by Thomas Mann
Johann Buddenbrook, now fast approaching his mid-forties, had visibly aged in the last few years. His little, round eyes seemed to lie deeper than ever; his large, aquiline nose stood out more sharply; and although the part in his hair was as precise as ever, it looked as if the ashy blond at his temples had been lightly dusted with a powder puff. His wife, however, was still in her late thirties, and, though never beautiful, she had preserved her radiant presence most admirably, and her soft white complexion with its scattered freckles had lost nothing of its delicacy. Her reddish, fashionably coiffed hair shone in the candlelight.
With just a hint of a sidelong glance from her pale blue eyes, she said, “I wanted to suggest something for you to consider, my dear Jean. Would it not be a good idea to hire a butler? I’ve become quite convinced of it. When I think of my parents …”
The consul let his newspaper slip to his knees, and as he took the cigar from his mouth a certain vigilance came into his eyes—this meant spending money.
“Yes, my dear, my darling Bethsy,” he began, stretching out these first words as long as possible to give himself time to put his objections in order. “A butler? Since the death of my beloved parents, we’ve kept all three girls working for us in the house, quite apart from Mamselle Jungmann, and it seems to me …”
“Oh, but the house is so large, Jean, it’s simply dreadful. I’m always saying, ‘Lina, my child, no one’s dusted in the back building for such a long time,’ and yet I don’t want to demand too much of the girls, it keeps them huffing and puffing just to maintain everything nice and tidy up front here. A butler would be so nice for running errands and such. We could find some honest, unassuming country fellow. Oh, and I almost forgot Jean—Louise Möllendorpf is going to let her Anton go. I’ve seen him serve at dinner, he’s very reliable.”
“I must admit,” the consul said, shifting somewhat uneasily back and forth, “that the whole idea comes as a surprise. We’ll not be going out in society for a while, and we’re not giving any dinners ourselves.”
“No, no; but we do have guests quite often, and that’s not my fault, dear Jean, though you know how much I do enjoy it. A business friend of yours visits in town, you ask him to dinner, he’s not yet taken a room at an inn, and so of course he spends the night here with us. Or some missionary may spend a week with us. The week after next, we’re expecting Pastor Mathias from Cannstatt. Well, in a nutshell, the salaries are so insignificant.…”
“But they add up, Bethsy! We have four people on the household payroll, and don’t forget all the men employed by the firm.”
“Can it be we really cannot afford a butler?” Elisabeth asked with a little smile, tilting her head slightly in her husband’s direction. “When I think of the servants my parents have …”
“Your parents, dear Bethsy! Well, now, I really must ask if you have any clear idea of the state of our finances?”
“No, Jean, it’s true I have no real detailed understanding.…”
“Well, that’s easily taken care of,” the consul said. He sat up erect on the sofa, crossed his legs, took a puff on his cigar, and, squinching his eyes a little, began marshaling the figures with exceptional proficiency.
“To be brief: At one time, before my sister’s marriage, my dear departed father had a nice round sum of 900,000 marks courant, that is, as I need not say, apart from real estate and the intangible value of the firm. Eighty thousand went to Frankfurt as a dowry, and 100,000 was spent setting up Gotthold in business: which leaves 720,000. Then came the purchase of this house, which, despite what we got for the old place on Alf Strasse, cost us, including improvements and new furnishings, 100,000: leaving 620,000. Then 25,000 was sent to Frankfurt in compensation: leaving 595,000. And that would have been the state of affairs at Father’s death had not all these expenses been offset over the years by earnings of around 200,000 marks courant. His total estate, therefore, came to 795,000. At which point another 100,000 was sent Gotthold’s way, and 267,000 to Frankfurt: leaving, if one discounts the few thousand marks courant Father left in his will to the Holy Ghost Hospital, the Businessmen’s Widows Fund, and so forth, approximately 420,000, plus another 100,000 from your dowry. That more or less describes, in round figures, apart from all sorts of minor fluctuations, the state of our finances. We are not so uncommonly rich, my dear Bethsy, and one must keep in mind that, even as business of late has dropped off, our business expenses have remained the same and cannot be reduced, given the scale on which the firm operates. Were you able to follow me?”
