I have already remarked that such excursions to Berlin occurred frequently in those days, but still more frequent were journeys into the provinces, because it was inc.u.mbent upon my father to look about for a new apothecary"s shop to buy. If he had had his way about it he doubtless would never have changed this state of affairs and would have declared the interim permanent. For, whereas his pa.s.sion for gaming was in reality forced upon him by his need to kill time, he had by nature a genuine pa.s.sion for his horse and carriage, and to drive around in the world the whole of life in search of an apothecary"s shop, without being able to find one, would have been, I presume, just the ideal occupation for him. But he saw that it was out of the question; a few years of travel would have consumed his means. So he only took great care to guard against too hasty purchases, and that answered the same purpose. The more critically he proceeded the longer he could continue his journeys and provide new quarters every evening for his beloved white horse, which, by the way, was a charming animal.
I say "his white horse," for he was more concerned about good quarters for the horse than for himself. And so, for three-fourths of a year, till Christmas, 1826, he was on the road a great deal, not to say most, of the time, covering, to be sure, quite an extensive territory, which, beside the Province of Brandenburg, included Saxony, Thuringia, and finally Pomerania.
In later life this period of travel was a favorite topic of conversation with my father, and likewise with my mother, who ordinarily a.s.sumed a rather indifferent att.i.tude toward the favorite themes of my father. That she made an exception in this case was due in part to the fact that during his journeyings my father had written to his young wife many "love letters," which as letters it was my mother"s chief delight to ridicule, so long as she lived. "For I would have you know, children," she was wont to say, "I still have your father"s love letters; one always keeps such charming things. One of these I even know by heart, at least the beginning. The letter came from Eisleben, and in it your father wrote to me: "I arrived here this afternoon and have found very good quarters. Also for the horse, whose neck and shoulders are somewhat galled. However, I will not write you today about that, but about the fact that this is the place where Martin Luther was born on the 10th of November, 1483, nine years before the discovery of America." There you have your father as a lover. You see, he would have been qualified to publish a _Letter Writer_."
All this was said by my mother not only with considerable seriousness, but also, unfortunately, with bitterness. It always grieved her that my father, much as he loved her, had never shown the slightest familiarity with the ways of tenderness.
The travels, which were kept up for nine months, were finally directed eastward toward the mouth of the Oder. Shortly before Christmas my father set out by stage coach, to save his horse from the hardships of winter travel, and when he arrived in Swinemunde the thermometer stood at 15 below zero, Fahrenheit. The cognac in his bottle was frozen to a lump of ice. He was so much the more warmly received by the widow Geisler, who, inasmuch as her husband had died the previous year, desired to sell her apothecary"s shop as quickly as possible. And the sale was made. In the letter announcing the conclusion of the transaction was this pa.s.sage: "We now have a new home in the province of Pomerania, Pomerania, of which false notions are frequently held; for it is really a splendid province and much richer than the Mark.
And where the people are rich is the best place to live. Swinemunde itself is, to be sure, unpaved, but sand is better than bad pavement, where the horses are always having something the matter with their insteps. Unfortunately the transfer is not to be made for six months, which I regret. But I must be doing something again, must have an occupation once more."
Three days after the arrival of this letter he was home again himself.
We were dragged out of bed, heavy with sleep, and called upon to rejoice that we were to go to Swinemunde.
To me the word represented but a strange sound....
When we arrived in Swinemunde, in the summer of 1827, it seemed an ugly hole, and yet, on the other hand, a place of very rare charm, for, in spite of the dullness of the majority of its streets, it had that peculiar liveliness that commerce and navigation produce. It depended altogether upon what part of the city one chose as a point of observation, whether one"s judgment was one thing or its opposite, favorable or unfavorable. If one chose the Church Square, surrounded by houses, among which was our apothecary"s shop, one could find little of good to say, although the chief street ran past there. But if one forsook the inner city and went down to the "River," as the Swine was regularly called, his. .h.i.therto unfavorable opinion was converted into its opposite. Here ran along the river, for nearly a mile, the "Bulwark," as poetic a riverside street as one could imagine. The very fact that here everything was kept to medium proportions, and there was nowhere anything to recall the grandeur of the really great commercial centres, these very medium dimensions gave everything an exceedingly attractive appearance, to which only a hypochondriac, or a person wholly unappreciative of the charms of form and color, could fail to respond. To be sure, this "Bulwark" street was not everywhere the same, indeed some parts of it left much to be desired, especially those up the river; but from the cross street which began at the corner of our house and led off at right angles one could find refreshment of spirit in the pictures that presented themselves, step by step, as one followed the course of the river.
