Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns CH 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

Arrived at the Ridels* on the Esplanade, as she had, at 

last, on that ^^nd of September, Charlotte Kesiner found 

no difficulty in explaining and excusing her certainly 

immoderate delay. Once on the spot, at length received 

into the arms of her youngest sister, with the husband 

standing by, his face alight with pleasure, she was dis- 

pensed from further accounting for the events that had 

cost her the forenoon and even part of the afternoon as 

well. Only in the succeeding days, in private talk and 

from occasion to occasion, did she partly volunteer and 

partly relate in answer to questions some account of that 

morning*s interviews. Even the invitation for the third 

following day, brought by the last of her visitors, she 

remembered only after the lapse of hours. Then, cer- 

tainly, she was not behindhand in urging upon her family 

their assent to the letter of acceptance she addressed, 

after her arrival, to the famous house on the Frauenplan. 

“I thought not last,” said she to her brother-in-law, 

”and perhaps even first, of you in the matter. I see no 

reason for not taking advantage of connections useful 

to one*s relatives, however antiquated they may be.” 

The Privy Councillor of the Finance Board, that is, 

aspired to the position of head of the ducal Finance 

Chamber; largely because since the days of the French 

invasion he was without private means and dependent 

upon his salary, and a considerable increase to the latter 

would accrue with the new position. He smiled grate- 

fully. In fact, this was not the first time that the friend 

of his sister-in-law’s youth had favoured his advance in 

life. Goethe esteemed him. The young Flamburgcr had 

been tutor in a count*s family, and Goethe had got for 

him the same office for the young Hereditary Piincess of 

the Saxe-Weimar house. He had held it for some years. 

283 

284 LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

In the salon of Madame Schopenhauer he had often been 

in the company of the poet, but never, so far, in the 

famous house; the occasion afforded by Chariotie’s 

presence was thus more than welcome. 

The Ridels received that same evening a written invi- 

tation to dinner at the Frauenplan. But in the following 

days the affair was glanced at only lightly; it was as 

though it was hardly in the family's mind, and men- 

tioned, if at all, with a certain cursoriness of attention. 

Only the married pair were bidden, not their daughter; 

and this, as well as the indication that dress should be 

worn, suggested that the party was not merely a family 

one. The fact was touched on in talk; then came a slight 

pause, as though to weigh whether this \kqtc a pleasur- 

able occasion or no; then the subject shifted again. 

The sisters had been so long parted, and the medium 

of letters been so inadequate to bridge the gap, that 

there was much to talk of from both sides. Children, 

brothers and sisters, and brothers and sisters' children 

must have their doings and their present status can- 

vassed. They had to mourn for many a member of the 

little group that had pressed around Lotte as she cut the 

bread and thus received a blithe poetic immortality. 

Four sisters had already passed away, the first to go being 

the eldest, Friederike, Hofratin Diet/, leaving behind her 

five sons, all of them in excellent positions in the courts 

or the magistracy. The fourth sister, Sophie, had died 

unmarried, now eight years gone, in the house of her 

brother George, a very fine man. Charlotte, despite an 

expressed wish from another quarter, had named her 

eldest son after him. He had married into a wealthy 

Hannover family and succeeded his father, on the death 

of the elder Buff, in the official position at Wetzlar, 

where he gave general satisfaction. 

All together, the masculine portion of that immortal- 

ised little troop had proved themselves more tenacious, 

more capable of life, than had the feminine — always 

excepting the two old ladies who now sat in Amalie 

Ridel's sitting-room and over their sewing discussed past 

and present events. The eldest brother, Hans— -the same 

who had been on so cordial a footing with Dr. Goethe 

CHAPTER EIGHT 585 

and had such exuberant and childlike joy in the \V eriher 

book on its arrival — Hans was director of finances for 

Count von Solms-Rodelheim, a respected and ^veil- 

re warded post. Wilhelm, the second, was a lawyer; 

another, Fritz, a captain in the Dutch army. Amid the 

rattle ol wooden needles or the pricking of embroidery, 

the sisters spoke of the Brandt girls, Annchen aird the 

junoesque Dorthel. Had aught been heard of them? 

Yes, now and then. The black-eyed Dordiel had not 

accepted the circumspect wooing oi that Councillor Celia 

of yore, though it had not gone unremarked in the lively 

circle — in particular a certain young student, himself 

susceptible to the charms of black eyes, had made rather 

rudely meiry over it. She had chosen instead a physician. 

Dr. Hessler, and after his early death had now tor a long 

time been housekeeper to a brother in Bamberg. Ann- 

chen had been Frau Councillor Werner for live-and- 

thirty years; and a third sister, Thekla, had entered on a 

satisfying existence at the side of Wilhelm Buff. 

All these, living and dead, came to mention. But 

Charlotte grew truly animated, the delicate pastel tint 

that so became her visited her cheek and she had to check 

the nodding tendency of her head, only when her own 

sons were the theme; men themselves now in the forties, 

with such dignified careers as Theodor, the professor of 

medicine, and August, the Councillor to the Legation. 

Their visit to the friend of their mother’s youth at the 

“Tannery” was once more referred to; ail together, the 

name of the mighty neighbour — a name so loftily remote, 

yet so inwoven with the life and lot of this whole family 

circle since its early days — crept anon, though seemingly 

shunned, into the sister’s talk. For instance, Charlotte 

recalled a journey she had made with Kestner, forty 

years ago, from Hannover to Wetzlar, when they had 

stopped off to pay a call on the mother of their whilom 

friend. They had got on so famously, the Frau Coun- 

cillor and the youthful pair, that she had claimed the 

privilege of standing godmother to the youngest Kestner 

girl. The man who once had said he would dearly love 

to hold each child, as it came, over the christening font 

was at the time in Rome. The mother had just been 

•j86 LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

surprised by a brief intelligence of his visit there, and 

now betrayed her inward pride by descanting at length 

upon her extraordinary son. Lotte remembered her 

words and now retailed them to her sister. How fruitful, 

Frau Aja had cried, how advantageous, how highly 

rewarding must be such a sojourn to a man of such keen- 

eyed vision for all that was good and great — how rich in 

blessing, not alone for him, but also for all those privi- 

leged to live in his sphere and under his spell! It had 

fallen to this mother’s lot to celebrate loudly and openly 

the good fortune of those lucky ones belonging to the 

circle of her own son. She load quoted the words of a 

friend, the deceased Frau Klettenberg; *‘When your 

Wolfgang comes to Mainz, he brings more than others 

from Paris or London/' The proud and happy mother 

said he had promised her, in her letter, to visit her on his 

homeward way. Then he must tell all his experiences 

down to the very last straw; friends would be asked to 

the house, there would be splendid, lordly entertainment, 

game and roast and fowl would be as the sands of the sea. 

Probably nothing came of all that, Amalie Ridel sur- 

mised; and her sister, who thought she had heard thc‘ 

same, turned the talk back on her own sons: they had 

been brought up to be dutiful and make due and regular 

visits, she said, taking occasion in her turn to sing the 

praise of her own. 

She probably was aware that such talk in time grew 

tedious to her sister. And so, since they wmuld naturally 

consider the matter of their toilets for the coming event, 

Charlotte privily revealed the jest she proposed: the 

choice of a frock on the model of the volpertshausen 

ball-gown, with subtraction of the pink bow. It came up 

when she inquired of her younger sister's plans, and then, 

being asked in turn, first shrouded her own in smiling, 

smirking, hesitant silence, then finally came out with her 

literary, suggestive little joke. Moreover, she secured 

herself beforehand against her sister's judgment, by 

demanding her censure of young Lotte's cold and critical 

strictures upon the idea. So that it meant little to have 

Amalie say she found it charming—with a facial expres- 

sion not actually in accord with her words. She even 

CHAPTER EIGHT :?87 

added, as it were consolingly, that in case the master of 

the house did not remark the allusion, one or other of 

his family would surely do so and call his notice. She did 

not enlarge further upon the subject. 

So much anent the discourse of the reunited sisters. It 

is certain that the first few days of Charlotte Buff's 

sojourn in Weimar were passed in the bosom of the 

family. Society, however curious it might be, had to wait 

for her appearance; the public glimpsed her on the short 

walks she took with the Frau Kammerrat through the 

rural little city and the park, to the Templars* house, 

the Lauterquelle, and the Klause; very likely too as she 

was fetched at evening by her maid and returned to the 

inn on the square, accompanied from the Esplanade by 

her daughter and perhaps by Dr. Ridel as well. She was 

often recognised — if not immediately in her own person, 

then by inference from her company; often, proceeding 

onwards with the blue eyes directed in mild hauteur 

straight before her face, she was perforce made aware that 

people passed her with suddenly lifted brows and a smile, 

then shuffled and turned round behind her back to stare. 

She had a stately and dignified way of returning saluta- 

tions meant for her companions but improving the 

occasion to include her as well. It was almost majestic, 

and much remarked. 

So came on the day, or the afternoon, mentioned with 

such reserve beforehand, awaited, indeed, with silent 

constraint: the day of the command invitation. The 

hired coach stood before the door; Ridel had bespoken it 

out of respect for the ladies* toilets and his own shoes, if 

also in part for the occasion as well, since this momentous 

day of the 25th of September threatened rain. The 

family had partaken, late in the forenoon and with scant 

appetite, of a cold second breakfast; they mounted the 

coach towards half past two, under the eyes of a half- 

dozen inquisitive provincials who had gathered, as for 

a wedding or a funeral, round the waiting hackney- 

carriage, to question the driver on the goal of the drive. 

On such occasions the admiration of the gaping crowd 

for the actual participants in the function is mostly 

equalled by the envy of the latter for the free and easy 

outsiders m their everyday clothes. And the outsiders 

too are privately aware of their own good luck; so that on 

both sides there is a mixture of leelings: on the one 

condescension mingles with an unexpressed “You lucky 

beggars!’' And on the other admiration with malicious 

satisfaction. 

Charlotte and her sister took the well of the coach. 

Dr. Ridel, his top hat on his knees, in tails, with white 

neckerchief and the fashionable padded shoulders, a 

small cross and two medals on his chest, with his niece by 

his side, filled the hard back bench. Scarce a word was 

exchanged on the brief drive along the Esplanade, and 

through the Frauen thorstrasse to the Frauenplan. On 

such occasions there mostly obtains a certain remission of 

individual animation, a state of inward preparation like 

that behind the scenes of a theatre; and here there were 

special circumstances to becloud or lower the general 

mood. 

The married couple respected Charlotte’s silence. 

Four-and-forty years. They thought of them with feel- 

ings of sympathy, now and then nodding and smiling 

at their dear one, even touching her caressingly on the 

knee, a gesture giving her opportunity to nod back and 

thus to disguise or justify that intermittent and touching 

sign of age, the trembling of her head, sometimes so 

strongly apparent, again scarcely present at all. Anon 

they stole glances at their niece, sitting there in a 

deliberate and obvious aloofness from the whole under- 

taking almost amounting to a reproach. Y’oung Lotte’s 

sober, virtuous, and self-sacrificing course of life made 

her a person to be respected, her satisfaction or dis- 

satisfaction weighed in the scale; thus the straight line 

formed by her firmly closed lips played its part in the 

general tendency to silence within the coach. That her 

severity concerned the misguided apparel of her mother, 

now concealed beneath a black wrap, they were all 

aware; Charlotte most clearly of all, and that single 

phrase of approval from her sister had not been enough 

to reassure her of the excellence of her little idea. More 

than once she had lost heart for it herself, and only 

stuck by it out of obstinacy, having once conceived it. 

