# Buddenbrooks/Volume 1/Part 4/Chapter 10

CHAPTER X
A chastened mood reigned for some time at the old house in Meng Street after Madame Grünlich and her little daughter returned thither to take up their abode. The family went about rather subdued and did not speak much about “it,” with the exception of the chief actor in the affair, who, on the contrary, talked about “it” inexhaustibly, and was entirely in her element.
Tony had moved with Erica into the rooms in the second storey which her parents had occupied in the time of the elder Buddenbrooks. She was a little disappointed to find that it did not occur to her Papa to engage a servant for her, and she had rather a pensive half-hour when he gently explained that it would be fitting for her to live a retired life and give up the society of the town: for though, he said, according to human judgments she was an innocent victim of the fate which God had sent to try her, still her position as a divorced wife made a very quiet life advisable, particularly at first. But Tony possessed the gift of adaptability. She could adjust herself with ease and cheerfulness to any situation. She soon grew charmed with her rôle of the injured wife returned to the house of her fathers; wore dark frocks, dressed her ash-blonde hair primly like a young girl’s, and felt richly repaid for her lack of society by the weight she had acquired in the household, the seriousness and dignity of her new position, and above all by the immense pleasure of being able to talk about Herr Grünlich and her marriage and to make general observations about life and destiny, which she did with the utmost gusto.
Not everybody gave her this opportunity, it is true. The ​Frau Consul was convinced that her husband had acted correctly and out of a sense of duty; but when Tony began to talk, she would put up her lovely white hand and say: “Assez, my child; I do not like to hear about it.”
Clara, now twelve years old, understood nothing, and Cousin Clothilde was just as stupid. “Oh, Tony!”—that was all she could say, with drawling astonishment. But the young wife found an attentive listener in Mamsell Jungmann, who was now thirty-five years old and could boast of having grown grey in the service of the best society. “You don’t need to worry, Tony, my child,” she would say. “You are young; you will marry again.” And she devoted herself to the upbringing of little Erica, telling her the same stories, the same memories of her youth, to which the Consul’s children had listened fifteen years before; and, in particular, of that uncle who died of hiccoughs at Marienwerder “because his heart was broken.”
But it was with her father that Tony talked most and longest. She liked to catch him after the noonday meal or in the morning at early breakfast. Their relations had grown closer and warmer; for her feeling had been heretofore one of awe and respect rather than affection, on account of his high position in the town, his piety, his solid, stern ability and industry. During that talk in her own salon he had come humanly near to her, and it had filled her with pride and emotion to be found worthy of that serious and confidential consultation. He, the infallible parent, had put the decision into her hands: he had confessed, almost humbly, to a sense of guilt. Such an idea would never have entered Tony’s head of itself; but since he said it, she believed it, and her feeling for him had thereby grown warmer and tenderer. As for the Consul, he believed himself bound to make up to his daughter for her misfortune by redoubled love and care.
Johann Buddenbrook had himself taken no steps against his untrustworthy son-in-law. Tony and her Mother did hear ​from him, in the course of conversation, what dishonourable means Grünlich had used to get hold of the eighty thousand marks; but the Consul was careful to give the matter no publicity. He did not even consider going to the courts with it. He felt wounded in his pride as a merchant, and he wrestled silently with the disgrace of having been so thoroughly taken in.
But he pressed the divorce suit energetically as soon as the failure of Grünlich came out, which it soon did, thereby causing no inconsiderable losses to certain Hamburg firms. It was this suit, and the thought that she herself was a principal in it, that gave Tony her most delicious and indescribable feelings of importance.
“Father,” she said—for in these conversations she never called him “Papa”—“Father, how is our affair going on? Do you think it will be all right? The paragraph is perfectly clear; I have studied it. ‘Incapacity of the husband to provide for his family’: surely they will say that is quite plain. If there were a son, Grünlich would keep him—”
Another time she said: “I have thought a great deal about the four years of my marriage, Father. That was certainly the reason the man never wanted us to live in the town, which I was so anxious to do. That was the reason he never liked me even to be in the town or go into society. The danger was much greater there than in Eimsbiittel, of my hearing somehow or other how things stood. What a scoundrel!”
“We must not judge, my child,” answered the Consul.
Or, when the divorce was finally pronounced: “Have you entered it in the family papers, Father? No? Then I’d better do it. Please give me the key to the secretary.” With bustling pride she wrote, beneath the lines she had set there four years ago under her name: “This marriage was dissolved by law in February, 1850.” Then she put away the pen and reflected a minute.