Here ran out from the sloping bank into the river a number of board rafts, some smaller, some larger, floating benches upon which, from early morning on, one saw maids at work washing clothes, always in cheerful conversation with one another, or with the sailors who leaned lazily over the street wall watching them. These rafts, which with the figures upon them produced a most picturesque effect, were called "clappers," and were used, especially by strangers and summer guests, for orientation and description of location. E.g. "He lives down by Klempin"s clapper," or "opposite Jahnke"s clapper." Between the rafts or wash benches were regular s.p.a.ces devoted to piers, and here the majority of the ships were moored, in the winter often three or four rows. The crews were on sh.o.r.e at this time, and the only evidence that the vessels were not wholly unguarded was a column of smoke rising from the kitchen stovepipes, or, more often, a spitz-dog sitting on a mound of sailcloth, if not on the top of his kennel, and barking at the pa.s.sersby. Then in the spring, when the Swine was again free from ice, everything began at once, as though by magic, to show signs of life, and the activity along the river indicated that the time for sailing was again near. Then the ships" hulls were laid on their sides, the better to examine them for possible injuries, and if any were found, one could see the following day, at corresponding places along the wharf, little fires made of chips of wood and raveled-out bits of old hawsers, and over them tar was simmering in three-legged iron pots. Beside these lay whole piles of oak.u.m. And now the process of calking began. Then, as noon approached, another pot, filled with potatoes and bacon, was shoved into the fire, and many, many a time, as I pa.s.sed by here on my way, at this hour, I eagerly inhaled the appetizing vapors, not in the least disturbed by the admixture of pitch. Even in my old age I am still fond of regaling myself, or at least my nerves, with the bitumen smoke that floats through our Berlin streets, when they are being newly asphalted.
In the spring and summer time activity was also resumed by the English steam dredger, which lay in the middle of the river, and upon which it was inc.u.mbent to clear the channel. The quant.i.ties of earth and slime drawn up from the bottom were emptied at a shallow place in the river and piled up so as to cause a little artificial island to come into existence. A few years later this island was covered with a rank growth of reeds and sedges, and in all probability it now supports houses and establishments of the marine station, as evidence to all those who saw the first third of the century, that times have changed and we have been growing as a world power.
For half an hour at a time, when possible, I watched the work of the English dredger, whose engineer, an old Scotchman by the name of Macdonald, was a special friend of mine. Who could have told then that, a generation later, I should make a tour of his Scottish clan and, under the guidance of a Maedonald, should visit the spot on the island of Icolmkill, where, according to an old fiction, King Macbeth lies buried.
I watched also, with as much interest as the dredging, the mooring of ships, when they came home from long voyages, some of them, such as the Queen Luise, a marine trading vessel, from their voyages around the world, which signified something in those days. My main vessel, however, was the Mentor, which was said to have won the victory in a fight with Chinese pirates. The pirates carried a long-barreled bronze cannon which shot better than the rough cast-iron cannons of which the Mentor had a few on board. Besides, the pirate boat was much swifter, so that our Swinemunde trader soon found itself in a bad position. But the captain was equal to the emergency. He had all his heavy cannons moved to one side of the ship, then purposely moderated his speed, in order to make it easier for his pursuers to catch up with him. And now their boat was really alongside, and the pirates were already preparing to climb over the side of the ship, when the captain of the Mentor gave the preconcerted signal and the cannons rolled with all force and swiftness from the one side of the ship to the other and the weight of the heavy guns, carrying the thin wall before them, crushed to pieces the boat lying below, already certain of victory, so that every soul on board was lost.
