Galgenberg, Dec. 1st.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,--It is strange to address this letter to Berlin,
and to know that by the time it gets there you will be there too. Well,
let it welcome you very heartily back to the Fatherland. I think I know
the street you are in; it is facing the Thiergarten, isn't it, and looks
north? Quite close to the Brandenburg Thor? I remember it because we
trudged, among other places, also about the Thiergarten on our memorable
visit, and Papa's eye caught the name of your street and he stood for
ten minutes in the rain giving us a spirited sketch of the man's life
and claims to have a street called after him. My step-mother waited with
a grim patience, her skirts firmly clutched in each hand. She had come
to sight-see and to have things explained to her, so that it would be
waste of a railway fare not to look and listen. Papa was in great
splendor that day, so obviously superior, in the universatility of his
knowledge, to either of us damp womenfolk. You won't get much sun there
unless your rooms are at the back, but on the other hand it is
undoubtedly a street for the exclusive and well-to-do, as even I could
see to whom marble steps and wrought-iron gates convey the usual lesson.
I, however, would sooner live in a kennel facing south than in a palace
where the sun never came; but then, as you know, my tendencies are
incurably kennelwards.
Today I am humble and hanging my head, for I have discovered to my pain
and horror that Papa and I are living well beyond our income. I expect
we have bought too many books, and spent too much in stamps to be used
by publishers; but it is certain that we've already consumed over
seventy pounds of our yearly hundred, and that we only took five months
to do it in. What do you think of that? We have been squandering money
right and left somehow. There were no clothes to buy, for what we have
will last us at least two years, and where it has all gone to I can't
imagine. Indeed I am a useless person if I cannot even manage a tiny
house like this and make such sufficient means do. Papa has written to
Professor Martens to tell him he is willing to take in a young man
again. Willing? He is eager, hungry for a young man, for he sees that
without one things will go badly with us. And I, remembering the wealth
we enjoyed while Mr. Collins was with us, have written to him to ask if
he cares to come back and finish learning German. I don't know if he
still wants to, or rather if his father still wants him to, for German
to Joey was as the fly in the apothecary's ointment, in its extreme
offensiveness, nor have I told Papa that I wrote, because of the
peculiar horror with which he regards Joey; but I couldn't resist when I
know that six months of Joey would deliver us for two whole years from
all young men whatever, and I hope when the time comes, if it ever does,
and Joey with it, to persuade Papa by judicious argument of the eminent
desirability of this particular young man.
There are, however, certain difficulties in the way. Our house has two
bedrooms, two sitting-rooms, an attic, a kitchen, and a coal-hole.
Johanna inhabits the attic. One sitting-room is sacred to Papa and his
work. The other is a scrap room in which we have our meals and receive
Frau von Lindeberg when she calls, and I write letters and read books
and darn stockings. Where, then, will Joey sleep? The answer is as clear
as daylight and very startling: Joey must sleep with Papa. Now that this
truth has dawned upon me I spend hours lost in thoughts of things like
screens and dividing curtains, besides preparing elaborate speeches for
the bringing of Papa to reason. He himself was the first to declare we
must positively take in a young man again, and he surely will see, when
it is pointed out to him, that any one we have must sleep at the
intervals appointed by nature. I'm afraid he'll see it in the case of
every one except the fruitful Joey. It is most unfortunate that Joey
should be so foolish about Goethe, for we really do want somebody who
doesn't mind about money, and I remember several poor boys in the past
who were so very poor that on the days when my step-mother demanded
payment I used to have to go out early and wander among the hills till
evening, unable to endure the sound of the thalers being wrung out of
them. Oh, money is the most horrid of all necessities. I am ashamed to
think of the many bright hours of life soiled by anxieties about it, by
meannesses about it. Wherever even a question of it arises Love and the
Graces fly affrighted, followed closely, by the entire troop of equally
terrified Muses, out of the nearest window. I detest it. I do not want
it. But with all my defiance of it I am crushed beneath the yoke of the
penny as completely as everybody else. Well do I know that penny, and
how much it is when there's one over, and what worlds away when there's
one too few.
Here comes Johanna to lay the dinner. We are rankly vegetarian again,
Papa leading the way with immense determination, for he has set his
heart at this unfortunate juncture on a new biography of Goethe that
must needs come out just now, a big thing in two volumes costing a
terrible number of marks, very well done, full of the result of original
digging among archives; but he dare not buy it, he says, in the present
state of our affairs. 'Dost thou not think, Rose-Marie,' he said, his
face in grievous puckers at the prospect, 'that a renewed and careful
course of herbage may quickly-set the matter right?'
'Not quickly,' said I, shaking my head, and pondering privately what,
exactly, he meant by the word renewed.
He looked crestfallen.
'But ultimately,' I said, wishing to cheer him.
'Ultimately--ultimately,' he echoed peevishly. 'The word has a
knell-like sound about it that I do not like. When we have reached thy
Ultimately I shall no longer be in a state to desire or appreciate
Bielschowsky's _Goethe_. My brain, by then, will be clothed with grass,
and my veins be streams of running water.'
'Well, darling,' said I, putting my arm through his, 'you'll be at least
very nice and refreshing, and extraordinarily like a verse of the
Psalms.'
And for two days he has held out undaunted, and here comes our lentil
soup and roast apples, so good-by.
Yours sincerely,