Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig (50 page)

In order to find the peace and quiet he needed to get down to concentrated work again, it was time to look for alternative accommodation to the London apartment. In the summer Stefan and Lotte travelled down to Bath in the south-west of England and stayed initially in Lansdown Lodge, a house in Lansdown Road. From this base they set about looking for a suitable house, and eventually found a property called ‘Rosemount’, which fitted the bill for both of them. Standing on a hill with a view over the city, the two-storey residence had a garden and was large enough to accommodate a study and a small library in addition to their living quarters. Viewing the property as a reasonably safe investment for a portion of his money, Zweig decided to buy it for himself and his future wife, in the hope that the negotiations with the current owner could be brought to a swift conclusion.

Before moving into their new home Stefan and Lotte planned to get married, and they had already made contact with a lawyer and the relevant authorities in Bath. On 1st September 1939 the couple had visited the registry office to make the final arrangements. In his diary Zweig described the course of the meeting and the rest of the day.

Everything seemed to go smoothly, the official was as friendly as can be and promised the ceremony for Monday—when suddenly an assistant looked in briefly to say that Germany invaded Poland this morning. And now we had a unique opportunity to admire the sangfroid of the English. The official carried on explaining to us what his part in the proceedings will be, as though nothing at all had happened; and whereas in Austria everybody would be running around or shouting, here everyone is staying calm and collected. There is nothing different about the city at all. People are not hurrying about or seeming agitated. Life goes on as normal. [ … ] In the city this afternoon. Nothing to be seen. Nobody in their wildest dreams would think that today is the day when the greatest catastrophe in the history of mankind began!
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Despite the outward appearance of calm, people in Britain were well aware of the implications that this act of war on the Continent could have for the future of their own country, given the current system of alliances. Before the day was out a blackout order had been issued to counter the threat of German air raids—the whole country was to be in total darkness from
dusk until dawn. It was not long before special calendars were printed, which not only indicated the times when the sun and moon rose and set, but also specified the hours between which not a glimmer of light was permitted to be seen.

With the entry of Britain into the war, Stefan and Lotte had been classified as enemy aliens, which stung Stefan. Lotte was German by birth, but he had been born in Austria. If he was now being put into the same category as his future wife, it could only mean that Britain had tacitly recognised the annexation of his homeland by the German Reich. Zweig now feared that they would be interned in a camp, but for the moment their registration as enemy aliens simply meant that they had to get permission from the authorities if they wanted to travel more than five miles from the market square of the town where they were registered. Fortunately their enemy status did not affect their wedding plans. The ceremony duly took place on the afternoon of 6th September 1939, although the couple had only been notified of their allocated appointment time on the morning of the day itself, much to their surprise: “Quick lunch and a shave, then the wedding ceremony with no great formalities, just the certificate declaring that I take L A to be my lawfully wedded wife. Enough for one day! And one more step towards order in a world of eternal chaos.”
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The new travel restriction had prompted brief doubts as to whether they had made the right choice to settle in Bath. But their misgivings were banished when, on the very day of their wedding, they received the news that Rosemount was available to buy on the terms they had negotiated. Less than two weeks later the new owner of the house was awaiting the furniture vans from London, laden with their precious cargo. Following some mishap the day before involving a cupboard he had brought across from Austria, Zweig became all the more worried when the vans had failed to turn up by the late afternoon: “Then waiting for the vans in Rosemount. I forgot to mention the stupid
Zwischenfall
with the
Bauernschrank
[incident with the cupboard] yesterday. I wait from 8½ and it becomes 10, 11, 12, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 o’clock, I phone three times, four times to London, quite convinced that something terrible must have happened with my furniture (poor Beethoven) two man [ … ] wait with me and go finally. In this moment 5.35 the two vans arrives.”
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The “poor Beethoven” in question was of course the desk, which they had managed to rescue from Salzburg, and which now took pride of place in their new Bath home.

