Chapter 18
EXPENSES OF LIFE
A few years ago a German economist reckoned that there were only 250,000 families in the empire whose incomes exceeded L450, a year. There were nearly three million households living on incomes ranging from L135 to L450, and nearly four millions with more than L90 but less than L135. But there were upwards of five millions whose incomes fell below L45. Since that estimate was made, Germany has grown in wealth and prosperity; and in the big cities there is great expenditure and luxury amongst some classes, especially amongst the Jews who can afford it, and amongst the officers of the army who as a rule cannot. But the bulk of the nation is poor, and class for class lives on less than people do in England. For instance, the headmaster of a school gets about L100 a year in a small town, and from L200 to L300 in a big one. A lieutenant gets about L65 a year, and an additional L12 if he has no private means. His uniform and mess expenses are deducted from this. He is not allowed to marry on his official income, unless he or his wife has an income of L125 in addition to his pay, as even in Germany an army man can hardly keep up appearances and support a wife and family on less than L190 a year. It is quite common to hear of a clerk living on L40 or L50, or of a doctor who knows his work and yet can only make L150. The official posts so eagerly sought after are poorly paid; so are servants, agricultural labourers, and artisans. When you are in Germany, if you are interested in questions of income and expenditure, you are always trying to make up your mind why a German family can live as successfully on L400 as an English family on L700, for you know that rent and taxes are high and food and clothing dear. If you are a woman and think about it a great deal, and look at family life in as many places and classes as you can, you finally decide that there are three chief reasons for the great difference between the cost of life in England and Germany. In the first place, labour is cheaper there; in the second place, the standard of luxury and even of comfort is lower; in the third place, the women are thriftier and more industrious than Englishwomen. This, too, leaves out of account the most important fact, that the State educates a man's children for next to nothing; and drills the male ones into shape when they serve in the army.
Servants, we have seen, get lower wages than they do here, but the real economy is in the smaller number kept. Where we pay and maintain half a dozen a German family will be content with two, and the typical small English household that cannot face life without its plain cook in the kitchen and its parlour-maid in her black gown at the front door, will throughout the German Empire get along quite serenely with one young woman to cook and clean and do everything else required. If she is a "pearl" she probably makes the young ladies' frocks and irons the master's shirts to fill in her time. Germans do not trouble about the black frock and the white apron at the front door. They will even open the door to you themselves if the "girl" is washing or cooking. A female servant is always a "girl" in Germany. I once heard a young Englishwoman who had not been long in Germany ask an elderly acquaintance to recommend a dressmaker.
"The best one in ---- is Fraeulein Mueller," said the elderly acquaintance.
"But she is too expensive," said the Englishwoman, and she glanced across the room at the lady's nieces, who were neatly and plainly dressed. "Do girls go to Fraeulein Mueller?"
"Girls! Certainly not," said the lady, with the expression Germans keep for the insane English it is their fate to encounter occasionally.
"But that is what I want to know, ... a dressmaker girls go to ... girls with a small allowance."
"I am afraid I cannot help you," said the lady stiffly. "I know nothing about the dressmakers girls employ."
"Perhaps Miss Brown means 'young girls,'" said one of the nieces, who was not as slow in the uptake as her aunt, and it turned out that this was what Miss Brown did mean; but she had not known that in everyday life _Maedchen_ without an adjective usually means a servant. She had heard of _Das Maedchen aus der Fremde_ and _Der Tod und das Maedchen_, and blundered.
