Goodnight, dear mother. I feel so close to you tonight, just as if you were here in the room with me, and I had only to put out my finger and touch Love. I don’t believe there’s much in this body business. It is only spirit that matters really; and nothing can stop your spirit and mine being together.
Your Chris.
Still, a body is a great comfort when it comes to wanting to kiss one’s darling mother.
Berlin, Sunday, June 2lst, 1914.
My precious mother,
The weeks fly by, full of work and Weltpolitik. They talk of nothing here at meals but this Weltpolitik. I’ve just been having a dose of it at breakfast. To say that the boarders are interested in it is to speak feebly: they blaze with interest, they explode with it, they scorch and sizzle. And they are so pugnacious! Not to each other, for contrary to the attitude at Kloster’s they are knit together by the toughest band of uncritical and obedient admiration for everything German, but they are pugnacious to the Swede girl and myself. Especially to myself. There is a holy calm about the Swede girl that nothing can disturb. She has an enviable gift for getting on with her meals and saying nothing. I wish I had it. Directly I have learned a new German word I want to say it. I accumulate German words every day, of course, and there’s something in my nature and something in the way I’m talked at and to at Frau Berg’s table that makes me want to say all the words I’ve got as quickly as possible. And as I can’t string them into sentences my conversation consists of single words, which produce a very odd effect, quite unintended, of detached explosions. When I’ve come to the end of them I take to English, and the boarders plunge in after me, and swim or drown in it according to their several ability.
It’s queer, the atmosphere here, — in this house, in the streets, wherever one goes. They all seem to be in a condition of tension — of intense, tightly-strung waiting, very like that breathless expectancy in the last act of “Tristan” when Isolde’s ship is sighted and all the violins hang high up on to a shrill, intolerably eager note. There’s a sort of fever. And the big words! I thought Germans were stolid, quiet people. But how they talk! And always in capital letters. They talk in tremendous capitals about what they call the deutscke Standpunkt; and the deutsche Standpunkt is the most wonderful thing you ever came across. Butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth. It is too great and good, almost, they give one to understand, for a world so far behind in high qualities to appreciate. No other people has anything approaching it. As far as I can make out, stripped of its decorations its main idea is that what Germans do is right and what other people do is wrong. Even when it is exactly the same thing. And also, that wrong becomes right directly it has anything to do with Germans. Not with a German. The individual German can and does commit every sort of wrong, just as other individuals do in other countries, and he gets punished for them with tremendous harshness; Kloster says with unfairness. But directly he is in the plural and becomes Wir Deutschen, as they are forever saying, his crimes become virtues. As a body he purifies, he has a purging quality. Today they were saying at breakfast that if a crime is big enough, if it is on a grand scale, it leaves off being a crime, for then it is a success, and success is always virtue, — that is, I gather, if it is a German success; if it is a French one it is an outrage. You mustn’t rob a widow, for instance, they said, because that is stupid; the result is small and you may be found out and be cut by your friends. But you may rob a great many widows and it will be a successful business deal. No one will say anything, because you have been clever and successful.
I know this view is not altogether unknown in other countries, but they don’t hold it deliberately as a whole nation. Among other things that Hilda Seeberg’s father did which roused her unforgiveness was just this, — to rob too few widows, come to grief over it, and go bankrupt for very little. She told me about it in an outburst of dark confidence. Just talking of it made her eyes black with anger. It was so terrible, she said, to smash for a small amount, — such an overwhelming shame for the Seeberg family, whose poverty thus became apparent and unhideable. If one smashes, she said, one does it for millions, otherwise one doesn’t smash. There is something so chic about millions, she said, that whether you make them or whether you lose them you are equally well thought-of and renowned.
“But it is better to — well, disappoint few widows than many,” I suggested, picking my words.
“For less than a million marks,” she said, eyeing me sternly, “it is a disgrace to fail.”
