Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

“It had to happen someday, Anna. Now, don’t cry. We’re going to be sensible, right? What else can we do? We simply have to get through it.”

  “When?” Anna asked with a sob.

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “O Lord, why then? Why not another week yet? Please, just five days.”

  “That won’t work, dear little Anna. It’s all settled and arranged. They’re waiting for me in Amsterdam. I can’t stay on another day, as much as I would like to.”

  “But it’s so dreadfully far away.…”

  “Amsterdam. Pooh! Not at all. And we can always think about each other, can’t we? And I’ll write. Just watch, I’ll write as soon as I get there.”

  “Do you remember?” she said. “A year and a half ago? At the sharpshooters’ fair?”

  He interrupted her, remembering with delight: “God, a year and a half ago! I thought you were Italian. I bought a carnation from you and put it in my buttonhole. I still have it. I’ll take it with me to Amsterdam. It was so hot and dusty out there on the meadow.”

  “Yes, and you brought me a glass of lemonade from the next booth. It seems like only yesterday. The smell of fritters frying and of all the people and …”

  “But it was so beautiful. From the very first moment, we could see in each other’s eyes that there was something special between us, couldn’t we?”

  “And you wanted to ride the carousel with me—but I couldn’t. I had to sell flowers. The old lady would have given me what-for.”

  “No, you couldn’t, I can see that perfectly now.”

  She said softly, “But that’s the only time I’ve ever refused you anything.”

  He kissed her again on the lips and eyes. “Adieu, my dear, good little Anna. Yes, it’s time we started to say goodbye.”

  “Oh, but you’ll come tomorrow, too, won’t you?”

  “Yes, sure, at about the same time. And the day after, early in the morning, if I can get away somehow. But now I just want to say one thing, Anna. I’m going rather far away—it’s true, Amsterdam is a long way off. And you’ll be staying here. But don’t do anything to demean yourself, Anna, do you hear? Because you haven’t so far, indeed you haven’t.”

  She wept into her apron, holding it up to her face with one hand.

  “And what about you?”

  “God only knows, Anna, how things will turn out. We aren’t young forever. You’re a clever girl—you never said anything about marriage and that sort of thing.”

  “No, heaven forbid that I’d ask anything like that of you.”

  “Time carries us along. And someday, if I live that long, I’ll take over the firm, and make a good match. You see, I’m being quite frank with you, now that we’re saying goodbye. And things will work out for you, too. I wish you every happiness, my dear, good little Anna. But don’t do anything to demean yourself, you hear? Because you have not so far, indeed you haven’t.”

  It was warm in the shop, the damp odor of soil and flowers hung in the air. Outside, the winter sun was about to set. Dusk glowed in the sky beyond the river—delicate, pure, pale, like something painted on fine china. Their chins hidden in the turned-up collars of their overcoats, people hurried past the window, not even noticing the two of them saying their goodbyes in one corner of the little flower shop.

  PART FOUR

  1

  30 April 1846

  Dearest Mama,

  A thousand thanks for your letter telling me about Armgard von Schilling’s engagement to Herr von Maiboom of Pöppenrade. Armgard sent an announcement herself (very elegant, edged in gold) and a letter saying how enchanted she is with her bridegroom. He’s apparently a very handsome and elegant man. How happy she must be! Everyone’s getting married; I got an announcement from Eva Ewers in Munich, too. She’s getting the director of a brewery.

  But now there’s something I must ask you, dear Mama. Why haven’t we heard a thing yet about a visit from the Buddenbrook family? Are you waiting for an official invitation from Grünlich, maybe? If so, it’s hardly necessary, he hasn’t given it a thought, I don’t suppose, and when I do remind him, he says, Yes, yes, child, your father has other things to do. Or do you imagine that you’d be disturbing me, perhaps? No, really, not in the least. Or are you afraid you’d only make me homesick? Good heavens, I’m a sensible woman, with both feet planted firmly in life, I’ve matured.

