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The Hanse in Medieval and Early Modern Europe The
Northern World 60 1st Edition Carsten Jahnke Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): Carsten Jahnke, Edda Frankot, Sofia Gustafsson, James M. Murray,
Mike Burkhardt, Marie-Louise Pelus-Kaplan, Stuart Jenks, Justyna Wubs-
Mrozewicz.
ISBN(s): 9789004212527, 9004212523
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 3.45 MB
Year: 2012
Language: english
The Hanse in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
 The Northern World

North Europe and the Baltic c. 400–1700 A.D.

Peoples, Economies and Cultures

Editors
David Kirby (London)
Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (Oslo)
Ingvild Øye (Bergen)
Piotr Gorecki (University of California at Riverside)
Steve Murdoch (St. Andrews)

Volume 60

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/nw

 The Hanse in Medieval
and Early Modern Europe

Edited by

Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz and Stuart Jenks

Leiden • boston
2013
Cover illustration: Detail top left corner The Virgin and Child with an Angel by Hans Memling, about
1480 (The National Gallery, London, UK, NG 686).

With kind permission of the National Gallery Picture Library.

The research and editorial work by Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz was funded by The Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Hanse in medieval and early modern Europe / edited by Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz and
Stuart Jenks.
p. cm. — (The Northern world ; v. 60)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-90-04-21252-7 (hbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-24193-0 (e-book)
1. Hanseatic League—History. 2. Hansa towns—History. 3. Europe—Commerce—History.
4. Commerce—History—Medieval, 500–1500. 5. Commerce—History—16th century.
I. Wubs-Mrozewicz, Justyna, 1976– II. Jenks, Stuart.

DD801.H22H35 2012
382.0943—dc23
 2012038885

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 Contents

The Hanse in Medieval and Early Modern Europe:

An Ιntroduction ........................................................................................... 1
Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz

. Map of the Hanse in 1554 according to the London

Steelyard Statutes ................................................................................... 26
. Guide to Hanse Research .......................................................................... 30

The City of Lübeck and the Internationality of Early

Hanseatic Trade ........................................................................................... 37
Carsten Jahnke

The London Steelyard’s Certifications of Membership

1463–1474 and the European Distribution Revolution . ................... 59
Stuart Jenks

. Appendix I: “Day Books”: The Example of George Mixstow’s

Ship ............................................................................................................. 98
. Appendix II: Henry VI’s Order of 16 November 1428 . ...................... 101
. Appendix III: Edward IV’s Οrder of 10 May 1465 ............................... 105

Der ehrbaren Hanse-Städte See-Recht: Diversity and Unity in

Hanseatic Maritime Law ........................................................................... 109
Edda Frankot

Sale of Goods around the Baltic Sea in the Middle Ages . ................... 129
Sofia Gustafsson

Hansards and the ‘Other’. Perceptions and Strategies in Late

Medieval Bergen .......................................................................................... 149
Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz

That Well-Grounded Error: Bruges as Hansestadt . ................................ 181

James M. Murray
vi contents

Small is Beautiful: Why Small Hanseatic Firms Survived in the

Late Middle Ages ......................................................................................... 191
Stuart Jenks

Business as Usual? A Critical Investigation on the Hanseatic

Pound Toll Lists . .......................................................................................... 215
Mike Burkhardt

Mobility and Business Enterprise in the Hanseatic World:

Trade Networks and Entrepreneurial Techniques
(Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) . .............................................. 239
Marie-Louise Pelus-Kaplan

Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 255

Stuart Jenks

Game Theory and the Hanse: An Epilogue .............................................. 283

Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz

List of Contributors . ........................................................................................ 289

Index ..................................................................................................................... 291
 THE HANSE IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN EUROPE:
AN INTRODUCTION

Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz

The Hanse Game

Just for fun, let’s imagine that the scholars who contributed to this volume
did not meet at an international congress. Instead, they gathered to play a
board game called ‘The Hanse: 500 years in the Baltic and North Sea’. They
enjoyed a bite of bread with herring and a good glass of beer, distributed
pawns, joked about winning and cooked up crafty strategies. Yet, scholars
being scholars, they first squabbled about the rules of the game:

Carsten: ‘Why is Lübeck in the middle of the board? Come on, guys,
there’s gotta be a better starting point for the Game! After all, Lübeck
wasn’t the centre of the Hanseatic world from the word go. Also, nobody
could count on selling his goods there, so “Go directly to Lübeck, collect
250 marks” is wrong.’
Edda: ‘Wait, before we start: it’s all about trade at sea. But the game
doesn’t have any instructions about what happens if something goes
wrong, like shipwreck, piracy and stuff like that. Worse yet, the Hanse
didn’t have a unified set of rules about this. Each town made up its own.
So we’re gonna to have to work through those Jeopardy and Chance cards
carefully before we start!’
Sofia: ‘Hey, that’s true for all the other commercial regulations, like sales
contracts. Each town had its own bylaws, just look at Scandinavia! And
right at the beginning we can chuck that old bit of nonsense about how
Lübeck law smoothed out all the differences that mattered. If ­anything,
people faced with similar problems hit on similar solutions separately.
So, Edda, I’m gonna be looking over your shoulder when you go through
those Jeopardy and Chance cards! You keep your eyes on the sea, I’ll keep
mine on the land.’
Justyna: ‘Why are we calling this “The Hanse Game” anyway? I mean,
it’s not as though they never dealt with anybody else! And getting
guys from all kinds of towns to get together in a tent with a “Hanse”
2 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

sign outside was harder than herding cats. So at least in the Kontore like
Bergen, we need some Interaction cards!’
Jim: ‘Everybody’s assuming the money comes out of the bank by magic.
I mean, “Go directly to Danzig, collect 400 marks for cloth”, is just ridicu-
lous! You gotta ask how you get the money to buy the cloth in the first
place. Not by rolling dice! So we need some Finance cards, maybe ones
that can only be cashed in Bruges.’
Stuart: ‘Hey, you’re all assuming everybody’s honest, but I’ve played
enough Monopoly to know it ain’t so. All the Game’s got are Jeopardy
cards telling you you’ve been rooked, but maybe we need some “Get Out
of Jeopardy” cards to force people to cut square corners. Also, I’m not real
happy about all these lines on the board telling you where to go. They all
just send you from East to West and back again. But there are lots more
places on the board than that, and the instructions don’t tell us anything
about how to connect up the dots.’
Mike: ‘How are we supposed to know who’s winning? I mean, how
do we know that you always get 200 marks for a load of stockfish from
Bergen? And how do we know that you make money on the whole? After
all, as Jim said, you’ve got to buy the stuff before you can sell it, and there’s
no guarantee you won’t get skinned!’
Marie-Louise: ‘Where’s the end point of the Game? When does the
music stop: 1669 when the last Hanseatic Diet met? Or do we go on play-
ing until the merchant networks folded up? Is the Game about politics or
people, that’s what I want to know!’
Stuart: ‘I’m gonna get another beer. Anybody want anything while
I’m up?’
(Scene fades . . .).

If it were only so easy! Board games are board games, but all authors in this
volume contribute—in the measured and dulcet tones of the learned—to
the academic game called ‘Hanse studies’, putting forward new points of
view, contesting the opinions of previous scholars. And they are not shy
about it. Debate lies at the very foundation of this volume. When some
of the articles were presented for the first time at the World Economic
History Congress in Utrecht (August 2009), there was a spirited discus-
sion both among the speakers themselves and with those in the audience.
The latter were economic historians studying commercial relations in pre-
modern Europe, and as specialists in their own fields, they questioned the
Hanse from all corners. Thus, the Hanse was set in a broader European
discussion context, where it rightfully belongs.
 introduction 3

These ‘internal’ and ‘external’ discussions have shaped this book. On the
one hand, the authors delve deep into their research topics and explore
central questions about the Hanse and the sources, advancing knowledge
in a field with long and robust research tradition. Yet their findings are not
restricted to Hanse studies alone. Rather, they highlight issues which make
the Hanse unique and atypical in the context of late medieval Europe.
Several contributions draw on Mediterranean trade, the actions of non-
Hanseatic traders or theoretical debates on commerce and economy in
late medieval and early modern Europe for comparisons. Furthermore, the
authors seek to place the Hanse in a wider context by showing features
and mechanisms which were intertwined with pan-European features and
mechanisms. They discuss common roots, influences and parallel devel-
opments, as well as source and research problems which crop up when
various parts of Europe are investigated. The leitmotif of the volume is the
two sides of the Hanse: in many aspects a typical European phenomenon,
but also unique, challenging and thus fascinating.
Consequently, the purpose of this book is also twofold. Aside from pre-
senting specific new research results, the volume can also serve as a guide
to Hanse studies. The authors’ footnotes signpost the state of research
on their topics, but not all research areas within the wider field of Hanse
could be covered in this volume. That is a recurrent problem common to
conferences and edited volumes. In this introduction, I will try to fill the
gaps by sketching the state of research on the Hanse (part I, pp. 4–14)
and summarizing authors’ results and presenting various areas of research
(part II, pp. 14–20), as well as by providing a list of selected sources and
bibliography of the Hanse (p. 30). In the concluding chapter, Stuart Jenks
will suggest the directions future Hanse research might—or should—take.
It must be noted that most of the research done in the field of Hanse stud-
ies is in German or other non-English languages: the current volume will
be one of the few book publications in English on the Hanse providing
both new findings and a summary of the state of research. It is our hope
that this presentation of the Hanse in its European context will stimulate
medieval and early modern historians to pick up their end of the story and
(re)integrate the Hanse in it.
Finally, the Hanse and Europe will be tackled from yet another angle
in this introduction (part III, pp. 20–25). I will briefly sketch the use and
abuse of the phenomenon ‘Hanse’ in (this time not late medieval ) Europe.
It is a hot topic at the moment, both in Hanseatic studies and in the higher
and lower echelons of European political and economic integration. Quite
remarkably, since the nineteenth century there have been many attempts
4 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

to hijack the Hanse and make it serve national and European ideologies.
Whenever the tune changes, the Hanse takes a different place in the musi-
cal chairs game. And as the changes are rung in the public sphere, they
affect historical research on the Hanse.

I. What was the Hanse?—Short Overview of the State of the Art

Various studies of the Hanse have one thing in common: sooner or later,
the question pops up ‘What was the Hanse, actually?’1 It is usually fol-
lowed by an audible sigh: ‘It’s complicated’. The most common problem
of description is that the Hanse needs to be understood within its own
particular legal and organizational framework. As it will be shown later, it
differed in many aspects from other mercantile organizations in medieval
and early modern Europe like merchant guilds, and from political struc-
tures like town leagues. Moreover, the way the Hanse worked is difficult
to ‘translate’ into modern terms in a straightforward manner. Parallels
with the EU, the EEC or the UN cover at best only some facets of the
Hanse, not the whole of it.2 As an introductory mental tool, it is perhaps
better here to draw a parallel to another theme of research on medieval
Europe, one in which self-questioning and recognition of complexity is also
taken as a point of departure: national or ethnic identities in the Middle
Ages. There the recurrent issues are whether such identities existed, and
if so, how they were built up.3 Both in the case of the research on the
Hanse and on identities, the researcher tries to grasp the connections
and mechanisms which hide behind notions which are all but hard-and-
fast. When it comes to the Hanse, there is a famous (and appropriately
maritime) metaphor by Ahasver von Brandt: he described it as a mollusc:
a strong, but also a changeable and a fluid body.4 The most conspicuous
(and most commonly mentioned in research) aspect of its changeability
is that membership in the Hanse was not fixed, and therefore its composi-

1 Henn (1999) and (2010); Hammel-Kiesow (2002); Selzer (2010). Compare Friedland
(1991) and Stoob (1995). See also the contributions in Müller-Mertens and Böcker (2003)
and Hammel-Kiesow (2003).
2 Hammel-Kiesow (2007).
3 Hoppenbrouwers (2010); Smith (2004); Jakobsson (1999).
4 von Brandt (1963) 29. Another water-borne metaphor can be found in the sources
themselves: in the fifteenth century, the English accused Hansards of crocodile-like behav-
iour. The Hanse showed only its head (and implicitly: its teeth), while the rest of the body
was hidden in water, see Selzer (2010) 36; Jörn (1998).
 introduction 5

tion changed from incident to incident. This makes it impossible to give a

complete list of members of the Hanse and plot them on a single map: all
maps of the Hanse are snapshots (see the map on pp. 26–29). Moreover,
the contours of the Hanse, like these of national and ethnic identities in
the Middle Ages, depend to a certain extent on the eye of the beholder.
These boundaries are different if one analyses the political context, or if
one chooses to focus on administrative and legal aspects of the organiza-
tion, or if one investigates shared cultural traits (like language). And then
again they are different in each period of investigation. In contrast to the
discussion on medieval national or ethnic identities, however, there is a
comforting consensus among Hanse scholars. The Hanse did exist.
So what was it, actually? In one of the most recent definitions, the
Hanse was an organization of traders (specifically: traders speaking Low
German and engaged in foreign trade) AND an organization of towns
(up to 70 large and 100–130 smaller towns) in which these traders were
burghers.5 The participation of towns in the Hanse was thus second-
ary, through their traders.6 Being part of the Hanse was only one aspect
of their urban identity, and sometimes only a small one.7 This explains
why the towns used the term ‘Hanse’ only in situations when common
interests were at stake, and hardly ever in town chronicles or when they
acted on their own account.8 Internally, the term gemener copman (com-
mon merchant) was preferred to ‘Hanse’ or ‘Hanse towns’, which shows
again that the basis of the organization was people, not urban entities.9
When it was no longer enticing for traders of a town to conduct trade
jointly with merchants from other Hanse towns, they (often silently) gave
up their membership and their participation in common rights. Since
the ultimate motive of traders was profit, they only played the Hanseatic
game as long as it was profitable. Apparently, it paid off for a long time,
since the Hanse existed for at least five hundred years, from the middle of
the twelfth until the middle of the seventeenth century.10

