My husband was as little aware as the other great landowners of an enormous contradiction in their lives.
On the one hand, luxury: innumerable servants, riding and carriage horses, vast sums spent on hunting, old wines, and food. And on the other, a total lack of all the little things that make life attractive. Drawing-rooms in which the truly quite beautiful old furniture was covered with dark rep – so that the dirt would not show so much, bathrooms with no windows and no running water. (In any case, the custom was to take only one “general bath” a week.) No books, no magazines – or at most: Sport im Bild* and, once in a while, Die Woche.*
Their passionate devotion to all things German made these people look on foreign cultures with disdain. Young girls, out of patriotism, did not learn Russian, and being able to speak good French or English was almost immoral.
In general, it was not good form to be educated – that was left to the “literati.”
All this was easier to accept in the old than in the young people. A few of the old gentlemen were – in a primitive way – grands seigneurs, who had been transplanted from another century into the age of the telephone and the telegraph. The telephone and the telegraph were in any case used mainly for the entertainment of the landowners’ wives. Telegrams were received at the county seat by fat Fräulein Paulson, who would telephone the message to the estate; the same method was used to send a telegram. If a telegram
contained an interesting item of news Fräulein Paulson telephoned the various estates: “Did you know that Fräulein v. Y. has become engaged?”
or “Baron X. has become a father.” Once I sent my mother a telegram to Japan for her birthday. It was in English, which Fräulein Paulson did not understand, and half an hour later my mother-in-law rang me: “Is someone ill at your place? Did you send a telegram to Japan?”
There were two railway stations near us – that is to say, one was thirty, the other seventy kilometers away. The little train that stopped at the closest one made fifteen kilometers an hour and in winter regularly got stuck in the snow. According to one story, it once ran off the rails, but neither the engineer nor the passengers noticed the difference. Still, speed itself is a relative matter.
Once we went to a cattle market and took our head drover with us. He was a man of about forty, and he had never been on a train before. As we boarded the train, he already looked dubious, and when the train stopped at the first station, he came to our compartment, pale, his knees trembling, and said, almost in tears: “I won’t go any further, gnädiger Herr. Not even if you fire me this minute. The little devil runs like a mad thing, and there’s bound to be an accident. One ought not to tempt God like this.”
In spite of all our assurances he got out and walked the whole of the long way back.
Even my father-in-law preferred driving twenty hours in a carriage to riding in the train, albeit for a different reason. “I will not travel in the same conveyance with the common herd.” Nor would he drive with fewer than four horses, and in general he preferred six. His carriage raced along; Jan, the coachman, continually threatened with the prospect of being dismissed because he was thin (and a “gentleman’s coachman” should be fat), drove like the very devil.
Gradually automobiles appeared, but they could not move very fast on the bad roads and continually had to stop to allow frightened horses and scarcely less frightened peasants to pass.
A charming story was told about one of the old landowners. His nephew had bought an automobile, and the old gentleman let himself be talked into taking a drive in it. The speed pleased him, and when he got out he went up to the driver with a friendly smile and in the palm of his hand offered him a lump of sugar. It was his custom to do this with his horses when they made good time.
*
A trip to town was always an exciting affair, for the train ran only every twenty-four hours. If you missed it, you had to take the post coach, which almost broke your bones. The Balts, who would let their coachmen wait for hours in the bitterest winter cold – the horses were always well covered – could not get used to the idea that they had to be punctual. When we went to town it was always the same story: “Hurry up. We’ll miss the train.”
“I still have to shave.”
“There isn’t time. Come along.”
Then my husband would go to the telephone and ring the station-master: “Herr Wilms, I am taking the train. We shall be a little late. Please see to it that we don’t miss it.”
“Certainly, Herr Baron.”
And so indeed, when we arrived at the station half an hour late, there was the train patiently waiting for us, and Herr Wilms received us with a broad smile. Each year my husband made him a present of a cow.
*
Cows played an important role on the estate. They lived far better than the workers, and if anything went wrong with them, the weather was never too bad to fetch the vet. I was a little afraid of the cows and kept out of their way; only the yard where the calves were raised appealed to me.
The little creatures were soft and gentle and came to know one. But that too had its dark side; if one of the calves with which I had made friends was slaughtered, I would eat no meat for days. This greatly irritated my husband to whom it was “stupid sentimentality.”
Twice a year Herr Meischtke, the cattle dealer, a little red-headed Jew, came to the estate. Sometimes he came in a carriage and four, sometimes with two horses, now and then with one, and once, indeed, on foot. But he recovered from every one of his business failures, and managed to swim up to the surface again. As soon as he had enquired about our health and asked if there was still no son and heir, the trading and haggling would begin. Herr Meischtke had nothing to teach my husband in this regard; the one was as crafty as the other. My love of truth was outraged – how can one, as an aristocrat, try to pass off inferior goods on a poor man who has to struggle so hard to earn his living? I made a face and then finally burst out: “Don’t buy that cow, Herr Meischtke. It has been sick for months and will not get any fatter!”
From that day on, the moment Herr Meischtke arrived at the farm he
always asked: “Where is the gnädige Frau Baroness? The gnädige Frau Baroness is a good business woman; she should be here when we strike our deal.”
My husband had his revenge when I tried to sell my gelding, Charmant, to one of his friends for a very good price. The deal was almost closed when he asked in a friendly way: “Did my wife tell you that the gelding limps as soon as it strikes pavement?”
When the visitor had gone, without having bought Charmant, I reproached my husband bitterly.
“The fellow has so much money! And when I think of the way you always try to get the better of poor Herr Meischtke!”
“One does not cheat one’s equals,” he replied sternly.