I once made a German exceedingly angry by saying that the standard of comfort was higher in England than in Germany. She said it was lower. When you have lived in both countries and with both peoples you arrive in the end at having your opinions, and knowing that each one you hold will be disputed on one side or the other. "Find out what means _Gemuetlichkeit_, and do it without fail," says Hans Breitmann, but _Gemuetlichkeit_ and comfort are not quite interchangeable words. Our word is more material. When we talk of English comfort we are thinking of our open fires, our solid food, our thick carpets, and our well-drilled smart-looking servants. The German is thinking of the spiritual atmosphere in his own house, the absence, as he says, of ceremony and the freedom of ideas. He talks of a man being _gemuetlich_ in his disposition, kindly, that is, and easy going. We talk of a house being comfortable, and when we do use the word for a person usually mean that she is rather stout. When both you and the German have decided that "comfort" for the moment shall mean material comfort, you will disagree about what is necessary to yours. You must have your bathroom, your bacon for breakfast, your table laid precisely, your meals served to the moment, your young women in black or your staid men to give them to you, and your glowing fires in as many rooms as possible. The German cares for none of these things. He would rather have his half-pound of odds and ends from the provision shop than your boiled cod, roast mutton, and apple-tart; he wants his stove, his double windows, his good coffee, his _kraeftige Kost_, and freedom to smoke in every corner of his house. He is never tired of telling you that, though you have more political freedom in England, you are groaning under a degree of social tyranny that he could not endure for a day. The Idealist, quoted in a former chapter, is for ever talking of the "hypocrisy" of English life, and her burning anxiety is to save the children of certain Russian and German exiles from contact with it. Another German tells you that our system of collegiate life for women would not suit her countryfolk, because they are more "individual." Each one likes to choose her own rooms, and live as she pleases. The next German has suffered torments in London because he had to sit down to certain meals at certain hours instead of eating anything he fancied at any time he felt hungry, and I suppose it is only your British _Heuchelei_ that leads you to smile politely instead of adding, "As the beasts of the field do." But I am always mazed, as the Cornish say, when Germans talk of their freedom from convention. In Hamburg I was once seriously rebuked by an old friend for carrying a book through the streets that was not wrapped up in paper. In Hamburg that is one of the things people don't do. In Mainz and in many other German towns there are certain streets where one side, for reasons no one can explain, is taboo at certain hours of the day; not of the night, but of the day. You may go to a music shop at midday to buy a sonata, and find, if you are a girl, that you have committed a crime. The intercourse between young people outside their homes is hedged round with convention. German titles of address are so absurdly formal that Germans laugh at them themselves. Their ceremonies in connection with anniversaries and family events bristle with convention, and offer pitfalls at every step to the stranger or the blunderer. It is true that men do not dress for dinner every day, and wax indignant over the necessity of doing so for the theatre in England; but there are various occasions when they wear evening dress in broad daylight, and an Englishman considers that an uncomfortable convention. The truth is, that these questions of comfort and ceremonial are not questions that should be discussed in the hostile dogmatic tone adopted in both countries by those who only know their own. The ceremonies that are foreign to you impress you, while those you have been used to all your life have become a second nature. An Englishwoman feels downright uncomfortable in her high stuff gown at night, and a German lady brought up at one of the great German Courts told me that when she stayed in an English country house and put on what she called a ball dress for dinner every night, she felt like a fool.
To come back to questions of expenditure so intimately related to questions of comfort, it must be remembered that in an English household there are two dinners a day: one early for the servants and children, and one late for the grown-ups; and solid dinners cost money even in England, where at present there is no meat famine. When Germans dine late they don't also dine early, even where there are children; while the kitchen dinner, that meal of supreme importance here, is eaten when the family has finished theirs, and is as informal as the meal a bird makes of berries. In a German household, living on a small income, nothing is wasted,--not fuel, not food, not cleaning materials, as far as possible not time. The _tuechtige Hausfrau_ would be made miserable by having to pay and feed a woman who put on gala clothes at midday, and did no work to soil them after that.
"Two girls," I once heard a German say to an Englishwoman who had just described her own modest household which she ran, she said, with two maids. "Two girls ... for you and your husband. But what, I ask you, does the second one do?"
"She cleans the rooms and waits at table and opens the door," said the Englishwoman.
"All that can one girl do just as well. I assure you it is so. There cannot possibly be work in your household for two girls. You have told me how quietly you live, and I know what English cooking is, if you can call it cooking."
"You see, there must be someone to open the door."
"Why could one girl not answer the door, ... unless she was washing. Then you would naturally go yourself."
"But it wouldn't be natural in England," said the Englishwoman. "It would be odd. Besides, if you only have one servant, she can't dress for lunch."
"Why should she dress for lunch?" asked the German. "My Auguste is a pearl, but she only dresses when we have _Gesellschaft_. Then she wears a plaid blouse and a garnet brooch that I gave her last Christmas, and she looks very well in them. But every day ... and for lunch, when half the work of the day is still to be done.... What, then, does your second girl do in the afternoons?"
"She brings tea and answers the door."
"Always the door. But your husband is not a doctor or a dentist. Why do so many people come to your door that you need a whole girl to attend to them?"
