Just ahead of Episode Sixteen of Three Men on the Bummel, let me thank you for your many insightful comments on this latest Tale for Our Time. My remarks yesterday on the German state's micro-regulation of every aspect of life prompted this response from Veronica, a Kiwi Steyn Clubber:
Let's apply Chesterton's Fence to the late 19th century German bylaw against piano playing in one's own home after 11 pm shall we, assuming Jerome was not exaggerating for comic effect - why would such a regulation have existed in the first place?
Well, at a guess, I'd say that late night tinkling of the ivories was discouraged, both socially and legally, because most people deemed it to be uncivilized, annoying and generally highly inconsiderate behavior, esp toward near neighbours of the midnight pianists, who probably had to get up early for work and didn't wish to hear 'Moonlight Sonata' or 'Songs Without Words', played very badly no doubt, at two in the morning.
Seems fair enough to me. Noise control and the appreciation and promotion of peace and quiet are conservative values MS!
The Germans can certainly be condemned for some things, although I find the WW2 framing here a bit of a reach, however as regards deterring the scourge of after hours music they were dead right.
To which Hugo Miller, a Mark Steyn Club member from the English Home Counties, retorts:
I'm sure Mark would say this should belong in the 'realm of manners'.
The last time I was in Germany, I wanted to cross the street, and as there were no cars in sight, I did so. Some German woman shouted something at me, which my wife translated as 'You are setting a bad example to the children'. Apparently I should have walked to the crossing, pressed the button and waited for the machine to tell me when to cross. If I had spoken enough German I would have told her that I was actually setting a good example, by teaching children to use their brains to figure out whether it was safe to cross, rather than delegate their thinking to a machine.
Hugo is quite correct that I regard this as part of Lord Moulton's "realm of manners" - as does Jerome K Jerome. As his narrator put it a couple of days ago, he had never had any desire to play the piano after 11pm - until he came to Germany and found that it was forbidden.
In tonight's episode of Three Men on the Bummel, our trusty narrator moves on from a "Moonlight Sonata" in the moonlight to horses stabled above your bedroom - which would, I'd have thought, be far more disturbing of one's sleep and surely more worthy of a German by-law:
There was one night when, tired out and far from town or village, we slept in a Black Forest farmhouse. The great charm about the Black Forest house is its sociability. The cows are in the next room, the horses are upstairs, the geese and ducks are in the kitchen, while the pigs, the children, and the chickens live all over the place.
The closest I've ever come to horses in the house was forty years ago on a visit to Faringdon to see Robert Heber-Percy, "the Mad Boy" and heir to Lord Berners. In Berners' day, Penny Betjeman (wife of Sir John) used to bring her impressive white Arab Moti into the drawing room to take tea with them. In the same room many years later, Robert offered to ride another mount through the French doors to show me what it was like.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Sixteen of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
If you'd like to join Veronica and Hugo in The Mark Steyn Club, you'll find more details here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership. Please join me tomorrow evening for Part Seventeen of Three Men on the Bummel.
