It is said that Byron awoke one morning at the age of twenty-four to find himself famous. George Webber had to wait eleven years longer. He was thirty-five when he reached Berlin, but it was magic just the same. Perhaps he was not really very famous, but that didn’t matter, because for the first and last time in his life he felt as if he were. Just before he left Paris a letter had reached him from Fox Edwards, telling him that his new book was having a great success in America. Then, too, his first book had been translated and published in Germany the year before. The German critics had said tremendous things about it, it had had a very good sale, and his name was known. When he got to Berlin the people were waiting for him.
The month of May is wonderful everywhere. It was particularly wonderful in Berlin that year. Along the streets, in the Tiergarten, in all the great gardens, and along the Spree Canal the horse-chestnut trees were in full bloom. The crowds sauntered underneath the trees on the Kurfürstendamm, the terraces of the cafés were jammed with people, and always, through the golden sparkle of the days, there was a sound of music in the air. George saw the chains of endlessly lovely lakes around Berlin, and for the first time he knew the wonderful golden bronze upon the tall poles of the kieferntrees. Before, he had visited only the south of Germany, the Rhinelands and Bavaria; now the north seemed even more enchanting.
He planned to stay all summer, and one summer seemed too short a time to encompass all the beauty, magic, and almost intolerable joy which his life had suddenly become, and which he felt would never fade or tarnish if only he could remain in Germany for ever. For, to cap it all, his second book was translated and brought out within a short time of his arrival, and its reception exceeded anything he had ever dared to hope for. Perhaps his being there at the time may have had something to do with it. The German critics outdid each other in singing his praises. If one called him “the great American epic writer”, the next seemed to feel he had to improve on that, and called hiti “the American Homer”. So now everywhere he went there were people who knew his work. His name flashed and shone. He was a famous man.
Fame shed a portion of her loveliness on everything about him. Life took on an added radiance. The look, feel, taste, smell, and sound of everything had gained a tremendous and exciting enhancement, and all because Fame was at his side. He saw the world with a sharper relish of perception than he had ever known before. All the confusion, fatigue, dark doubt, and bitter hopelessness that had afflicted him in times past had gone, and no shadow of any kind remained. It seemed to him that he had won a final and utterly triumphant victory over all the million forms of life. His spirit was no longer tormented, exhausted, and weighted down with the ceaseless effort of his former struggles with Amount and Number. He was wonderfully aware of everything, alive in every pore.
Fame even gave a tongue to silence, a language to unuttered speech. Fame was with him almost all the time, but even when he was alone without her, in places where he was not known and his name meant nothing, the aura which Fame had shed still clung to him and he was able to meet each new situation with a sense of power and confidence, of warmth, friendliness, and good fellowship. He had become the lord of life. There had been a time in his youth when be felt that people were always laughing at him, and he had been ill at ease with strangers and had gone to every new encounter with a chip on his shoulder. But now he was life’s strong and light-hearted master, and everyone he met and talked to—writers, taxi-drivers, porters in hotels, elevator boys, casual acquaintances in trams and trains and on the street—felt at once the flood of happy and affectionate power within him, and responded to him eagerly, instinctively, with instant natural liking, as men respond to the clean and shining light of the young sun.