CHLODWIG HELMER
AT THE SIELENBURG, 1909.
DEAR COUSIN AND BELOVED FRIEND!
It was a pleasant surprise when your letter, after long wanderings,
reached me here. I was convinced that you had entirely forgotten me,—ten
long years we had lost sight of each other,—and now suddenly down upon
me rains this letter in which you relate to me the experiences which you
have been having in all this time and you want to have the like from me.
Oh, how gladly do I fulfill your wish! I am simply hungry for a regular
outpouring of my mind. Your twenty pages would make the basis of a
fascinating novel: interesting events described in a fluent style. Now,
my answer ought not to prove much shorter: I shall devote to it a few
hours of leisure, but I shall not take much trouble about polishing my
style. “Unconstrained”—do you remember? That was the catchword that we
selected at the time when we became intimate friends as students in the
same class in the Theresianum. “Unconstrained”—ah! in this word lie
whole revolutions, and you know well that I have always been a
revolutionist.
Now for my story. I will begin at the very end, that is—this very day.
Before I confide to you what I have been doing during these last years,
you must know where and what I am at the present moment. My residence is
called Schloss Sielenburg. It is surrounded by a great park of twenty
acres, and from the window is visible a forest which is my delight. Many
trees a hundred years old, and one oak a thousand years old, stand in
it, and there are moss and shrubbery and the twitter of birds. That
there are still such forests on the earth can console one for the
existence of cities and suburbs.
From my window I can see the roof of the stables where there are six
pairs of carriage-horses and six saddle-horses. A garage for the
automobiles is just building. Among the saddle-horses is a gray with a
silken mane, with some Arab in his build and behavior, with such
thoughtful and reproachful, and at the same time affectionate, eyes—ah!
I tell you there are animals also here below, the existence of which can
console us for many of the councilors and aldermen that are their
contemporaries! So you may easily imagine how reconciled with the world
I feel as I ride on that gray through yonder forest!
I am not master of all this accumulated wealth: castle, grounds,
forests, stables, and garages are the property of the Right Honorable
Count Eduard Sielen—a sick old man. He exercises his dominion also over
a secretary, and that secretary am I.
Now you know—I, the cabinet minister’s son, over whose future career we
could not make plans sufficiently ambitious,—to be an ambassador was one
of the lowest of my expectations,—am now in a subservient, humble
position, am obliged to be forever ready, at my gracious master’s beck
and call, to write at his dictation or read to him the newspapers, or
anything else. And yet I feel much more free than when I was in the
government service, for I can throw up my place at any moment, and the
work which I am performing is independent of what I think; it leaves my
private character, my personal actions, untouched, whereas in the
service of the State the master cannot be changed and one must
subordinate his whole “I” to his standards, and only act and work as an
unelastic system demands.
No, I could not have endured that yoke. I did not endure it. After
completing my volunteer year, I began my regular service under a
district chief; once I ventured to contradict my superior, and as a
punishment was transferred to a smaller district at soul-killing labor
and no living wage; one must practice for some years before one gets a
decent salary—I left the service.
In the mean time my parents had died—so I had no need of asking any
one’s advice. I was free. I had inherited a small property profitably
invested in industrials; this made me independent. I traveled about the
world and I have seen a tremendous lot and learned a tremendous lot from
my experiences.
Then suddenly the value of my industrials fell so far below par that one
fine day the bonds were so much waste paper. That meant: “Go to work
again.” For a time I was a journalist, but that also was an unendurable
yoke. I was obliged to bend my judgment to suit the opinions of the
paper on which I was engaged as an editorial writer, and these opinions
were, to tell the truth, no opinions at all, but consisted in following
the instructions given out by the ministry. Here again was a form of
slavery, of gagging, which I could not put up with, and I left the
editorial sanctum just as I had left the government office. Then I was
happy when I was offered a position as secretary to the old Count Sielen
which I have been filling for two years now. Here I can at least poetize
and think as I please.
Yes, poetize. Perhaps you did not know that I have discovered in myself
the impulse to write verses, and a collection of my poems has already
appeared in print and has been enthusiastically received by the critics.
