The Serapion Brethren, Vol. II

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

CHAPTER II.

In which it is related how, by the intervention of a cigar which would not draw, a love-affair was set agoing between a lady and gentleman who had previously knocked their heads together.

The manner in which young Edmund Lehsen, the painter, made acquaintance with the mysterious goldsmith, Leonhard, was somewhat different to that in which Tussmann had done so.

Edmund was one day sketching a beautiful group of trees in a lonely part of the Thiergarten, when Leonhard came up, and, without any ceremony, looked over his shoulder at what he was doing. Edmund did not disturb himself, but went on with his sketch, till the goldsmith cried--

"That is a most extraordinary picture, young gentleman. Those will come to be something else than trees before you have done with them."

"Do you see anything out of the way, sir?" Edmund said, with flashing eyes.

"I mean," said the goldsmith, "that there are all sorts of forms and shapes peeping out from amongst those high leaves there, in ever-changing variety: geniuses, strange animals, maidens, and flowers. Yet the whole thing ought only to amount to that group of trees before us there, through which the rays of the evening sun are streaming so charmingly."

"Sir!" Edmund answered, "either you have a very profound understanding, and a most penetrating eye for matters of this kind, or I have been unusually successful in portraying my inmost feelings. Don't you perceive when, in looking at Nature, you abandon yourself to all your feelings of longing, all kinds of wonderful shapes and forms come looking at you through the trees with beautiful eyes? That was what I was trying to represent to the senses in this sketch, and I see I have succeeded."

"I understand," Leonhard said, rather coldly and dryly. "You wanted to drop study, and give yourself a rest, to refresh and strengthen your fancy."

"Not at all," Edmund answered. "I consider this way of working from Nature is my best and most useful 'study.' Study of this sort enables me to put the really poetic and imaginative element into my landscape. Unless the landscape painter is every bit as much a poet as the portrait painter, he will never be anything but a dauber."

"Heaven help us!" cried the goldsmith. "So you, dear Edmund Lehsen, are going to----"

"You know me, then, sir, do you?" the painter cried.

"Why shouldn't I?" said Leonhard. "I first made your acquaintance on an occasion which you, probably, don't remember much about; that is to say, when you were born. Considering the small experience which you had at that time, you had behaved very well--had given your mamma little trouble--and as soon as you came into the world, gave a very pretty cry of pleasure and delight. Also, you showed a great love for the daylight, which, by my advice, you were not kept away from. Because, according to the most recent medical opinions, daylight is far from having a bad effect on babies, but rather is beneficial to their bodies and their minds. Your papa was so pleased that he hopped about the room on one leg, singing

'The manly heart with love o'erflowing,'

from Mozart's 'Flauto Magico.'

"Presently he handed your little person over to me, and asked me to draw your horoscope, which I did. Afterwards I often came to your father's house, and you didn't disdain to suck at the little bags of almonds and raisins which I used to bring you. Then, when you were about six or eight, I went away on my peregrinations. When I got back to Berlin I saw with satisfaction that your father had sent you here from Münchberg to study the noble art of painting; because there is not a very large collection in Münchberg of works adapted for fundamental study, either in the shape of pictures, statues, bronzes, gems, or other art-treasures of value. That good native town of yours can scarcely vie with Rome, Florence, or Dresden in that respect; or perhaps even with what Berlin will one day become, when bran-new antiques, fished out of the Tiber, have been brought to it in some considerable quantity."

"Heavens!" Edmund cried, "the most vivid remembrances out of my childhood are awaking themselves in my mind. You are Herr Leonhard, are you not?"

"Certainly!" Leonhard answered. "Leonhard is my name. Yet I am a little astonished that you should remember me all this long time."

"I do, though," Edmund answered. "I know that I was always glad when you came to my father's, because you always brought me such delicious things to eat, and petted me. But I always felt a sort of reverential awe for you; in fact, more than that--a kind of oppressive anxiousness, which often lasted after you were gone. But what makes the remembrance of you remain so vividly in my mind is what my father used to say about you. He set great store by your friendship, because you had got him out of a number of troubles in the most wonderful way--out of some of those difficulties which come upon people in this world so often. And he used to speak in the most enthusiastic way about the extent to which you had penetrated into deep and mysterious branches of science; how you controlled many of the secret powers of Nature at your will. Not only that, but (begging your pardon for saying so) he often went so far as to give us to understand that you were really nobody other than Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew."

