IN WHICH IT IS RELATED HOW, BY THE INTERVENTION OF A CIGAR WHICH WOULD
NOT DRAW, A LOVE-AFFAIR WAS SET AGOING BETWEEN A LADY AND
GENTLEMAN WHO HAD PREVIOUSLY KNOCKED THEIR HEADS TOGETHER.
The manner in which young Edmund Lehsen, the painter, made acquaintance
with the mysterious goldsmith, Leonhard, was somewhat different to that
in which Tussmann had done so.
Edmund was one day sketching a beautiful group of trees in a lonely
part of the Thiergarten, when Leonhard came up, and, without any
ceremony, looked over his shoulder at what he was doing. Edmund did not
disturb himself, but went on with his sketch, till the goldsmith
cried--
"That is a most extraordinary picture, young gentleman. Those will come
to be something else than trees before you have done with them."
"Do you see anything out of the way, sir?" Edmund said, with flashing
eyes.
"I mean," said the goldsmith, "that there are all sorts of forms
and shapes peeping out from amongst those high leaves there, in
ever-changing variety: geniuses, strange animals, maidens, and flowers.
Yet the whole thing ought only to amount to that group of trees before
us there, through which the rays of the evening sun are streaming so
charmingly."
"Sir!" Edmund answered, "either you have a very profound understanding,
and a most penetrating eye for matters of this kind, or I have been
unusually successful in portraying my inmost feelings. Don't you
perceive when, in looking at Nature, you abandon yourself to all your
feelings of longing, all kinds of wonderful shapes and forms come
looking at you through the trees with beautiful eyes? That was what I
was trying to represent to the senses in this sketch, and I see I have
succeeded."
"I understand," Leonhard said, rather coldly and dryly. "You wanted to
drop study, and give yourself a rest, to refresh and strengthen your
fancy."
"Not at all," Edmund answered. "I consider this way of working from
Nature is my best and most useful 'study.' Study of this sort enables
me to put the really poetic and imaginative element into my landscape.
Unless the landscape painter is every bit as much a poet as the
portrait painter, he will never be anything but a dauber."
"Heaven help us!" cried the goldsmith. "So you, dear Edmund Lehsen, are
going to----"
"You know me, then, sir, do you?" the painter cried.
"Why shouldn't I?" said Leonhard. "I first made your acquaintance on an
occasion which you, probably, don't remember much about; that is to
say, when you were born. Considering the small experience which you had
at that time, you had behaved very well--had given your mamma little
trouble--and as soon as you came into the world, gave a very pretty cry
of pleasure and delight. Also, you showed a great love for the
daylight, which, by my advice, you were not kept away from. Because,
according to the most recent medical opinions, daylight is far from
having a bad effect on babies, but rather is beneficial to their bodies
and their minds. Your papa was so pleased that he hopped about the room
on one leg, singing
'The manly heart with love o'erflowing,'
from Mozart's 'Flauto Magico.'
"Presently he handed your little person over to me, and asked me to
draw your horoscope, which I did. Afterwards I often came to your
father's house, and you didn't disdain to suck at the little bags of
almonds and raisins which I used to bring you. Then, when you were
about six or eight, I went away on my peregrinations. When I got back
to Berlin I saw with satisfaction that your father had sent you here
from Münchberg to study the noble art of painting; because there is not
a very large collection in Münchberg of works adapted for fundamental
study, either in the shape of pictures, statues, bronzes, gems, or
other art-treasures of value. That good native town of yours can
scarcely vie with Rome, Florence, or Dresden in that respect; or
perhaps even with what Berlin will one day become, when bran-new
antiques, fished out of the Tiber, have been brought to it in some
considerable quantity."
"Heavens!" Edmund cried, "the most vivid remembrances out of my
childhood are awaking themselves in my mind. You are Herr Leonhard, are
you not?"
"Certainly!" Leonhard answered. "Leonhard is my name. Yet I am a little
astonished that you should remember me all this long time."
