OUR FRIEND KNOPF.
On the bright summer days people sail joyously up and down the river,
everything sparkles and glitters in the sunlight, and is full of
gladness. Who there thinks how much sorrow, how much weariness,
anguish, and care, dwell within the houses they pass by? Look yonder at
the high-perched village, that seems to rise so prettily out of the
river, and sends to us now the sound of bells; there goes a poor
village schoolmaster, with depressed countenance, from the church to
the school-house. But to-day his face is lighted up, for a faithful
friend stands in front of the schoolhouse, and extends to him his hand.
"Hey! you here, Herr Knopf?" cried the schoolmaster.
"The free Republic of the United States gives me a day's freedom. You
see before you an independent man. Ah, dear Fassbender, I am specially
born to be a teacher of girls; I tell you that previous to the deluge
of their first ball, girls are the choicest blossoms of our planet."
Knopf related to his fellow-teacher how happy he was to have for a
pupil a bright American girl, quick of apprehension; and his homely
countenance, as he spoke, assumed a wholly different expression.
Knopf had, in fact, an ugly face, it was so full of seams. His nose,
mouth, brow, even his eyebrows, which projected somewhat over his
light-blue eyes whenever he wore no spectacles, as was now the case,
all seemed kneaded out of dough. But now, as he spoke of his pupil, his
countenance, was lighted up.
He made known that he had come hither, in order to give Roland's
present instructor some hints concerning the character of his pupil,
and the manner in which he could best be advanced. He had already been
walking since before sunrise, and it was a refreshing walk. He felt now
that it was not needful for him to go to the villa, he would make an
appointment with the tutor to meet him here, and requested that a boy
might carry a note from him to Captain Dournay.
The children came up one after another, and saluted Herr Knopf, whom
they already knew. A curly-headed boy was very happy to be the bearer
of the note to Villa Eden, instead of being obliged to sit in school.
Knopf knew a beautiful spot back of the village, under a linden on the
crown of the hill, where there was a wide prospect on every side.
Strolling thither, he laid himself down under the tree, and surveyed
the landscape with a joyful glance.
"In grass and flowers I love to lie,
And hear afar the flute's sweet sigh,"
he said almost aloud to himself. And since in our steam-puffing times
there is no flute to be heard, Knopf screwed his cane, which was
intended also for a flute, into the right shape, and played upon it the
tune set by Conrad Kreuzer to Uhland's song. He was more pleased at the
thought that others would hear this at a distance, than that he was
hearing it himself.
No boat went up or down the stream that he did not signalize it with a
white handkerchief. What matter if those on board were strangers? He
has given them a sign that he on the height here is happy; they below
there are to be happy too. The signal may tell them that.
Yes, Knopf deserves to be known more intimately.
The son of a poor schoolmaster, Knopf had gone through his university
course with great difficulty, and had passed his examination; but now
he fell into great misfortune. On the very first day of his year of
probation, the boys stamped and hissed, and the more he bade them be
quiet, so much the more noisy were they; and the more enraged he
became, so much the more insolent was their derision. The director came
to his assistance, but as soon as he went away from the schoolroom, the
noise and stamping began afresh. It was granted to Knopf to pass his
year of probation in a distant city; but some invisible sprite must
have spread abroad his mishap, for very soon after he began teaching,
the same thing happened here. And now he gave up entirely the office of
a public school teacher.
Knopf was abundantly liked at the capital as a teacher of girls.
Inasmuch as he was so fabulously ugly, mothers could entrust their
half-grown daughters to his private instruction, without the least
anxiety lest they should fall in love with him. He was conscientious
and painstaking, but he did not succeed. He was liked in all the
families, but no one wished to employ him exclusively, or for any
considerable length of time; he was only a temporary teacher. No other
one had so many deceased scholars as he, for many were committed to his
instruction only after they became ailing.
Knopf had been much at the watering-places, and when the parents could
not go with their children to the baths, he was entrusted with that
service; he was both tutor and attendant. He was also teacher for some
time in an asylum for idiots, and his conscience often reproved him,
then and afterwards, for not remaining in that position; but he
asserted that he was too much a devotee of the beautiful.
Yes, he wanted to explore what kind of humane institutions were
established among the Greeks and Romans. He found that they had very
few children morally and physically diseased. Knopf had a plan, which
he held on to for some time, of establishing an institution for the
care of sick children at some salt-spring; for iodine is the watch-word
of the cultivated, that is, the possessing world, whose humours are
acrid: he hoped to find an associate for the sacred iodine. Meanwhile
he remained a make-shift teacher for girls.
