Chapter 43Back to the Tempio — A New World JourneyZURÜCK ZUM TEMPIO — NEUE WELTREISE
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Returned to the Tempio Hermione, I made all the preparations for the opening of my first picture exhibition in the new hall. There was a world of things to do, in every corner and cranny. It was, after all, a finished whole that was to be presented. At last everything was ready. The garden too was resplendent in its most beautiful flowering. The second of June 19111 saw several hundred people gathered at my house. A wonderful catalogue2, at a cost of fifteen hundred marks, had been sent out; I had spared neither time, trouble nor expense.
Johanna was in her element. — At the black gate a genuine Indian in national dress received the ladies and gentlemen, had their names given him, which he announced loudly onward, and another servant in knee-breeches then led the guests up the lawn to me (who received them in the columned veranda of the dwelling house) and conducted them through the rooms of the upper floor to the rear staircase. From there a third servant brought them through the park into the sphinx-flanked picture exhibition.
It was all very impressive. But as usually happens at such great receptions: the visitors looked at all the trappings more than at the pictures themselves.
All the same, I was satisfied with the beginning. Many reviews came too. The one headed “A Greek Dream in the Mark3” pleased me most. But the daily attendance slackened after the first weeks, and I soon recognised that I should have to woo the public ever anew and with special occasions. — I gave one more Rose Festival, with a prologue spoken by myself.
Again the overflow! But the thing was endlessly strenuous and costly. A few Sunday events with lectures were thoroughly rained out.
The children had again been begged for with endless effort. They themselves came very gladly now, I felt it, even if they did not dare to say so, and indeed still betrayed little character of their own. Helga was already grown up, had even been brought out into society in Kiel. Inge was to be confirmed by a pastor of modern, liberal-minded direction. Of the stipulated six months after confirmation4 that had been promised me there was as little talk in her case as in Helga's; I had to thank God that they came at all, however short the time.
My brother-in-law had luck. After five young H.s had died before him, the entail with Castle J.5 fell to him against all expectation. The beloved children now lived there in splendour and luxury. The castle and the park were newly done up. All my “friends” congratulated me on how well this adoption had turned out. I myself, though, came little by little to feel that the right air of life for my two artist-children blew far rather around the Tempio than in Castle J. All the same I had to tell myself that from the worldly standpoint I had done the right thing in securing their future. How much more anxiously should I have to look into their future for them if they had had to stand early on their own feet.
In these eight high-summer days, in which it was quite still of exhibition visitors, we grew ever more inwardly close to one another. Without many words; it lay solely in the feeling. It made me deeply happy that the Tempio reached so far into their souls. And I too began, in those days, to love it more and more.
Today I hate it6 — despite its beauty. For it became a block at my leg, and the speculation on its earning power proves more and more to have been a mistaken one.
The parting after the eight days was very bitter to me, for in the autumn I meant to make a world journey again. Though to be sure — since I could not be with the children anyway, it was all one whether I dwelt here or at the North Pole. —
The dearest ones had gone; it grew ever hotter that summer, and we watered almost the whole day. Everything had, after all, to be in good order for the visitors and for me.
But I felt even now that the Tempio was taking from me, besides money, a good part of my life-strength as well. For the whole day long, somewhere, something demanded my personal strength.
And there were a thousand things to think of and see to. I was lying in a light kimono by the fountain, reading. Then I saw a youth of about eighteen striding towards the hall. When he saw me, he turned about and came up to me.
“May I go into the exhibition without an entrance fee; I am a painter, a colleague, Franz Cäsar Jentsch7, and moreover a writer too, so a double colleague!” — I said yes.
After a good while he came out again with a red face, as if intoxicated. “May I kiss the great artist's hands for her wonderful work.”
And now he showered me with a waterfall of observations, some of them quite good.