His wife nodded with some hesitation; her embroidery still lay in her lap. “Quite well, my dear Jean,” she said, although she had not understood everything and certainly did not see why all these huge sums should prevent her from hiring a butler.
The consul drew on his cigar till it glowed, leaned his head back, and let out the smoke. Then he continued: “You’re thinking, in fact, that, come the day your dear parents are called to their heavenly reward, we can expect a handsome sum, and you’re quite right. All the same—we cannot be so imprudent as to depend too much on that. I know that your father has had some rather painful losses—due, as we all are aware, to your brother, Justus. Now, Justus is a very charming fellow, but not exactly a good businessman, and he has also had some setbacks that were not his fault. He has met with very costly losses from some of his customers, and as a result of his weakened capital position, he had to borrow money at very high interest from the banks, and your father has had to spring into the breach several times with significant sums to prevent even greater misfortune. That sort of thing cannot be repeated, and yet I fear it will be, because—forgive me, Bethsy, for speaking so candidly—that certain savoir faire that we all find so agreeable about your father, who no longer has anything to do with the business, does not stand your brother in good stead as a businessman. You know what I mean—he is not exactly prudent, is he? A little flighty, a little given to putting on airs. Certainly your parents lack for nothing, and no one could be more delighted by that than I. They live life in splendid style—as their circumstances permit.…”
His wife smiled indulgently; she knew her husband’s prejudices against the elegant tastes of her family.
“That’s all,” he added, laying what remained of his cigar in the ashtray. “For my part, I shall place my ultimate trust in the Lord, that He will keep me healthy and strong, so that by His grace I can restore the firm’s fortunes to their previous solid position. I hope that you clearly understand the matter now, dear Bethsy?”
“Perfectly, Jean, perfectly,” Elisabeth was quick to reply, for she had given up entirely on a butler for this evening. “But let’s go to bed, shall we? It has grown quite late.”
In any case, a few days later the consul came in from the office in a good mood, and it was decided over dinner that they would hire the Möllendorpfs’ Anton.
6
WE’LL PUT TONY in a boarding school. Fräulein Weichbrodt’s would be best,” said Consul Buddenbrook, and he was so definite that that was what was done.
Thomas was proving his talents in the office, Clara was growing up quite nicely, and poor Klothilde had an appetite that would please most anyone—but they were less satisfied, as has been hinted, with Tony and Christian. As far as the latter was concerned, the least of the problems was that he was required to drink coffee with Herr Stengel almost every afternoon—although one day Frau Buddenbrook had finally had enough and sent an ornate note to that gentleman requesting his presence on Meng Strasse for the purpose of a conference. Herr Stengel appeared in his Sunday wig, wearing his highest stiff collar, his vest studded with pencils sharpened to darts, and sat with the consul’s wife in the landscape room, while Christian eavesdropped on the conversation from the dining room. The excellent pedagogue expanded eloquently, though somewhat nervously, on his opinions, spoke of the important difference between a “line” and a “stroke,” mentioned the lovely woodland green as well as the coal box, making frequent use during the cour
se of his visit of the word “consequently,” which seemed to him aptly suited to his elegant surroundings. After fifteen minutes, the consul appeared, chased Christian away, and expressed to Herr Stengel his keen regret that his son had given him cause for dissatisfaction.
“Oh, by no means, Herr Consul, heaven forbid! Young Mr. Buddenbrook has a sharp mind, is an exuberant lad. And consequently … a little high-spirited, if I may be permitted to say so, hmm … and consequently …”
The consul politely gave him a tour of the house, at which point Herr Stengel took his leave. But, no, that was not the worst of it.
