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RUE AND ROSES
BY
ANGELA LANGER
WITH INTRODUCTION
BY
W. L. COURTNEY
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
RUE AND ROSES
——
ANGELA LANGER
Copyright, 1913
By George H. Doran Company
INTRODUCTION
You will like Anna, the heroine of "Rue and Roses," when you getto know her. But perhaps it will take some time before she becomesfamiliar to you, partly because she is intensely Teutonic, partly,also, because the little history she gives about herself strikes theordinary reader as fragmentary. She certainly is very German. Youpicture her to yourself with her large eyes and her, apparently, placidexterior. Very likely she is wearing a shawl round her shoulders andsits apart from other girls, for ever analyzing herself and her ownstates of consciousness. That is the characteristic thing about her.She is intensely self-analytic, and from the earliest moment whenshe began to think at all, she has ceaselessly occupied herself withher own soul-states and traversed one or[Pg 6] two heart-crises. Havingnothing much external to interest her, she is driven to introspection,and becomes, as a matter of course, a little priggish and pedantic,exaggerating the importance of conditions about which the normalhealthy outdoor girl of another race never troubles herself.
Yet she is worth knowing for all that. She may be a little tiresome,but she is a good, honest girl, who has not had the best of luck, who,indeed, has come from a home where everything seems opposed to her owninstincts and inclinations. Her father's business is perpetually onthe down-grade, and his little commercial enterprises invariably fail,and leave him worse off than he was before. The mother, of course,is always on the verge of tears, because it is her painful duty totry and make both ends meet—a feat which she is eternally unableto accomplish. From one place they drift to another, and Anna's fewfriends of childhood are left[Pg 7] behind, or if she sees them again theylook at her askance, because her father has been in prison. And thereis a brother, too, who would be a severe affliction even in the mostfavourable circumstances.
Meanwhile Anna pursues her own way, very humble, very insignificant,but always trying to do her best. She is a governess, and enduresthe usual fate of governesses, being either bullied or made loveto—bullied by the mistress, and on one occasion compromisingly madelove to by the master. One solace she has—the writing of poems. Acharacteristic German trait this! And so she sits and dreams, for sheis the most sentimental little person you ever came across—sentimentalto the full extent of Teutonic capacity, with her head full ofWeltschmerz and Schwärmerei. Of course she sighs for the PrinceCharming who is to come and redeem her from her servitude, a being ofimpossible virtues, noble and [Pg 8]distinguished, and excessively handsome,the highborn husband for whom Cinderella dreams while she sweeps outthe ki