They’re funny, aren’t they. I’m greatly interested. They remind me more and more of what Kloster says they are, clever children. They have the unmoral quality of children. I listen — they treat me as if I were the audience, and they address themselves in a bunch to my corner — and I put in one of my words now and then, generally with an unfortunate effect, for they talk even louder after that, and then presently the men get up and put their heels together and make a stiff inclusive bow and disappear, and Frau Berg folds up her napkin and brushes the crumbs out of her creases and says, “Ja, ja,” with a sigh, as a sort of final benediction on the departed conversation, and then rises slowly and locks up the sugar, and then treads heavily away down the passage and has a brief skirmish in the kitchen with Wanda, who daily tries to pretend there hadn’t been any pudding left over, and then treads heavily back again to her bedroom, and shuts herself in till four o’clock for her Mittagsruhe; and the other boarders drift away one by one, and I run out for a walk to get unstiffened after having practised all the morning, and as I walk I think over what they’ve been saying, and try to see things from their angle, and simply can’t.
On Tuesdays and Fridays I have my lesson, and tell Kloster about them. He says they’re entirely typical of the great bulk of the nation. “Wir Deutschen,” he says, and laughs, “are the easiest people in the world to govern, because we are obedient and inflammable. We have that obedience of mind so convenient to Authority, and we are inflammable because we are greedy. Any prospect held out to us of getting something belonging to some one else sets us instantly alight. Dangle some one else’s sausage before our eyes, and we will go anywhere after it. Wonderful material for S. M.” And he adds a few irreverences.
Last Wednesday was his concert at the Philarmonie. He played like an angel. It was so strange, the fat, red, more than commonplace-looking little bald man, with his quite expressionless face, his wilfully stupid face — for I believe he does it on purpose, that blankness, that bulgy look of one who never thinks and only eats — and then the heavenly music. It was as strange and arresting as that other mixture, that startling one of the men who sell flowers in the London streets and the flowers they sell. What does it look like, those poor ragged men shuffling along the kerb, and in their arms, rubbing against their dirty shoulders, great baskets of beauty, baskets heaped up with charming aristocrats, gracious and delicate purities of shape and colour and scent. The strangest effect of all is when they happen, round about Easter, to be selling only lilies, and the unearthly purity of the lilies shines on the passersby from close to the seller’s terrible face. Christ must often have looked like that, when he sat close up to Pharisees.
But although Kloster’s music was certainly as beautiful as the lilies, he himself wasn’t like those tragic sellers. It was only that he was so very ordinary, — a little man compact, apparently, of grossness, and the music he was making was so divine. It was that marvellous French and Russian stuff. I must play it to you, and play it to you, till you love it. It’s like nothing there has ever been. It is of an exquisite youth, — untouched, fearless, quite heedless of tradition, going its own way straight through and over difficulties and prohibitions that for centuries have been supposed final. People like Wagner and Strauss and the rest seem so much sticky and insanitary mud next to these exquisite young ones, and so very old; and not old and wonderful like the great men, Beethoven and Bach and Mozart, but uglily old like a noisy old lady in a yellow wig.
The audience applauded, but wasn’t qu
ite sure. Such a master as Kloster, and one of their own flesh and blood, is always applauded, but I think the irregularity, the utter carelessness of the music, its apparently accidental beauty, was difficult for them. Germans have to have beauty explained to them and accounted for, — stamped first by an official, authorized, before they can be comfortable with it. I sat in a corner and cried, it was so lovely. I couldn’t help it. I hid away and pulled my hat over my face and tried not to, for there was a German in eyeglasses near me, who, perceiving I wanted to hide, instantly spent his time staring at me to find out why. The music held all things in it that I have known or guessed, all the beauty, the wonder, of life and death and love. I recognised it. I almost called out, “Yes — of course — I know that too.”
