A legacy; a novel Page 2

  "It does sound degenerate of us," said Emil.

  Six months later Edu said to his wife, "I say, Sarah, you wouldn't let me draw the next quarter of my allowance now?"

  "I'm afraid not, Edu."

  "I wish you would you know. Just this once. You see credit's awfully sticky these days."

  "Credit?"

  "It's these damned notices of yours. Everybody seems to take them seriously. It takes me all day to raise a couple of hundreds, even at forty per cent."

  "I see."

  "Oh very well . . . But I wish you were a bit more reasonable. Never does to keep a chap too short. Don't say you weren't warned."

  Edu went to his mother, who directed Gottlieb to supply him out of household funds.

  Edu Merz's values, manner and appearance ran very much to form. He wore an eyeglass, and he wore loose, tweedy, careless English clothes, and he had a tall, loose-limbed, slightly stooping body and a lined face with features of the faintly simian strain that went through all the Merzes except Grandpapa. He made clever women feel dowdy, and had a way with the others; and of course he never looked at one who was not pretty, and of course he was facile and arrogant and shallow, and of course he had charm. He always had a joke for me, and I used to stare at him from the bottom of the dinner-table with uncompromising distaste. My half-sister was devoted to him.

  My mother once said that everything about Edu was impersonation: that his passion was not cards, but seeing himself at cards. She may have been right. It is certain that Edu adored his chosen personality; and its setting, in some measure, depended on his wife. Edu at race-meetings, at bachelor suppers, Edu with the duns, was one thing; Edu with Sarah was another, and as a couple they were something else again. Obviously their marriage was a failure, but that was something both were able to set aside, and if they had little else in common, they shared at least two things—a belief in the importance of society, and the habit of being rich. Both were at home in their time.

  Edu was born in the same year as King Edward VII, and indeed he was lucky in his period as it allowed for the fulfilment of his second nature. For only by flourishing as he did in an era at once so friendly to the sons of Jewish magnates and so unprejudiced about baccarat could he be what he was, and also be an Edwardian gentleman.

  The life led by Edu and Sarah was a far cry from the congealed provincialism of Voss Strasse. The old Merzes dined at seven fifteen and had soup for lunch; the young Merzes were fashionable. They went to England a great deal, wintered on the Riviera, and Sarah went to Paris for her clothes, which was then neither usual nor approved of in Berlin. She also went, without Edu, to Florence and to Rome. They lived some ten miles out of town, in a large-windowed house built for Sarah by Hans Messel, and they entertained incessantly—sporting people, theatrical people, the Crown Prince, writers, critics; Sarah was accused of having long-haired friends, and pictures that might as well be looked at upside down.

  At the same time the young Merzes went on doing their filial duties as they were seen, Edu calling on his mother every day, he and Sarah never failing to dine at Voss Strasse on a Sunday night.

  Their children, two girls, went to boarding school in England, to the horror of their grandparents, who had heard that there was no steam heating in the bedrooms. Sarah was bringing up her girls in the simple way. They had no maid, did their own hair and went to cooking classes, and they were sent into Berlin for afternoon concerts and classical matinees on the public horse omnibus. Their mother ran the first electric brougham in town, and soon after bought a Delaunay-Belleville, but kept her coachman; Edu got himself a Minerva with a Belgian mechanic in the Nineties; his father continued to go about in a well-sprung landau drawn by two fat mares.

  Edu scraped along for a few years. Two or three times he got into a hole and was helped out by his father; once he made a killing in roulette. Then, one night, he lost half a million marks in IOUs at the Herren Club. Within two days his other creditors closed in. Sarah did not pay. It could not have been easy. Grandpapa Merz cursed her, but did not pay either. Edu went bankrupt. He had to resign his directorship with Merz %c Merz, and from all his clubs. He could not believe his fate. He promised sincere, complete and everlasting reform. When he grasped that what his wife had warned him of was true, that he could no longer enter the Rooms anywhere, he broke down.

  Once more Sarah offered divorce. Once more Edu chose to stay. His mother sent for Sarah. The old lady was near tears. "Poor Edu tells me it's all up with him," she said. "Poor boy—so cold I hear, and very nasty food."

