XLI

Galgenberg, Aug. 25th.

Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Very well; I won't quarrel; I will be

friends,--friends, that is, so long as you allow me to be so in the only

right and possible way. Don't murder too many grouse. Think of my

disapproving scowl when you are beginning to do it, and then perhaps

your day of slaughter will resolve itself into an innocent picnic on the

moors, alone with sky and heather and a bored, astonished dog. Are you

not glad now that you went to Scotland instead of coming to Jena to find

the Schmidts not at home? Surely long days in the heather by yourself

will do much toward making you friends with life. I think those moors

must be so beautiful. Really very nearly as good as my Galgenberg. My

Galgenberg, by the bye, has left off being quite so admirably solitary

as 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 I

do by his, for, frankly, I find men are best; and they have a son who is

an _Assessor_ in Berlin. You know what an _Assessor_ is, don't you?--it

is 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 are

a _Geheimrath_. And a _Geheimrath_, if he lives long enough and doesn't

irritate anybody in authority, becomes ultimately that impressive and

glorious being a _Wirklicher Geheimrath_--implying that before he was

only in fun--_mit dem Prädikat Excellenz_. And don't say I don't explain

nicely, because I do. Well, where was I? Oh, yes; at the son. Well, he

appeared a fortnight ago, brown and hot and with a knapsack, having

walked all the way from Berlin, and is spending his holiday with his

people. For a day or two I thought him quite ordinary. He made rather

silly jokes, and wore a red tie. Then one evening I heard lovely sounds,

lovely, floating, mellow sounds coming up in floods through the orchard

into my garden where I was propped against a tree-trunk watching a huge

yellow moon disentangling itself slowly from the mists of Jena,--oh,

but exquisite sounds, sounds that throbbed into your soul and told it

all 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 drew

me on to my feet, then they drew me down the garden, then through the

orchard, nearer and nearer, till at last I stood beneath the open window

they were coming from, listening with all my ears. Against the wall I

leaned, holding my breath, spell-bound, forced to ponder great themes,

themes of life and death, the music falling like drops of liquid light

in dark and thirsty places. I don't know how long it lasted or how long

I stood there after it was finished, but some one came to the window and

put his head out into the freshness, and what do you think he said? He

said, '_Donnerwetter, wie man im Zimmer schwitzt._' And it was the son,

brown and hot, and with a red tie.

'Ach, Fräulein 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 many

things that I did not hear, for how can you hear when your spirit

refuses to come back from its journeyings among the stars?

'Will you not enter?' he said at last. 'My mother is fetching up some

beer and will be here in a moment. It makes one warm playing.'

But I would not enter. I walked back slowly through the long orchard

grass between the apple-trees trees. The moon gleamed along the

branches. The branches were weighed down with apples. The place was full

of the smell of fruit, of the smell of fruit fallen into the grass, that

had lain there bruised all day in the sun. I think the beauty of the

world is crushing. Often it seems almost unbearable, calling out such an

acuteness 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 of

evil. It really almost makes you respect and esteem the bad things,

doing it with an intelligent eye fixed on the future. Here is our young

friend down the hill, a young man most ordinary in every way but one, so

ordinary that I think we must put him under the heading bad, taking bad

in 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 the

Muse of melody. Apparently she is not very particular about her temples.

It is true while he is playing at her dictation she transforms him

wholly, and I suppose she does not care what he is like in between. But

I do. I care because in between he thinks it pleasant to entertain me

with facetiousness, his mother hanging fondly on every word in the

amazing way mothers, often otherwise quite intelligent persons, do.

Since that first evening he has played every evening, and his taste in

music is as perfect as it is bad in everything else. It is severe,

exquisite, exclusive. It is the taste that plays Mozart and Bach and

Beethoven, and wastes no moments with the Mendelssohn sugar or the

lesser inspiration of Brahms. I tried to strike illumination out of him

on these points, wanted to hear his reasons for a greater exclusiveness

than I have yet met, went through a string of impressive names beginning

with Schumann and ending with Wagner and Tchaikowsky, but he showed no

interest, and no intelligence either, unless a shrug of the shoulder is

intelligent. It is true he remarked one day that he found life too short

for anything but the best--'That is why,' he added, unable to forbear

from wit, 'I only drink Pilsner.'

'What?' I cried, ignoring the Pilsner, 'and do not these great

men'--again I ran through a string of them--'do not they also belong to

the very best?'

'No,' he said; and would say no more. So you see he is obstinate as well

as 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 perch

Brahms on one of the highest peaks of Parnassus (I never thought there

was quite room enough for him on it), and did you not go three times all

the 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 a

better judge than a person of his very nearly all-round bad taste?

Whatever your faults may be, you never made a fault in ties, never

clamored almost ceaselessly for drink, never talked about _schwitzen_,

nor entertained young women from next door with the tricks and

facetiousness of a mountebank. I wonder if his system were carried into

literature, and life were wholly concentrated on the half dozen

absolutely best writers, so that we who spread our attention out thin

over areas I am certain are much too wide knew them as we never can know

them, became part of them, lived with them and in them, saw through

their eyes and thought with their thoughts, whether there would be gain

or loss? I don't know. Tell me what you think. If I might only have the

six mightiest books to go with me through life I would certainly have to

learn Greek because of Homer. But when it comes to the very mightiest, I

cannot even get my six; I can only get four. Of course when I loosely

say six books I mean the works of six writers. But beyond my four I

cannot get; there must be a slight drop for the other two,--very slight,

hardly a drop, rather a slight downward quiver into a radiance the

faintest degree less blazing, but still a degree less. These two would

be Milton and Virgil. The other four--but you know the other four

without 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; for

we only have a handful of years to do anything in, and they are quite

surely not enough to go round when going round means taking in the whole

world.

On the other hand, wouldn't my speech become archaic? I'm afraid I would

have a tendency that would grow to address Papa in blank verse. My

language, even when praying him at breakfast to give me butter, would be

incorrigibly noble. I don't think Papa would like it. And what would he

say to a daughter who was forced by stress of concentration on six works

to go through life without Goethe? Goethe, you observe, was not one of

the two less glorious and he certainly was not one of the four

completely glorious. I begin to fear I should miss a great deal by my

exclusions. It would be sad to die without ever having been thrilled by

_Werther_, exalted by _Faust_, amazed by the _Wahlverwandtschaften_,

sent to sleep by _Wilhelm Meister_. To die innocent of any knowledge of

Schiller's _Glocke_, with no memory of strenuous hours spent getting it

by heart at school, might be quite pleasant. But I think it would end by

being tiring to be screwed up perpetually to the pitch of the greatest

men's greatest moments. Such heights are not for insects like myself. I

would hang very dismally, with drooping head and wings, on those exalted

hooks. And has not the soul too its longings at times for a

dressing-gown and slippers? And do you see how you could do without

Boswell?

Yours sincerely,