“Father,” she said, “I understand very well that this affair is a blot on our family history. I have thought about it a ​great deal. It is exactly as if there were a spot of ink in the book here. But never mind. That is my affair. I will erase it. I am still young. Don’t you think I am still quite pretty? Though Frau Stuht, when she saw me again, said to me: ‘Oh, Heavens, Mme. Grünlich, how old you’ve grown!’ Well, I certainly couldn’t remain all my life the goose I was four years ago! Life takes one along with it. Anyhow, I shall marry again. You will see, everything can he put right by a good marriage.”
“That is in God’s hand, my child. It is most unfitting to speak of such things.”
Tony began at this time to use very frequently the expression “Such is life”; and with the word “life” she would open her eyes wide with a charming serious look, indicating the deep insight she had acquired into human affairs and human destinies.
Thomas returned from Pau in August of that year. The dining-table was opened out again, and Tony had a fresh audience for her tale. She loved and looked up to her brother, who had felt for her pain in that departure from Travemünde, and she respected him as the future head of the firm and the family.
“Yes, yes,” he said; “we’ve both of us gone through things, Tony.”
The corner of his eyebrow went up, and his cigarette moved from one corner of his mouth to the other: his thoughts were probably with the little flower-girl with the Malay face, who had lately married the son of her employer and now herself carried on the shop in Fishers’ Lane.
Thomas Buddenbrook, though still a little pale, was strikingly elegant. The last few years had entirely completed his education. His hair was brushed so that it stood out in two clumps above his ears, and his moustache was trimmed in the French mode, with sharp points that were stiffened with the tongs and stuck straight out. His stocky broad-shouldered figure had an almost military air.
​His constitution was not of the best; the blue veins showed too plainly at the narrow temples, and he had a slight tendency to chills, which good Dr. Grabow struggled with in vain. In the details of his physical appearance—the chin, the nose, and especially the hands, which were wonderfully true to the Buddenbrook type—his likeness to his grandfather was more pronounced than ever.
He spoke French with a distinctly Spanish accent, and astonished everybody by his enthusiasm for certain modern writers of a satiric and polemic character. Broker Gosch was the only person in town who sympathized with his tastes. His father strongly reprehended them.
But the Father’s pride and joy in his eldest son were plain to be seen; they shone in the Consul’s eyes. He welcomed him joyfully home as his colleague in the firm, and himself began to work with increased satisfaction in his office—especially after the death of old Madame Kröger, which took place at the end of the year.
The old lady’s loss was one to be borne with resignation. She had grown very old, and lived quite alone at the end. She went to God, and the firm of Buddenbrooks received a large sum of money, a round hundred thousand thaler, which strengthened the working capital of the business in a highly desirable way.
The Consul’s brother-in-law Justus, weary of continual business disappointments, as soon as he had his hands on his inheritance settled his business and retired. The gay son of the cavalier à-la-mode was not a happy man. He had been too careless, too generous to attain a solid position in the mercantile world. But he had already spent a considerable part of his inheritance; and now Jacob, his eldest son, was the source of fresh cares to him.
The young man had become addicted to light, not to say disreputable, society in the great city of Hamburg. He had cost his father a huge sum in the course of years, and when Consul Kröger refused to give him more, the mother, a weak, ​sickly woman, sent money secretly to the son, and wretched clouds had sprung up between husband and wife.
The final blow came at the very time when B. Grünlich was making his failure: something happened at Dalbeck and Company in Hamburg, where Jacob Kröger worked. There had been some kind of dishonesty. It was not talked about; no questions were asked of Justus Kröger; but it got about that Jacob had a position as travelling man in New York and was about to sail. He was seen once in the town before his boat left, a foppishly dressed, unwholesome-looking youth. He had probably come hither to get more money out of his mother, besides the passage money his father sent him.
It finally came about that Justus spoke exclusively of “my son,” as though he had none but the one heir, his second son, Jürgen, who would certainly never be guilty of a false step, but who seemed on the other hand to be mentally limited. He had had difficulty getting through the High School; after which he spent some time in Jena, studying law—evidently without either pleasure or profit.