  But she brightened at once on being told that her son still had the choice of two comfortable homes.

  "They say Edu's bankrupt, doesn't he have to go to prison?"

  "Not any more, Mama." The nature of modern bankruptcy was explained to her.

  "Clink'd serve him right," said Grandpapa, who was at once furious with his son and delighted at his having come a cropper.

  "He doesn't have to pay his bills?" said Grandmama.

  "He can't."

  "Sounds a very good idea to me. Why is he so upset about it?"

  This, too, was explained to her, and from the standpoint of her son.

  "Yes, yes . . . Men like to go to these places. I don't see why Edu can't ask those people in and have a nice game of cards at home?" she said, foretelling, rather accurately, her son's future course.

  Opinions as to Sarah's conduct differed. Germany in the early Nineteen-hundreds was a boom country, and Berlin its capital. Standards of behaviour were fluid. Before union, the atmosphere and ways of living in the various parts and principalities had been regional and European; the changes afterwards were gradual and not complete. Except in Brandenburg. To that nucleus of Prussia, to that poor flat country of marshes and poor sandy soil and the city set among parade grounds and sparse pines, to that border province of garrisons and unwieldy estates worked by Slav day-labourers and Huguenot artisans and ruled by the descendants of Teutonic Knights, Bismarck's successful wars and the foundation of the Empire brought at once a tide of big money, big enterprise, big building, big ideas which blurred demarcations between castes, swelled military and domestic discipline into Wagnerian displays and atrophied the older traditions of economy, frugality and probity. Tradespeople were coining money, the middle classes were getting rich and the rich became opulent. The pay of the bureaucracy remained lean, but its members were puffed with self-importance. Sons of bankers entered guard regiments instead of their fathers' firms, and the sons of brigadier generals resigned commissions in favour of marriage to an actress or an heiress. Uniforms, no longer the livery of duty, were worn like feathers, to strut the owner and attract the eligible. Men still toiled, but they also spent and glittered; women were still expected to bring portions and mend socks, but they often failed in the fulfilment of either of these expectations.

  At the clubs some of the men said that Sarah Merz was a mean hard bitch who could well afford to have bailed poor Edu out; others said that no one could afford doing that for ever.

  "She might have given him another chance though."

  "Edu's had a good many."

  "She ought to have put her foot down before. It was paying up those other times that gave him ideas."

  "When a woman's as rich as that she can't help giving a man ideas."

  "Odd, when you think of it, Edu falling for a clever woman."

  "Edu wouldn't know."

  "He knew about Kastell Aniline."

  "They all did that."

  "Oh Edu was mad about Sarah."

  "And Edu was no pauper either."

  "Well he is one now."

  "Yes. It hasn't turned out so well for Edu after all, has it?"

  "It hasn't turned out well at all."

  The older men said Edu was still snug enough. The house was Sarah's.

  "And that allowance for pocket money."

  "He couldn't—he's a bankrupt."

  "Sarah could slip it to him."

  "Not Sarah."
<
br />   "No; I suppose not Sarah."

  "She might at least have paid his card debts. Jolly uncomfortable for a man."

  "Think of a woman being able to do that!"

  "Has he still got that girl at the Lessing Theatre?"

  "Her or another."

  "Sarah can't have liked that part much." "She can hardly like any of it." "Oh it's a bad business any way you look at it.'* "A very bad business/'

  At the courts where Friedrich had his post they said, "Eduard Merz is in the receiver's hands. Shouldn't have thought to see that name on the bankruptcy lists."

  "The old people must feel it."

  "Feel is a strong word for that family."

  "There is money owing."

  "Nobody had any business giving Merz credit."

  "Not after the way his wife tied it all up."

  "Yes, that was done quite properly—as far as that ever goes."

  "Young Mrs. Merz took a great deal on herself."

  "Any assets?"

  "Only personal. Merz's got a motor."

  "Not much prospect of a discharge!"

  "Not a chance."

  "Much the best thing for him."

  "It'll look fishy though. If they go on living in that huge house of theirs—"

  "It will look damn fishy"

  "Who acted for Mrs. Merz?"