"Why not the Pied Piper of Hamelin? or the King of the Kobolds?" cried the goldsmith. "All the same, there is some foundation for the idea that there is something a little out of the everyday line about me--something which I don't care to talk about, for fear of giving rise to 'unpleasantness.' I certainly did some good turns to your papa, by means of my secret knowledge, or 'art.' He was particularly pleased with the horoscope which I cast for you at your birth."

"It wasn't so very clear, though," Edmund said. "My father often told me you said I should be a great something--either a great Artist, or a great Ass. At all events, I have to thank this utterance for my father's having given consent to my wish to be a painter; and don't you think your horoscope is going to turn out true?"

"Oh, most certainly," the goldsmith answered, very dryly; "there can be no doubt about that. At this moment you are in the fairest possible way to turn out a very remarkable Ass."

"What!" cried Edmund--"you tell me so to my face!--you----"

"It rests altogether with yourself," the goldsmith said, "to avoid the bad alternative of my horoscope, and turn out a very remarkable Painter. Your drawings and sketches show that you have a rich and lively imagination, much power of expression, and a great deal of cleverness in execution. You may raise a grand edifice on those foundations. Carefully keep away from all 'modish' exaggerations and eccentricities, and apply yourself to serious study. I congratulate you upon your efforts to imitate the grave, earnest simpleness of the old German masters. But, even in that direction, you must carefully shun the precipice which so many fall over. It needs a profound intelligence, and a mind strong enough to resist the enervating influence of the Modern School, to grasp, wholly, the true spirit of the old German masters, and to penetrate completely into the significance of their pictures. Without those qualifications, the true spark will never kindle in an artist's heart, nor the genuine inspiration produce works which, without being imitations, shall be worthy of a better age. Nowadays young fellows think that when they patch together something on a Biblical subject, with figures all skin and bone, faces a yard long, stiff angular draperies, a perspective all askew, they have painted a work in the style of the great old German masters. Dead-minded imitators of that description are like the country lad who holds his bonnet before his face while the Paternoster is being sung in church, and says if he doesn't remember the words, he knows the tune."

The goldsmith said much more that was true and beautiful on the subject of the noble art of painting, and gave Edmund a great many valuable hints and lessons; so that the latter, much impressed, asked how it had been possible for him to acquire so much knowledge on the subject without being a painter himself; and why he went on living in such seclusion, and never brought his influence to bear on artistic effort of all descriptions.

"I have told you already," the goldsmith said, in a gentle and serious tone, "that my ways of looking at life, and at things in general, have been rendered exceptionally acute by a long--aye, a marvellously long--course of experience. As regards my living in seclusion, I know that wherever I should appear, I should produce a rather extraordinary effect, as a result, not only of my nature in general, but more especially of a certain power which I possess; so that my living quietly in Berlin here might not be a very easy matter. I keep thinking of a certain person who, in many respects, might have been an ancestor of mine: so marvellously like me in every respect, in body and mind too, that there are times not a few when I almost believe (perhaps it may be fancy) that I am that person. I mean a Swiss of the name of Leonhard Turnhäuser zum Thurm, who lived at the court of the Elector Johann Georg, about the year 1582. In those days, as you know, every chemist was supposed to be an alchemist, and every astronomer was called an astrologer; so Turnhäuser was very probably both. It is certain, at all events, that he did most wonderful things, and, inter alia, was a very marvellous doctor. Unfortunately, he had a trick of putting his finger in every pie, and getting conspicuously mixed up in all that was going on. This made him envied and hated; just as people who have money and make a display with it, though it may be never so well earned, bring enemies about their throats. Thus it came about that people made the Elector believe that Turnhäuser could make gold, and that, if he did not do so, he had his reasons for so abstaining. Then his enemies came to the Elector and said--'See what a cunning, shameless rascal this is. He boasts of powers which he does not possess, and carries on sorceries and Jewish deceptions, for which he ought to be burned at the stake like Lippolt the Jew.' Turnhäuser had been a goldsmith by trade, and this came out. Then everybody said he had none of the knowledge imputed to him, though he had given the most incontrovertible proofs of it in open day. They even said that he had never, himself, written any of the sage and clever books and important prognostications which he published, but had paid others to do them. In short, envy, hatred, and calumny brought matters so far that he was obliged to leave Berlin in the most secret manner, to escape the fate of the Jew Lippolt; then his enemies said he had gone to the Catholics for protection. But »that is not true. He went to Saxony, and worked at his trade there, though he did not give up the study and practice of his science."

