Irretrievable (2 page)

Since
Unwiederbringlich
, as well as a psychological novel and a novel of
mœurs
, is something of an historical novel, a few historical notes may be appropriate to help the English reader, particularly on the Schleswig-Holstein question. As Palmerston once remarked, only three people had ever understood it, of whom one went mad, the second had died and the third, Palmerston himself, had forgotten! Briefly, the nineteenth-century history of the duchies concerns their attempts to remain united and, in spite of certain personal links with the Danish monarchy, relatively autonomous, in accordance with the declaration of 1460 (referred to by the Princess on p.
87
) that they should remain undivided in perpetuity—
uf ewig ungedeelt
. A second obvious factor was the desire of some Danes to incorporate parts of Schleswig-Holstein into Denmark; in particular the so-called
Eiderdanes
(of whom the politician Hall, also mentioned in the novel, was one of the leaders) wished the whole of the area north of the Eider to become Danish. The German
Bund
or Confederation, with Prussia in the forefront, was equally determined to maintain rights, at least in Holstein which, since 1815, was a member of the
Bund
.

In 1848, Frederick VII, of whom we hear a good deal in the novel, proclaimed Schleswig a Danish province. The Schleswig-Holsteiners appealed to the Bund and their forces under a Prussian general achieved considerable success until, in 1849, they were at last decisively defeated at Fredericia, in north Schleswig. The Prussians then concluded an armistice and when the Schleswig-Holsteiners tried to fight on they were defeated at Idstedt by the Danes under the command of de Meza, a Dane of Portuguese extraction who also appears in Fontane's novel. Finally in 1853, by the so-called London protocol, Schleswig remained in loose union with Denmark while Holstein, although largely administered from Copenhagen, remained a member of the German
Bund
—an explosive situation which forms the historical background throughout
Unwiederbringlich
.

Fontane, who was the author of a book on the Danish war of 1863, took great care to ensure accuracy, both in the general background and in political events as well as in personal details, for example concerning Frederick VII. Frederick who lived from 1808 to 1862, first married in 1836, married a second time in 1841 and divorced five years later. His mistress Luise Rasmussen, later Countess Danner, of whom so much is heard in the novel, had been successively a governess and a ballerina before being set up as a milliner with the help of the King's private secretary Berling, who then withdrew in favour of the King. One of the undoubted charms of
Unwiederbringlich
is the way in which Fontane's imagination has been stimulated and entranced by the setting of the novel on the Baltic coast as well as at the Copenhagen court and in the Danish country-side, which he visited to obtain local colour. Fontane has thus been able to give a wider resonance and a freer rein to his imagination in his treatment of the
fait divers
(actually occurring in Mecklenburg-Strelitz) which provided him with the starting-point of his novel; and it is relevant both to his obvious depth of understanding and to his powers of moral and emotional detachment that the relationship between his own father and mother and his own wife and himself seem to have provided material for the relationship between Christine and Helmut in the novel. Be that as it may, the combination of so many factors—the accuracy and vividness of the background and setting (not forgetting some very comical secondary characters), the skilful narrative technique, the sureness of purpose, the brilliantly aphoristic style, the pervasive irony, the importance and modernity of the theme, make
Unwiederbringlich
one of the outstanding novels of the nineteenth century.

This translation is dedicated to my wife.

Douglas Parmée
Queen's College, Cambridge
1963

Holkenäs
Castle, the family seat of Count Holk, was built on a dune sloping down to the sea, a mile south of Glücksburg: an impressive sight for the occasional visitor to a district at that time quite off the beaten track. It was an edifice in the Italian style, reminiscent in so many ways of classical Greek architecture that the Count's brother-in-law, Baron Arne of Arnewieck, could well speak of a
latter-day temple of Paestum
. Ironically, of course, yet with some justification, for seen from the sea it looked like an oblong cluster of columns which concealed the living and reception rooms on the ground floor of the building, while the upper storey broke sharply back, rising a bare six feet above the columns which extended all around the four sides of the building to form a veranda; and it was these columns which gave the building its markedly Mediterranean appearance. Along the veranda stood stone seats spread with rugs, used all day and every day throughout the summer months, unless it was pleasanter to move up on to the flat space, more terrace than roof, which ran all round the top floor. On this roof-terrace supported by the ground-floor columns stood pots of cactus and aloes; here, even on the warmest day, the air was relatively cool and if a sea-breeze sprang up, the flag drooping from its mast would start flapping loudly, adding to the breeze as it fluttered to and fro.

The castle of Holkenäs had not always stood upon this dune and the present count himself, after his marriage sixteen years before to the beautiful baroness Christine Arne, youngest sister of the owner of the neighbouring estate, had moved with his bride into the modest rooms of the original old castle of Holkenäs further inland in the large village of Holkeby, exactly opposite the old village church, built of stone and possessing neither chancel nor tower. Both buildings dated from the fourteenth century and a new castle had already been planned under the count's grandfather. But it was the present count who, possessing amongst other fads a passion for building, had taken up the idea once more and soon afterwards had built the much-discussed castle on the dune which, scoffed at by some, admired by others, was not only more elegant but more comfortable. In spite of this, the countess had never ceased to prefer the old castle; and so strong was her preference that she never passed it without a pang of melancholy at the thought of the pleasant time she had spent there. For her, those years had been the happiest of her life, When all was love and no differences between herself and her husband had yet appeared. Her three children had been born in the old castle opposite the church, and the death of the youngest, who had been christened Estrid, had only brought the handsome young couple closer together and strengthened their sense of belonging to each other.

