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Title: Auld lang syne
Author: Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Language: English
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AULD LANG SYNE
[Illustration: F. Max Müller]
AULD LANG SYNE
BY
THE RT. HON. PROFESSOR F. MAX MÜLLER
AUTHOR OF THE “SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE,” ETC.
_WITH A PORTRAIT_
New York
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
PREFACE
What are you to do when you are sent away by your doctor for three or
four weeks of perfect rest? You are made to promise that you will lie
perfectly fallow, take no books and allow no proofsheets to reach you. A
very eminent German professor, the late Dr. Neander, the famous Church
historian, solved the difficulty in his own way. He had faithfully
promised his physician that he would take no books with him to Karlsbad,
but had at last, as a great favour, obtained permission to take at least
one work with him on his journey. On the morning of his departure the
doctor wished to say good-bye to his patient, and calling at his door
saw a cart laden with heavy folios. “But, dear professor,” he said, with
considerable surprise and displeasure, “you had promised me to take no
books with you.” “Yes, doctor,” the professor replied, “but you allowed
me one work, so I thought I might take the Fathers with me to Karlsbad.”
I might have done the same, if I had taken the “Rig Veda” only, or the
Sacred Books of the East with me, but my conscience would not allow it,
so that I found myself in small lodgings at an English watering place
with nothing to do all day long but to answer a number of accumulated
letters and to read _The Times_, which always follows me. What was I to
do? Doctors ought to know that to a man accustomed to work enforced rest
is quite as irritating and depressing as _travaux forcés_. In
self-defence I at last hit on a very simple expedient. I began to write
what could be written without a single book, and taking paper, pen and
ink—these I had never forsworn—I jotted down some recollections of
former years. The fancy took me, and I said with Goethe:—
Ihr naht euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten—
and after a day or two I was so absorbed in my work, if work it could be
called, that I said again with Goethe:—
Ihr drängt euch zu! Nun gut, so mögt ihr walten....
Of course I had to leave many a gap in my sketch of Auld Lang Syne.
Dates, even names, would now and then leave me in the lurch, and as I
had no means of verifying anything, I had to wait till I was settled
again among my books and letters and papers at home. But though I
corrected some glaring anachronisms and some mistaken names, I could
leave my MS. very much as it had been written down in my temporary
exile, and I can therefore vouch for its truth so far that it is an
exact copy of the negative developed by long exposure in my memory.
Whether it is accurate, who can tell? I know from sad experience that my
memory is no longer what it was. All I can say is that the positive copy
here published is as true and as exact as the rays of the evening sun of
life, falling on the negative in my memory, could make it. Though I have
suppressed whatever could possibly have given offence to any sensible
person, however sensitive, I have not retouched the pictures of my
friends or acquaintances, nor have I tried, as is now so much the
fashion, to take out all the lines and wrinkles so that nothing remains
but the washed-out faces of angels.
What I give here is but a small portion of the panorama of life that has
passed before my eyes. Of myself there is but little, for the spectator
or interpreter in a panorama should remain unseen and in the dark. It is
a pleasure to him, though often a sad pleasure, to see once more what he
has seen before, to live the old time over again, to look once more at
dear faces, once so full of love and life, to feel the touch of a
vanished hand, and hear a voice that is still.
As we grow old it is our fate to lose our friends; but the friends we
have lost are often nearer to us than those who remain. Will they never
be quite near to us again? Stars meet stars after thousands of years,
and are we not of more value than many a star?
F. MAX MÜLLER.
CONTENTS
PAGE
MUSICAL RECOLLECTIONS 1
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS—
I. 40
II. 86
III. 120
IV. 164
RECOLLECTIONS OF ROYALTIES—
I. 205
II. 245
BEGGARS 289
INDEX 321
AULD LANG SYNE
MUSICAL RECOLLECTIONS
The man that has no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils:
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.
Thus wrote Shakespeare; but with all due respect for the immortal bard,
he was wrong for once. Did not my dear friend, Arthur Stanley, hate
music, and was he not to be trusted? Were his affections dark as Erebus?
True it is, music gives us a new life, and to be without that life is
the same loss as to be blind, and not to know the infinite blue of the
sky, the varied verdure of the trees, or the silver sparkle of the sea.
Music is the language of the soul, but it defies interpretation. It
means something, but that something belongs not to this world of sense
and logic, but to another world, quite real, though beyond all
definition. How different music is from all other arts! They all have
something to imitate which is brought to us by the senses. But what does
music imitate? Not the notes of the lark, nor the roar of the sea; they
cannot be imitated, and if they are, it is but a caricature. The
melodies of Schubert were chosen, not from the Prater, but from another
world.
For educational purposes music is invaluable. It softens the young
barbarian, it makes him use his fingers deftly, it lifts him up, it
brings him messages from another world, it makes him feel the charm of
harmony and beauty. There is no doubt an eternal harmony that pervades
every kind of music, and there are the endless varieties of music, some
so strange that they seem hardly to deserve to be called a gift of the
Muses. There is in music something immortal and something mortal. There
is even habit in music; for the music that delights us sounds often
hideous to uneducated ears.
Indian music is thoroughly scientific, based on mathematics, and handed
down to the present age after many centuries of growth. But when we hear
it for the first time, it seems mere noise, without melody, without
harmony, without rhythm. The Maoris have their own music too, but send a
New Zealander to hear a long symphony of Beethoven, and, if he can, he
will certainly run away long before the finale.
In a lesser degree it is the same with us. Beethoven’s compositions were
at first considered wild and lawless. Those who admired Mozart and Haydn
could not endure him. Afterwards the world was educated up to his Ninth
Symphony, but some of his later sonatas for pianoforte and violin were
played by Mendelssohn and David in my hearing, and they both shrugged
their shoulders, and thought that the old man had been no longer quite
himself when he wrote them. We have grown into them, or up to them, and
now many a young man is able to enjoy them, and to enjoy them honestly.
I remember the time when Schumann’s songs were published at Leipzig, and
the very same songs which now delight us were then by the best judges
called curious, strange, interesting, promising, but no more. Yes, there
is habit in music, and we are constantly passing through a musical
education; nay, the time comes when our education seems finished, and we
can learn and take in no more. I have passed through a long school. I
began with Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, lived on with Mendelssohn, rose
to Schumann, and reached even Brahms; but I could never get beyond, I
could never learn to enjoy Wagner except now and then in one of his
lucid intervals. No doubt this is my fault and my loss, but surely the
_vulgus profanum_ also has its rights and may protest against being
tired instead of being refreshed and invigorated by music. Would
Mendelssohn have admired Wagner? Would Beethoven have listened to his
music, would Bach have tolerated it? Yet these were musicians too,
though perhaps not sufficiently educated. To be honest, a great deal of
Wagner’s music seems tiresome to me, and I do not see why it should ever
end.
My musical education began very early, so early that I cannot remember
ever passing through any drudgery. As long as I remember I could play,
and I was destined to become a musician, till I went to the University,
and Mendelssohn advised me to keep to Greek and Latin. I was born and
brought up in Dessau, a small German town in an oasis of oak-trees where
the Elbe and the Mulde meet, a town then overflowing with music. Such
towns exist no longer.
When I went to school at Dessau, this small capital of the small Duchy
of Anhalt-Dessau counted, I believe, not more than ten or twelve
thousand inhabitants. Everybody knew everybody. As a boy I knew not only
the notables of Dessau, I knew the shops and the shopmen, the servants,
the day-labourers (_Tagelöhner_) who sawed and split wood in the street,
every old woman that sold apples, every beggar that asked for a
Pfennig—mark, not a penny, but the tenth part of a penny. It was a
curious town, with one long street running through it, the
_Cavalierstrasse_, very broad, with pavements on each side. But the
street had to be weeded from time to time, there being too little
traffic to prevent the grass from growing up between the chinks of the
stones. The houses had generally one storey only; those of two or three
storeys were mostly buildings erected by the Duke for his friends and
his higher officials. Many houses were mere cottages, consisting of a
ground floor and a high roof. Almost every house had a small mysterious
looking-glass fastened outside the window in which the dwellers within
could watch and discuss an approaching visitor long before he or she
came within speaking distance. It was the fashion not only to whitewash
the plastered walls of houses, but to green-wash, or to blue-wash, or to
pink-wash them. All this is changed now; few people remember the old
streets, with distant lamps swinging across to make darkness more
visible at night, and with long waterspouts frowning down on the
pavement like real gurgoyles, and not frowning only, but during a
thunderstorm pouring down buckets of water on the large red and green
umbrellas of the passers-by.
Dessau was then a very poor town, but a _læta paupertas_ reigned in it;
everybody knew how much everybody else possessed or earned, and no one
was expected to spend more than was justified by his position. We can
hardly understand now with how little people then managed, not only to
live, but thoroughly to enjoy the highest pleasures of life. My
grandfather, who was the Duke’s Prime Minister, received, I believe, no
more than two thousand thalers (£300) salary, though there may have been
additional allowances for rent, carriages and horses. But there was a
curious mixture of simplicity of life and enjoyments of the highest
kind. I remember in my grandfather’s house delightful social gatherings,
musical and literary performances. I remember Mozart’s “Don Juan,”
Beethoven’s “Fidelio” being performed there, the latest works of Goethe
and Jean Paul being read and appreciated with a cup of tea or a glass of
wine. A more select circle enjoyed their Shakespeare, their Dante, their
Calderon in English, Italian, and Spanish. I remember my grandfather
(the son of Basedow, the reformer of national education in Germany) in
his Court uniform, driving to Court in his carriage and pair, servants
in full livery, everybody making room for him and bowing deep on each
side, hat in hand. And when he came back from Court, was it not a real
holiday for his grandchildren to turn the pockets of his uniform inside
out—the pockets were lined on purpose with soft leather—to see what
bonbons and cakes he had brought home for us from _Tafel_—_i.e._, dinner
at Court? Almost my first recollections come from my grandfather’s
house. My mother, after the very early death of my father, who died
before I was four years old, had gone back to live at her father’s
house. This was a very common arrangement then. Two or three generations
often lived together in the same house, and among the better families
the house was looked upon as a common home, descending from father to
son and grandson. There was a large garden stretching out behind the
house, which was our playground. Our neighbours’ gardens were separated
on each side from our own by a low hedge only. Next door to us was the
house of a soap and candle maker, and I still remember the disagreeable
smells on the day when soap was boiled and candles were drawn. People
talked across the garden hedge to their neighbours, and all the affairs
of the town were discussed there. Our neighbour on the right side took
lodgers, and one of them was a young man who had come to Dessau to study
music under F. Schneider, and at the same time to give music lessons. He
had been a theological student, but had _umgesattelt_ (changed saddles),
and now tried to support himself as best he could at Dessau. He often
talked to me across the garden hedge (I was only five years old). One
day he lifted me across into his own garden, and asked whether I would
like to learn the pianoforte. I, of course, said yes, and he then bade
me promise to come to him every day for half an hour, but not to say a
word to my mother or to anybody else. The bargain was struck; I kept my
music quite secret, till, after about half a year or so, I sat down at
my grandfather’s pianoforte, and to the amazement of everybody played
some easy pieces of Mozart or Diabelli. Of course the young theological
student—his name was Kahle—was engaged at once to be my music-master. He
charged five Groschen (sixpence) for a lesson, and I made very rapid
progress. My mother was very musical; she had a splendid alto voice, and
was often invited to sing the solos at the great musical festivals in
Germany. My aunts, too, sang very well, and as a little boy I could sing
all the songs which they sang, and well remember being put on a table to
sing Händel’s great arias, “Schnell wie des Blitzes Strahl,” etc. Dessau
at that time was steeped in music.
The reigning Duke kept a first-rate orchestra, and at the head of it was
Friedrich Schneider, a well-known composer of the old school, a cantor,
like Bach, but also Ducal Capellmeister, and the head of what was then
called a musical school, now a conservatorium. This school was
frequented by students from all parts of Germany, and it has produced
some excellent musicians and well-known composers. There were public
concerts given regularly every fortnight at a very low charge, and there
were rehearsals twice a week, at which a few people only were allowed to
be present. I was one of the few, and every Tuesday and Friday after
school I sat there for an hour or two hearing the very best music
excellently performed, and being deeply impressed, nay, awed by old
Schneider, who stormed at the players when a single note went wrong, and
used language which I was not allowed to repeat. He was a character. A
small, square man, with greyish hair flowing down to his shoulders, his
black eyes full of fire, and sometimes of fury. He was very fond of his
glass of wine, which had given to his whole face, and particularly to
his nose, a glowing ruddy complexion. He brooked no opposition from
anybody, and he was the terror of all the young musicians who showed
themselves at Dessau. His orchestra had such a reputation at that time
that some of the greatest celebrities considered it an honour either to
have their compositions performed or to be allowed to sing or play at
his concerts. I remember Paganini, Sonntag, Spohr, Mendelssohn (then
quite a young man), and many more passing through their ordeal at
Dessau. Mendelssohn’s visit left a deep impression on my mind. I was
still a mere child, he a very young man, and, as I thought, with the
head of an angel. Mendelssohn’s was always a handsome face, but later in
life the sharpness of his features betrayed his Jewish blood. He
excelled as an organ player, and while at Dessau he played on the organ
in the _Grosse Kirche_, chiefly extempore. I was standing by him, when
he took me on his knees and asked me to play a choral while he played
the pedal. I see it all now as if it had been yesterday, and I felt
convinced at that time that I too (_anch’ io_) would be a musician. Was
not Weber, Karl Maria von Weber, my godfather, and had he not given me
my surname of Max? My father and mother had been staying with Weber at
Dresden, and my father had undertaken to write the text for a new opera,
which was never finished. Weber was then writing his “Freischütz,” and
my mother has often described to me how he would walk about the whole
day in his room composing, not before the pianoforte, but with a small
guitar, and how she heard every melody gradually emerging from the twang
of his little instrument. Both his wife and my mother were expecting
their confinement, and it was arranged that if the children should be
boys, they should be called Max, if girls, Agathe. We were both boys,
and Weber’s son, Max Maria von Weber, became a distinguished traveller,
a most charming writer, and at last an influential financier in the
Austrian service. He stayed with me several times at Oxford, and we
exchanged notes about our respective fathers. He published a life of his
father, which has, I believe, been translated into English.
Old Schneider was kind to young Mendelssohn, whenever he came to Dessau;
they were both ardent admirers of Händel and Bach, but the more modern
and romantic compositions of the young composer did not quite meet the
approval of the severe Maestro. Schneider was terribly outspoken, and
apt to lose his temper and become violent. He once had a most painful
scene with Madame Sonntag, or rather with Countess Something, as she was
then. First of all, he thought very little of any composer whose name
ended in _ini_ or _ante_, and he would but seldom yield to the Duke and
Duchess when they wished now and then to have some of Rossini’s or
Mercadante’s music performed by their own orchestra. But when the
Italian Countess ventured to speak to his orchestra and to ask them for
a _ritardando_ of her own, he flourished his bâton and broke out:
“Madame,” he said, “you may sing as you like, but I look after of my
orchestra,” and there was an end of it.
Life went on, and what time I could spare from school work, perhaps too
much, was given to music. There was not an air or a symphony of
Beethoven’s which at that time I could not have hummed from beginning to
end, and even now I often detect myself humming, “Ich bin’s, du bist’s,
O himmlisches Entzücken!” Who does not know that duet between Fidelio
and Florestan? Much of that humming repertorio has remained with me for
life, though I cannot always tell now where an Allegro or Adagio comes
from. It comes without being called, I cannot drive it away when I want
to be quiet. I hum the bass, I whistle the piccolo, I draw out the notes
from the violoncello, I blow the trumpet, in fact I often feel like
Queen Bess, “And she shall have music wherever she goes.”
When I was about eleven or twelve, old Schneider allowed me to play with
accompaniment of the full orchestra some concertos of Mozart, etc. This
was a great event in my quiet life, and everything looked as if music
was to be my profession. When afterwards I went to the Nicolai School at
Leipzig, the school at which Leibniz (not Leibnitz) had been educated, I
lived again in the musical house of Professor Carus. His wife sang
sweetly; his son, my old friend, Professor V. Carus, was an excellent
violin player, a pupil of David. I myself began to play the violoncello,
but without much success, and I joined a chorus under Mendelssohn, who
was then director of the famous Gewandhaus Concerts at Leipzig. We often
had to sing anything he had composed and wished to hear before
performing it in public. As a friend of my father and my mother,
Mendelssohn was always most charming to me, but he did not encourage my
idea of a musical career. The fact was I had not time to serve two
masters. I could not practise and study music as it ought to be
practised and studied without neglecting Greek and Latin, and, as life
became more serious, my mind was more and more drawn to the thoughts of
antiquity, to Homer and Cicero, and away from the delights of music. I
heard excellent music at the house of Professor Carus. I still have an
old slip of paper on which Mendelssohn, Liszt, David, Kalliwoda and
Hiller wrote their names for me one evening after they had been playing
quartettes at Professor Carus’s house. (See page 14.)
[Illustration]
I even ventured while at Leipzig to play sometimes at public concerts in
the neighbourhood. But when I began to look forward to what I should
make of my life, and how I should carve out for myself a useful career,
I saw that music was out of the question. There was another
consideration which determined my choice. There was much deafness in my
family. My mother became deaf when she was still quite young, my
grandmother, several of my uncles and cousins, all had lost their
hearing, and this induced me, young as I was, to choose a profession
which would be possible even if I should share the same misfortune. I
could not think of medicine, or law, or the Church—so I said to myself,
keep to Greek and Latin, try to be a scholar. A professorship was my
highest ambition, but I thought that even if that should fail, I might
find a quiet Benedictine cell somewhere, and support myself by my pen.