5 Hammel-Kiesow (2002) 10.

6 Selzer (2010) 5.
7 Henn (2010) 13; the contributions in Henn and Sarnowsky (2010).
8 For instance in interaction with the emperor, see Moraw (2002) 64. More general:
Hammel-Kiesow (2002) 17; Behrmann (1997) and (2004).
9 Irsigler (1998); Friedland (1999).
10 There is no clear beginning or end of the Hanse, see the contributions of Carsten
Jahnke and Marie-Louise Pelus-Kaplan, as well as the overview of the political and eco-
nomic periodization of the Hanse further in this introduction.
6 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

Shared interest, functioning as a common denominator for traders and

towns involved in the Hanse, is a key notion in understanding the orga-
nization. It started with the shared interest of traders abroad, forming a
group: the very term hansa means cohors, that is a ‘troop’ or a ‘crowd’.
It refers thus to a collective phenomenon, an appearance and action as
a group. From the twelfth century, the term was used in Northwestern
Europe in the context of trading communities which were active in long-
distance trade, and whose members obviously needed each other’s sup-
port, for self-defence if nothing else. From the late thirteenth century on,
the term started to be used in reference to traders of ‘the’ Hanse. Yet it
also referred to the tax these traders had to pay for being able to partici-
pate in the trade abroad. A third meaning of the word hansa was legal:
it was the right to conduct trade jointly. This third meaning reveals the
tectonic force underlying the gradual rise of the Hanse as an organization
of traders, and later also of towns: cooperating to secure trading rights
abroad.11 This cooperation of traders coming from various towns was
on the one hand visible in the context of their meetings (the so-called
Hanseatic Diets, most often held in Lübeck),12 and on a daily basis in
the Hanseatic settlements abroad (especially the four largest ones, the so-
called Kontore in London, Novgorod, Bruges and Bergen).13 From the late
thirteenth century on, the word hansa started to be used in reference to
traders of the growing organization which became to be known as ‘the’
Hanse.14 Its economic foundation was the exchange of goods in the Baltic
and North Sea areas, transported primarily by sea, but also by river and
land. If one wants to make a broad generalization, mass goods and raw
materials from the north and east were exchanged for finished products,
luxury goods and transit goods from the West and the Mediterranean.
One mercantile organization thus connected various regions in Europe.15
The current state of research is that this Hanse was first and foremost a
‘community of interest’, not a hierarchical structure.16 There was no top-

11 Friedland (1991) 21–5; Hammel-Kiesow (2002) 27.

12 Henn (2001).
13 There were also several smaller ones, for instance in Oslo and Tønsberg, Norway,
Bourgneuf and La Rochelle in France, Lynn and Boston in England; on the Kontore, see
Angermann and Friedland (2002); Graßmann (2005); Schubert (2002).
14 Hammel-Kiesow (2002) 27.
15 The most common goods in the Hanseatic trade: furs, wax, wood, grain, fish (herring
and stockfish, i.e. dried cod), textiles, beer, wine, salt, potash; Bund (1973) 5; Boer (2000);
Hammel-Kiesow (1999) and (2002) 37.
16 von Brandt (1962) 7; Hammel-Kiesow (2002) 14–5; Selzer (2010) 10–1.
 introduction 7

down decision-taking in questions of trade or trade policies: all decisions

taken at Hanseatic Diets had to be validated in each town and incorpo-
rated into its bylaws in order to be binding on the individual merchant. In
principle, the Hanse was a network of peers (although some of them were
in practice more influential than others, the emblematic example being
Lübeck traders). Their interaction increased when it seemed profitable
or (politically) necessary. Such a structure was correlated to the fact that
the merchants of the Hanse operated in a large area, by European medi-
eval standards. The towns where they were burghers and with which they
traded were located broadly in the Baltic and North Sea area and their
hinterlands. A loose and non-hierarchical structure made it possible for
traders from towns distant from one another to join the organization and
profit from the same privileges. This way, the Hanse could appear and act
as a large, varied group of traders with a say in areas crucial to medieval
European trade. As Carsten Jahnke points out in his contribution, ‘the’
Hanse became a successful collective brand name in Europe.
This brings us to a discussion which bears on the towns of the Hanse
and the broader European medieval context. The ‘community of interest’
view on the Hanse disputes a very different viewpoint, mostly taken by
earlier scholars, where the Hanse was seen as a top-down, hierarchical
urban league. The literature commonly refers to this discussion as the
non-hierarchical ‘Gemeinschaft’ versus the hierarchical ‘Bund’ debate.17
Urban leagues were common in medieval Europe, well-known examples
being the ‘Rheinischer Bund’ or the Swabian League.18 The concept of the
Hanse as an urban league would make it at least a recognizable, perhaps
an emblematic European phenomenon. Yet the Hanse does not fit in this
picture, it was far more unusual. It lacked several traits researchers have
identified as being crucial for an urban league: there was no foundation act,
no common seal, no executive power or treasury. Nor was it created for a
specific, time-framed purpose. One member could not be held responsible
for the actions of others. Also, the Hanse shared economic rather than
political goals (although it used political means—war and diplomacy—
to achieve these goals). On the other hand, towns could simultaneously
belong to the Hanse and an urban league, which accordingly could have
an impact on the Hanse as a whole or some of the towns in it, but was

17 Wernicke (1983); Henn (1984). In his attempt to analyse the Hanse in a sociological
model of strong and weak ties, A. Pichierri (2000) used the concept of the Hanse as an
urban league (or even: a state of towns).
18 Distler (2006).
8 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

just as clearly a separate, non-Hanseatic entity.19 Furthermore, there were

attempts to add some of the elements of town leagues to the Hanse, by
binding the towns in the so-called tohopesates. These military alliances
were triggered by political—rather than economic—interests. They were
created with a (political) goal in mind and for a limited period of time.20
It must be pointed out that in the second half of the sixteenth century,
attempts were made to reshape the Hanse into an urban league. These
attempts have to be viewed from the context of the changes of power
in late medieval and early modern Europe: states and princes became
stronger, while towns lost much of their autonomy. Privileges for trad-
ers no longer worked to their economic advantage, and gradually they
lost importance. Consequently, Hanseatic traders and their hometowns
were forced to invent new ways to be a partner in commercial and politi-
cal negotiations. One of them was to seek more defined organizational
structures which made them fit better into this hierarchical world.21 In
the context of this volume, it is important to underscore the fact that this
post-medieval meaning which was added to the Hanse has influenced
terminology in English. While ‘Hansebund’ has practically vanished from
German scholarship as a term for the whole organization, ‘the Hanseatic
League’ endures in the English-speaking context as fossil.
There was another European medieval form of organization—merchant
guilds—which should be discussed in the context of the Hanse, focussing
on traders. Like the Hanse, they were non-hierarchical, bottom-up orga-
nizations of traders. As Stephan Selzer recently pointed out, scholars use
the term ‘merchant guild’ to cover various types of organizations function-
ing under various names in the Middle Ages. Among them are hansas of
­traders abroad, one of the early roots of ‘the’ Hanse. The common denomi-
nator of these organizations was that membership was voluntary, based on
equality among all members and sealed by an oath. Membership in a guild
had implications for various aspects of life, not only the professional ones.
A well-known and currently intensely investigated element was religious
life, as guilds often overlapped with confraternities. Sociability, especially
commensality, was another feature, and it entailed frequent and direct
contact between most if not all its members. Guilds and their members

19 Selzer (2010) 62.

20 See for instance the unsuccessful attempt to create such an alliance in 1418, and a
successful one in 1451 (for the period of six years), see Selzer (2010) 62–3.
21 Postel (1999); Blockmans (1993); Heerma van Voss and van Nederveen Meerkerk
(2007).
 introduction 9

were also connected to a specific location. Moreover, the fundamental

rule for guilds was that members were to help each other in plight. Guilds
had their own internal administration, jurisdiction and seal.22 There were
many local merchant guilds in the towns of the Hanse, uniting, as in the
case of Lübeck, traders active on a specific foreign market like Flanders or
Bergen in Norway. These merchant guilds were pillars of Hanseatic trade,
and the Hanse fits very well indeed into the general European tradition
of bottom-up organization of trade.23 Also, Hanseatic settlements abroad
(Kontore and smaller settlements) might be seen as merchant guilds in
the diaspora (alien merchant guilds).24 However, the Hanse as a whole
was not a mega-guild of traders (if we follow the guild concept sketched
above), as it has been recently claimed by economists and some economic
historians. Its members swore no oath to other Hansards in general, but
did so only when they joined a Hanseatic Kontor abroad. The Hanse was
marked off from guilds because there was (for most of the period) no
shared internal administration, treasury or seal; there was no real coer-
cive power towards its members (as paradoxical as it may sound); there
was no pan-Hanseatic memoria culture; and finally, sociability and direct
contact was limited to the (infrequent) meetings and involved only a very
small number of Hanse merchants, who were envoys to these meetings.25

22 Oexle (1989); Schmidt-Wiegand (1999); Selzer (2010) 26–9. This interpretation of

medieval (merchant) guilds encompasses ‘bodies which were called gilda, but also confrat-
ria, consortium, fraternitas, societas, coniuratio, amicitia and other’, see Oexle (1989) 1452.
23 Asmussen (1999); Burkhardt (2009). Many of these guilds outlived the Hanse itself,
for instance the Bergenfahrer. Apart from the fact that merchant guilds offered eco-
nomic benefits to its members, something which might in part explain their longevity in
European economy, see Ogilvie (2011), the complex social glue of rules and traditions must
have played a role.
24 Ogilvie (2011); Wubs-Mrozewicz (2011). The Kontore had an internal administration,
jurisdiction and rules of conduct, seal, treasury and an oath was given when a trader
became member. Also, conviviality and commensality were important, and there was a
memoria culture.
25 Fahlbusch (1994); Czaja (2000); Henn (2002). It must be noted that these economic
historians and economists use a wider concept of merchant guilds, which is more or less
equivalent with ‘merchant associations’. This concept focuses on the economic aspects of
the activities of (long-distance) merchants. To encompass various types of merchant asso-
ciations, also very loose ones, the term covers also ad hoc groups with little or no juridical,
administrative and social structures. In this take, the Hanse is also seen as a merchant
guild, see especially Ogilvie (2011) and Grafe and Gelderblom (2010) and the literature cited
there. However, it means attaching a label to the Hanse which is too broad to capture its
paradox as an organization both of traders and towns; the paradox that is was a recognized
economic and political power in the Middle Ages, but it lacked coercive power towards
its own members; and the paradox that it refused to define its legal boundaries while it
operated within very broad geographical boundaries.
10 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

This all is understandable from the organizational point of view if we

take the geographic extent of the Hanse into account. So the Hanse was
not a town league and not a guild, but relied on town administrations and
local (as well as alien) guilds in order to function.
What made the Hanse outstanding and successful in medieval Europe?
There are several features which ought to be mentioned. It must be
stressed that if one chooses to look at these features individually, they
are not unique to the Hanse, but rather of the economy and culture of
medieval Europe in general. It is the combination of these features which
was unique. This allowed Hanse traders to act as a group. Only a brief
sketch can be given here. First of all, the organization of the Hanse as a
well-informed network of peers was of crucial importance. This network
relied on the one hand on (extended) family ties, and on the other on
the choice of trading partners both close and far from one’s hometown.
Especially in the latter case, mutual trust was key in relations. The busi-
ness relations were based on reciprocal help in the purchase and sale of
each other’s goods. As Stuart Jenks shows in his contribution, the atti-
tude was rather to create incentives to honest trade than to create a system
of punishments. In order to maintain this person-oriented way of trad-
ing, a good reputation (the Hanseatic word is gelouwe) was imperative.
The loss of one’s good name meant exclusion from the trade network,
and in some cases even from the Hanse as a whole.26 If you were part
of the network, you benefited from the efficiency of the information flow
within the Hanse: information was exchanged during Hanseatic meetings,
in the Kontore and in letters between traders and towns.27 It is clear that
merchants took great care to obtain and disseminate information as part
of (internal) conflict resolution.28 Literacy was a pre-requisite for taking
part in the extensive Hanseatic trade and information network.29 In addi-
tion, the fact that the whole Hanseatic network could use Middle Low
German as a lingua franca in speech and in writing (most of the sources
from the fifteenth and sixteenth century are in the vernacular) eased com-
munication and bound traders to one another.30 An important part of the
exchange of information concerned quality control. This was organized

