Galgenberg, Aug. 25th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Very well; I won't quarrel; I will befriends,--friends, that is, so long as you allow me to be so in the onlyright and possible way. Don't murder too many grouse. Think of mydisapproving scowl when you are beginning to do it, and then perhapsyour day of slaughter will resolve itself into an innocent picnic on themoors, alone with sky and heather and a bored, astonished dog. Are younot glad now that you went to Scotland instead of coming to Jena to findthe Schmidts not at home? Surely long days in the heather by yourselfwill do much toward making you friends with life. I think those moorsmust be so beautiful. Really very nearly as good as my Galgenberg. MyGalgenberg, by the bye, has left off being quite so admirably solitaryas it was at first. The neighbor is, as I told you, extremely friendly,so is his wife, though I do not set such store by her friendliness as Ido by his, for, frankly, I find men are best; and they have a son who isan _Assessor_ in Berlin. You know what an _Assessor_ is, don't you?--itis a person who will presently be a _Landrath_. And you know what a_Landrath_ is? It's what you are before you turn into a_Regierungsrath_. And a _Regierungsrath_ is what you are before you area _Geheimrath_. And a _Geheimrath_, if he lives long enough and doesn'tirritate anybody in authority, becomes ultimately that impressive andglorious being a _Wirklicher Geheimrath_--implying that before he wasonly in fun--_mit dem Praedikat Excellenz_. And don't say I don't explainnicely, because I do. Well, where was I? Oh, yes; at the son. Well, heappeared a fortnight ago, brown and hot and with a knapsack, havingwalked all the way from Berlin, and is spending his holiday with hispeople. For a day or two I thought him quite ordinary. He made rathersilly jokes, and wore a red tie. Then one evening I heard lovely sounds,lovely, floating, mellow sounds coming up in floods through the orchardinto my garden where I was propped against a tree-trunk watching a hugeyellow moon disentangling itself slowly from the mists of Jena,--oh,but exquisite sounds, sounds that throbbed into your soul and told itall it wanted to hear, showed it the way to all it was looking for,talked to it wonderfully of the possibilities of life. First they drewme on to my feet, then they drew me down the garden, then through theorchard, nearer and nearer, till at last I stood beneath the open windowthey were coming from, listening with all my ears. Against the wall Ileaned, holding my breath, spell-bound, forced to ponder great themes,themes of life and death, the music falling like drops of liquid lightin dark and thirsty places. I don't know how long it lasted or how longI stood there after it was finished, but some one came to the window andput his head out into the freshness, and what do you think he said? Hesaid, '_Donnerwetter, wie man im Zimmer schwitzt._' And it was the son,brown and hot, and with a red tie.
'Ach, Fraeulein Schmidt,' said he, suddenly perceiving me. 'Good evening.A fine evening. I did not know I had an audience.'
'Yes,' said I, unable at once to adjust myself to politenesses.
'Do you like music?'
'Yes,' said I, still vibrating.
'It is a good violin. I picked it up--' and he told me a great manythings that I did not hear, for how can you hear when your spiritrefuses to come back from its journeyings among the stars?
'Will you not enter?' he said at last. 'My mother is fetching up somebeer and will be here in a moment. It makes one warm playing.'
But I would not enter. I walked back slowly through the long orchardgrass between the apple-trees trees. The moon gleamed along thebranches. The branches were weighed down with apples. The place was fullof the smell of fruit, of the smell of fruit fallen into the grass, thathad lain there bruised all day in the sun. I think the beauty of theworld is crushing. Often it seems almost unbearable, calling out such anacuteness of sensation, such a vivid, leaping sensitiveness of feeling,that indeed it is like pain.
