# Buddenbrooks/Volume 1/Part 6/Chapter 1

CHAPTER I
Thomas Buddenbrook took a solitary early breakfast in his pretty dining-room. His wife usually left her room late, as she was subject to headaches and vapours in the morning. The Consul went at once to Meng Street, where the offices still were, took his second breakfast with his mother, Christian and Ida Jungmann in the entresol, and met Gerda only at dinner, at four in the afternoon.
The ground floor of the old house still preserved the life and movement of a great business; but the upper storeys were empty and lonely. Little Erica had been received as a boarder by Mademoiselle Weichbrodt, and poor Clothilde had moved with her few sticks of furniture into a cheap pension with the widow of a high school teacher, a Frau Dr. Krauseminz. Even Anton had left the house, and gone over to the young pair, where he was more needed. When Christian was at the club, the Frau Consul and Ida Jungmann sat at four o’clock dinner alone at the round table, in which there was now not a single extra leaf. It looked quite lost in the great spaces of the dining-temple with its images of the gods.
The social life of Meng Street had been extinguished with the death of Consul Johann Buddenbrook. Except for the visits of this or that man of God, the Frau Consul saw no guests but the members of her family, who still came on Thursday afternoons. But the first great dinner had already been given by the young pair in Broad Street. Tables were laid in both dining- and living-room, and there were a hired cook and waiters and Kistenmaker wines. It began at five o’clock, and its sounds and smells were still in the air at eleven. All the business and professional men were present, ​married pairs and bachelors as well: all the tribe of Langhals, Hagenströms, Huneus’, Kistenmakers, Överdiecks, and Möllendorpfs. It finished off with whist and music. They talked about it in glowing terms on the Bourse for a whole week. The young Frau Consul certainly knew how to entertain! When she and the Consul were alone, in the room lighted by burned-down candles, with the furniture disarranged and the air thick with heavy odours of rich food, wine, cigars, coffee, perfume, and the scent of the flowers from the ladies’ toilettes and the table decorations, he pressed her hand and said: “Very good, Gerda. We do not need to be ashamed. This sort of thing is necessary. I have no great fondness for balls, and having the young people jumping about here; and, besides, there is not room. But we must entertain the settled people. A dinner like that costs a bit more—but it is well spent.”
“You are right, she had answered, and arranged the laces through which her bosom shimmered like marble. “I much prefer the dinners to the balls myself. A dinner is so soothing. I had been playing this afternoon, and felt a little queer. My brain feels quite dead now. If I. were to be struck by lightning I should not change colour.”
Next morning at half past eleven the Consul sat down beside his Mother at the breakfast table, and she read a letter aloud to him:
My dear Mother,
I must beg your pardon—it is a shame that I have not written before in the eight days I have been here. My time has been so taken up with all the things there are to see—I’ll tell you about them afterwards. Now I must ask if all the dear ones, you and Tom and Gerda and Erica and Christian and Tilda and Ida are well—that is the most important thing.
Ah, what all I have seen in these days!—the Pinakothek and ​the Glyptothek and the Hofbrauhaus and the Court Theatre and the churches, and quantities of other things! I must tell you of them when I see you; otherwise I should kill myself writing. We have also had a drive in the Isar valley, and for to-morrow an excursion to the Wurmsee is arranged. So it goes on. Eva is very sweet to me, and her husband, Herr Niederpaur, the brewery superintendent, is an agreeable man. We live in a very pretty square in the town, with a fountain in the middle, like ours at home in the market place, and the house is quite near the Town Hall. I have never seen such a house. It is painted from top to bottom, in all colours—St. Georges killing dragons, and old Bavarian princes in full robes and arms. Imagine!
Yes, I like Munich extremely. The air is very strengthening to the nerves, and for the moment I am quite in order with my stomach trouble. I enjoy drinking the beer—I drink a good deal, the more so as the water is not very good. But I cannot quite get used to the food. There are too few vegetables and too much flour, for instance in the sauces, which are pathetic. They have no idea of a proper joint of veal, for the butchers cut everything very badly. And I miss the fish. It is quite mad to be eating so much cucumber and potato salad with the beer—my tummy rebels audibly. Yes, one has to get used to a great deal. It is a real foreign country. The strange currency, the difficulty of understanding the common people—I speak too fast to them and they seem to talk gibberish to me—and then the Catholicism. I hate it, as you know; I have no respect for it—
Here the Consul began to laugh, leaning back in the sofa with a piece of bread and herb cheese in his hand.
“Yes, Tom, you are laughing,” said his Mother, and tapped with her middle finger on the table. “But it pleases me very much that she holds fast to the faith of her fathers and shuns the unevangelical gim-crackery. I know that you felt a certain sympathy for the papal church, while you were in France and Italy: but that is not religion in you, Tom—it is something else, and I understand what. We must be forbearing; yet ​in these things a frivolous feeling of fascination is very much to be regretted. I pray God that you and your Gerda,—for I well know that she does not belong to those firm in the faith—will in the course of time feel the necessary seriousness. You will forgive your mother her words, I know.”
On top of the fountain (she continued reading) there is a Madonna, and sometimes she is crowned with a wreath, and the common people come with rose garlands and kneel down and pray—which looks very pretty, but it is written: “Go into your chamber.” You often see monks here in the street; they look very respectable. But—imagine, Mamma!—yesterday in Theatiner Street some high dignitary of the church was driving past me in his coach; perhaps it was an archbishop; anyhow, an elderly man—well, this gentleman throws me an ogling look out of the window, like a lieutenant of the Guard! You know, Mother, I’ve no great opinion of your friends the ministers and missionaries, but Teary Trieschke was certainly nothing compared to this rakish old prince of the Church.
“Horrors!” interjected the Frau Consul, shocked.
“That’s Tony, to the life,” said the Consul.
“How is that, Tom?”
“Well, perhaps she just invited him a trifle—to try him, you know. I know Tony. And I am sure the ‘ogling look’ delighted her hugely, which was probably what the old gentleman wanted.”
The Frau Consul did not take this up, but continued to read:
Day before yesterday the Niederpaurs entertained in the evening. It was lovely, though I could not always follow the conversation, and I found the tone sometimes rather questionable. There was a singer there from the Court opera, who sang songs, and a young artist, who asked me to sit for him, which I refused, as I thought it not suitable. I enjoyed myself most with a Herr Permaneder. Would you ever think there ​could be such a name? He is a hop-dealer, a nice, jolly man, in middle life and a bachelor. I had him at table, and stuck to him, for he was the only Protestant in the party. He is a citizen of Munich, but his family comes from Nuremberg. He assured me that he knew our firm very well by name, and you can imagine how it pleased me, Tom, to hear the respectful tone in which he said that. He asked how many there are of us, and things like that. He asked about Erica and Grünlich too. He comes sometimes to the Niederpaurs’, and is probably going to-morrow to Wurmsee with us.
Well, adieu, dear Mamma; I can write no more. If I live and prosper, as you always say, I shall stop here three or four weeks more, and when I come back I will tell you more of Munich, for in a letter it is hard to know where to begin. I like it very much; that I must say—though one would have to train a cook to make decent sauces. You see, I am an old woman, with my life behind me, and I have nothing more to look forward to on earth. But if, for example, Erica should—if she lives and prospers—marry here, I should have nothing against it; that I must say.
Again the Consul was obliged to stop eating and lean back in his chair to laugh.
“She is simply priceless, Mother. And when she tries to dissimulate, she is incomparable. She is a thousand miles away from being able to carry it off.”
“Yes, Tom,” said the Frau Consul, “she is a good child, and deserves good fortune.” And she finished the letter.