The worst of it was an incident that had only recently come to their ears. One evening Christian Buddenbrook and one of his good friends were permitted to attend a performance of Schiller’s William Tell at the municipal theater. The role of Tell’s son Walter, however, was being played by a young woman, a certain Demoiselle Meyer–de la Grange, and she was the cause of the incident. Whether it was appropriate to her role or not, she was in the habit of wearing a diamond brooch on stage—the jewels were notoriously genuine and generally known to have been the gift of Consul Peter Döhlmann, the son of Döhlmann the lumber merchant on Erste Wall Strasse, just outside the Holsten Gate. Consul Peter was one of the gentlemen known around town as suitiers—so, too, for example, was Justus Kröger—which implied that his style of life was rather loose. He was married and even had a little daughter, but for some time now he had been separated from his wife and lived quite the bachelor life. The fortune his father had left him, apart from the business which he still ran after a fashion, had been quite considerable. But it was rumored that he was already living off the capital. He spent most of his time and took his breakfast at the Club or the Rathskeller, but he could often be seen wandering the streets at four in the morning and took frequent business trips to Hamburg. But, above all, he was such a passionate lover of the theater that he never missed a performance and took a personal interest in the players. Demoiselle Meyer–de la Grange was the latest in this year’s series of actresses whom he had favored with diamonds.
The point is that the young lady—who was wearing her diamond brooch on this occasion as well—looked so charming and was so touching in the role of Walter Tell that Christian Buddenbrook was moved to tears; indeed, he was quite swept away, resulting in the kind of gesture that can arise only out of strong emotion. During intermission he paid one mark and eight and a half shillings for a bouquet from the flower shop across the street, and with it in hand, this fourteen-year-old whippersnapper with a big nose and small, deep-set eyes marched backstage and, since no one was there to stop him, discovered Fräulein Meyer–de la Grange engaged in conversation with Consul Peter Döhlmann outside the door to her dressing room. At the sight of Christian waltzing up with his bouquet, the consul almost stumbled into the wall, he laughed so hard.
This newest suitier, however, presented his compliments to Walter Tell with a very serious face, handed him or her the flowers, rocked his head slowly back and forth, and said in a voice so sincere that it sounded as if he were in great pain, “Your acting is simply beautiful, Fräulein.”
“Damned if it ain’t Krischan Buddenbrook!” Consul Döhlmann exclaimed in his thick Plattdeutsch.
Fräulein Meyer–de la Grange, however, raised her pretty eyebrows and asked, “The son of Consul Buddenbrook?” Then she sympathetically patted her newest admirer’s cheek.
Such were the facts that Peter Döhlmann shared with his fellows at the Club that same evening and that spread like wildfire all over town, even reaching the ear of the school director, who in turn asked to speak with Consul Buddenbrook about the matter. And how did he take it? He was less angry than simply overwhelmed in his distress. He was an almost broken man as he sat down in the landscape room to tell his wife about it.
“He’s our son, and look how he’s turning out.”
“Good heavens, Jean, your father would have laughed about it. And if you tell my parents about it this Thursday, Papa will find it terribly amusing.”
The consul flared up. “Ha! Right! I have no doubt it will amuse him, Bethsy! He will enjoy hearing how his frivolity and irreverent notions have been passed on not only to Justus, that suitier, but quite obviously to one of his grandsons as well. Damnation, you simply force me to say such things! He goes to see this—person! Spends his allowance on this harlot! No, he doesn’t know what he’s doing; but the tendency is there! The tendency is there!”
Yes, it was a serious matter; and the consul was all the more outraged when it turned out that Tony, as noted, was not behaving all too well, either. True, with time she had ceased making the pale man dance or visiting the doll lady; but she had a way of tossing her head that was getting saucier and saucier, and she exhibited, especially after spending a summer in the country with her grandparents, a serious proclivity to be vain and haughty.
One day the consul surprised her, much to her annoyance, reading Clauren’s Mimili with Mamselle Jungmann; he thumbed through the book—and it was closed for good. A short time later it came out that Tony—Antonie Buddenbrook—had gone for a walk beyond the town gates with a young high-school friend of her brother’s, just the two of them. Frau Stuht, the same woman who moved in the highest social circles, had seen them and happened to mention to the Möllendorpfs, from whom she was buying some used clothing, that Mamselle Buddenbrook was getting to be quite grown up. And the wife of Senator Möllendorpf had merrily repeated the story to the consul. The walks were forbidden. But then it was learned that Mademoiselle Tony was retrieving notes from a poorly plastered-over hollow in the old tree just outside the Burg Gate, and was leaving a few notes there herself, all of them either from or addressed to that same high-school student. Once this came to light, it seemed imperative that she be placed under the strict supervision of a boarding school, the one run by Fäulein Weichbrodt, Mühlenbrink 7.