  I just returned from coffee with Madame Käselau, a neighbor. They’re pleasant people, and our neighbors on the left, the name is Gussmann (but our houses are rather far apart), are sociable, too. And there are regular visits from a couple of good friends who also live out here: Dr. Klaassen (I’ll have to tell you more about him later) and Kesselmeyer the banker, Grünlich’s closest friend. You can’t imagine what a funny old man he is! He has close-trimmed white whiskers and salt-and-pepper hair on top of his head that looks like goose down and flutters in the breeze. He makes funny motions with his head, like a bird, and is something of a chatterbox, I call him “the magpie”; but Grünlich has forbidden me to say that, because magpies are thieves and Herr Kesselmeyer is an honest man. He walks all hunched over and rows with his arms. The goose down reaches only about halfway down the back of his neck, and his nape is bright red and all wrinkly. He has such a merry way about him. Sometimes he pats my cheek and says, What a good little wife, Grünlich can count his blessings that he got you! And then he pulls out his pince-nez (he always carries three of them, on long cords that dangle at his white vest and get all tangled up), sets it on his nose, which he wrinkles up tight, and stares at me pleased as punch, with his mouth wide open, so that I simply have to laugh at him. But he’s not at all offended.

  Grünlich is very busy, leaves for town in our little yellow buggy early every morning and doesn’t get back till late. Sometimes he will sit down with me and read his newspaper.

  When we do go out in society—to see Kesselmeyer, or Consul Goudstikker on the Alster Damm, or Senator Bock on Rathaus Strasse—we have to hire a carriage. I have begged Grünlich often enough to buy us a coupé, because we really do need it out here. He has more or less promised me he would, but strangely enough he doesn’t like to go out in society with me at all, and apparently he doesn’t even like it when I talk with people in town. Can it be he’s jealous?

  Our villa, which I’ve already described in detail to you, dear Mama, is really very pretty, and the new furniture has made it even lovelier. You would find the salon on the mezzanine absolutely flawless: all in brown silk. The adjoining dining room is very prettily wainscoted; the chairs cost twenty-five marks courant apiece. I’m sitting in the pensée room, which serves as our sitting room. And then there’s a smoking and billiard room, as well. The salon on the other side of the hallway on the ground floor has new yellow blinds and looks very elegant. The bedrooms, bathrooms, dressing rooms, and servants’ quarters are all upstairs. We even have a little groom for the yellow buggy. And I’m fairly satisfied with our two maids. I don’t know if they’re entirely honest; but thank God I don’t have to count every penny. In brief, everything as befits our family name.

  And now, Mama, comes the most important thing, which I’ve saved till last. For some time now I’ve been feeling a bit strange, you know, not exactly ill and yet not really well. And so I happened to mention this to Dr. Klaassen. He’s a tiny little man with a big head, with an even bigger floppy hat. He carries a cane walking stick with a round bone handle, and he always presses it up against his long beard, which is almost green, he’s been dying it black so long. Well, you should have seen him! He didn’t say a thing, just set his spectacles to rights, winked one little red eye, nodded his potato of a nose at me, giggled, and looked me up and down so impertinently that I didn’t know what to do. Then he examined me and said that everything was going splendidly, but that I should drink mineral water, because I might be just a bit anemic. Oh, Mama, do tell Papa, but very circumspectly, so that he can enter it in the family history. I’ll write more about it as soon as possible.

/>   My fondest greetings to Papa, Christian, Clara, Thilda, and Ida Jungmann. I recently wrote a letter to Thomas in Amsterdam.

  Your dutiful daughter,

  Antonie

  2 August 1846

  My dear Thomas,

  I was delighted to hear the news that you and Christian were able to meet in Amsterdam, I’m sure you had some very enjoyable days together. I have not yet heard anything about your brother’s further journey to England via Ostende, but I pray God that everything went well. It may not yet be too late, now that Christian has decided to abandon his scientific pursuits, for him to learn something useful from his employer, Mr. Richardson, and I hope his mercantile career may be blessed with success. Mr. Richardson (of Threadneedle Street) is, as you know, a close business friend of our house. I consider myself lucky to have placed both my sons in firms with whom we have cordial ties. You have already experienced the advantages of such a relationship. I take great satisfaction in the fact that Herr van der Kellen has already raised your salary this quarter and wants to make provision for your earning other commissions as well. I am confident that, by dint of your own hard work, you have proved yourself worthy of the accommodating spirit he has shown and that you will continue to do so.

