May 27th
I see that I was carried away by ecstasy, parable, and oratory and quite forgot to tell you more about the children. I must have sat for at least two hours, lost in contemplation of my work—the sketch I did yesterday will give you a somewhat fragmentary impression of it—when, with the approach of evening, a young woman came toward the children, who still hadn’t moved. She was carrying a basket on her arm and called out to them from a distance, “My, what a good boy you are, Philip!” She nodded to me. I returned her greeting, rose, walked over to her, and asked if she was their mother. She said she was and, giving the older boy a bun, picked up the baby and kissed him in a very pretty display of motherly love. “I told Philip to hold the little one,” she explained, “while I went to town with my older boy to get some white bread and sugar, and a small earthenware dish for the baby’s porridge.” I could see all the things she mentioned in her basket because the lid was up.
“I want to make soup for my Hans this evening.” Hans was the name of the youngest child. “My oldest boy, the rascal, broke the dish yesterday while he was quarreling with Philip over what was left of the cereal.” I asked her where her oldest boy was, and she had just finished telling me that he was chasing a pair of geese in a nearby field, when he came running up to us with a hazel switch for his little brother. I went on chatting with the woman and learned that her husband had set out on a journey to Switzerland to claim an inheritance left him by a cousin. “They were going to cheat him of it,” she explained. “They didn’t reply to his letters so he had to go there himself. I hope nothing has happened to him. I have had no word from him since he left.” I found it difficult to part from the woman. I gave each of the children a penny and gave her one for the little boy, so she could treat him to some white bread with his soup when she went to town again. Then we parted.
Let me tell you something, my dear fellow—when I no longer know how to contain myself, the sight of someone like that, who is content within the narrow confines of her existence, who knows how to get by from day to day, who, when she sees the leaves fall, thinks of nothing but that winter is coming…it stills the tumult in my heart.
Since that day, I have visited Wahlheim often. The children have grown accustomed to me. I give them my sugar when I drink my coffee and share my bread and butter and sour milk with them in the evening. Every Sunday they get their penny, and if I don’t happen to be there after vespers, I leave word with the innkeeper to give it to them. They confide in me, all sorts of things, but what amuses me most is their wildness, and their simple outbursts of self-assertion when they are joined by other children from the village. It wasn’t easy to convince their mother that they were not annoying me in the least.
May 30th
What I said the other day about painting is true also of poetry. It is simply that one should recognize and try to express only what is excellent, and that is saying a great deal in a few words. Today I experienced something that, simply told, could be a beautiful idyll, but what is poetry, episode, and idyll? Must it always be patchwork when we participate in a revelation of nature?
If you are expecting something very lofty and highly refined after this preamble, then you have been sadly misled again. Nothing more grandiose than a peasant lad produced this lively anticipation in me. I will tell the tale badly, as usual, and as usual you will say that I am exaggerating. It is Wahlheim again, always Wahlheim, where such unique things take place.
A group of people were taking coffee under the linden trees. They did not appeal to me, so I made up an excuse for not joining them. A peasant boy came out of one of the neighboring cottages and busied himself fixing the plow which I sketched a few days ago. I liked his appearance so I accosted him and asked him some questions about himself. We were soon on quite friendly terms, and, as is usual with this type of person, he began to confide in me. He told me that he was in the service of a widow and that he was being treated well there. He talked on and on about her, singing her praises, and it wasn’t long before I realized that he was hopelessly in love with her. She was not young, he explained, and her first husband had treated her badly. She therefore did not want to marry again. From what he told it became quite clear how pretty and charming she was, and how much he wished that she would choose him to help her forget her first mistake.
I would have to repeat what he said word for word really to convey to you his attraction to the woman, his love and devotion. Indeed, I would have to be a great poet to reproduce what he said, his attitude, the harmoniousness of his voice, the latent fire in his eyes, as spiritedly as I experienced them. But there are no words for the tenderness expressed by the man as a whole. Anything I might say would be clumsy in comparison. I was especially touched by his fear that I might come to the wrong conclusions about the relationship and doubt her propriety. It was charming to hear him speak of her appearance and figure, to which he was so strongly attracted although she was no longer young. I can recapture it only in the depths of my soul. Never in my life have I witnessed the driving forces of desire and passion so purely expressed. I will even go so far as to say that I have never seen them envisioned with so much chastity. Don’t be vexed if I tell you that I catch fire myself when I recall his innocence and honesty. The thought of his loyalty and tenderness follows me everywhere, and I feel faint with desire myself, as if his passion had been contagious.
Of course I shall try to catch a glimpse of her as soon as possible, or rather, come to think of it, I don’t think I shall. I’ll do better to continue to visualize her through the eyes of her lover. Who knows…seen with my own, she might not look at all as I see her standing before me now, and why spoil the pretty picture?
June 16th
You want to know why I don’t write? You ask me that, you who are supposed to be a learned man? You should know without a word from me that I am well and…oh, let’s not beat about the bush. I have met someone who has touched my heart. I have…oh, I don’t know what I have!
It is not going to be easy for me to tell you what happened chronologically—that I have met a most endearing creature. I am in high spirits and very happy, therefore no good at all for a factual accounting of affairs.
An angel? Rubbish! That is what every man calls his beloved, isn’t it? Yet I am quite incapable of conveying to you how absolutely perfect she is and why she is so absolutely perfect. Let it suffice to say that she has captivated me.
She is naïve yet very sensible; she is kind yet firm, and tranquillity personified as she goes about her daily tasks.
And all I have just written is arrant nonsense and tiresome notions that really don’t give you a single one of her traits. Some other time—no, not some other time but right now I am going to tell you about it. If I don’t do it now, I never will. Because, to be quite frank, since I started writing to you I have put down my pen three times to see that my horse was saddled so that I could ride over to visit her. Although I swore to myself this morning that I would not go there today, I find myself constantly wandering over to the window to note how high the sun still stands in the sky.
There. Nothing to be done about it. I simply had to go and see her, and here I am again, William. I shall have my supper now and write to you. What joy it is to see her surrounded
