In May it happened that Uncle Gotthold—Consul Gotthold Buddenbrook, now sixty years old—was seized with a heart attack one night and died in the arms of his wife, born Stüwing.
The son of poor Madame Josephine had had the worst of it in life, compared with the younger and stronger brother and sister born of Madame Antoinette. But he had long since resigned himself to his fortunes; and in his later years, especially after his nephew turned over to him the Consulate of the Netherlands, he ate his lozenges out of his tin box and harboured the friendliest feelings. It was his ladies who kept up the feud now: not so much his good-natured wife as the three elderly damsels, who could not look at Frau Consul, or Antonie, or Thomas, without a spark in their eyes.
On the traditional “children’s day,” at four o’clock, they all gathered in the big house in Meng Street, to eat dinner and spend the evening. Sometimes Consul Kröger or Sesemi Weichbrodt came too, with her simple sister. On these occasions the three Miss Buddenbrooks from Broad Street loved to turn the conversation to Tony’s former marriage and to dart sharp glances at each other while they egged Madame Grünlich on to use strong language. Or they would make general remarks on the subject of the undignified vanity of dyeing one’s hair. Or they would enquire particularly after Jacob Kröger, the Frau Consul’s nephew. They made jokes at the expense of poor, innocent, Clothilde—jokes not so harmless as those which the charity girl received in good part every day from Tom and Tony. They made fun of Clara’s austerity and bigotry. They were quick to find out that Tom and Christian were not on the best of terms; also, that they did not need to pay much attention to Christian anyhow, for he was a sort of Tomfool. As for Thomas himself, who had no weak point for them to ferret out, and who always met them with a good-humoured indulgence, that signified “I understand what you mean, and I am very sorry”—him they treated with respect tinctured with bitterness. Next came the turn of little Erica. Rosy and plump as she was, they found her alarmingly backward in her growth. And Pfiffi in a series of little shakes drew attention several times to the child’s shocking resemblance to the deceiver Grünlich.
But now they stood with their mother about their Father’s death-bed, weeping; and a message was sent to Meng Street, though the feeling was not entirely wanting that their rich relations were somehow or other to blame for this misfortune too.
In the middle of the night the great bell downstairs rang; and as Christian had come home very late and was not feeling up to much, Tom set out alone in the spring rain.
He came just in time to see the last convulsive motions of the old gentleman. Then he stood a long time in the death-chamber and looked at the short figure under the covers, at the dead face with the mild features and white whiskers. “You haven’t had a very good time, Uncle Gotthold,” he thought. “You learned too late to make concessions and show consideration. But that is what one has to do. If I had been like you, I should have married a shop girl years ago. But for the sake of appearances—! I wonder if you really wanted anything different? You were proud, and probably felt that your pride was something idealistic; but your spirit had little power to rise. To cherish the vision of an abstract good; to carry in your heart, like a hidden love, only far sweeter, the dream of preserving an ancient name, an old family, an old business, of carrying it on, and adding to it more and more honour and lustre—ah, that takes imagination, Uncle Gotthold, and imagination you didn’t have. The sense of poetry escaped you, though you were brave enough to love and marry against the will of your father. And you had no ambition, Uncle Gotthold. The old name is only a burgher name, it is true, and one cherishes it by making the grain business flourish, and oneself beloved and powerful in a little corner of the earth. Did you think: ‘I will marry her whom I love, and pay no attention to practical considerations, for they are petty and provincial?’ Oh, we are travelled and educated enough to realize that the limits set to our ambition are small and petty enough, looked at from outside and above. But everything in this world is comparative, Uncle Gotthold. Did you know one can be a great man, even in a small place, a Caesar even in a little commercial town on the Baltic? But that takes imagination and idealism—and you didn’t have it, whatever you may have thought yourself.
Thomas Buddenbrook turned away. He went to the window and looked out at the dim grey gothic facade of the Town Hall opposite, shrouded in rain. He had his hands behind his back and a smile on his intelligent face.
The office and tide of the Royal Consulate of the Netherlands, which Thomas Buddenbrook might have taken after his father’s death, went back to him now, to the boundless satisfaction of Tony Grünlich; and the curving shield with the lions, the arms, and the crown was once more to be seen on the gabled front of the house in Meng Street, under the “Dominus providebit.”
Soon after this was accomplished, in June of the same year, the young Consul set out to Amsterdam on a business journey the duration of which he did not know.