Buddenbrooks/Volume 1/Part 4/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
April 30, 1846
My dear Mamma,
A thousand thanks for your letter, in which you tell me of Armgard von Schilling’s betrothal to Herr von Maiboom of Pöppenrade. Armgard herself sent me an invitation (very fine, with a gilt edge), and also a letter in which she expresses herself as enchanted with her bridegroom. He sounds like a very handsome and refined man. How happy she must be! Everybody is getting married. I have had a card from Munich too, from Eva Ewers. I hear she’s getting a director of a brewery.
Now I must ask you something, dearest Mamma: Why do I hear nothing of a visit from the Buddenbrooks? Are you waiting for an official invitation from Grünlich? If so, it isn’t necessary; and besides, when I remind him to ask you, he says, “Yes, yes, child, your Father has something else to do.” Or do you think you would be disturbing me? Oh, dear me, no; quite the contrary! Perhaps you think you would make me homesick again? But don’t you know I am a reasonable woman, already middle-aged and experienced?
I’ve just been to coffee at Madame Käselau’s, a neighbour of mine. They are pleasant people, and our left-hand neighbours, the Gussmanns (but there is a good deal of space between the houses) are sociable people too. We have two friends who are at the house a good deal, both of whom live out here: Doctor Klaasen, of whom I must tell you more later, and Kesselmeyer, the banker, Grünlich’s intimate friend. You don’t know what a funny old man he is. He has a stubbly white beard and thin black and white hair on his head, that looks like down and waves in the breeze. He makes funny motions with his head, like a bird, and talks all the time, so I call him the magpie, but Grünlich has forbidden me to say that, because magpies steal, and Herr Kesselmeyer is an honourable man. He stoops when he walks, and rows along with his arms. His fuzz only reaches half-way down his head in the back, and from there on his neck is all red and seamy. There is something so awfully sprightly about him! Sometimes he pats me on the cheek and says, “You good little wifey! what a blessing for Grünlich that he has got you.” Then he takes out his eye-glasses (he always wears three of them, on long cords, that are forever getting tangled up in his white waistcoat) and sticks them on his nose, which he wrinkles up to make them stop on, and looks at me with his mouth open, until I have to laugh, right in his face. But he takes no offence at that.
Grünlich is very busy; he drives into town in the morning in our little yellow wagon and often does not come back till late. Sometimes he sits down with me and reads the paper. When we go into society—for example, to Kesselmeyer’s, or to Consul Goudstikker on the Alster Dam, or Senator Bock in City Hall Street—we have to take a hired coach. I have begged Grünlich again and again to get a coupé, for it is really a necessity out here. He has half promised, but, strange to say, he does not like to go into society with me and is evidently displeased when I visit people in the town. Do you suppose he is jealous?
Our villa, which I’ve already described to you in detail, dear Mamma, is really very pretty, and is much prettier by reason of the new furnishings. You could not find a flaw in the upstairs sitting-room—all in brown silk. The dining-room next is prettily wainscoted. The chairs cost twenty-five marks apiece. I sit in the “pensée-room,” which we use as a sitting-room. There is also a little room for smoking and playing cards. The salon, which takes up the whole other half of the parterre, has new yellow blinds now and looks very well. Above are the bed, bath, and dressing-rooms and the servants’ quarters. We have a little groom for the yellow wagon. I am fairly well satisfied with the two maid-servants. I am not sure they are quite honest, but thank God I don’t have to look after every kreuzer. In short, everything is really worthy of the family and the firm.
And now, dear Mamma, comes the most important part of my letter, which I have kept till the last. A while ago I was feeling rather queer—not exactly ill and yet not quite well. I told Dr. Klaasen about it when I had the chance. He is a little bit of a man with a big head and a still bigger hat. He carries a cane with a flat round handle made of a piece of bone, and walks with it pressed against his whiskers, which are almost light-green from being dyed so many years. Well, you should have seen him! he did not answer my questions at all, but jerked his eye-glasses, twinkled his little eyes, wrinkled his nose at me—it looks like a potato—snickered, giggled, and stared so impertinently that I did not know what to do. Then he examined me, and said everything was going on well, only I must drink mineral water, because I am perhaps a little anaemic. Oh, Mamma, do tell Papa about it, so he can put it in the family book. I will write you again as soon as possible, you may be sure.
Give my love to Papa, Christian, Clara, Clothilde and Ida Jungmann. I wrote to Thomas just lately.
Your dutiful daughter,
Antonie.
