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Chapter 3Family. First ImpressionsFAMILIE. ERSTE EINDRÜCKE

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I come from a Hessian noble family that by its traditions traces itself back to Luxembourg robber-knights. Burg Brisch, the ancestral seat, still stands there. But it is a very long time ago, and later the robber-knights reappeared in the Limburg region as pastors. And that, no doubt, gives the ill-starred mixture of my soul: a hybrid thing of robber-knight and paschal lamb — forever in the wrong place too impetuous, too daring, or else too soft and weak.

Robber-knight and paschal lamb! It was the signature of my soul, the curse of my life.

My mother was a née Scheffer-Hattendorf, from an ancient Hessian family of manorial landowners on a declining branch. The line counted four chancellors; it had owned many estates, among them Liederbach, of whose splendid furnishings and silken wall-hangings my grandmother often told. She came from the old Hessian family von Hanstein and had sixteen quarterings of nobility. The Scheffers held a patent of nobility from the fourteenth century, but thought themselves too good actually to bear the title. Under my mother's brother the last estate, Hattendorf, was parcelled out; he himself went to America as a farmer and died there.

My mother, in her day the acknowledged most beautiful woman in Darmstadt, married my father at sixteen; he was thirty-six. At first it was a love-match, which later did not turn out very happily. My father, who died a privy councillor, became, despite his good nature and his great gift for music, an embittered, lonely man in his later years. My ardently feeling mother — a hot-head — felt misunderstood. Later, too, the judgment of the world became her measuring-line. And yet she was the first to help me set out on my career as a painter. — I will now try to hold fast, as directly as possible, the impressions, the confused images, of my earliest childhood years.

Frankly, I have very few memories of it. I see everything in the farthest distance. I always ran away from home the moment I could so much as walk, and my father tied a little bell around my neck, which one heard tinkling now here, now there. Once I ran off into the street, as far as I possibly could; I was soon caught again, and I still feel the regret over it now. Another time I hid on the balcony behind a big pomegranate tree. I heard my mother lamenting and wailing over my disappearance, but I stayed quiet in my corner until, only after hours, I was found by chance. Why I did not come forward of my own accord, especially since I felt my mother's loud weeping prickle in all my nerves, is a riddle to me to this day. — Another time I see myself looking out of the window with my father. He was humming a song about the wind, “that tears the child's floppy ears off.” I thought: my ears are small and no “floppy ears.” That I could not grasp: why such a jesting untruth should be funny. —

My beautiful mother was painted in Darmstadt by old “court-painter Hartmann.” I can still see him before me: small, slim, with a great grey moustache. I was allowed to go with her into the sloping attic studio, and I studied the brushes and paints and their handling with the greatest attention. — At Christmas I then received white paper and coloured pencils.

Thereupon my first “sensuality” awakened, when I gave blue forget-me-nots a yellow cup; I still feel it today like a pleasure, the delicate blue against the deep yellow of the cup. — And then my greatest joy — I was still very small — was to crawl under the grand piano when my father, working the pedal hard, improvised. It put me into a kind of twilight-state; I forgot everything else over it and often had to be pulled out of my hiding-place by force. —

When my parents went to the court ball — my mother spending hours at her toilette and, as it seemed to me, wrapped in fairy-tale garments — and said goodbye to me, my father would promise to bring me back sweets. The next morning he had kept his word only sparingly. But I would slip up to the garret to the court footman Wachtel — he had far finer and more plentiful sweets “pinched” for me, the “little bell-child” — and was secretly astonished that my distinguished parents could bring me far less sugar than “Father Wachtel.”

Then we moved to another apartment with a garden in which wonder-treasures revealed themselves to me. I believe it was there that the great Pan took possession of my child's soul — I sat for days in some green corner, among flowers, fashioning little doll's-bonnets out of rose petals. With the thorns I fastened ribbons of ribbon-grass to them. And I made chains of tiny blossoms, in the manner I later saw in India, which are unknown among us. In autumn, when the grapes ripened, great blue grapes, I climbed a ladder, stuck my head between leaves and fruit, and looked into the neighbouring garden, which seemed to me a forbidden wonder-world. So fairy-tale-like was all of it to me.