"I do, though," Edmund answered. "I know that I was always glad when
you came to my father's, because you always brought me such delicious
things to eat, and petted me. But I always felt a sort of reverential
awe for you; in fact, more than that--a kind of oppressive anxiousness,
which often lasted after you were gone. But what makes the remembrance
of you remain so vividly in my mind is what my father used to say about
you. He set great store by your friendship, because you had got him out
of a number of troubles in the most wonderful way--out of some of those
difficulties which come upon people in this world so often. And he used
to speak in the most enthusiastic way about the extent to which you had
penetrated into deep and mysterious branches of science; how you
controlled many of the secret powers of Nature at your will. Not only
that, but (begging your pardon for saying so) he often went so far as
to give us to understand that you were really nobody other than
Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew."
"Why not the Pied Piper of Hamelin? or the King of the Kobolds?"
cried the goldsmith. "All the same, there is some foundation for the
idea that there is something a little out of the everyday line about
me--something which I don't care to talk about, for fear of giving rise
to 'unpleasantness.' I certainly did some good turns to your papa, by
means of my secret knowledge, or 'art.' He was particularly pleased
with the horoscope which I cast for you at your birth."
"It wasn't so very clear, though," Edmund said. "My father often told
me you said I should be a great something--either a great Artist, or a
great Ass. At all events, I have to thank this utterance for my
father's having given consent to my wish to be a painter; and don't you
think your horoscope is going to turn out true?"
"Oh, most certainly," the goldsmith answered, very dryly; "there can be
no doubt about that. At this moment you are in the fairest possible way
to turn out a very remarkable Ass."
"What!" cried Edmund--"you tell me so to my face!--you----"
"It rests altogether with yourself," the goldsmith said, "to avoid the
bad alternative of my horoscope, and turn out a very remarkable
Painter. Your drawings and sketches show that you have a rich and
lively imagination, much power of expression, and a great deal of
cleverness in execution. You may raise a grand edifice on those
foundations. Carefully keep away from all 'modish' exaggerations and
eccentricities, and apply yourself to serious study. I congratulate you
upon your efforts to imitate the grave, earnest simpleness of the old
German masters. But, even in that direction, you must carefully shun
the precipice which so many fall over. It needs a profound
intelligence, and a mind strong enough to resist the enervating
influence of the Modern School, to grasp, wholly, the true spirit of
the old German masters, and to penetrate completely into the
significance of their pictures. Without those qualifications, the true
spark will never kindle in an artist's heart, nor the genuine
inspiration produce works which, without being imitations, shall be
worthy of a better age. Nowadays young fellows think that when they
patch together something on a Biblical subject, with figures all skin
and bone, faces a yard long, stiff angular draperies, a perspective all
askew, they have painted a work in the style of the great old German
masters. Dead-minded imitators of that description are like the country
lad who holds his bonnet before his face while the Paternoster is being
sung in church, and says if he doesn't remember the words, he knows the
tune."
The goldsmith said much more that was true and beautiful on the subject
of the noble art of painting, and gave Edmund a great many valuable
hints and lessons; so that the latter, much impressed, asked how it had
been possible for him to acquire so much knowledge on the subject
without being a painter himself; and why he went on living in such
seclusion, and never brought his influence to bear on artistic effort
of all descriptions.
"I have told you already," the goldsmith said, in a gentle and serious
tone, "that my ways of looking at life, and at things in general, have
been rendered exceptionally acute by a long--aye, a marvellously
long--course of experience. As regards my living in seclusion, I know
that wherever I should appear, I should produce a rather extraordinary
effect, as a result, not only of my nature in general, but more
especially of a certain power which I possess; so that my living
quietly in Berlin here might not be a very easy matter. I keep thinking
of a certain person who, in many respects, might have been an ancestor
of mine: so marvellously like me in every respect, in body and mind
too, that there are times not a few when I almost believe (perhaps it
may be fancy) that I am that person. I mean a Swiss of the name of
Leonhard Turnhäuser zum Thurm, who lived at the court of the Elector
Johann Georg, about the year 1582. In those days, as you know, every
chemist was supposed to be an alchemist, and every astronomer was
called an astrologer; so Turnhäuser was very probably both. It is
certain, at all events, that he did most wonderful things, and, _inter
alia_, was a very marvellous doctor. Unfortunately, he had a trick of
putting his finger in every pie, and getting conspicuously mixed up in
all that was going on. This made him envied and hated; just as people
who have money and make a display with it, though it may be never so
well earned, bring enemies about their throats. Thus it came about that
people made the Elector believe that Turnhäuser could make gold, and
that, if he did not do so, he had his reasons for so abstaining. Then
his enemies came to the Elector and said--'See what a cunning,
shameless rascal this is. He boasts of powers which he does not
possess, and carries on sorceries and Jewish deceptions, for which he
ought to be burned at the stake like Lippolt the Jew.' Turnhäuser had
been a goldsmith by trade, and this came out. Then everybody said he
had none of the knowledge imputed to him, though he had given the most
incontrovertible proofs of it in open day. They even said that he had
never, himself, written any of the sage and clever books and important
prognostications which he published, but had paid others to do them. In
short, envy, hatred, and calumny brought matters so far that he was
obliged to leave Berlin in the most secret manner, to escape the fate
of the Jew Lippolt; then his enemies said he had gone to the Catholics
for protection. But »that is not true. He went to Saxony, and worked at
his trade there, though he did not give up the study and practice of
his science."
