VIENNA, THE SHABBY GENTEEL

Hokitika Guardian, 18 June 1921, Page 1

VIENNA, THE SHABBY GENTEEL

(By G. Ward Price.) Vienna. Like many bankrupts, Austria still lives in considerable' outward style. Such splendid plnces of amusement exist nowhere else, for buildings that used to he tho preserves of one of the wealthiest aristocracies of the world are now converted for this purpose. Popular subscription-balls are given in the Throne Room of the Hofburg, where Austrian rulers lived for six hundred years; Schonbrunn, old Emporor Francis Joseph’s summer palace, is now a restaurant for excursionists, where food is served on fine china plates with the imperial monogram. The schwarzenherg Casino, on the Ring, which used to be the finest military club in Europe, a vast building of marble balls and stairways has been turned into a popular cafe.

Austria has arrived in fact, at the stage of decrepitude which is picturesque without being sordid.

Here, as in Germany, I am unable to understand why something at least, on account of reparations should not be obtained by requiring the Government to sell in the United States and South America a great part of the national treasures which in Austria arc so plentiful. In the Imperial Art Museum are literally dozens of Rubens. Vnndycks, and masters of the Venetian school which ought to come under the auctioneer's hammer in New York.

As for the private boards of tho Hapsburgs family, no one. knows their full extent. Hitherto the Reparations Commission has opposed the sale of Vienna’s art possessions on the ground that it would detract from the city’s interest for tourists. The Austrians have only been allowed to pledge in Holland a part of the immense collection of costly tapestries which the old Imperial Family possessed as security for food-credits. On the human side, too, Austria lias not yet reached the squalid stage of social degeneration. You do not find, as in Russia, ex-generals selling matches in the street, hut you do meet them as clerks and private secretaries—still well groomed and dignified hut with overcoats as green as the dancing cock’s plumes in the headgear of their old uniforms used to ho.

There is an ex-cavalry captain named Ellmnyer, renowned in Austrian society before the war as horseman, swordsman and dancer. Setting up as a dancingmaster whon the revolution came he has had very great success. His school has become the chief rallying-point of wlial was once the great world in Vienna, and the other night lie organised a private subscription-ball to' bring together people whom poverty and the new scheme of things have driven apart

Tt is a long while since T bad scon such lovely women in a hall loom—delicate white skins, melting, languorous. TmJf-Orientnl eyes. And as one looked at trie old Excellencies and Founts and Barons in their 1913 dress-coats—some of whom would doubtless go short, of a pair of hoots so that they and their wives might have this taste of the old times—one wondered whether they are not in some ways happier now. “Keeping up position'd —in German countries, at any rate—used to he a lifelong obsession. At least they are freed from that.