So music had to step into the background, not altogether, but so as not
to interfere with more serious work. No, music, though somewhat
slighted, has remained a true and faithful friend to me through life. I
have enjoyed music until very late in life when I began to feel
satisfied, and would much rather hum a symphony to myself than hear it
played, often not half so well as I remembered it at Dessau, at the
Gewandhaus Concerts at Leipzig, and at the marvellous Conservatoire
Concerts in Paris. These were the perfection of instrumental music.
Never has any other performance come near them. It was difficult to get
a ticket. People used to form _queue_ and stand the whole night in order
to secure the next morning an _abonnement_ for the season. To buy a
ticket was beyond my means, for when I was at Paris I had entirely to
support myself. But a friend of mine took me to the Conservatoire, and I
often sat in the corridor without seeing the orchestra, listening as if
to organ music. It was perfect. Every instrument of the orchestra was
first-rate—the players had mostly passed through the same school, the
conductor was an old man with a German name which I forget. Was it
Habeneck? He reminded me of Schneider, and certainly his orchestra
marched like a regiment of soldiers.
And besides being a constant source of the highest enjoyment to me,
music has often helped me in my pilgrimage through life. Both in Paris
and later on in London, many a house was open to me which would have
remained closed to a mere scholar. Musicians also always took an
interest in the son of the poet, Wilhelm Müller, whose songs had been
set to music, not only by Schubert, but by many other popular composers.
I well remember, when telling Jenny Lind whose son I was, how she held
up her hands and said: “What? the son of the poet of the ‘Müllerlieder’!
Now sit down,” she said, “and let me sing you the ‘Schöne Müllerin.’”
And she began to sing, and sang all the principal songs of that sad
idyll, just moving her head and hands a little, but really acting the
whole story as no actress on the stage could have acted it. It was a
perfect tragedy, and it has remained with me for life. Stockhausen also
(who, as I saw too late, has just been celebrating his seventieth
birthday) once sang the “Winterreise” to me in the same way, but as I
had to accompany him I had only half the pleasure, though even that was
great.
How many memories crowd in upon me! I heard Liszt when I was still at
school at Leipzig. It was his first entry into Germany, and he came like
a triumphator. He was young, theatrical, and terribly attractive, as
ladies, young and old, used to say. His style of playing was then
something quite new—now every player lets off the same fireworks. The
musical critics who then ruled supreme at Leipzig were somewhat coy and
reserved, and I remember taking a criticism to the editor of the
_Leipziger Tageblatt_ which the writer did not wish to sign with his own
name. Mendelssohn only, with his well-tempered heart, received him with
open arms. He gave a _matinée musicale_ at his house, all the best known
musicians of the place being present. I remember, though vaguely, David,
Kalliwoda, Hiller; I doubt whether Schumann and Clara Wieck were
present. Well, Liszt appeared in his Hungarian costume, wild and
magnificent. He told Mendelssohn that he had written something special
for him. He sat down, and swaying right and left on his music-stool,
played first a Hungarian melody, and then three or four variations, one
more incredible than the other.
We stood amazed, and after everybody had paid his compliments to the
hero of the day, some of Mendelssohn’s friends gathered round him, and
said: “Ah, Felix, now we can pack up (‘jetzt können wir einpacken’). No
one can do that; it is over with us!” Mendelssohn smiled; and when Liszt
came up to him asking him to play something in turn, he laughed and said
that he never played now; and this, to a certain extent, was true. He
did not give much time to practising then, but worked chiefly at
composing and directing his concerts. However, Liszt would take no
refusal, and so at last little Mendelssohn, with his own charming
playfulness, said: “Well, I’ll play, but you must promise me not to be
angry.” And what did he play? He sat down and played first of all
Liszt’s Hungarian Melody, and then one variation after another, so that
no one but Liszt himself could have told the difference. We all trembled
lest Liszt should be offended, for Mendelssohn could not keep himself
from slightly imitating Liszt’s movements and raptures. However,
Mendelssohn managed never to offend man, woman, or child. Liszt laughed
and applauded, and admitted that no one, not he himself, could have
performed such a _bravura_. Many years after I saw Liszt once more, at
the last visit he paid to London. He came to the Lyceum to see Irving
and Ellen Terry act in “Faust.” The whole theatre rose when the old,
bent Maestro appeared in the dress circle. When the play was over, I
received an invitation from Mr., now Sir Henry, Irving to join a supper
party in honour of Liszt. I could not resist, though I was staying with
friends in London and had no latch-key. It was a brilliant affair. Rooms
had been fitted up on purpose with old armour, splendid pictures,
gorgeous curtains. We sat down, about thirty people; I knew hardly
anybody, though they were all known to fame, and not to know them was to
profess oneself unknown. However, I was placed next to Liszt, and I
reminded him of those early Leipzig days. He was not in good spirits; he
would not speak English, though Ellen Terry sat on his right side, and,
as she would not speak German or French, I had to interpret as well as I
could, and it was not always easy. At last Miss Ellen Terry turned to me
and said: “Tell Liszt that I can speak German,” and when he turned to
listen, she said in her girlish, bell-like voice: “Lieber Liszt, ich
liebe Dich.” I hope I am not betraying secrets; anyhow, as I have been
indiscreet once, I may as well say what happened to me afterwards. It
was nearly 3 A.M. when I reached my friend’s house. With great
difficulty I was able to rouse a servant to let me in, and when the next
morning I was asked where I had been, great was the dismay when I said
that I had had supper at the Lyceum. Liszt had promised to come to stay
with me at Oxford, but the day when I expected him, the following note
arrived from Amsterdam, probably one of the last he ever wrote:—
[Illustration]
A few weeks after, I saw his death announced in the papers.
And thus Liszt left the stage. I saw his entrance and his exit, and when
I asked myself, What has he left behind? I could only think of the new
school of brilliant executionists of which he may truly be called the
founder and life-long apostle. I confess that, though I feel dazzled at
the impossibilities which he and his pupils perform with their ten
fingers, I often sigh for an Allegro or an Andante by Haydn and Mozart
as they were played in my young days with simplicity and purity on very
imperfect instruments. Players now seem to think of themselves only, not
of the musical poets whose works they are to render. Mendelssohn, Clara
Wieck (Madame Schumann) even Moscheles and Hummel acted as faithful
interpreters. On listening to them, exquisite as their execution was,
one thought far more of what they played than how they played. That time
is gone, and no one has now, or will ever have again, the courage to
bring it back. If one wants to enjoy a sonata of Haydn one has to play
it oneself or hum it, because the old fingers will not do their work any
longer.
And Mendelssohn also, whom I had known as a young man, said good-bye to
me for the last time in London. It was after the first performance of
his “Elijah” in 1847. He too said he would come again next year, and
then came the news of his sudden death. I saw him last at Bunsen’s
house, where he played at a _matinée musicale_ always ready to please
and oblige his friends, always amiable and charming, even under great
provocation. Only once I remember seeing him almost beside himself with
anger, and well he might be. He possessed a most valuable album, with
letters, poems, pictures, compositions of the most illustrious men of
the age, such as Goethe and others. The binding had somewhat suffered,
so it was sent to be mended, and I was present when it came back. It was
at his sister’s house, Fanny Hensel’s, at Berlin. Mendelssohn opened the
album, jumped up and screamed. The binder had cut off the blue skies and
tree-tops of all the Italian sketches, and the signatures of most of the
poems and letters. This was too much for _Felix_, he was for once
_infelix_. Still, happy and serene as his life certainly was, for he had
everything a man of his talents could desire, there were bitter drops in
it of which the world knew little, and need not know anything now. There
are things we know, important things which the world would be glad to
know. But we bury them; they are to be as if they had never been, like
letters that are reduced to ashes and can never be produced again by
friends or enemies.
He was devoted to his sister Fanny, who was married to Hensel the
painter, an intimate friend of my father. When I was a student at
Berlin, I was much in their house in the _Leipziger Strasse_, and heard
many a private concert given in the large room looking out on the
garden. Mendelssohn played almost every instrument in the orchestra, and
had generally to play the instrument which he was supposed to play
worst. When he played the pianoforte, he was handicapped by being made
to play with his arms crossed. All the celebrities of Berlin (and Berlin
was then rich in celebrities) were present at those musical gatherings,
and Mendelssohn was the life of the whole. He was never quiet for a
moment, moving from chair to chair and conversing with everybody.
Boeckh, the great Greek scholar, lived in the same house, and
Mendelssohn had received so good a classical education that he could
hold his own when discussing with the old master the choruses of the
Antigone. Mendelssohn was, in fact, a man _teres et rotundus_. He was at
home in classical literature, he spoke French and English, he was an
exquisite draughtsman, and had seen the greatest works of the greatest
painters, ancient and modern. His father, a rich banker in Berlin, had
done all he could for the education of his children. He was the son of
Mendelssohn the philosopher, and when his son Felix had become known to
fame, he used to say with his slightly Jewish accent: “When I was young
I was called the son of the great Mendelssohn; now that I am old I am
called the father of the great Mendelssohn; then, what am I?” Well, he
found the wherewithal that enabled his son, and his other children too,
to become what they were, all worthy of their great grandfather, all
worthy of the name of Mendelssohn.
[Illustration: Die glückliche Fischerin.]
Felix was attached to both his sisters, Fanny and Rebekah (Dirichlet),
but he was more particularly devoted to Fanny (Hensel). They had been
educated together. She knew Greek and Latin like her brother, she played
perfectly, and composed so well that her brother published several of
her compositions under his own name. They were one spirit and one soul,
and at that time ladies still shrank from publicity. Everybody knew
which songs were hers (I remember, for instance, “Schöner und Schöner
schmückt sich die Flur”), and it was only later in life that she began
to publish under her own name. I give the beginning of a song which she
wrote for my mother. The words are my father’s, the little vignette was
drawn by her husband, who was an eminent artist at Berlin.
The struggles which many, if not most men of genius, more particularly
musicians, have had to pass through were unknown to Felix Mendelssohn
Bartholdy. Some people go so far as to say that they miss the traces of
those struggles in his character and in his music. And yet those who
knew him best know that his soul, too, knew its own bitterness. His
happiest years were no doubt spent at Leipzig, where I saw much of him
while I was at school and at the University. He was loved and admired by
everybody; he was undisputed master in the realm of music. He was at
first unmarried, and many were the rumours as to who should be his
bride. News had reached his friends that his heart had been won by a
young lady at Frankfurt; but nobody, not even his most intimate friends,
knew for certain. However, one evening he had just returned from
Frankfurt, and had to conduct one of the Gewandhaus Concerts. The last
piece was Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. I had sung in the chorus, and
found myself on the orchestra when the concert was over, the room nearly
empty, except his personal friends, who surrounded him and teased him
about his approaching engagement. His beaming face betrayed him, but he
would say nothing to anybody, till at last he sat down and extemporised
on the pianoforte. And what was the theme of his fantasy? It was the
passage of the chorus, “Wer ein holdes Weib errungen, mische seinen
Jubel ein.” That was his confession to his friends, and then we all
knew. And she was indeed “ein holdes Weib” when she arrived at Leipzig.
One thing only she lacked—she could not express all she felt. She was
soon called the “Goddess of Silence” by the side of her devoted husband,
who never could be silent, but was always bubbling over like champagne
in a small glass. They were a devoted couple, not a whisper was ever
heard about either of them, though Mendelssohn had many friends, the
greatest of all being his sister Fanny. With her he could speak and
exchange whatever was uppermost or deepest in his heart. I have heard
them extemporise together on the pianoforte, one holding with his little
finger the little finger of the other. Her death was the heaviest loss
he ever suffered in life. He was so unaccustomed to suffering and
distress that he could never recover from this unexpected blow. Nor did
he survive her long. She died on the 14th of May, 1847; he followed her
on the 4th of November of the same year.
During most of the time when Mendelssohn celebrated his triumphs as
director of the Gewandhaus Concerts, young Robert Schumann was at
Leipzig, but he was little seen. Mendelssohn, so bright and happy
himself, wished to see the whole world around him bright and happy, and
was kind to everybody. The idea of jealousy was impossible at that time
in Mendelssohn’s heart. Neither could Schumann, as a young and rising
musician, have thought himself then to be in any sense an equal or rival
of Mendelssohn. But there are natures which like to be left alone, or
with a very few intimate friends only, and which shrink from the too
demonstrative happiness of others. It is not envy, it often is modesty;
but in any case it is not pleasant. Schumann was conscious of his own
strength, but he was still struggling for recognition, and he was also
struggling against that adversity of fortune which seems to decree
poverty to be the lot of genius. There was another struggle going on, a
struggle which is generally fought out in private, but which in his case
was carried on before the eyes of the world, at least the musical world
of Leipzig. He was devoted to a young pianoforte player, Clara Wieck.
But her father, a great teacher of music, would not allow the marriage.
He had devoted years of his life to the musical education of his
daughter, and then, as she was just beginning to earn applause for
herself and her master, as well as the pecuniary reward for their
combined labours, a young musician, poor, and not yet recognised, wished
to carry her off. Parents have flinty hearts, and the father said “No.”
Many a time have I watched young Schumann walking alone in the
neighbourhood of Leipzig, being unexpectedly met by a young lady, both
looking not so happy as I thought that under the circumstances they
ought. This went on for some time, till at last, as usual, the severe or
flinty-hearted father had to give way, and allow a marriage which
certainly for many years was the realisation of the most perfect
happiness, till it ended in a terrible tragedy. There was the seed of
madness in the genius of Schumann as in that of so many really great
men, and in an access of mania he sought and found rest where Ophelia
sought and found it.
I did not see much of Schumann, nor of Madame Schumann, in later life,
though in concerts in London I often admired her exquisite rendering of
her husband’s compositions. I only recollect Schumann as a young man
sitting generally in a corner of the orchestra, and listening to one of
his works being performed under Mendelssohn’s direction. I remember his
very large head, his drooping eyes; I hardly ever remember a smile on
his face. And yet the man must have been satisfied, if not happy, who
could write such music as his, who could write, “Wohlauf noch getrunken
den funklenden Wein!” and he lived to see his own creations admired more
even than those of Mendelssohn. He lived to see his critics turned into
admirers; in fact he educated his public, and gained a place for that
thoughtful, wistful, fairy-like music which is peculiarly his own.
Many celebrated musicians stayed at Leipzig during Mendelssohn’s reign.
I remember Moscheles, Thalberg, Sterndale Bennett, Clara Novello, young
and fascinating, and many more. Another friend of Mendelssohn who stayed
some time at Leipzig was Ferdinand Hiller. We heard several of his
compositions, symphonies and all the rest, performed at the Gewandhaus
Concerts under Mendelssohn’s direction. In his life there was, perhaps,
too little of the _dira necessitas_ that has given birth to so many of
the masterpieces of genius. He might, no doubt, have produced much more
than he did; but that he was striving to the very end of his life was
proved to me by an interesting letter I received from him about a year
before his death. His idea was to write a great oratorio, and he wanted
me to supply him with a text. It was a colossal plan, and I confess it
seemed to me beyond the power of any musician, nay, of any poet. It was
to be a historical drama, representing first of all the great religions
of the world, each by itself. We were to have the hymns of the Veda, the
Gâthas of the Avesta, the Psalms of the Old Testament, the Sermons and
Dialogues of Buddha, the trumpet-calls of Mohammed, and, lastly, the
Sermon on the Mount, all of them together forming one mighty symphony in
which no theme was lost, yet all became in the end an accompaniment of
one sweet song of love dominating the full chorus of the ancient
religions of the world. It was a grand idea, but was it possible to
realise it? I was ready to help, but before a year was over I received
the news of Hiller’s death, and who is the musician to take his place,
always supposing that he could have achieved such a World Oratorio?
It was in the last year of his life that Mendelssohn paid his last visit
to England to conduct his last oratorio, the “Elijah.” It had to be
performed at Exeter Hall, then the best place for sacred music. Most of
the musicians, however, were not professionals, and they had only bound
themselves to attend a certain number of rehearsals. Excellent as they
were in such oratorios as the “Messiah,” which they knew by heart, a new
oratorio, such as the “Elijah,” was too much for them; and I well
remember Mendelssohn, in the afternoon before the performance, declaring
he would not conduct.
“Oh, these tailors and shoemakers,” he said, “they cannot do it, and
they will not practise! I shall not go.” However, a message arrived that
the Queen and Prince Albert were to be present, so nothing remained but
to go. I was present, the place was crowded. Mendelssohn conducted, and
now and then made a face, but no one else detected what was wrong. It
was a great success and a great triumph for Mendelssohn. If he could
have heard it performed as it was performed at Exeter Hall in later
years, when his tailors and shoemakers knew it by heart, he would not
have made a face.
It was at Bunsen’s house, at a _matinée musicale_, that I saw him last.