But what I want to talk about is the strange way good things come out ofevil. It really almost makes you respect and esteem the bad things,doing it with an intelligent eye fixed on the future. Here is our youngfriend down the hill, a young man most ordinary in every way but one, soordinary that I think we must put him under the heading bad, taking badin the sense of negation, of want of good, here he is, robust of speech,fond of beer, red of tie, chosen as her temple by that delicate lady theMuse of melody. Apparently she is not very particular about her temples.It is true while he is playing at her dictation she transforms himwholly, and I suppose she does not care what he is like in between. ButI do. I care because in between he thinks it pleasant to entertain mewith facetiousness, his mother hanging fondly on every word in theamazing way mothers, often otherwise quite intelligent persons, do.Since that first evening he has played every evening, and his taste inmusic is as perfect as it is bad in everything else. It is severe,exquisite, exclusive. It is the taste that plays Mozart and Bach andBeethoven, and wastes no moments with the Mendelssohn sugar or thelesser inspiration of Brahms. I tried to strike illumination out of himon these points, wanted to hear his reasons for a greater exclusivenessthan I have yet met, went through a string of impressive names beginningwith Schumann and ending with Wagner and Tchaikowsky, but he showed nointerest, and no intelligence either, unless a shrug of the shoulder isintelligent. It is true he remarked one day that he found life too shortfor anything but the best--'That is why,' he added, unable to forbearfrom wit, 'I only drink Pilsner.'
'What?' I cried, ignoring the Pilsner, 'and do not these greatmen'--again I ran through a string of them--'do not they also belong tothe very best?'
'No,' he said; and would say no more. So you see he is obstinate as wellas narrow-minded.
Of course such exclusiveness in art _is_ narrow-minded, isn't it?Besides, it is very possible he is wrong. You, I know, used to perchBrahms on one of the highest peaks of Parnassus (I never thought therewas quite room enough for him on it), and did you not go three times allthe way to Munich while you were with us to hear Mottl conduct the_Ring_? Surely it is probable a person of your all-round good taste is abetter judge than a person of his very nearly all-round bad taste?Whatever your faults may be, you never made a fault in ties, neverclamored almost ceaselessly for drink, never talked about _schwitzen_,nor entertained young women from next door with the tricks andfacetiousness of a mountebank. I wonder if his system were carried intoliterature, and life were wholly concentrated on the half dozenabsolutely best writers, so that we who spread our attention out thinover areas I am certain are much too wide knew them as we never can knowthem, became part of them, lived with them and in them, saw throughtheir eyes and thought with their thoughts, whether there would be gainor loss? I don't know. Tell me what you think. If I might only have thesix mightiest books to go with me through life I would certainly have tolearn Greek because of Homer. But when it comes to the very mightiest, Icannot even get my six; I can only get four. Of course when I looselysay six books I mean the works of six writers. But beyond my four Icannot get; there must be a slight drop for the other two,--very slight,hardly a drop, rather a slight downward quiver into a radiance thefaintest degree less blazing, but still a degree less. These two wouldbe Milton and Virgil. The other four--but you know the other fourwithout my telling you. I am not sure that the _Assessor_ is not right,and that one cannot, in matters of the spirit, be too exclusive.Exclusiveness means concentration, deeper study, minuter knowledge; forwe only have a handful of years to do anything in, and they are quitesurely not enough to go round when going round means taking in the wholeworld.
On the other hand, wouldn't my speech become archaic? I'm afraid I wouldhave a tendency that would grow to address Papa in blank verse. Mylanguage, even when praying him at breakfast to give me butter, would beincorrigibly noble. I don't think Papa would like it. And what would hesay to a daughter who was forced by stress of concentration on six worksto go through life without Goethe? Goethe, you observe, was not one ofthe two less glorious and he certainly was not one of the fourcompletely glorious. I begin to fear I should miss a great deal by myexclusions. It would be sad to die without ever having been thrilled by_Werther_, exalted by _Faust_, amazed by the _Wahlverwandtschafte
n_,sent to sleep by _Wilhelm Meister_. To die innocent of any knowledge ofSchiller's _Glocke_, with no memory of strenuous hours spent getting itby heart at school, might be quite pleasant. But I think it would end bybeing tiring to be screwed up perpetually to the pitch of the greatestmen's greatest moments. Such heights are not for insects like myself. Iwould hang very dismally, with drooping head and wings, on those exaltedhooks. And has not the soul too its longings at times for adressing-gown and slippers? And do you see how you could do withoutBoswell?
Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XLII
Galgenberg, Aug. 31st.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Yes, of course he does. He plays every evening.And every evening I go and listen, either in the orchard beneath theopen window or, more ceremoniously, inside the room with or withoutPapa. I find it a pleasant thing. I am living in a bath of music. And Ihope you don't expect me to agree with your criticism of music as astirrer-up of, on the whole, second-rate emotions. What are second-rateemotions? Are they the ones that you have? And was it to have themstirred that you used to journey so often to Munich and Mottl? Stirredup I certainly am. Not in the way, I admit, in which a poem of Milton'sdoes it, not affected in the least as I am affected by, for instance,the piled-up majesty of the poem on _Time_, but if less nobly still veryeffectually. There; I have apparently begun to agree with you. Well, Ido see, the moment I begin to consider, that what is stirred is lessnoble. I do see that what I feel when I listen to music is chiefly_Wehmuth_, and I don't think much of _Wehmuth_. You have no word for it.Perhaps in England you do not have just that form of sentiment. It is aforlorn thing, made up mostly of vague ingredients,--vague yearnings,vague regrets, vague dissatisfactions. When it comes over you, youremember all the people who are absent, and you are sad; and the peoplewho are dead, and you sigh; and the times you have been naughty, and yougroan. I do see that a sentiment that makes you do that is not thehighest. It is profitless, sterile. It doesn't send you on joyfully tothe next thing, but keeps you lingering in the dust of churchyards,barren places of the past which should never be revisited by thewholesome-minded. Now this looks as though I were agreeing with youquite, but I still don't. You put it so extremely. It is so horrid tothink that even my emotions may be second-rate. I long ago became awarethat my manners were so, but I did like to believe there was nothingsecond-rate about my soul. Well, what is one to do? Never be soft? Neverbe sad? Or sorry? Or repentant? Always stay up at the level of Milton's_Time_ poem, or of his _At a Solemn Musick_, strung high up to anunchanging pitch of frigid splendor and nobleness? It is what I try toaim at. It is what I would best like. Then comes our friend of the redtie, and in the cool of the day when the world is dim and scented shakesa little fugue of Bach's out of his fiddle, a sparkling, sly littlefugue, frolicsome for all its minor key, a handful of bright threadswoven together, twisted in and out, playing, it would seem, at some gameof hide-and-seek, of pretending to want to catch each other into atangle, but always gayly coming out of the knots, each distinct andholding on its shining way till the meeting at the end, the finalembrace when the game is over and they tie themselves contentedlytogether into one comfortable major chord,--our friend plays this, thismanifestly happy thing, and my soul listens, and smiles, and sighs, andlongs, and ends by being steeped in _Wehmuth_. I choose the little fugueof Bach as an instance, for of all music it is aimed most distinctly atthe intellect, it is the furthest removed from _Wehmuth_; and if it hasthis effect on me I will not make you uncomfortable by a description ofwhat the baser musics do, the musics of passion, of furious exultationsand furious despairs. But my vague wish for I do not know what, gentle,and rather sweetly resigned when the accompaniment is Bach, swellssuddenly while I listen to them into a terrifying longing that rends andshatters my soul.
What private things I tell you. I wouldn't if I were talking. I would beaffected by your actual presence. But writing is so different, and sostrange; at once so much more and so much less intimate. The body issafe--far away, unassailable; and the spirit lets itself go out to meeta fellow spirit with the frankness it can never show when the body goestoo, that grievous hinderer of the communion of saints, that officiousblunderer who can spoil the serenest intercourse by a single blush.