Told me, in Munich dialect and with the gestures of a true-hearted child of nature, of various good acquaintances we had in common. That his father was a Bavarian colonel who had cast him off because he wanted to become not an officer but a painter; that he was the favourite pupil of Leo Putz8, who even now was smoothing his paths. Through his recommendation he had already earned much money with graphic work. Besides, he was a writer too. He quoted me some good verses which, as I later learned, were not his. His one happiness, though, was his little wife: might he bring her to me? I could not say no. The next afternoon he came with a slight, pretty little creature, blood-young to look at, who performed just as understandingly before the pictures.
Then they besought me to take them in for the night. I did not do it gladly. After eight days I had to put them out by force, because I was expecting a visitor. Since I did not want them nesting in, I had told them they must eat out; but every other moment I caught Johanna slipping something to the “poor little wife”, a cup of cocoa, a buttered roll. Now they quartered themselves in the neighbourhood; “I would surely permit the sick wife to rest sometimes in my glorious park.” Which meant that from early morning on they dragged the deck chairs about the garden, tables likewise, and never brought anything back to its old place. But Franz Cäsar (his mother, supposedly, was an Italian countess!) now began to make himself little by little useful and, as he hoped, indispensable. He helped for hours watering the garden. When he went into town he always had something to see to for us, or some piece of news useful to me.
When visitors came he played the secretary, collected the entrance money. From week to week I was more annoyed at the pair and found them pushing. But then again they moved me to pity. Johanna got no proper work done the whole day, so much did the two of them have to chatter with her. They also told a touching love story of how the two had found each other — she had been a student of medicine.
For the third of September I planned a farewell festival for that summer. A few days later, after all, I meant to set out on my fifth world journey. And since I wanted to offer something quite singular, I hit upon a Greek moon festival9.
The idea was good. The pupils of the well-known dancer Frau Holtfreter were to descend the steps from the Greek hall and, at full moon, perform ancient Greek, classical dances on the round place before it. Beforehand I would speak Greek verses, in Greek dress.
We set a strong publicity campaign on foot. Jentsch redoubled his zeal.
And the great day drew near. An old admirer and friend, Dr. Alfred Rühl, had come to visit, a highly gifted man, but, as I saw, a candidate of death. (Not a year later his wife sent me the death notice.) But at that time he was all life and fire and admiration. And yet another unforeseen visit appeared with the Viennese actor Hermann Benke, called “the God of Währing”. With these Jentsch made friends in the most intimate way.
The festival was to be ordered again like the opening celebration. This time Jentsch was to conduct the guests through the living rooms, because he said that with so many precious things lying about one had to keep a sharp eye on them, and could not leave that to any servant. But when the flood broke in — there were seven hundred people — everything proved too small. And the crowd pressed — in the most glorious weather, to be sure — head to head.
The festival ran according to programme, brilliantly beyond measure and wonderfully singular.
Everyone, and I too, was deeply satisfied.
One of the hired waiters, who had changed his clothes in the bathroom, could not find his cap when the festival closed. After long searching he saw it at last in the farthest corner under the divan. I myself made the sad discovery next morning that the takings of four hundred marks were missing, which I had put away in the bathroom chest of drawers that very afternoon. I was beside myself, and told Jentsch at once10, who fell just as beside himself over it, and wondered whether one ought not to look into the servant who had stayed so long in the bathroom at the end. I knew the man to be honest to the core. But people had been coming and going the whole time. That was a strong damper on the joy of the successful festival. And a loss for my journey.
But now the preparations for it came to the foreground.
On the eve of my departure Johanna fell weeping on my neck: this time she was so namelessly afraid of being alone, and would I not allow the Jentschs to sleep downstairs in the pink children's room during my absence. They would pay regular rent; out of it she could meet light and heating; would I not please consent.
I said no, because I was afraid they would then nest themselves in all too firmly. But after Johanna had vowed to me that she would lock the upper rooms directly after my departure tomorrow evening, I yielded at last, though very unwillingly, to her pleas and tears.
