The Temptations of Dr. Hoffmann
ELIZABETH HARDWICK
I
HAD BEEN
living for some time in the same house on Riverside
Drive with Dr. Felix Hoffmann and his wife before I actually met
them. He was known to me as a prominent German Protestant theo–
logian and when I saw
his
name on one of the mailboxes in my
hou~e
I was not without curiosity about him. Had I not developed a
friendship with this family I believe that winter in New York would
have been unendurable, because I was living under conditions that
often seemed to me almost uncivilized. For reasons of economy I had
taken a room in one of those co-operative apartments around Colum–
bia University in which many ladies, most of them well past middle
age, live. The place was clean and had once been a fi!le family apart–
ment with a good view of the river, but most of the ladies living
there were quite mad and had a way of dividing into warring camps
over a foolish issue like the answering of the telephone and sometimes
they engaged in the most distressing fights in the hall. I felt rather
depressed about all of them because they were lonely and idle and,
since I found one as pathetic as the other, I was inclined to be a bit
unscrupulous and to try to take both .sides in their arguments. This
was disastrous; each side repeated what I had said and I sometimes
trembled for fear of retribution when I put my key in the door. Also,
the place was very bad for my studies.
If
I had had the courage to
ignore the ladies I might have got along better, but though I kept
telling myself that haughtiness was far more honest than the hypo–
critical friendliness I had assumed, I found myself irrevocably com–
mitted to the latter. It was too bad because it was very cold that winter
and I often stayed in the library longer than I wished rather than go
home to face my "friends." Such social life as I had was spent mostly
in drugstores where I drank so many cups of coffee I was constantly
dizzy.
Living in this atmosphere, it perhaps isn't surprising that I should
have welcomed meeting someone else in the house and that I should
have thought the Hoffmann household extraordinarily attractive. I