CHAPTER EIGHT 289 

She told herself, to her own consolation, that it had 

taken very little to summon up that long-ago picture, 

since everyone knew she always wore white by preference 

and had a perfect right to do so now; only the pink bows 

and the absence of the breast-knot betrayed the school- 

girl trick she meant to play. She sat there with her ash- 

grey hair dressed high, confined by a gauze band and 

failing in ringlets to her neck; and despite some feeling 

of envy for the others* unobtrusive garb, the very thought 

of that trick made her heart beat with a stolen and 

defiant throb of expectancy. 

Their wheels rattled over the uneven cobblestones of 

the Kleinstadt-Platz, then came the Seifengasse, and then 

there stood the great house, a long facade with slightly 

diagonal wings — Charlotte had already passed it several 

times, with Amalie Ridel. A parterre and a bel-etage, 

with windows in the moderately high mansard roof; in 

each wing a yellow-painted porte-cochere, and shallow 

steps leading up to the front door in the middle. The 

family alighted; other guests were already meeting and 

greeting at the bottom of the flight, having arrived from 

opposite directions on foot. Two gentlemen of mature 

age, in top hats and pelerines — in one Charlotte recog- 

nised Dr. Riemer— were shaking hands with a younger, 

seemingly having come from close by, as he wore full 

dress with no cloak, only an umbrella in his hand. This 

was Herr Stephan Schiitze, ‘‘our excellent belletrist and 

editor of albums,” Charlotte learned, as the pedestrians 

turned towards the family group and the customary 

introductions took place, amid much cordiality and 

swinging of top hats. Riemer jocosely declined the 

presentation, expressing his confidence that the Frau 

Councillor would not have forgotten an old friend of as 

much as three days* standing. He gave youn^ Lotte*s 

hand a fatherly little pat; and was copied therein by his 

companion, a man of fifty, rather stooiied, with a mild 

cast of features and long hair bleached in strands, hang- 

ing down below his tall hat. This was no less a person 

than Herr Hofrat Meyer, the art professor. He and 

Riemer had each arrived direct from their occupations; 

their ladies would find the way hither of themselves. 

sgo LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

*‘Let us hope/' Meyer said as they entered, in the 

disa'eet staccato of his native land, wherein a homely 

old-German something seemed to mingle with foreign. 

French-sounding traits, “let us hope we have the luck 

to find the master in a good and lively key, not taciturn 

and marode, giving us to feel we are a burden upon him. 

That is always distressing." 

He had turned to Charlotte to say this, expressly and 

seriously, plainly oblivious of how such words from an 

intimate of the house might unnerve a new-comer. She 

could not forbear replying: 

“I know the master of this house for even longer than 

yourself, Herr Professor; I am not unversed in the 

variable moods of his genius." 

“The later acquaintance is after all the more authen- 

tic," said he unperturbed, equably doing justice to each 

syllable of the last word. 

Charlotte was not heeding. She was looking at the 

impressive stateliness of the entrance hall and staircase: 

the wide marble balustrade, the broad steps of the 

splendid leisurely ascent, the classic ornament dispensed 

with such exquisite measured taste. On the first landing 

white niches displayed classic bronze figures and in front 

of them on a marble pedestal the bronze figure of a grey- 

hound turned towards them in a pose strikingly faithful 

and well observed. On this landing August von Goethe, 

attended by a footman, awaited the guests. He looked 

very well, despite some puffiness of face and figure; in a 

silk neck-cloth and damask waistcoat, his hair parted and 

waved, decorations on his chest. He led them some way 

up the steps to the reception-room, but had then to 

return to greet other arrivals. 

It fell to the servant to attend them further: a young 

man with a dignity and poise in keeping with the aristo- 

cratic picture, in blue livery with gilt buttons and a 

yellow striped waistcoat. He guided the Ridels and 

Kestners and the three friends of the house for the rest of 

the way and helped them to lay off their wraps. Here at 

the top too the scene was most splendid, elegant, and 

artistic. From the light surface of the side wall there 

stood out darkly gleaming a group known to Charlotte 

CHAPTER EIGHT 291 

as Sleep and Death: two youths, the arm of one laid along 

the other's shoulder. Above the door a white relief served 

as lintel; on the threshold a blue enamel Salve! was let 

into the floor. “There!" thought Charlotte, taking 

heart; “then we are welcome, despite this talk of taciturn 

and marodel But the lad has certainly a fine berth herel 

He lived more modestly in the Corn Market at Wetzlar. 

There he had my silhouette on the wall, that we gave 

him out of pity and friendship; morning and evening he 

greeted it with eyes and lips — ^he wrote that down him- 

self. Have I a special right, or no, to take this Salve! to 

myself?" 

At her sister's side she passed the open portals of the 

salon — somewhat startled at the unfamiliar practice of 

the servant, who formally called out the name of each 

guest in turn, her own among them: “Frau Councillor 

Kestner!” the reception-room, with its grand piano, was 

elegant enough, yet rather disappointing by its moderate 

propo^ tions compared with the spaciousness of the stair- 

case. Open double doors revealed a perspective of other 

rooms beyond. Two gentlemen and a lady were already 

present, standing together near a colossal bust of Juno; 

they interrupted their chat to turn their attention 

towards the guests just announced — one guest in particu- 

lar, as well she knew — and to make ready for the ensuing 

introductions. But in the same instant the liveried ser- 

vant announced fresh comers, Herr Chamberlain Kirms 

and spouse, who entered with the son of the house, the 

ladies Meyer and Riemer following on their heels. As 

usual in small communities of short distances, the com- 

plement of invited guests was suddenly filled up. The 

introductions became general; Charlotte, the centre of a 

little cluster, made acquaintance through the oflBces of 

Dr. Riemer and youn^ Goethe of all those still strange to 

her, the Kirms', Chief Architect Coudray and wife, 

Superintendent of Mines Herr Werner from Freiburg, 

who lodged at the Erbprinz, and the ladies Riemer and 

Meyer. 

She knew to what curiosity — in the ladies probably 

tinged with malice — she was exposing herself; and met 

it with a dignity in any case forced upon her by the 

59^ LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

necessity to check the nodding tendency of her head, 

now much aggravated by all the circumstances. Her 

weakness was remarked with a variety of sentiments by 

all those present, contrasting oddly, as it did, with the 

maidenliness of her appearance as she stood there, a 

quaint and dainty little figure, in her ankle-length flow- 

ing white frock, caught up into folds at the bosom with 

an agraffe and garnished with pink bows; perching on 

tight little black button boots with heels. The ash-grey 

hair stood up above a fair unwrinkled brow; the face was 

irretrievably elderly, with sunken cheeks on either side a 

well-formed, rather roguishly smiling mouth; the small 

nose had a naive red tinge, the forget-me-not blue eyes 

looked out with gentle and weary distinction. . . . Just 

as she was she received the greetings of those presented, 

their assurances of their enchantment at her sojourn in 

their midst, and their sense of the honour vouchsafed 

them in being present at so memorable and meaningful 

a reunion. 

Beside her stood her critic and conscience, young Lotte 

— if we may venture to call her so — and sank in a curtsy 

from time to time. She was far and away the youngest of 

the company, consisting as it did of people of ripe years 

— even Schiitze, the writer, being a man in the middle 

forties. Brother CarFs nurse and housekeeper looked 

positively austere, with smoothly parted hair drawn back 

over her ears, and a heliotrope frock with an almost 

clerical starched round collar. She smiled ungraciously, 

and drew down her brows at the polite nothings said to 

her and even more to her mother, regarding them as 

offences wilfully provoked. And she suffered — not with- 

out effect upon Charlotte, who defended herself stoutly 

against the stealing influence — from her mother’s juvenile 

appearance: the white frock might just pass, as a caprice 

and affectation; but certainly not the flagrant pink bows. 

Her heart was torn by conflicting feelings: the wish that 

people might understand the meaning of the unseemly 

garniture and not find it scandalous, and the dread lest 

for God’s sake they might misunderstand it! 

In short, young Lotte’s humourless annoyance at the 

whole affair bordered on desperation; Charlotte was 

CHAPTER EIGHT 293 

sensitive and intuitive enough to share her feeiings, and 

had no small difficulty in clinging to her belief in the 

excellence of the little jest. Yet no woman could have 

had much ground for worry over her costume in such a 

circle, or for fearing the reproach of eccentricity. A 

tendency to artistic licence, even to theatricality, was 

visible throughout the female part of the gathering, by 

contrast with the oiGBcial exterior of the gentlemen, who, 

Schiitze excepted, all wore in their buttonholes this or 

that order of merit, medal, ribbon, or cross. Madame 

Chamberlain Kirms, indeed, might be counted an excep- 

tion: as the wife of a high oflSiciai she evidently held witii 

strictness of convention; yet even she, in the exaggerated 

size of her silken cap-wings, detracted from her own 

principles, for they verged on the fantastic. And Madame 

Riemer — that orphan whom the scholar had married 

from this very house — as well as Frau Councillor Meyer, 

n^e von Koppenfeld, struck in their garb a strong note 

of the artistic and individual, not to say extravagant. 

Frau Riemer's taste was for the sombre intellectual, with 

a collar of yellowed lace on her black velvet gown, a 

hawklike profile, and ivory-tinted, darkly glooming face 

and brow, shadowed by curled locks of midnight black 

shot through with white. Frau Meyer, a more than 

mature Iphigenia, affected a lemon-coloured robe in 

classic style, ^vith a half-moon on the girdle directly 

beneath the full bodice, and an antique border at lire 

hem. A dark-coloured veil flowed down from her head; 

and as a modern touch she had added long gloves to the 

short sleeves of her gown. 

Madame Coudray, the architect’s wife, was distin- 

guished not only by her voluminous frock but by a great 

broad-brimmed Corona Schroter hat with a veil round 

the crown; the brim bent down and rested upon the 

ringlets of hair at the back. Even Amalie Ridel, with her 

ducklike profile, had made essays in the direction of the 

picturesque by a complicated arrangement of frills to 

her sleeves and a shoulder-throw of white swansdown. 

Among all these Charlotte’s figure was actually the least 

pretentious — and yet in her elderly girlishness, the dig- 

nity of her bearing constantly threatened by the nodding 

^94 LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

of her head, she was the oddest, tire most striking and 

appealing of all, a sight to make one ponder if not to 

make one mock — to mock, that was it, the tortured Lott- 

ciien thought. She was bitterly convinced that the ladies 

of Weimar came to a spiteful little understanding together 

as soon as the introductions were over and the company 

broke up into groups dispersed through the room. 

The son of the house displayed to the Kestners, mother 

and daughter, the painting hanging above the sofa, show- 

ing them how to draw aside the green silk curtain that 

shrouded it. It was a copy of the so-called Aldobrandini 

Marriage, most kindly made by Professor Meyer. The 

professor himself came up to them, and August went to 

mingle with other guests. Meyer had arrived in a top 

hat, but had now replaced it by a velvet cap. It looked 

so domestic by contrast with the dress clothes that Char- 

lotte involuntarily looked down at his feet, to see whether 

perhaps he wore felt slippers. He did not, although his 

shuffling gait, even in his boots, suggested them. He had 

his hands clasped comfortably across his back, and his 

head inclined demurely on one side; all together the 

professor seemed to wish to appear in the character of 

an old family friend, reassuring by his own tranquillity 

the nervousness of new-comers to the house. 