Edmund was wonderfully attracted to this old goldsmith, who inspired in
him a reverential trustfulness and confidence. Not only was he a critic
of the most instructive quality, though severe; but he told Edmund
secrets concerning the preparation of colours and the combining of them
known to the old masters, and of the most precious importance when he
put them to the test of practice. Thus there was formed, between these
two, one of those alliances which come about when there is on the one
hand hopeful confidence, in a young disciple, and, on the other,
affectionate paternal friendship on the part of a teacher.
About this time it happened, one fine summer evening, that Herr
Melchior Bosswinkel, Commissionsrath, who was taking his pleasure in
the Thiergarten, could not manage to get a single one of his cigars to
draw. He tried one after another, but every one of them was stopped up.
He threw them away, one after another, getting more and more vexed and
annoyed as he did so; at last he cried out: "Oh, God! and those are
supposed to be the very finest brands to be got in Hamburg. Damme! I've
spared neither trouble nor money, and here they play the very deuce
with every idea of enjoyment--not one of the infernal things will draw.
Can a man enjoy the beauties of nature, or take part in any sort of
rational conversation, when these damnable things won't burn? Oh, God!
it's terrible!"
He had involuntarily addressed these remarks to Edmund Lehsen, who
happened to be close beside him with a cigar which was drawing
splendidly.
Edmund, who had not the slightest idea who the Commissionsrath was,
took out his cigar-case and offered it politely to this desperate
person, saying that he could vouch for both the quality and the drawing
powers of his cigars, although he had not got them from Hamburg, but
out of a shop in Frederick Street.
The Commissionsrath accepted, full of gratitude and pleasure, with a
"Much obliged, I'm sure." And as, the moment he touched the end of the
cigar which Edmund was smoking with the one just obtained from him,
this latter drew delightfully, and sent out the loveliest and most
delicious clouds of blue odoriferous smoke, he cried, enraptured:
"Oh, my dear sir! you have really rescued me from the profoundest
depths of misery. Do please to accept a thousand thanks. In fact, I
would almost venture to ask you to let me have one more of those
magnificent cigars of yours, to be going on with when this one is
finished."
Edmund said the contents of his cigar-case were quite at the
gentleman's disposal; and then they went on their several ways.
Presently, when the twilight had fallen a little, and Edmund, with the
idea for a picture in his head, was making his way, rather absently,
not paying much attention to those about him, pushing through amongst
the chairs and tables so as to get out of the crowd, the
Commissionsrath suddenly appeared in front of him, asking him if he
would not come and sit down at his table. Just as he was going to
decline--because he was longing to get away into the open country--he
suddenly caught sight of a young lady, the very incarnation of youth,
beauty, and delightsomeness, who was seated at the Commissionsrath's
table.
"My daughter, Albertine," the Commissionsrath said to Edmund, who was
gazing motionless at the lady, almost forgetting that it was incumbent
on him to bow to her. He recognised, at the first glance, in Albertine,
the beautiful creature whom he had come across at the last exhibition
as she was admiring one of his own pictures. She was describing and
pointing out the meaning of this fanciful picture to an old lady and
two girls who were with her; explaining the peculiarities of the
drawing and the grouping; applauding the painter, and saying that he
was quite a young artist, though so full of promise, and that she
wished she knew him. Edmund was standing close behind her, drinking in
the praise which flowed from her beautiful lips. His heart was so full
that he could not bring himself to go forward and say he was the
painter. And at this juncture Albertine happened to drop one of her
gloves, which she had taken off. Edmund stooped to pick it up, and as
Albertine did the same thing at the same instant, their heads banged
together with such a crash that it rang through the place.