He took the liveliest interest in my work, the edition of the Rig Veda,
the Sacred Hymns of the Brâhmans. A great friend of his, Friedrich
Rosen, had begun the same work, but had died before the first volume was
finished. He was a brother of the wife of Mendelssohn’s great friend,
Klingemann, then Hanoverian Chargé d’Affaires in London, a poet many of
whose poems were set to music by Mendelssohn. So Mendelssohn knew all
about the Sacred Hymns of the Brâhmans, and talked very intelligently
about the Veda. He was, however, subjected to a very severe trial of
patience soon after. The room was crowded with what is called the best
society of London, and Mendelssohn being asked to play, never refused.
He played several things, and at last Beethoven’s so-called “Moonlight
Sonata.” All was silence and delight; no one moved, no one breathed
aloud. Suddenly in the middle of the Adagio, a stately dowager sitting
in the front row was so carried away by the rhythm, rather than by
anything else, of Beethoven’s music, that she began to play with her
fan, and accompanied the music by letting it open and shut with each
bar. Everybody stared at her, but it took time before she perceived her
atrocity, and at last allowed her fan to collapse. Mendelssohn in the
meantime kept perfectly quiet, and played on; but, when he could stand
it no longer, he simply repeated the last bar in arpeggios again and
again, following the movements of her fan; and when at last the fan
stopped, he went on playing as if nothing had happened. I dare say that
when the old dowager thanked him for the great treat he had given her,
he bowed without moving a muscle of his inspired face. How different
from another player who, when disturbed by some noise in the audience,
got up in a rage and declared that either she or the talker must leave
the room.
And yet I have no doubt the old lady enjoyed the music in her own way,
for there are many ways of enjoying music. I have known people who could
not play a single instrument, who could not sing “God save the Queen” to
save their life, in eloquent raptures about Mendelssohn, nay, about
Beethoven and Bach. I believe they are perfectly honest in their
admiration, though how it is done I cannot tell. I began by saying that
people who have no music in them need not be traitors, and I alluded to
my dear friend Stanley. He actually suffered from listening to music,
and whenever he could, he walked out of the room where there was music.
He never disguised his weakness, he never professed any love or
admiration for music, and yet Jenny Lind once told me he paid her the
highest compliment she had ever received. Stanley was very fond of Jenny
Lind, but when she stayed at his father’s palace at Norwich he always
left the room when she sang. One evening Jenny Lind had been singing
Händel’s “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Stanley, as usual, had left
the room, but he came back after the music was over, and went shyly up
to Jenny Lind. “You know,” he said, “I dislike music; I don’t know what
people mean by admiring it. I am very stupid, tone-deaf, as others are
colourblind. But,” he said with some warmth, “to-night, when from a
distance I heard you singing that song, I had an inkling of what people
mean by music. Something came over me which I had never felt before; or,
yes, I had felt it once before in my life.” Jenny Lind was all
attention. “Some years ago,” he continued, “I was at Vienna, and one
evening there was a tattoo before the palace performed by four hundred
drummers. I felt shaken, and to-night while listening to your singing,
the same feeling came over me; I felt deeply moved.” “Dear man,” she
added, “I know he meant it, and a more honest compliment I never
received in all my life.”
However, unmusical as Stanley’s house was, Jenny Lind, or Mrs.
Goldschmidt as she was then, often came to stay there. “It is so nice,”
she said; “no one talks music, there is not even a pianoforte in the
house.” This did not last long however. A few days after she said to me:
“I hear you have a pianoforte in your rooms at All Souls’. Would you
mind my practising a little?” And practise she did, and delightful it
was. She even came to dine in College, and after dinner she said in the
most charming way: “Do you think your friends would like me to sing?” Of
course, I could not have asked her to sing, but there was no necessity
for asking my friends. In fact, not only my friends listened with
delight to her singing, but the whole quadrangle of All Souls’ was black
with uninvited listeners, and the applause after each song was immense,
both inside and outside the walls of the College.
Stanley’s feeling about music reminds me of another music-hater at
Oxford, the late Dr. Gaisford, the famous Dean of Christ Church. It was
he who put my name on the books of “The House,” a very great honour to
an unknown German scholar on whom the University, at his suggestion, had
just conferred the degree of M.A. What the Dean’s idea of music was may
best be judged from his constantly appointing old scouts or servants who
were too old to do their work any longer as bedmakers to be singing men
in the Cathedral choir. The Dean’s stall was under the organ, and one
day in every month, when “The voice of Thy thunder was heard round
about, and the lightnings shone upon the ground, and the earth was moved
and shook withal,” a certain key in the organ made the seat on which the
Dean sat vibrate under him. On that day, before he left the Cathedral,
he invariably thanked the organist, Dr. Corfe, for the nice tune he had
played.
Music, in fact, was at a very low ebb at Oxford when I arrived there.
The young men would have considered it almost _infra dignitatem_ to play
any instrument; the utmost they would do was now and then to sing a
song. Yet there was much love of music, and many of my young and old
friends were delighted when I would play to them. There was only one
other person at Oxford then who was a real musician and who played well,
Professor Donkin, a great mathematician, and altogether a man _sui
generis_. He was a great invalid; in fact, he was dying all the years I
knew him, and was fully aware of it. It seemed to be quite admissible,
therefore, that he, being an invalid, and I, being a German, should
“make music” at evening parties; but to ask a head of a house or a
professor, or even a senior tutor, to play would have been considered
almost an insult. And yet I feel certain there is more love, more honest
enjoyment of music in England than anywhere else.
And how has the musical tide risen at Oxford since those days! Some of
the young men now come up to college as very good performers on the
pianoforte and other instruments. I never know how they learn it,
considering the superior claims which cricket, football, the river, nay,
the classics and mathematics also have on their time at school. There
are musical clubs now at Oxford where the very best classical music may
be heard performed by undergraduates with the assistance of some
professional players from London. All this is due to the influence of
Sir F. Ouseley, and still more of Sir John Stainer, both professors of
Music at Oxford. They have made music not only respectable, but really
admired and loved among the undergraduates. Sir John Stainer has been
indefatigable, and the lectures which he gives both on the science and
history of music are crowded by young and old. They are real concerts,
in which he is able to illustrate all he has to say with the help of a
well-trained choir of Oxford amateurs. As to myself, I have long become
a mere listener. One learns the lesson, whether one likes it or not,
that there is a time for everything. Old fingers grow stiff and will no
longer obey, and if one knows how a sonata of Beethoven ought to be
played, it is most painful to play it badly. So at last I said:
“Farewell!” The sun has set, though the clouds are roseate still with
reflected rays. It may be that I have given too much time to music, but
what would life have been without it? I do not like to exaggerate, or
say anything that is not quite true. Musical ears grow sensitive to
anything false, whether sharp or flat. But let us be quite honest, quite
plain. Is there not in music, and in music alone of all the arts,
something that is not entirely of this earth? Harmony and rhythm may be
under settled laws; and in that sense mathematicians may be right when
they call mathematics silent music. But whence comes melody? Surely not
from what we hear in the street, or in the woods, or on the sea-shore,
not from anything that we hear with our outward ears, and are able to
imitate, to improve, or to sublimise. Neither history nor evolution will
help us to account for Schubert’s “Trockne Blumen.” Here, if anywhere,
we see the golden stairs on which angels descend from heaven to earth,
and whisper sweet sounds into the ears of those who have ears to hear.
Words cannot be so inspired, for words, we know, are of the earth
earthy. Melodies, however, are not of this earth, and the greatest of
musical poets has truly said:—
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS
I
I am the son of a poet, and I have tried very hard all my life not to be
a poet myself, if poet means a man who tries to make his thoughts dance
gracefully in the chains of metre and rhyme. In my own very prosaic work
I have had to suffer all my life from suppressed poetry, as one suffers
from suppressed gout. Poets will, no doubt, protest most emphatically
against so low a view of their art. They assure us that they never feel
their chains, and that they are perfectly free in giving expression to
their thoughts in rhyme and metre. Some of the more honest among them
have even gone so far as to confess that their best thoughts had often
been suggested to them by the rhyme. Platen may be quite right when he
says:
Was stets und aller Orten sich ewig jung erweist
Ist in gebundenen Worten ein ungebundener Geist.
(What proves itself eternal in every place and time
Is an unfettered spirit, free in the chains of rhyme.)
True, very true. You may get that now and then, but in our modern
languages it is but seldom that thought soars up quite free on the wings
of rhyme. Many and many a thought sinks down because of the weight of
the rhyme, many and many a thought remains altogether unspoken because
it will not submit to the strait jacket of the rhyme; many and many a
poor thought is due entirely to an irrepressible rhyme; and if some
brilliant thoughts have really been suggested by the rhyme, would it not
be better if they had been suggested by something else, whether you call
it mind or soul? The greatest masters of rhyme, such as Browning in
English or Rückert in German, and even H. Heine, often fall victims to
their own mastery. They spoil their poems in order to show that they can
find a rhyme for anything and everything, however grotesque the rhyme
may be. I remember once being bold enough to ask Tennyson what was the
use or excuse of rhyme. He was not offended, but was quite ready with
his answer: “Rhyme helps the memory,” he said—and that answer was as
honest as it was true. But what is useful for one purpose, for the
purpose of recollecting, may be anything but useful for other purposes,
it may be even hurtful, and in our case it has certainly proved hurtful
again and again to the natural flow and expression of thought and
feeling.
Nor should I venture to say a word against Platen’s _gebundene Worte_.
It was only the very necessity of finding a word to answer to _time_
which led me to speak of chains of _rhyme_. _Gebundene Worte_ are not
necessarily rhymed words, they are measured words, and these are no
doubt quite natural and quite right for poetry. Metre is measure, and
metrical utterance, in that sense, was not only more natural for the
expression of the highest thoughts, but was probably everywhere more
ancient also than prose. In every literature, as far as we know, poetry
came first, prose second. Inspired utterance requires, nay produces,
rhythmic movements not only of the voice (song and prosodia), but of the
body also (dance). In Greek, _chorus_ means dance, measured movement,
and the Greek choruses were originally dances; nay, it can be proved
that these dancing movements formed really the first metres of true
poetry. Hence, it was quite natural that David should have danced before
the Lord with all his might. Language itself bears witness to the fact
that the oldest metres were the steps and movements of dancers. As the
old dances consisted of steps, the ancient metres consisted of feet.
Even we ourselves still speak of feet, not because we understand what it
means, but simply because the Greeks and Romans spoke of feet, and they
said so because originally the feet really marked the metre.
The ancient poets of the Veda also speak of feet, and they seem to have
been quite aware why they spoke of metrical feet, for in the names of
some of their metres we still find clear traces of the steps of the
dances which accompanied their poems. _Trishtubh_, one of their ancient
metres, meant three-step; _Anushtubh_, the later Sloka, meant by-step[1]
or Reigen. The last syllables or steps of each line were called the
_Vritta_, or the turn, originally the turn of the dancers, who seem to
have been allowed to move more freely till they came to the end of one
movement. Then, before they turned, or while they turned, they marked
the steps more sharply and audibly, either as iambic or as trochaic, and
afterwards marched back again with greater freedom. Hence in ancient
Sanskrit the end or turn of each line was under stricter rules as to
long and short steps, or long and short syllables, whereas greater
freedom was allowed for the rest of a line. Thus Sanskrit _Vritta_, the
_turn_, came to mean the metre of the whole line, just as in Latin we
have the same word _versus_, literally the turn, then verse, and this
turn became the name for verse, and remained so to the present day.
There is no break in our history, and language is the chain that holds
it together. A strophe also was originally a turning, to be followed by
the antistrophe or the return, all ideas derived from dancing. The
ancient Sanskrit name for metre and metrical or measured speed was
_Kh_andas. The verb _Kh_and would correspond phonetically to Latin
_scandere_, in the sense of marching, as in _a-scendere_, to march
upward, to mount, and _de-scendere_, to march downward, all expressing
the same idea of measured movement, but not of rhyme or jingle. These
movements were free and natural in the beginning; they became artificial
when they became traditional, and we find in such works as the Sanskrit
V_ri_tta-ratnâkara, “the treasury of verse,” every kind of monstrosity
which was perpetrated by Hindu poets of the Renaissance period, and
perpetrated, it must be confessed, with wonderful adroitness.
But I must not tire my friends with these metrical mysteries. What I
want them to know is that in the most ancient Aryan poetry which we
possess there is no trace of rhyme, except here and there by accident,
and that everywhere in the history of the poetry of the Âryas, rhyme, as
essential to poetry, is a very late invention. It is the same in Semitic
languages, though in Semitic as well as in Aryan speech, in fact,
wherever grammatical forms are expressed chiefly by means of
terminations, rhyme even in prose is almost inevitable. And this was no
doubt the origin of rhyme. In languages where terminations of declension
and conjugation and most derivative suffixes have retained a full-bodied
and sonorous form, it was difficult to avoid the jingle of rhyme. In
Latin, which abounds in such constantly recurring endings as _orum_,
_arum_, _ibus_, _amus_, _atis_, _amini_, _tatem_, _tatibus_, _inibus_,
etc., good prose writers had actually to be warned against allowing
their sentences to rhyme, while poets found it very easy to add these
ornamental tails to their measured lines.
There can be little doubt that it was the rhymed Latin poetry, as used
in the services of the Roman Catholic Church, which suggested to the
German converts the idea of rhymed verses. The pagan poetry of the
Teutonic races had no rhymes. It was what is called alliterative. In the
German dialects the accent remained mostly on the radical syllable of
words, and thus served to shorten the terminations. Hence we find fewer
full-bodied terminations in Gothic than in Latin, while in later
Teutonic dialects, in English as well as in German, these terminations
dwindled away more and more. Thus, we say _Di’ chter_ when the Romans
would have _Dicta’ tor_, _Pre’ diger_ for _prœdica’ tor_, _cha’ ncel_
for _cance’ lla_. In order to bind their poetical lines together the
German poets had recourse to initial letters, which had to be the same
in certain places of each verse, and which, if pronounced with strong
stress or strain, left the impression of the words being knitted
together and belonging together. Here is a specimen which will show that
the rules of alliteration were very strictly observed by the old German
poets, far more strictly than by their modern imitators. The old rule
was that in a line of eight arses there should be two words in the first
and one in the second half beginning with the same letter, consonant or
vowel, and always in syllables that had the accent. Here is a line from
the old “Song of Hildebrand,” dating from the eighth century:—
=H=iltibraht joh =H=adhubrant =H=iltibraht and =H=adhubrant
Untar =h=arjum tuâm, etc. Between =h=osts twain, etc.
Rückert has imitated this alliterating poetry in his poem of “Roland”:—
=R=oland der =R=ies
=I=m =R=athhaus zu Bremen
=S=teht er im =S=tandbild
=S=tandhaft und wacht.
Kingsley has attempted something like it in his “Longbeard’s Saga,” but
with much greater freedom, not to say licence:—
=S=caring the wolf cub,
=S=caring the horn-owl,
=S=haking the snow-wreaths
Down from the pine boughs.
But to return to our modern poetry and to the poets whom I have known,
and of whom I have something to tell, does it not show the power of
tradition if we see them everywhere forcing their feet into the same
small slippers of rhyme? And who would deny that they have achieved, and
still are achieving, wonderful feats?—_tours de force_, it is true, but
so cleverly performed that one hardly sees a trace of the force
employed. No doubt much is lost in this process of beating, and
hammering, and welding words together (a poet is called a
_Reimeschmied_, a smith of rhymes, in German); much has to be thrown
away because it will not rhyme at all (_silver_ has been very badly
treated in English poetry, because it rhymes with nothing, at present
not even with gold), but what remains is often very beautiful, and, as
Tennyson said, it sticks to the memory. One wishes one could add that
the difficulty of rhyme serves to reduce the number of unnecessary poets
that spring up every year. But rhyme does not strangle these numerous
children of the Muses, and it is left to our ill-paid critics to perform
every day, or every week, this murder of the innocents.
It may not seem very filial for the son of a poet thus to blaspheme
against poetry, or rather, against rhyme. Well, I can admire rhymed
poetry, just as I can admire champagne, though if the wine is really
good I think it is a pity to make it mousseux.
H. Heine, who certainly was never at a loss for a rhyme, writes, at the
end of one of his maddest poems, “Die Liebe”: “O Phœbus Apollo, if these
verses are bad, I know thou wilt forgive me, for thou art an all-knowing
god, and knowest quite well why for years I could not trouble myself any
longer with measuring and rhyming words!” And he adds: “I might, of
course, have said all this very well in good prose.” He ought to know,
but there will not be many of his admirers to agree with him.[2]
I hardly remember having ever seen my father, and I came to know him
chiefly through his poetry. He belonged to the post-Goethe period,
though Goethe (died 1832) survived him. He was born in 1794, and died in
1827, and yet in that short time he established a lasting reputation not
only as a scholar, but as a most popular poet. His best known poems are
the “Griechenlieder,” the Greek songs which he wrote during the Greek
war of independence. Alas! in those days battles were won by bravery and
the sword, now by discipline and repeating guns. These Greek songs, in
which his love of the ancient Greeks is mingled with his admiration for
heroes such as Kanaris, Mark Bozzaris, and others who helped to shake
off the Turkish yoke, produced a deep impression all over Germany,
perhaps because they breathed the spirit of freedom and patriotism,
which was then systematically repressed in Germany itself. The Greeks
never forgot the services rendered by him in Germany, as by Lord Byron
in England, in rousing a feeling of indignation against the Turk, and as
the marble for Lord Byron’s monument in London was sent by some Greek
admirers of the great poet, the Greek Parliament voted a shipload of
Pentelican marble for the national monument erected to my father in
Dessau.