  "Benjamin k Bleibtreu. Her people's people."

  "You can hear what the Socialists are going to say about it."

  "Curious bankruptcy when you look at it—not an honest penny owed. All to usurers and old gamblers, and a few supper bills."

  "Grist for the papers."

  "Sort of thing does nobody any good."

  "She ought to have paid up!"

  "And he'd have them all in the gutter sooner or later."

  "A wife can always be loyal and face the music."

  "Not these Frankfort millionairesses, not the way they're brought up."

  The people who came to Sarah's house said to each other, "She might have done it less publicly."

  "This kind of thing can only be done in that way, or not at all."

  "Then it cannot be done at all."

  "It is one of those things."

  The Kaiser was furious. He made a scene to Eulenburg. He said he was not going to have that sort of thing in Berlin among that sort of people. He said that for fifteen years he had tried to get rid of anti-Semitism; he said those Kastells thought they owned the world; he said those debts would have to be paid.

  But when the facts were put before him, he became furious with Edu. He would have him run out of the capital, he said, and how was he expected to put down gambling in the Guards while that kind of thing went on in civilian clubs? It became known that he meant to send a letter of sympathy to Grandpapa Merz, and everybody was all agog at the impending indiscretion until Biilow persuaded him to keep his oar out.

  Edu's dentist bill happened to be owing. He and Sarah did not go to the same man. The lawyers told her that it would be fatal to meet any single liability. Sarah sent her protesting children to have their teeth seen to again. She was understood and the dentist sent her a comprehensive statement, which she paid.

  At Voss Strasse as time passed and they realized that Edu was actually unable to put name to cheque or note, the sentiment was surprised relief. Of course when they remembered to think of it, they did not forgive Sarah. They also resented the gaps at the Sunday dinners, for the young Merzes had gone to live abroad. First they had tried a villa of theirs between Grasse and Nice, but the proximity to Monte Carlo made Edu too unhappy. A friendly yacht offered and bore him to less tempting shores. Sarah

  went to Paris. She asked my father to get her a flat and he found her one in the Avenue Rapp. Sarah sent the Henri II sideboards into storage but said that the Louis XIII suite might do not at all badly with a picture she had an eye on; my father said that indeed he also did not like Renaissance but what could one expect in these furnished places, and if really she was about to buy something, she had better have a look at a thirteenth-century relief of the Annunciation he had found, well he would not tell her where yet, and which he was sure came from Cluny. Sarah engaged the cook on my father's advice and bought the picture on her own. And it was in this flat, at a dinner party, that my father met my mother.

  Part Two

  AUGUSTANS

  1

  Julius Maria von Felden was born about the middle of the last century in Baden, as second son of Augustus Matthias Joseph, Baron Felden, Freiherr zu Landeney, and after the continental custom inherited with his three brothers a version of the title and a portion of the estate. The family was old, landed, agreeably off without being in the least rich and of no particular distinction. At a period nearer to its origin it must have conformed no doubt to a tougher and a more acquisitive mould, and at least one Felden had been obliged to take part in a crusade, but for the last four centuries Feldens had looked after their land, diminishing rather than otherwise, filled diplomatic posts of a more decorative than political character and discharged functions at provincial courts. Yet they were neither backwoodsmen nor courtiers, but country gentlemen of cultured, if not general, interests. They drank hock and claret, but they also drank and knew how to make their own wine. They dabbled in the natural sciences; they enjoyed and contributed to those branches of the arts that increase the amenities of living—domestic architecture, instrument-making, horticulture. They were bored by the abstract, bored by letters, and their acceptance of thought was confined to thought about things. They liked new theories of acoustics, but turned from ones of government with suspicion and distaste. They played music like craftsmen, and made objects like artists. One went to Cremona; learnt; and became known as an amateur lute-builder. Some contributed to works of ornithology, some botanized. In their time several had experimented with alchemy, and my father's grandfather had been fascinated by steam. Physics held no terrors then and the laws of the universe were something a man might deal with pleasantly in a work-shop set up behind the stables.