Edmund was wonderfully attracted to this old goldsmith, who inspired in him a reverential trustfulness and confidence. Not only was he a critic of the most instructive quality, though severe; but he told Edmund secrets concerning the preparation of colours and the combining of them known to the old masters, and of the most precious importance when he put them to the test of practice. Thus there was formed, between these two, one of those alliances which come about when there is on the one hand hopeful confidence, in a young disciple, and, on the other, affectionate paternal friendship on the part of a teacher.

About this time it happened, one fine summer evening, that Herr Melchior Bosswinkel, Commissionsrath, who was taking his pleasure in the Thiergarten, could not manage to get a single one of his cigars to draw. He tried one after another, but every one of them was stopped up. He threw them away, one after another, getting more and more vexed and annoyed as he did so; at last he cried out: "Oh, God! and those are supposed to be the very finest brands to be got in Hamburg. Damme! I've spared neither trouble nor money, and here they play the very deuce with every idea of enjoyment--not one of the infernal things will draw. Can a man enjoy the beauties of nature, or take part in any sort of rational conversation, when these damnable things won't burn? Oh, God! it's terrible!"

He had involuntarily addressed these remarks to Edmund Lehsen, who happened to be close beside him with a cigar which was drawing splendidly.

Edmund, who had not the slightest idea who the Commissionsrath was, took out his cigar-case and offered it politely to this desperate person, saying that he could vouch for both the quality and the drawing powers of his cigars, although he had not got them from Hamburg, but out of a shop in Frederick Street.

The Commissionsrath accepted, full of gratitude and pleasure, with a "Much obliged, I'm sure." And as, the moment he touched the end of the cigar which Edmund was smoking with the one just obtained from him, this latter drew delightfully, and sent out the loveliest and most delicious clouds of blue odoriferous smoke, he cried, enraptured:

"Oh, my dear sir! you have really rescued me from the profoundest depths of misery. Do please to accept a thousand thanks. In fact, I would almost venture to ask you to let me have one more of those magnificent cigars of yours, to be going on with when this one is finished."

Edmund said the contents of his cigar-case were quite at the gentleman's disposal; and then they went on their several ways.

Presently, when the twilight had fallen a little, and Edmund, with the idea for a picture in his head, was making his way, rather absently, not paying much attention to those about him, pushing through amongst the chairs and tables so as to get out of the crowd, the Commissionsrath suddenly appeared in front of him, asking him if he would not come and sit down at his table. Just as he was going to decline--because he was longing to get away into the open country--he suddenly caught sight of a young lady, the very incarnation of youth, beauty, and delightsomeness, who was seated at the Commissionsrath's table.

"My daughter, Albertine," the Commissionsrath said to Edmund, who was gazing motionless at the lady, almost forgetting that it was incumbent on him to bow to her. He recognised, at the first glance, in Albertine, the beautiful creature whom he had come across at the last exhibition as she was admiring one of his own pictures. She was describing and pointing out the meaning of this fanciful picture to an old lady and two girls who were with her; explaining the peculiarities of the drawing and the grouping; applauding the painter, and saying that he was quite a young artist, though so full of promise, and that she wished she knew him. Edmund was standing close behind her, drinking in the praise which flowed from her beautiful lips. His heart was so full that he could not bring himself to go forward and say he was the painter. And at this juncture Albertine happened to drop one of her gloves, which she had taken off. Edmund stooped to pick it up, and as Albertine did the same thing at the same instant, their heads banged together with such a crash that it rang through the place.