Afterwards I would have liked best to go home and to sleep with the sound of it still in my heart, but Kloster sent round a note saying I was to come to supper and meet some people who would be useful for me to know. One of his pupils, who brought the note, had been ordered to pilot me safely to the house, it being late, and as we walked and Kloster drove in somebody’s car he was there already when we arrived, busy opening beer bottles and looking much more appropriate than he had done an hour earlier. I can’t tell you how kindly he greeted me, and with what charming little elucidatory comments he presented me to his wife and the other guests. He actually seemed proud of me. Think how I must have glowed.
“This is Mees Chrees,” he said, taking my hand and leading me into the middle of the room. “I will not and cannot embark on her family name, for it is one of those English names that a prudent man avoids. Nor does it matter. For in ten years — nay, in five — all Europe will have learned it by heart.”
There were about a dozen people, and we had beer and sandwiches and were very happy. Kloster sat eating sandwiches and staring benevolently at us all, more like an amiable and hospitable prawn than ever. You don’t know, little mother, how wonderful it is that he should say these praising things of me, for I’m told by other pupils that he is dreadfully severe and disagreeable if he doesn’t think one is getting on. It was immensely kind of him to ask me to supper, for there was somebody there, a Grafin Koseritz, whose husband is in the ministry, and who is herself very influential and violently interested in music. She pulls most of the strings at Bayreuth, Kloster says, more of them even than Frau Cosima now that she is old, and gets one into anything she likes if she thinks one is worth while. She was very amiable and gracious, and told me I must marry a German! Because, she said, all good music is by rights, by natural rights, the property of Germany.
I wanted to say what about Debussy, and Ravel, and Stravinski, but I didn’t.
She said how much she enjoyed these informal evenings at Kloster’s, and that she had a daughter about my age who was devoted, too, to music, and a worshipper of Kloster’s.
I asked if she was there, for there was a girl away in a corner, but she looked shocked, and said “Oh no”; and after a pause she said again, “Oh no. One doesn’t bring one’s daughter here.”
“But I’m a daughter.” I said, — I admit tactlessly; and she skimmed away over that to things that sounded wise but weren’t really, about violins and the technique of fiddling.
Not that I haven’t already felt it, the cleavage here in the classes; but this was my first experience of the real thing, the real Junker lady — the Koseritzes are Prussians. She, being married and mature, can dabble if she likes in other sets, can come down as a bright patroness from another world and clean her feathers in a refreshing mud bath, as Kloster put it, commenting on his supper party at my lesson last Friday; but she would carefully keep her young daughter out of it.
They made me play after supper. Actually Kloster brought out his Strad and said I should play on that. It was evident he thought it important for me to play to these particular people, so though I was dreadfully taken aback and afraid I was going to disgrace my master, I was so much touched by this kindness and care for my future that I obeyed without a word. I played the Kreutzer Sonata, and an officer played the accompaniment, a young man who looked so fearfully smart and correct and wooden that I wondered why he was there till he began to play, and then I knew; and as soon as I started I forgot the people sitting round so close to me, so awkwardly and embarrassingly near. The Strad fascinated me. It seemed to be playing by itself, singing to me, telling me strange and beautiful secrets. I stood there just listening to it.
They were all very kind and enthusiastic, and talked eagerly to each other of a new star, a trouvaille. Think of your Chris, only the other day being put in a corner by you in just expiation of her offensiveness — it really feels as if it were yesterday — think of her being a new, or anything else, star! But I won’t be too proud, because people are always easily kind after supper, and besides they had been greatly stirred all the evening at the concert by Kloster’s playing. He was pleased too, and said some encouraging and delightful things. The Junker lady was very kind, and asked me to lunch with her, and I’m going tomorrow. The young man who played the accompaniment bowed, clicked his heels together, caught up my hand, and kissed it. He didn’t say anything. Kloster says he is passionately devoted to music, and so good at it that he would easily have been a first-rate musician if he hadn’t happened to have been born a Junker, and therefore has to be an officer. It’s a tragedy, apparently, for Kloster says he hates soldiering, and is ill if he is kept away long from music. He went away soon after that.