Such stories were always in the air and were a.s.sociated, not only with the ships lying along the "Bulwark," but occasionally also with the houses on the opposite side. Further down the river both the houses and the stories lost their charm, until, at the very end of the city, one came to a large building standing back from the street, which again aroused interest. This was the recently erected "Society House,"
the meeting place not only for the summer bathers, but also, during the season, for the leading people of the city, of whom no one, perhaps, was more often seen there than my father. To be sure, his frequent visits were really not made on account of the "Society House"
itself, least of all on account of the concerts and theatrical performances given in it, to say nothing of the occasional b.a.l.l.s,--no, what attracted him and took him out there now and then even or his morning gla.s.s, was a pavilion standing close by the "Society House,"
in which a major with a historical name and most affable manners, dressed in a faultless blue frock coat with gold b.u.t.tons, kept the bank. This was only too often the resort of my father, who, when he had lost a considerable sum and had correspondingly enriched the pot of the bank keeper, instead of being out of sorts over it, simply drew the inference that the keeping of the bank was a business that produced sure gain, and the old major with the high white neckcloth and the diamond pin was an extremely enviable man and, above all, one very worthy of emulation. In such a career one got something out of life. My father expressed such opinions, too, when he came home and sat down late to dinner. This he did once in the presence of a recently married sister of my mother, who was visiting in our home during the bathing season.
"But you are not going to-do that," she replied to his remarks.
"Why not?"
"Because there is no honor in it."
"Hm, honor," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and began to drum upon the table with his fingers; but, not having the courage to argue the question, he merely turned his face away and left the table.
The city was very ugly and very handsome, and an equal contrast was, to be observed in its inhabitants, at least with respect to their moral qualities. Here, as in all seaports, there was a broad stratum of human beings day in and day out under the influence of rum and arrack, and they composed the main body of the population; but there was also, as is quite general in seaports, a society of a materially higher type spiritually, which overshadowed by far what one usually met with in those days in the small cities of the inland provinces, especially the Mark of Brandenburg, where the narrowest philistinism held sway. That these inhabitants were so thoroughly free from narrow-mindedness was without doubt due to a variety of causes, but chiefly, perhaps, to the fact that the whole population was of a p.r.o.nounced international character. In the villages of the environs there still lived presumably a certain number of the descendants of the Wendic Pomeranian: aborigines of the days of Julin and Vineta. In Swinemunde itself, especially in the upper stratum of society, there was such a confusion of races that one came in contact with representatives from all the nations of Northern Europe, Swedes, Danes, Dutchmen, and Scotchmen, who had settled here at one time or another, most of them, no doubt, at the beginning of the century, the period when the hitherto unimportant city first began to grow and prosper.
The number of inhabitants, at the time of our arrival, was about four thousand, of whom hardly a tenth were citizens of the city, and a still very much smaller fraction entered into consideration socially.
What could be called, with more or less justice, the society of the city was composed of not more than twenty families. These twenty families, together with a few of the n.o.bility, who came in from the country to spend the winter, formed a private club, with headquarters in the Olthoff Hall, and the club"s membership was further enlarged, as was the society of the city in general, by the dependents, or retinue, of a few of the richest and most respected houses. These proteges, half of them poor relatives, half bankrupt merchants, were not always invited, but were, on all important convivial occasions, designed to produce a deep impression, and their function then was to submit to what the Englishmen call practical jokes, during the second half of the banquet, the first half being, as a usual thing, conspicuous for the remarkably proper conduct of the company. When the time arrived for this part of the program all bonds of pious awe were loosed and they proceeded with most daring experiments, which my pen hesitates to record. On one occasion one of these unfortunates--unfortunate because poor and dependent--had to suffer a jaw tooth to be pulled out with the first pair of tongs that could be found; but it must not be inferred that those who undertook the operation were necessarily rough men. It was only a case where the socially arrogant, who made themselves so generally conspicuous in those days, especially under the stimulation of wine, did not hesitate to take such liberties. In rich aristocratic houses in the country they occasionally went to even greater extremes....