Johanna came in just there. She was decked in smiles, and wanted to saygood-by till to-morrow morning. It is her night out, and she reallylooked rather wonderful to one used to her kitchen condition. Her skin,cleansed from week-day soilure, was surprisingly fair; her hair, wavedmore beautifully than mine will ever be, was piled up in bright imposingmasses; her starched white dress had pink ribbons about it; she worecotton gloves; and held the handkerchief I lend her on these occasionsgenteelly by its middle in her hand. Every second Sunday she descendsthe mountain at sunset, the door-key in her pocket, and dances all nightin some convivial _Gasthof_ in the town, coming up again at sunrise orlater according to the amount of fun she was having. On the Monday I donearly everything alone, for she sleeps half the day, and the other halfshe doesn't like being talked to. She is a good servant, and she wouldcertainly go if we tried to get her in again under the twelve hours. Onthe alternate Sundays we allow her to have her young man up for theafternoon and evening. He is a trumpeter in the regiment stationed inJena, and he brings his trumpet to fill up awkward silences. Engagedcouples of that kind don't seem able to talk much, so that the trumpetis a great comfort to them. Whenever conversation flags he whips it outand blows a rousing blast, giving her time to think of something to saynext. I had to ask him to do it in the garden, for the first time itnearly blew our roof, which isn't very tightly on, off. Now he and shesit together on a bench outside the door, and the genius down the hillwith the exclusive ears suffers, I am afraid, rather acutely. Papa and Iwander as far away as we can get among the mountains.
It is rather dreadful when they quarrel. Then, of course, Johanna sulksas girls will, and sulks are silent things, so that the trumpet has tofill up a yawning gulf and never leaves off at all. Last Sunday it blewthe whole time we were out, and I expected when I got home to find theengagement broken off. We stayed away as long as we could, climbinghigher and higher, wandering further and further, supping at lastreluctantly on cucumber salad and cold herrings in the little restaurantup on the Schweizerhohe because the trumpet wouldn't stop and we didn'tdare go home till it did. Its blasts pursued us even into the recessesof the dingy wooden hall we took our ears into, vainly trying to carrythem somewhere out of range. It seemed to be a serious quarrel. We had adepressing meal. We both esteem Johanna with the craven esteem you feelfor a person, at any moment capable of giving notice, who does all theunpleasant things you would otherwise have to do yourself. The state ofher temper seriously affects our peace. You see, the house is small, andif her trumpeter has been unsatisfactory and she throws the saucepansabout or knocks the broom in sweeping against all the wooden things likedoors and skirting-boards, it makes an unendurable clatter and puts anend at once to Papa's work and to my equally earnest play. If, hernerves being already on edge, I were to suggest to her even smilingly tobe quiet, she would at once give notice--I know she would--and thedreary search begin again for that impossible treasure you in Englandcall a paragon and we in Jena call a pearl. Where am I to find a clean,honest, strong pearl, able to cook and willing to come and live in whatis something like an unopened oyster-shell, so shut-up, so cut-off sosolitary would her existence here be, for eight pounds a year? It iseasy for you august persons who never see your servants, who have somany that by sheer force of numbers they become unnoticeable, to derideus who have only one for being so greatly at her mercy. I know you willderide. I see your letter already: 'Dear Fraeulein Schmidt, Is not yourattitude toward the maid Johanna unworthy?' It isn't unworthy, becauseit is natural. Defiantly I confess that it is also cringing. Well, it isnatural to cringe under the circumstances. So would you. I dare say ifyour personal servant is a good one, and you depend much on him forcomfort, you do do it as it is. And there are very few girls in Jena whowoul
d come out of it and take a situation on the side of a precipice foreight pounds a year. Really the wages are small, balanced against thedisadvantages. And wages are going up. Down in Jena a good servant canget ten pounds a year now without much difficulty. So that it behoovesus who cannot pay such prices to humor Johanna.
About nine the trumpet became suddenly dumb. Papa and I, after waiting afew minutes, set out for home, conjecturing as we went in what state weshould find Johanna. Did the silence mean a rupture or a making-up? Iinclined toward the rupture, for how can a girl, I asked Papa, murmurmild words of making-up to a lover engaged in blowing a trumpet? Papasaid he didn't know; and engrossed by fears we walked home withoutspeaking.