“We ail seem to be here,*’ he said, in the slow even 

staccato he had brought with him from Stafa on the Lake 

of Zurich and never lost throughout all the years in 

Rome and Weimar. He talked entirely without the aid 

of gesture. “We seem to be our full count, and let us 

hope our host will present himself without delay. It is 

comprehensible that new-comers should feel a certain 

nervousness in these last long minutes, though they 

should rejoice to be able to accustom themselves before- 

hand to the surroundings and atmosphere. I always make 

it my afiair to give such people the benefit of a little 

advice which should make the experience easier and 

pleasanter — though it always remains difficult enough/* 

He accented the French word on the first syllable, and 

went on with unmoved countenance: 

“What I mean is that it is always best” {he said 

“besht”) “to conceal as much as possible the tension one 

CHAPTER EIGHT 395 

is unavoidably in; and to greet him with the utmost 

possible unahectedness, with no sign of stress. That 

sensibly lightens the strain on both sides, for him as well 

as for oneself. For he is sensitive to the guests’ nervous- 

ness and shares it with him; he gets the contagion, so to 

speak, from afar; so that he too is subjected to a com- 

pulsion working with the embarrassment of the other 

side to become mutually intolerable. It is distinctly the 

sensible thing to be entirely natural — for instance, not to 

think one must enter on high intellectual themes, as for 

example his own words. Nothing is more ill-judged. 

Much better talk about simple and concrete matters 

within one’s own experience; for he never tires of the 

human and actual, becomes animated at once and is able 

to give free rein to his responsive kindliness. I need not 

say that I have in mind no familiarity leaving out of con- 

sideration the distance between him and us; he would 

know how to put a stop to such a thing at once, as we 

have seen in more than one instance.” 

Charlotte listened blinking to the instruction of this 

faithful satellite and knew not what to say in reply. 

Involuntarily she was perceiving — and finding herself 

thoroughly ripe for the perception — how hard it is for 

people overtaken by stage fright to draw comfort or 

profit from advice to be calm. The quite opposite effect 

was far more likely. Personally she felt offended at the 

man laying down die law, for mixing into her affairs. 

“Thank you very much, Herr Hofrat,” said she at last, 

“for your suggestions. Many people must have already 

been grateful for them. But we must not forget that in 

this case we are dealing with the renewal of a friendship 

of four-and-forty years’ standing.” 

He responded dryly: “A man who is a different person 

fiom day to day and from hour to hour will certainly 

have become different person in four-and-forty years. 

— ^Well, Carl,” said he to the servant, who passed them 

on the way through the suite of rooms, “what sort of 

mood are we in to-day?” 

“Pretty jolly, on the wdiole, Herr Hofrat,” the young 

man replied. A moment later, standing at the double 

door, whose two wings, as Charlotte only then perceived, 

u 

096 LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

could slide into the wall 011 either side, he announced, 

without much formality, rather in an easy, sociable key: 

“His Excellence/* 

Meyer crossed over to the other guests, who had 

broken off their conversation to collect in a group stand- 

ing at some distance from the ladies Kestner. Goethe 

entered with a quick, firm, rather abrupt tread, his 

shoulders back and abdomen somewhat forward. He 

rvore dress clothes: a dress coat with a double row of 

buttons, and a finely worked glittering silver star rather 

high up on his chest; silk stockings, a white batiste neck- 

cloth crossed over and fastened with an amethyst pin. 

His hair, curling on the temples, but above the high 

arched brow already thin, was evenly powdered. Char- 

lotte knew and did not know him — and both facts dis- 

turbed her. She knew again at first glance the peculiar 

wide-openness of the actually not very large, datkly 

lustrous eyes in the dark skin of the face; the right eye 

sat distinctly lower than the left. That naive, wide-open 

gaze — just now accentuated by the lifting of the finely 

arched brows running down to the somewhat depressea 

outer corners of the eyes — it seemed to be saying: “Who 

are all these people?*’ Dear God, how she knew those 

youthful eyes, niter all this lifetime of )cars! Their 

actual colour was brown, they were rather close-lying; 

but they passed for black, because at every change of 

mood — and when did his mood not change? — the pupils 

so expanded that they impinged on the iris and gave the 

impression of blackness. It was he — and it was not. Cer- 

tainly he had not had that towering brow — of course, its 

height was due to the retreating hair, though hair there 

still was in abundance; it was simply the effect of stealing 

time — one tried to reassure oneself with that, but with- 

out success. For time in this sense was life, was work, that 

through the decades had chiselled at the marble brow 

and so profoundly and movingly reshaped and graven 

the once smooth features. Time, age— here they were 

more than a loss, a liability, a natural decline, touching 

and even melancholy to reflect on; they were full of 

meaning, they were intellect, achievement, history; their 

CHAPTER EIGHT ^97 

effects, far from giving rise to pity, made the contempla- 

tive heart beat high with joyful amaze. 

Goethe was now seven-and-sixty years old. Charlotte 

might count herself lucky that the reunion was taking 

place now instead of fifteen years earlier, at the begin- 

ning of the century, when the heaviness of body that 

began in his Italian period had been at its height. He 

had got rid of it again some time before. Despite the 

stiff gait — though even that was characteristic of his 

youthful period — his legs looked slender and young 

below the exceedingly fine and glossy doth of his black 

suit; in the last decade his figure had approached again 

to that of his youth. Our good Charlotte had missed 

seeing some things, especially in the face; it was more 

altered from that of the friend of Wetzlar days, since it 

had gone through phases she knew not of. At one time 

it had had a fat and morose look, with sagging cheeks; 

she would have found it far harder to recognise her 

youthful friend than at his present stage. His features 

wore just now a rather disingenuous look, and one asked 

oneself why; it showed especially in the look of innocent 

surprise at sight of the after all expected guests. But 

added to that there was an excessive mobility of the 

mouth, generously cut and altogether beautiful though 

it was, neither too thin nor too full, with deep corners 

buried in the grooves carven by age in the cheeks. There 

was a nervous excess of swiftly contradictory possibilities 

of expression; his hesitation amongst them seemed to 

cast doubts on his sincerity. There was unmistakable 

conflict between the statuesque dignity and significance 

of these features and the childlike vacillation, a sort of 

coquettish ambiguity, that sat upon them. 

As he entered, the master of the house was clutching 

his left arm, the rheumatic one, with his right hand. 

After a few steps he let it go, stood still, and made an 

affable ceremonial bow to the company in general, then 

advanced towards the ladies standing nearest him. 

The voice — yes, it was altogether the old voice, the 

resonant baritone, the very tones of the slender youth as 

he spoke or read aloud. Perhaps a thought more slow 

and measured, but even of yore there had been a shade of 

LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

-98 

solemnity in them — how strange it was to hear their very 

accents proceeding from the settled man! 

“My dear ladies/’ said he, putting out a hand to each, 

to Charlotte the right and to Lotte the left, then bring- 

ing them together and holding them in his owm, “at last 

I can welcome you %vith my own lips to Weimar! You 

behold a man to whom the time has seemed long until 

this moment. I call this a capital surprise — it does my 

heart good. How it must rejoice the heart of our good 

Finance Councillor, this dearly desired visit! We need 

not say how much we treasure it that once within these 

walls you have not passed us by!” 

He had said: “dearly desired” — and his smiling mouth 

wore an expression half embarrassed, half relishing, that 

gave the little improvisation an added charm. It was 

only too clear to Charlotte that there was diplomacy in 

the charm: a purposeful vagueness calculated to regulate 

the situation from the first word on — the discretion and 

deliberation of his words betrayed it. And in pursuance 

of his design he made capital of the fact that not she 

alone but her daughter with her stood before him; he 

put all four hands together, he spoke to them in the 

plural; he even referred to himself as “we,” withdraw- 

ing, as it were, behind the shelter of his house and sug 

gesting the possibility that she might have “passed it by.’ 

Even the delightful little improvisation had reference to 

the Ridels. 

His gaze wavered between mother and daughter, and 

also passed beyond them in the direction of the window. 

Charlotte had the impression that he did not really see 

her; but what his fleeting glance did take in, she per- 

ceived, was the now ungovernable trembling of her head; 

for a brief second he shut his eyes against the sight with 

a look of avoidance and gravity that was almost deathly. 

But he returned in a breath from this cloudy retreat and 

to the conventional present, as though nothing had 

happened. 

^‘And youth,” he went on, turning to face young 

Lotte, “comes like a ray of golden sunshine into the 

shadowed house ” 

Charlotte, up to now, had merely indicated by a gesture 

CHAPTER EIGHT 299 

that it went without saying she would not pass by his 

house. She now broke in at this point with the obvious 

and indicated introduction he was evidently expecting 

It had been her chiefest wish, siie said, to bring to his 

notice this daughter, Charlotte, her second youngest, now 

on a visit of some duration from her home in Alsace. 

She addressed him as Excellence, if rather hurriedly and 

slurringiy, and he did not demur or ask for another title, 

perhaps because he was busy looking at the person 

presented. 

“Pretty, pretty, pretty!*' he said. “These eyes have 

probably done some damage in the masculine world." 

The compliment was so conventional, so unsuited to 

Brother Carl’s companion and helper, that it cried to 

heaven. Young Lotte gave a tortured and contemptuous 

smile and set her teeth cornerwise in her lip. Her look 

may have moved him to begin his next sentence with an 

“In any case" that dismissed the subject. 

“In any case," said he, “it is very charming that I am 

vouchsafed to behold in 7 iatura at least one member of 

the little group whose silhouettes our dear departed 

Hofrat sent me. Time brings one all, if one will but 

wait." 

That sounded like a concession; the mention of Hans 

Christian and the silhouettes was something of a depar- 

ture from the rules. Charlotte felt it to be so, but it was 

probably mistaken of her to recall to his mind that he had 

already made the acquaintance of two of their children, 

August and Theodor, they having taken the liberty of 

visiting him at the “Tannery." Probably she should not 

have even mentioned the name of the estate, for he 

looked at her a moment, as it fell from her lips, with a 

sort of vacancy of spirit too intense to have been caused 

by any thought of the meeting. 

“Oh, yes, of course!" he cried. “How could I forget it? 

Forgive this old brain!" But instead of indicating the 

forgetful brain he rubbed his left arm with his right 

hand as he had on entering the room, evidently wishing 

to attract notice to its ailing state. “How are those fine 

young men? Good, I thought so. Success lies in their 

excellent natures, it is inborn in them — and no wonder. 

LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

300 

with such parents, — And the ladies had a pleasant 

journey?’' he proceeded. *T feel sure of it; the stretch 

from Hildesheim, Nordhausen, and Erfurt is a much 

used and favoured one: good horses for the most part, 

several good inns on the way — and moderately expen- 

sive, you will hardly have paid more than fifty thaler 

netto,** 

As he spoke he was breaking up this separate conversa- 

tion and moving to manoeuvre the Kestners over towards 

the rest of the gathering. 

assume," he said, "that our invaluable young man 

here" — he meant August — "has made you acquainted 

with the small company present. These equally lovely 

women are your friends, these good gentlemen your 

admirers. . . He greeted in turn Madame Kirms in her 

cap, the architect's lady in her enormous hat, the intellec- 

tual Frau Riemer, the classical Frau Meyer, and Amalie 

Ridel, on whom he had already cast a speaking glance 

from afar, as he mentioned the dearly desired visit Then 

he shook the gentlemen by the hand, with especial 

cordiality that of the stranger. Superintendent of Mines 

Werner, a stocky, friendly figure in the fifties, with small 

lively eyes, a bald crown, and curly white hair at the 

back, his smooth cheeks nestled comfortably into the 

white shirt-collar held up by a white neck-cloth and 

leaving his chin free. Him the master looked at with a 

very slight sidewise and backwards movement of the 

head as though he were weary of formal phrases and 

abandoned them with a "There, at last we can cut the 

cackle and get to the horses." The gesture called forth 

on Meyer’s and Riemer’s faces a look of patronising 

approval, the real source of which was jealousy. The 

master, after doing his duty by the rest, took occasion to 

return to the geologist, while the ladies pressed round 

Charlotte; whispering behind their fans, they wanted to 

know if she found Goethe very much changed. 