Decades later I stood again in my childhood paradise and simply could not grasp where I had found all its beauties. Yes — it was the great Pan who had kissed me there for the first time! And perhaps another, too: the world-genius, or in plain German the “travel-devil,” took secret and unnoticed possession of me there.

Above us lived a family Ulrich, who came straight from Trinidad and Barbados.

The owner of the house was a “Paris tailor,” Mr. Eppenestre, who in his native Darmstadt was spending the annuities he had tailored together in Paris. In the garden house lived an old Russian count from the legation. With these people from the most various circles I then came much into contact; I heard of distant lands and cities as of the nearest neighbourhood. All this made an indelible impression on me. What all did not pass through my confused small-child mind. — Until then I had been my parents' only offspring. I was given a French-Swiss girl as a nursemaid. She was very pretty and merry, and I could soon chatter French with her like a little parrot.

But one evening there was great commotion in the house. A strange woman ran through the nursery with big sponges and water-cans, then I heard shrill screaming. I was put to bed earlier than usual, and Louisa even forgot to rub my thumb and forefinger with “the bitter stuff.” That was to break me of the habit, for every night I sucked two fingers to fall asleep and had already half sucked them away; I still see them before me: quite thin were the little fingers, with deep dents in them. That was the “Suckeles,” the sucking. With my left hand I would then pull the sheet over my ear and scratch eagerly at it, the “Kratzes,” the scratching. Without “Suckeles” and “Kratzes” falling asleep was impossible for me, and I felt it as bottomless cruelty that they wanted to break me of this pleasure, to spoil it for me, with rubbings of wormwood. — That evening, though, I scratched and sucked entirely undisturbed, to my heart's content.

The next morning my father came to my bed, lifted me out, and carried me into my mother's bedroom: “You've got a little sister.” I gazed in wonder at the little marvel of the world, delighted in the tiny hands, could not grasp where the child had so suddenly come from. The “stork” seemed to me so improbable. Why did he not let himself be seen? —

But from that time a cooler air surrounded me in the house. All love was directed to the newborn sister, the “baby of the nest.” And I began early to feel that my heart was far too warm for the ordinary temperature of the world. And so, with few exceptions, it has been cold all its life. —

Soon lessons were to begin. Herr Huth, a stout man with little grey curls and a snub nose, taught me to read and write. I thought he looked exactly like a picture of Luther that hung in the nursery.

One day my grandmother was expected. I looked forward to it greatly, for she always brought splendid “Magenmorsellen,” stomach lozenges, a speciality from Marburg, where she had recently been living. — Grandmother did come, and soon afterwards went out with my parents; Louise was with little Mimi, who had developed into an impudent little bawler.

I used the time to search grandmother's trunk for more “Magenmorsellen,” but instead found a magnificent lace bonnet with long fluttering lilac ribbons (I can still see it) and a big gold cross. The latter I put into my little pearl bag, but the splendid bonnet under the bed. Served grandmother right. Why did she bring so few lozenges!

In the evening the bonnet was to be christened and the gold cross worn. Neither could be found; great agitation arose, the servants were accused. It became uncomfortable for me; I said, “Just look under the bed.” There lay the state-bonnet, in the farthest corner, crumpled up. My mother wanted to strike me. On this occasion she found the gold cross in my bag. “You wicked child, you bad child,” she wailed. “Why did you do that?” — And to this day I do not know why. Perhaps because man's heart is evil from his youth1? —

I was now soon to enter school, after being taught for four years by Herr Huth-Luther. But now the chief sufferings of my childhood began. I could not make friends with the other little girls, always kept myself apart, and could not understand why they were forever shrieking and merry. I had so much to ponder, so much to think about. The most glorious thing, after all, had been life in Venice, among the great painter-princes. If only one could suddenly say, too: “Anch'io sono pittore2!” — Every rose I got hold of in summer I set in a vase on my windowsill. But only when the sky was blue. Then I dreamed myself off to Venice. The window-cross turned into a pointed arch. Below, the lagoon sobbed, and I was Titian painting his dead daughter, or the blonde Dogaressa who, deceiving her old husband, awaited her “paramour.” This word paramour awakened quite peculiar imaginings in me.