I also drew up a document setting out everything the Jentschs might do and might not, and believed now that I had sufficiently restricted their freedom of movement.
When I told Herr Zappe of this, he was very dissatisfied with me and said I should not have done it. He could not abide Jentsch, and mistrusted him.
The next day I travelled to Hamburg, escorted to the train by Jentsch and Johanna. As the train pulled out, he was supporting her tenderly.
Now my everyday life sank away once more, and the picture-book of the world unrolled its ever new pictures before me. At first the sea was very smooth. In Tenerife we spent a day. Later I went through the equator baptism for the first time, and received the beautiful name of “Cuttlefish”. Then there were balls, concerts; I gave a lecture and took many orders for my just-published “Perlenkrönlein11”. For this, my self-anthology, Jentsch, my “house-thief”, had drawn the title page, which annoys me to this day. — There were many farmers from Southwest among the passengers, and I heard much of interest about conditions there. At Lüderitzbucht we stopped a day, and I got an inkling of the rigid features of that landscape. But all the way to the new diamond fields I unfortunately did not get.
Notes
Sources, identifications, and points where the German carries something English cannot. Added by this project; not in the original.
- ↑The second of June 1911 — The one full date the memoir has printed in years — and it matches the locally documented opening day of the Gemäldehalle exactly. Chapter 42's reconstructed chronology delivered her home from the second American journey in the spring of 1911; here the memoir itself supplies the date the Tempelhof local record preserves for the hall's opening, 2 June 1911, and the two confirm each other to the day. It is worth pausing on how rare this is: the book has crossed three years, four continents and two exhibitions without naming a single year, and breaks its silence for the Tempio's greatest day.
- ↑catalogue — A printed catalogue of the 1911 opening exhibition, produced and mailed at a cost of fifteen hundred marks — a serious sum, and a serious hunting lead. Fifteen hundred marks — roughly a workman's annual wage — bought no pamphlet: this was a substantial illustrated catalogue, sent out in quantity. If a single copy survives in any German library or estate, it would be the fullest inventory that exists of her paintings at their moment of greatest concentration, two hundred of them gathered in the purpose-built hall. Together with the Preuschenmappe of the same years, it belongs at the top of the list of documents to hunt.
- ↑A Greek Dream in the Mark — A review headline — which means the Berlin press of June and July 1911 covered the hall's opening, and the notices are findable. The Mark is the Mark Brandenburg, whose dry sand the Greek dream stood in — the same joke the dead cypresses of chapter 41 played less kindly. "Many reviews" of a datable event at a known address make this the most searchable German press corpus the memoir has offered since the Berlin exhibitions of the 1890s: Berlin papers, summer 1911, Lichtenrade, Tempio Hermione.
- ↑stipulated six months after confirmation — The adoption promises again — and they shrink even between the memoir's own chapters. Chapter 30's account of the written promises was six weeks a year, and a year with her after each daughter's confirmation; here memory says six months. Either the promise had versions or the recollection does — and both readings tell the same story: nothing was made binding at law, and every term eroded, on paper and in memory alike. Inge's confirmation "by a pastor of modern, liberal-minded direction" is its own quiet epilogue — this is the child of the earlier chapters' baptism scene, who ran screaming from the font, now confirmed under the gentlest clergyman the family could find.
- ↑the entail with Castle J. — A checkable genealogical claim: five young Holtzendorffs dead before the admiral, a family entail falling to him around 1911, a castle initialed "J." — the estate should be identifiable. A Majorat was an entailed estate passing whole to a single heir, and one falling to a man of nearly sixty "against all expectation", over five deceased younger kinsmen, is exactly the kind of event the Prussian genealogical handbooks record. Identifying Schloß J. would locate where Helga and Inge actually grew up in these years — the "splendour and luxury" against which the Tempio had to compete for them. Note the arithmetic of her consolation, too: the adoption's old justification, a secured future, restated at the very moment it turned gilded — and immediately contradicted by her own feeling that the right air for two artist-children blew around the Tempio.