How did we live at our house? On the whole, well, far beyond our station and our means. So far as the culinary department was concerned, there were, to be sure, occasional strange periods; for example, in the summer time, when, on account of the superabundant yield of milk, the star of milk soup reigned supreme. Then everybody struck, feigning lack of appet.i.te.
But these were only exceptional conditions, of short duration.
Ordinarily we were well and very sensibly fed, a thing which we owed less to our mother than to our housekeeper, a Miss Schroder. Before going any further I must tell about her. When we reached Swinemunde my mother was still in Berlin taking treatment for her nerves, so that my father was immediately confronted with the question, who should manage the household in the interim. There were no local newspapers, so he had to inquire around orally. After a few days a letter was brought by messenger from the head forester"s lodge at Pudagla, inquiring whether the head forester"s sister might offer us her services. She had learned housekeeping in her brother"s home. My father answered immediately in the affirmative and for two days rejoiced in the thought of being able to take into his home as housekeeper a sister of a head forester, and from Pudagla, to boot. That afforded relief; he felt honored. On the third day the Schroder girl drove up to our house and was received by my father. He declared later that he had kept his countenance, but I am not quite sure of it, in spite of the possibility that his good heart and his politeness may have made the victory over himself easier. The good Schroder girl, be it said, was a pendant to the "princess with the death"s head," who came to notice in Berlin at about this time. What had caused the misfortune of the latter (who was restored to her original appearance by Dieffenbach, by a plastic surgical treatment, since become famous), I do not know. In the case of the Schroder girl, however, it was the smallpox. Now what is smallpox? Everybody has seen persons who have been afflicted with smallpox, and has considered the expression, "the devil has threshed peas on his or her face," more or less apt. At least the expression has become proverbial. In this case, however, the proverbial phrase, if applied, would have been mere glossing over, for the Schroder girl had, not pits the size of peas, but scars half as broad as your hand, a spectacle, the like of which I have never again encountered. Yet, as already said, a contract was entered into, and a happier one was never closed. The Schroder girl was a treasure, and when my mother came home six weeks later she said: "You did well to take her, Louis; disfigured as she is, her eyes have been spared, and they tell one that she is faithful and reliable. And she is safe from love affairs, and we with her. With her we shall have only pleasant experiences."
And so it proved. So long as we remained in Swinemunde the Schroder girl remained in our house, loved and respected by old and young, not least of all by my father, who gave her particular credit for her sense of justice and her candor, in spite of the fact that he occasionally had to suffer severely because of these two qualities.
She was always waging war against him. In the first place, out of love for my mother, for whom she came to be an eloquent advocate, in spite of the fact that my mother was thoroughly able to defend herself, in accordance with her maxim, "The best defense is a blow." In the second place, she was the mistress of the pantry, which was intrusted to her with most plenary powers, and my father was always undertaking pillaging expeditions against it, not only to satisfy his own personal wants, which she might have tolerated, even though he was capable of consuming half a veal roast for his breakfast, without thinking anything about it; but she objected strenuously to his raids for the benefit of his pet chickens, dogs, and cats. We had two cats, Peter and Petrine. Peter, also called Peter the Great, who might have been mistaken for a young jaguar, was his special pet, and when this beautiful animal followed him, purring, into the pantry, and he always followed, there was no end to the dainty morsels given him. The best was none too good. This wanton waste made the Schroder girl, faithful soul that she was, fly into a rage, for she often saw her plans for dinner completely upset.
In the house she was indeed a treasure, but for us children, especially me, she was even more than that, she was a real blessing.
The training we received from our parents advanced by fits and starts; sometimes there was training and again there was none, and never any thought of continuity. But the Schroder girl supplied the continuity.