Greek and Roman mythology was his strong point, and it is extremely
important that a maiden in cultivated society should make no mistake in
that. His favorite pursuit was, however, the interpretation of the
poets, especially the romantic. Of course, he was himself a poet, but
modestly, only to himself. There, were probably in the capital few
albums, begun by very young girls and afterwards abandoned, which did
not contain a sonnet, or oftener a triolet, beautifully written by Emil
Knopf for his dear pupil. He had also a musical knowledge sufficient to
direct the private practising of pupils, and he was particularly
strict, yes, even unmerciful, in keeping time. He could also draw
sufficiently well to give assistance in that respect, especially in
drawing flowers. He was also handy and popular in wedding-games,
whenever one of his pupils was married. He not only knew how to make
the maidens speak, in the language of flowers, as "I am the rose," "I
am the violet," but he could bring out jokes and sportive allusions;
and while the players in their fine dresses were declaiming; and
forming charming tableaux, he sat in the prompter's box, and breathed
to them the words. How happy he was, too, at some public dinner, and
how assentingly he nodded, when this or the other speaker recited by
heart, or read from a manuscript, the toast he had himself composed!
Emil Knopf was one of the most serviceable of men; he was proud of
never having advertised in the newspapers; he was recommended from
mouth to mouth, and for the most part from one fair mouth to another,
one mother speaking in his commendation to another, and the fathers
smiling and saying, "Yes, Herr Knopf is a very conscientious teacher."
If he were in a house where smoking was disagreeable, he chewed roasted
coffee-berries, and he was just as contented with that. Knopf liked to
take snuff, but he did it only when he was alone, and very quietly; he
carried a colored and a white pocket-handkerchief, so that the
gentleman and the lady of the house might not notice that he took
snuff. One very peculiar habit he could not break himself of, that of
hitching up the trousers on both legs, as if they were going suddenly
to drop down from his body.
But this is no sufficient reason for his appearing destined to be only
a temporary teacher, nothing but a pedagogical nurse for a few weeks.
Knopf is taken into some family until the stress of sickness or need of
some kind is over, and then he is dismissed with very courteous, very
friendly words; but still always dismissed. Fourteen half-yearly
terms--Knopf always reckoned by the semester, and we must do the same
by him--Knopf lived at the capital; and, during this period, he always
intended to procure a wholesale quantity of a brand of cigars which
should taste right, but he never made up his mind. Fourteen semesters
he smoked, from week's end to week's end, different kinds of cigars on
trial, and was perpetually asking what was the price by the thousand,
but he never succeeded in getting the thousand at one time.
Knopf was, naturally, one of the clumsiest of mortals, but he trained
himself to be one of the best swimmers and gymnastic performers, so
that he was, for a time, assistant teacher of gymnastics. Having been
employed twice in the country, where it is so difficult to procure
piano-tuners, he had been led to learn how to tune pianos himself; but
he would never do it except in the house where he happened to be
temporarily living. Several persons asserted that he could also knit
and do plain sewing, but this was unmitigated slander. He could darn
stockings in a most masterly style, but no one had ever seen him do it,
he always did it secretly by himself.
Knopf had come to Herr Sonnenkamp likewise as a temporary candidate and
temporary teacher; here a longer tarrying seemed to be allotted to him,
and a future free from anxiety. Knopf had an enthusiastic love for
Roland, and although the boy learned nothing thoroughly with him, Knopf
used to say to his crony, the teacher Fassbender,--
"The Gods never learned anything, they had it all in themselves. Who
can tell us the name of Apollo's teacher of music, or with what
chief-butler Ganymede served his apprenticeship? Fine natures have all
in themselves, and do not require instruction. We are only cripples
with all our learning; we are tyrannized over by the four Faculties,
but life is no four-sided figure."
This, then, is our friend Knopf; and he was called "our friend Knopf"
in the best families of the land.
Knopf had just left off playing the flute, and was now sitting with his
writing-tablets upon his knee, looking sometimes, round upon the
landscape, sometimes writing rapidly a few words; then he would put his
pencil in his mouth, and seemed ruminating for some new turn of
expression. One could see the road for a great distance, leading from
the village, by the villa, to the neighboring hamlet. Now Knopf saw a
man on horseback coming towards him. He transformed speedily his flute
into a walking-stick again, concealed his tablets, and then hastened
across the vineyard down to the highway.
"Yes, he who sits a horse so well, he is just the right teacher for
him," said Knopf. He took off his hat; while still at a distance, the
rider nodded to him.