But school was an abomination to me. Actually I attached myself to no one there; only one good, stupid girl, Lola Reis she was called, came, all through those years, unfailingly to fetch me for the walk to school. I knew nothing else about her. Nor did I ever hear of her again later; after confirmation I lost sight of her. Is it not almost so with all people? One wanders together a little while, and then the one stays a few steps behind, never catches up with the other again, and one never hears of each other again.

Most dreadful of all to me were the breaks, when all the girlfriends, arm in arm, chained themselves together and whispered among themselves. It was then that the feeling of loneliness first crept consciously over my heart.

So as not to be together with the others, I often climbed secretly during the breaks up to the loft and crept about among the wet washing. And these breaks seemed to me endless.

Learning was a joy to me. I especially loved history and languages. The history teacher, Dr. Boßler, red-haired, slim, and elegant, was even my first crush. I was, to be sure, not the only one in the class who secretly adored him. For his lessons we all wore our Sunday boots. Ten years later he did indeed marry one of his pupils.

The ones I most admired of all the pupils, or rather the resident boarders, were Henriette Schadee, a Dutch girl whom I later visited in Rotterdam, and Fanny Jais, the buxom Munich lass who was engaged to a medical man, Dr. Graf. I was often in their house in Munich later, too. Sadly the poor doctor soon went mad. — Then there was the picture-beautiful Lily Meyer from Brazil, who recited Cassandra so wonderfully. (I always tried to imitate her.) She married the art-writer Dr. Wilhelm Lauser in Vienna. I stayed with her too on my wanderings. They lived in a large park, and she was rocking her first-born. (I learned there to eat boiled corn-cobs with butter.) — Where have they gone, these women? It seems to me I can still hear them laughing and joking. Fanny Jais loved to kiss, but the headmistress, nicknamed “the little grey cloak”, then forbade it her. “That was all too sensual.” This remark set the whole class to hard thinking. — To the English teacher, Fräulein Lanz, I often brought pomegranate blossoms from the tree behind whose tub I had once hidden. The red pomegranate blossoms of that tree flamed through my whole childhood. Whomever I loved, I brought some to. But it seemed to me as if no one recognized the symbolic gift of my flaming heart. All my life, in the face of every happiness, I remained the little girl with the pomegranate blossoms! Craving and never finding! —

At home I did not feel too comfortable. More and more the parents' love turned to my sister, who by her clinging, outwardly tender nature brought it about that her every wish was fulfilled. —

We had moved again, and I was given, next to the kitchen, a narrow little chamber, a “room of my own”! That made me infinitely proud, puritanically plain though the closet was. I trained beans and bindweed before the window, kept a secret sweet-collection in an old writing-desk, and set on the windowsill a plate of fruit and an open favourite book, Schwab's Treasury of Ballads. When I now thought at school of this, my very own Eldorado, my heart swam in bliss. As soon as I was home again, I locked myself into my kingdom, under the pretext of urgent schoolwork. Only then did I feel completely free, completely myself.

Here too we had a garden, to which, between two walls, a narrow vine-walk led. What dreams that green arbour enclosed for me, flashing, when the sun shone on it, with green-golden lights. My father planted and sowed in his leisure hours; my mother cleaned vegetables the while and called on me, always in vain, to help. “You’d rather run up and down the vine-walk like a wild animal,” she said reprovingly. — In time I came to feel our “privy-councillor household” as dreadful, the contradiction of being and seeming in our life. Everything came down to throwing sand in the eyes of “the world.” Court balls and costly street-dresses! At home one did not like to be caught unprepared. To ask an unforeseen guest to table would have been an impossibility; whereas there were great parties, with weeks of preparation (daily redoubled belt-tightening) and distinguished hired servants. Or else lodging-visits that turned everything upside down. With guests our table was famous; for the four of us alone it was very meagre.