26 Selzer and Ewert (2001); Puhle (1999). See also the contributions of Marie-Louise
Pelus-Kaplan and Stuart Jenks in this volume.
27 See also Jenks (2010); Henn (2002).
28 Wubs-Mrozewicz (2006).
29 Henn (2002); Wriedt (2005). One did not have to be personally literate, but one’s
firm did: Jenks (1992).
30 Peters (1987); Fouquet (2006); Niebaum (2010).
 introduction 11

collectively, in the towns and especially in the Kontore, for instance to

ensure that the quality of cloth (Bruges) or fish (Bergen) was checked
and properly marked. Norms for weights and measures were also agreed
upon collectively. This was one of the tools for cutting individual traders’
transaction costs (they did not have to carry out the checks themselves)
and thus make it profitable for them to join the Hanseatic network.31
Another one was that collective privileges abroad were made accessible
to a wide and (until the middle of the fifteenth century) inclusive group
of traders coming from various towns. Cost-efficiency was also apparent
in the simple, single-entry bookkeeping, which was anything but back-
ward in comparison to the Mediterranean trade, as Stuart Jenks argues
in his article.32 This ‘keep it simple’ principle, and the possibility of join-
ing a business partnership where one’s input was work and not capital,
opened the way for merchants without much experience or means to
Hanseatic trade. Many traders could work their way up. Research has
demonstrated that in the Hanse this resulted in a situation quite different
from the mercantile world in southern Germany or the Mediterranean.
In the latter two cases, a handful of traders and entrepreneurs garnered
great wealth, while in the Hanse the middle strata of well-off merchants
was much broader.33 Apart from being active in trade, they were also
involved in (urban) politics by being part of the town council or being
envoys to negotiations with other (Hanseatic) towns or (foreign) rulers.
This meant that they could exert both economic and political influence on
Hanseatic trade.34 Finally, apart from functioning as a kinship, mercantile
and information network, the Hanse catered for the potentially rivalrous
groups within it. Being part of these groups was less voluntary, or at least
less self-directed than being part of trade networks. The prime example
is life in the Kontore: after becoming part of a Kontor, a trader had to get
along with merchants from other towns, who were not and often would
not become part of their direct trade, kinship or even friendship networks.
The Hanseatic traders in the Kontore enacted rules and devised ways of
life which were to ensure that they would protect and not interfere in each
others’ business.35 This was exceptional in Europe: the outposts abroad

31 Jenks (1996) and (2005); Selzer (2010) 93–5.

32 Hammel-Kiesow (2008).
33 Selzer (2010) 97–8.
34 Pitz (2001); Moraw (2002).
35 Jörn (2000); Schubert (2002); Wubs-Mrozewicz (2008). See also the example of
Hildebrand Veckinchusen in Böcker (1999).
12 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

catered for the interests of traders coming not only from one town (like
the Venetians in Bruges), but for traders originating from various towns.36
Last but (by no means) least, the geographical extent of the trading area
of the Hanse was remarkable and unique: ‘from the Urals to Portugal and
Greenland to Central Germany.’37
When did the Hanse begin? When did it end? Again, there is no straight-
forward answer. It depends whether one takes a more Hanseatic (largely
political and organizational) or a European (largely economic) view. In
older research, the stages of development of the Hanse were measured
by political events. The foundation of Lübeck (1143/1159), for a long time
misleadingly presented as ‘the birth of the Hanse’, was certainly a crucial
element in the whole series of foundations of towns in the Baltic. Yet it
was not the towns as such, but the individual merchants and councillors
of these towns whose activities gradually built up the Hanse, as Carsten
Jahnke shows in his contribution. There were several other ‘events’ in the
history of the Hanse which earlier scholars presented as turning points.
Only a few can be highlighted here, namely those which have been mis-
interpreted, and these misinterpretations have proved long-lived, both in
research and in publications for a general readership. A prime example is
the beginning of regular Hanseatic Diets (meetings) from 1356,38 which
earlier scholars erroneously viewed as the moment when the Hanse of
traders was replaced by the Hanse of towns. As mentioned earlier, towns
were members of the Hanse through their burghers, not the other way
round. What can be claimed for this period, however, is that the organiza-
tion of the Hanse became more tightly cinched (especially regarding the
Kontore), and the town councils were involved in this process.39 Another
example was the conflict with the Danish king Valdemar IV Atterdag in
the 1360s, which triggered the establishment of the Cologne Confederation
in 1367. The Confederation’s victory was sealed by the Peace of Stralsund
(1370), which earlier scholars presented as ‘the’ political highpoint of the
Hanse and the beginning of the high summer of the Hanse which would
last until the 1470s.40 As it will be shown in the last section of this intro-
duction, the 1370 treaty was re- and misused as a point of reference in the

36 Selzer (2010) 85.

37 See the contribution by Carsten Jahnke in this volume.
38 Although the problem of what criteria a meeting of town representatives had to fulfil
in order to be called a ‘Hanseatic’ Diet is vexed: Henn (2001) 1–3.
39 Henn (1984).
40 Schwebel (1970); Henn (1994) 388–9; Jörn (1998b).
 introduction 13

nineteenth century. However, the Cologne Confederation was a political

alliance which only partly overlapped the Hanse (more towns and traders
were absent than present, among them the eponomous Cologne), so it is
questionable whether the Treaty of Stralsund should be used as a flagship
for Hanseatic political history. The fifteenth-century conflict between the
Wendish towns and Holland (1438–1441) was at times erroneously pre-
sented as a Hanseatic-Hollandish war. Also, it was far too often presented
as the result of growing Hanseatic-Hollandish competition in the Baltic
(borne by the teleological thought that Hollanders would gain the upper
hand there later) and the outburst of strong mutual antagonism. In fact,
the conflict was largely about the payment of damages for privateering,
and cooperation between both sides continued.41 The 1554/1557 attempt
to reorganize the Hanse as a town league has on the one hand spawned
the erroneous notion that the Hanse was—or ought to have been—a town
league, and on the other hand that it was the involuntary twitching of a
dying man.42 As mentioned earlier, it should be rather seen in the context
of the political changes which took place in Europe at that time. The last
Hanseatic Diet (1669) has often been presented as the final moment of
the Hanse: yet in fact envoys from only a few towns participated in the
meeting, and Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen carried on their trade under
the Hanseatic brand name. As Marie-Louise Pelus-Kaplan shows in her
contribution, the Hanse lived on in many aspects.
If one wants to tell the story of the rise and decline of the Hanse
from a European economic point of view, the periodization is quite
different, as Stephan Selzer recently pointed out. The Hanse emerged
­during the period of explosive economic growth in Europe which lasted
from the eleventh to the middle of the fourteenth century.43 According
to Rolf Hammel-Kiesow, three conditions were of prime importance for
the expansion of Hanseatic traders: first the inclusion of the Baltic in the
trade system; second, the increased demand for goods in consequence
of population growth at third-world rates from the twelfth century; and
finally, the growing urbanization of Northwestern Europe.44 Under these
circumstances, traders united under a brand name and chose to safeguard
their rights in a large group. From an economic point of view, as Selzer

41 Seifert (1997).
42 Postel (1999).
43 Selzer (2010) 45; compare Pitz (1984).
44 Hammel-Kiesow (2002) 21–6.
14 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

stresses, the heyday of the Hanse lay around 1300.45 Thereafter, the strains
on agrarian production, combined with climate change and the Black
Death in the middle of the fourteenth century, made life more difficult
not only for the average man, but also for the average Hanseatic trader.
The politically halcyon days between 1370 and the 1470s stood in stark
contrast to the everyday struggle to transport one’s goods safely (piracy
and robbery were rife), sell it at a profitable price (without running
into conflict with the locals or their rulers, who could grant or rescind
privileges) and in turn purchase goods which would not prove to be coun-
terfeit (as many new products and their imitations were coming on the
market, for instance woollen cloth). On the other hand, the period which
has traditionally been seen as witnessing the (political ) disintegration
of the Hanse: the sixteenth century and later, was in fact an economic
boom time both in Europe and for traders in the Hanse. The number of
Hanseatic ships rose significantly, and the Hamburg, Bremen and Danzig
found ways to integrate their trade in the emerging Atlantic economy.46
And the last section of this introduction will show, even today the ‘Hanse’
is still eagerly sought as a brand name to sell all sorts of goods and services
in Europe. So we are only stretching the point slightly if we say that the
Hanse has never really disappeared from European economy.

II. The Hanse in a Late Medieval Context: Deep Dives and Bird’s Eye Views

The contributors to this volume have all focussed on their respec-

tive research areas. The articles are thus deep dives in the Hanseatic
archives and in the scholarly discussions pertaining to the Hanse. The
references provided in them signal recent secondary literature within
such areas as: the origin and growth of the Hanse; the organization of
Hanseatic trade; legal history of the Hanse; interaction with non-Hansards
and questions of identity; motivation in Hanseatic trade; source criticism
and quantitative analysis; transitions in the Hanse in the early modern
period. Moreover, all authors have placed their findings in the broader
context of European history.
Carsten Jahnke elucidates the origins of the institution ‘the Hanse’
within a broad political and economic context. ‘The City of Lübeck and
the Internationality of Early Hanseatic Trade’ questions an old dogma,

45 Selzer (2010) 44–5.

46 Graßmann (1998); Bogucka (2003); Pelus-Kaplan (2007); Selzer (2010) 107–14.
 introduction 15

namely that the origin of the Hanse should be sought in the foundation
of Lübeck (1143/1159). In fact, he finds that the town was founded as a
regional trade centre, and remained a minor player for a considerable
time. Yet Lübeck undoubtedly had a key role in shaping the organiza-
tion in the thirteenth century. Jahnke shows how ‘the’ Hanse came into
being as a result of a special need for the protection of rights, namely
when Lübeck traders lost their ‘Danish’ rights abroad in 1227, notably in
London, and when they had to secure their rights in Flanders in 1252/1253.
A new, effective brand name was need to attain a special position, and
the universi mercatores Romani imperii proved to fit the bill. The power
of the Hanse was born out of weakness and need. Moreover, when putting
the Hanse in a broader framework, he points out that the city of Lübeck, as
well as other Baltic towns, achieved a unique degree of symbiosis between
merchants, lesser nobles and artisans. This released resources which were
crucial for the growth of the Hanse. From a European and medieval point
of view, Jahnke hangs a question mark at the predicate ‘German’ in the
discussions of the Hanse, especially its content at the time. He also argues
that in its collective form, the Hanse was a typical organization of medi-
eval Europe. However, its longevity and its size (stretched out over a huge
area), as well as the degree to which it, as an economic organization, used
political means, made it unusual in the European context.
In his article ‘The London Steelyard’s Certifications of Membership
1463–1474 and the European Distribution Revolution’, Stuart Jenks argues
that next to the well-known pre-modern revolutions like the Commercial
Revolution and the Consumption Revolution, another sea-change took
place in the European economy in the fifteenth century: the Distribution
Revolution. It had a significant influence on the world of the Hanse, and
as such the Hanse is a good example of the transformations of trade in
Europe in the fifteenth century. In short, as a hierarchy of markets emerged
in Europe, traders gradually concentrated on specific markets one step
up the chain, and this growing degree of specialization was evident in
the Hanseatic outposts abroad, the Kontore, where it becomes apparent
that Hanseatic trade was being funnelled through a very small number of
ports. He builds his argument on a close reading of the so-called Guildhall
certificates (of the Hanseatic Kontor in London). At the same time, he
resolves several source critical issues connected to the certificates which
have until now proved misleading for the interpretation of this source. By
doing it, he gives a comprehensive demonstration not only of the com-
plexity of this very source, but also of sources for the economic history of
medieval Europe altogether.
16 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

In ‘Der ehrbaren Hanse-Städte See-Recht: Diversity and Unity in

Hanseatic Maritime Law’, Edda Frankot breaks a lance for the interpre-
tation that Northern Europe lacked one common sea law in the Middle
Ages. She argues that the Rôles d’Oléron (customary sea laws put in writ-
ing by at least 1286) were not used as a universal sea law in the Hanseatic
world, and the decisions taken at the Hanseatic meetings were not mere
amendments to the Rôles. Instead, Frankot shows on the basis of numer-
ous examples and legal cases from Lübeck, Hamburg, Riga, Kampen,
Aberdeen, Danzig, Reval and elsewhere that each town had its own
rules concerning sea issues. Pan-Hanseatic regulations were only drawn
up if there were gaps in the legal framework which disadvantaged
Hanseatic traders. However, these decisions were only legally binding for
a Hanseatic trader if they were incorporated in the bylaws of his own
town. This was true even of the ‘Hanseatic Sea Law’, which was finally
drafted in 1614. In general, Frankot stresses, Hanseatic traders were used
to dealing with this diversity of sea laws. In this aspect they followed a
general European pattern: diversity, not uniformity was the norm.
Sofia Gustafsson also argues for diversity in another take on legal
history in her ‘Sale of Goods around the Baltic Sea in the Middle Ages’.
She focuses on sales contracts, specifically the right to purchase and to
cancel a purchase. Gustafsson discusses both the rules and the customs
of sales contracts, along with symbolic acts which made the contracts
valid. Contrary to the received doctrine that Lübeck law influenced virtu-
ally every Northern European legal system, she demonstrates that there
was no distinct influence from one source. Rather, one should speak of
diversity and differences in the various town laws. When similarities can
be spotted, Gustafsson stresses, they were due to parallel developments
and can be seen as an expression of a common Northern European town
culture.
In her contribution ‘Hansards and the ‘Other’. Perceptions and
Strategies in Late Medieval Bergen’, Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz analyses
the interaction of Hanseatic traders in Bergen, Norway, with Norwegians,
Hollanders and Englishmen. She demonstrates that on the one hand,
this interaction followed general European patterns of contact between
foreign traders and their hosts, customers and competitors. Yet on the
other hand, she argues, Hanseatic traders stood out in Europe because
they made a particular distinction between all that was Hanseatic and all
that was non-Hanseatic. ‘Non-Hanseatic’ was an umbrella term for vari-
ous ‘national’ groups, and it gained importance from the fifteenth century
 introduction 17