My father’s lyrical poems also are well known all over Germany,
particularly the cycles of the “Schöne Müllerin” and the “Winterreise,”
both so marvellously set to music by Schubert and others. He certainly
had caught the true tone of the poetry of the German people, and many of
his poems have become national property, being sung by thousands who do
not even know whose poems they are singing. As a specimen showing the
highest point reached by his poetry, I like to quote his poem on
_Vineta_, the old town overwhelmed by the sea on the Baltic coast. The
English translation was made for me by my old, now departed, friend, J.
A. Froude:—
VINETA.
I. I.
Aus des Meeres tiefem, tiefem From the sea’s deep hollow faintly
Grunde pealing,
Klingen Abendglocken dumpf und Far-off evening bells come sad and
matt, slow;
Uns zu geben wunderbare Kunde Faintly rise, the wondrous tale
revealing
Von der schönen alten Wunderstadt. Of the old enchanted town below.
II. II.
In der Fluthen Schoss hinabgesunken On the bosom of the flood reclining
Bleiben unten ihre Trümmer stehn, Ruined arch and broken spire,
Ihre Zinnen lassen goldne Funken Down beneath the watery mirror
shining
Wiederscheinend auf dem Spiegel Gleam and flash in flakes of golden
sehn. fire.
III. III.
Und der Schiffer, der den And the boatman who at twilight
Zauberschimmer hour
Einmal sah im hellen Abendroth, Once that magic vision shall have
seen,
Nach derselben Stelle schifft er Heedless how the crags may round
immer, him lour,
Ob auch rings umher die Klippe Evermore will haunt the charmèd
droht. scene.
IV. IV.
Aus des Herzens tiefem, tiefem From the heart’s deep hollow
Grunde faintly pealing,
Klingt es mir, wie Glocken, dumpf Far I hear them, bell-notes sad and
und matt: slow,
Ach! sie geben wunderbare Kunde Ah! a wild and wondrous tale
revealing
Von der Liebe, die geliebt es hat. Of the drownèd wreck of love below.
V. V.
Eine schöne Welt is da versunken. There a world in loveliness
decaying,
Ihre Trümmer bleiben unten stehn, Lingers yet in beauty ere it die;
Lassen sich als goldne Phantom forms across my senses
Himmelsfunken playing,
Oft im Spiegel meiner Träume sehn. Flash like golden fire-flakes from
the sky.
VI. VI.
Und dann möcht’ ich tauchen in die Lights are gleaming, fairy bells
Tiefen, are ringing,
Mich versenken in den Wiederschein, And I long to plunge and wander
free
Und mir ist als ob mich Engel Where I hear those angel-voices
riefen singing
In die alte Wunderstadt herein. In those ancient towers below the
sea.
That the poet did not consider rhyme an essential element of poetry, he
has shown in some of his assonantic poems, such as:
Alle Winde schlafen
Auf dem Spiegel der Flut;
Kühle Schatten des Abends
Decken die Müden zu.
Luna hängt sich Schleier
Ueber ihr Gesicht,
Schwebt in dämmernden Träumen
Ueber die Wasser hin.
Alles, alles stille
Auf dem weiten Meer,—
Nur mein Herz will nimmer
Mit zur Ruhe gehn.
In der Liebe Fluten
Treibt es her und hin,
Wo die Stürme nicht ruhen,
Bis der Nachen sinkt.
Though my father was a great admirer of Goethe, he seems to have
incurred his displeasure and to have been brought into personal
collision with the grand old poet. Goethe had translated some modern
Greek songs; it may be, as my father thought, without having fully
mastered the difficulties of the spoken Greek language. My father
published a complete translation of Fauriel’s collection of Greek
popular poetry,[3] and Goethe did not like comparisons between his work
and that of anybody else, least of all of quite a young poet. “Die
schöne Müllerin” also may have seemed to Goethe an encroachment on a
domain peculiarly his own. In fact, when my father, with my mother, went
to Weimar to pay their respects to Goethe, his Excellency was somewhat
stiff and cold. My mother, also, had evidently not been sufficiently
careful and respectful. She was the granddaughter of the famous
pedagogue Basedow, the reformer of national education all over Germany,
who had been a friend of Goethe in his youth. Goethe speaks of him in
his poem, “Prophete rechts (Basedow), Prophete links (Lavater), das
Weltkind (Goethe) in der Mitten.” And he also complains bitterly of
Basedow in his “Dichtung und Wahrheit,” as being never without a pipe in
his mouth, and as lighting his pipe with most offensive
tinder—_Stinkschwamm_, as Goethe calls it. My mother, when asked by
Goethe, “Was für eine geborene” she was (What had been her maiden
name?), could not resist the temptation, and replied, laughing: “Your
Excellency ought to scent it; I am the granddaughter of Basedow.”
Happily my mother was very beautiful, and was pardoned the liberty she
had taken. Still, the relations between my father and Goethe always
remained rather strained, and all that I find in his album is a
medallion portrait of Goethe with the following lines, dated 7th
November, 1825:—
Meinen feyerlich Bewegten
Mache Dank und Freude kund;
Das Gefühl das Sie erregten
Schliesst dem Dichter selbst den Mund.
He was on much warmer terms with the poets of the Swabian school,
Uhland, Schwab, Justinus Kerner, etc. In the year before his death,
1827, he spent some time with them in Würtemberg, and in many respects
he may be reckoned as belonging to their school. The verses which Uhland
wrote in my father’s album have often been quoted as a curious prophecy
of his early death. It seems that some conversations which he had with
the Seherin of Prevorst[4] when staying in Justinus Kerner’s house near
Weinsberg, had filled him and his friends with misgivings. Uhland’s
lines were:—
Wohl blühet jedem Jahre
Sein Frühling, süss und licht,
Auch jener grosse, klare—
Getrost, er fehlt dir nicht;
Er ist dir noch beschieden
Am Ziele deiner Bahn,
Du ahnest ihn hienieden
Und droben bricht er an.
Zu freundlicher Erinnerung an,
L. UHLAND.
Stuttgart, den 13 Sept., 1827.
Justinus Kerner himself also wrote some lines in which he alludes to the
apparition of spirits. His rooms, as my mother assured me, were always
full of them, and they all seemed on the most familiar terms with the
other inmates.
Nicht wie Geister, nein! wie Sterne
Kamt ihr freundlich in der Nacht,
Ja, so ernst und mild wie Sterne
Hat uns euer Bild gelacht
Oft wenn schweigt der Welt Getümmel
Wird’s so treten in den Himmel
Den die Lieb uns angefacht.
JUSTINUS KERNER
und seine Hausfrau,
FRIEDERICKE.
Weinsberg, 7, 15, ’27.
am Tage euerer nächtlichen
Erscheinung.
I once came myself in personal contact with Uhland, the head of the
Swabian school of poetry, when he was already an old man. He came to
Leipzig when I was a student there, and stayed at the house of Professor
Haupt, the famous Latin and German scholar. Uhland was a very shy and
retiring man, and had declined every kind of public reception. However,
the young students would not be gainsayed, and after assembling in the
afternoon to consider what should be done to show their respect to the
German poet and the liberal German politician, they marched off, some
600 or 800 of them, drew up in front of the house where they knew Uhland
was staying, and sang some of Uhland’s songs. At last Uhland, a little,
old, wrinkled man, appeared at the window, and expected evidently that
some one should address him. But no arrangements had been made, and no
one ventured to speak, fearing that at the same time two or three others
might step forward to address the old poet. After waiting a considerable
time, the position became so trying that I could bear it no longer; I
stepped forward, and in a few words told Uhland how he was loved by us
as a poet, as a scholar, and as a fearless defender of the rights of the
people, and how proud we were to have him amongst us. We then waited to
hear him speak, but he could not overcome his shyness, and sent a
message to ask some of us to come into his room to shake hands with him.
Even then he could say but very little, but when he knew that I was the
son of his old friend, Wilhelm Müller, he was pleased. To me it was like
a vision of a bygone age when I looked the old poet in the eyes, and
whenever I hear his song, “Es zogen drei Burschen wohl über den Rhein,”
or when I read his beautiful ballads, I see the silent poet looking at
me with his kind eyes, unable to use meaningless words, but simply
saying “Thank you.”
Another poet who was a friend and admirer of my father, and whom I saw
likewise like a vision only passing before me, was Heinrich Heine. He
was younger than my father (1799–1856), and evidently looked up to him
as his master. “I love no lyric poet,” he wrote, “excepting Goethe, so
much as Wilhelm Müller.” I found a letter of his which deserves to be
preserved. Alas! the whole of my father’s library and correspondence was
destroyed by fire, and this letter escaped only because my mother, a
great admirer of Heine’s poems, had preserved it among her own books.
Here is the letter, or at least parts of it. The original was sent about
the years 1841–43, when I was a student at Leipzig, to Brockhaus’
_Blätter für Litterarische Unterhaltung_, but the original was never
returned to me. It has often been quoted in histories of German
literature, and I give the extracts here from Gustav Karpeles’ “Heinrich
Heine’s Autobiographie,” Berlin, 1888, pp. 149, 150:—
Hamburg, 7th June, 1826.
I am great enough to confess to you openly that my Small Intermezzo
metre[5] possesses not merely accidental similarity with your own
accustomed metre, but probably owes its most secret rhythm to your
songs—those dear Müller-songs which I came to know at the very time
when I wrote the Intermezzo. At a very early time I let German
folk-song exercise its influence upon me. Later on, when I studied at
Bonn, August Schlegel opened many metrical secrets to me; but I
believe it was in your songs that I found what I looked for—pure tone
and true simplicity. How pure and clear your songs are, and they are
all true folk-songs. In my poems, on the contrary, the form only is to
a certain extent popular, the thoughts belong to our conventional
society. Yes, I am great enough to repeat it distinctly, and you will
sooner or later find it proclaimed publicly, that through the study of
your seventy-seven poems it became clear to me for the first time how
from the forms of our old still existing folk-songs new forms may be
deduced which are quite as popular, though one need not imitate the
unevennesses and awkwardnesses of the old language. In the second
volume of your poems the form seemed to me even purer and more
transparently clear. But why say so much about the form? What I yearn
to tell you is that, with the exception of Goethe, there is no lyric
poet whom I love as much as you.
Another fragment of the same letter occurs on page 195 (951). Here
Heine, referring to his North Sea poems, writes:—
The “North Sea” belongs to my last poems, and you can see there what
new keys I touch, and on what new lines I move along. Prose receives
me in her wide arms, and in the next volume of my “Reisebilder” you
will find in prose much that is mad, bitter, offensive, angry, and
very polemical. Times are really too bad (1826), and whoever has
strength, freedom, and boldness has also the duty seriously to begin
the fight against all that is bad and puffed up, against all that is
mediocre, and yet spreads itself out so broad, so intolerably broad. I
beg you, keep well disposed towards me, never doubt me, and let us
grow old together in common striving. I am conceited enough to believe
that when we are both gone my name will be named together with yours.
Let us therefore hold together in love in this life also.
I never came to know Heine. I knew he was in Paris when I was there in
1846, but he was already in such a state of physical collapse that a
friend of mine who knew him well, and saw him from time to time, advised
me not to go and see him. However, one afternoon as I and my friend were
sitting on the Boulevard, near the Rue Richelieu, sipping a cup of
coffee, “Look there,” he said, “there comes Heine!” I jumped up to see,
my friend stopped him, and told him who I was. It was a sad sight. He
was bent down, and dragged himself slowly along, his spare greyish hair
was hanging round his emaciated face, there was no light in his eyes. He
lifted one of his paralysed eyelids with his hand and looked at me. For
a time, like the blue sky breaking from behind grey October clouds,
there passed a friendly expression across his face, as if he thought of
days long gone by. Then he moved on, mumbling a line from Goethe, in a
deep, broken, and yet clear voice, as if appealing for sympathy:—
“Das Maulthier sucht im Düstern seinen Weg.”
Thus vanished Heine, the most brilliant, sparkling, witty poet of
Germany. I have seen him, that is all I can say, as Saul saw Samuel, and
wished he had not seen him. However, we travel far to see the ruins of
Pompeii and Herculaneum, of Nineveh and Memphis, and the ruins of a mind
such as Heine’s are certainly as sad and as grand as the crumbling
pillars and ruined temples shrouded under the lava of Vesuvius. “Eine
schöne Welt ist da versunken,” I said to myself, and I went home and
read in Heine’s “Buch der Lieder.” “Du bist wie eine Blume,” “Ich habe
im Traum geweinet,” “Ein Tannenbaum steht einsam.” “Yes,” I said,
“snow-white lilies spring from muddy ponds, and small mushrooms are said
to grow on fresh-fallen snow.”
Few poets in Germany have been or are still so admired and loved as
Heine, but few poets also have been so viciously maligned as Heine.
Society, no doubt, had a right to frown on him, but against such
calumnies as were heaped on him by envy, hatred, and malice, it is well
to remember some of his last lines:—
Hab’ eine Jungfrau nie verführet
Mit Liebeswort, mit Schmeichelei,
Ich hab’ auch nie ein Weib berühret,
Wüsst’ ich, dass sie vermählet sei.
Wahrhaftig, wenn es anders wäre,
Mein Name, er verdiente nicht
Zu strahlen in dem Buch der Ehre,
Man dürft’ mir spucken in’s Gesicht.
That is strong language and evidently meant as an answer to his spies
and enemies. But why will people always spy into the most uninteresting
part of a poet’s life? Why are they bent on knowing on what terms Dante
stood to Beatrice, Petrarch to Laura, Goethe to Frau von Stein, Heine to
George Sand. Volumes have been written on their intimate relations, and
yet whom does it concern, and what can it teach us? Let the dead bury
their dead.
Whilst at Leipzig as a young student I still imagined myself a poet, and
from time to time some of my poems appeared, to my great joy, in the
local papers. I even belonged to a poetical society, and I remember at
least two of us who in later times became very popular writers in
Germany. One was a Jew of the name of Wolfsohn, whose play, “Only a
Soul,” giving the tragedy of a Russian peasant girl, proved a great
success all over Germany, and is still acted from time to time. He died
young. Another, Theodor Fontane, is alive, and one of the best known and
best loved novel-writers of the day. He was a charming character, a man
of great gifts, full of high spirits and inexhaustible good humour. He
began life in a chemist’s shop, and had a very hard struggle in his
youth, which may have prevented his growing to his full height and
strength. He might have been another Heine, but the many years of hard
work and hopeless drudgery kept him from soaring as high as his young
wings would have carried him. I remember but little of his poetry now,
there remains but the sense of pleasure which I derived from it at the
time. Now and then, as it happens to all of us, a few long-forgotten
lines rise to the surface. In a political poem of his, I remember a
young Liberal being warned with the following words:—
Sonst spazierst du nach Siberien
In die langen Winterferien,
Die zugleich Hundstage sind!
And I have never forgotten the last lines of his beautiful poem, “Die
schöne Rosamunde,” where he says of the King:—
Ihn traf des Lebens grösster Schmerz:
Der Schmerz um dieses Leben!
All young poets in Germany were then liberal and more than liberal, all
dreamt and sang of a united Germany. But being thirty years ahead of
Bismarck, they were unmercifully sent to prison, and often their whole
career was ruined for life. Living much in that society, I too, a
harmless boy of eighteen, was sent to prison as a person highly
dangerous to the peace of Europe. The confinement in the academic career
was not very severe, however, except in one respect. From time to time
one was allowed to go out, provided one kept on good terms with the
attendants. But the serious thing was that as one became a popular
character all one’s friends came to visit one, and they expected of
course to be hospitably entertained. The consumption of beer and tobacco
was considerable, and so was the bill at the end of my political
incarceration. More of that perhaps by-and-by. Nearly all the political
poetry of that time, much as it then stirred the people, is now
forgotten; even the names of the poets are known to but few, though they
have found their way into the various histories of German literature. I
remember as one of the best, Herwegh, who came to Leipzig when I was a
student, and who, of course, was _fêted_ by the Burschenschaft at a
brilliant supper. Much beer was drunk, much tobacco was smoked, many
speeches were made. The police were present, and the names of all who
had taken part were entered in the Black Book, mine among the rest.
Herwegh was a real poet, unfortunately he spent nearly all his poetical
genius on political invective. How well I remember his poem in which
every verse ended with the words:—
Wir haben lang genug geliebt,
Wir wollen endlich hassen!
But there were some poems of his which well deserved a longer life. One
began with the words: “Ich möchte hingehen wie das Abendroth.” Very
beautiful, but my memory does not serve me further, and my copy of his
poems has vanished from my library like many other volumes which I lent
to my friends.[6]
I well remember the pleasure which Herwegh’s poems gave me, but the
words themselves are gone. It is the same with so many of our
recollections. I can still feel the intense delight, the hushed
reverence with which I looked the first time at Raphael’s Madonna di San
Sisto, and looked at it again and again whenever I passed through
Dresden. But whether the colour of the Virgin’s dress is red or blue I
cannot tell. I dare say it is all there, in the treasure-house of my
memory. Nay, sometimes it suddenly appears, only never when I call for
it. What is forgotten, however, does not seem to be entirely forfeited;
it can be gotten again, and it probably forms, though unknown, the
fertile soil for new harvests: that which thou sowest is not quickened
except it die.