"Oh! They don't," said the Englishwoman, getting rather worn. "There are very few, really. It's the custom."
"Ah!" said the German, with a long deep breath of satisfaction. "So are you English ... such slaves to custom. _Gott sei Dank_ that I do not live in a country where I should have to keep a girl in idleness for the sake of the door. With us a door is a door. Anyone who happens to be near opens it."
"I know they do," said the Englishwoman, "and when a servant comes she expects you to say _Guten Tag_ before you ask whether her mistress is at home?"
"Certainly. It is a politeness. We are a polite nation."
"And once, when I had just come back from Germany, I said Good-morning to an English butler before I asked if his mistress was at home, and he thought I was mad. We each have our own conventions. That's the truth of the matter."
"Not at all," said the German. "The truth of the matter is, that the English are extremely conventional, and follow each other as sheep do; but the German does what pleases him, without asking first whether his neighbour does likewise."
This is what the German really believes, and you agree or disagree with him according to the phase of life you look at when he is speaking. You find that when he comes to England he honestly feels checked at every turn by our unwritten laws, while when you go to Germany you wonder how he can submit so patiently to the pettiness and multiplicity of his written ones. He vaguely feels the pressure and criticism of your indefinite code of manners; you think his elaborate system of titles, introductions, and celebrations rather childish and extremely troublesome. If you have what the English call manners you will take the greatest care not to let him find this out, and in course of time, however much you like him on the whole, you will lose your patience a little with the individual you are bound to meet, the individual who has England on his nerves, and exhausts his energy and eloquence in informing you of your country's shortcomings. They are legion, and indeed leave no room for the smallest virtue, so that in the end you can only wonder solemnly why such a nation ever came to be a nation at all.
"That is easily answered," says your Anglophobe. "England has arrived where she is by seizing everything she can lay hands on. Now it is going to be our turn."
You express your interest in the future of Germany as seen by your friend, and he shows you a map of Europe which he has himself marked with red ink all round the empire as it will be a few years hence. There is not much Europe outside the red line.
"But you haven't taken Great Britain," you say, rather hurt at being left out in this way.
"We don't want it ... otherwise, ... but India ... possibly Australia." He waves his hands.
You look at him pensively, and suddenly see one of the great everyday distances between your countryfolk and his. You think of a French novel that has amused you lately, because the parents of the heroine objected to her marriage with the hero on grounds you were quite incapable of understanding. The young man's work was in Cochin-China, and the young lady's father and mother did not wish her to go so far. Never in your life have you heard anyone raise such a trivial difficulty. You live in a dull sober street mostly inhabited by dull sober people, but there is not one house in it that is not linked by interest or affection, often doubly linked, with some uttermost end of the earth. You can hardly find an English family that has not one member or more in far countries, and so the common talk of English people in all classes travels the width of the world in the wake of those dear to them. But in 1900 only 22,309 Germans out of a population of 60,400,000 emigrated from Germany, and these, says Mr. Eltzbacher, whose figures I am quoting, were more than counterbalanced by immigration into Germany from Austria, Russia, and Italy. It is true that the population of Germany is increasing with immense rapidity, and that the question of expansion is becoming a burning one; but it is a question quite outside the strictly home politics of this unpretending chronicle. We are only concerned with the obvious fact that Germans settle in far countries in much smaller numbers than we do, and that those who go abroad mostly choose the British flag and avoid their own. It does not occur as easily to a German as to an Englishman that he may better his fortunes in another part of the world, or if he is an official that he will apply for a post in Asia or Africa. He wants to stay near the Rhine or the Spree where he was born, and to bring up his children there; and with the help of the State and his wife he contrives to do this on an extraordinary small income. The State, as we have seen, almost takes his children off his hands from the time they are six years old. It brings them up for nothing, or next to nothing; in cases of need it partially feeds and clothes them, it even washes them. Some English humorist has said that a German need only give himself the trouble to be born; his government does the rest. But first his mother and then his wife do a good deal. They are like the woman in Proverbs who worked willingly with her hands, rose while it was night, saw well to the ways of her household, and ate not the bread of idleness.