on. In theory, a Hansard was to limit his business and social contacts to
other Hansards. In practice, there were close contacts on various levels,
and they were tolerated as long as the overall interest of the organization
was not endangered. From the Hanseatic point of view, the term ‘non-
Hansard’ (just as ‘Hansard’) was a chameleon in content and connotation
(positive, negative, neutral). The multifarious perceptions of and inter-
actions with non-Hansards as the ‘Other’ disclose what ‘Hanseaticness’
meant at a given moment.
James M. Murray traces the ‘Hanseatic’ content of the history of Bruges
in ‘That Well-Grounded Error: Bruges as Hansestadt’, and discusses the
recent echoes of this past in present cultural initiatives. He shows that
Hansards in many aspects followed the same patterns of trade and life in
Bruges as other foreigners. They were, however, an atypical group because
they were particularly numerous. Also, the degree to which they were
involved in the religious and charitable life of Bruges made them stand
out as a group among Italians, French, and Iberian merchants. Murray
also asks what constituted the main attraction to Bruges for Hanseatic
traders in the fifteenth century. Was it still the function of the town as
a trade centre? Or was it its function as a financial market which made
traders venture there?
In ‘Small is Beautiful: Why Small Hanseatic Firms Survived in the Late
Middle Ages’, Stuart Jenks takes issue with the so-called ‘backwardness’
of the Hanse in the European context, a view put forward by Wolfgang
von Stromer. Specifically, he focuses on the question of why the Hanse
managed to survive and prosper for such a long period. He discusses some
aspects of this enigma in depth: the fact that Hanseatic firms were small
and that Hanseatic traders could enter several partnerships. This allowed
them to be flexible and grasp opportunities where they arose, as well as
to spread risks. Hansards also had several tools at hand to cut the cost
of bookkeeping, information gathering and quality control. These tools
enabled them to be no less successful than their Italian or South German
counterparts. The second argument of the article rejects the view that the
Hanse was the prime example of a private-order, multilateral reputation-
based organization (as suggested by Greif and González de Lara). Were
that to be the case, then the mechanisms of internal control would rely
largely on the threat of ostracism and punishment of malfeasance. The
Hanse, Jenks argues, was instead governed by incentives to conduct hon-
est trade. The very organization of it as a network of peer partnerships
stimulated transparency, reciprocity and quick access to information. This
18 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

was a different way of handling problems of control than for instance in

Venice.
Mike Burkhardt discusses a major source critical problem in his article
‘Business as Usual? A Critical Investigation on the Hanseatic Pound Toll
Lists’. He analyses the pound toll lists of Lübeck, which was a toll levied
irregularly in Hanseatic towns in order to finance military actions. It is a
source which has been used repeatedly to make comparisons to the vol-
ume of Mediterranean trade. A close reading, however, reveals that the
source is not as reliable as researchers have thought. Analyzing the cus-
toms returns, the Hanseatic Bergen trade and individual traders, Burkhardt
shows that there is too little exact information on the goods shipped, so
that the analysis generates more questions than answers. Given the fact
that the toll was levied only in special circumstances, and that pound
tolls lists have survived for no more than eight years of the Middle Ages,
Burkhardt warns against generalizations. Placing the issue in a broader
context, he poses the question to what extent calculations of medieval
sources give a reliable picture of European medieval trade.
Finally, Marie-Louise Pelus-Kaplan deals in ‘Mobility and Business
Enterprise in the Hanseatic World: Trade Networks and Entrepreneurial
Techniques (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)’ with the phase of tran-
sition of the Hanse, and puts it both in a retrospective and in a European
context. On the basis of merchant archives (some of which have recently
become available for research, namely the 1575–1583 account book of Hans
Moller which was recovered after the dissolution of the Soviet Union), she
demonstrates that the sine qua non for Hanseatic traders was mobility.
Also, Pelus-Kaplan shows that this mobility was connected to the fact that
Hanseatic business enterprises were usually based on family ties. In agree-
ment with the picture sketched by Jenks for the earlier period, she argues
that the simplicity of the organization of business relations in the Hanse
allowed individual traders to be flexible and adapt to new circumstances.
Hanseatic firms still flourished long after the Hanse as a whole lost its
economic and political impetus. Looking at the Hanse in this broader
European context of growth in the early modern period, one should see it
as ‘a vast series of family and commercial networks ceaselessly adapting
themselves to changing circumstances, using very flexible and at the same
time often pragmatic entrepreneurial techniques’.

There are several areas of research on the Hanse which could not be
covered in this volume. Which of these areas are crucial if one wants to
take a broad European perspective? First of all, one vital field deals with
 introduction 19

the connections between trade and artisanry, in terms of trade both with
goods produced in Hanseatic towns (especially beer)47 and outside of
them (especially cloth).48 This research shows the importance of Hanseatic
trade not only for the distribution of goods, but also of ideas in Europe,
for instance the use of hops in beer brewing, and of the impact it had on
the growth of urban centres and the specialization of whole regions, for
instance the development of Flanders as a cloth-producing region. When
one focuses on the trade in foodstuffs, one sees how important it would
be to investigate the role Hanseatic traders took in creating the culinary
dividing line between butter and beer (Northern Europe) and olive oil and
wine (Southern Europe).49
Another area is shipbuilding: the origins of the Hanseatic cog and its
influence on later maritime architecture are inseparable from European
maritime history in general.50 Also, the religious life of Hanseatic traders
both in its unifying and dividing aspects has to be viewed in a broader
European framework: for instance in the medieval religious culture of
confraternities and memoria,51 or the spread of Reformation in Hanseatic
towns and in the outposts of Hanseatic trade.52 A well-developed research
area which cries out for a European perspective is ‘Hanseatic’ art and
architecture. The quotation marks refer here to the discussion to what
extent one can speak of Hanseatic art, whether it is supposed to mean
art produced in Hanseatic towns, or disseminated by Hanseatic traders
and exerting influence on the local art production.53 In parallel, there is
debate on whether the brick buildings of many Hanseatic towns (show-
cased nowadays in tourist flyers) demonstrate the existence of typically
Hanseatic features, and whether the spread of brick architecture along the
Baltic shores can be understood as a proxy of Hanseatic influence. Both
in the case of art and architecture, the debate is what should be seen as
‘Hanseatic’, and what as ‘general European’. Furthermore, the education
of Hanseatic traders is of importance in the context of increased (lay)
literacy and numeracy in late medieval Europe. Burgeoning long-distance
trade made it necessary for traders to develop good skills in writing, count-
ing, Latin, the knowledge of goods, weights, measures and currencies

47 Blanckenburg (2001); Unger (2004).

48 Holbach (2007); Munro (1994); Stabel (2000); Abraham-Thisse (2002).
49 Mohrmann (1996).
50 Paulsen (2010); Ellmers (2010).
51 Poeck (1991); Rahn (1999); Rößner (2001); Graßmann (2009).
52 Postel (2009); Grassmann (2009b).
53 Zaske (1986); von Bonsdorff (1993); Nordhagen (1994); Pilecka (1994); Jaacks (1999).
20 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

in Hanseatic trade, as well as of geography, law and administration. This

led to the establishment of non-clerical town schools in Hanseatic towns
under the patronage of town councils and merchant elites from the thir-
teenth to the fifteenth century.54 Also, the need for higher education
increased. At the same time, the emergence of universities in Rostock
(1419) and Greifswald (1456) can be seen as part of the general wave of
establishment of universities in Europe.55 Finally, the language of the
Hanseatic traders, Middle Low German (one of the distinctive features
of the Hanse) should be considered in a broader European context. As a
lingua franca in a large region it was one of the most prominent languages
in medieval Europe. Since it was widely used both in a written and an oral
form, it constituted an important counterpart to medieval Latin. And on
the other hand, Middle Low German exerted a strong influence on the
languages of the places to which Hanseatic traders ventured. This influ-
ence proved especially profound and lasting in Scandinavia: especially in
Sweden and western Norway it led to a vast number of loan words, and
to the changes of syntax.56 The impact of Hanseatic presence in Northern
Europe speaks for itself.

III. The Hanse and Europe

The definition and redefinition of the Hanse in a European context is

not only relevant for the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The
­history of the Hanse became a subject of research in the nineteenth cen-
tury, in a time when the Holy Roman Empire dissolved (1806), when the
map of Europe was set to change several times. The first modern histo-
rian of the Hanse, Georg Friedrich Sartorius posted a ‘status update’ of
the Hanse in 1802: it was no longer a matter of contemporary politics, but
it has turned into a ‘safe’ historical subject, a ‘halbvergessene Antiquität’
(‘a nearly forgotten antique’).57 It brings to my mind a dusty piece of old
furniture, which has stood in the corner for so long no one remembers
which maiden aunt put it there. It is quite ironic that it was soon to be
politicized in various ways. To push the metaphor further, since then this
Hanseatic antique has proved to be chest of drawers filled with impressive

54 Schildhauer (1984); Jenks (1992); Wriedt (2005).

55 Asche (1999); Wriedt (2005).
56 Peters (1987); Dalen (1994); Jahr (1995); Rambø (2008); Niebaum (2010).
57 Sartorius (1802–1808) 6.
 introduction 21

memories of the past (often drawn out at random), a seat on which vari-
ous ideas of leadership were throned, and a table to display commercial
interests and diverse merchandise. With a bit of polishing and a lick of
paint of the latest fashionable shade, the Hanse has been turned over and
over again into a versatile furnishing.
The use and reuse of the Hanse is well-apparent in the context of
German national history. It is a recurrent topic of self-reflection in recent
scholarship.58 Remarkably, every couple of decades, different aspects of
the Hanse came to the fore in the discussion of national history. The
approach to the Hanse as a theme in national history, however, also had
consequences for its interpretation in a European context. After Sartorius’
academic approach, the first round of recycling the Hanse concerned the
prominent role traders took as town councillors and burghers of largely
independent towns. They were seen as the true carriers of German val-
ues, and the wealthy citizens of towns in the nineteenth century proudly
imagined themselves as their heirs. Hanseatic (medieval ) burghership
was thus the key notion. A national myth of northern burghership, as
opposed to the world of emperors, kings and nobles of southern Germany,
was created.59 The archivist Johann Martin Lappenberg, when applying
to a South German body for funds for the edition of sources relevant
for Hanseatic history, pointed out that the Hanse was of supreme value for
national history. It is enlightening that he saw the need to put the stress
on national history, the European aspect apparently being self-evident.60
In this take, Europe was the vast market in which German burghers could
act as independent entrepreneurs. The Hanse, as a powerful urban orga-
nization, was the outstanding German imprint on European mercantile
history in the Middle Ages. The following turn in Hanseatic historiogra-
phy was concurrent with rise of the Second German Empire (1871), and
the establishment of the Hansischer Geschichtsverein in 1870/71 (with its
journal, the Hansische Geschichtsblätter as a central organ for research on
the Hanse and scholarly editions). The Hansischer Geschichtsverein came
into being in connection with the quincentenary of the Peace of Stralsund
(1370). This ‘German’ victory over Denmark, viewed as the apex of
Hanseatic political might (see the discussion in part I, pp. 12–13), was linked

58 Henn (1994); Hill (2001); Hammel-Kiesow (2007); Selzer (2010). See also the contribu-
tion of Carsten Jahnke in this volume.
59 Schwebel (1964) 17–9; Henn (1994) 396–9.
60 Henn (1994) 397; Hill (2001) 75. The main Hanseatic source series: Hanserecesse/
Hanserezesse (1870–1970); Hansisches Urkundenbuch (1876–1939).
22 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

to the contemporary Schleswig-Holstein question. In imperial Germany,

Hanseatic historiography followed the general political course and turned
to the sea. The maritime aspect of the Hanse was thus highlighted. The
medieval Hanse was glorified for its mastery of the seas, and used to jus-
tify the expansion of the German fleet. Research was closely intertwined
with political propaganda, as it appears from some of the (popular) writ-
ings of the scholars Dietrich Schäfer and Walther Vogel. The Hanse was
presented as part and parcel of Germany’s maritime past and future.61
In this imperialistic context, Europe was to be subdued once again by
the maritime power of Germany. In Nazi Germany, the Hanse was again
seen as a convenient past image of power and expansion. This image was
used in a rhetoric which was to affect Europe deeply. The stress was this
time on the economic expansion of Hanseatic traders in the Baltic, an area
which was now seen as a ‘German’ inheritance from the Hanseatic past,
infamously labelled Lebensraum. The socio-economic turn in the research
on the Hanse, and in part its appropriation by the Nazi propaganda, was
heralded by Fritz Rörig. The Hanseatic trader turned into the paragon of
Germanic virtue, and a prime example of the superiority of German entre-
preneurship, culture and law in Europe. The drive of Hansards to conquer
new markets was used as a justification for German military expansion
in the 1930s and 1940s.62 Other historians justified Nazi ideology by way
of reference to the Hanse, and in turn used elements from the Hanseatic
past to feed Nazi propaganda. For instance in the case of the Netherlands,
the occupation of 1940–45 was first presented as ‘natural’ in view of the
cooperation of Hollandish and Hanseatic traders, or even by presenting
Hollanders as part of the Hanse.63 Later on, the occupation was justi-
fied by way of reference to the Hollandish expansion and the Hanseatic
demise in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. According
to Karl Pagel, it could have all been prevented by a timely incorporation
of Hollanders ‘in den Bund der blutsverwandten niederdeutschen Städte’
(‘in the league of the Low German cities related by blood’): in other words,
it was best to keep Hollanders under control, whether in the Middle Ages
or in the 1940s.64 The expansion and ultimate fate of the medieval Hanse