They stood about for a while in the reception-room, 

E resided over by the colossal bust and adorned with 

ands of * embroidery, aquarelles, oil paintings, and 

copperplate engravings. The simply designed chairs 

were arranged symmetrically along the w^alls between 

CHAPTER EIGHT 

301 

the white door-frames, interspersed with white-lacquered 

display-cabinets. There were bowls of carven chalcedony 

on the marble tables; a winged Nike adorned the covered 

sofa-table beneath the Aldobrandini Marriage; figures of 

gods and fauns and antique masks stood under glass bells 

on the bureau; and all these art objects gave the room 

the look of a museum. But Charlotte kept her eyes fixed 

on their host, standing there with his feet apart, his 

elbows stretched out and hands laid together on his back, 

in his satin-soft dress coat with the star on his breast 

glittering at each motion, making conversation with one 

and other of the masculine guests, Werner, Kirms, 

Coudray, by turns — for the present no more with her. 

It was good and pleasant to look at him thus, privately, 

without having to talk to him — but that did not prevent 

her being filled with a compelling urge to go on talking; 

she felt it as an imperative need, though even so, watch- 

ing his intercourse with her fellow guests, she was equally 

put off the idea and convinced that the person just then 

enjoying the privilege of his attention was not particu- 

larly to be envied. 

The friend of her youth made an entirely elegant 

impression, no doubt of that. His apparel, once so dash- 

ingly eccentric, was now very choice, deliberately a little 

in the rear of the fashion; something a little old-style 

about it harmonised with the stiffness of his bearing as he 

walked or stood, and made for dignity. He held his fine 

head high, his manner was confident and reserved; yet 

even so the dignity seemed not to be quite firm on its 

legs. Whoever stood before him, his bearing had about it 

something hesitating, uncomfortable, embarrassed; the 

absurdity of it upset the observer as much as it did the 

person at the moment suffering under the constraint of 

the dialogue. Everyone feels and knows that objectivity 

of mind lies at the bottom of a free and unembarrassed 

manner. Forced behaviour is enough in itself to lay a 

man open to the charge of lacking sympathy for men and 

things; it is likely to make any and every subject repug- 

nant to the helpless partner in the dialogue. The master s 

eyes habitually rested upon the speaker, as long as the 

speaker did not look at him; so soon as that happened. 

^02 LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

the eyes glanced aside and began to move about his head 

into space. 

Charlotte’s sharp feminine eye saw all this, and we can 

only repeat that it made her dread to talk again with her 

one-time friend, and at the same time ardently crave to 

do that very thing. In any case, much of his manner 

might be laid to that unease of the minutes before the 

meal, which were lasting too long. Several times he 

looked with lifted brows at his son, on whom seemed to 

rest the responsibility of a major-domo. 

At last the servant approached the host with the 

desired announcement, ana he quickly communicated it 

to the guests as they broke up their groups. 

“Dear friends, we are invited to take our places,” he 

said. He went up to Lotte and Lottchen, took them by 

the hands with a certain country-dance elegance, and led 

the procession with them into the adjacent room, called 

the yellow salon; the meal had been laid there, as the 

“small dining-room” farther on was not adequate for 

sixteen people. 

The wora “salon” was rather too large for the room in 

which the guests were now received, though it was larger 

than the one they had just left. It too was dominated by 

colossal busts, two of them: the Antinous in its melan- 

choly beauty, and a majestic Jupiter. The walls were 

adorned by a set of coloured plates of mythological sub- 

jects, and a copy of Utian’s Heavenly Love, Here too 

there were glimpses, through open doors, into other 

rooms; particularly charming was the vista through a 

door on the narrow side of the room along a hall of busts 

and an ivy-clad gallei^ to the stair leading to the garden. 

The table was laid with more than middle-class elegance: 

fine damask, flowers, silver candelabra, gilded porcelain, 

and three glasses at each cover. The young liveried 

servant waited, assisted by a rosy-cheeked young country 

girl, in cap and stays, white puffed sleeves, and home- 

made stuff frock. 

Goethe sat in the middle of the long side of the table, 

between Charlotte and her sister; on their right and left 

Kammemt Kirms and Professor Meyer; beyond, on 

either side, the ladies Meyer and Riemer* August had 

CHAPTER EIGHT 

305 

not been able, because there were too many men, to keep 

to the principle of alternating the sexes. He had put 

the Bergrat opposite his father, with Dr. Riemer as his 

neighbour, sharing the society of Lotte the younger. 

Madame Coudray was placed at Werner’s left, on the 

other side, that being filled out by Dr. Ridel and Madame 

Kirms. Herr Stephen Schiitze and chief architect 

Coudray shared the narrow end of the table. 

The soup, a rich consomme with marrow-balls, stood 

already at the places. The host broke his bread with a 

ritualistic air over his soup-plate. He looked much better 

and freer seated than standing or walking; one would 

have taken him for a taller man than when he was on his 

legs. But it was probably the situation itself, the position 

as host, as father of the family and giver of the feast, that 

lent him more ease and freedom. He seemed to feel in 

his element. With a roguish twinkle in his eyes he looked 

around the still silent circle; as he opened the meal with 

the ceremony of breaking bread, so he seemed to wish to 

set the key of the conversation too. For he addressed the 

whole circle, in his deliberate, clearly articulated, well- 

modulated tones, in the accents of a south German 

brought up in north Germany. 

*Xet us give thanks to the heavenly powers, dear 

friends, for vouchsafing so happy an occasion for this 

joyous meeting. Let us be glad of the modest, yet well 

and truly prepared meal!” 

There he began to ply his spoon and the company 

all followed suit, not without exchanging glances, nods, 

and enthusiastic smiles at the excellence of the little 

speech — as much as to say: What can one do? He always 

puts it in a way not to be improved on. 

Charlotte sat enveloped in the aroma of eau-de-cologne 

emanating from the person of her neighbour on the left. 

Involuntarily she was reminded of the sweet odour that 

according to Riemer betrayed the presence of the god- 

head. She half mused, half thought that the eau-de- 

cologne, fresh though it was, represented the prosaic 

reality of the so-called divine ozone. At the same time 

her housewifely perceptions told her that the marrow- 

balls were certainly well and truly prepared, they were 

LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

m 

fine and light as feathers. And all the while her whole 

being hung in suspense, in an expectancy that defied the 

regulations and had not given up the idea of brushing 

them aside. The vague hope, difficult of clear definition, 

was strengthened by her neighbour's relaxed and more 

comfortable air as head of the table. A pity, she thought, 

that she was, of necessity, sitting beside and not opposite 

to him. How much more favourable to her inward hopes 

it would have been if they were face to face; how much 

it would have improved the chance of his seeing the 

symbolism of her attire, the vehicle of her hopes! Wait- 

ing in suspense for the address of her neighbour, she was 

jealous of the lively-eyed Werner and felt how much 

better it would be to confront it face to face. But the 

host did not address her separately, he spoke in general 

to all his neighbours, after taking a few mouthfuls of 

soup. He held up one after the other the tivo bottles of 

wine standing before him in silver holders (a similar pair 

stood at either end of the table) and tipped them sideways 

to read the labels. 

‘1 see," he said, 'ffiiy son has come down handsomely, 

he has given us two admirable elixirs, and the domestic 

cordial can vie with the imported. We hold with the 

patriarchal custom of pouring out for ourselves — it is 

superior to being served by ministering spirits and the 

finicking round with glasses; that I cannot endure. By 

our method a man has a free hand and can see how it is 

going with his bottle. What do you think, ladies, and 

you, my dear Bergrat? Red or white? I say first the 

native wine and then the French with the roast — or 

would you rather lay a good heart-warming base with 

this one to start off? I can vouch for it: this vintage 

Lafite of the year 'o8 works gently upon the spirits, I 

would not swear not to come on to it later — though the 

'll Piesporter Goldtropfen is likely to make you a 

monogamist, once you begin with it. Our dear Germans 

are a crack-brained lot, and have always w^orked their 

prophets as hard as the Jews theirs; but their wines are 

the noblest gift of God/* 

Werner, surprised, simply laughed straight out. But 

CHAPTER EIGHT 

305 

Kirms, a narrow-headed man with a crop of curly grey 

hair on his crown, and heavy eyehds, replied: 

“His Excellence forgets to reckon to the credit of these 

worthless Germans that they produced you/’ 

The applause, led by Meyer on the left and Riemer 

diagonally opposite him, betrayed that they had been 

listening to their host’s conversation and not to their 

neighbours’. 

Goethe laughed too, but without opening his lips — 

perhaps in order not to show his teeth. 

“We will let that pass, as a passable trait,” said he. 

Then he inquired of Charlotte what she would like to 

drink, 

“I am not used to wine,” she replied. “It goes too 

easily to my head — I only sip a little for friendship’s 

sake. And what I would rather sip from is the fountain 

there” — she motioned with her head towards the bottles 

of water. “What may they be?” 

“Oh, that is my Eger water,” answered Goethe. “Your 

inclination counsels you well; I am never without this 

mineral water, of all the temperance drinks in the world 

I have had the best experience with it. I will pour you 

out some, on condition that you will take a little of the 

golden spirit as well — and the further condition that you 

do not mingle the two elements, that you put no water 

in your wine. That is a very bad custom indeed.” 

He superintended the pouring from where he sat, 

while farther down the table his son and Dr. Riemer 

performed the same office. Meanwhile the plates were 

changed, and they were served with a ragout of fish and 

mushrooms au gratin, in shells Charlotte felt no appe- 

tite; but she had to admit the excellence of the dish. 

Intent upon every detail and full of silent zeal of research, 

she found the excellence of the cuisine very interesting 

indeed, and ascribed it to the requirements of the master 

of the house; particularly when she saw, both now and 

later, that August’s eyes, the father-eyes save for their 

melancholy sweetness and infinitely weaker penetration, 

went almost anxiously to the parent’s face to see if he 

found the dish a success. Goethe was the only person 

to take two of the shells; but he left the second almost 

3o6 LOTTE in WEIMAR 

untouched. With the next course too he showed that, as 

the saying is, his eyes were larger than his appetite; it 

was a capital filet, served on long platters and plentifully 

garnished with vegetables. He heaped his plate so full 

that he left half of it uneaten. He took great draughts, 

both of the Rhine wine and the Bordeaux; the pouring 

out, like the bread-bieaking, %vas a little ceremony, but 

he ministered largely to himself. The Piesporter in par- 

ticular had soon to be replaced. The ahvays dark hue of 

his face showed as the meal progressed an ever greater 

contrast to the whiteness of his hair. 

As he poured out, Charlotte watched his hand with 

the same compelling, almost paralysing intensity that 

held her throughout. That hand, with its frilled cuff and 

short, w^ell-kept finger-nails, had with all its breadth and 

strength something cultured and spiritualised, as it 

grasped the neck of -the bottle. He repeatedly poured out 

the Eger water for her, and went on talking, as he did so, 

in his slow, clearly articulated voice, deep without 

monotony, and only now and again yielding to the local 

practice of his home and leaving off the end-consonants. 