She had no favorites, never allowed herself to be outwitted, and knew just how to handle each one of us. As for me, she knew that I was good-natured, but sensitive, proud, and under the control of a certain degree of megalomania. These bad inclinations she wished to hold in check, and so said to me times without number: "Yes, you think you are a marvelous fellow, but you are only a childish boy, just like the rest of them, only at times a bit worse. You always want to play the young gentleman, but young gentlemen don"t lick honey from their plates, or at least don"t deny it if they have done so, in fact they never tell lies. Not long ago I heard you prating about honor, but I want to tell you, _that_ doesn"t look to me like honor." She insisted upon truthfulness, treated boasting with fine ridicule, and was chary of compliments. But when she did praise it was effective. She did me many a good turn, and not until late in life, when I was past fifty, did I meet another woman, this time an elderly lady, who exerted such an educational influence upon me. Even now I am still taking lessons and learn from people who are young enough to be my grandchildren.
Thus much about the good Schroder girl, and after this digression in memory of her I ask once more: "Well, how did we live?" I propose to show how we lived, by means of a series of pictures, and in order to introduce order and clarity into the description it will be well to divide our life as we lived it into two halves, a summer life and a winter life.
First, then, there was the summer life. About the middle of June we regularly had the house full of visitors; for my mother, in accordance with the old custom, still kept in touch with her relatives, a trait which we children only very imperfectly inherited from her. But let it be understood, she kept in touch with her relatives, not to derive advantages from them, but to bestow advantages. She was incredibly generous, and there were times when we, after we had grown up, asked ourselves the question, which pa.s.sion really threatened us most, the gaming pa.s.sion of our father, or the giving and presenting pa.s.sion of our mother. But we finally discovered the answer to the question. What our father did was simply money thrown away, whereas the excessive amounts given away by our mother were always unselfishly given and carried with them a quiet blessing. No doubt a certain desire to be, so far as possible, a _grande dame_, if only in a very small degree, had something to do with it, but then all our doings show some elements of human weakness. Later in life, when we talked with her about these things, she said: "Certainly, I might have refrained from doing many things. We spent far more than our income. But I said to myself: "What there is will be spent anyhow, and so it is better for it to go my way than the other.""
These summer months, from the middle of June on, were often made especially charming by the numbers of visitors in our home, mostly young women relatives from Berlin, who were both cheerful and talkative. The household was then completely changed, for weeks at a time, and, the hatchet being temporarily buried, merriment and playing of sly tricks, with occasional boisterous pranks, became the order of the day. The most brilliant performer in the fun-making compet.i.tions that frequently arose was always my father himself. He was, as handsome men often are, the absolute opposite of Don Juan, and proud of his virtue. But by as much as he was unlike Don Juan, he was charming as a Gascon, when it came to a spirited discussion of pert and often most daring themes, with young ladies, of whom he made but one requirement, that they be handsome, otherwise it was not worth his while. I inherited from him this inclination to enter into subtle discussions with ladies, in a jesting tone; indeed I have ever carried this inclination over into my style of writing, and when I read corresponding scenes in my novels and short stories it once in awhile seems to me as though I heard my father speaking. Except with this difference, that I fall far short of his felicitousness, as people who had known him in his prime often told me, when he was over severity and I was correspondingly along in years. I have frequently been addressed in some such way as this: "Now see here, you do very well, when you have your good days, but you can"t compete with your father."
And that was certainly true. His small talk, born of bonhomie and at the same time enlivened with fantastic lawyerly artifice, was simply irresistible, even when dealing with business matters, in which as a rule heartiness has no place. And yet his remarks on money matters had a lasting effect, so that none of us children ever cherished the slightest feeling of bitterness on account of his most remarkable financial operations. My mother, however, was of too different a nature to be easily converted or carried away by his social graces.
These matters were to her most repugnant when treated lightly and jestingly. "Whatever is serious is not funny, that"s all." But she never disputed the fact that, as a happy humorist, he always succeeded in drawing people over to his side, though she never failed to add: "unfortunately."