While Zweig was still busy with sorting out the house and furniture, a letter was sent, without his knowledge, from the Ministry of Information to the BBC. The writer suggested that this might be the right moment, now that the war had just begun, to invite the writer Stefan Zweig, currently classified as an enemy alien, to speak on the radio. In the opinion of the official concerned, there was no doubt that Zweig’s words would be of considerable interest to listeners, and he added: “I suppose there is nobody but Thomas Mann whose influence in German speaking countries is so great.”
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In the event the suggestion was not taken up.

Zweig was back in London on 25th and 26th September to perform a sad duty. Two days earlier Sigmund Freud had died there, and Zweig had been asked to give a brief address at the funeral in the crematorium. Before moving down to Bath he had visited the revered master several times at his London home, on one occasion even bringing with him the young painter Salvador Dalí, who made a portrait sketch of Freud during his visit. Having already given commemorative addresses for Rilke and Hofmannsthal, Zweig now had to speak for the third time in memory of one of his late mentors.

Back in his new home, having completed new essays for his collection
Sternstunden der Menschheit,
a number of other minor pieces and the novel, Zweig wanted to get back finally to a project that had engaged his interest on and off for nearly forty years. Felix Braun was thrilled to hear of his friend’s plans: “My dear Stefan! Balzac! I was so happy when I read that. You alone are called to give us a work such as this, and no writer in the world is as much yours as he.”
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When selling off part of his manuscript collection Zweig had of course not parted with the Balzac autograph pages or the proofs for
Une ténébreuse affaire,
which he had bought in Paris in 1914. In the time-honoured manner these items now provided him with inspiration and study material for his biography of the French novelist, which was conceived as a two-volume work.

The antiquarian bookseller Heinrich Eisemann from Frankfurt, who had now opened a shop in London, was a long-standing acquaintance of Zweig’s—more than that, a close confidant, and not only in matters relating to new acquisitions for his collection. In the meantime Zweig had started buying manuscripts again. Through Eisemann’s good offices he was able to acquire some items of superb quality. Before long Zweig was the proud owner of no fewer than three manuscript scores by Georg Friedrich Handel, which were among the very rarest items on the market. The manuscript of
Mozart’s song
Das Veilchen
had graced his display cabinet since 1935, and in 1939 this outstanding ensemble was completed by Franz Schubert’s
An die Musik
. To the Beethoven memorabilia and manuscripts he had been buying since the 1920s were now added a bundle of manuscripts relating to Beethoven’s death and burial, as well as two menus written in his hand. Zweig wrote to Geigy-Hagenbach to announce further successes in this quarter: “Did I tell you that I bought Danhauser’s drawing of Beethoven on his deathbed (I already have the one by Teltscher)? With the desk I practically have a whole museum now, which nobody on earth can match—apart from Bodmer, who has something like it in his own way. I am less and less interested in acquiring minor items.
Pauca sed optimum
—few, but the best.”
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It appears that Zweig even planned to write a monograph on Beethoven, because he compiled a detailed list for himself, with annotations, of all the items in his collection (noting in the margin alongside the entries for the violin and cream skimmer “Still in Vienna unfortunately”)
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and studied the composer’s manuscripts at great length.

In general he now found himself returning more and more to themes from earlier times and from his own country. In April 1940 he was invited by the Conférences des Ambassadeurs to travel to Paris and give a lecture in the Théâtre Marigny. Friderike, who had stayed on in France, had suggested the idea of inviting her ex-husband from Bath. By now he was able to travel freely again, having officially become a subject of King George VI the month before. Lotte too was granted British citizenship in June, and each of them swore the oath of allegiance within a few days of their naturalisation.

It did not take long to find a subject for the lecture in Paris—Zweig’s text was entitled “The Vienna of Yesterday”. He had already started to make some initial notes for an autobiography, and decided to speak about the city of his birth—now lost to him—in rose-tinted retrospective. Following his rapturous reception by a capacity audience in the theatre, he was able to extend his stay in Paris to a good two and a half weeks, giving Zweig the opportunity to conduct research for the Balzac biography in the Bibliothèque Nationale and various archives. He also had meetings with Friderike, with whom he still had to tie up a few financial loose ends, and his friend Julien Cain, the director of the BN. To both of them Zweig talked about the terrible future he saw coming, starting with the imminent German invasion and occupation of France. He also gave three radio talks, in which he left his listeners in little doubt that the
whole of Europe would soon be at war. In conversation with friends and acquaintances he tried to make them see that there was still time to escape from the danger zone. His friends listened to him, alarmed by what he said and even more by his depressed state of mind; but they did nothing, which only deepened Zweig’s gloom.