61 Schäfer (1913); Vogel (1915); Henn (1994) 399–407; Hill (2001) 75–8.
62 Rörig (1940). The work of Rörig had also positive effects, namely freeing Hanseatic
research from the political focus, and stimulating the investigation of the economic, social
and cultural history of the Hanse, Henn (1994) 407–12; Hill (2001) 80–6.
63 For an overview of the question of Hollanders in the Hanse, see Seifert (1997).
64 Pagel (1943) 166; Wubs-Mrozewicz (ESSHC paper 2010, in preparation for publica-
tion). The work of Pagel is usually presented as an example of scholarship which resisted
 introduction 23

(and, indeed, of medieval Germany) was thus made to serve as the hand-
maiden of contemporary debates about the ‘role’ of Germany in Eastern
and Western Europe. In the post-war period, the work of Rörig had also
positive effects, not tainted by Nazi thought. It stimulated the investigation
of the economic, social and cultural history of the Hanse, both in Eastern
and Western Germany.65 Does this mean that contemporary political cor-
sets were shed? Hardly. In the GDR, the focus of research lay predictably
on class-struggle and the pan-European context of the Hanse was primar-
ily Marxist-Leninist. The Hanse of towns (presented as an urban league
in the late Middle Ages) was a welcome illustration of the fight against
feudalism in medieval Europe.66 On the other hand, the end of the WWII
triggered an urge to turn away from the nationalistic take on Hanseatic
history. This is most apparent in the work of Heinrich Sproemberg, who
presented the Hanse as a European research topic. This was due not only
to the need to put Hanseatic sources in a larger framework, or to include
non-German scholars in the discussions. The Hanse originated in Europe
and it affected Europe. At the same time, the interpretation of this role
of the Hanse was to be depoliticized.67 When Karl H. Schwebel presented
an overview of Hanseatic historiography in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries in 1964, he remarked that a new turn was about to take place.
Forthwith, it was imperative to view the Hanse from a ‘resentment-free
and supranational vantage point’.68
Has putting the Hanse in a contemporary European context depoliti-
cized it, or at least neutralized the use of its image? Not quite. At present,
the Hanse is repeatedly sold to European customers in a twofold way.
On the one hand, (regional) politicians and publicists point to it as the
forerunner of the European Union, and a prime example of European eco-
nomic integration and close cooperation of regions. Once again, wealthy
citizens of towns, now in the twentieth century and in the whole of
Europe, were invited to imagine themselves proudly as the heirs of the
medieval Hansards. Several parallels have been evoked: the economic
motive behind its existence, the extensive territory of the organization,
its horizontal structures (limited hierarchy), the collective decision-taking,

the influence of Nazi propaganda, see for instance Henn (1994) 411. However, it is not
entirely the case if one analyses Pagel’s depiction of the Hanseatic-Hollandish relations.
65 Müller-Mertens (2003).
66 Henn (1994) 412; Selzer (2010) 10.
67 Sproemberg (1959). In this article, Sproemberg sought to underline the European
context of the Hanse which was present in the work of Rörig.
68 Schwebel (1964) 20.
24 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

the exchange of goods and ideas, as well as regional ties. Using the Hanse
as a point of reference, cross-border cooperation initiatives have been
taken like the ‘Neue Hanse Interregio’ (1991).69 Also, the ‘City League the
Hanse’ (sic!) (also called the ‘Hanseatic League of New Time’ or the ‘New
Hansa’) was forged in 1980, with yearly ‘Hanseatic days’ as festive meet-
ings of its members (who were, let us be honest, on a junket). By now the
organization counts 176 member towns and cities in 16 European coun-
tries.70 The surge of interest in the Hanse, especially in the Baltic region, is
directly connected to the changes which took place in Europe after 1989.
The reunification of Germany, and the membership of the Baltic states in
the European Union, have created a frothy enthusiasm for a shared
‘Hanseatic past’. EU-membership and interregional cooperation is fre-
quently presented as a continuation of old ties. Not all projects were
successful in the long run: for instance in 1988, local politicians in Schleswig-
Holstein launched yet another initiative to create a ‘New Hanse’. This met
with a frosty response in Scandinavia, especially in Denmark: it was viewed
as a stalking horse for a revival of German dominance in the region.71 This
reaction was understood better by historians than by the politicians or the
broad public. While scholars applaud the public’s interest in history, they
feel bound to caution against misleading interpretations. They remind
us that the Hanse was an organization of traders speaking Low German,
abiding by similar (though not the same) law and customs, not of the
towns themselves.72 This has also consequences for the modern term
‘Hanseatic town’ and part of the ‘City League the Hanse’. For instance Riga
was a town in the Hanse because of the (German) merchants living there
who traded overseas with the assistance of Hanseatic privileges. Riga’s
Hanseatic heritage is not limited to charming brick architecture and the
historic flair of the Old Town. It also includes the (from today’s point of
view) foreign traders who made it Hanseatic. Comparisons between the
area where the Hanseatic merchants were active and the entire European
Union thus only works in a limited way: people and places are not related
in the same manner.

69 Hill (2001) 67; see also Brand (2007).

70 http://www.hanse.org/en.
71 Hill (2001) 67–69. For an overview of the Norwegian interpretation of this shared
past, see Nedkvitne (1990).
72 Hammel-Kiesow (2007); Henn (1994) 413–4; Hill (2001) 67–9.
 introduction 25

This brings us to the second ‘selling point’ of the Hanse in Europe,

namely as a product. Towns in the Baltic and North Sea area boast of their
Hanseatic past in order to attract tourists and investment. Modern busi-
nessmen drape the mantel of the sober Hanseatic businessman around
their own activities. For instance, the trading families in Hamburg—and
the Chamber of Commerce (!)—point to the ‘Ehrbarer Kaufmann’ (hon-
est merchant) as their collective forebear and inspiration.73 The list of
products which are flogged under the Hanse label is endless, reaching
from aviation (Lufthansa) to band aids (Hansaplast).74 It is obvious that
the name is supposed to signal thoroughness, quality and tradition. The
layer of historicism is intended to generate trust even in those potential
customers who are not—or are only vaguely—familiar with the histori-
cal phenomenon itself. Most of these businesses are situated in Germany,
but there are also examples from the Netherlands (Hanze Hogeschool in
Groningen), Estonia (Hansa Grill in Tallinn), Poland (Hanza real estate
in Gdańsk) or Norway (the brewery Hansabryggeri in Bergen). In most
instances, the word ‘Hanse’ has little or nothing to do with the Hanse
itself, but the places in which those businesses are located do have a
Hanseatic past.75 Both in the case of parallels with the European Union,
and the appropriation of the Hanse as a ‘quality stamp’ in advertising, the
perception of the Hanse in a European context is a construct, leading a
life of its own.
Thus, the Hanse game goes on. What will be the next round, in histori-
cal analysis and in historical reminiscence?

73 See the lengthy article on southern and northern trade traditions in Europe in one of
the leading newspapers in the Netherlands (NRC Handelsblad 10 and 11.07.2010).
74 Selzer (2010) 1.
75 On the other hand, both Nuremberg and Munich, located well south of the last
Hanseatic town, have a ‘Hansa Street’.
26 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

Map of the Hanse in 1554 according to the London Steelyard Statutes

Based on the map in Hammel-Kiesow, R., Puhle, M. and S. Wittenburg

(phot.) (2009) Die Hanse (Darmstadt: 2009). We kindly thank Rolf Hammel-
Kiesow and Matthias Puhle for their permission to use the map.
As stated earlier, all maps of the Hanse are snapshots: it is not possible
to draw one complete map of Hanse members.

Glossary:

Braunsberg/ Braniewo
Breslau/ Wrocław
Danzig/Gdańsk
Dorpat/ Tartu
Elbing/ Elbląg
Gollnow/ Goleń
Kolberg/ Kołobrzeg
Köln (Cologne)
Königsberg/ Kaliningrad
Krakau/ Kraków
Kulm/ Chełmno
Nimwegen/ Nijmegen
Raseborg/ Raasepori
Reval/ Tallinn
Rügenwalde/ Darłowo
Staveren/ Stavoren
Stettin/ Szczecin
Stolp/ Słupsk
Thorn/ Toruń
Åbo/Turku
introduction 27
28 justyna wubs-mrozewicz
introduction 29
30 justyna wubs-mrozewicz

Guide to Hanse Research

1) Central source editions

HR: Hanserecesse/Hanserezesse (Leipzig: 1870–1970), 4 series and a total of 26 volumes.
(Partly digitized, see www.hansischergeschichtsverein.de, ‘Publikationen’).
HUB: Hansisches Urkundenbuch, (Halle: 1876–1939), 11 volumes. (Partly digitized, idem).
2) Presentation of sample sources
Sprandel, R. ed., Quellen zur Hanse-Geschichte (Darmstadt: 1982).
3) Main journal
Hansische Geschichtsblätter (1871–), with an extensive review section: ‘Hansische Umschau’.
4) Selected general overviews
Dollinger, Ph. (1997) Die Hanse, 5th ed. (Stuttgart: 1997).
Friedland, K. (1991) Die Hanse (Stuttgart: 1991).
Hammel-Kiesow, R. (2008) Die Hanse, 4th ed. (München: 2008).
Hammel-Kiesow, R., Puhle, M. and S. Wittenburg (phot.) (2009) Die Hanse (Darmstadt:
2009).
Selzer, S. (2010) Die mittelalterliche Hanse (Darmstadt: 2010).
Schildhauer, J. (1984) Die Hanse. Geschichte und Kultur (Leipzig: 1984).
5) Comprehensive exhibition companion
Bracker, J. et al. eds., Die Hanse. Lebenswirklichkeit und Mythos, 3rd ed. (Lübeck: 1999).
6) Selected edited volumes
Brand, H. and E. Knoll eds. (2010) Koggen, Kooplieden en Kantoren. De Hanze, een praktisch
netwerk, 2nd ed. (Hilversum: 2010).
Cordes, A. ed. (2008) Hansisches und hansestädtisches Recht, Hansische Studien 19 (Trier:
2008).
Graßmann, A. ed. (1998) Niedergang oder Übergang? Zur Spätzeit der Hanse im 16. und 17.
Jahrhundert, Quellen und Darstellungen zur hansischen Geschichte NF 44 (Köln: 1998).
Hammel-Kiesow, R. ed. (2002) Vergleichende Ansätze in der hansischen Geschichtsforschung,
Hansische Studien 13 (Trier: 2002).
Hammel-Kiesow, R. and R. Holbach eds. (2010) Geschichtsbewusstsein in der Gesellschaft.
Konstrukte der Hanse in den Medien und in der Öffentlichkeit, Hansische Studien 19
(Trier: 2010).
Müller-Mertens, E. and H. Böcker eds. (2003) Konzeptionelle Ansätze der Hanse-
Historiographie, Hansische Studien 14 (Trier: 2003).
North, M. and S. Jenks (1993) Der hansische Sonderweg? Beiträge zur Sozial- und
Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Hanse, Quellen und Darstellungen zur hansischen Geschichte
NF 39 (Köln: 1993).
Sarnowsky, J. ed. (2006) Verwaltung und Schriftlichkeit in den Hansestädten, Hansische
Studien 16 (Trier: 2006).
Wernicke, H. and N. Jörn eds. (1998) Beiträge zur hansischen Kultur-, Verfassungs-
und Schiffahrtsgeschichte, Hansische Studien 10 = Abhandlungen zur Handels- und
Sozialgeschichte 31 (Weimar: 1998).
7) Online publication (and in the future book publication)
www.hanselexikon.de
8) Internet guide to some of the archives central for Hanse research
http://www.balticconnections.net/, see also Bes, L., Frankot E. and H. Brand eds. Baltic
Connections: Archival Guide to the Maritime Relations of the Countries around the Baltic Sea
(including the Netherlands) 1450–1800, The Northern World 36 (Leiden/Boston: 2007).
 introduction 31

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 introduction 33

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 The city of Lübeck and the internationality
of early HaNseatic trade

Carsten Jahnke

Since the beginning of the twentieth century the ‘foundation’ of the

city of Lübeck and the beginnings of the Hanse have been seen as two
sides of the same coin, or as Fritz Rörig said: ‘The whole existed earlier
than the parts. The development of the proud Hanseatic cities in the
Baltic Sea area [. . .] was not a whim of fate, but was the consequence
of an economic programme: the economic domination of the Baltic by
German merchants.’1 Controlling commerce in the Baltic and the North
Sea was viewed as the Manifest Destiny of the Hanse, and it followed that
those whom a benign fate chose to profit most handsomely from it were
the German merchants themselves.
The observant reader will have noted that the Second German Empire,
triumphant from 1871, cast a long shadow over this concept. Although it
contains many weak points, it remained unquestioned, at least in German
scholarship, until the beginning of this century. Consequently, most histo-
ries of the Hanse start with the so-called ‘foundation’ of the city of Lübeck
in 1158/59 by Duke Henry the Lion, ignoring the beginnings of Hanseatic
trade as well as Lübeck’s earlier, Slavic history. In line with this view,
German merchants popped up in new markets like the Demon King in the
panto and were altogether as instantaneously victorious as the German
armies of the nineteenth century.
It is the aim of this paper to examine this concept in the light of the
sources. In order to do so, we first have to sketch out the development of
international trade in the first half of the twelfth century. Then, we will
undertake a new analysis of the ‘foundation’ of the city of Lübeck and
follow its course to commercial ascendency. This will necessitate posing
the question of the foundation of the Hanse and its initial forms of orga-
nization, even if it cannot be finally solved here. The central question of

1 Rörig (1955) 19f. Das Ganze war früher da als die Teile. Denn schon das Werden jener han-
sischen Ostseestädte, unter ihnen der stolzen Stadt der späteren Führung, Lübeck, war ja nicht
ein Spiel des Zufalls, sondern vollzog sich in Auswirkung eines bewußten wirtschaftspolitischen
Programms: wirtschaftliche Beherrschung der Ostsee durch den deutschen Kaufmann.
38 carsten jahnke

the paper is whether the emergence and rise of the Hanse to commercial
ascendency was an inexplicable accident of history or part of a develop-
ment within the bounds of normal medieval trade.