And now let us return to the summer visitors in our home. At times it was rather difficult to furnish continual rounds of entertainment for the young women, and would perhaps have proved impossible, if it had not been for the horses. Almost every afternoon, when the weather was good, the carriage drove up to our door, and such days during the bathing season, when we were often almost completely overwhelmed with visitors, were probably the only times when my mother, without in the least sacrificing her fundamental convictions, was temporarily reconciled to the existence of horse and carriage. Whoever knows Swinemunde, and there are many who do know the place, is aware of the fact that one is never embarra.s.sed there for a beautiful spot to visit on afternoon drives, and even in those days this was as true as it is today. There was the trip along the beach to Heringsdorf, or, on the other side, out to the moles; but the most popular drives, because they afforded protection from the sun, were those back into the country, either through the dense beech forest toward Corswant, or better still to the village of Camminke, situated near the Haff of Stettin and the Golm (mountain). There was a much frequented skittle-alley there, where women played as well as men. I myself liked to stand by the splintery lath trough, in which the skittle-boy rolled back the b.a.l.l.s. My only reason for choosing this position was because I had heard a short time before that one of the players at this very alley, in catching a ball as it rolled to him, had run a long lath splinter under the nail of his index finger. That had made such an impression on me that I always stood there shuddering for fear of a repet.i.tion of the accident, which fortunately did not occur. When I finally grew tired of waiting I stepped through a lattice gate, always hanging aslant and always creaky, into a garden plot running along close by the skittle-alley and parallel with it. It was a genuine peasant"s garden, with touch-me-nots and mignonette in bloom, and in one place the mallows grew so tall that they formed a lane. Then when the sun went down behind the forest the Golm, which lay to the west, was bathed in red light, and the metal ball on its tall pillar looked down, like a sphere of gold, upon the village and the skittle-garden.
Myriads of mosquitoes hung in the air, and the b.u.mble bees flew back and forth between the box-edged beds.
Our visitors usually left at the beginning of August, and when September came the last of the hotel guests departed from the city.
If anybody chose to remain longer it was inconvenient for the landlords, in which connection the following scene occurred. A man, a Berliner of course, on returning to his hotel, after accompanying some departing friends to their steamer, sat down leisurely by his host and hostess, rubbed his hands together, and said: "Well, Hoppensack, at last the Berliners are all gone, or at least nearly all of them; now we shall have a good time, now it will be cozy." He expected, of course, that the host and hostess would agree with him most heartily.
But instead of that he found himself looking into long faces. Finally he screwed up his courage and asked why they were so indifferent.
"Why, good heavens, Mr. Schunemann," said Hoppensack, "a recorder and his wife came to us the last of May and now it is almost the middle of September. We want to be alone again, you see." As Mrs. Hoppensack nodded approvingly, there was nothing left for Schunemann to do but to depart himself the next day.
Not long after the last summer guests had gone the equinoctial storms set in, and, if it was a bad year, they lasted on into November. First the chestnuts fell, then the tiles rattled down from the roof, and from the eaves-troughs, always placed with their outlets close by bedroom windows, the rain splashed noisily down into the yard. In the course of time, scattered clouds sailed across the clearing sky and the air turned cold. Everybody felt the chilliness, and all day long there was an old woodchopper at work in the shed. My father would often go down to see him, take the ax and split wood for him a half-hour at a time.
Social activities were at a standstill during these late autumn days.
People were recovering from the strain of the summer season and storing up strength for winter entertainments. Before these began there was an interregnum of several weeks, the slaughtering and baking times, the latter coinciding with the Christmas period. First came the slaughtering of geese. A regular household without a goose-killing time could hardly have been thought of. Many things had to be taken into account. First of all, perhaps, were the feathers to make new beds, which were always needed for guest chambers; but the chief concern were the smoked goose-b.r.e.a.s.t.s, almost as important articles as the hams and sides of bacon hanging in the chimney. Shortly before St.