I have before me the household accounts of several German families living on what we should call small incomes; and they show more exactly than any vague praise can do the prodigies of thrift accomplished by people obliged to economise, and at the same time to present a respectable appearance. The first one is the budget of a small official living with a wife and two children in a little town where a flat on the fourth or fifth floor can be had at a low rent:--
L s. d. Rent 20 0 0 Fuel 3 10 0 Light 1 10 0 Clothes for the man 3 0 0 Clothes for the wife 2 0 0 Clothes for the children 1 0 0 Boots for the man 1 0 0 Boots for the wife and children 1 5 0 Repairs to boots 0 17 6 Washing and house repairs 3 0 0 Doctor 2 0 0 Newspaper 0 12 0 Charwoman 3 0 0 Taxes 2 10 0 Postage 1 4 0 Insurances 2 10 0 Amusements 3 0 0 Housekeeping 45 0 0 Sundries 3 1 0 ----------- L100 0 0 ===========
The fuel allowed in this budget consists of 30 cwt. of _Steinkohlen_ at 1 mark 15 pf. the cwt., 30 cwt. of _Braunkohlen_ at 70 pf. the cwt., and 4 cwt. of kindling at 1 mark 10 pf. the cwt. This quantity, 3 tons without the kindling, would have to be used most sparingly to last through a long rigorous German winter, as well as for cooking and washing in summer. The amount set apart for lights allows for one lamp in the living room and two small ones in the passage and kitchen. The man may have a new suit every year, one year in winter and the next year in summer, and his suit may cost L2, 10s. His great-coat also is to cost L2, 10s., but he can't have a new suit the year he buys one, and it should last him at least four years. The ten shillings left is for all his other clothes except boots, and presumably for all his personal expenses, including tobacco, so he had better not spend it all at once. His wife performs greater miracles still, for she has to buy a winter gown and a summer gown, a hat and gloves, for her L2. These are not fancy figures. The miracle is performed by tens of thousands of German women every year. They buy a few yards of cheap stuff and get in a sewing-woman to make it up, for as a rule they are not nearly as clever and capable as Englishwomen about making things for themselves. Your English maid-servant will buy a blouse length at a sale for a few pence, make it up smartly, and wear it out in a month of Sundays. Your German she-official will have a blouse made for her, and it will probably be hideous; but she will wear it so carefully that it lasts her two years. Under-raiment she will never want to buy, as she will have brought a life-long supply to her home at marriage. You easily figure the children who are dressed on twenty marks a year, the girl in a shoddy tartan made in a fashion of fifty years ago with the "waist" hooked behind, and the boy in some snuff-coloured mixture floridly braided. But the interesting revelation of this small official budget is in its carefully planned fare made out for a fortnight in summer and a fortnight in winter. In winter the _Hausfrau_ may spend about 17s. a week on her food and in summer 19s. That leaves only 2s. a month for the extra days of the month, and for small expenses, such as soda, matches, blacking, and condiments. Breakfast may cost sixpence a day, and for this there is to be 3/4 litre of milk, 4 small white rolls, 1/2 lb. rye bread, 2 oz. of butter, 1 oz. of coffee. Nothing is set down for sugar, and I think that most German families of this class would not use sugar, and would eat their bread without butter. On Sunday they have a goose for dinner, and pay 4s. 6d. for it, and though 4s. 6d. is not much to pay for a goose, it seems an extravagant dish for this family, until you discover that they are still dining on it on Wednesday. Not only has the _Hausfrau_ brought home this costly bird, but she has laid in a whole pound of lard to roast with it, white bread for stuffing, and cabbage for a vegetable. Pudding is not considered necessary after goose, and for supper there is bread and milk for the children, and bread, butter, cheese, and beer for the parents. On Monday they have a rest from goose, and dine on _gehacktes Schweinefleisch_. German butchers sell raw minced meat very cheaply, and the _Hausfrau_ would probably get as much as she wanted for three-halfpence. On Tuesday they get back to the goose, and have a hash of the wings, neck, and liver with potatoes. For supper, rice cooked with milk and cinnamon. Germans use cinnamon rather as the Spaniards use garlic. They seem to think it improves everything, and they eat quantities of milky rice strewn with it. On Wednesday my family has soup for dinner, a solid soup made of goose, rice, and a pennyworth of carrots. For supper there is sausage, bread, and beer. By the way, this official is not really representative, for he spends nothing on tobacco, and only a penny every other day on beer. He cannot have been a Bavarian. His wife gives him cod with mustard sauce on Thursday, Sauerkraut and shin of beef on Friday, and on Saturday lentil soup with sausages, an excellent dish when properly cooked for those who want solid nourishing food. On the following Sunday 3 pounds of beef appears, and potato dumplings with stewed fruit, another good German mixture if the dumplings are