I. The Hanse—An Atypical and Typical Business Organization in the

Middle Ages in the Light of Historiography

Even for contemporaries, the inner structure of the Hanse was a mystery. It
has remained so, even for scholars in our day.2 The reason for this is surely
that the Hanse was not a monolithic block, not a ‘state within the state’,
but a loose-jointed confederation with a complex structure and numerous
protagonists, each with their own interests.3 Nonetheless, the Hanse was
economically and politically powerful. Because of this, the Hanse was not,
as its first modern historian (Sartorius) termed it, a ‘harmless and nearly
forgotten antique’ (harmlose halbvergessene Antiquität), condemned
to obscurity by its ‘non-political background’.4 But German unification
in 1871 charged the Hanse with contemporary political relevance.5 The
ideals of the citizens of the proud, new German Empire—and their rulers’
ambitions to build a powerful fleet—made the Hanse seem the epitomy
of a glorious German past. The notion that a German trade monopoly
had been planned prior to the first appearance of a ‘German’ merchant
in this area,6 and that large-scale trade was impossible before Hanseatic
merchants arrived on the scene, fitted in perfectly with their view of the
role of the Second German Empire in the contemporary world.7 Within
the bounds of this concept, Lübeck, the caput omnium, held the key
position.
In reality, however, the Hanse did not appear suddenly, out of the
mists of pre-Hanseatic history. Rather, it developed under particular
circumstances which determined its inner structure. In some ways, this
­structure was indeed atypical, but in others the Hanse resembled many
other ­confoederationes.
As will be shown, the Hanse was a community forged in exceptional
circumstances in the course of the thirteenth century. To be sure, Lübeck’s

2 Pitz (2001) §§ 1–21.

3 Pichierri (2000) 63–80 and 115–27.
4 Satorius (1802) VI, see also the Introduction to this volume, pp. 20–5.
5 Schäfer (1903) 32 and 134f.
6 Rörig (1959) 393f.
7 Hill (2001) 75–86.
Other documents randomly have
different content
beautiful love? The love of Matthew which spends itself in pleasure in
Cecily’s existence rather than in personal desire, the tornado which must
storm the frail soul of Fliss, the rare devotion of Ellen, the servant, for her
mistress, the fine normality of Dick’s feeling for his wife, or the love of
Cecily herself, tormented and abused as such free-given love so often is
tormented and abused by life? The spotlight of circumstance is turned now
on one, now on another, as if seeking to find out.
Its light is focused on Cecily now. Dick knows about his expected child
and every quality in his manhood has leapt into eager response to this proof
of his own continuity. He cannot be too tender; he is fearful lest somehow
things go wrong, and yet immensely sure that everything will be successful.
He assures himself that this is a common happening and carries within
himself the proud knowledge of an event that is absolutely unique. He is
very curious about the physiological marvel, as all men are who for the first
time watch themselves so mysteriously reproduced. And with it all—all the
pride that he feels in his coming child—Cecily remains his young wife as
well as his child’s mother and he feels apologetic that this must hurt her—
even endanger her—and he loves her beyond his pride and hope. Cecily’s
mother knows and surrounds Cecily with every precaution and comfort,
seeming to guard her a little jealously now, even from Dick. Cecily has
given up dancing and most society, and society, noticing—ever on the qui
vive for these domestic interludes and their reactions on the people
concerned in them—accepts the situation with a sigh and a smile and a
touch of sentiment. Young Mrs. Harrison is going to have a baby—“so
soon.” Well, opinion divides here.
Matthew hears of it among the casual gossip, through some chance
remark about Dick, and goes to call on Cecily again, as if her interest were
enhanced for him. Cecily receives him gladly, feeling that she is making a
permanent friend and he is one of the few constant visitors at the gray-
shingled house. Another is Madeline Von Vlectenburg, now Madeline
Ensign, who has married a Carrington man and come to Carrington to live
and whose acquaintance is still so small that she clings to Cecily’s
companionship; and another is Fliss Horton, who has become very
assiduous and helpful in bringing Cecily gayety and Madeline useful
gossip. Fliss has the freedom of Cecily’s house now and treats Ellen with a
charming, friendly informality and Ellen is always glad apparently to set an
extra place for Miss Horton at her employer’s request.
 Ellen knows about the baby too and will let Cecily do nothing for herself
if she can help it. She has a tremendous maiden excitement about all the
preparations and in secret is knitting a pink afghan. In secret—for she never
refers to the coming event except by the most modestly veiled of allusions.
Yet, with all this light focused upon her, with all this care and tenderness
surrounding her, Cecily withdrew into herself, more like her mother than
she had ever been before. Her fears had lessened with the sense of
enveloping support and knowledge and the many preparations normalized
the months, but there grew in her a consciousness of isolation like nothing
she had ever known before. It would come upon her sometimes in the midst
of her friends, listening to the idle talk of Madeline and Fliss—sometimes
when she was with Dick. It was not at all lonely or unpleasant—only a
feeling of being set apart. She tried to explain it to Dick.
“It’s like recognizing suddenly that you are part of a design—it’s
strangely impersonal.”
And again——
“But I’m not worried, Dick, dear. I’m interested and happy. Just because
I’m silent now and then you mustn’t think I’m sad. I can’t help feeling
responsible.”
“It’s the first time I’ve ever felt really responsible, you see. I’ve always
been guided; people have always taken me all the way. Once in the convent
when the priest told us about marriage I got awfully afraid. I suppose I
sensed then that you had to go part of the way alone.”
“Yes, I know. You’re all with me and will be, but you can’t go all the
way, darling. I don’t mind and I’m not afraid. I’ve something to go after,
something to get.”
“Being born,” she told him, more whimsically, “must be a terrific
process. Perhaps that’s why it’s fixed so that we can’t remember it at all.”
Those were the more sober moments, but there was on the whole more
gayety than sobriety about the impending birth. Even Fliss, who held strong
views on motherhood and had more than once remarked that she did not
mean to be ever “tied down,” enjoyed looking at the beautiful baby clothes
and the elaborate equipment which were showered upon Cecily, and they all
talked about it a great deal with a gay frankness and humor utterly
unrestrained by the presence of the men of the intimate circle.
 At dinners, at which Cecily, dressed in some lovely loose robe, presided,
Fliss naturally fell to Matthew and every one but Matthew himself fostered
the pairing. Fliss, playing her game and hating her home background more
every day, waited for something to come of all this. While she waited she
played with Dick and it often happened that Matthew drifted to Cecily’s
side while the others amused themselves. And Fliss made a confidant of
Dick and asked his advice, thereby establishing a bond, for not only did
Dick enjoy giving the advice, but he was naturally curious to see whether
Fliss would take it and if she did take it, whether it would work out well and
prove him wise.
Fliss asked him if he didn’t think she ought to go to work. That was her
temporary line of conversation, but Dick didn’t know that. He pondered it
seriously.
“At what?”
“I’ve had no training and of course I’m not clever. I suppose I’d have to
take up stenography and go into some one’s office.”
“Surely you can find something better than that.”
“What? I can’t teach and I wouldn’t want to, anyway. And what else is
there for a girl who doesn’t know anything about anything and whose only
cleverness is in trimming hats?”
“Start a hat shop.”
“You need money for that, Dick.”
“You need money for everything. You’ll have to face that, unless you
marry it.”
“That, too, has been suggested. But it’s not so easy to find some one with
money whom you can marry.”
Dick’s eyes strayed to the other end of the room.
“How about Matthew?”
“Matthew hasn’t asked me.”
“Shall I tell him to ask you?” teased Dick.
“If you like. But he won’t—even though I wouldn’t marry him if he did.
I want something a little different from Matthew.”
“A shade more jazz.”
“A shade more jazz is right!”
 “Matthew is ruled out.”
Matthew turned to call to them. “Who is taking my name in vain?”
Fliss crossed the room negligently. “We were discussing,” she told him
with her engaging impudence, “the possibility of your marrying me.”
“Am I going to do it?”
“No. Rest easy. I’ve refused you in advance.”
“Because you haven’t enough jazz,” contributed Dick.
“Reason enough. But I wonder why I haven’t more of that peculiar
quality. Of course it’s always existed under a variety of names so I can’t say
I didn’t happen along in the right generation. I never did have it. Perhaps
because I had to go to work too young.”
“Well, I should have gone to work young, and I always had it,” said
Fliss.
Cecily was following them amusedly. “And I never had to work at all
and I haven’t it.”
“Convent training.”
“No, look at Madeline. She’s full of the same spirit Fliss is full of.”
“And Dick?”
“Dick’s a jazzer thrown into high company,” mocked Fliss.
“Dick’s a jazzer—reformed.” Dick put his arm about his wife’s
shoulders and drew her close to him. “You’re all wrong. Jazzing or
whatever you call it is purely a matter of age. When you draw near thirty
you get over it, just as the average man gets over tennis.”
“But I’m not thirty.”
“No,” said Dick, looking down at her tenderly, “but you’ve other fish to
fry. Besides you can’t be classified.”
“French model, one only.” Fliss could always be counted on to remain
flippant. The others caught her note with amusement.
It was one of their many idle, undeveloped, cross-purposed
conversations, which in spite of its lightness had a kind of function in
bringing them nearer together, teaching them what to expect from each
other, revealing their quality to each other. The weeks slipped along, each
one important and interesting in its relation to the coming of Cecily’s child,
bringing that great anticipation closer to them. And the lives of all of them
clung to their own little orbits in the midst of a storm already world
devastating, though there were many moments when they all shivered as
some great tragedy, dulled by distance, came over the wires and through the
papers to them. Cecily, of course, dated all things by the fifteenth of May,
and as the winter changed into spring and the whole world opened happily
under the warming sun, she was more and more eager to bring her waiting
to a close. Dick was impatient, she knew, and that made her more so. She
was catching some of Dick’s quality as she lived with him. She was trying
to learn how to frost the depths of the spiritual isolation which was
absorbing her with a surface companionship during hours which demanded
lightness. There was some sacrifice in learning this new lightness, but she
had a vague feeling that it would make Dick happy if she were not only
happy, but gay.
The wonder of Cecily was that she was twenty, as yet unbigoted, and
that her personality was still vague in its outlines. The convent was of
course mainly responsible for this—in leaving so much to God. The implied
educational method of most schools and colleges is that you have to work
things out “on your own” as definitely as possible—work out God, too,
when you get to it—but the convent method was not so. When things
became tangled or overerudite, or too introspective, or embarrassing and
indelicate, the gentle nuns turned the solutions over to God and left them
there without asking for an accounting. Working with material like Cecily
they took care to perfect her English and her French, even if they totally
neglected economics, gave her a cultural knowledge of science and a
knowledge of history, which was colored by faith in the church, and sent
her out with a clean mind. There were plenty of fine fresh minds coming
out of women’s colleges every day, but their freshness was like the
antiseptic freshness of a laboratory after corruption has been studied and its
traces scoured away; Cecily’s was the freshness of the out-of-doors, which
is different. Mental and emotional qualities were still to develop and,
stepping as she did into marriage so quickly, she had all of psychology, all
of philosophy, to learn. The bag of women’s tricks, already so thoroughly
ransacked by Fliss, was quite unknown to Cecily.
While Dick was teaching her love and some gayeties as well, she was
learning other things. It was absurd to say that Matthew had set himself to
the forming of her mind—what he did was too intangible for him to have
had a definite purpose—but still, he did try to help Cecily to think.
Undoubtedly it was at first for the pure pleasure of seeing the effect that
much discussed themes would have upon a mind as inexperienced as hers
that Matthew introduced many of his conversations. Her ready response led
him further. He lent her books, catching up the broken thread of a
conversation about some problem by sending her relevant printed thought;
he stimulated her mind constantly. And the mind, which must have been a
reproduction in part at least of Allgate Moore’s mind, the part which was
responsible for the fact that people called him “genius,” began to grow.
Such a year for Cecily! There were many nights when she sat listening to
the men talking about the affairs which were absorbing almost all thinking
people’s minds—the sinking of ships at sea, the slaughters of war, the
advances and retreats of the hostile armies, the surmises as to new alliances
—all of it deepening in Cecily her natural sense of the gravity of the
world’s affairs and of the world’s dangers. Then when they stopped—and
they would stop when her comments or queries became too intense, too
worried—she always marveled at the way they, and Dick especially, could
spring back to lightness of thought and word.

