even stricter confidence, the same story. They would be part of a circle who knew the truth about Anselm Stern and Dorothy Wellwood, and they would preserve the convention that Dorothy was indeed Dorothy Wellwood, and thus she could go home. She wondered what Toby would think, who had loved her mother so long—she was trying to rethink, revisit, what she surmised of the relations of those two. She rejected the idea that he might always have known that Dorothy was not Humphry’s child. She would have noticed, if he had looked knowing in any way. He did not. He looked baffled.
And how should she prepare her return—to a certain extent, a climb-down—to Todefright? She wrote a letter to her mother. It took her a long time to write.
Dearest Mother Goose,
I was so pleased to have your letter and hear that all is well at home. I miss the children, and Tom, and the countryside, even though it is both beautiful and exciting in the city. I am learning a lot. Germans are very different from us, and you come to understand yourself better by seeing people who are different.
I don’t know why you thought I might not want the fairytale. I always love to see it, and know what happens next. I showed it to Herr Anselm Stern whose theatre we have been visiting. He said Mistress Higgle might be related to Hans mein Igel (originally by the Grimms) and put on his own puppet play about Hans the Igel for all of us to see. We have become great friends with Herr Stern and all his family. Frau Stern is an artist. I don’t know if you have met her. She is a very kind and welcoming woman and invites all of us—including the Tutes—to supper. Herr Stern’s sons, Wolfgang and Leon, are very good friends of all of us, now. They talk to Griselda in German, and take Charles to cabaret theatres and cafes! I know you are sad we shall not be in Todefright for the Midsummer Party, but the Sterns have invited us to celebrate it—it is called the Johannisnacht Fest—here, with them, and we will think of you all. Everyone in Munich—that is, in artistic circles in Schwabing—dresses up in fancy dress on every conceivable occasion, so we shall have to think what to go as. Herr Stern has promised to do a version of Midsummer Night’s Dream with marionettes for the occasion. Everyone here loves to go out and see the Bauerntanz—the people dancing in the streets. Herr Stern says he can make the rustics in the Dream be like the German Bauern. I am learning German but very slowly. Griselda speaks it like a swan swimming in a river. But she too will be happy to come home. We all send love, to you, and to Father, and to everyone in Todefright.
Dorothy.
Dorothy thought this letter was both a masterpiece of the disingenuous, and a very useful lifeline, cast to Olive, if Olive wanted to grasp it. She then sat down to think about her own fury at Olive, her wish to close her out and punish her. What exactly was she punishing her for? For a moment of passion (she supposed it was a moment of passion) with the mysterious and intriguing Anselm? For her own birth? She was glad she had been born, she was contented enough with who she was, even if that person turned out to have a different origin from what she had always supposed. For bringing her up in ignorance, as a Wellwood? What else could a woman in that situation have done? She had not lied to Humphry—possibly could not. They had both loved Dorothy, that she had to admit. What angered her was the lie. Those who are lied to feel diminished, set aside, misused. So Dorothy felt. But she was also discovering that knowing about lies that have been told is a form of power. She had power over both Humphry and Olive, because they had lied to her, and she knew. And they did not know how much she knew, and they were fearful. The letter she had written would make them more fearful, more anxious. They deserved that. But the letter also, in its naivete and neutrality, left the door open for everyone to pretend that nothing had happened at all—for them all to know they were pretending, and tell a story together. She pressed the envelope shut, licked the stamp, and carried it to the post.
Charles/Karl was also preoccupied with his double identity. He saw more both of the politically agitated and of the raffish and satirical sides of life in Schwabing than the young ladies did. He sat in the Cafe Stefa-nie, in the thick smoke and the singing, and listened to psychoanalysts and anarchists preaching ferment. He listened to slogans. “Unity is princely violence, is tyrannical rule. Discord is popular violence, is freedom” (Panizza). Intense analogies were drawn between hidden destructive parts of the soul, and the excitement of peasants and workers in mobs. It was dangerous to deny such impulses—violence, conspiracy, revolution, murder became necessary and desirable as the tyrannical state was opposed and overcome. It was a long way from the polite lucubrations of the Fabians, and even further from the horse-racing, shooting-party circles of the new King, at the edge of which Charles’s father moved—thanks to his German mother’s fortune. Charles was quite intelligent enough to see that he was able to be an anarchist because he was rich. The Munich cafe thinkers were aesthetically excited by peasant manifestations of energy—the charivari, the Bauerntanz, the Karneval. Karneval and misrule went together, and were glorious. Joachim Susskind mostly listened. Wolfgang said little, though, like his father, he sketched incessantly, beards wagging in passionate dissertation, women’s legs visible under their skirts as they leaned back, applauding. Leon joined in. He discussed the necessity of assassination, almost primly. Karl said he did not see that it was necessary—such detached Acts as there had been—anarchists had killed the President of France, the Prime Minister of Spain, the Empress Elizabeth and the King of Italy—had only led to more repression. There speaks an Englishman, said Leon, not unfriendly. You don’t recognise oppression as we do. You cannot be put in prison for Unzuchtigkeit—“obscenity” Joachim translated—or for lese- majeste as our artists regularly are. We are driven to put on our serious plays in private clubs and cabarets. And then, the police come in, and the artists are imprisoned, or banished. Oskar Panizza is in Switzerland and cannot return.
“We shall take you to the new artists’ cabaret, the Elf Scharfrichter. Eleven executioners,” said Joachim. “It’s better in German—the sharp edge of the axe is the bite of the wit.”
Karl was already amazed by the satirical poison and violence of the periodicals, Jugend, Simplicissimus, with their drawings at once elegant, wicked, obscene and lively. Black dancing demons. Bulldogs. Women like bats and vampires with black mouths. Leon invited him—as an English anarchist—to admire Simpl’s cartoons on English matters. Leon explained to Charles/Karl that artists in Schwabing felt great sympathy for the oppressed Boers in South Africa. The cartoons preached “Shoot the English in the mouth, where they are most dangerous.” There was a graphic and horrible image of King Edward and a colonial officer stamping on Boers in a concentration camp. “The blood from these devils is befouling my crown,” said the King. “Strong, is it not?” said Leon. “English tourists have tried to get it suppressed. It mocks the Kaiser also. His endless uniforms. His journey to the Holy Land.”
Karl was surprised—somewhat surprised—by his reaction to these images. He felt pure, chauvinistic English resentment and hurt, which he concealed from the Germans as he had concealed his anarchism from his family. Like Dorothy, he had moments of homesickness for a life more slow-paced, less intense, more ruminative. More polite. The English could not take such pleasure in giving offence. The cartoon would be funnier, less—less unpleasant.
• • •
They took him to see the Elf Scharfrichter perform. They took him on a night when the puppets were playing, because Wolfgang had helped in the construction of the cast, and was involved in the performance itself.
The Scharfrichter were eleven artists—including the playwright, Frank Wedekind—who paraded in blood-red robes and hangmen’s masks, carrying executioners’ heavy swords, and performed plays, songs, puppet and shadow plays, using popular forms—which were referred to as Tingeltangel—and comparing themselves to the workers in applied arts—they meant, they said, to make songs to be sung as craftsmen made chairs to fit people’s bottoms. Angewandte Lyrik was what it was about. They had a
