“Why are you behaving in this way?” she
said kindly. “You know, I’m not angry
with you for what you said last night. You can’t
help it if you love me. I’m flattered.
But although I’m not exactly engaged to Hermann
I can never love anyone else, and I look upon myself
as his bride.”
Philip blushed again, but he put on quite the expression
of a rejected lover.
“I hope you’ll be very happy,” he
said.
Professor Erlin gave Philip a lesson every day.
He made out a list of books which Philip was to read
till he was ready for the final achievement of Faust,
and meanwhile, ingeniously enough, started him on a
German translation of one of the plays by Shakespeare
which Philip had studied at school. It was the
period in Germany of Goethe’s highest fame.
Notwithstanding his rather condescending attitude towards
patriotism he had been adopted as the national poet,
and seemed since the war of seventy to be one of the
most significant glories of national unity. The
enthusiastic seemed in the wildness of the Walpurgisnacht
to hear the rattle of artillery at Gravelotte.
But one mark of a writer’s greatness is that
different minds can find in him different inspirations;
and Professor Erlin, who hated the Prussians, gave
his enthusiastic admiration to Goethe because his
works, Olympian and sedate, offered the only refuge
for a sane mind against the onslaughts of the present
generation. There was a dramatist whose name
of late had been much heard at Heidelberg, and the
winter before one of his plays had been given at the
theatre amid the cheers of adherents and the hisses
of decent people. Philip heard discussions about
it at the Frau Professor’s long table, and at
these Professor Erlin lost his wonted calm: he
beat the table with his fist, and drowned all opposition
with the roar of his fine deep voice. It was
nonsense and obscene nonsense. He forced himself
to sit the play out, but he did not know whether he
was more bored or nauseated. If that was what
the theatre was coming to, then it was high time the
police stepped in and closed the playhouses.
He was no prude and could laugh as well as anyone
at the witty immorality of a farce at the Palais Royal,
but here was nothing but filth. With an emphatic
gesture he held his nose and whistled through his
teeth. It was the ruin of the family, the uprooting
of morals, the destruction of Germany.
“Aber, Adolf,” said the Frau Professor
from the other end of the table. “Calm
yourself.”
He shook his fist at her. He was the mildest
of creatures and ventured upon no action of his life
without consulting her.
“No, Helene, I tell you this,” he shouted.
“I would sooner my daughters were lying dead
at my feet than see them listening to the garbage of
that shameless fellow.”
The play was The Doll’s House and the author
was Henrik Ibsen.
Professor Erlin classed him with Richard Wagner, but
of him he spoke not with anger but with good-humoured
laughter. He was a charlatan but a successful
charlatan, and in that was always something for the
comic spirit to rejoice in.