I once aroused my mother's horror when I declared to her that I had never yet eaten my fill.

Very often an old inheritance-uncle came, Baron Zoch, on whom every possible consideration was lavished. I was his favourite — my sister then, decades later, inherited from him. He was widely travelled, very demanding, a Swabian who began every sentence with “Hajo.” We therefore called him the “Hajo-uncle,” and he impressed me mightily at the time; for me he was surrounded by the nimbus of his far travels.

My father often had appointments out of town. We were then usually allowed to come along, “to make use of the carriage.” All these journeys made a deep impression on me; I started a book in which I noted the various places these trips brought me to. Each time, at a new entry, I had the involuntary feeling: “Now there is one place fewer in the world that you do not yet know.” For from earliest childhood I had a burning drive to travel and a feeling that it was something like an iron duty for me to know and see everything, but everything, in this world thoroughly. — On each of these outings I took my sketchbook, and brought back my childish drawings of all the newly-seen things with great pride. Once we drove to Lindenfels in the Odenwald. Around the romantic castle-ruin the elder was in bloom. At the inn we met a young painter — August Fritz he was called — who later, far too early for him, went to ruin and died. But at the time his skill made a tremendous impression on me. He praised my feeble attempts and said to me at parting: “Adieu, little artist.” —

I still possess an old notebook from that time, in which are found the words: “Adieu, little artist!” This word brands itself into my brain in letters of flame and decides my fate — I shall be an artist!

One summer we were in Jugenheim on the Bergstrasse. All the sweet, almost southern beauty of the Heiligenberg, the seat of Prince Alexander of Hesse and his wife, Princess Battenberg3, the mother of Alexander, the later first prince of the Bulgarians, dug itself into my soul. Often we sat by the “golden cross,” which affords a glorious view over the Rhine plain. — How I loved nature even then! —

But from now on no picture in any magazine was safe from me. I copied everything, everything, and was infinitely proud of it.

Then came the war of '704 with its upheavals! Into my little room came billeted soldiers. A gunsmith, who not long afterwards died of cholera.

My mother did nursing in a military hospital. I was sometimes allowed to visit her and bring the wounded flowers and fruit. How that made me happy. Even then the captured wounded French were treated with special interest. Often we looked from the school windows into another hospital, and many of us blew little kisses to the French soldiers with the red trousers! until the headmistress got wind of it and the punishment followed. — My uncle Fritz, my mother's youngest brother, a first lieutenant in Austrian service, once severely wounded at Königgrätz5 and turned into a one-armed man, now came in 1870 for a long visit and, with his one arm, his manly beauty, and his white uniform, aroused the interest of the whole little residence-town. I could not stand him, I did not trust him. He felt himself a martyr because he could not go along into the new war. In summer, as almost every year, we were again for a long time at Hattendorf, on the estate. Grandmother had already died, my uncle Louis ran everything on a lavish scale. Uncle Fritz, who was staying there to recuperate, somehow, in a mysterious way, kicked over the traces. I eavesdropped on many a secret family council about his sins, which interested and excited me greatly. It was all so dark, life had so many questions and riddles. When would one know everything? I drew eagerly again, this time from nature. For the painter Schlösser, a Darmstadt child who had been driven from Paris by the war, had seen my work and made it my duty never again to draw from copies, but only from nature. So I drew, in that Upper-Hessian corner, on the Schwalm, near Alsfeld's stork's-nest, everything that came before my fingers. But far more gladly I roamed aimlessly about in fields and woods. A little hill I climbed every evening to watch the sun go down. Then I spread out my arms, gazed as if enraptured into the red glow, and cried: “Great World-Spirit, take everything from me, only let me see the world, the world!” —

When I then came far too late to supper, my good aunt Ottilie, my mother’s unmarried sister, scolded: “There’s no bearing you any longer; you get crazier by the day.” I now also read indiscriminately whatever came under my fingers, and life seemed to me ever more colourful and confused. More and more I withdrew into myself. Yes, I was soon entirely estranged from my parents. They did not understand me.