Another famous political poet whose acquaintance I made when he was an
old man was Moritz Arndt. His poetry was not very great, but the effect
which he produced by his “Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland” has been, and
is still, perfectly marvellous. If Bismarck finished the unity of
Germany, Arndt laid the foundation of it, and in the grateful memory of
the people his song will probably be remembered long after Bismarck’s
diplomatic triumphs have been forgotten. I shall never forget old Arndt,
for, old as he was, he gave me such a grip of the hand that I thought
the blood would squirt from my nails.
Lesser poets and writers whom I knew at that time, while I was a student
at Leipzig, were Karl Beck, of Hungarian extraction, Robert Blum
(_fusillé_ at Vienna by Windischgrätz, 9th November, 1848), Herlossohn,
Kühne, Laube, and several more whose names I could find in Histories of
German Literature, or the Conversations-Lexicon, but no longer in the
camera obscura of my memory. And yet some of their poems were really
beautiful, full of high thoughts and deep feeling. But the world does
not recognise a poet of one poem, or even of ten or twenty. In order to
be a poet a man must produce hundreds of poems, volume after volume,
good, bad, and indifferent. Nor is there here anything like the survival
of the fittest. Although ever so many of Schiller’s or Goethe’s poems
have become old and antiquated—few will deny this—yet no one is
satisfied with a selection of the best, few people would ever agree as
to which are the best. We must take them all or none. In that respect
the ancient poets are certainly much better off. What is left of
Tyrtaeos or Sappho, or of Horace and Catullus, can be carried in our
waistcoat pocket, nay, in the folds of our brains; and though even here
sifting might increase enjoyment, yet we can take in whatever there is
without sinking under the burden. But who can remember Goethe or
Wordsworth or Victor Hugo, aye, who has time even to read all their
verses, so as to mark, learn, and inwardly digest them?
In towns like Paris and London, if a poet once succeeds in attracting
attention, and gathering some male and female admirers around him, the
very atmosphere which he breathes, the wide survey of humanity which he
commands, strengthen and inspire him. No one becomes an Alpine climber
who has no Alps to climb, and many a poetical soul languishes and
withers if confined within the walls of a small provincial town. I have
known very ordinary mortals who when they came to write for a great and
influential newspaper became inspired like the prophetess on the Delphic
tripod, and wrote well, while their ordinary writings remain feeble. I
have known poets in small provincial towns who became changed after they
had changed their provincial public for the public of a large capital. I
remember a dear cousin of mine at Dessau, Adolf von Basedow, who was my
playfellow when we were children, and remained my true friend all
through life. He had a quite exceptional gift for occasional poetry, and
later in life he wrote many things without ever being able to find a
proper publisher. Some of his plays were acted and proved successful on
neighbouring stages, but he never received that response which inspires
and nerves a poet for higher efforts. He was very modest, nay, almost
shy, and in these days humility, however charming in the man, is not
likely to open the road to success. Now that he is gone, there are all
his poetical productions laid aside and soon to be forgotten, while some
of the poetry we are asked to admire in these days is far inferior to
those fallen leaves. He was an officer and went through the whole of the
Franco-German war, having, like so many others, to leave his wife and
children at home. He returned home safe, but his health had suffered,
and he never was himself again. I have seldom known a more high-minded
and truly chivalrous character, content with the small surroundings in
which he had to move, but never making the smallest concession to
expediency or meanness. He was proud of his name, and whatever we may
think of the small nobility in Germany, their manly pride keeps up a
standard of honour without which the country would not be what it is. We
may laugh at their courts of honour and their duels, arising often from
very trifling causes, but in our age of self-seeking and pushing we want
some true knights as the salt of the earth.
While I was at the University at Leipzig I well remember meeting Robert
Blum in literary circles. He certainly was not a poet, but when required
he could speak very powerfully and wield his pen with great effect.
Never shall I forget the horror I felt when I heard of his execution at
Vienna. No doubt there was danger when the mob broke into the
Kaiserburg, shouting and yelling, and when Prince Metternich said to the
Emperor, who had asked him what this hideous noise could mean, “Sire,
c’est que Messieurs les démocrates appellent la voix de Dieu.” But for
all that, to shoot a member of the German Parliament then sitting at
Frankfurt was an outrage for which Austria has had to pay dearly. Still
more cruel was the execution at the same time of a little helpless Jew,
Jellineck, whom I had known as belonging to a small class reading Arabic
with Professor Fleischer at Leipzig. Robert Blum may have been a
dangerous man in the then state of German political excitement, but
Jellineck was nothing but a perfectly harmless scholar, and if he was
found guilty by a court-martial, it could only have been because he
could never express himself intelligibly. If he had been killed in the
streets of Vienna like many others, all one could have said would have
been, “Qu’allait-il faire dans cette galère?” but to shoot a harmless
student after a short court-martial was no better than lynching. There
has been a Nemesis for all that, as Austria knows too well, and what
would the world be without that invisible Nemesis?
With every year my own work became more and more prosaic, and yet more
and more absorbing. Neither at Berlin nor afterwards at Paris, had I
time or inclination to make new friends or cultivate literary society.
Berlin never was rich in poets or poetry; Paris also, when I was there
in 1844, and again in 1847 and 1848, had no names to attract me.
Lamartine had some fascination for me, and I managed to see him and hear
much about him from a common friend, Baron von Eckstein. This German
Baron was a well-known character in Paris between 1840 and 1850, a
German settled there for many years, a Roman Catholic, much mixed up, I
believe, in small political transactions, and a constant contributor to
the _Augsburger Zeitung_, at that time the _Times_ of Germany. He was a
man of wide interests, a student of Sanskrit, chiefly attracted by the
mystic philosophy of the Upanishads and the Vedânta. When he heard of my
having come to Paris to attend Burnouf’s lectures and to prepare the
first edition of the “Rig Veda,” he toiled up to my rooms, though they
were _au cinquième_ and he was an old man and a martyr to gout. He was
full of enthusiasm, and full of kindness for a poor student. I was very
poor then; I hardly know now how I managed to keep myself afloat, yet I
never borrowed and never owed a penny to anybody. I disliked giving
lessons, but I worked like a horse for others, copying and collating
manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Royale. I lived like a Hindu Sannyâsin,
but, as Heine said,
Und ich hab’ es doch ertragen—
Aber fragt mich nur nicht wie.
Baron Eckstein’s eyes were too weak to allow him to copy and collate
Sanskrit manuscripts, and I gladly did it for him. I recollect copying
for him, among other texts, the whole of the Aitarêya Brâhmana in Latin
letters. I still possess a copy of it. He paid me liberally, and he
often invited me to lunch with him at his _café_, which was welcome to a
young man of good appetite, who had to be satisfied with wretched
dinners at the Palais Royal, but not at Véfour’s or the Trois Frères
Provençaux. Being the Paris correspondent of the leading German paper,
the Baron was on friendly terms with many of the political and literary
celebrities of the time. I believe he was in receipt of a literary
pension from the French Government, but I do not know it for certain. He
offered to introduce me to George Sand, to Lamennais, to the Comtesse
d’Agout (Daniel Stern), to Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and others. But I
shut my eyes and shook my head; I had no time then for anything but the
Veda, and getting ready for the great battle of life that was before me.
I am sorry for it now, but, without self-denial, we can never do
anything.
When the February revolution came, Baron d’Eckstein was very active. His
friend Lamartine was then in the ascendant, and through him he knew all
that was going on. No revolution, I believe, was ever made with so
little preparation. There was no conspiracy of any kind. A night or two
before the contemplated banquet to Ledru Rollin, Lamartine was asked by
his friends, Eckstein being present, whether he would accept office
under the Duchesse d’Orléans, provided she was proclaimed Regent in the
Chamber. He laughed as if it were an idle dream, outside the sphere of
practical politics, as we now say, but he accepted. The Duchesse and her
friends counted on him, and his prestige at that time was so great that
he might have carried anything. But no one knows his own prestige, and
when the moment came, when the Duchesse d’Orléans was present in the
Chamber and Lamartine was expected to speak, there was confusion and
fright; some shots had been fired in the Assembly, the name of the
Republic had been shouted, the Deputies broke up, and the Duchesse had
to fly. Never was kingdom lost with so little excuse. I saw the whole
so-called revolution from my windows at the corner of the Rue Royale and
the Boulevard de la Madeleine. I may have to describe what I saw at some
other time. At present I am thinking of the poet-statesman only, of
Lamartine and his brilliant speech from the balcony of the Hôtel de
Ville.
Whatever Lamartine was, a poet, a dreamer, an aristocrat, he had the
spirit of _noblesse_ in him, and that spirit prevailed at the time. It
was due to him, I believe, that capital punishment was then abolished
once for all for political offences. Sinister elements came to the
surface, but they had soon to hide again. I remember another speaker at
the Hôtel de Ville, speaking after Lamartine in support of the abolition
of every kind of title and privilege, and, before all, for the abolition
of the nobility. He was eloquent, he was furious, and after he had
summed up all the crimes committed by the French nobility and laughed at
those who had grown rich and powerful by the misdeeds of their noble
ancestors, he finished up in a loud voice, “Soyons ancêtres nous-mêmes,”
a sentiment loudly applauded by the unwashed multitudes who aspired to
take the place of the _ancêtres_ whom they had just heard execrated from
the balcony of their terrible Hôtel de Ville.
All the walls in the streets where I lived were then chalked with the
mysterious words, _Liberté_, _Egalité_, _Fraternité_. Not far from my
house there was a tobacconist’s shop, called _Aux trois blagues_, with
three tobacco pouches painted over the window. My friend, the
tobacconist, was an _aristo_, so he left the _trois blagues_ and simply
wrote underneath, _Liberté_, _Egalité_, _Fraternité_.
But I must not forget another poet, the greatest German poet I have ever
known, and of whom I saw a great deal at Berlin before I migrated to
Paris, I mean Rückert. It is strange how little his poems are known in
England and France. He has never had an apostle, nor would a mere herald
do him much service. He was a poet somewhat like Wordsworth, who must be
laid siege to, not till he surrenders, but till we surrender to him. If
he is known at all in England, it is through his lyric poems, which have
been set to music, as they deserved to be, by Schumann. Who has not
heard “Du, meine Seele, du, mein Herz,” one of the grandest songs of our
age? But, alas! either the words are murdered in a translation which
would break the heart both of the poet and the composer, or the German
words are often pronounced so badly that no one can tell whether they
are English or German or Sanskrit. Rückert was one of the richest poets.
There is hardly a branch of poetry which he has not cultivated. I say
cultivated on purpose, for his poetry was always a work of art,
sometimes almost of artifice. He was not equally successful in all his
poetical compositions: particularly towards the end of his life he
disappointed many of his admirers by his dramatic attempts. He is like
Wordsworth in this respect also, that one cannot enjoy all he writes,
yet in the end one comes to enjoy much that has been put aside at first,
because it comes from him.
I may be prejudiced, yet a poet whose verses Goethe repeated on his
deathbed is not likely to be overrated by me. These are the verses
which, we are told, Goethe murmured before he exclaimed, “More light,
more light!” and passed away:—
UM MITTERNACHT.
Um Mitternacht
Hab’ ich gewacht
Und aufgeblickt zum Himmel,
Kein Stern am Sterngewimmel
Hat mir gelacht
Um Mitternacht.
Um Mitternacht
Hab’ ich gedacht
Hinaus in dunkle Schranken;
Es hat kein Lichtgedanken
Mir Trost gebracht
Um Mitternacht.
Um Mitternacht
Nahm ich in Acht
Die Schläge meines Herzens;
Ein einz’ger Puls des Schmerzens
War angefacht
Um Mitternacht.
Um Mitternacht
Kämpft’ ich die Schlacht
O Menschheit, deiner Leiden;
Nicht konnt’ ich sie entscheiden
Mit meiner Macht
Um Mitternacht.
Um Mitternacht
Hab’ ich die Macht
In deine Hand gegeben:
Herr über Tod und Leben,
Du hältst die Wacht
Um Mitternacht.
If I had a strong personal liking for Rückert it might be excused. He
was really an Eastern poet, rich in colour, but equally rich in thought.
The first poems of his I knew in my youth were his “Oestliche Rosen.” My
father reviewed them (“Vermischte Schriften,” vol. v., p. 290). He
declared he might have judged them by one letter, the letter K, which in
Roman times meant condemnation, but which in Rückert’s case would give
to his “Oestliche Rosen” their right title of “Köstliche Rosen.” One of
Rückert’s greatest works, a real treasury of meditative thought and
mature wisdom, was his “Weisheit des Brahmanen,” and this also appealed,
no doubt, strongly to my own personal tastes. His translations of
Oriental poetry, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, are perfect masterpieces.
They often take away one’s breath by the extraordinary faithfulness and
marvellous reproduction in German of plays on words and jingle of rhymes
that seemed to be possible once, and once only, whether in Persian,
Arabic, or Sanskrit. I may have been influenced by all this, and still
more by my personal regard for the poet, but for all that I should
strongly advise all who care for poetry, and for German poetry, to judge
for themselves, and not to be disheartened if they do not strike gold on
the first pages they open.
To know Rückert personally was a treat. I had heard much about him
before I made his acquaintance, when I was a student at Berlin. The
Duchess of Anhalt-Dessau, my own peculiar duchess, had in her youth been
much admired by the Crown Prince of Prussia, afterwards Frederick
William IV. She was herself a Prussian princess, a daughter of Prince
Frederick Ludwig Karl of Prussia, who died 1796, and of a Princess of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who after the death of her husband married the
Duke of Cumberland, and became Queen of Hanover. This princess, a lady
of great natural gifts, highly cultivated and well read, was personally
acquainted with some of the most distinguished men in Germany. Even in
the narrow sphere in which she had learnt to move and act in Dessau, she
did much good in trying to discover young men of talent, and assisting
them in their studies. She had always been very gracious to me, and even
as a boy I was often invited to play with her _à quatre mains_ at the
Castle. I saw her for the last time after I had begun my Oriental
studies at Leipzig, and before I went to Berlin. She told me then that
she herself had known a little Sanskrit, that she and the young Crown
Prince of Prussia had learnt the Sanskrit alphabet, and had corresponded
in it, to the great annoyance of people who opened or read all letters
that were not meant for them. “When you go to Berlin,” she said, “you
must see Rückert, but do not be frightened. I was myself most anxious to
see him. The King invited him to dinner, together with a number of his
illustrious ménagerie. I asked the King where Rückert was sitting, the
poet of ‘Frauenliebe’ and ‘Liebesfrühling.’ ‘Look there,’ the King said.
‘That broad-shouldered boor with his elbows on the table, eating a hunk
of bread, that is your poet!’ And a _désillusionnement_ it was,” she
said. “Still, I was proud to have seen him and to have talked to him.”
So I was prepared.
Frederick William IV. had tried hard to attract a number of the most
eminent men in Germany to Berlin. Berlin by itself is not attractive,
and it seemed as if the men who were then best known in Germany had
chosen the South, rather than the North, for their residence. The
Brothers Grimm Schelling, Cornelius and many more were tempted to Berlin
by large salaries, and among them was Rückert also, not so much the
Oriental scholar as the poet. He went to Berlin, after long hesitation
and misgivings, and announced lectures on Arabic, Persian, and other
Oriental languages. But he could not brook the restraints of official
life. He had a little _Landgut_, Neusess, near Coburg, and thither he
felt so strongly drawn during the summer that he soon appealed to the
Minister of Public Instruction for leave of absence during each summer.
This was most graciously granted by the King, but soon after followed a
petition for leave of absence during a particularly severe winter. This
too was granted, though the Minister ventured to say: “But, my dear
Professor, if you are always absent during the summer semester, and now
ask for leave of absence during the winter semester also, when do you
mean to lecture?” Nor was this all. When I called on the Professor to
enter my name for his lectures on the “Gulistan,” a Persian poem, he
received me very coldly. He was indeed the broad-shouldered giant whom
the Duchess had described to me. He wore a long dressing-gown, and his
hair, parted in the middle, was hanging wildly about his temples.
“Why do you want to learn Persian?” he said. I humbly explained my
reason. “It is no use your learning Persian,” he continued, “if you do
not know Arabic.” To this I was able to reply that I had studied Arabic
for a year under Professor Fleischer at Leipzig. However, the Professor
was not to be foiled. He wanted to get away to Neusess, but at the same
time to be able to satisfy the Minister that he had done his duty in
offering to lecture. “You know,” he said, “_tres faciunt collegium_. I
cannot lecture for one.” This was unanswerable, according to German
academical etiquette. So I bowed, and went into the highways and hedges
to secure the help of two _commilitones_. Accompanied by them, I invaded
the Professor once more in his den. All three of us told him that we
were most anxious to learn Persian.
One of them actually did wish to learn Persian, and became afterwards a
very distinguished scholar. He was then called Paul Bötticher, but he is
best known by his later name, Paul de Lagarde, a man of extraordinary
power of work and an enormous accumulation of knowledge. When Rückert
saw there was no escape, he yielded, at first not with a very good
grace; but he soon became most delightful. We were really working
together, and when he found out that I was the son of his old friend
Wilhelm Müller, nothing could exceed his kindness to me. At first he
often confessed to his pupils that he had forgotten his Persian, but
with every week it seemed to come back to him. Nothing more was said
about Neusess, and the fields and meadows and woods that he had to
desert for our sakes. Whatever may have been said about Rückert as a
professor, he was more useful in his informal teaching than many learned
professors who year after year read their lectures to large admiring
audiences.