It was at Matthew’s suggestion that they went to Allenby. Allenby, as

well as being Matthew’s surname, was the name given in his honor to a
little village at the mouth of one of the mines in which Matthew had large
interests. Dick had been offered the stock which one of the directors was
relinquishing and expressed a curiosity to see the place. Matthew said he
would drive him down if he would take a day off.
“I can’t leave Cecily very well,” said Dick.
“Bring Cecily.”
“Now?”
“It won’t hurt her. The roads are fine; state roads—no frost holes. We
can get across to Judith for the night. There’s a very decent inn there where
we could stop.”
“Yes, I know the place. I’ll ask Cecily. Maybe she’d like it.”
It was the second week in April. Mrs. Warner did not especially approve
of the trip, but Cecily had set her heart on it.
“Well,” compromised her mother, “if they drive slowly it probably won’t
hurt you. Don’t go down any mines. And it’s still cold; take plenty of rugs.”
 To balance the party they had asked Fliss, though, as Fliss said, she was
not sure whether she was chaperoning Cecily or Cecily her, and they started
off early on a Saturday morning, Matthew and Dick proving that it was a
business trip by sitting together in the front seat. Lunch from thermos
bottles and a picnic basket hardly halted them and they reached Allenby in
the middle of the afternoon.
It was, as Matthew said, hardly a village. There was a railway station
and about it were grouped houses and cheap stores flanking the side of brief
indefinite streets of rutted red clay. Its newness was ugly, but, looking at it,
one knew its age would be worse. It had no possibility of growing to charm
and dignity from such beginnings. It was a necessity—nothing more. Their
comments as they looked at it were characteristic. Fliss had the first word.
“So this is where your money comes from.”
Matthew and Dick both laughed. “It’s quite a settlement, isn’t it?” said
Dick. “I’d no idea the place was so big. You must have a thousand people in
the village.”
“And more squatted around the mine itself. You’ll see later.” Matthew
turned to Cecily. “What do you think of my namesake?”
“It seems a desolate place for people to live—a miserable place. I should
think you could make it a little more attractive.”
“That’s not good sociology; that’s charity.”
They left their car at the railroad station and wandered about the village,
Dick growing enthusiastic over things which seemed pathetic to Cecily, and
Fliss amusing herself with comments and trying to dazzle the people she
saw. She insisted that they should have a soda at the store and over that she
was very merry and mocking. Matthew dragged them away.
“It gets dark early and we must see the mine yet.”
The road to the mine was rough and led through a waste of ugly fields,
covered with discolored vegetation. It was growing colder and the dead
bushes shook in the wind. The girls huddled themselves in rugs and began
to think of dinner and the Inn. The mine was interesting, but——
Dick and Matthew, however, had grown absorbed by this time. They
were deep in statistics; they looked interestedly and speculatively over the
barren fields and with real admiration at a group of one story huts grouped
together near the great red pit which was the mine.
 “Some of the people have to live close for various reasons,” explained
Matthew over his shoulder. “In case of a blizzard we have to keep a force
fairly close. There are about a hundred men who live here. A few have their
families, but most of them are unmarried and live in bunk houses.”
A number of children bore witness to the existence of the families. They
were very dirty children—stolid little Scandinavians, most of them. The
automobile awoke their interest. They measured its difference from the
half-dozen begrimed Fords which were casually lined up on one side of the
mine office.
“Want to go down, Fliss? Cecily mustn’t.”
“Love it,” said Fliss.
“We’ll just go down to the first level,” Matthew decided, “to give Fliss
an idea. You must put on overalls though. Come in the office and they’ll fix
you out. I’ve had lots of women here. It’s all right.”
Cecily watched them from the depths of the car as they disappeared over
the edge of the mine, walking on a kind of circular path—Fliss looking like
an extremely rakish boy in her overalls. Then she settled herself to wonder
again how these people lived and how it was worth living without any
beauty or any comfort—or love. She wondered if women loved these rough,
unpleasant-looking men now emerging in little groups. They all went to the
office. It was Saturday night and they were getting their pay. They stared at
Cecily and the car, some stolidly, some hostile in their glances. Vaguely she
wished Dick would come back.
Suddenly a man paused beside the car. He was obviously angry. She had
seen him leave the office, slamming the door with an oath that carried to her
ears, and as he came down the road and she knew he must pass the car, she
felt his hostility even before he spoke. He did not shout, but he came to a
pause and his voice was low and menacing and his face full of hate.
“Sit there, damn you, and grin. They fired me—and they’ll pay for it.
You’ll all pay for it, you damned blood suckers. You——”
Then he called Cecily a name which she had never heard before, but
which was utterly clear in its implication, even to her, and went swiftly
down the road, lost in the increasing crowd of homegoing men. Cecily had
gone dead white. She became conscious of crowds of men pouring past her
now and she felt every face ferocious. She did not want to look at them and
yet she could not help it. She felt suddenly that she was affronting them.
This car, her furs, her luxury of robes, their shacks! And Dick did not come.
Where was he? Why did he not come? Had they caught him and Matthew
down in the mine? Had something happened? She tried to reassure herself,
but her shocked mind went tearing on into confusion. Then in the midst of it
came a pain, a tearing pain like nothing she had felt ever before. Dick,
coming up beside Fliss and Matthew, all three laughing and talking to one
of those men who had so terrified Cecily, saw his wife, white-faced—
staring.
They were all immensely frightened and too inexperienced to be sure
what steps were best to take. Even Cecily was not sure that her hour had
really begun, but before they got back to the little village there was not
much room for doubt. Dick and Matthew looked at each other in utter
consternation. They were four hours away from all the elaborate
preparations for the advent of Cecily’s child; they both had heard of
accidents. The ride back home was not to be attempted, but here, in this
forlorn little mining town——
In those first hours it was Cecily herself who took the initiative. In an
interval between the pains she lifted her head from Dick’s shoulder with an
actual smile.
“Apparently I’m going to spoil the party; and I can’t get back home.
Find me a place to stay over night, Dick—the cleanest house there is. And
telephone Dr. Wilson. In the meantime get hold of the doctor here.”
They did as she said. The little frame house of the mine superintendent
was made ready and the superintendent’s wife, a Swedish woman of forty,
after her first bewilderment took command of the situation and Cecily with
stolid sympathy. Cecily, in a strange hummocky bed, wearing a coarse
cotton flannel nightgown, soon lost the connection between reality and
nightmares. Nothing was real about her—the face of the Swede woman
with her guttural reassurances, the bearded man who they said was the
doctor, but who seemed unable to relieve her torture—but through it all her
mind pounded along on a steady track of fear and determination. She might
lose her baby—she would not lose her baby—they must take care. She kept
giving directions, pathetic directions, about that.
Matthew had found the doctor and after a look at Cecily he told them
that they would have no time to send for their own physician. He did not
seem much concerned about it all and was inclined to take it all very easily.
He was a middle-aged man—Swedish also—with a blond beard and
abstracted blue eyes.
“But,” said Dick, “there’s not even a nurse!”
The doctor smiled. “Fifty babies in six months in this village,” he said,
“and no nurse for any of them. This lady (pointing to Fliss) and Mrs. Olson
will help me—and you, if I need you.”
But it seemed none the less terrible. Matthew and Dick pooled their
knowledge of such events. Fliss stayed by Cecily, remarkably calm, helping
Mrs. Olson in her meager preparations, but white to her lips. And each half
hour the cloud of pain and worry thickened over the little house. It was a
cold night. Mrs. Olson had sent her children to a neighbor’s house. Dick
and Matthew, in the kitchen, tried to conceal their fears.
“Why was I such a damned fool as to bring her?” cried Dick.
“I wish I hadn’t suggested it, but we did and we’re here. We’ll have to
see it through, Dick. The chances are ninety to one that it will come out all
right, old man.” But he, too, was white and his hand shook a little as he
poked at the fire in the stove.
Fliss came in and stood leaning against the door. They jumped up. She
gave them a few directions.
“Hunt through the drug store yourself,” she finished. “We must be sure
the things are right. I’ll watch.”
“Do you think you can, Fliss?” Dick sounded doubtful and Fliss, leaning
against the door, did not look too competent. Her skirt was too short and her
hair too elaborate.
“I’ve got to,” she answered. “I don’t know much, but I’ve heard things—
enough to know what to avoid.”
They had reached Carrington by telephone and knew that Cecily’s
mother, Cecily’s nurse and Cecily’s doctor were now on their way to
Allenby, but it would be three or four hours before they could arrive even
with the greatest of speed. The local doctor had assured them that it would
be over before that. The two men could hear strange sounds that did not
seem natural—cries that hurt almost unbearably to hear. The footsteps
overhead were hurried.
“Do you think—already?” asked Dick.
Then they both heard it.
 Fliss came in again. Her hair was disordered and her face as pale as
before. She faced them with startled, angry eyes.
“So that’s what women have to go through,” she said, “and you never get
a taste of it! My Lord, but it’s fierce!”
Dick had pushed past her, upstairs. It seemed as if Matthew were about
to follow, and restrained himself.
“Is something wrong?” he asked hoarsely. “Is she——”
Fliss actually laughed. All the primitive sex antagonism in her had
seemed to leap out suddenly. She was angrily on guard, fiercely angry at all
men, so free of this agony—quite at her best as she stood there in her wrath.
“Oh, no, nothing’s wrong. It’s bad enough when it’s right. Dick’s got his
baby all right.”
She sat down at table with her face in her hands. Matthew’s face relaxed
a little and he patted Fliss clumsily on the shoulders.
“You’re a brick, Fliss.”
She recovered herself quickly and looked up, brushing her hair back, her
burst of anger seeming quite spent, a wan humor asserting itself.
“There was much the same situation when I was born,” she said
reflectively. “Do you suppose that child will have the same sentiments
towards me that I have towards Mrs. Ellis? I forgot to tell you—it’s a girl.”

CHAPTER X

T HE dawn brought confidence and no small feeling of triumph to all of

them. The nurse, the Carrington specialist and Cecily’s mother all
arrived and with the verdict of the trusted doctor that the baby was
small but healthy and that Cecily was in no danger, they all began to enjoy
the adventure in retrospect. Cecily could not be moved for at least ten days
and the nurse tried to arrange the room as pleasantly and conveniently as
possible, rather arousing a smoldering ire in Mrs. Olson until Dick, taking
her aside, slipped a check into her hand of sufficient size to feed and clothe
the little Olsons for the winter. After that the nurse had things her own way.
Much of Cecily’s equipment had been brought already and her stepfather
arrived later with a great bunch of roses that towered above Mrs. Olson’s
best white water pitcher. It was obviously impossible for them all to stay in
Allenby. Mrs. Warner took a room at a neighbor’s house, the nurse stayed
with Cecily on a camp bed imported from Carrington, and everything
became quickly ordered and made comfortable by the ease of wealth. But
the shock, the healthy encounter with an experience which is no respecter of
wealth and convenience, was to remain in the minds of each of the four
participants for a long time.
Matthew was to take Fliss back to Carrington in the afternoon, for Dick
refused to stir for another twenty-four hours. Sleeping in the kitchen with
Mr. Olson meant nothing to him, he declared. So he stayed. The nurse was
keeping Cecily very quiet, but she let the departing adventurers in for a few
moments. Matthew saw first the big clothes basket on a chair by the
window and then Cecily, with her hair braided tightly back and dark circles
under her eyes. For an instant he looked from one to the other, obviously
unable to speak.
“Take a look at my daughter,” said Cecily.
Matthew obeyed. Then he came over to the bedside and looked at Cecily,
laying a nervous, strangely hot hand on hers.
“It’s a shame I got you into all this.”
“It’s worked out all right and it wasn’t your fault at all. I insisted on
coming. The baby’s healthy and I’m strong—and the experience! You’ve
told me I lacked experience and that my life was cushioned. Well, this
wasn’t cushioned.”
“God knows it wasn’t.”
The girls looked at each other and Cecily suddenly felt her eyes fill with
tears.
“I’ll never forget your seeing me through, Fliss. Never.”
Fliss bent over her and kissed her. She had passed the stage of her first
emotion and was ready to recognize what a lucky incident the whole thing
had been for her. Mrs. Warner had said the same thing that Cecily had just
said. She was established in that family and she knew it. Now that Cecily
was comfortable, that she was out of peril and surrounded by American
Beauty roses, down comforters and in her own silk nightdress, Fliss could
afford to take account of stock and see how her own had risen.
“Good-by, Cecily. When you get back to town I’ll be around to see you.”
 “As soon as I get back,” Cecily pledged her.
“Take care of my foster daughter.”
There was an interesting moment—as Fliss crossed to the improvised
cradle and stood looking down at the baby, an expression on her face which
could mask no ulterior motive. The queer little thing that she had seen come
into the world, struggling, seemed to make her feel shaken.
“Come on, Matthew, Cecily’s tired and we must hurry.”