"Oh, good gracious!" Albertine cried, holding her hands to her head.
Edmund started back in consternation and alarm. At his first step he
stamped on the old lady's pug, which yelled aloud; at his second he
trampled the gouty toe of a professor, who gave a tremendous shout, and
devoted poor Edmund to all the infernal deities. Then the people came
hurrying from the neighbouring rooms, and all the lorgnettes were fixed
upon Edmund, who made the best of his way out of the place, amid the
whimperings of the dog, the curses of the professor, the objurgations
of the old lady, and the tittering and laughter of the girls. He made,
we say, his escape in those circumstances, blushing over and over with
shame and discomfiture, in complete despair, whilst a number of young
ladies got out their essence-bottles and rubbed Albertine's forehead,
on which a great lump was rapidly rising.
Even then, in the crisis of this ridiculous occurrence, Edmund had
fallen deeply in love, though he was scarcely aware of it himself. And
it was only a painful sense of his own stupidity that prevented him
from going to search for her all over the town. He could not think of
her otherwise than with a great red lump on her forehead, and the
bitterest reproach, the most distinct expression of anger, in her face
and in her whole being.
There was not the faintest trace of this, however, about her as he saw
her now. She blushed indeed over and over again when she saw him, and
seemed unable to control herself. But when her father asked him his
name, &c., she said with a delightful smile, and in gentle accents,
"that she must be much mistaken if he were not Mr. Lehsen, the
celebrated painter, whose works she so immensely admired."
Those words, we need not say, ran through Edmund's nerves like an
electric shock. In his emotion he was about to burst into flowers of
rhetoric, but the Commissionsrath would not let him get to that,
clasping him to his breast with fervour, and saying, "My dear sir, what
about the cigar you promised me?" And whilst he was lighting said cigar
at the ashes of the former one, he said, "So you are a painter? and a
great one, from what my daughter Albertine tells me--and she knows what
she is talking about in such matters, I can assure you. I'm very glad
you are. I love pictures, and, as my daughter Albertine says, 'Art'
altogether, most tremendously. I simply dote upon it. And I know
something about it, too. I'm a first-rate judge of a picture. My
daughter Albertine and I know what we're about there. We've got eyes in
our heads. Tell me, my dear painter, tell me without hesitation, wasn't
it you who painted those pictures which I stop and look at every day as
I pass them, because I cannot help standing to admire the colouring of
them? Oh, it is beautiful!"
Edmund did not quite understand how the Commissionsrath managed to see
any pictures of his daily in passing them, seeing that he had never
painted any signboards, that he could remember. But after a good deal
of questioning, it turned out that Melchior Bosswinkel meant certain
lacquered tea-trays, stove-shades, and things of that sort, which he
saw and much admired in a shop-window as he went to business of a
morning, after two or three sardines and a glass of Dantziger at the
Sala Tarone. These productions constituted his highest ideal of the
pictorial art. This disgusted the painter not a little; and he cursed,
internally, Bosswinkel and his wretched chatter, which was preventing
him from making any approach to the young lady. At last there came up
an acquaintance, who engaged him in conversation, and Edmund took
advantage of this to go and sit down beside Albertine, who seemed to be
very much pleased at his doing so.
Every one who knows Miss Albertine Bosswinkel is aware that, as has
been said, she is the very personification of youth, beauty, and
delightsomeness; that, like all other Berlin young ladies, she dresses
in the best possible taste in the latest fashions, sings in Zelter's
choir, has lessons on the piano from Herr Lauska, dances most
beautifully, sent a tulip charmingly embroidered and surrounded by
violets to the last exhibition, and though by nature of a bright,
lively temperament, is quite capable of displaying the proper amount of
sentimentality required at tea-parties, at all events. Also, that she
copies poetical extracts and sentences which have pleased her in the
writings of Goethe, Jean Paul, and other talented men and women, in the
loveliest little tiny handwriting into a nice little book with a gilt
morocco cover.
Of course it was natural that, sitting beside the young painter, whose
heart was beaming with the bliss of a timid affection, she should
be several degrees more sentimental than was usual on the tea and
reading-aloud occasions; and she lisped in the prettiest manner about
such subjects as poetic feeling, depth of idea, childlike simplicity,
and so forth.