He was expatiating upon his first acquaintance %vith this 

excellent mineral spring. Every year, he said, he had it 

sent to Weimar by the so-called Franzensdorf carriers 

and still did so, for since he had stopped going to the 

Bohemian baths, he practised a systematic cure with the 

Eger water at home. It was probably his unusually pre- 

cise and clear delivery, from those mobile, half-smiling 

lips, and the something involuntarily penetrating and 

dominating about it, that made the table generally listen 

when he spoke; the converse a deux remained thin and 

fitful throughout the meal; as soon as he began to speak, 

the attention of the whole table was diverted to him. 

He could scarcely help this, or at most by pointedly 

addressing his next-door neighbour and lowering his 

voice; but even so the others kept their ears open. 

In this way it was, after the good word Hofkammerrat 

Kirms put in for the German people, that the host began 

to speak to Charlotte as it were alone, and to enlarge on 

the person and advantages of her partner on the right: 

what a capital economist he was, how deserving of the 

CHAPTER EIGHT 307 

rewards of the State; the mind of a lord Chamberlain, 

yet a friend of the muses and sensitive amateur of the 

drama; invaluable as a member of the newly established 

board of management at the Hof theater. It would almost 

have appeared that he wanted to put her off on Kirms, if 

he had not gone on to inquire of her own attitude 

towards the theatre, and conjecture that she would take 

advantage of her sojourn to form an opinion of the 

pow’'ers of the Weimar company. He would put his box 

at her disposition, whenever she felt the wish to use it. 

She thanked him cordially and said that for her part she 

had alw^ays greatly enjoyed the theatre, but in her circle 

there was no great interest, and the Hannover theatre 

was not calculated to arouse it. Thus, being always 

occupied with her many duties, she was somewhat a 

stranger to this form of enjoyment. She would find it 

both delightful and instructive to make the acquaintance 

of the famous Weimar company he had himself trained. 

She so expressed herself, in a rather low voice, and he 

listened with his head bent towards her place, nodding 

his understanding. And, to her chagrin, as he listened 

he delicately pushed with his ring-finger the small balls 

and crumbs she had absently made with her bread, and 

assembled them in a tidy little pile. He repeated his ofiEer 

of the loge, and hoped that circumstances might permit 

him to show her a performance of Wallenstein, with 

Wolf in the title role, an offering well worth seeing that 

had much impressed visiting strangers. After that, he 

said it was amusing that a double connecting link, the 

Schiller play and the table water, had brought him to 

the old castle in Bohemia, where the noblest of Wallen- 

stein's followers had been slain; as architecture it greatly 

interested him. He went on to describe it, turning 

slightly away as he did so from Charlotte's place and 

abandoning his more intimate tones; straightway he had 

the ear of the whole circle round the table. The so-called 

black tower, he said, as seen from the former draw-bridge, 

was a magnificent piece of work, the stone had probably 

come from the Kammerberg. This he said to the Superin- 

tendent of Mines, nodding at him in professional under- 

standing. The stones, so he said, were cut with extra- 

3o8 LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

ordinary skill and so placed as to offer the best resistance 

to the weather, so that they had almost the iorni of 

certain loose field-crystals at Elbogen. His eyes sparkled, 

his animation increased as he ainvcch by association with 

this resemblance, at a find he had once made when on a 

driving-tour in Bohemia, on the way between Eger and 

Liebenstein, whither he had been drawn not only by the 

Knights’ castle but also by the geologically instructive and 

really sublime Platienberg opposite the Kammerberg. 

The road thitlier, as he described it, with mounting 

temperament and liveliness of style, had been a break- 

neck one, strewn with pot-holes full of water, some of 

them very deep. His companion, a local official, had 

been in lively iear, ostensibly for the narrator’s person, 

but actually and obviously for his own, so that Goethe 

had repeatedly had to calm him and point out the skill 

of the dx'iver, who knew his business so well that 

Napoleon, had he seen the man, would certainly have 

made him his personal coachman. He caiefuUy drove 

through the middle of the big holes — much tlie best way 

to avoid an upset. “And then,” he continued, “as we are 

bumping along at a slow pace up the still ascending 

road, I see something by the side that makes me get out, 

cautiously, from the wagon to look at it. Well, how did 

you get here? I asked — for what was it shining up at me 

out of the mud? A feldspar twin crystal!” 

“The deuce — you don’t say!” said Werner. He was 

probably the only person present — Charlotte suspected, 

she almost hoped — ^who knew what a feldspar twin crystal 

was; but everybody showed the greatest delight at this 

encounter of the narrator with the freak of nature — and 

indeed quite spontaneously, for he had given it such 

enlivening dramatic form, especially the joyful surprise 

and the address to the discovery, that it was truly charm- 

ing; it had such a fresh and appealing and fairy-story 

effect, that a man — and what a man!~had spoken so 

humanly to a stone; it was by no means the Mines Super- 

intendent alone who was beholden to him. Charlotte, 

looking with equal intensity at speaker and audience, 

sa-^v love and pleasure on every face; for instance on 

Riemei’s, where they mingled strangely with his habitual 

CHAPTER EIGHT 

309 

peevish expression; on August’s too, yes, she saw them 

even on Lottchen’s, and notably on Meyer’s otherwise 

dry and immobile features as he leaned over past Amalie 

Ridel to hang on the narrator’s lips; such warmth of 

affection was mirrored there that tears, she knew not 

why, came into her own eyes. 

She felt by no means pleased that the friend of her 

youth, after the brief private colloquy, had shifted his 

attention to the whole circle — partly because they 

wanted it, no doubt, but also, she did not conceal from 

herself, on account of the “regulations.” And yet she 

could not help sympathising with their characteristic 

pleasure; their characteristic, one might almost say 

mythically conditioned pleasure in this patriarchal mono- 

logue by the presiding father of the house. An old verbal 

association and \ague memory came into her mind and 

obstinately persisted. “Luther’s Table-Talk.” thought 

she, and defended the impression against all the dissimi- 

larity of the actual features. 

Eating, drinking, pouring out, at times leaning back 

wdth his hands folded over his serviette, he went on talk- 

ing; for the most part slowly, in a low key, and search- 

ing conscientiously after the words; but also mere lightly 

and rapidly, the hands freeing themselves to make ges- 

tures of great ease and charm. They reminded Charlotte 

that he was in the habit of discussing with artists problems 

of delivery and dramatic effects. As he talked, his eyes, 

with the peculiar depression at their corners, embraced 

the whole table with their w^arm and biilliant glance; 

his lips moved freely, not invariably making a pleasant 

impression, for they seemed at times to be drawn down 

by some unlovely compulsion that was torturing and 

puzzling to behold, turning the pleasure at his words into 

uneasy pity. But as a rule the pressure lifted speedily, 

and then the motions of the finely formed mouth were so 

full of satisfying charm that one felt how precise and 

unexaggcraied a description was the Homeric epithet 

“ambrosial,” even though one had never before applied 

it to a concrete instance. 

He went on talking about Bohemia, about Franzens- 

brunn and Eger and the cultivated beauty of its valley; 

310 LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

described a harvest feast of the Church he had once 

attended, the beflagged procession through the market 

square of guilds and mihtia and peasants, led by clergy 

in heavily embroidered vestments, carrying relics. Then, 

lowering his voice and slicking out his lips, with a 

portentous expression that had something epically 

humorous about it, as when one tells frightening stories 

to children, he talked about a night of blood that 

remarkable town had experienced in the late Middle 

Ages, an uprising against the Jews, a sudden and violent 

attack like a paroxysm; there was an account of it in the 

old chronicles. A good many of the children of Israel 

dwelt in Eger, in the streets assigned to them, where they 

had also a very famous synagogue and a Jewish school of 

higher learning, the only such school in Germany. One 

day a barefoot friar, who clearly possessed the fatal gift 

of eloquence, had preached from the pulpit on the sufter- 

ings of Christ, to most piteous effect; he painted the Jews 

as the source of all evil, so revoltingly that a soldier, 

quite beside himself as the result of the sermon and ready 

for any deed, sprang to the high altar, seized the crucifix, 

and with a yell: “He who is a Christian, let him follow 

me!” set the spark to the highly inflammable congrega- 

tion. They followed him; outside the church they were 

joined by a great rabble, and an outrageous slaughtering 

and plundering began in the ghetto. The unhappy 

dwellers were dragged to a narrow alley between two of 

their main streets and there butchered — in such wise that 

the blood ran down like a stream and to this day it was 

called the Murder Street. A single Jew escaped alive 

from this massacre, by crawling up the chimney and 

remaining hidden there. When order had been restored, 

the penitent community, having been punished with 

severity by the then reigning Charles IV, solemnly made 

the Jewish survivor a citizen of Eger. 

“Citizen of Egerl” cried the narrator. “So then he 

amounted to something and had been splendidly recom- 

pensed. He had lost his wife and children, his friends 

and relatives, all his property and possessions, his whole 

society, not to speak of the suffocating effect of the dread- 

ful hours he spent up the cliimney. He stood there naked 

CHAPTER EIGHT 311 

as he was bom, but he was a citizen of Eger, and after 

all he was proud of it. Human beings! That is the way 

they are. Give way with gusto to the impulse to commit 

the cruellest deeds, and after their heads are cool again, 

enjoy quite as much the large gesture of repentance with 

which they think to pay for the crime. It is laughable — 

and touching. For in the mass you cannot speak of a 

deed, but only of a happening; it is better to regard such 

events as incalculable natural phenomena rising from the 

temper of the age. In this light the corrective interven- 

tion of a humane power is beneficial; even though too 

late, even though it could have acted before and did not; 

in this case it was the majesty of Rome that saved as far 

as possible the honour of humanity, instituting an in- 

vestigation into the grave casus and formally levying a 

fine on the existing magistracy.” 

The horrid episode could not have been narrated with 

more objectively disarming and soothing comment; thus, 

Charlotte felt, it should probably be treated, if such a 

thing was to be told at table at all. Goethe lingered yet 

a while on the subject of the Jewish character and 

destiny, listening to and as it were digesting the remarks 

thrown in by one or other of the guests — Kirms, Coudray, 

or the adroit Meyer. He expressed himself with objec- 

tivity and faintly humorous respect on the peculiarities 

of this remarkable people. The Jews, he said, were 

pathetic without being heroic; the age and blood experi- 

ence of their race made them wise and sceptical, and 

that was the precise opposite of the heroic. There was 

definitely a certain wisdom and irony in the very accents 

of even the simplest Jew — alongside a definite inclina- 

tion to pathos. But tliat word must be understood in its 

most precise sense, in the sense of suffering, and the 

Jewish pathos was an emphasis on suffering that often 

made a grotesque, really offensive impression on the rest 

of us— a man of finer feelings has always to suppress in 

himself stirrings of disgust and even a natural hatred 

before the behaviour and gestures of a man smitten by 

God. It was very hard to define the feelings, singularly 

mixed of laughter and unexpressed respect, of one of us 

When he hears a Jewish pedlar turned roughly away by 

X 

LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

31s 

a servant on account o£ his obstinate persistency; hear^ 

him, with arms outstretched to heaven, cry out: “The 

villain has scourged and tortured meT' Such strong 

words, coming from our older and more high-flown 

vocabulary, are not at the disposal of every average 

native; whereas the child of the old bond has direct rela- 

tions with that sphere of the pathetic and does not 

scruple to apply its syllables grandiloquently to his own 

lowly fortunes. 