No one was to be seen. The house was dark and empty. Everything wasquiet except the crickets. The trumpeter had gone, but so, apparently,had Johanna. She had forgotten to lock the door, so that all we--oranybody else passing that way--had to do was to walk in. Nobody,however,--and by nobody I mean the criminally intentioned, brieflyburglars--walks into houses perched as ours is. They would be verybreathless burglars by the time they got to our garden gate. We shouldhear their stertorous breathing as they labored up well in time to lockthe door; and Papa, ever pitiful and polite, would as likely as notunlock it again to hasten out and offer them chairs and lemonade. It wasnot, then, with any misgivings of that sort that we went into ourdeserted house and felt about for matches; but I was surprised thatJohanna, when she could sit comfortably level on the seat by the door,should rather choose to go and stroll in the garden. You cannot strollin my garden. You can do very few of the things in it that most peoplecan do in most gardens, and certainly strolling is not one of them. Itis no place for lovers, or philosophers, or leisurely persons of thesort. It is an unrestful place, in which you are forced to be energetic,to watch where you put your feet, to balance yourself to a nicety, to becontinually on the alert. I lit a lantern, and went out in search ofJohanna strolling. I stood on the back door steps and looked right andlooked left. No Johanna. No sounds of Johanna. Only the crickets, andthe soft darting by of a bat. I went down the steps--they are sixirregular stones embedded one beneath the other in the clay and leadingto the pump from which, in buckets, we supply our need for water--andstanding still again, again heard only crickets. I went to themignonette beds I have made--mignonette and nasturtiums; mignonette forscent and nasturtiums for beauty, and I hope you like nasturtiums--andstanding still again, again heard only crickets. The night was dark andsoft, and seemed of a limitless vastness. The near shrill of thecrickets made the silence beyond more intense. A cat prowled past,velvet-footed, silent as the night, a vanishing gray streak, intent andterrible, concentrated wholly on prey. I went on through the grass, myshoes wet with dew, the lantern light fitfully calling out mypossessions from the blackness,--the three apple-trees, thecurrant-bush, the pale group of starworts, children of some accidentalwind-dropped seed of long ago; and beside the starworts I stopped againand listened. Still only the crickets; and presently very far away thewhistle of the night express from Berlin to Munich as it hurried pastthe little station in the Paradies valley. It was extraordinarily quiet.Once I thought my own heart-beats were the footsteps of a late wandereron the road. I went further, down to the very end, to the place where mybeautiful, untiring monthly-rose bush unfolds pink flower after pinkflower against the fence that separates us from our neighbor's kingdom,and stopped again and listened. At first still only crickets, and theanxious twitter of a bird toward whose nest that stealthy, murderousstreak of gray was drawing. It began to rain; soft, warm drops, from themotionless clouds spread low across the sky. I forgot Johanna, andbecame wholly possessed by the brooding spirit of the night, by thefeeling of oneness, of identity with the darkness, the silence, thescent. My feet were wet with dew; my hair with the warm and gentle rain.I lifted up my face and let the drops fall on it through the leaves ofthe apple-trees, warm and gentle as a caress. Then the sudden blare of atrumpet made me start and quiver. I quivered so much that the lanternfell down and went out. The blare was the loudest noise I thought I hadever heard, ripping up the silence like a jagged knife. The startledhills couldn't get over it, but went on echoing and re-echoing it,tossing it backward and forward to each other in an endless surprise,and had hardly settled down again with a kind of shudder when they wereroused to frenzy by another. After that there was blare upon blare. Theman only stopped to take breath. They were louder, more rollicking thanany I had heard him produce. And they came from the neighbor's house,from the very dwelling of him of the easily tortured ears, of him forwhom Wagner is not good enough. Well, do you know what he had done? Iran down to question, and to extract Johanna and explain the trumpeter,and I met the poor genius, very pale and damp-looking, his necktiestruggled up behind to the top of his collar, its bow twisted roundsomehow under his left ear. He was hurrying out into the night as Iarrived, panting, on the doorstep. 'Why in the world--' I began; but ablast drowned further speech.