August 2, 1846
My dear Thomas,
I have read with pleasure the news of your meeting with Christian in Amsterdam. It must have been a happy few days for both of you. I have no word as yet of your brother’s further journey to England via Ostende, but I hope that with God’s mercy it has been safely accomplished. It may not be too late, since Christian has decided to give up a professional career, for him to learn much that is valuable from his chief, Mr. Richardson; may he prosper and find blessing in the mercantile line! Mr. Richardson, Threadneedle Street, is, as you know, a close business friend of our house; I consider myself lucky to have placed both my sons with such friendly-disposed firms. You are now experiencing the good result of such a policy; and I feel profound satisfaction that Herr van der Kellen has already raised your salary in the quarter of a year you have been with him, and that he will continue to give you advancement. I am convinced that you have shown and will continue to show yourself, by your industry and good behaviour, worthy of these favours.
I regret to hear that your health is not so good as it should be. What you write me of nervousness reminds me of my own youth, when I was working in Antwerp and had to go to Ems to take a cure. If anything of the sort seems best for you, my son, I am ready to encourage you with advice and assistance, although I am avoiding such expense for the rest of us in these times of political unrest.
However, your Mother and I took a trip to Hamburg in the middle of June to visit your sister Tony. Her husband had not invited us, but he received us with the greatest cordiality and devoted himself to us so entirely during the two days of our visit, that he neglected his business and hardly left me time for a visit to Duchamps in the town. Antonie is in her fifth month, and her physician assures her that everything is going on in a normal and satisfactory way.
I have still to mention a letter from Herr van der Kellen, from which I was pleased to learn that you are a favoured guest in his family circle. You are now, my son, at an age to begin to harvest the fruits of the upbringing your parents gave you. It may be helpful to you if I tell you that at your age, both in Antwerp and Bergen, I formed a habit of making myself useful and agreeable to my principals; and this was of the greatest service to me. Aside from the honour of association with the family of the head of the firm, one acquires an advocate in the person of the principal’s wife; and she may prove invaluable in the undesirable contingency of an oversight at the office or the dissatisfaction of your chief for some slight cause or other.
As regards your business plans for the future, my son, I rejoice in the lively interest they indicate, without being able entirely to agree with them. You start with the idea that the market for our native products—for instance, grain, rapeseed, hides and skins, wool, oil, oil-cake, bones, etc.—is our chief concern; and you think it would be of advantage for you to turn yourself to the commission branch of the business. I once occupied myself with these ideas, at a time when the competition was small (it has since distinctly increased), and I made some experiments in them. My journey to England had for its chief purpose to look out connections there for my undertakings. To this end I went as far as Scotland, and made many valuable acquaintances; but I soon recognized the precarious nature of an export trade hither, and decided to discourage further expansion in that direction. Thus I kept in mind the warning of our forefather, the founder of the firm, which he bequeathed to us, his descendants: “My son, attend with zeal to thy business by day, but do none that hinders thee from thy sleep at night.”
This principle I intend to keep sacred, now as in the past, though one is sometimes forced to entertain a doubt, on contemplating the operations of people who seem to get on better without it. I am thinking of Strunk and Hagenström, who have made such notable progress while our own business seems almost at a stand-still. You know that the house has not enlarged its business since the set-back consequent upon the death of your grandfather; and I pray to God that I shall be able to turn over the business to you in its present state. I have an experienced and cautious adviser in our head clerk Marcus. If only your Mother’s family would hang on to their groschen a little better! The inheritance is a matter of real importance for us.
I am unusually full of business and civic work. I have been made alderman of the Board of the Bergen Line; also city deputy for the Finance Department, the Chamber of Commerce, the Auditing Commission, and the Almshouse of St. Anne, one after the other.
Your Mother, Clara and Clothilde send greetings. Also several gentlemen—Senator Möllendorpf, Doctor Överdieck, Consul Kistenmaker, Gosch the broker, C. F. Köppen, and Herr Marcus in the office, have asked to be remembered. God’s blessing on you, my dear son. Work, pray, and save.
With affectionate regards,
Your Father.
October 8, 1846
Dear and honoured Parents,
The undersigned is overjoyed to be able to advise you of the happy accouchement, half an hour ago, of your daughter, my beloved wife Antonie. It is, by God’s will, a daughter; I can find no words to express my joyful emotion. The health of the dear patient, as well as of the infant, is unexceptionable. Dr. Klaasen is entirely satisfied with the way things have gone; and Frau Grossgeorgis, the midwife, says it was simply nothing at all. Excitement obliges me to lay down my pen. I commend myself to my worthy parents with the most respectful affection.
B. Grunlich.
If it had been a boy, I had a very pretty name. As it is, I wanted to name her Meta, but Grünlich is for Erica.