I will not name the title and publisher, lest you may think that I am
hinting to you to buy it—moreover, I have issued it under a pseudonym
which I will not divulge until my reputation is established. At the
present time I am putting the last touches to a four-act drama. You have
no notion what a delight, what an exalting consciousness of
accomplishment, lies in writing out from one’s very soul what moves it.
And to create! To enrich the world with something new! The joy of
creation is the highest of all joys. If I were not a poet I would crave
to be an inventor.... I do not know, for example, whether the name
“Edison” should not be spoken with as much respect as the name
“Shakespeare.” I am now following enviously the work of the aviators—I
look up to the Zeppelins and the Wrights as to heroes and especially as
to heralds. They are sounding the call to a new era. They are summoning
their fellow-men to vanquish an unheard-of future—perhaps without
knowing it, for their minds are fixed on the mechanical part of their
work. The aerial age! Do you surmise what that signifies? Certainly,
those have no notion of it who would accomplish nothing else with their
sky-commanding apparatus than to elevate into the air the ancient
scourges of the depths.
In your story of the last ten years which you have so kindly made me
acquainted with, you write a vast amount about your experiences in life
and love.
Pardon me, if I do not tell you anything about my experiences in love. I
do not want to profane, in dry epistolary prose, whatever has sanctified
my life with tender charm, and I would not soil my pen with vulgar
adventures. Every man has in this domain a bit of magic dreamland and
a—register of his peccadilloes. The one I leave undisclosed, the other
unconfessed.
On the Sielenburg at the present time—not taking into account the
kitchen department—there is no one of the gentle sex dangerous to any
man’s heart or peace of mind. The housekeeping is under the charge of
the count’s widowed sister, the Countess Schollendorf, who is at least
sixty-two years old. She exercises control over the household and the
servants and she invites guests according to her own idiosyncrasies—for
the most part ancient female cousins. There are three of that sort here
now, accompanied by their maids and their lapdogs. One of these
females—her name is Albertine—has two terrible peculiarities: the first
is sincerity, and the second is that she is deeply concerned with the
well-being of all her fellow-men. It results from the first that she is
always telling people to their faces the most disagreeable truths, and
from the second that she expects of them every sort of sacrifice and
renunciation and other torments—of course, “only for their own good.”
There are still other habitués of the establishment: the castle chaplain
and an aged ruined cousin four times removed, to whom Count Sielen
furnishes bread and butter. As you see, it is not a very gay society,
nor is the conversation at table very enlivening. Yet, just now, the
count, because of his miserable health, is accustomed to take his meals
in his own room, and I keep him company, which is preferable to sitting
at the lower end of the table in the big dining-room and listening to
uninteresting small-talk, mostly confined to the idle gossip of court
and society, unless, by chance, thanks to the old cousin, who is an
arch-reactionary, it skirts the domain of politics—which makes it
particularly distasteful to me. This gentleman would especially like to
see restored the conditions that prevailed before the year 1848, and
from this standpoint he illuminates the present-day events and questions
of which his newspaper—the “Reichspost”—brings him an echo.
That his opposite neighbor at table has Jewish blood in his veins—you
know my mother’s grandfather was a Jew—does not prevent him from letting
his opinion concerning regrettable disturbances culminate in the
sentence: “The Jews are responsible for that”:—for example, the Russian
revolution and the horrors connected with it, all initiated by the Jews:
the decay of morals, the increase of poverty, the downfall of the old
aristocratic families, earthquakes and floods (these latter as God’s
punishments)—all these things are attributable to the Jews. He does not
say in so many words that the destruction of this pernicious race would
be a praiseworthy remedy, but he leaves it to be plainly understood.
The chaplain—I must give him due credit for this—does not agree with
such truculences: he is a good man, a gentle Christian, and as such
avoids everything coarse and spiteful. During these discussions I remain
obstinately dumb, for I cannot contend with Cousin Coriolan. The eyes of
his yearning are turned back to the past, while mine look to the future,
and it is impossible, while standing back-to-back, to fence with him.
And do I hear you ask: “Your count, your employer, what is he like?”
He?—A dear old fellow: I cannot say anything else. Genial, jovial,
simple, friendly, gay. He must have been a man of captivating
personality. Now, indeed, he is old and ill, and yet his sense of humor
has not deserted him.