“I cannot teach you Persian,” he used to say, “I can only tell you and
show you how to learn it. I learnt everything I know by myself, and so
can you. We will work together, but that is all I can do.” It was
astounding to see how this giant had worked, all by himself. No one at
that time thought, for instance, of studying Tamil. He showed me a copy
of a complete Tamil, or was it Telugu, dictionary in folio, which he had
copied and largely added to. He had studied Chinese too. He was far
advanced in Sanskrit and Zend, and in Arabic and Persian he had probably
read more, though in his own way, than many a learned professor. Such an
honest student as Rückert was could do more good to his pupils in one
hour than others by a whole semester of lecturing. And this is the
secret of the success of German professors. They take their pupils into
their work-shops, they do not keep them standing and gaping at the
show-window. Thus the immense advantage which English Universities enjoy
in being able to combine professorial with tutorial teaching, is made up
for to a certain extent by the devotion of the German professors, who
give up their time in their seminaries and so-called societies for the
benefit of students who want to learn how to work, and do not wish to be
simply crammed for examinations. They make friends of their pupils,
their pupils are proud to do much of the drudgery work for them, while
they remain for life their grateful pupils and afterwards their loyal
colleagues. After term was over, there was, of course, no holding
Rückert in Berlin, but he invited me to see him at Neusess, which a few
years afterwards I did.
There I found the old man working in his farmyard like a real peasant,
pitchforking manure into his cart, and carting it off to the fields. He
was delighted to see me, and when he had washed his hands he came into
his study to shake hands, and to talk about the work on which I was then
engaged. Rückert was a scholar with whom one could discuss any question
quite freely. Even if one had to differ from him, he was never offended
by contradiction. When we could not agree he used to say: “We will leave
this for the present, and discuss it another time.” He told me, among
other things, how my father had saved his life.
The two young men were travelling together on foot in Italy. Italy was
at that time, in the beginning of the century, the cynosure of every
German student, and of every German poet. Goethe had described it, and
they all wanted to follow in Goethe’s footsteps, and pass their
“Wanderjahre” in the “Land wo die Citronen blühn!” How they did it with
a few thalers in their pockets we can hardly understand, but it was
done.
Rückert and my father were travelling on foot, and they had often to
sleep in the poorest _osterias_. In these wretched hovels they got more
than they had bargained for, and one fine morning, after getting out
into the fresh air, they saw a lake, and my father jumped in to have a
bath. Rückert could not resist, and followed. But he could not swim, the
lake was deeper than he had thought, and he was on the point of drowning
when my father swam towards him and rescued him. “I wrote my first epic
poem then, in the style of Camoens,” said Rückert, with a loud chuckle,
“and I called it the ‘Lousiade,’ but it has never been published.” After
this visit I lost sight of Rückert, as of many of my German friends. But
I still possess the manuscript of a metrical and rhymed version of the
Sanskrit poem the “Meghadûta, the Cloud Messenger,” which I made and
afterwards published (in 1847), and which contains a number of
corrections and suggestions made by Rückert in pencil. “I translated it
myself,” he said to me, “but I shall not publish my translation now.”
During my stay in Paris, as I remarked, there was no time for poets or
poetry. I had to sit up night after night to copy and collate Sanskrit
MSS., and I shall never forget how often I screwed down my green-shaded
lamp in the morning and saw the sun slowly rising over the Boulevard,
and lighting up the arch of the Porte St. Martin. I lived _au cinquième_
in a corner house of the Boulevard de la Madeleine, in a house which
exists no longer, or at all events has been very much changed, so that
on my last visit I could not find my windows again.
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS
II
When I had settled in England in 1847, my literary acquaintances began
afresh. I have had the good fortune of being on more or less intimate
terms with such poets as Kingsley, Clough, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson,
Browning, and with poets in prose such as Froude, Ruskin, Carlyle, and I
may add, in spite of the Atlantic, Emerson, Lowell, and Oliver Wendell
Holmes. I knew other writers such as Macaulay, Arthur Helps, Arthur
Stanley, Frederick Maurice, Dr. Martineau; I may add even the names of
Faraday, Lyall, Sedgwick, Thirlwall, Grote, Whewell, Richard Owen,
Darwin, Huxley, among my personal acquaintances or friends.
Kingsley was married to one of my wife’s aunts. She was one of six most
remarkable sisters, all married except the eldest and, I believe, the
most gifted, who had devoted her life to the education of her younger
sisters. Besides Charles Kingsley, the husbands of the other sisters
were Froude, the historian; Lord Wolverton, of high standing in the
financial world as the head of the house of Glyn, and the valued adviser
of Mr. Gladstone in his earlier financial reforms; R. Mertyns Bird, an
illustrious name in the history of India as the organiser of the
North-Western Provinces; and “S. G. O.”
How soon popularity vanishes! There was a time when everybody knew and
spoke of “S. G. O.” He was Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne, an influential
writer on political and social subjects, a frequent contributor to _The
Times_ during the Crimean War, a man of great force and independence of
character. He was a giant in stature, and extremely attractive by his
varied knowledge in different branches of physical science. He was a
well-known microscopist, and when it was wanted, a doctor, a nurse, a
surgeon, a dentist. However, he was not a poet, like his two
brothers-in-law. He was an active clergyman, a sanitary reformer, a
ready helper wherever poor people were ready to be helped. These five
men, the husbands of five remarkable sisters—of whom one, Mrs. Bird, is
still living at the age of ninety-six (she died this year), and not only
living, but alive to all that is interesting in the world, and full of
good works—represented a power in England. “S. G. O.” moved in a sphere
of his own, and seldom came to Oxford. But Kingsley and Froude soon
became my intimate friends.
If I call Froude a poet it is because, as I explained before, I do not
consider rhyme as essential to poetry. But for really poetical power,
for power of description, of making the facts of history alive, of
laying bare the deepest thoughts of men and the most mysterious feelings
of women, there was no poet or historian of our age who came near him. I
knew him through all his phases. I knew him first when he was still a
fellow of Exeter College. I was at that time often with him in his rooms
in High Street, opposite to St. Mary’s Church, when he was busy writing
novels, and I well remember passing an evening with him and trying to
find the right name for a novel which afterwards appeared under the
title of “Nemesis of Faith.” I saw him almost daily while his
persecution at Oxford was going on, gaining strength every day. He had
to give up his fellowship, on which he chiefly depended. I will not
repeat the old story that his novel was publicly burnt in the quadrangle
of Exeter College. The story is interesting as showing how quickly a
myth can spring up even in our own lifetime, if only there is some
likelihood in it, and something that pleases the popular taste. What
really happened was, as I was informed at the time by Froude himself, no
more than that one of the tutors (Dr. Sewell) spoke about the book at
the end of one of his College Lectures. He warned the young men against
the book, and asked whether anybody had read it. One of the
undergraduates produced a copy which belonged to him. Dr. Sewell
continued his sermonette, and warming with his subject, he finished by
throwing the book, which did not belong to him, into the fire, at the
same time stirring the coals to make them burn. Of what followed there
are two versions. Dr. Sewell, when he had finished, asked his class,
“Now, what have I done?” “You have burned my copy,” the owner of the
book said in a sad voice, “and I shall have to buy a new one.” The other
version of the reply was, “You have stirred the fire, sir.”
And so it was. A book which at present would call forth no remark, no
controversy, was discussed in all the newspapers, and raised a storm all
over England. Bishops shook their heads, nay even their fists, at the
young heretic, and even those among his contemporaries at Oxford who
ought to have sympathised with him, and were in fact quite as unorthodox
as he was, did not dare to stand up for him or lend him a helping hand.
Stanley alone never said an unkind word of him. The worst was that
Froude not only lost his fellowship, but when he had accepted the
Headmastership of a college far away in Tasmania, his antagonists did
not rest till his appointment had been cancelled. Froude unfortunately
was poor, and his father, a venerable and well-to-do Archdeacon, was so
displeased with his son that he stopped the allowance which he had
formerly made him. It seems almost as if the poverty of a victim gave
increased zest and enjoyment to his pursuers. Froude had to sell his
books one by one, and was trying hard to support himself by his pen.
This was then not so easy a matter as it is now. At that very time,
however, I received a cheque for £200 from an unknown hand, with a
request that I would hand it to Froude to show him that he had friends
and sympathisers who would not forsake him. It was not till many years
later that I discovered the donor, and Froude was then able to return
him the money which at the time had saved him from drowning. I should
like to mention the name, but that kind friend in need is no longer
among the living, and I have a feeling that even now he would wish his
name to remain unknown. This is by no means the only instance of true
English generosity which I have witnessed. But at the time I confess
that I was surprised, for I did not yet know how much of secret
goodness, how much of secret strength there is in England, how much of
that real public spirit, of that chivalrous readiness to do good and to
resist evil without lifting the vizor. Froude had a hard struggle before
him, and, being a very sensitive man, he suffered very keenly. Several
times I remember when I was walking with him and friends or
acquaintances of his were passing by without noticing him, he turned to
me and said: “That was another cut.” I hardly understood then what he
meant, but I felt that he meant not only that he had been dropped by his
friends, but that he felt cut to the quick. Persecution, however, did
not dishearten him; on the contrary, it called forth his energies, and
the numerous essays from his pen, now collected under the title “Short
Studies on Great Subjects,” show how he worked, how he thought, how he
followed the course that seemed right to him without looking either
right or left. Bunsen, who was at the time the Prussian Minister in
London, and had heard from me about Froude, took a deep interest in him,
and after consulting with Archdeacon Hare and Frederick Maurice,
suggested that he should spend a few years at a German university. I was
asked to bring my young friend to Carlton Terrace, where Bunsen received
him with the truest kindness. What he tried to impress on him was that
the questions which disturbed him required first of all a historical
treatment, and that before we attempt to solve difficulties we should
always try to learn how they arose. Froude was on the point of going to
Germany with the assistance of some of Bunsen’s friends when other
prospects opened to him in England. But frequently in later life he
referred to his interview with Bunsen and said, “I never knew before
what it meant that a man could drive out devils.”
I confess I was somewhat surprised when Froude suddenly told me of his
plan of writing a History of England, beginning with Henry VIII. My idea
of a historian was that of a professor who had read and amassed
materials during half his life, and at the end produced a ponderous
book, half text, half notes. But, hazardous as the idea of writing a
History of England seemed to me for so young a man, I soon perceived
that Froude had an object in writing, and he certainly set to work with
wonderful perseverance. Few of his critics have given him credit for
what he did at Simancas and at the Record Office in London. I have seen
him at work, morning and evening, among piles of notes and extracts. I
know how the pages which are such pleasant light reading were written
again and again till he was satisfied. Often I had to confess to him
that I never copied what I had once written, and he was outspoken enough
to tell me, “But you ought; and you will never write good English if you
don’t.” He learnt Spanish, French, and German, so as to be able to read
new and old books in these languages. He always kept up his classical
reading, and translated, as far as I remember, several Greek texts from
beginning to end. To these he afterwards referred, and quoted from them,
without always, as he ought, going back again to the original Greek.
It is not for me to say that he did not make mistakes, and that he was
not weak in some branches of historical knowledge. I cannot deny that in
his translations also there are mistakes, arising from haste rather than
from ignorance. But who has ever examined any translation from any
language, without finding signs of what seems carelessness or ignorance?
Four eyes see more than two. We have translations of Plato and Aristotle
in Latin and in almost every language of Europe. The text has been
critically examined for hundreds of years, and every difficult passage
has been explained again and again. But is there any one translation
which could be called immaculate? Was not even the last translation of
Plato which is so deservedly popular, characterised by the late Rector
of Lincoln, in the well-known words of a French writer, as _très belle,
mais peu fidèle_? Now, while the true scholar, when examining a new
translation, rejoices over every new happy rendering, the ill-natured
critic, particularly if he wants to display his own superior knowledge,
can easily pick out a number of passages where a mistake has been made,
or where he thinks that a mistake has been made, and then proceed to
show that the very best Greek scholar of the day does not know “what
every schoolboy ought to know,” etc. There are many passages in Greek
and other authors that admit of more than one translation. If the
translator adopts one and rejects another, the game of the critic is
easy enough: he has only to adopt the rejected rendering, and his
triumph is secured. If that is so in Greek, how much more is it the case
in translating passages from faded documents written in antiquated
Spanish, nay, even letters of Erasmus written in his peculiar Latin, or
statutes in Norman-French.
Translation is a difficult art, and scholars, particularly those who
know the language from which, or the language into which, they translate
as well as their own, consider a good translation almost impossible. I
have had some experience in translating, and I know something of the
treatment which translators may expect from conceited critics. The
Sacred Books of the East, translated by myself and a number of friends,
the best scholars I could find, have not escaped that kind of pedantic
criticism. Impartial and honest critics have recognised the difficulties
under which scholars labour in translating, often for the first time,
ancient texts, whether Greek or Sanskrit. It is easy enough to translate
a text, after it has once been translated; it is easy even to improve in
a few places on the translations of the first pioneers. But to translate
for the first time an ancient text, badly edited or not yet edited at
all, is a totally different thing, and those who undertake it have a
right not only to the indulgence, but to the gratitude of all who come
after them. No one in our sphere of studies would call himself a scholar
who has not edited a text never edited before, or at least translated a
text that never was translated before. There are some critics who think
they have done their duty if they can discover a few flaws in a
translation, though they cannot even appreciate the labours and the
brilliant though silent discoveries of a first translator. The work that
has to be done by a first translator of an ancient text is often the
work of a real decipherer. He has to grope his way through Egyptian
darkness like the first interpreter of an Egyptian or Babylonian
inscription. He cannot help making mistakes. But though we know now how
often even a Champollion (died 1832) was mistaken, do we not feel
ashamed if we read what another most eminent Egyptologist and Coptic
scholar, Amadeo Peyron (died 1870), the head of the Egyptian Museum at
Turin, said of Champollion? “I have known Champollion,” he said, “the
so-called decipherer of hieroglyphics, very well, from his first visits
to our Museum. I took him for an ordinary swindler, and his publications
have afterwards confirmed me in my views. His philological labours have
remained to me unsolved riddles.”[7]
I have lately had another experience. I had to revise my translation of
Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” and I was surprised to see how many
passages there were which I had to alter, not because I did not know
either German or English, but because in many places a translation can
only be approximately faithful; and it is only a happy thought that
enables us now and then to approach nearer to the German original,
though in that case often at the expense of the English idiom.
In the case of Froude, we must remember that, whatever he wrote, he had
to meet not a single critic only, but a whole army. As far as one could
see, a kind of association had been formed for the suppression of his
“History.” Those who were behind the scenes know how certain of his
rivals and enemies actually banded themselves together, as if against a
common enemy. Now, I remember seeing in _Fraser’s Magazine_, then edited
by Froude, a review of Green’s “History of the English People,” with
pages and pages of mistakes in names, in dates, in facts. Yet, the same
writers who delighted in picking holes in Froude’s “History” from week
to week, from month to month, from year to year, kept up a constant
chorus of applause for Green’s “History of the English People”—no doubt
rightly so; but why not mete the same measure to others also? One of his
reviewers openly confessed that if he took the trouble of reading a book
carefully, he could not afford to review it in one paper only, he had to
write at least five or six articles to make it pay. This Φρουδοφονία, as
it was called, went on year after year, but, strange to say, Froude’s
work was not killed by it; on the contrary, it became more and more
popular. In fact, together with his other works, it enabled him to live
independently and even comfortably by his pen. Things have come to such
a pass that, if we may trust the experience of publishers, nothing sells
so well as a well-abused book, while laudatory notices seem to produce
little or no effect. The public, it seems, has grown too wise. Even such
powerful adjectives as epoch-making (_Epoche-machend_), monumental and
even _pyramidal_, fall flat. _Epoche-machend_ has too often been found
out to mean no more than _Poche-machend_ (_Poche_ in German means
_claque_), and _monumental_ has once or twice proved a misprint for
_momental_ or momentary. Few scholars would agree with M. Le Bon that
“works of history must be considered as works of pure imagination, as
fanciful accounts of ill-observed facts.” This is a French exaggeration.
But neither are books of history meant to be mere chronicles. History is
surely meant to teach not only facts, but lessons also; and, though
historians may say that facts ought to speak for themselves, they will
not speak without a _vates sacer_. I am the last man to stand up for an
unscholarlike treatment of history, or of anything else. But as I do not
call a man a scholar who simply copies and collates MSS., makes indices
or collects errata, I doubt whether mere _Quellenstudium_ will make a
historian. _Quellenstudium_ is a _sine quâ non_, but it is not
everything; and whereas the number of those who can ransack archives and
libraries is large, the world has not been rich in real historians whom
it is a delight to listen to, such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy and
Tacitus, Montesquieu, Gibbon, and, may we not add, Macaulay and Froude?
None of these historians, not even Gibbon, has escaped criticism, but
how poor should we be without them!
