after that I often skated with her. She was a born Bohemian, with, perhaps, the artist's love of notoriety. The ponderous respectability of the Saxon Court must have weighed upon her like a nightmare. But there is no need to believe all the stories that were told against her. A man I knew well, an Irish doctor, got himself mixed up with the business; and was given forty-eight hours to clear out of Dresden, taking all his belongings, including his family, with him. He was in good practice there, and it ruined him. It transpired afterward that he was guiltless of all; except maybe of having talked too much. But the court had got its dander up, and was hitting out all round. His name was O'Brien. He was aware of his national failing. I asked him once to support me in a resolution I was putting to the club.
“Don't, my dear J.,” he begged me. “Don't ask me to get on my legs. If I once start talking I go on for ever. And the Lord knows what I'll say.”
We had the same sort of trouble with G. B. Shaw, another Irishman, on the dramatic committee of the Authors' Club. Shaw could be, and generally was, the most exemplary and helpful of committee men. But every now and then the old O'Adam would assert itself.
“Speaking of musical glasses,” he would interrupt, “I'll tell you a thing that happened to a play of my own.”
The anecdote would have all Shaw's delightful wit and inconsequence, and would invariably lead to another. Carton, our chairman, would take out his watch, and lay it ostentatiously upon the table. But hints were of no use when once Shaw had got into his stride. Carton in the end would have to use his hammer.
“I'm sorry, my dear Shaw,” he would say, “I should love to hear the end of it. We all should, I am sure. But——”