Martin"s day, if enough geese had been collected to supply the needs, they were penned up for fattening, in the court, which gave rise to a horrible cackling, well calculated to rob us of our night"s rest for a whole week. But a day was straightway set for the beginning of the feast, about the middle of November. In the court, in a lean-to built near the end of the house, and, strange to say, with a dove-cote over it, was the servants" room, in which, beside the cook, two house-maids slept, provided always they did any sleeping. The coachman was supposed, according to a rule of the house, to occupy the straw-loft, but was happy to forego the independence of these quarters, which went with his position, preferring by his presence to crowd still worse the already crowded s.p.a.ce of the servants" room, in full accord with Schiller"s lines,
"Room is in the smallest hovel For a happy, loving pair."
But when goose-killing time came it meant a very considerable further overcrowding, for on the evening that the ma.s.sacring was to begin there was added to the number of persons usually quartered in the servants" room a special force of old women, four or five in number, who at other times earned a living at washing or weeding.
Then the sacrificial festivities began, always late in the evening.
Through the wide-open door--open, because otherwise it would not have been possible to endure the stifling air--the stars shone into the smoky room, which was dimly lighted by a tallow candle, with always a thief in the candle. Near the door stood in a semi-circle the five slaughter priestesses, each with a goose between her knees, and as they bored holes through the skullcaps of the poor fowls, with sharp kitchen knives--a procedure, the necessity of which I have never understood--they sang all sorts of folk-songs, the text of which formed a strange contrast, as well to the murderous act as to the mournful melody. At least one had to suppose this to be the case, for the maids, who sat on the edge of the bed with their guest from the straw-loft between them, followed the folksongs with never-ending merriment, and at the pa.s.sages that sounded specially mournful they even burst into cheers. Both my parents were morally strict, and they often discussed the question, whether there were not some way to put a stop to this insolent conduct, but they finally gave it up. My father had a lurking suspicion that such a custom had existed in antiquity, and, after he-had looked the matter up, said: "It is a repet.i.tion of ancient conditions, the Roman saturnalia, or, what amounts to the same thing, a case where the servants temporarily lord it over the so-called lords." When he had thus cla.s.sified the occurrence historically he was satisfied, the more so as the maids always amused him the following morning by lowering their eyes in a most unusually modest fashion. Then he would make fantastically extravagant remarks, as though _Gil Blas_ had been his favorite book. That was not the case, however. He read Walter Scott exclusively, for which I am grateful to him even to this day, since, even then, a few crumbs fell from his table for me. His favorite among all the works was _Quintin Durward_, probably on account of its French subject.
I have here further to add that the terrors of this goose-killing time were by no means ended with the slaughter night and the mournful melodies. On the contrary, they lasted at least three or four days longer, for the slaughtering time was also the time when the giblets dressed with goose-blood were served daily at our table, a dish which, according to the Pomeranian view, stands unrivaled in the realm of cookery. Furthermore my father considered it his duty to support the view peculiar to this region, and, when the great steaming platter appeared, would say: "Ah, that is fine! Just eat some of this; it is the black soup of the Spartans, full of strength and stamina." But I observed that he, along with the rest of us, picked out the dried fruit and almond dumplings, leaving the nourishing gravy for the servants outside, above all for the slaughtering and mourning women, who by their boring operations had established the most legitimate claim to it.
About a fortnight later came the pig-killing, toward which my feeling remained exactly the same as on that occasion when, hardly seven years of age, I had fled from the city toward Alt-Ruppin, in order to escape, not only the spectacle, but a whole gamut of ear-and-heart-rending sounds. But I had meanwhile grown out of childhood into boyhood, and a boy, whether he will or no, feels honor-bound manfully to take everything that comes along, even if his own deepest nature revolts against it. That the prospect of rice pudding with raisins in it was a contributing factor in this comedy of bravery, I am unable to say, for fond as I am of good things to eat, I was always, during the weeks just preceding Christmas, half upset by the smell of hot grease that drifted through the house. At least I never had what could be called a really good appet.i.te during this period, despite the fact that it would have been particularly worth while just then. Especially would such have been the case when, as usually happened about the first of December, a stag was sent in from the chief forester"s and was hung up, eviscerated, as game usually is, against the gable end of the servants" house. Day after day the cook would go to this horrible gable ornament and cut out, first the haunch, then the shoulders and legs, with the result that we always heaved a sigh of relief when the glory of this venison was a thing of the past.