"Oh, good gracious!" Albertine cried, holding her hands to her head.

Edmund started back in consternation and alarm. At his first step he stamped on the old lady's pug, which yelled aloud; at his second he trampled the gouty toe of a professor, who gave a tremendous shout, and devoted poor Edmund to all the infernal deities. Then the people came hurrying from the neighbouring rooms, and all the lorgnettes were fixed upon Edmund, who made the best of his way out of the place, amid the whimperings of the dog, the curses of the professor, the objurgations of the old lady, and the tittering and laughter of the girls. He made, we say, his escape in those circumstances, blushing over and over with shame and discomfiture, in complete despair, whilst a number of young ladies got out their essence-bottles and rubbed Albertine's forehead, on which a great lump was rapidly rising.

Even then, in the crisis of this ridiculous occurrence, Edmund had fallen deeply in love, though he was scarcely aware of it himself. And it was only a painful sense of his own stupidity that prevented him from going to search for her all over the town. He could not think of her otherwise than with a great red lump on her forehead, and the bitterest reproach, the most distinct expression of anger, in her face and in her whole being.

There was not the faintest trace of this, however, about her as he saw her now. She blushed indeed over and over again when she saw him, and seemed unable to control herself. But when her father asked him his name, &c., she said with a delightful smile, and in gentle accents, "that she must be much mistaken if he were not Mr. Lehsen, the celebrated painter, whose works she so immensely admired."

Those words, we need not say, ran through Edmund's nerves like an electric shock. In his emotion he was about to burst into flowers of rhetoric, but the Commissionsrath would not let him get to that, clasping him to his breast with fervour, and saying, "My dear sir, what about the cigar you promised me?" And whilst he was lighting said cigar at the ashes of the former one, he said, "So you are a painter? and a great one, from what my daughter Albertine tells me--and she knows what she is talking about in such matters, I can assure you. I'm very glad you are. I love pictures, and, as my daughter Albertine says, 'Art' altogether, most tremendously. I simply dote upon it. And I know something about it, too. I'm a first-rate judge of a picture. My daughter Albertine and I know what we're about there. We've got eyes in our heads. Tell me, my dear painter, tell me without hesitation, wasn't it you who painted those pictures which I stop and look at every day as I pass them, because I cannot help standing to admire the colouring of them? Oh, it is beautiful!"

Edmund did not quite understand how the Commissionsrath managed to see any pictures of his daily in passing them, seeing that he had never painted any signboards, that he could remember. But after a good deal of questioning, it turned out that Melchior Bosswinkel meant certain lacquered tea-trays, stove-shades, and things of that sort, which he saw and much admired in a shop-window as he went to business of a morning, after two or three sardines and a glass of Dantziger at the Sala Tarone. These productions constituted his highest ideal of the pictorial art. This disgusted the painter not a little; and he cursed, internally, Bosswinkel and his wretched chatter, which was preventing him from making any approach to the young lady. At last there came up an acquaintance, who engaged him in conversation, and Edmund took advantage of this to go and sit down beside Albertine, who seemed to be very much pleased at his doing so.

Every one who knows Miss Albertine Bosswinkel is aware that, as has been said, she is the very personification of youth, beauty, and delightsomeness; that, like all other Berlin young ladies, she dresses in the best possible taste in the latest fashions, sings in Zelter's choir, has lessons on the piano from Herr Lauska, dances most beautifully, sent a tulip charmingly embroidered and surrounded by violets to the last exhibition, and though by nature of a bright, lively temperament, is quite capable of displaying the proper amount of sentimentality required at tea-parties, at all events. Also, that she copies poetical extracts and sentences which have pleased her in the writings of Goethe, Jean Paul, and other talented men and women, in the loveliest little tiny handwriting into a nice little book with a gilt morocco cover.

Of course it was natural that, sitting beside the young painter, whose heart was beaming with the bliss of a timid affection, she should be several degrees more sentimental than was usual on the tea and reading-aloud occasions; and she lisped in the prettiest manner about such subjects as poetic feeling, depth of idea, childlike simplicity, and so forth.