  It grieves me, nevertheless, to hear that your health is not of the best. What you write about the state of your nerves reminds me of my own youth, when I was working in Antwerp and was forced to go to Ems for the waters. If something similar should prove necessary for you, my son, I am, but of course, ready to come to your assistance in both word and deed, although I am avoiding such expenses for the rest of us, given the current state of political unrest.

  Your mother and I did, however, take a trip to Hamburg in the middle of June to visit your sister Tony. Her husband had not invited us to come, but received us very cordially all the same and was so devoted in his attentions during the two days we spent with him that he neglected his own business and hardly left me time to visit the Duchamps in town. Antonie was then in her fifth month; her doctor assures us that everything is taking a normal and highly satisfactory course.

  I would now like to mention a letter from Herr van der Kellen, from which I learned to my delight that you are also received privately as a most welcome guest within the circle of his family. You are now at an age, my son, when you are beginning to harvest the fruits of the upbringing your parents have been pleased to give you. It may serve you in good stead when I say that at your age I took special care, both in Bergen and in Antwerp, to be pleasant and useful to my employers, which always proved to be to my great advantage. Quite apart from the honor and pleasure of a closer association with one’s employer’s family, one acquires an advocate in the person of his wife, if the occasion should ever arise—and though such occasions are to be avoided if at all possible, they may nevertheless occur—that, through some oversight in the office or for some other reason, one’s employer is less satisfied with one’s work than one might wish.

  As to your future business plans, my son, I am greatly pleased by the lively interest they reveal, though I cannot fully concur in them. You proceed on the assumption that there is a natural and enduring market for the products native to our city’s environs, such as grain, rapeseed, hides and furs, wool, oil, linseed cake, bonemeal, etc., and you would particularly like to apply yourself to that trade, apart from our present consignment venture. At one time, when the competition in that trade was still relatively small (though in the meantime it has grown considerably), I also occupied myself with the same idea and, as time and opportunity permitted, made some experiments in that regard. The primary purpose of my trip to England was to investigate possible connections for such an enterprise. I even traveled as far as Scotland, making the acquaintance there of several people who have since proved valuable to the firm, but I soon recognized the precarious state of the export business there, with the result that I gave up any further cultivation of the idea, particularly because I have always kept in mind the admonition of our forefather and founder of our firm: “My son, show zeal for each day’s affairs of business, but only for such that make for a peaceful night’s sleep.”

  I intend to hold that principle sacred to the end of my days, although now and then one may entertain doubts when confronted with people who apparently have better success without such principles. I am thinking of Strunck & Hagenström, who are experiencing notable expansion, while the course of our own affairs remains all too peaceful. As you know, following the losses incurred upon the death of your late grandfather, the firm has not grown, and I pray God that I can pass the business on to you in at least its present condition. I have an experienced and prudent helper in Marcus, our chief clerk. If only your mother’s family knew how to count their pennies a bit better; that inheritance will be of great importance to us!

  I am quite overwhelmed at the moment with business and civic affairs. I have been made an alderman on the Bergen Line board of directors, and have been chosen as a committee member for the Finance Department, the Chamber of Commerce, the Auditing Committee, and the St. Anne Poorhouse, one after another.

  Warmest greetings from your mother, Clara, and Klothilde. Several gentlemen—Senator Möllendorpf, Dr. Oeverdieck, Consul Kistenmaker, Gosch the broker, C. F. Köppen, Herr Marcus from the office, and Captains Kloot and Klötermann—have all asked me to send their greetings. God bless you, my son. Work, pray, and save.