Nothing had remained quite the same since they had moved into the new castle and the countess, who had been brought up by Herrnhuter 
[1]
and was, in any case, of a highly emotional nature, had had such a strong premonition of this change that she would have much preferred to see the old castle renovated and enlarged so that they might have continued to live there. The count, however, was obstinately set on his “castle by the sea.” On the first occasion when he mentioned the subject to his wife, he declaimed:

a quotation which had exactly the opposite effect on the countess whom it was intended to impress and thus win over to the new building, for it merely aroused in her a somewhat malicious bewilderment. Holk was not a very literary man and no one knew this better than the countess.

“Where did you unearth that quotation, Helmut?”

“At Arnewieck, of course. There's an engraving hanging on the wall in your brother's house and it was written underneath. And I must confess, Christine, that I was very much taken by it. A castle by the sea! I think it would be a splendid thing and make us both very happy.”

“If people are happy they should not try to become any happier. And do you realize how strange it is that you should quote that? I think you only know the beginning of that song which, by the way, is by Uhland, I hope you don't mind my telling you … but it does not go on at all in the way it begins. At the end, it becomes very sad:

Yes, Helmut, that is how it ends.”

“Excellent, Christine. I like it too,” laughed Holk. “And it is by Uhland, you say? Highest regard for him. But you surely don't expect me not to build my castle by the sea merely because ‘a song of mourning' resounded from the hall of an imaginary castle by the sea—even if it was imagined by Uhland?”

“No, Helmut, I hardly expect that. But I confess that I would rather stay down here in the old stone house in spite of its lack of comfort—and its ghost. The ghost doesn't affect me but I do believe in premonitions, even if the Herrnhuter refuse to have anything to do with them and are probably right. Nevertheless, we are all subject to human weakness and so we're often anxious about things that we cannot put out of our minds, however hard we try.”

After this conversation, the subject was not raised again except on one occasion when, after sundown, the couple had climbed on to the dune to look at the new building which had been started meanwhile. When they reached the top, Holk smiled and pointed at the clouds which were, at that very moment, “golden and pink.”

“Yes, I know what you mean,” said the countess.

“And?”

“In the meantime, I have resigned myself. When you first spoke to me about the new building, I was feeling sad; you know why. I could not forget our child and I wanted to be near the spot where he was buried.”

He kissed her hand and then confessed that what she had said on the last occasion had upset him as well. “And now you are so good and kind. And how lovely you look in this beautiful evening light. I think that we are going to be very happy here, don't you, Christine?”

She hung tenderly on his arm. But she made no reply.

All this had taken place the year before the completion of the building and soon afterwards, because the old castle in the village was becoming less and less habitable, Holk agreed with his brother-in-law to send Christine and the children to Arnewieck and to leave them there until the following Whitsun when everything should be ready; and now Whitsun was drawing near and the day had come to move into the new castle. True, the garden which sloped down at the rear of the dune was only half-planted and there was still much left uncompleted. But one thing had been finished: the narrow façade facing seawards. Here, there were already small shrubberies and circular flower-beds and in front, where the dune sloped downwards, a flight of steps led from the terrace to the beach and was continued by a pier built out to sea, which was also intended as a jetty for the steamers plying between Glücksburg and Copenhagen.

Christine was filled with admiration and joy far beyond her expectations and when, after going round the house, she walked up on to the flat roof and looked out over the splendid view spread before her, she forgot all the worries and forebodings that had continued to plague her even after she had accepted the idea of the new building; she called to the children still standing on the terrace to come up and share her pleasure. Holk saw how deeply she was moved and was just about to speak and thank her when she forestalled him: “Helmut, it's almost a year since we last stood here on the dune and you asked me whether I would be happy here. I didn't want to reply then.”

“And now?”

“Now I say yes, I am.”

Some weeks
later, an old friend from her boarding-school days at Gnadenfrei, Julie von Dobschütz, also arrived. She was a young woman in somewhat straitened circumstances, originally invited to stay the summer. Soon, however, the countess felt that it would be pleasant to have her as a companion, friend, and governess, a feeling shared by Holk, since he was rather concerned at Christine's isolation in the new castle. So Fräulein Dobschütz stayed on as governess to Asta and Axel, the two children. Asta was left entirely in her charge; but Axel changed his teacher when a young ordinand, by the name of Strehlke, joined the household.

All this had taken place seven years ago. The count and the countess had settled in at the new castle and were enjoying in actual fact the “happy days” that they had hoped to spend there. The love and affection that had bound them together over the years continued and although they sometimes had differences of opinion over educational and religious matters, they were not of so serious a nature as to endanger the peace of the household. It is true that recently, since the children had grown older, there had been no lack of such differences, which was hardly surprising in view of the diversity of character of the count and his wife. Holk, though a kind and excellent husband, was none the less a man of rather ordinary gifts and in any case markedly inferior to his wife, who was a far more talented woman. Of this there could be no doubt; but that it was so—and no one saw it more clearly than Holk himself—was nevertheless somewhat galling for him and there were times when he suffered from Christine's virtues and wished for a rather less outstanding wife. At first, this had been only an unspoken feeling, one which he hardly admitted even to himself; but for some time now this feeling had been put into words; frequent disputes arose and although Julie Dobschütz had great diplomatic gifts and did not find much difficulty in smoothing things over, the fact remained that Christine, who had foreseen all this, began to think nostalgically of the old days when such things never, or hardly ever, occurred.