as light as they should be. The husband has them warmed up for supper next day. One day he has bacon and vegetables for dinner, and another day only apple sauce and pancakes, but at every midday meal throughout the fortnight he has carefully planned food on which his wife spends considerable time and trouble. He never comes home from his work on a winter's day to have a mutton bone and watery potatoes set before him. In summer the bill of fare provides soups made with wine, milk, or cider; sometimes there are curds for supper, and if they have a chicken, rice and stewed fruit are eaten with it. But a chicken only costs this _Hausfrau_ 1 mark 20 pf., so it must have been a small one. I have often bought pigeons for 25 pf. apiece in Germany, and stuffed in the Bavarian way with egg and bread crumbs they are good eating. Fruit is extremely cheap and plentiful in many parts of Germany, but not everywhere. We have Heine's word for it that the plums grown by the wayside between Jena and Weimar are good, for most of us know his story of his first interview with Goethe; how he had looked forward to the meeting with ecstasy and reflection, and how when he was face to face with the great man all he found to say was a word in praise of the plums he had eaten as he walked. In the fruit-growing districts most of the roads are set with an avenue of fruit trees, and so law-abiding are the boys of Germany, and so plentiful is fruit in its season, that no one seems to steal from them. I have talked with elderly Germans, who remembered buying 3 pounds of cherries for 6 kreuzers, a little more than a penny, when they were boys. But those days are over. The small sweet-water grapes from the vineyards of South Germany are to be had for the asking where they are grown, and apricots are plentiful in some districts, and the little golden plums called _Mirabellen_ that are dried in quantities and make the best winter compote there is. When I see English grocers' shops loaded up with dried American apples and apricots that are not worth eating, however carefully they are cooked, I always wonder why we do not import _Mirabellen_ instead.
Sweetbreads in the Berlin markets were about 1 mark 10 pf. each last year, small tongues were 1 mark 10 pf. _Morscheln_, a poor kind of fungus much used in Germany, were 65 pf. a pound, real mushrooms were 1 mark 50 pf., and the dried ones used for flavouring sauces were the same price. Butter and milk are usually about the same price as with us, but eggs are cheaper. You get twenty for a mark still in spring, and I remember making an English plumcake once in a Bavarian village and being charged 6 pf. for the three eggs I used. A rye loaf weighing 4 pounds costs 50 pf., the little white rolls cost 3 pf. each. In Berlin last year vegetables were nearly as dear as in London, but in many parts of Germany they are much cheaper. I know of one housewife who fed her family largely on vegetables, and would not spend more than 10 pf. a day on them, but she lived in a small country town where green stuff was a drug in the market. Asparagus is cheaper than here, for it costs 35 pf. to 40 pf. a pound, and is eaten in such quantities that even an asparagus lover gets tired of it. Meat has risen terribly in price of late years. In the open market you can get fillet of beef for 1 mark 60 pf., sirloin for 90 pf., good cuts of mutton for 90 pf. to 1 mark, and veal for 1 mark, but all these prices are higher at a butcher's shop. Fillet of beef, for instance, is 2 marks 40 pf. a pound there.
The budget of a family living on L250 a year does not call for so much comment as the smaller one, because L250 is a fairly comfortable income in Germany. Either a schoolmaster or a soldier must have risen in his profession before he gets it; but the following estimate is made out for a business man who does not get a house free or any other aid from outside:--
L s. d. Rent 50 0 0 Fuel 7 10 0 Light 5 0 0 Clothes--husband 6 0 0 " wife 4 0 0 " children 2 10 0 Shoes 4 0 0 School fees 5 0 0 Washing 5 0 0 Repairs to linen 2 10 0 Doctor and dentist 5 0 0 Newspapers and magazines 2 0 0 Servant's wages 9 0 0 Servant's insurance and Christmas present 2 0 0 Taxes 6 0 0 Postage 1 10 0 Insurances 5 0 0 Housekeeping 90 0 0 Amusements and travelling 25 0 0 Christmas and presents 10 0 0 Sundries 3 0 0 ----------- L250 0 0 ===========
On examining this budget it will occur to most people that the poor _Hausfrau_ might spend a little more on her clothes and a little less on her presents, and as a matter of fact even in Germany, where Christmas is a burden as well as a pleasure, this would be done. The next budget is the most interesting, because it is not an ideal one drawn up for anyone's guidance, but is taken without the alteration of one penny from the beautifully kept account book of a friend. There were no children in the family, so nothing appears for school fees or children's clothes. The household consisted of husband and wife and one maid. They lived in one of the largest and dearest of German cities, and the husband's work as well as their social position forced certain expenses on them. For instance, they had to live in a good street and on the ground floor; and they had to entertain a good deal.