  With affectionate regards,

  Your Father

  8 October 1846

  Dear and honored parents,

  The undersigned finds himself in the agreeable position of reporting to you the happy news of the birth of a daughter, delivered of his beloved wife, Antonie, some thirty minutes ago. It is a girl, by God’s will, and I can find no words to express the joy that presently moves me. Both the child and her dear mother are in excellent health, and Dr. Klaassen indicated that he was quite satisfied with how matters progressed. Even Frau Grossgeorgis, the midwife, says that it was nothing at all. My elation obliges me to lay down my pen. Commending myself to my most worthy parents, I remain with respectful affection,

  B. Grünlich

  If it had been a boy, I had a very pretty name all picked out. I would prefer to call her Meta, but Grünlich is for Erika.

  T.

  2

  WHAT IS WRONG with you, Bethsy?” the consul asked as he sat down at the table, removing the plate that covered his soup. “Are you ill? What’s wrong? You look as if you’re not feeling well.”

  The company seated around the table in the spacious dining room had grown very small. On normal days, besides the consul and his wife, there were only Mamselle Jungmann, ten-year-old Clara, and skinny Klothilde, meekly and silently eating away. The consul looked around the table—nothing but long, worried faces. What had happened? He was nervous and anxious himself, because the awkward situation in Schleswig-Holstein had set the stock market in turmoil. But there was some other turmoil in the air here. Later, when Anton left to fetch the meat course, the consul learned what had happened. Trina—their cook, Trina, who until now had always been a loyal and solid girl—was suddenly showing clear signs of revolt. Much to Elisabeth’s displeasure, Trina had taken up of late with a butcher’s apprentice—in a kind of intellectual alliance, it seemed—and this bloody fellow had to have been the reason her political views had changed so disastrously. Madame Buddenbrook had felt it necessary to reprimand her for a shallot sauce that had turned out badly, whereupon Trina had set her bare arms on her hips and expressed herself as follows: “Just you wait, madame, twon’t be long now and things’re gonna be reg’lated different. Then I’ll be asittin’ up on the sofa in a silk dress, and you’ll be waitin’ on me, ’cause …” It went without saying that she had been let go at once.

  The consul shook his head. He had been witness of late to all sorts of disquieting incidents himself. To be sure, the older grain haulers and warehouse workers were solid enough fellows not to let notions be put in their heads. But a
mong the younger ones a few had shown by their conduct on one occasion or other that this new rebellious spirit had wormed its way into them. Last spring there had been a riot in the streets, although a new constitution commensurate with the demands of the times was already being drafted, and, indeed, despite the objections of Lebrecht Kröger and a few other obstinate old men, it had been adopted as the basic law of the city by decree of the senate. Elections had been held, and a representative assembly had met. But still there was no peace. The world was being turned upside down. Everyone wanted to revise the constitution and amend the qualifications for voting—and the old citizens were wrangling. “Retain restricted voting rights!” one side said, including Consul Johann Buddenbrook himself. “Universal franchise,” said the others, including Hinrich Hagenström. And then there was yet another group who cried, “Universal restricted franchise,” and some of them perhaps even knew what they meant by it. And the air was full of notions such as the abolition of the difference between citizens and inhabitants, or the easing of qualifications for citizenship, even for non-Christians. No wonder, then, that the Buddenbrooks’ Trina had taken a fancy to the sofa and a silk dress. Oh, but worse was to come. Things threatened to take a dreadful turn.

  It was an early October day in 1848; a few light clouds drifted across a blue sky and were turned silvery white by a sun that had lost much of its strength—indeed, the fire was crackling behind the tall, shiny grate of the stove in the landscape room.

  Little Clara, whose hair was a darker blond now and whose eyes were rather stern, was sitting with her embroidery beside the sewing table at the window, and Klothilde had taken a sofa seat next to Elisabeth to do her needlework. Although Klothilde Buddenbrook was not much older than her married cousin—she had just turned twenty-one—there were already pronounced lines in her long face, and her hair, which had never been blond but more a mousy gray, was parted and drawn back tight to complete the picture of an old maid, a state with which she was quite content and which she did nothing to remedy. Perhaps she felt some need to grow old early, to move beyond all the doubts and hopes as quickly as possible. Since she was absolutely penniless, she knew that no one would be found in all the world to marry her, and so she looked humbly toward a future in some little parlor, living on a small pension that her powerful uncle would procure for her from the funds of some charitable foundation for poor women of good family.