The evening breeze had begun to sigh, breathing perfume from the
flowers and wafting their scents on its wings; and two nightingales
were singing a lovely duetto in among the thick darkling leafage, in
the tenderest accents of love-complaining.
Albertine began, quoting from Fouqué--
"A rustling, whisper'd singing
Breaks thro' the leaves of spring,
And over heart, and sense, and soul
A web of love doth fling."
And Edmund, grown less timid now that the twilight was falling more
deeply, took her hand and laid it on his heart, whilst he went on,
continuing the quotation--
"Did I, in whispered music, sing
What my heart hears--aright--
From that sweet lay would burst, in fire,
Love's own Eternal Light."
Albertine withdrew her hand, but only to take off her glove, and then
give the hand back to this lucky youngster. He was just going to kiss
it fervently, when the Commissionsrath broke in with a
"Oh! I say! How chilly it's getting! I wish I had brought my great
coat! Put on your shawl, Tiny! It's a fine Turkish shawl, my dear
painter--cost fifty ducats. Wrap yourself up in it, Tiny; we must be
getting home. Good-bye, my _dear_ sir."
Edmund was here inspired by a happy thought. He took out his cigar case
and offered the Commissionsrath a third Havannah.
"I really am excessively obliged to you," the Commissionsrath said,
delighted; "you really are most kind. The police don't let one smoke
walking about in the Thiergarten, for fear of the grass getting burnt;
one enjoys a pipe or a cigar more for that very reason."
Bosswinkel went up to the lamp to light the cigar, and Edmund took
advantage of his doing so to whisper to Albertine, very shyly, that he
hoped she would let him walk home with her. She put her arm in his,
they went on together, and Bosswinkel, when he joined them, seemed to
consider it a matter of course that Edmund was going to walk with them
all the way to town.
Anybody who has once been young, and in love--or who is both now at
this present time (there are many who have never been either the one or
the other)--will understand how Edmund, at Albertine's side, thought he
was hovering over the tops of the trees, rather than walking through
amongst them; up among the gleaming clouds, rather than down upon the
earth.
Rosalind, in Shakespeare's 'As You Like It,' says that the "marks"
of a man in love are "a lean cheek, a blear eye and sunken, an
unquestionable spirit, a beard neglected, hose ungartered, bonnet
unhanded, sleeve unbuttoned, shoe untied, and everything demonstrating
a careless desolation." But those marks were as little seen in Edmund
as in Orlando. Like the latter, however, who marred all the trees of
the forest with carving his mistress's name on them, hung odes on the
whitethorns, and elegies on the bramble-bushes, Edmund spoilt
quantities of paper, parchment, canvas and colours, in besinging his
beloved in verses which were wretched enough, and in drawing her, and
painting her, without ever succeeding in making her in the least
like--so far did his fancy soar above his capability. When to this was
added the peculiar, unmistakable somnambulistic look of the love-sick,
and a fitting amount of sighing at all times and seasons, it was not to
be wondered at that the old goldsmith saw into his young friend's
condition.
"H'm," he said; "you don't seem to think what an undesirable thing it
is to fall in love with a girl who is engaged. For Albertine Bosswinkel
is as good as engaged already to Tussmann, the Clerk of the Privy
Chancery."
This terrible piece of news sent Edmund into the wildest despair.
Leonhard waited patiently till the first paroxysm was past, and then
asked if he really wanted to marry Albertine. Edmund declared that was
the dearest wish of his heart, and implored the goldsmith to help him
as much as ever he could to beat Tussmann out of the field, and win the
lovely lady himself.
What the goldsmith thought and said was that a young artist might fall
in love as much as ever he liked, but to marry straight away was a very
different affair; and that was just why young Sternbald never cared to
marry, and, for all he knew, was still unmarried up to that hour.
This thrust took effect, because Tieck's 'Sternbald' was Edmund's
favourite book, and he would have been only too glad to have been the
hero of that tale himself. So he then and there put on a very pitiful
face, and was very near bursting into tears.
"Well," said the goldsmith, "whatever happens, I am going to take
Tussmann off your hands. What you have got to do is to get into
Bosswinkel's house, by hook or by crook, as often as you can, and
attract Albertine to you as much as you can manage to do. As for my
operations against the Clerk of the Privy Chancery, they can't be begun
till the night of the Autumnal Equinox."