- ↑Today I hate it — The harshest eruption of the writing present anywhere in the memoir: the life's dream of the last five chapters, renounced in one wartime sentence. "Heute" is 1917–18: a private exhibition hall in the fourth year of the war, with no visitors, no coal, no income, and a house that "demanded my personal strength" now demanding it of a woman in her sixties. Chapter 73 — Krieg, Geld, Zusammenbruch: war, money, collapse — is the story this sentence comes from, told in advance in six words. The bitterest part is structural: the memoir places the confession directly after the tenderest paragraph the Tempio ever gets, the eight quiet days when she and the children began to love it together. She died in the house in December 1918, eighteen months at most after writing that she hated it.
- ↑Franz Cäsar Jentsch — Remember the name: before the chapter is out the memoir will be calling him "my house-thief", and chapter 53 is titled Tempio-Raub — the robbery of the Tempio. Everything he says in the coming paragraphs — the Bavarian colonel father who cast him off, the Italian countess mother, the favourite-pupil claim on Leo Putz, the verses that turn out to be someone else's, the medical-student wife — should be read as his own testimony, quoted by a narrator who already knows how the story ends and lets him talk. This is the memoir doing suspense, and doing it well: the gun is loaded in plain sight, piece by piece, from "I said yes" onward.
- ↑Leo Putz — Leo Putz (1869–1940), the Munich Scholle painter, then at the height of his fame — exactly the name a young Munich confidence man would reach for. Whether Putz ever heard of Jentsch is another question. (Leo Putz)
- ↑Greek moon festival — The Griechisches Mondfest the local record remembers from the hall's first season — here dated precisely: 3 September 1911, the summer's farewell fete, seven hundred guests. The Tempelhof record preserves the Rose Festival and the Greek Moon Festival as the legendary fetes of the Gemäldehalle's opening year; the memoir now supplies their calendar and their logic — the Rosenfest a mid-season rally when daily attendance flagged, the Mondfest the season's grand farewell, staged days before she sailed. Moonlit Greek dances on the round place below the hall steps, the hostess speaking Greek verses in Greek dress: this is the evening that made the house's local legend, and the evening its resident con-man used best.
- ↑told Jentsch at once — The anatomy of the theft, as hindsight assembles it: the hidden takings, the cap planted deep under the divan, and Jentsch first to point at the "thoroughly honest" servant. Read as she wrote it — knowing what she knew by the writing desk — the paragraph is a complete little crime scene: someone watched her hide four hundred marks in the bathroom commode that afternoon; the hired waiter's cap turns up thrown to the farthest corner under the divan, which reads like manufactured suspicion; and the first voice proposing to search the honest man is the volunteer secretary who handled the entrance money all evening. Two pages on she flatly calls Jentsch "my house-thief" — case closed, verdict delivered in an epithet. Chapter 53's title, Tempio-Raub, says how much more he would take.
- ↑Perlenkrönlein — "Little Pearl Crown", her self-anthology of poems — the bibliography dates it 1912, but it was out by November 1911, and the memoir has copies selling on an autumn 1911 voyage. And its title page is by the house-thief. Perlenkrönlein: Gedichte is the last poetry collection in her bibliography, dated 1912, but it was in print by late November 1911, when the Kölnische Zeitung listed it among the books received for review (7 December 1911). So her "just published" on a ship that sailed in September 1911 fits a book of that autumn, and the 1912 is a post-dated title page or the bibliography's slip. The richer fact is the cover: Jentsch drew the title plate, so the one checkable surviving work of the man behind chapter 53's Tempio-Raub is on the front of her own book, where it "annoys me to this day" — the writing desk of 1917–18 still glaring at it. Any copy of Perlenkrönlein carries the house-thief's hand.