CHAPTER VI.

My introduction to art, and acquaintances great and small in the Lennestrasse.

The Drakes mentioned in my sister’s journal are the family of the sculptor, to whom Berlin and many another German city owe such splendid works of art.

He was also one of our neighbours, and a warm friendship bound him and his young wife to my mother.  He was kind to us children, too, and had us in his studio, which was connected with the house like the other and larger one in the Thiergarten.  He even gave us a bit of clay to shape.  I have often watched him at work for hours, chattering to him, but happier still to listen while he told us of his childhood when he was a poor boy.  He exhorted us to be thankful that we were better off, but generally added that he would not exchange for anything in the world those days when he went barefoot.  His bright, clear artist’s eyes sparkled as he spoke, and it must indeed have been a glorious satisfaction to have conquered the greatest hindrances by his own might, and to have raised himself to the highest pinnacle of life—­that of art.  I had a dim impression of this when he talked to us, and now I consider every one enviable who has only himself to thank for all he is, like Drake, his friend in art Ritschl, and my dear friend Josef Popf, in Rome, all three laurel-crowned masters in the art of sculpture.

In Drake’s studio I saw statues, busts, and reliefs grow out of the rude mass of clay; I saw the plaster cast turned into marble, and the master, with his sure hand, evoking splendid forms from the primary limestone.  What I could not understand, the calm, kindly man explained with unfailing patience, and so I got an early insight into the sculptor’s creative art.

It was these recollections of my childhood that suggested to me the character of little Pennu in Uarda, of Polykarp in Homo Sum, of Pollux in The Emperor, and the cheery Alexander in Per Aspera.

I often visited also, during my last years in Berlin, the studio of another sculptor.  His name was Streichenberg, and his workshop was in our garden in the Linkstrasse.

If a thoughtful earnestness was the rule in Drake’s studio, in that of Prof.  Streichenberg artistic gaiety reigned.  He often whistled or sang at his work, and his young Italian assistant played the guitar.  But while I still know exactly what Drake executed in our presence, so that I could draw the separate groups of the charming relief, the Genii of the Thiergarten, I do not remember a single stroke of Streichenberg’s work, though I can recall all the better the gay manner of the artist whom we again met in 1848 as a demagogue.

At the Schmidt school Franz and Paul Meyerheim were among our comrades, and how full of admiration I was when one of them—­Franz, I think, who was then ten or eleven years old—­showed us a hussar he had painted himself in oil on a piece of canvas!  The brothers took us to their home, and there I saw at his work their kindly father, the creator of so many charming pictures of country and child life.