Grafin Koseritz brought me back in her car and dropped me at Frau Berg’s on her way home. She lives in the Sommerstrasse, next to the Brandenburger Thor, so she isn’t very far from me. She shuddered when she looked up at Frau Berg’s house. It did look very dismal.
Bedtime.
I’m so sleepy, precious mother, so sleepy that I must go straight to bed. I can’t hold my head up or my eyes open. I think it’s the weather — it was very hot today. Good night and bless you, my sweetest mother.
Your own Chris who loves you.
Berlin, Sunday, June 28th. Evening.
Beloved little mother,
I didn’t write this morning, but went for a whole day into the woods, because it was such a hot day and I longed to get away from Berlin. I’ve been wandering about Potsdam. It is only half an hour away in the train, and is full of woods and stretches of water, as well as palaces. Palaces weren’t the mood I was in. I wanted to walk and walk, and get some of the pavement stiffness out of my legs, and when I was tired sit down under a tree and eat the bread and chocolate I took with me and stare at the sky through leaves. So I did.
I’ve had a most beautiful day, the best since I left you. I didn’t speak to a soul all day, and found a place up behind Sans Souci on the edge of a wood looking out over a ryefield to an old windmill, and there I sat for hours; and after I had finished remembering what I could of the Scholar Gypsy, which is what one generally does when one sits in summer on the edge of a cornfield, I sorted out my thoughts. They’ve been getting confused lately in the rush of work day after day, as confused as the drawer I keep my gloves and ribbons in, thrusting them in as I take them off and never having time to tidy. Life tears along, and I have hardly time to look at my treasures. I’m going to look at them and count them up on Sundays. As the summer goes on I’ll pilgrimage out every Sunday to the woods, as regularly as the pious go to church, and for much the same reason, — to consider, and praise, and thank.
I took your two letters with me, reading them again in the woods. They seemed even more dear out there where it was beautiful. You sound so content, darling mother, about me, and so full of belief in me. You may be very sure that if a human being, by trying and working, can justify your dear belief it’s your Chris. The snapshot of the border full of Canterbury bells makes me able to picture you. Do you wear the old garden hat I loved you so in when you garden? Tell me, because I want to think of you exactly. It makes my mouth water, those Canterbury bells. I can see their lovely colours, their pink and blue and purple, with the white
Sweet Williams and the pale lilac violas you write about. Well, there’s nothing of that in the Lutzowstrasse. No wonder I went away from it this morning to go out and look for June in the woods. The woods were a little thin and austere, for there has been no rain lately, but how enchanting after the barren dustiness of my Berlin street! I did love it so. And I felt so free and glorious, coming off on my own for my hard-earned Sunday outing, just like any other young man.
The train going down was full of officers, and they all looked very smart and efficient and satisfied with themselves and life. In my compartment they were talking together eagerly all the way, talking shop with unaffected appetite, as though shop were so interesting that even on Sundays they couldn’t let it be, and poring together over maps. No trace of stolidity. But where is this stolidity one has heard about? Compared to the Germans I’ve seen, it is we who are stolid; stolid, and slow, and bored. The last thing these people are is bored. On the contrary, the officers had that same excitement about them, that same strung-upness, that the men boarders at Frau Berg’s have.
Potsdam is charming, and swarms with palaces and parks. If it hadn’t been woods I was after I would have explored it with great interest. Do you remember when you read Carlyle’s Frederick to me that winter you were trying to persuade me to learn to sew? And, bribing me to sew, you read aloud? I didn’t learn to sew, but I did learn a great deal about Potsdam and Hohenzollerns, and some Sunday when it isn’t quite so fine I shall go down and visit Sans Souci, and creep back into the past again. But today I didn’t want walls and roofs, I wanted just to walk and walk. It was very crowded in the train coming back, full of people who had been out for the day, and weary little children were crying, and we all sat heaped up anyhow. I know I clutched two babies on my lap, and that they showed every sign of having no self-control. They were very sweet, though, and I wouldn’t have minded it a bit if I had had lots of skirts; but when you only have two!
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 178