M. Pf. Bread 180 -- Meat 310 95 Fish and poultry 98 55 Aufschnitt 67 25 Potatoes 19 10 Vegetables 110 50 Fruit 87 95 Eggs 83 90 Milk 121 85 Butter 195 -- Lard 36 55 Flour, Gries, etc. 25 60 Sugar and treacle 66 20 Groceries 22 50 Coffee 67 -- Tea and chocolate 17 95 Drinks 159 10 Lights 30 55 Washing 126 80 Laundress 32 25 Ice 10 20 Coal and wood 170 10 Turf and other fuel 159 25 Matches 3 -- Cleaning 60 -- Furniture 4 55 Repairs 19 50 Crockery and kitchenware 38 -- Repairs 49 -- China and glass 30 5 Clothes--husband 181 20 " wife 452 85 Boots--husband 24 10 " wife 60 35 Linen 17 5 Charities 232 20 Rent 2150 -- Rent of husband's share of professional rooms 318 70 ---- -- Carry forward 5839 45
M. Pf. Brought forward 5839 45 Fares 46 10 Books 64 25 Writing materials 30 50 Charwoman and tips 85 95 Wages and servants' presents 335 50 Papers 35 25 Carpenter 125 -- Tobacco and cigars 165 90 Sundries 39 35 Photography and fishing tackle 141 10 Music lessons 15 10 Medicine 13 80 Hairdresser 2 40 Presents--family 291 75 " friends 119 -- Amusements 137 25 Travelling 736 40 Stamps 99 65 Entertaining (at Home) 232 -- Charities[2] 24 -- Subscriptions 119 80 Fire insurance 12 30 Old age insurance 10 40 ---- -- 8722 20 ==== ==
There are some interesting points about this budget as compared with an English one of L436. It will be seen that although meat is so dear in Germany the weekly butcher's bill for three people was only 6s., fish and poultry together only 2s., and the ham sausage, etc. from the provision shop under 1s. 6d. a week. The washing bill for the year is low, because nearly everything was washed at home, and dear as fuel is in Germany this household spent about L16, where an English one presenting the same front would spend L20 to L25. Observe, too, the amount spent on servants' wages by people who lived in a large charmingly furnished flat, and had a long visiting list. The wife, too, a very pretty woman and always well dressed, spent much less on her toilet than anyone would have guessed from its finish and variety, for she came from one of the German cities where women do dress well. There is nearly as much difference amongst German cities in this respect as there is amongst nations. Berlin is far behind either Hamburg or Frankfurt, for instance. The middle-class women of Berlin have an extraordinary affection all through the summer season for collarless blouses, bastard tartans, and white cotton gloves with thumbs but no fingers. In England the force of custom drives women to uncover their necks in the evening, whether it becomes them or not, and it is not a custom for which sensible elderly women can have much to say. But pneumonia blouses have never been universal wear in any country, and it is impossible to explain their apparently irresistible attraction for all ages and sizes of women in the Berlin electric cars. Those who were not wearing pneumonia blouses a year ago were wearing _Reform-Kleider_, shapeless ill-cut garments usually of grey tweed. The oddest combination, and quite a common one, was a sack-like _Reform-Kleid_, with a saucy little coloured bolero worn over it, fingerless gloves, and a madly tilted beflowered hat perched on a dowdy coiffure. These are rude remarks to make about the looks of foreign ladies, but the _Reform-Kleid_ is just as hideous and absurd in Germany now as our bilious green draperies were on the wrong people twenty-five years ago, and I am sure every foreigner who came to England must have laughed at them. On the whole, I would say of German women in general what a Frenchwoman once said to me in the most matter-of-fact tone of Englishwomen, _Elles s'habillent si mal_.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Probably private charities.