That was ail most engaging; the company were no 

little diverted — for Charlotte’s taste rather too loudly — 

by the wailing pedlar and his picturesque Mediterranean 

gesturing and posturing, imitated, or rather indicated, by 

the speaker m a swift play of mimicry. It 'was inimitable 

— Charlotte herself had to join in the mirth — but she 

was too little attentive to the subject-matter, and too 

many thoughts were criss-crossing in her head, for her to 

go further than a rather laboured smile. She felt an 

impatient contempt for the obsequious note in the laugh- 

ing applause, because it referred to the friend of her 

youth — but just for that reason she felt personally 

flattered by it as wtIL Naturally she could not but be 

touched at seeing from the expression of his mouth that 

the friendliness so freely expended from his rich store 

cost him not a little. Back of the social contribution lay 

his gr-^at life-work, giving his voice such resonance that 

it was easy to understand an immoderately gi'ateful re- 

sponse, if not to sympathise with it. And the strange 

thing was that reverence for his intellectual powers was 

mixed with respect for his social and official position in 

such a way that you could no longer make a distinction 

between them. A great poet %vas, by chance — and yet 

again not by chance — a great gentleman as well; and this 

second quality was considered not as something- different 

from his genius but as its representative expression in the 

world. The cumbersome title of Excellence, that made 

him seem so unapproachable, had originally as little to 

do with his genius as had the star on his chest; they tvere 

both attributes of the minister and court favourite. But 

these distinctions had taken on such added meaning from 

his intellectual stature that, on a yet more profound 

CHAPTER EIGHT 

3^3 

level, they seemed to be one and the same thing. Quite 

possibly, Charlotte thought, they were so in his own 

consciousness too. 

She mused thus, uncertain whether it were worth the 

trouble to linger upon such thoughts. Certainly the 

ready laughter of her fellow guests expressed their 

pleasure in this peculiar combination of the spiritual 

and the secular, their pride in it, their willing subjection 

to it; and in one way she did not find that right and good, 

but rather revolting. Should further observation prove 

that the pride and enthusiasm were really adulation and 

slavishness, then she was clearly justified of her scruples 

and the pain bound up with them. It seemed as though 

it %vas made too easy for people to bow down before the 

spiritual when it took the form of an elegant and spark- 

iing-eyed eldeidy man, who was laden with orders and 

titles, who lived in a house like a museum, with a splendid 

state staircase; whose fine hair grew like that of the 

Jupiter on his pedestal, and who spoke with ambrosial 

lips. The spiritual, she felt, needed to be poor, ugly, and 

bare of earthly honour, in order to test aright the capacity 

of men to honour it. She looked across at Riemer, 

because something he had said found an echo in her and 

still lingered in her ear. *‘In all that there is no 

Christianity.” Well, then, not; then no Christianity. 

She would not judge, she had no desire to assent to any 

of the complaints that chronically injured man had 

mingled in the hymns of praise for his lord and master. 

But she looked at him, and saw that as he vied with the 

others in laughter, a little ridge of caution, opposition, 

dislike, in short of peevishness, stood out between his 

troubled ox-eyes. And then her mild but persistently 

inquiring gaze travelled on two places, past Lottchen to 

August, the erring, overshadowed son, who bore the stain 

on his character of having shirked the service, and who 

meant to marry the little person. She looked at him, not 

for the first time during the dinner. When his father 

told how the clever driver had saved them from upsetting 

on the bad road, she had fixed her eyes upon him, remem- 

bering the odd incident of his telling her what had 

befallen the friend of her youth, and how conscious 

314 LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

greatness had been spilt into the ditch. Her eyes roved 

between August and the famulus, and a sudden distrust 

not only of them but of the whole company came into 

her mind and made her start: it seemed to her for one 

dreadful moment that the loud and general laughter of 

these devotees was meant to cover up and drown out 

something else, something the more uncanny in that it 

was like a personal threat to her very self, while at the 

same time it concealed an invitation to share it and be 

one of them. 

It was, thank God, an anomalous, senseless tempta- 

tion. Love, nothing but love, was voiced in the laughter 

round the table, spoken from the eyes hanging on the 

deliberate yet lively enunciation of her friend. They 

wanted more — and they got it. Luther’s patriarchal 

table-talk went on and on — ^a sonorous, witty discourse, 

enlarging on the subject of the Jews, with a lofty modera- 

tion of itself carrying conviction in the matter of the fine 

it would have levied on the magistracy of Eger. Goethe 

praised the rare and special aptitudes of this extra- 

ordinary stock, its understanding of music and its medical 

learning. Throughout the Middle Ages the Jewish and 

the Arabian physician had enjoyed the confidence of the 

world. Then there was literature: the Jews, like the 

French, had special affinity for it, and even an indiffer- 

ently gifted Jew usually wrote a purer and more precise 

style than the average German, who, by contrast with the 

peoples of the south, lacked respect for language and 

enjoyment and precision in its use. The Jews, indeed, 

were the people of the Book, and from that one deduced 

that their qualities as human beings and their moral con- 

victions should be regarded as secularised forms of the 

religious. But the religiosity of the Jews was characteris- 

tically directed towards the things of this world and 

bound up with them; and it was just this capacity and 

tendency of theirs to give to earthly affairs the dynamism 

of religion that made one conclude that they were called 

to play a significant r61e in the shaping of the future on 

earth. Most remarkable, and hard to fathom in view of 

the considerable contribution they have made to civilisa* 

tion in general, was the ancient antipathy for ever 

CHAPTER EIGHT 

3^5 

smouldering in the other peoples of the world against 

the figure of the Jew, for ever threatening to blaze up 

into active hatred, as was amply instanced in the tale of 

the disorders at Eger. This antipathy, this aversion, only 

heightened by the feeling of respect inseparable from it, 

could be compared with that felt in the case of only one 

other people: the Germans. And the destined role of the 

Germans and their inward as well as outward situation 

among the other peoples showed the most extraordinary 

likeness to that of the Jews. He would not venture to 

enlarge upon the point, that would be foolish; but he 

confessed that sometimes he was conscious of a fear that 

almost took away his breath lest one day the concentrated 

world hatred a^inst that other salt of the earth, the 

German stock, would be released in a historic uprising 

of which that mediaeval night of butchery was but a 

rehearsal in miniature. . . . But it was best they should 

let such apprehensions take care of themselves and be of 

good cheer — and forgive him for making such extrava- 

gant comparisons and parallels among the nations. 

Others might be made, even more striking. In the ducal 

library there was an old globe of the earth, whereon were 

short inscriptions describing the characters of various 

peoples. About Germany it said; “The Germans are a 

people displaying a great likeness to the Chinese.” Was 

that not amusing? — and yet with something apt about it 

too, when one thought of the German pleasure in titles 

and their bred-in-the-bone respect for scholarship. Of 

course such aper^us upon folk-psychology always had 

something arbitrary about them — the comparison fitted 

the French just as well or even better; their cultural self- 

satisfaction and the rigorous ofiBcialism of their examina- 

tion system resembled that of the mandarin caste. They 

were democrats too, like the Chinese, though their demo- 

cratic convictions were not nearly so radical. Confucius' 

countrymen, indeed, had a saying that “the great man is 

a national misfortune,” 

Here came another outburst of laughter, even more 

boisterous than before. That word, from those lips, 

caused a perfect storm of merriment. They threw them- 

selves back in their chairs, they bowed over the table. 

3i6 LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

they struck it with the fiat of their hands — shocked into 

self-abandonment by this nonsensical dogma and possessed 

by the wish to show their host they could appieciaie his 

quoting it and at the same time to convince him what a 

monstrous and blasphemous absurdity they considered it. 

Chaiiotte alone sat on the defensive, stilli) upright, her 

forget-me-not eyes wide with alarm. She felt cold. She 

had actually lost colour, and a painful twitching at the 

corners of her mouth was her only contribution to the 

general merriment. She seemed to see a spectral vision: a 

scene with many roofs, towers with little bells, and in the 

street beneath, a train of people, repulsively sly and 

senile, in pigtails and sugai-loaf hats and coloured 

jackets; they hopped first on one foot and then on the 

other, then lifted a shrunken long-nailed finger and in 

chirping voices pronounced words that were, utterly, 

fatally, and direfuily, the truth. This nightmai'e vision 

w'as accompanied by the same dread as before, running 

cold down her back, lest the too loud laughter round the 

board might be hiding an evil something that threatened 

in a reckless moment to burst forth: somebody might 

spring up, overturn the table, and scream out: “The 

Chinese are right!” 

She was certainly very nervous. But nervousness like 

that is always in the air, and a sort of tension and appre- 

hension, when humanity divides itself into the one and 

the many, and a single individual confronts — in what- 

ever sense or connection — the masses. Charlotte's old 

friend sat in a row with them at the table; but even so 

the situation — uncanny and yet just for that reason 

fascinating — had arisen, chiefly because he led the con- 

versation and the rest were the audience. He looked with 

large dark shining eyes along the table at the storm of 

mirth his words had evoked; and his face, his manner, 

had that same disingenuous naivetd and pretended sur* 

prise as when he entered the salon. The ambrosial lips 

were already moving in preparation for further speech. 

When it was quieter he said: 

“Such a saying is certainly poor evidence for the wisdom 

that reigns on this earth. It betrays an out-and-out anti- 

individualism that is enough to end all talk of similarity 

CHAPTER EIGHT 317 

between the Chinese and the Germans. The individual 

is dear to us Germans— and rightly, for only in him are 

we great. But that being true, far more explicitly than 

With 01 her nations, the relation between the individual 

and the general considering all the scope it gives to the 

former, has its melancholy and dangerous side. Beyond 

a doubt, it was more than chance that the natural tadium 

vita of Frederick the Great’s old age expressed itself in 

the remark: “I am tired of ruling over slaves.” 

Charlotte did not venture to look up. If she had she 

would only have seen thoughtful nods, and here and 

there more expressly approving smiles; but her excited 

fancy pictured malicious glances cast at the speaker from 

under lowered eyelids, and she shrank in horror from 

seeing them. She felt sunk in gloomy abstraction; it kept 

her for some time from following the thread of the talk 

and she could not have said what led to the subject under 

discussion when from time to time she became aware of 

it. She almost failed to hear when her neighbour once 

more turned to iier and addressed her personally. He 

was begging hei to take minimum” — so he expressed 

himself — of the compote he handed her, and half 

absently she did so. Then she heard talk of the theory of 

colour, coming up in connection with certain beakers of 

Karlsbad glass he promised to display after dinner; the 

painting on them showed the most wonderful transforma- 

tion of colour according to the way the light fell upon 

them. He added some adverse, even offensive comment 

on Newton’s theory, jesting about the ray of sunlight 

coining through a hole in the blind and falling on a glass 

prism, and spoke of a sheet of paper preserved by him as 

a memento of his first studies in this field, and his earliest 

notes on it. They were spattered with rain that had fallen 

on them through a leaking tent during the siege of Mainz. 

He cherished piously all such little relics and souvenirs 

of the past and preserved them carefully, too carefully, 

for in the course of a long life far too many such deposits 

accumulated. The words set up a violent throbbing of 

Charlotte’s heart beneath the white frock with the ribbon 

lacking; scarcely could she resist inquiring after other 

such items deposited at some time during his life. But 

3i8 LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

she saw the impossibility — once more she lost the thread 

of his discourse. 