A far happier time was the baking week, which began with spice-nuts and sugar cookies, and ended with bretzels, wreath-cakes, and cakes baked on tins. Not only were we admitted to the bakeroom, where there was a most alluring odor of bitter almonds and grated lemons; we also received, as a foretaste of Christmas, a bountiful supply of little cake-rolls, baked especially for us children. "I know," said my mother, "that the children will upset their stomachs eating them, but even that is better than that they should be restricted to too low a diet. They shall have joyful holiday feeling during all these days, and nothing can give it to them better than holiday cakes." There is something in that view, and it may be absolutely right if the children are thoroughly robust. But we were not so robust that the principle could be applied to us without modification. And so, about Christmas time, I was always much given to crying.
On New Year"s Eve there was a club ball, which I, being the oldest child, was allowed to witness. I took my position in one corner of the hall and looked on with vacillating feelings. When the dancing couples whirled past me I was happy, on the one hand, because I was permitted to stand there as a sort of guest and share in the pleasure with my eyes, and yet, on the other hand, I was unhappy, because I was merely an onlooker instead of a partic.i.p.ator in the dance. My personal insignificance weighed heavy upon me, doubly heavy because of the gastric condition I was regularly in at this reason, and it continued so until the night.w.a.tchman, wrapped in his long blue cloak, came into the hall at midnight and, after blowing a preliminary signal on his horn, wished everybody a happy New Year. Then, as if by magic, my feeling of sentimentality vanished entirely, and I was carried away by the comic grotesqueness of the scene, and soon regained my freedom and buoyancy of spirit.
Just about this time social activities began, taking the form of a series of weekly feasts, many of which resembled that of Belshazzar, in so far as a spirit hand was at the very time writing the bankruptcy of the host upon the wall. However, my knowledge of the details of these feasts was derived only from hearsay. But any special banquets, whether great or small, that fell to the lot of our own house I saw with my own eyes and it is about these that I now propose to tell.
When it came our turn to entertain, the whole house was pervaded with a feeling of solemnity, which had a certain similarity to the feeling at the time of a wedding. Furthermore, a parallel to the tripart.i.te division into wedding-eve celebration, wedding day, and the day after, appeared in the form of preparation day, real feast-day, and eating of the remnants. Which of these three days deserved the prize may remain an open question, but I am inclined to believe I liked the first the best. To be sure, it was unepicurean and called for much self-restraint, but it was rich in antic.i.p.ation of glorious things to come.
On this day of preparation the widow Gaster, a celebrated cook, came to our house, as she did to all other houses on similar occasions. Her personal appearance united complacence with dignity, and by virtue of this latter quality she was received with respect and unlimited confidence. Because of a dislike, easily understood, for all the things she had to prepare day in and day out, especially sweets, she lived-almost exclusively on red wine, deriving the little other sustenance she needed from the vapors of hot grease, with which she was continually surrounded. Her arrival at our house was always a signal for me to plant myself near the kitchen, where everything that took place could be observed and, incidentally, admired. It was always her first task to bake a tree-cake on a spit. She kept a record of all the tree-cakes she baked, and when the number reached a thousand the housewives of Swinemunde gave her a well-deserved feast in celebration of the achievement. To be sure, tree-cakes are to be had even today, but they are degenerations, weak, spongy, and pale-cheeked, whereas in those days they had a happy firmness, which in the most successful specimens rose to crispness, accompanied by a scale of colors running from the darkest ocher to the brightest yellow. It always gave me great pleasure to watch a tree-cake come into being. Toward the back wall of a huge fireplace stood a low half-dome, built of bricks, the top projecting forward like a roof, the bottom slanting toward the back. Along this slanting part was built a narrow charcoal fire about four feet long and by it were placed two small iron supports, upon which a roasting spit was laid, with a contrivance for turning it.