  For an undilutedly Catholic family, few had entered the church, and of these most had remained country abbes. The French Revolution was still alive with them as a calamity, and of the Industrial one they were not aware. During the Napoleonic Wars they had favoured the Confederation of the Rhine, and though unenthusiastic about Buonaparte had fought a little on his side. No Felden, however, had borne arms as a profession since the Reformation, and not one was known to have borne them in a cause. They married their neighbours' daughters, they married women from Bavaria, from Piedmont, from the Tyrol, Lombardy, Alsace and France; looks were important in their choice, yet not once within the recorded memory of the Almanach de Gotha had they married outside the Catholic aristocracy. At the time of my father's birth, the language spoken in his family was French, the temper and setting of their lives retarded Eighteenth Century; their seat had always been in a warm corner of Baden, that mild, bland, rural country of meadows and trout streams, small farms, low mountains and small towns; their home was Catholic Western Continental Europe, and the centre of their world was France. They ignored, despised, and later dreaded, Prussia; and they were strangers to the sea.

  When I was born, Julius von Felden was already a man in his late fifties and his own parents, and their age, had long been dead. I never knew my grandparents and I never knew Landen, the house in which my father had grown up. Yet something of the atmosphere of his youth came through in his own person, and some of the facts I learnt from talk. Not all of them. What my father chose to remember was governed by his own sense of relevancy, and his aim was to converse. He would have preferred solitude, or rather a privacy of animals and objets-d'art, yet thought it was incumbent on him to spend a reasonable amount of his time—at dinner, perhaps—with his kind. His language was limited, he was certainly not aware of words, but I believe that when he spoke he saw what he had lived. From these set fragments, then, I knew the sheltered valley of Landen where the apricots had ripened on the south
wall every year; I learnt the names of dogs and ducks and horses, and the smells of seasons— of the scent that drifted across the snow from where the sides of boar were smoked, of sweet clouded wine drunk foaming off the press and stands at sunrise immobile by a pond, of the tree that bore three-hundred weight in plums and the swinging fall of rye before the scythe. I learnt terms of bee-keeping and terms of stag-driving; I learnt of clean straw, oats and clover, of winter honey, walnuts and March wool, of the pig killed at Michaelmas and Easter, and the hams baked whole inside a loaf of bread; I learnt of demonstrations held by travelling Mesmerists in the library, of quirks of squires, discomfitures of tutors, and of the ruses employed by peacocks. Rural life, under Julius's touch, emerged as composed as his own exquisitely turned out person and well-ordered day. I did not learn the name of my father's mother, nor what the tutors had been supposed to teach; I learnt that at Landen they had dined at exactly one hour after sunset and that my grandfather (or was it his father?) explained this to his guests as a custom of the Romans; I learnt that Julius and his brothers rode any old how but were kept to be most particular about their dress when driving, that the boys were always given brandy and hot water when they came in from skating in the winter dusk, and that Johannes the third son had danced with a bear at a fair.

  I learnt of the missal dropped by them from the choir of Karlsruhe Cathedral during high mass in order to prove Newton, and how in consequence they were all packed off for a term to the Jesuit Seminary where the Fathers had dined off hock, trout and hare, and the pupils had dined off soup. I learnt of holidays in summer with cousins in the Cote-d'Or, en Bourgogne my father called it, where he had been allowed to wax the furniture and had been given black currant syrup mixed in his white wine; I learnt that Cag-liostro had once spent a night at Landen and was supposed to have left a secret; that Gustavus, the eldest (Julius never liked him), had a fine hand at water-colouring but disgusted the old Baron by not helping with the birds, persisting instead to paint in coats of arms; I learnt that the cure" was asked to dinner once a year, on Saint Martin's Day, when they were served, in a length of courses, with two roast geese: one for the company, one for the cure, and how my grandfather refusing to speak German in his house except to tenants and domestics, and the cure unable to speak French, they had all had to get along in Latin; and I could taste the cakes that had no taste at all given to my father as a baby by the old Grand Duchess of Baden, and it comes to me only now that she cannot well have been the same old lady, the Grand Duchess Louisa, I was taken to in turn to have my head patted at the age of four.