Sir Walter Raleigh, when he was writing his “History of the World” in
the Tower of London, overheard two boys quarrelling over the facts of an
incident that had happened the day before; and he said to himself: “If
these two boys cannot agree on an event which occurred almost before
their own eyes, how can any one be profited by the narration which I am
writing, of events which occurred in ages long past?” The answer which
the critical historian would give to Raleigh would probably be: “Go and
examine the two boys; find out their home, their relations, their
circumstances, particularly the opportunities they had of seeing what
they profess to have seen; and try to discover whether there was any
bias in their minds that could have made them incline towards one side
rather than the other. Give all that evidence, and then you are a real
historian.” But is that true, and were any of the great historians
satisfied with that? Was not their heart in their work, and is the heart
ever far from what we call bias? Did not Herodotus, in describing the
conflict between Greece and Asia, clearly espouse the cause of Greece? I
know he has been called the father of lies rather than of history; but
he has survived for all that. Did not Thucydides throughout his history
write as the loyal son of Athens? Was Tacitus very anxious to find out
all that could be said in favour of Tiberius? Was even Gibbon, in his
“Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” quite impartial? Ranke’s
“History of the Popes,” may be very accurate, but for thousands who read
Macaulay and Froude is there one who reads Ranke, except the historian
by profession? History is not written for historians only. Macaulay
wrote the history of the English Restoration as a partisan, and Froude
made no secret on which side he would have fought, if he had lived
through the storms of the English Reformation. If Macaulay had been one
of the two boys of Sir Walter Raleigh, he would probably not have
discovered some of the dark shadows on the face of William III. which
struck the other boy; while some critics might possibly say of Froude
that in drawing the picture of Henry VIII. he may have followed now and
then the example of Nelson in the use of his telescope. Still, in
describing such recent periods as the reign of Henry VIII., historians
cannot, at all events, go very far wrong in dates or names. Froude may
have been wrong in embracing the cause of Henry VIII. and accepting all
the excuses or explanations which could be given for his violent acts.
But Froude is, at all events, honest, in so far that no one can fail to
see where his sympathies lie, so that he really leaves us free to decide
what side we ourselves should take.
When the historian has to analyse prominent characters, and bring them
again full of life on the stage of history, is it not the artist, nay
the poet, who has to do the chief work, and not the mere chronicler? In
Froude’s case the difficulty was very great. The contemporary estimates
of Henry’s character were most conflicting, and without taking a line of
his own, without claiming in fact the same privilege which Henry’s
contemporaries claimed, whether friends or foes, it would have been
impossible for him to create a character that should be consistent and
intelligible. There was nothing too fiendish to be told of the English
king by the Papal party, and yet we cannot help asking how such a
caitiff, as he is represented to have been by Roman Catholic agents,
could have retained the love of the English people and secured the
services of some of the best among the noblemen and gentlemen of his
time? If we take upon ourselves to reject all reports of Royal
Commissioners in Henry’s reign as corrupt and mendacious, would it be
worth while to write any history of the English people at all? It is, no
doubt, an ungrateful task to whitewash a historical character that has
been besmirched for years by a resolute party. Yet it has to be done
from time to time, from a sense of justice, and not from a mere spirit
of opposition. Carlyle’s heroes were nearly all the best-abused men in
Christendom: Frederick the Great, Cromwell, and Goethe. Every one of
these characters was lying, as Carlyle said himself, under infinite
dung; yet every one of them is now admired by thousands, because they
trust in Carlyle. It was the same Carlyle who encouraged Froude in his
work of rehabilitating Bluff King Hal, and we ought, at all events, to
be grateful to him for having enabled us to know all that can be said by
the king’s advocates. If Froude wrote as a partisan, he wrote, at the
same time, as a patriot, and if a patriot sees but one side of the
truth, some one else will see the other.
Can we imagine any history of our own times written from the pole star,
and not from amid the turmoil of contending parties? Would a history of
the reign of Queen Victoria, written by Gladstone, be very like a
history written by Disraeli? However, these squabbles of reviewers about
the histories of Macaulay and Froude are now almost entirely forgotten,
while the historical dramas which Macaulay and Froude have left us,
remain, and Englishmen are proud of possessing two such splendid
monuments of the most important periods of their history. Macaulay’s
account of William III. remained unfinished, and it is characteristic of
Froude that, if I understood him rightly, he gave up the idea of
finishing the reign of Queen Elizabeth, because, as an Englishman, he
was disappointed in her character towards the end of her reign.
I saw much of Froude again during the last years of his life, when he
returned to Oxford as Regius Professor of History, having been appointed
by Lord Salisbury. “It is the first public recognition I have received,”
he used to say. He rejoiced in it, and he certainly did credit to Lord
Salisbury’s courageous choice. His lectures were brilliant, and the room
was crowded to the end. His private lectures also were largely attended,
and he was on the most friendly and intimate terms with some of his
pupils.
There is no place so trying for a professor as Oxford. Froude’s
immediate predecessors, Goldwin Smith, Stubbs, and Freeman, were some of
the best men that Oxford has produced. Their lectures were excellent in
every respect. Yet every one of them had to complain of the miserable
scantiness of their audiences at Oxford. The present Bishop of Oxford,
Dr. Stubbs, in his “Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Mediæval and
Modern History” (1886), states what may sound almost incredible, that he
had sometimes to deliver his lectures “to two or three listless men.”
The same may be said of some of the best lectures delivered in the
University. The young men are encouraged in each college to attend the
lectures delivered by the tutors, and are given to understand that
professorial lectures “do not pay” in the examinations. These
examinations are chiefly in the hands of college tutors. Professor
Stubbs was not given to complain about anything that might seem to
concern himself, yet he confesses that “sometimes he felt hurt that in
the combined lecture list he found the junior assistant tutor
advertising a course on the same subject, or at the same hours, as his
own.” Nay, he goes so far in his modesty as to say: “It may be better
that there should be a dozen or fifteen college lecturers working away
with large classes, when I have only a few stray men,” but the real
friends of the University would hardly think so. As things are at
present, it has been said, and, I believe, truly said, that nearly all
professorial lectures might be abolished, and the studies of the
undergraduates would go on just the same. Oxford suffers in this respect
from a real _embarras de richesse_. The University is rich enough,
though by no means so rich as it was formerly, to keep up a double staff
of teachers, professorial and tutorial. It supports sixty-five
professors, readers, and lecturers, and probably four or five times as
many tutors. Many of the tutors are quite equal to the professors, nay,
it may be, even superior to them, but the most popular tutor, whose
lectures, when in college, were crowded, has to be satisfied with two or
three listless men as soon as he has been raised to the professoriate.
Froude’s lectures formed an exception, but even this was quoted against
him.
Froude was not only the most fascinating lecturer, but the most charming
companion and friend. His conversation was like his writings. It never
tired one, it never made one feel his superiority. His store of
anecdotes was inexhaustible, and though in his old age they were
sometimes repeated, they were always pleasant to listen to. He enjoyed
them so thoroughly himself, he chuckled over them, he covered his eyes
as if half ashamed of telling them. They are all gone now, and a pity it
is, for most of them referred to what he had actually seen, not only to
what he had heard, and he had seen and heard a good deal, both in Church
and State. He knew the little failings of great men, he knew even the
peccadilloes of saints, better than anybody. He was never ill-natured in
his judgments, he knew the world too well for that, and it is well,
perhaps, that many things which he knew should be forgotten. He himself
insisted on all letters being destroyed that had been addressed to him,
and from a high sense of duty, left orders that his own letters,
addressed to his friends, should not be divulged after his death. Though
he left an unfinished autobiography, extremely interesting to the few
friends who were allowed to read it, those who decided that it should
not be published have acted, no doubt, wisely and entirely in his
spirit.
My friend Charles Kingsley was a very different man. He was a strong
man, while Froude had some feminine weaknesses, but also some of the
best feminine excellencies. His life and his character are well known
from that excellent biography published by his gifted widow, not much
more than a year after his death. This Life of hers really gave a new
life to him, and secured a new popularity and influence to his writings.
In him, too, what I admired besides his delightful character was his
poetical power, his brilliant yet minute and accurate descriptions of
nature, and the characters he created in his novels. With all the
biographies that are now published, how little do people know after all
of the man they are asked to love or hate! In order to judge of a man,
we ought to know in what quarry the marble of which he was made was
carved, what sunshine there was to call forth the first germs of his
mind, nay, even whether he was rich or poor, whether he had what we
rightly call an independence, and whether from his youth he was and felt
himself a free man. There is something in the character of a man like
Stanley, for instance, which we have no right to expect in a man who had
to struggle in life like Kingsley. The struggle for life may bring out
many fine qualities, but it cannot but leave traces of the struggle, a
certain amount of self-assertion, a love of warfare, and a more or less
pronounced satisfaction at having carried the day against all rivals and
opponents. These are the temptations of a poor man which do not exist
for a man of independent means. It is no use shutting our eyes to this.
Every fight entails blows, and wounds, and scars, and some of them
remain for life. Kingsley seems to have had no anxieties as a young man
at school or at the University, but when he had left the University and
become a curate, and, more particularly, when he had married on his
small curacy and there were children, his struggles began in good
earnest. He had often to write against time; he had to get up subject
after subject in order to be able to write an article, simply that he
might be able to satisfy the most troublesome tradesmen. He always wrote
at very high pressure; fortunately his physical frame was of iron, and
his determination like that of a runaway horse. People may say that he
had the usual income of a country clergyman, but why will they forget
that a man in Kingsley’s position had not only to give his children an
expensive education, but had to keep open house for his numerous friends
and admirers? There was no display in his quiet rectory at Eversley, but
even the simplest hospitality entails more expense than a small living
can bear, and his friends and visitors ranged from the lowest to the
highest—from poor workmen to English and foreign royalties. As long as
he could wield his pen he could procure the necessary supplies, but it
had to be done with a very great strain on the brain. “It must be done,
and it shall be done,” he said; yes, but though most of his work was
done, and well done, it was like the work of an athlete who breaks down
at the end of the day when his victory is won. People did not see it and
did not know it, for he never would yield, and never would show signs of
yielding. When, towards the end of his life, a canonry was offered him,
first at Chester, then at Westminster, he felt truly grateful. “After
all,” he said to me, “these stalls are good for old horses.” His
professorship at Cambridge was really too much for him. He was not
prepared for it. Personally he did much good among the young men, and
was certainly most popular. At Cambridge as a professor he did his best,
but he had hardly calculated _Quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent_.
Anyhow, the work soon became too much even for his iron constitution,
and he was glad to be relieved. The fact is that Kingsley was all his
life, in everything he thought and in everything he did, a poet, a man
of high ideals, and likewise of unswerving honesty. No one knew
Kingsley, such as he really was, who had not seen him at Eversley, and
among his poor people. He visited every cottage, he knew every old man
and old woman, and was perfectly at home among them. His “Village
Sermons” gave them just the food they wanted, though it was curious to
see every Sunday a large sprinkling of young officers from Sandhurst and
Aldershot sitting quietly among the smock-frocked congregation, and
anxious to have some serious conversation with the preacher afterwards.
Kingsley was a great martyr to stammering, it often was torture to him
in a lively conversation to keep us all waiting till his thoughts could
break through again. In church, however, whether he was reading or
speaking extempore, there was no sign of stammering; apparently there
was no effort to overcome it. But when we walked home from church he
would say: “Oh, let me stammer now, you won’t mind it.”
He was not a learned theologian, his one idea of Christianity was
practical Christianity, honesty, purity, love. He was always most
courteous, most willing to bow before higher authority or greater
learning; but when he thought there was anything wrong, or mean, or
cowardly, anything with which he, as an honest man, could not agree, he
was as firm as a rock.
His favourite pursuits lay in natural science. He knew every flower,
every bird, every fish, and every insect in his neighbourhood, and he
had imbibed a belief in the laws of nature, which represented to him
indirectly the thoughts of God. When, therefore, after a long
continuance of drought, the bishop of his diocese ordered him to have a
special prayer for rain, he respectfully and firmly declined. He would
pray for the good gifts of heaven, offer thanks to God for all that He
was pleased to send in His wisdom, but he would not enter into
particulars with Him, he would not put his own small human wisdom
against the Divine wisdom; he would not preach on what he thought was
good for us, for God knew best. He had no difficulty in persuading his
farmers and labourers that if they had any trust in God, and any
reverence for the Divine wisdom that rules the world, they would place
all their troubles and cares before Him in prayer, but they would not
beg for anything which, in His wisdom, He withheld from them. “Thy will
be done,” that was his prayer for rain. There was great commotion in
ecclesiastical dovecotes, most of all in episcopal palaces. All sorts of
punishments were threatened, but Kingsley remained throughout perfectly
quiet, yet most determined. He would not degrade his sacred office to
that of a rain-maker or medicine-man, and he carried his point. “In
America we manage these things better!” said an American friend of
Kingsley. “A clergyman in a village on the frontier between two of our
States prayed for rain. The rain came, and it soaked the ground to such
an extent that the young lambs in the neighbouring State caught cold and
died. An action was brought against the clergyman for the mischief he
had done, and he and his parishioners were condemned to pay damages to
the sheep farmers. They never prayed for rain again after that.”
Kingsley incurred great displeasure by the support he gave to what was
called Christian Socialism. His novel “Alton Locke,” contained some very
outspoken sentiments as to the terrible sufferings of the poor and the
duties of the rich. Kingsley, Frederick Maurice, and their friends, did
not only plead, but they acted; they formed societies to assist poor
tailors, and for a time the clothes they wore showed but too clearly
that they had been cut in Whitechapel, not in Regent Street. Poor
Kingsley suffered not only in his wardrobe, but in his purse also, owing
to his having been too sanguine in his support of tailoring by
co-operation.
However, his books, both in prose and poetry, became more and more
popular, and this meant that his income became larger and larger.
Publishers say that novels and sermons have the largest market in
England and the colonies, and Kingsley provided both. All went on well:
even his being stopped once in the middle of a sermon by a clergyman who
had invited him to preach in his church in London, but did not approve
of his sermon, did not hurt him. He had many influential friends; both
the Queen and the Prince of Wales had shown by special marks of favour
how much they appreciated him, and he had a right to look forward to
ecclesiastical preferment and to a greater amount of leisure and
freedom. One unexpected cloud, however, came to darken his bright and
happy life. Some people will say that he brought it upon himself, but
there are certain clouds which no honest man can help bringing upon
himself. He, no doubt, began the painful controversy with Newman. Having
seen how much misery had been caused among some of his own dearest
friends by the Romanising teaching under the auspices of Newman and
Pusey, he made the mistake of fastening the charge of dishonesty,
half-heartedness, and untruthfulness on Newman personally, instead of on
the whole Roman Catholic propaganda in England from the time of Henry
VIII.’s apostasy from the Roman Church to that of Newman’s apostasy from
the Church of England. I shall not enter into this controversy again. I
have done so once, and have been well punished for having ventured to
declare my honest conviction that throughout this painful duel Kingsley
was in the right. But Kingsley was clumsy and Newman most skilful.
Besides, Newman was evidently a man of many friends, and of many able
friends who knew how to wield their pens in many a newspaper.
In spite of having taken a most unpopular step in leaving the national
church, Newman always retained the popularity which he had so well
earned as a member of that Church. I have myself been one of his true
admirers, partly from having known many of his intimate friends at
Oxford, partly from having studied his earlier works when I first came
to England. I read them more for their style than for their contents. If
Newman had left behind him no more than his exquisite University sermons
and his sweet hymns he would always have stood high among the glories of
England. But Kingsley also was loved by the people and surrounded by
numerous and powerful friends. It must be due to my ignorance of the
national character, but I have certainly never been able to explain why
public sympathy went so entirely with Newman and against Kingsley; why
Kingsley was supposed to have acted unchivalrously and Newman was looked
upon as a martyr to his convictions, and as the victim of an illiberal
and narrow-minded Anglican clique. Certain it is that in the opinion of
the majority Kingsley had failed, and failed ignominiously, while
Newman’s popularity revived and became greater than ever.
Kingsley felt his defeat most deeply; he was like a man that stammered,
and could not utter at the right time the right word that was in his
mind. What is still more surprising was the sudden collapse of the sale
of Kingsley’s most popular books. I saw him after he had been with his
publishers to make arrangements for the sale of his copyrights. He
wanted the money to start his sons, and he had a right to expect a
substantial sum. The sum offered him seemed almost an insult, and yet he
assured me that he had seen the books of his publishers, and that the
sale of his books during the last years did not justify a larger offer.
He was miserable about it, as well he might be. He felt not only the
pecuniary loss, but, as he imagined, the loss of that influence which he
had gained by years of hard labour.
However, he was mistaken in his idea that he had laboured in vain.
Immediately after his death there came the most extraordinary reaction.
His books sold again in hundreds of thousands, and his family received
in one year a great deal more from his royalties than had been offered
him for the whole copyright of all his books. People are more willing
now to admit that though Newman may have been right in his “Apologia pro
Vita Sua,” Kingsley was not wrong in pointing out the weak points in
Newman’s character and in the moral and political doctrines of the Roman
Catholic system, more particularly of the Jesuits, and the dangers that
threatened his beloved England from those who seemed halting between the
two Churches, the one national, the other foreign, the one reformed, the
other unreformed.