Johann Buddenbrook felt keenly the cloud on his wife’s family and looked with the more anxiety to the future of his own children. He was justified in placing the utmost confidence in the ability and earnestness of his older son. As for Christian, Mr. Richardson had written that he showed an unusual gift for acquiring English, but no genuine interest in the business. He had a great weakness for the theatre and for other distractions of the great city. Christian himself wrote that he had a longing to travel and see the world. He begged eagerly to be allowed to take a position “over there”—which meant in South America, perhaps in Chile. “That’s simply love of adventure,” the Consul said, and told him to remain with Mr. Richardson for another year and acquire mercantile experience. There followed an exchange of letters on the subject, with the result that in the summer of 1851 Christian Buddenbrook sailed for Valparaiso, where he had ​hunted up a position. He travelled direct from England, without coming home.
So much for his two sons. As for Tony, the Consul was gratified to see with what self-possession she defended her position in the town as a Buddenbrook born; for as a divorced wife she had naturally to overcome all sorts of prejudice on the part of the other families.
“Oh!” she said, coming hack with flushed cheeks from a walk and throwing her hat on the sofa in the landscape-room. “This Juliet Möllendorpf, or Hagenström—or Semmlinger—whatever she is, the creature!—Imagine, Mamma! She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t say ‘How do you do’: She waits for me to speak first. What do you say to that? I passed her in Broad Street with my head up and looked straight at her.”
“You go too far, Tony. There is a limit to everything. Why shouldn’t you speak first? You are the same age, and she is a married woman, just as you were.”
“Never, Mamma! Never under the shining sun! Such rag-tag and bob-tail!”
“Assez, my love. Such vulgar expressions—”
“Oh, it makes me feel perfectly beside myself!”
Her hatred of the upstart family was fed by the mere thought that the Hagenströms might now feel justified in looking down on her—especially considering the present good fortune of the clan. Old Hinrich had died at the beginning of 1851, and his son Hermann—he of the lemon buns and the boxes on the ear—was doing a very brilliant business with Herr Strunk as partner. He had married, less than a year later, the daughter of Consul Huneus, the richest man in town, who had made enough out of his business to leave each of his three children two million marks. Hermann’s brother Moritz, despite his lung trouble, had a brilliant career as student, and had now settled down in the town to practise law. He had a reputation for being able, witty, and literary, and soon acquired a considerable business. He did not ​look like the Semmlingers, having a yellow face and pointed teeth with wide spaces between.
Even in the family Tony had to take care to hold her head up. Uncle Gotthold’s temper toward his fortunate step-brother had grown more mild and resigned now that he had given up business and spent his time care-free in his modest house, munching lozenges out of a tin box—he loved sweets. Still, considering his three unmarried daughters, he could not have failed to feel a quiet satisfaction over Tony’s unfortunate venture; and his wife, born Stüwing, and his three daughters, twenty-six, twenty-seven, and twenty-eight years old, showed an exaggerated interest in their cousin’s misfortune and the divorce proceedings; more, in fact, than they had in her betrothal and wedding. When the “children’s Thursdays” began again in Meng Street after old Madame Kröger’s death, Tony found it no easy work to defend herself.
“Oh, heavens, you poor thing!” said Pfiffi, the youngest, who was little and plump, with a droll way of shaking herself at every word. A drop of water always came in the corner of her mouth when she spoke. “Has the decree been pronounced? Are you exactly as you were before?”
“Oh, on the contrary,” said Henriette, who like her elder sister, was extraordinarily tall and withered-looking. “You are much worse off than if you had never married at all.”
“Yes,” Friederike chimed in. “Then it is ever so much better never to have married at all.”
“Oh, no, dear Friederike,” said Tony, erecting her head, while she bethought herself of a telling and clever retort. “You make a mistake there. Marriage teaches one to know life, you see. One is no longer a silly goose. And then I have more prospect of marrying again than those who have never married at all!”
“Oh!” cried the others with one voice. They said it with a long hissing intake of breath which made it sound very sceptical indeed.
Sesemi Weichbrodt was too good and tactful even to men​tion the subject. Tony sometimes visited her former teacher in the little red house at Millbrink No. 7. It was still occupied by a troop of girls, though the boarding-school was slowly falling out of fashion. The lively old maid was also invited to Meng Street on occasion to partake of a haunch of venison or a stuffed goose. She always raised herself on tiptoe to kiss Tony on the forehead, with a little exploding noise. Madame Kethelsen, her simple sister, had grown rapidly deaf and had understood almost nothing of Tony’s affair. She still laughed her painfully hearty laugh on the most unsuitable occasions, and Sesemi still felt it necessary to rap on the table and cry “Nally!”