And there was little to lift his mood when he contemplated his earlier circle of intimates in Salzburg and Vienna. At least Erwin Rieger, Felix Braun and Victor Fleischer had all managed to get out of Austria in time. Zweig had not heard from Rieger in a long time, and it was not until 1941 that he learnt that his friend and former collaborator had died the year before in Tunis. Little was known about the precise circumstances of his death. The official version was that he had died in an accident, but Zweig was convinced that Rieger had taken his own life.

Braun had escaped to England via Switzerland, was living in Lancashire, and stayed in regular contact with Zweig by letter. Both were very concerned about Fleischer, their mutual friend from their time together in Vienna, who had fallen seriously ill. He too had fled to Britain, where he received medical treatment from Lotte’s brother Manfred, a practising doctor. Zweig visited Fleischer several times in hospital, and invited him down to Bath to recuperate afterwards. Their visitor had evidently got the wrong idea about life at Rosemount, picturing formal soirées instead of quiet country living, and Zweig was forced to set the record straight: “Dear Victor, Your note caused much merriment here—a dinner jacket has not been sighted here since we moved in. You must think we live very grandly. [ … ] Since you are to be our house guest, I hasten to tell you—and don’t be alarmed!—about a minor family event: yesterday evening a hen laid the first Rosemount egg, and Farmer Zweig is very proud of this achievement.”
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“Farmer” Zweig was indeed doing some gardening now, as a distraction from the adversities of everyday life. In Salzburg he had only titivated the odd bush or shrub from time to time, but now he made a serious effort to familiarise himself with the fundamental principles of gardening. Behind it all lay the idea of becoming self-sufficient up to a certain point. His fear of food shortages during the war also led him to stockpile large quantities of tinned goods in the basement of the house; extra supplies of paper and ink were stored away as well.

Lotte’s niece Eva lived with them at Rosemount for a while, since her parents thought the girl would be safer outside London when the war began.
It was the custom to speak French at mealtimes in the Zweig household, which severely limited the available topics of conversation from the child’s point of view. Zweig got on particularly well with the gardener, Edward Miller, and they spent many an evening pondering together the ways of the world. The gruff Miller was quite a character, a passionate republican and anti-royalist, who even refused to stand and join in when the national anthem struck up in the cinema—as was the custom in those days—and the rest of the audience sang ‘God Save the King’.

Despite the war, the time in Bath brought interludes of greater relaxation and leisure than the years before. But Zweig’s dark forebodings could quickly cause his mood to change. Just talking about the threatening situation was sometimes enough to plunge him into depression. Since the outbreak of war he had been listening regularly to the radio news bulletins in order to keep up with events. In the early months of the war, certainly, when the German
Wehrmacht
was celebrating one victory after another, there was little reason to hope that his condition might improve. On 21st May 1940 Zweig was in London when he heard the latest news: “I caught my breath when I heard the radio at lunchtime—the Germans in Amiens. That means they are nearly in Abbeville and at the coast—which means the British army in Belgium is surrounded on three sides and being forced back towards the coast, and if they are lucky they will lose only their equipment. It is a disaster, and, I fear, the final catastrophe. It means that Paris is under threat, the Maginot Line has been rolled up from the rear, Britain is isolated and may even be invaded soon. [ … ] And now they are calling for Saturday and Sunday shifts in the aircraft factories, after eight months of easy going. It is a black day, and I confess that for all my gloomy forebodings I never believed such a lightning breakthrough possible.”
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In his imagination he already saw his Bath retreat captured by Hitler’s troops. A few days later he wrote in his diary: “Those of us who live with and in the light of the old ideas, we are lost; I have already prepared a certain little phial.”
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