As the plates were changed for the sweet, she found 

herself in the middle of a nari'ative with no idea how it 

had come up: their host was entering with great warmth 

into his tale concerning the strange career of a certain 

Italian singer. On its moral side, he said, it was charm- 

ingly edifying: she had made public her extraordinary 

gifts with the sole desire of assisting her father, a collector 

for the monte di pieta in Rome, who had fallen on evil 

days owing to his weakness of character. The young 

woman^s extraordinary talent had been discovered at an 

amateur concert; she was snapped up on the spot by a 

theatrical manager and aroused such lively enthusiasm 

that on her first appearance in Florence a music-lover 

gave, instead of a single scudo, a hundred zecchini for 

his ticket. She did not fail to give generously to her 

parents from this first gift; and her ascent to fame was 

very swift. She became the brightest star in the musical 

firmament, money flowed into her hands in streams, and 

her first care was to surround with every comfort her old 

parents at home. The narrator invited diem to imagine 

the mingled chagrin and satisfaction of the father when 

his brilliant child made up by her loyalty and energy 

for his own lacks. But the vicissitudes of her career did 

not end here. A rich Viennese banker fell in love with 

her and offered her his hand. She bade farewell to fame 

to be his wife; her ship seemed to have come to haven in 

the safest, most splendid way. But the banker failed, he 

died a beggar; and after several years of luxurious security 

she returned, no longer young, to the stage, to experience 

die greatest triumph of her life. The public hailed her 

reappearance and new achievements with a homage that 

first taught her what she had given up and of what 

deprived humanity when she thought to see in the 

wooing of her Crcesus the crown and conclusion of her 

career. This triumphant return after the episode of a 

brilliant private social interlude was the happiest day of 

her life; it made her for the first time body and soul an 

artist. She lived but a few years after that. 

The narmtor made comments Upon his tale, referring 

CHAPTER EIGHT 319 

to the peculiar lack of seriousness, the indifference and 

unawareness shown by this extraordinary woman towards 

her individual calling. With easy and sovereign gesture 

he seemed to try to animate the company with satisfac- 

tion in this kind of detachment. A strange sort of idealist! 

Obviously, despite her great gift, she had never taken 

very seriously either her own art or art in general. Only 

to lift her fallen parent to his feet had she made up her 

mind to practise the talent till then unsuspected by 

everyone, even herself. And she had used it always in 

the service of filial affection. Her readiness to abandon 

fame and retire to private life at the first and not very 

romantic opportunity, no doubt to the despair of the 

impresarios, was most striking. There was every indica- 

tion that she had not, in her palatial Vienna home, shed 

any tears for her art or found it a hardship to give up the 

footlights, the theatre sights and smells, or the bouquets 

that rewarded her roulades and trills. True, when harsh 

necessity again made demands upon her, she had without 

more ado gone back to public life; and now there was 

forced upon her by the demonstrations of her audiences 

the realisation that her art, never regarded by her with 

great seriousness, but always as more or less a means to 

an end, was her true and genuine calling. And then how 

striking it was that a brief time after her triumphal 

return her life came to an end, she passed away! Obviously 

it had not answered; this late discovery, this definite 

decision that her life was bound up and identical with 

art, her existence as its priestess, had not been suitable 

or possible for her. He, the narrator, had always been 

fascinated by this theme of the relation of the artist to 

his art; it was a tragicomedy wherein the roles of modesty 

and superiority were inextricably mingled. He would very 

much like to have made the acquaintance of the lady. ^ 

His hearers indicated that they would have enjoyed it 

too. Poor Charlotte laid less stress on the idea. Thei'e 

was something painful and disquieting in the story or 

rather in the accompanying comment. She had been 

hoping — for her own ^atifiication but also for the 

speaker's sake as well — that some moral edification would 

be the issue of this instance of filial piety. But he had 

LOTTE IN W E I A R 

320 

given a disappointing turn to the gratifying sentiment, it 

was at best psychoiogicaily “interesting”; it show^ed an 

approbation of this example of the artist’s contempt for 

his art — and that chilled and frightened Charlotte, again 

for his sake as well as for her own. 

The sweet was a raspberry fool, mixed with whipped 

cream, with a delicious bouquet, and ser\ed with sponge 

fingers. Champagne was handed, the servant poured it 

out, after all, from a bottle wrapped in a serviette. 

Goethe had partaken copiously of the earlier wines, but 

he now drank two beakeis of champagne in quick succes- 

sion, as though he were thirsty, holding the emptied glass 

over his shoulder to the servant for the second filling. 

He seemed for a brief moment to be contemplating 

another diverting reminiscence, gazing diagonally up^ 

wards into space with his close-lying eyes. They watched 

him with smiling expectation, Meyer wdth a look of 

speechless affection; then he addressed himself across the 

table to Herr Bergrat Werner and said he had something 

for him: “Oh, I must tell you somethin’!” he expressed 

it. The slip, or whatever it was — sounded very odd after 

the precise and deliberate eloquence their ears had been 

attuned to. He added that most of the resident guests 

would certainly remember the amusing old anecdote, 

but it would be new to the strangers present and it was 

so good that surely everybody would like hearing it 

again. 

He went on, with an expression that revealed his owm 

inward enjoyment of the subject, to talk about an art 

exhibition or thirteen years earlier. It had been got up 

by the Weimar Friends of Art and supported from out- 

side from many other collections. One of the finest things 

had been the copy — an extraordinarily able copy — of 

Leonardo da Vinci's head of Charitas: “the one from 

Cassel, you know, and you know the copyist too, it w’^as 

Herr Riepenhausen, a man with a most pleasing talent, 

who in this case had done an exceptionally sensitive and 

praiseworthy piece of work. The Ixead was in aquarelle, 

giving most faithfully the subdued tones of the original, 

and reproducing the languishing expression of the eyes, 

the gentle pleading bend of the head, and in particular 

CHAPTER EIGHT 321 

the sweet melancholy o£ the mouth, with the greatest 

fidelity. 

1 he exhibition was later than usual in the year, and 

the public interest lu it kept it open longer too. The 

rooms got colder and ioi economy’s sake they were 

heated oni} at tiie hours when they were open to the 

public. Visitors were charged a small entrance fee; for 

Weimarians there was a subscription, allowing them to 

enter outside the regular hours. 

“Now here is the story: the authorities, themselves 

highly diverted, sent for us one day to the place where 

the Charitas was hung, to confirm by the evidence of our 

own eyes the most demure and delightful phenomenon: 

on the mouth of the picture, I mean on the glass at that 

spot, there was an unmistakable imprint, a well-formed 

impression of a pair of pretty lips; in other words, a kiss 

bestowed upon the Io\eiy semblance. 

“You may imagine our amusement, and the crimino- 

logical rest we applied to our secret investigation into 

the identity of the criminal. He was young — one might 

take that foi granted ~«~eveii if the imprint on the glass 

had not proved it. He must have been alone, for else no 

one would venture on such an act. In other words, a 

resident of Weimar, with a subscription permitting him 

to commit his tender folly tvhen the rooms were un- 

heated. He had breathed upon the cold glass and 

imprinted his kiss on his own breath, which then con- 

gealed. Only a few of us were acquainted with the cir- 

cumstance, but it was not hard to find out who had been 

alone in the unheated rooms. Our suspicions, amounting 

to certainty, came to rest on a certain young man — I will 

neither name nor further designate him — and he never 

knew how we found out about his romanlic little venture; 

but we in the knotv had occasion afterwards to observe 

those really very kissable lips when we greeted that 

young man in the street/' 

Such the story, begun with the slip in pronunciation, 

and greeted not only by the Bergrat but by all the rest 

with exclamations. Cliarlotte had got very red. She 

blushed as deeply, up to the roots of her crown of grey 

hair, as her delicate colouring would allow, and the blue 

LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

3S5 

of her eyes looked by contrast pallid and harsh. She sat 

turned away from the narrator towards her neighbour 

Hofkammerrat Kirms, and almost looked as though she 

wanted to fly for refuge to his bosom; but, being highly 

entertained by the story, he did not mark it. The poor 

woman was in terror lest their host might expand further 

upon the physics of this kiss into vacancy. He commented 

iiideed upon his story, but confined himself to aesthetic 

considerations. He spoke of the sparrows that picked at 

the cherries in Apelles’ painting; and of the deceptive 

effect of art, the most singular and precisely therefore 

the most fascinating of all phenomena, upon the reason. 

Not alone in the sense of illusion, for it was by no means 

a deliberate deception; but in a profounder way, through 

art’s relation with the earthly and the heavenly sphere 

at once, because its effect was both spiritual and sensuous, 

or, to speak in platonic language, it was divine and visible 

both, and through the senses worked on the spirit. Hence 

the peculiar inwardness of the yearning aroused by the 

beautiful — expressed, in the present case, by the youthful 

art-lover’s act, through the medium of the laws of heat 

and cold. The joke, of course, lay in the muddle-headed 

inadequacy of the poor youth’s act. You could not help 

being sorry, even while you smiled, for the deluded 

young wretch’s feelings as his lips touched the cold 

smooth glass. Could one conceive a more telling or 

touching allegory than this Of hot-blooded emotion 

embodying itself by chance upon icily unresponsive 

matter? It was a sort of cosmic jest. And so on. 

Coffee was served at table. Goethe took none. He 

drank a glass of southern wine called tinto rosso with the 

dessert, to which he addressed himself at once after the 

fruit; it consisted of all sorts of confections, rings of gum 

tragacanth, sweet lozenges, and raisins. After that he 

gave the signal by rising and the company went back to 

the Juno-room, and into the adjoining side-cabinet, 

called by the familiars of the house the Urbino-room, 

after the Renaissance portrait of the Duke of Urbino 

hanging there. The ensuing hour — actually it was only 

rather more than three quarters— was thoroughly tedious; 

but in a way to leave Charlotte in doubt whether she pre- 

CHAPTER EIGHT 3*3 

ferred it to the excitements and embarrassments of the 

dinner itself. She tvould gladly have dispensed her old 

friend from the diligent provision of amusement he 

thought it right to make. He had in mind mostly the 

guests for the firs' time in his house, namely Charlotte 

and her family, and Bergrat Werner. He was concerned 

to “show them somethin’ worth seein’,’’ as he expressed 

it. With his own hands, with assistance from August and 

the servant, he lifted the great portfolios of plates from 

the shelves, opened their heavy covers before the ladies as 

they sat, to display the layers of curiosities therein — that 

being the word he used to describe the baroque pictures. 

He paused so long at the top one that there was not much 

time for the rest. A Battle of Constantine in large sheets 

gave occasion for long-%vinded explanations; he pointed 

here and there, called attention to the grouping of the 

figures, the correct drawing of human beings and horses, 

and sought to impress on his audience how much talent 

and originality it took to sketch and complete such a 

scene. Tiien the cabinet of coins, brought in drawers 

out of the portrait-room, must needs be examined; it 

was, if the guests had presence of mind to observe, 

astonishingly rich and fuU; containing a complete set of 

papal coins from the fifteenth century up to the present 

time. He emphasised with great justice that such a 

collection afforded a most happy insight into the history 

of art. He seemed to know the names of all the engravers 

and the circumstances under which the various medals 

were struck, with anecdotes about the lives of the people 

they commemorated. 

The glass beakers from Karlsbad were not forgotten. 

Their host had them fetched, and by turning them to and 

fro in the light produced the very charming variations of 

colour they did indeed display, from yellow to blue, and 

red to green. Goethe explained the phenomenon in detail 

by means of a small apparatus devised, if Charlotte under- 

stood him aright, by himself; he had August-fetch it. It 

was a wooden frame with small tinted glass plates to be 

moved to and fro across a black or white ground, thus 

reproducing the phenomena of the beakers. 