The years went on. Gradually people forgot their feelings over Tony’s affair. She herself would only think now and then of her married life, when she saw on Erica’s healthy, hearty little face some expression that reminded her of Bendix Grünlich. She dressed again in colours, wore her hair in the old way, and made the same old visits into society.
Still, she was always glad that she had the chance to be away from the town for some time in the summer. The Consul’s health made it necessary for him to visit various cures.
“Oh, what it is to grow old!” he said. “If I get a spot of coffee on my trousers and put a drop of cold water on it, I have rheumatism. When one is young, one can do anything.” He suffered at times also from spells of dizziness.
They went to Obersalzbrunn, to Ems and Baden-Baden, to Kissingen, whence they made a delightful and edifying journey to Nuremberg and Munich and the Salzburg neighbourhood, to Ischl and Vienna, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, and home again. Madame Grünlich had been suffering from a nervous affection of the digestion, and was obliged to take a strenuous cure at the baths; but nevertheless she found the journey a highly desirable change, for she did not conceal her opinion that it was a little slow at home.
“Heavens, yes—you know how it is, Father,” she would say, regarding the ceiling with a thoughtful air. “Of course, I ​have learned what life is like—but just for that reason it is rather a dull prospect for me to be always sitting here at home like a stupid goose. I hope you don’t think I mean I do not like to be with you, Papa. I ought to be whipped if I did, it would be so ungrateful. But I only mean life is like that, you know.”
The hardest thing she had to bear was the increasing piety of her parents’ home. The Consul’s religious fervour grew upon him in proportion as he himself felt the weight of years and infirmity; and his wife too, as she got older, began to find the spiritual side to her taste. Prayers had always been customary in the Buddenbrook house, but now for some time the family and the servants had assembled mornings and evenings in the breakfast-room to hear the Master read the Bible. And the visits of ministers and missionaries increased more and more from year to year. The godly patrician house in Meng Street, where, by the way, such good dinners were to be had, had been known for years as a spiritual haven to the Lutheran and reformed clergy and to both foreign and home missions. From all quarters of the Fatherland came long-haired, black-coated gentlemen, to enjoy the pious intercourse and the nourishing meals, and to be furnished with the sinews of their spiritual warfare. The ministers of the town went in and out as friends of the house.
Tom was much too discreet and prudent even to let any one see him smile; but Tony mocked quite openly. She even, sad to say, made fun of these pious worthies whenever she had a chance.
Sometimes when the Frau Consul had a headache, it was Tony’s turn to play the housekeeper and order the dinner. One day, when a strange clergyman whose appetite was the subject of general hilarity, was a guest, Tony mischievously ordered “bacon broth,” the famous local dish: a bouillon made with sour cabbage, in which was served the entire meal—ham, potatoes, beet-root, cauliflower, peas, beans, pears, sour plums, and goodness knows what, juice and all—a ​dish which nobody except those born to it could possibly eat.
“I do hope you are enjoying the soup, Herr Pastor,” she said several times. “No? Oh, dear, who would have thought it?” And she made a very roguish face, and ran her tongue over her lips, a trick she had when she thought of some prank or other.
The fat man laid down his spoon resignedly and said mildly: “I will wait till the next course.”
“Yes,” the Frau Consul said hastily, “there is a little something afterwards.” But a “next course” was unthinkable, after this mighty dish; and despite the French toast and apple jelly which finished the meal, the reverend guest had to rise hungry from table, while Tony tittered, and Tom, with fine self-control, lifted one eyebrow.
Another time Tony stood with Stina, the cook, in domestic discourse in the entry, when Pastor Mathias from Kannstadt, who was stopping a few days in the house, came back from a walk and rang at the outer door. Stina ran to open, with her peasant waddle, and the Pastor, with the view of saying an edifying word and testing her a little, asked in a friendly tone: “Do you love the Master?”
Perhaps he had the idea of giving her a tip if she professed herself on the side of the Saviour.
“Lord, Herr Pastor,” said Stina, trembling and blushing, with wide eyes. “Which one do Herr Pastor mean? T’ old un or t’ young un?” Madame Grünlich did not fail to tell the story at the table, so that even the Frau Consul burst out into her sputtering Kröger laugh. The Consul, however, looked down in displeasure at his plate.
“A misunderstanding,” said Herr Mathias, highly embarrassed.