7
THERESE WEICHBRODT was hunchbacked, so hunchbacked that she was not much taller than a table. She was forty-one years old, but, having never set much store by external appearances, she dressed like a woman in her sixties. Little cushions of gray curls at her ears were topped by a bonnet, its green ribbons dangling over her childlike shoulders; and she had never been known to spruce up her homely black dress—except for a large oval brooch with a fancy porcelain miniature of her mother.
Little Fräulein Weichbrodt had clever and piercing brown eyes, a gently arching nose, and thin lips that she could press together with great determination. Her small body and all its movements were certainly droll enough, and yet the general impression she left commanded respect. This was primarily due to her use of language. When she spoke, it was with spirited thrusts of her lower jaw and rapid, insistent shakes of her head, each consonant carefully stressed, each word exact, clear, definite, and free of every dialect. But she exaggerated her vowels to such an extent that, for example, she did not say “butter,” but “botter,” sometimes even “booter,” and called her obstreperous yapping dog “Booby” instead of “Bobby.” When she told one of her students, “Doon’t bee seelly, chawld!,” while rapping the table with the knuckle of her index finger—that left an impression, no doubt of it. And when Mademoiselle Popinet, the French girl, would take much too much sugar for her coffee, Fräulein Weichbrodt had a way of eyeing the ceiling, playing an imaginary piano on the tablecloth, and remarking, “Take the whool sugarbool, I soorly woold!”—and Mademoiselle Popinet would turn bright red.
As a child—my God, how tiny she must have been as a child—Therese Weichbrodt had called herself “Sesame,” and had retained this mutation of her name, allowing the better and more studious of her charges, both boarders and day students alike, to call her that. “Call me ‘Sesame,’ child,” she said to Tony Buddenbrook on the very first day, giving her a little kiss on the forehead that made a soft popping sound. “I prefer it.” Her older sister, Madame Kethelsen, however, was called Nelly.
Madame Kethelsen, who was somewhere in the vicini
ty of forty-eight, had been left penniless by her late husband, and now lived in a little room on the top floor of her sister’s house and took her meals with the students. She dressed in much the same fashion as Sesame, but unlike her was extremely tall. She wore woolen warmers at her gaunt wrists. She was not a teacher, had not the least notion of how to be strict—she was harmless and quietly cheerful by nature. If one of Fräulein Weichbrodt’s charges played a joke on someone, she would laugh aloud in her amiable way, so heartily that it almost sounded like a wail, until Sesame would rap insistently on the table and cry, “Nelly!”—though it sounded more like “Nally!”—intimidating her into silence.
Madame Kethelsen obeyed her younger sister, let herself be scolded like a child, and the fact was that Sesame felt true disdain for her. Therese Weichbrodt was a well-read—indeed, almost learned—spinster, whose life was a series of small, earnest battles to maintain the faith of her childhood, her optimistic piety, and the conviction that she would one day be recompensed in the great beyond for her hard and lackluster life. Madame Kethelsen, however, was uneducated, a woman of innocent and simple temperament. “Sweet Nelly,” Sesame would say, “my God, what a child she is, has never had a doubt in her life, has never known the struggle of faith—she’s so happy.” Such words betrayed equal portions of contempt and envy—a definite, though forgivable, weakness in Sesame’s character.
The brick-red suburban house was surrounded by a prettily tended garden, and its main floor, set well above the foundation, was taken up by classrooms and the dining room; bedrooms were located on the second floor and even in the attic. Fräulein Weichbrodt did not have many charges, for she took only older girls and provided just three years of instruction, even for her day students; Sesame was also very strict about admitting only the daughters of the very best families. Tony Buddenbrook was, as noted, received with a display of affection; indeed, for that evening’s dinner Therese made her “bishop’s punch,” a red, sweet libation that was drunk cold and in whose preparation she was a master. “A leetle moore beeshop?” she asked with an amiable shake of her head—and it sounded so tempting that no one turned her down.