It was a strange convalescence and perhaps an unusually healthy one, for

there was no excitement and a great deal of quiet. The brunt of the
inconvenience now fell on the nurse and Cecily had only to lie for long,
silent hours, thinking over the whole wonderful event. She listened to the
voices of the children outside her window, marveling that they had been
born just as her child was born, and the roots of that solidarity of
motherhood which all mothers feel for each other began to grow in her. She
had come to that stage in marriage when the mysteries are shared, not with
one other individual, but with a whole sex. Dimly the great expansiveness
of motherhood began to dawn upon her mind.
All this expressed itself not only in her dreaming, but in her curiosity.
She plied the nurse with questions. Physiology and psychology of other
mothers fascinated her. The cases of the nurse, in so far as she would talk
about them, were an endless source of interest. Dick joined her in her
interest. Step by step they went over the story of the birth again and again.
But then Dick left it and went to town, carrying with him the consciousness
of his fatherhood, to be sure, but temporarily overlaying that interest with
business and masculine contact. Cecily lay in bed and thought and talked on
about women and mothers. She had not the slightest intention of playing
upon her illness. She was quick to feel her energy coming back and rejoiced
in it. There was not a suggestion of querulousness in her manner. That she
took the luxury and the petting which surrounded her as things natural to
her was not to be wondered at.
But there was a great deal of praising and petting, and while Dick was
triumphant he was also surrounded by an atmosphere that made him feel
vaguely apologetic for having to undergo so little inconvenience himself.
He was ready enough to admit the apparent unfairness of the situation. Not
that it had ever struck him before. If he had considered it at all before his
marriage he would have said that women had to have children, but men had
to rustle to support them and called it fair enough. In the face of his
personal situation it seemed different. Cecily, frail and pitiable, seemed
indeed to be bearing the heavy end.
It was Fliss who got a real sociological slant on the situation. She visited
Cecily’s house before Cecily returned to Carrington, ostensibly to return a
scarf which she had borrowed of Cecily for the eventful ride, but really to
see and have a gossip with Ellen. Ellen was scrupulous. She would not join
Fliss in the living-room and Fliss was compelled to sit in Cecily’s room
while Ellen polished the furniture. Ellen was very much excited about all
that had happened—a little disappointed at not having been nearer the
center of action herself, but determined to make up for that by making
Cecily’s homecoming as comfortable as possible. The baby having been
born, the pink afghan had been hastened to completion and now lay in state
on the foot of the crib.
“Poor Mrs. Harrison,” said Ellen, “she’s been through a lot, hasn’t she?”
Fliss shrugged her shoulders in impatience. “You all make me sick,” she
said; “she hasn’t been through more than any other woman, has she?”
But she gave Ellen no chance to answer.
“She had a bad time for twenty-four hours—no, about twelve hours. And
for that the whole town sits back and gasps with pity, because it’s Cecily—
Cecily who’s been used to ‘everything.’ What got on my nerves was to see
what all women had to suffer. But I don’t see that Cecily hasn’t got it so
much easier than most people that she doesn’t need my pity or any one
else’s. Nurses and doctors and silk quilts and embroidered layettes take a
good deal of sting out of having babies, I should think. And Dick acting as
if he ought to grovel in the earth because his wife presented him with a
baby! I dropped in to see May Robinson on the way here to-day. She’s
expecting another and doing her own housework. And her husband is on the
road and only gets home for week ends. May isn’t being so darn coddled.
She’s worried sick about how they’re going to afford the new one. I can’t
say that I’m especially sorry for Cecily.”
Ellen gave the dressing table a last flourishing polish and took refuge in
her usual philosophy.
“Well, that’s how things are,” she said. “Some people have more than
others. But that’s no reason why you can’t be sorry for a pretty young girl
like Mrs. Harrison having a thing like that happen when she’s miles away
from home and help and all.”
“She had me,” grinned Fliss, and went on with a brief recital of what she
and Mrs. Olson had done. Ellen listened with interest, although with some
embarrassment.
“It was certainly fine of you, Fliss.”
“Fine nothing. It was the luckiest thing that ever came my way.”
Ellen looked her question.
“Don’t you see how solid it makes me with the Harrisons? It gives me a
real connection. Cecily never will forget a single thing that happened, and
among other things she probably won’t forget that I was the first person to
hold her baby. Yes—the greatest luck I ever had, for there’s more than that
to it. Matthew Allenby knows I’m on earth at last. Of course, it’s Cecily
he’s gone on, but because he thinks I was useful for once—especially to the
angelic Cecily—he actually noticed me as if I were more than a mechanical
toy. And he’s quite a person, Ellen!”
Ellen did not answer and Fliss began to wander around the room looking
at things. She opened Cecily’s wardrobe and pushed dress after dress along
the sliding rod in envious review.
“Lord, what it must be to be rich,” she sighed, “what fun—what fun!”
“Come,” said Ellen, “come out in the kitchen and I’ll fix you a bit of
lunch. You need it,” she added sagely. “You’re always sort of longing when
you’re hungry.”
Fliss laughed and caught her cousin around the waist, waltzing her about
ecstatically.
“You old darling—wait till I am rich and see what I’ll do for you.”
“Look out—Mrs. Harrison’s rugs,” cautioned Ellen.

CHAPTER XI

T HE baby changed from a novelty into a treasure; to the period of

ecstatic delight there succeeded the scientific business of infant care.
The expert nurse having brought her patient back to Carrington and
attended her there until she was full of renewed energy, left and Cecily took
charge of her own baby. There was a nursemaid during the daytime, but at
night when the sudden, piercing little cry sounded from the next room it
was Cecily herself who went to find out whether it was hunger or cold that
caused it. The responsibility matured her as responsibility matures the
average woman. It tired her physically and numbed her mind a little.
“You mustn’t let your cradle become an obsession,” said her mother.
“Of course not. I wouldn’t let myself get too absorbed. It wouldn’t be
fair to Dick,” said Cecily, rather automatically.
“I wonder if you give Dick quite the attention you used to?”
Cecily looked up, surprised.
“It’s very common,” said her mother easily, “to think too much about the
baby and too little about the husband at this time. I hope I don’t seem
intrusive, darling, but you stay at home rather a lot.”
“I have to get back to the baby, you see, if I do go out.”
“The baby is six months old, now. You and Dick ought to go away for a
vacation. I’ll stay here and get a trained nurse for the baby.”
Cecily did not take her up, but she watched Dick that night at dinner.
They did not seem to talk as much as they used to—except about Dorothea.
She crossed over to his place and put her hand softly under his chin.
“Do I neglect you, Dick, dear—for the baby?”
“Do I look neglected?” countered Dick. “Nonsense. Don’t talk like a
problem play. Besides, how could you neglect me for Dorothea? She’s me,
isn’t she?” And he smiled engagingly as only Dick could smile. “If I catch
you neglecting me, you’ll hear from me. Who brought this on? Who’ve you
been talking to?”
“Nobody. Mother just suggested that I might be a bit too concentrated.
She wanted me to go away and leave her in charge.”
“Good idea. I think I could do it next month—if we aren’t going to war.”
“We must wait until after Christmas,” demurred Cecily.
But after Christmas they did not go at once. In January Cecily paid a
secret visit to her doctor. When she came home she sat down in her
straightest living-room chair and looked about her a little queerly. She was
still sitting there half an hour later when Dick came home.
“Well,” said Dick, “how’s my family?”
 Cecily made a feeble little joke, which showed considerable progress in
adjustment.
“Increasing,” she said, with a catch in her voice.
Dick wheeled around.
“Why, Cecily,—why, you don’t mean we’re going to have another!”
She nodded at him, a medley of expressions on her face, all of them
overlaid with that wondering question as to how he would take it.
“You’re sure?”
“Quite.”
They sat down and held each other rather tightly. Responsibilities, more
than toys, more than novelties, spread before them. Then like a clear ray of
light the same thought came to both of them.
“They’ll be great companions for each other.”
“I was thinking about that.”
Fliss came in that night. There was more than usual radiance in her face.
She dashed up for a visit to the nursery, down again to show Dick a new
dance step and Cecily felt a little wistful as she watched her. Waiting—
illness—the stretch looked very long. She wondered what Fliss would say if
she knew.
But Fliss was full of herself and in no mood to inspire confidences.
“Why the million-dollar mood?” asked Dick.
Fliss laughed and flushed a little. “I’ve had something happen to me—
something nice.”
“Secret? Tell us,” begged Cecily. “I want to hear something pleasant.”
“It’s a real thrill. I’m engaged to be married. I’m to be married next
month.”
“Who?”
Fliss had never looked more charming, more provocative. She dangled a
gay little slipper from her toes and looked at them half teasingly.
“You’d never guess. A real high-brow. What he’ll ever do with me I
don’t know. But he can’t get away now.” And then, worked up to her
climax, “I told him I was going to tell you when he wasn’t around—I
wanted the fun. It’s Matthew.”
 “Well, isn’t that great!” said Dick, with the sincerest congratulation for
Fliss and a more than faint wonder in his tone. But Fliss, if she analyzed his
tone at all, was not disturbed. She was looking at Cecily.
Over Cecily’s first shock of surprise there clouded a sense of
relinquishment, unacknowledged. Deliberately she made herself pleased.
“It’s wonderful.” And, more courteous than Dick, she added, “I’m
awfully glad for Matthew.”
Possibly she was not quite quick enough to say it. A little flash lit up
Fliss’s brilliant face and she countered with quick frankness. “I get a lot
more out of it than Matthew, but he’ll get something, according to my
lights, and I may make him happier than people will expect. And,” most
laughingly, “we can’t all be perfect Cecilys. And you were taken.”
If Cecily thought the remark based on more than flippancy she gave no
sign. When Matthew and Fliss came to see them a few days later and he
was alone with Cecily for a few moments she was all congratulation.
“She’ll keep you young, Matthew. She’s always so gay. I can see Dick
brighten up whenever she comes in until I’m almost jealous. All men like
her.”
“Is that a recommendation for a wife?” he asked a little gravely.
“Don’t be foolish. You know that I mean you’ll be very happy.”
“I will be happy,” he answered. “I am happy.” He paused and looked at
her intently. “I am glad that I am going to be married to Fliss and I am glad
that you are alive. We take what we can get of happiness.”
When he had gone she did not analyze his words. She did not want to.
She put the thought of them aside, her thoughts turning to the things that
were always in her mind now. The new baby, and was there going to be a
war?
 BOOK TWO
CHAPTER XII

F LISS—still Fliss despite the dignity of the name of Allenby—was, after

two years, still attracting attention. She reacted to it exactly as she had
reacted to her own popularity at the High School dances. It enhanced
every sparkling quality.
She had been busy. After her marriage, enforcedly quiet because it
would never do to draw unnecessary attention to the social unimportance of
her family, she and Matthew had gone traveling. They had had a good time.
She hung on his arm and petted him; she begged for things and was
enthusiastically grateful for them when he gave them to her. She kept him
laughing and herself in constant good temper and in every fresh
extravagance of silk or fur or velvet she was prettier than before. Matthew
laughed at her and let her pet him and expanded. He called her a little crook
and she admitted it, but he never had the bad taste to ask her if she would
have married him if he had been poor. They were frank with each other, but
never moved much below the easy surface of things. Never had Matthew
really played before, and under her skillful leadership he learned a good
deal about play. He learned the fun of extravagance. His mother had not
been a person to accept money or presents easily. Fliss rose resplendent
from a shower of them. And from the depths of her little savage heart she
was grateful for presents, for relief from sordidness; and grateful most of all
for the sheer content with the life he made possible.
“Don’t we have fun?” she would say in her strongest italics, every now
and then, with a swift little caress that was perfectly honest in its affection
as far as it went.
“We do,” he would acknowledge with smiling, amused understanding—
more than that, with pleasure.
He had his second glimpse of his wife’s remarkable adaptability when
they visited his mother. His mother had been duly written of his marriage,
had duly written to say she expected to see them while they were on their
wedding trip, and, moved by some impulse, Matthew had deliberately
sandwiched a week in the little Indiana town between the more brilliant
points on their itinerary. They arrived in Peachtree about nightfall, stepping
from the jumpy local train to a station platform dripping with rain and lit
only by the dingy glow from a quick lunch counter window. Fliss, well
acclimated by this time to waiting red-caps and taxis, looked about her and
then at Matthew with amusement.
“You are completely out of the picture,” said Matthew. “You look
shockingly resplendent up against Peachtree. Don’t look about you for cabs;
there are no cabs. No one needs cabs here.”
His mother rounded the corner of the station house, driving her umbrella
before her. Matthew seemed to recognize her by the swish of her skirts in
the rain. He took her umbrella and kissed her gravely.
“Good boy,” she said. “Is this Florence?”
Fliss reached half way up on Mrs. Allenby’s spare, tall form. She was
silhouetted for a moment against the black dress of the older woman. Then
Mrs. Allenby inspected the bags.
“Dave Johnson can bring up your grips. You can’t manage the four of
them in this rain, even if it is only a step.”
They left the bags and Fliss, as they went along together, had a
consciousness of wooden sidewalks in indifferent repair, of the stillness of a
country village after the train has gone through, of a town gone to bed
unreasonably early.
Up a little path which crunched under their feet, on a tiny porch where a
rocking chair stood grotesquely upside down so that its seat might be
protected from the rain, through a low door. Matthew struck a match and,
moving familiarly in the darkness, lit a lamp. They were in the parlor.
Fliss had known poverty and shabbiness. This was different from
anything she had ever known. It was the acme of thrift, of cleanliness, of
economy and respectability, and pride. The very glow in the Franklin stove,
coming through the isinglass, was stiff and correct. The furniture, the
prideful Brussels rug with its over-pink central cluster of roses was clean to
extremity. The tidies on the chair backs were straight. The Bible, flanked by
an imposing parlor table volume, margined the white cover on the center
table. The young Mrs. Allenby, standing in the midst of the intensity of
order, felt as exotic and out of place as she looked. But her mother-in-law,
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