The count is a widower and childless. He had two children, but lost them
both under tragic circumstances. The daughter—a marvelously beautiful
girl—ran off with her brother’s tutor. At that time the countess was
still living—a terribly haughty and hard-hearted woman, and nothing
would induce her to pardon her daughter for this step. The count would
have gladly given in, but the inexorable woman would not relent.
In a few years the daughter died, and shortly afterwards the son met
with a fatal accident in a boating-party. It was whispered about that he
was of very light weight, and that he had showed great lack of love and
respect for his parents: consequently, his loss was not such a severe
blow to the count, although it deprived him of his only son and heir. He
was much more deeply affected by the loss of his daughter; in the first
place, her elopement with a man who was regarded as unworthy of her, and
then her death. But time has healed all those wounds. The cheerful,
light-hearted temperament of my dear count (for I really love the man)
won the day. He had the reputation of being the gayest and wittiest
cavalier in his time, and even only two years ago, when I first entered
his house, he was in the happiest state of mind and of a geniality which
simply captivated my heart.
Just now, indeed, he is a great sufferer, and old age, which he has so
long victoriously resisted, is at last getting in its detestable work.
He is not and has never been what is called a high intelligence. He is
clever with a somewhat superficial cleverness, without great
depth—without complications, without subtlety, but abounding in
straightforward, honest, human understanding. His wit never stings and
never bites; it merely smiles and winks; in short, my poor count is, as
I rather disrespectfully remarked above, a dear old fellow.
I have never made a confidant of him about my anonymous poetizing: he
has no inclination for poetry. His reading—that is, what I read to
him—consists exclusively of selections from the daily newspapers, the
weekly comic papers, French novels—but they must be piquant; and for
serious pabulum: memoirs of princes, generals, and statesmen. Military
and diplomatic history, especially relating to the time in which he took
an active part, interests him. But all this has inspired me with a great
disgust at the kettle of chatter and intrigue in which the soup of the
unsuspecting people’s destiny is cooked. Aye! the nations have no
suspicion what contemptible means the great men who make universal
history use, what petty aims they pursue: personal jealousies and
ambitions, entanglements of lies and errors and accidents, whereof are
born the mighty events which are explained as the expression of Divine
Will, or of a scheme of creation conditioned by natural laws. And, vice
versa, the great men high up know nothing of the people: they fail to
comprehend their sufferings and hopes. Their awakening and stretching of
limbs they have no suspicion of....
_Two days later._
Since I wrote the above, something has happened. For some time it has
seemed to me that the count was concealing something from me. If his
attorney, Dr. Fixstern, came, I was dismissed from the room, and letters
addressed to him were not as usual dictated to me, but were written by
the count himself. And now I know what the secret was; early this
morning the count confided in me: The child left by the daughter who
eloped with the tutor has turned up, and the grandfather has invited the
young girl to make her home at the Sielenburg. She will be coming now in
a few days. The old gentleman is delighted.
I am full of curiosity. The young thing will scarcely feel very
comfortable at the Round Table which I described to you. Well, later in
the summer there are various visitors from the neighboring castles,
among them young people, and in the autumn there are many brilliant
hunting-parties. Of course, owing to my position, I hold aloof from all
these things. My world is not this world of aristocratic society—my
kingdom is that of the imagination. There I sometimes indulge in revels
and there I hope to attain some rank—not mediocre; there ceases my
modesty. Artists must not be—inwardly—modest, else they are not artists.
Just as an athlete feels his muscles, so must the artist feel his power
of creation. A host of thoughts press forward to be formulated, and
these thoughts are elastic and swelling like an athlete’s muscles! A
domain which no Pegasus’ hoof has as yet ever touched invites me. First
I am going to finish my drama, which treats of a social problem, and
then I shall fly away to that virgin land where horizons flooded with
light open out before me. I am going to compose the epic of the conquest
of the air.... I shall fly up to the flaming corona of the Sun, and from
that I will pluck down forked flames to annihilate all that is low and
common. I am called away, so I will mail this and will write again.
Yours ever,
CHLODWIG HELMER.