At intervals, when he had done his duty and thought 

LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

3^4 

he had provided his guests with enough occupation for 

a while, he walked up and down in the loom with his 

hands behind his back and from time to time diew a long, 

deep breath, expelling it with a little sound not unlike a 

groan. Or he stopped and talked wiiii various unoccu- 

pied groups familiar with his collections, as they stood 

round the'^room and in the passage to the cabinet, llie 

strange sight of him talking thus with Herr Stephan 

Schiitze, the writer, made an abiding impression on 

Charlotte as she bent with her sister o\er the optical 

apparatus, shoving the coloured plates to and fro, quite 

near to where the older and the younger man stood. She 

divided her attention between them and the colour 

efEects. Schiitze had taken oS the glasses he habitually 

wore and held them as it were concealed as he looked 

with his protruding eyes, dulled and half blinded from 

lack of the accustomed support, into die browned and 

muscular features before him. They wore, these features, 

a conflict of expressions. The two were talking about an 

Album of Love and Friendship compiled by Schiitze a 

few years earlier. Goethe had brought up the subject; 

standing there, with his legs apart and chin stuck out, he 

praised it highly and said that the compilation was both 

varied and suggestive and declared that he had regularly 

drawn much entertainment and instruction from it. He 

suggested that Sciiutze's own humorous contributions 

should some time be published in a separate collection. 

The other, blushing and goggling still more, confessed 

that he had played sometimes with the idea Himself and 

only doubted whether such a collection were worth 

while. Goethe, vigorously shaking his head, protested 

against the doubt; basing his view, however, not on the 

tales themselves, but on purely human, so to speak 

statutory, grounds. Things must be, he said, collected 

when the time came, the autumn of life; the harvest must 

be gathered and stored, the grain got under roof; other- 

wise one would not depart in peace, not having lived a 

right or pattern life. The only thing was to find a good 

title. His dose-lying eyes roved about the ceiling— with- 

out much prospect of success, so Charlotte feared, for she 

had the clearest intuition that he was not acquainted 

CHAPTER EIGHT 

325 

with the tales. But now Herr Schutze betrayed how far 

his hesitating thoughts had carried him, for he had a 

name ready at hand; he had thought — ^just in case — to 

call the proposed book Happy Hours, Goethe found that 

capital. He could not have drought of a better title him- 

self. It was most pleasing, and not without dignity and 

elegance. It would appeal to the publisher, attract 

readers; and most important of all, it fitted the contents. 

That was as it should be. A good book has its title born 

with it; and that it was clear and unequivocal was 

precisely the evidence of its soundness and justification. 

“Excuse me/’ said he, as Architect Coudray came towards 

him. But Riemer hurried up, as Schutze put on his 

spectacles again, obviously to hear what Goethe had said. 

Almost at the end of the party the host happened 

to think of showing Charlotte the counterfeits of her 

children, sent to him long ago by that active, worthy 

pair. The Kestner ladies had finished with the coins and 

copperplates and the colour apparatus, and he was lead- 

ing them about the room to display various of his 

curiosities; the statuettes of the gods under glass, an 

ancient lock with a key hanging on the wall by the 

window, a little gilt Napoleon with hat and dagger 

enclosed in the bell-shaped end of the tube of a barometer. 

And then he thought of it: “Now I know,” he cried, 

slipping into more familiar address, “what I must show 

you, children: the old birthday present, the silhouettes 

of yourselves and your splendid progeny! You shall see 

how faithfully I have cherished and honoured it all these 

years! August, be so good, fetch me the por’feuille wdth 

the drawings, the silhouettes, I mean,” he called, drop- 

ping again into Erankfurtese. As they were looking at 

the quaintly incarcerated little Napoleon, August 

brought the fascicle from somewhere and laid it on the 

Streicher piano, beckoning them thither as there was no 

more space on the round table. 

Goethe himself untied the covers and opened the 

volume. Inside w^as a time-yellowed and mildewed con- 

fusion of emblematic souvenirs and relics, silhouettes, 

occasional poems in faded wreaths of flowers, drawings of 

rocks and roofs, river-banks and flocks and shepherds, 

3^6 LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

such as their owner might have sketched in hastily as aids 

to his memory, on journeys in years gone by* The old 

gentleman did not very well remember the contents and 

could not come on what he sought. ‘"Devil take it, where 

is the thing?** said he with mounting vexation, tossing 

the sheets about faster and faster with nervous hands. 

The circle deplored his trouble and kept repeating their 

readiness to give up the idea of seeing the portraits. It 

did not need looking at the actual picture again to have 

it clearly before their eyes. In the end Charlotte herself 

found it among the chaos and drew it out. “I have it, 

Excellence,** she said, “here it is.** He looked at the 

sheet with the profiles stuck on it, rather taken aback 

and even incredulous, and answered with a trace of anger 

in his voice: “It certainly is, it was 'reserved to you to find 

it out. There you are, my good friend, neatly cut, and 

the departed archivist and *your five eldest hopefuls. 

Our lovely Fraulein is not there. Which are the ones I 

know? These? Yes, yes, children grow up/* 

Meyer and Riemer approached. They made a cautious 

signal, each shutting his eyes with drawn brows and 

slightly nodding. They felt, it seemed, that the episode 

brought the sitting to an end, and everyone agreed they 

were right in sparing the master fatigue. And the guests 

chatting in the Urbino-room felt the same. 

“So you will leave me, children, all of you at once?** 

said their host. “Well, no one can blame you for return- 

ing to your own duties and pleasures. Adieu, adieu. Our 

Bergrat must stop awhile with me, yes, my dear Werner, 

you agree? I have something interesting for you back in 

my study, something from abroad, we old augurs must 

have a little after-celebration; fossil fresh-water snails 

from Libnitz in the Elbogen region. “My dear friend/* 

said he to Charlotte, “farewell! I am convinced that 

Weimar and your dear ones will keep you here for some 

weeks longer. Life has held us sundered far too long a 

time for me not to ask of it that we may meet often 

during your sojourn. No, no, thanks! Until then, dearest 

madamel Adieu, ladies! Adieu, gentlemen!** 

August conveyed the Ridels and Kestners back down 

the splendid staircase to the house door, where stood 

CHAPTER EIGHT 327 

their hired coach as well as another two tor the Kirmsand 

Coudray cpuples. It was raining hard now. The guests 

from whom they had taken leave above bowed again as 

they passed. 

“Father was exceptionally animated by your presence,” 

said August. “He seemed entirely to have forgotten his 

bad arm.” 

“He was charming,” responded the Landkammerrat’s 

lady, and her husband gave emphatic assent. Charlotte 

said: 

“If he was in pain, then his spirits and liveliness are 

the more to be admired. I hate to think it, and blush to 

recall that I did not ask him about his trouble. I should 

have offered him some of my opodeldoc. After a separa- 

tion, especially a long one, there are always many 

omissions to regret.” 

“Whatever they are,” replied August, “you will have 

occasion to make them good, even though not at once. 

For I think my father must rest now and not enter into 

more engagements. If he asks leave to absent himself 

from court, he cannot accept other invitations. I make 

the remark by way of precaution.” 

“Heavens, yes, of course!” they said. "That goes 

without saying. Our thanks and greetings once more.” 

Then tlic four sat again in their high caliche and 

rolled away through the narrow streets towards home. 

Lotte the younger, bolt upright on the rear seat, her 

nostrils fluttering in and out, stared into the well of the 

coach past the ear of her mother, whose pomp of ribbons 

was once more shrouded in her black mantle. 

“He is a great and good man,” said Amalie Ridel, and 

her husband confirmed her; “That he is.” 

Charlotte thought or dfeamed: “He is great, and you 

are good. But I am good too, good deep down in my 

heart, and wish to be. For only good men can esteem the 

great. Those Chinamen, hopping and chirping undei 

their pagodas, are both wicked and foolish.” 

Aloud she said to Dr. Ridel; “I feel so guilty, brother, 

that I must confess at once before you ask me. I spoke of 

omissions and knew but too well what I meant. I am 

returning home with disappointment and regret. Foi 

y 

gitS LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

the truth is that neither at table nor afterwards did I 

come to speak of your hopes and wishes to Goethe and 

enlist him for them, as I certainly meant to do. I do not 

know how the omission could have occurred; but in the 

whole of the time there was no place that it fitted in. I 

am to blame — but yet only in a way. Forgive meT’ 

'‘No matter, dear Lotte,’' aswered Ridel. “Do not 

distress yourself. It was not so necessary to speak of it; 

just by your presence, and the fact that we dined with 

His Excellence, you have been helpful enough to us, and 

it will all work out for the best." 

CHAPTER NINE 

Charlotte remained in Weimar until nearly the middle 

of October, lodging all that time with Lottchen, her 

daughter, at the Elephant. Frau Elmenreich, the pro- 

prietress, met her half-way on the price of the lodging, 

partly out of calculation but also because Headwaiter 

Mager put in his word. We do not know too much about 

this sojourn of the famous lady in the equally famous 

city of Weimar. It seems — as befitted her years — to have 

borne the character of dignified retirement, though she 

was by no means inaccessible. Her time was largely 

devoted to her dear family; still, we hear of several small 

and even a few important gatherings graced by her 

presence in those weeks, in various social circles of the 

Residence. One of them, quite properly, was given by 

the Ridels themselves, and others by people in the Land- 

kammerrat’s official circle. Herr Hofrat Meyer and his 

lady, born von Koppenfeld, and Oberbaurat Coudray 

and his, each invited to their home on one occasion the 

friend of Goethe's youth. She was also seen in court 

society, in the house of Count Edling, member of the 

Board of the Weimar Theatre, and his lovely wife, 

Princess Sturdza from Moldavia. At the beginning of 

October they gave a soiree, embellished with music and 

recitations. It was probably on this evening that Char- 

lotte made the acquaintance of Frau von Schiller; the 

latter wrote a letter to a friend with a shrewd and sym- 

pathetic description of her person and manner. This 

other Charlotte speaks of Amalie Ridel as well, by way 

of comment on the ''transitoriness of earthly things": 

she remarks how very mature and settled the once "saucy 

blonde" looked as she sat among the ladies. 

On all these occasions, of course, Charlotte was the 

object of homage. Her friendly and composed dignity in 

329 

330 LOTTE IN WEIMAR 

accepting all such attentions had at length the result that 

she received them no longer as the due of her literary 

renown, but as a tribute to her own person and qualities, 

not least attractive among them being a kind of gentle 

plaintiveness. Any noisy demonstrations she rejected 

mildly but firmly. We are told that an excitable female 

dashed up to her in an evening company, arms out- 

stretched, crying out; “Lotte! Lotte!” Charlotte re- 

treated, and recalled the foolish creature to reason with 

a quiet “Calm yourself, my love!” Thereafter, however, 

she conversed most affably with her about local and 

world affairs. Malice, gossip, and prying curiosity did 

not, of course, wholly spare her; but they were held in 

check by the decency of the better-minded. There leaked 

out and got abroad by degrees, probably through the 

indiscretion of Sister Amalie, a report that the old lady 

had gone to visit Goethe in a garb that made tasteless 

allusion to the Werther romance. But by that time her 

moral ascendancy was so secure that gossip could do 

little to harm her. 

At none of these events did she encounter again her 

friend of Wetzlar days. It was known that he was suffer- 

ing from gout in his arm, and also busy with revision of 

two forthcoming volumes of the Collected Works. We 

have a letter written by Charlotte to her son August, the 

Legation Councillor: it describes the dinner at the 

Frauenplan; one can but say of it that k must have been 

written on the impulse of the moment, with small pains 

to give a fair-minded report — or even with a tendency 

in the other direction. She wrote: 

I have, indeed, said nothing as yet, even to you, 

about my meeting with the great man. Actually I have 

little to say: only this much, that I made a new 

acquaintance, with an old man who, if I had not 

known he was Goethe, and even knowing it, made on 

me no pleasant impression. You know how little I 

promised myself from this renewed, or rather this new 

acquaintance, and so it did not touch me. And in his 

stiff way he did all he could to show me courtesy. He 

remembered you and Theodor with interest. 

Your Mother, Charlotte Kestner, n^e Buff.