The evening breeze had begun to sigh, breathing perfume from the flowers and wafting their scents on its wings; and two nightingales were singing a lovely duetto in among the thick darkling leafage, in the tenderest accents of love-complaining.

Albertine began, quoting from Fouqué--

"A rustling, whisper'd singing

Breaks thro' the leaves of spring,

And over heart, and sense, and soul

A web of love doth fling."

And Edmund, grown less timid now that the twilight was falling more deeply, took her hand and laid it on his heart, whilst he went on, continuing the quotation--

"Did I, in whispered music, sing

What my heart hears--aright--

From that sweet lay would burst, in fire,

Love's own Eternal Light."

Albertine withdrew her hand, but only to take off her glove, and then give the hand back to this lucky youngster. He was just going to kiss it fervently, when the Commissionsrath broke in with a

"Oh! I say! How chilly it's getting! I wish I had brought my great coat! Put on your shawl, Tiny! It's a fine Turkish shawl, my dear painter--cost fifty ducats. Wrap yourself up in it, Tiny; we must be getting home. Good-bye, my dear sir."

Edmund was here inspired by a happy thought. He took out his cigar case and offered the Commissionsrath a third Havannah.

"I really am excessively obliged to you," the Commissionsrath said, delighted; "you really are most kind. The police don't let one smoke walking about in the Thiergarten, for fear of the grass getting burnt; one enjoys a pipe or a cigar more for that very reason."

Bosswinkel went up to the lamp to light the cigar, and Edmund took advantage of his doing so to whisper to Albertine, very shyly, that he hoped she would let him walk home with her. She put her arm in his, they went on together, and Bosswinkel, when he joined them, seemed to consider it a matter of course that Edmund was going to walk with them all the way to town.

Anybody who has once been young, and in love--or who is both now at this present time (there are many who have never been either the one or the other)--will understand how Edmund, at Albertine's side, thought he was hovering over the tops of the trees, rather than walking through amongst them; up among the gleaming clouds, rather than down upon the earth.

Rosalind, in Shakespeare's 'As You Like It,' says that the "marks" of a man in love are "a lean cheek, a blear eye and sunken, an unquestionable spirit, a beard neglected, hose ungartered, bonnet unhanded, sleeve unbuttoned, shoe untied, and everything demonstrating a careless desolation." But those marks were as little seen in Edmund as in Orlando. Like the latter, however, who marred all the trees of the forest with carving his mistress's name on them, hung odes on the whitethorns, and elegies on the bramble-bushes, Edmund spoilt quantities of paper, parchment, canvas and colours, in besinging his beloved in verses which were wretched enough, and in drawing her, and painting her, without ever succeeding in making her in the least like--so far did his fancy soar above his capability. When to this was added the peculiar, unmistakable somnambulistic look of the love-sick, and a fitting amount of sighing at all times and seasons, it was not to be wondered at that the old goldsmith saw into his young friend's condition.

"H'm," he said; "you don't seem to think what an undesirable thing it is to fall in love with a girl who is engaged. For Albertine Bosswinkel is as good as engaged already to Tussmann, the Clerk of the Privy Chancery."

This terrible piece of news sent Edmund into the wildest despair. Leonhard waited patiently till the first paroxysm was past, and then asked if he really wanted to marry Albertine. Edmund declared that was the dearest wish of his heart, and implored the goldsmith to help him as much as ever he could to beat Tussmann out of the field, and win the lovely lady himself.

What the goldsmith thought and said was that a young artist might fall in love as much as ever he liked, but to marry straight away was a very different affair; and that was just why young Sternbald never cared to marry, and, for all he knew, was still unmarried up to that hour.

This thrust took effect, because Tieck's 'Sternbald' was Edmund's favourite book, and he would have been only too glad to have been the hero of that tale himself. So he then and there put on a very pitiful face, and was very near bursting into tears.

"Well," said the goldsmith, "whatever happens, I am going to take Tussmann off your hands. What you have got to do is to get into Bosswinkel's house, by hook or by crook, as often as you can, and attract Albertine to you as much as you can manage to do. As for my operations against the Clerk of the Privy Chancery, they can't be begun till the night of the Autumnal Equinox."