There was another occasion when Newman’s and Kingsley’s friends had a
sharp conflict at Oxford. When the Prince of Wales was invited to Oxford
to receive his honorary degree of D.C.L., he had, as was the custom,
sent to the Chancellor a list of names of his friends on whom he wished
that the same degree should be conferred at the same time. One of them
was Kingsley, then one of his chaplains. When his name was proposed a
strong protest was made by Dr. Pusey and his friends, no one could
understand why. Dr. Pusey declared distinctly that he did not mean to
contest Kingsley’s orthodoxy, but when asked at last to give his
reasons, he declared that Kingsley’s “Hypatia” was an immoral book. This
was too much for Dr. Stanley, who challenged Pusey to produce one single
passage in “Hypatia” which could be called immoral. On such conditions
Shakespeare could never have received an honorary degree from the
University of Oxford. I still possess the copy of “Hypatia” which
Stanley examined, marking every passage that could possibly be called
immoral. It need hardly be said that there was none. Still Dr. Pusey
threatened to veto the degree in Convocation and to summon his friends
from the country to support him. And what could have been done to
prevent an unseemly scandal on such an occasion as a royal visit to
Oxford? Dr. Stanley and his friends yielded, and Kingsley’s name was
struck out from the Prince’s list, and, what was still worse, it was
never placed again on the list of honorary doctors such as might really
have reflected honour on the University. If ever the secret history of
the degrees conferred _honoris causa_ by the University of Oxford on
truly eminent persons, not members of the University, comes to be
written, the rejection of Kingsley’s name will not be one of the least
interesting chapters.
Kingsley’s death was a severe blow to his country, and his friends knew
that his life might have been prolonged. It was a sad time I spent with
him at Eversley, while his wife lay sick and the doctors gave no hope of
her recovery. He himself also was very ill at the time, but a doctor
whom the Queen had sent to Eversley told him that with proper care there
was no danger for him, that he had the lungs of a horse, but that he
required great care. In spite of that warning he would get up and go
into the sick-room of his wife, which had to be kept at an icy
temperature. He caught cold and died, being fully convinced that his
wife had gone before him. And what a funeral it was! But with all the
honour that was paid to him, all who walked back to the empty rectory
felt that life henceforth was poorer, and that the sun of England would
never be so bright or so cheerful again, now that he was gone. Though I
admired—as who did not?—his poetical power, his brilliant yet most
minute and accurate descriptions of nature, and the lifelike characters
he had created in his novels, what we loved most in him was his
presence, his delightful stammer, his downright honesty, and the perfect
transparency of his moral nature. He was not a child, he was a man, but
unspoiled by the struggles of his youth, unspoiled by the experiences of
his later years. He was an English gentleman, a perfect specimen of
noble English manhood.
Having been particularly attached to his young niece, my wife, he had at
once allowed me a share in his affections, and when other members of her
family shook their heads, he stood by me and bade me be of good cheer
till the day was won, and she became my wife. That was in 1859. Here are
some verses he had addressed to his two nieces, to my wife and to her
sister, afterwards Mrs. Theodore Walrond (died 1872):—
TO G***.
A hasty jest I once let fall—
As jests are wont to be, untrue—
As if the sum of joy to you
Were hunt and picnic, rout and ball.
Your eyes met mine: I did not blame;
You saw it: but I touched too near
Some noble nerve; a silent tear
Spoke soft reproach and lofty shame.
I do not wish those words unsaid.
Unspoilt by praise or pleasure, you
In that one look to woman grew,
While with a child, I thought, I played.
Next to mine own beloved so long!
I have not spent my heart in vain.
I watched the blade; I see the grain;
A woman’s soul, most soft, yet strong.
A FAREWELL.
My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey:
Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
For every day.
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast for ever
One grand sweet song.
In the original, as written down in her album, there is a third verse
between the two:—
I’ll tell you how to sing a clearer carol
Than lark who hails the dawn on breezy down,
To earn yourself a purer poet’s laurel
Than Shakespeare’s crown.
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS
III
Knowing both Kingsley and Froude very intimately, I soon came to know
many of their friends, though my residence at Oxford kept me clear from
the vortex of literary society in London. In some respects I regretted
it, but in others I found it a great blessing. It requires not only
mental, but considerable physical strength to stand the wear and tear of
London life, and I confess I never could understand how some of my
friends, Browning, Tyndall, Huxley, M. Arnold, and others, could manage
to do any serious work, and at the same time serve the Moloch of Society
to whom so many men and women in London offer themselves and their
children as willing sacrifices year after year. They had not only to
dine out and lose their evenings, but wherever they went they had to
shine, they had often to make speeches, long speeches, at public
dinners, they came home tired and slept badly, and in the morning they
were interrupted again by letters, by newspapers, by calls, then by
meetings and committees, by the inevitable leaving of cards, and,
lastly, there was with many of them their official work. Society is a
voracious animal, and has deprived the world of much that can only be
the outcome of quiet hours, of continuous thought, and of uninterrupted
labour. These men must have had not only the brain, but the physical
constitution also of giants, to survive this constant social worry.
A quiet dinner with a few friends is pleasant enough, and a certain
amount of social friction may even be useful in keeping us from rusting;
nay, a casual collision with a kindred spirit may sometimes call forth
sparks which can be turned into light and heat. But to dress, to drive a
few miles, then to be set down, possibly, between two strangers who have
little to say and much to ask, and who, if ill-luck will have it, may
not even be beautiful or charming, is a torture to which men like
Browning and M. Arnold ought never to have submitted. An afternoon tea
is a far more rational amusement, because people are not kept chained
for two hours to one chair and two neighbours, but can move about and
pick out some of their friends whom they really wish to talk to. Even a
luncheon is more bearable, for it does not last so long, and one may
find a chance of talking to one’s friends. But dinners are tortures,
survivals of the dark ages for which there is no longer any excuse, and
I believe that more people, and good people too, have fallen victims to
dinners, public or private, than have broken their necks in the hunting
field.
I had hoped at one time that the æsthetic phase through which English
society was passing, would have put an end to, or would at least have
modified, these social gobblings. Surely it is a most unbeautiful sight
to see a number of people, young and old, with or without teeth, filling
their mouths with mutton or beef, chewing, denticating, masticating
their morsels, and then washing them down with wine or water. No doubt
it can be done inoffensively, or even daintily, but is it? Eastern
ladies know how to throw small morsels of food into their open mouths
with their fingers, and Eastern poets describe this performance with
rapture. Chinese poets become eloquent even over chop-sticks as handled
by their fair ones. But for all that, the Hindus seem to me to show
their good taste by retiring while they feed, and reappearing only after
they have washed their hands and face. Why should we be so anxious to
perform this no doubt necessary function before the eyes of our friends?
How often have I seen a beautiful face distorted by the action of the
jaw-bones, the temples forced out, and the cheeks distended by obstinate
morsels. Could not at least the grosser part of feeding be performed in
private, and the social gathering begin at the dessert, or, with men, at
the wine, so as to have a real _Symposion_, not a _Symphagion_? But I am
on dangerous ground, and shall broach no further heresies.
Life at Oxford has many advantages. Of course our London friends tell us
that we are mere provincials, but that is a relative expression, and,
anyhow, we enjoy life in peace. It is true we have not shaken off the
regular society dinners altogether, but no one is offended if his
friends tell him that they are too busy to dine out. And we still have
our pleasant small dinners or luncheons of four, six, at the utmost
eight people, when you can really see and enjoy your friends, and not
only roast beef and port. In former years, when I first came to Oxford,
it was different, but then the evil was chiefly confined to heads of
colleges and halls, and there were even then exceptions, where you dined
to meet a few friends, and not simply to lay in food.
One of my earliest dinners I remember at Oxford was to meet Thackeray.
Thackeray was then writing “Esmond,” and a Mr. Stoddard—a fellow of St.
John’s College—asked me to meet him at dinner. We were only four, and we
were all very much awed by Thackeray’s presence, particularly I, not
being able as yet to express myself freely in English. We sat silent for
some time, no one ventured to make the first remark, the soup was over,
and there was a fine John Doré on the table waiting to be splayed. We
were hoping for some brilliant sally from Thackeray, but nothing came.
At last Thackeray suddenly turned his large spectacled eyes on me and
said: “Are you going to eat your own ancestor?” I stared, everybody else
stared. At last we gave it up, and Thackeray, looking very grave and
learned, said: “Surely you are the son of the Dorian Müller—the Müller
who wrote that awfully learned book on the Dorians; and was not John
Doré the ancestor of all the Dorians?” There was a general, “Oh, oh!”
but the ice was broken, and no one after this horrible pun was afraid of
saying anything. All I could tell Thackeray was that I was not the son
of Otfried Müller, who wrote on the Dorians, but of Wilhelm Müller, the
poet, who wrote “Die Homerische Vorschule,” and “Die Schöne Müllerin,”
and as to John Doré being our ancestor, how could that be? The original
John Doré, so I have been told, was _il Janitore_, that is, St. Peter,
and had no wife, as some people will have it, or at least never
acknowledged her in public, though he was kind to his mother-in-law. All
this did not promise well, yet the rest of our little dinner party was
very successful; it became noisy and even brilliant.
Thackeray from his treasures of wit and sarcasm poured out anecdote
after anecdote; he used plenty of vinegar and cayenne pepper, but there
was always a flavour of kindliness and good-nature, even in his most
cutting remarks. I saw more of him when he came to Oxford to lecture on
the Four Georges, and when he stood for Parliament and was defeated by
Cardwell and Charles Neate. After one of his lectures, when I expressed
my delight with his brilliant success, “Wait, wait,” he said, “the time
will come when you will lecture at Oxford.” At that time my English was
still very crumbly; there was no idea of my staying on in England, still
less of my ever becoming a professor at Oxford.
Thackeray’s novels were a great delight to me then, and some have
remained so for life. Still, there is a fashion in all things, in
literature quite as much as in music, and when lately reading “The
Newcomes” I was surprised at the meagreness of the dialogue, the very
dialogues for which we felt so impatient from month to month when the
book first came out in numbers. Still one always recognises in Thackeray
the powerful artist, who, like a Japanese painter, will with a few lines
place a living man or woman before you, never to be forgotten.
I am sorry I missed seeing and knowing more of Charles Dickens. I met
him in my very early days with a friend of mine at some tavern in the
Strand, but did not see him again till quite at the end of his career,
when he was giving readings from his novels, and knew how to make his
audiences either weep or laugh. Still I am glad to have seen him in the
flesh, both as a young and as an old man. However wide apart our
interests in life might be, no one who had read his novels could look on
Dickens as a stranger. He knew the heart of man to the very core, and
could draw a picture of human suffering with a more loving hand than any
other English writer. He also possessed now and then the grand style,
and even in his pictures of still life the hand of the master can always
be perceived. He must have shed many a tear over the deathbed of poor
Joe; he must have chuckled and shouted over Mr. Winkle and Mr. Tupman
going out partridge shooting. Perhaps to our taste, as it now is, some
of his characters are too sentimental and simpering, but there are few
writers now who could create his child-wife. It always seemed to me very
strange that my friend Stanley, though he received Dickens among the
great ones of Westminster Abbey, could not, as he confessed to me, take
any pleasure in his works.
But though I could not spend much time in London and cultivate my
literary acquaintances there, Oxford itself was not without interesting
poets. After all, whatever talent England possesses is filtered
generally either through Oxford or Cambridge, and those who have eyes to
see may often watch some of the most important chapters in the growth of
poetical genius among the young undergraduates. I watched Clough before
the world knew him, I knew Matthew Arnold during many years of his early
life, and having had the honour of examining Swinburne I was not
surprised at his marvellous performances in later years. He was even
then a true artist, a commander of legions of words, who might become an
imperator at any time. Clough was a most fascinating character,
thoroughly genuine, but so oppressed with the problems of life that it
was difficult ever to get a smile out of him; and if one did, his round
ruddy face with the deep heavy eyes seemed really to suffer from the
contortions of laughter. He took life very seriously, and made greater
sacrifices to his convictions than the world ever suspected. He was
poor, but from conscientious scruples gave up his fellowship, and was
driven at last to go to America to make himself independent without
giving up the independence of his mind. With a little more sunshine
above him and around him he might have grown to a very considerable
height, but there was always a heavy weight on him, that seemed to
render every utterance and every poem a struggle.
His poems are better known and loved in America, I believe, than in
England, but in England also they still have their friends, and in the
history of the religious or rather theological struggles of 1840–50
Clough’s figure will always be recognised as one of the most
characteristic and the most pleasing. I had once the misfortune to give
him great pain. I saw him at Oxford with a young lady, and I was told
that he was engaged to her. Delighted as I was at this prospect of a
happy issue out of all his troubles, I wrote to him to congratulate him,
when a most miserable answer came, telling me that it all was hopeless,
and that I ought not to have noticed what was going on.
However, it came right in the end, only there were some years of patient
struggle to be gone through first; and who is not grateful in the end
for such years passed on Pisgah, if only Jordan is crossed at last?
Another poet whom I knew at Oxford as an undergraduate, and whom I
watched and admired to the end of his life, was Matthew Arnold. He was
beautiful as a young man, strong and manly, yet full of dreams and
schemes. His Olympian manners began even at Oxford; there was no harm in
them, they were natural, not put on. The very sound of his voice and the
wave of his arm were Jovelike. He grappled with the same problems as
Clough, but they never got the better of him, or rather he never got the
worse of them. Goethe helped him to soar where others toiled and sighed
and were sinking under their self-imposed burdens. Even though his later
life was enough to dishearten a poet, he laughed at his being _Pegasus
im Joche_. Sometimes at public dinners, when he saw himself surrounded
by his contemporaries, most of them judges, bishops, and ministers, he
would groan over the drudgery he had to go through every day of his life
in examining dirty schoolboys and schoolgirls. But he saw the fun of it,
and laughed. What a pity it was that his friends, and he had many, could
find no better place for him. Most of his contemporaries, many of them
far inferior to him, rose to high positions in Church and State, he
remained to the end an examiner of elementary schools. Of course it may
be said that, like so many of his literary friends, he might have
written novels and thus eked out a living by pot-boilers, as they are
called, of various kinds. But there was something noble and refined in
him which restrained his pen from such work. Whatever he gave to the
world was to be perfect, as perfect as he could make it, and he did not
think that he possessed a talent for novels. His saying “No Arnold can
ever write a novel” is well known, but it has been splendidly falsified
of late by his own niece. He had to go to America on a lecturing tour to
earn some money he stood in need of, though he felt it as a _dira
necessitas_, nay, as a dire indignity. It is true he had good
precedents, but evidently his showman was not the best he could have
chosen, nor was Arnold himself very strong as a lecturer. England has
not got from him all that she had a right to expect, but whatever he has
left has a finish that will long keep it safe from the corrosive wear
and tear of time.
When later in life Arnold took to theological studies, he showed, no
doubt, a very clear insight and a perfect independence of judgment, but
he had only a few spare hours for work which in order to be properly
done would have required a lifetime. Yet what he wrote produced an
effect, in England at least, more lasting than many a learned volume,
and he was allowed to say things that would have given deep offence if
coming from other lips. His famous saying about the three Lord
Shaftesburys has been judged very differently by different writers. As a
mere matter of taste it may seem that Arnold’s illustration of what he
took to be the common conception of the Trinity among his Philistine
friends was objectionable. Let us hope that it was not even true.
But Arnold’s intention was clear enough. He argued chiefly against those
who had called the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass “_a degrading
superstition_.” He tells them they ought to discover in it what the
historian alone, or what Arnold means by a man of culture, can discover;
namely, the original intention of the faithful in thus interpreting the
words of Christ (St. John, vii., 53): “Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have
no life in you.” It was in protesting against this narrowness that he
reminded his Protestant friends of the weak joints in their own armour,
particularly their too literal acceptation of the doctrine of the
Trinity.[8] And I doubt whether he was altogether wrong when he charged
them with speaking of the Father as a mere individual, or, as he
expressed it, a sort of infinitely magnified and improved Lord
Shaftesbury with a race of vile offenders to deal with, whom his natural
goodness would incline him to let off, only his sense of justice would
not allow it. And is it not true that many who speak of Christ as the
Son of God take “son” in its common literal sense, or, as Arnold
expressed it, imagine “a younger Lord Shaftesbury, on the scale of his
father and very dear to him, who might live in grandeur and splendour if
he liked, but who preferred to leave his home to go and live among the
race of offenders, and to be put to an ignominious death, on the
condition that his merits should be counted against their demerits, and
that his father’s goodness should be restrained no longer from taking
effect, but any offender should be admitted to the benefit of it, simply
on pleading the satisfaction made by the son”? Finally, when he points
out the extremely vague conception of the Holy Ghost as a person and as
an individual, does he really exaggerate so very much when he says that
He is with many no more than “a third Lord Shaftesbury, still on the
same high scale, who keeps very much in the background and works in a
very occult manner, but very efficaciously nevertheless, and who is busy
in applying everywhere the benefits of the son’s satisfaction and the
father’s goodness?” Nay, even when he goes on to say that this is
precisely the Protestant story of justification, what he wants to
impress on his Protestant readers is surely no more than this, that from
his point of view there is nothing actually degrading in their very
narrow view, as little as in the common Roman Catholic view of the Mass.
What he means is no more than that both views as held by the many are
grotesquely literal and unintelligent.
People who hold such views would be ready to tell you, he says, “the
exact hangings in the Trinity’s council chamber.” But, with all that he
is anxious to show that not only was the original intention both of
Roman and English Catholics good, but that even in its mistaken
application it may help towards righteousness. In trying to impress this
view both on Protestants and Roman Catholics, Arnold certainly used
language which must have pained particularly those who felt that the
picture was not altogether untrue. However, his friends, and among them
many high ecclesiastics, forgave him. Stanley, I know, admired his
theological writings very much. Many of his critics fully agreed with
what Arnold said, only they would have said it in a different way. There
is a kind of cocaine style which is used by many able critics and
reformers. It cuts deep into the flesh, and yet the patient remains
insensible to pain. “You can say anything in English,” Arthur Helps once
said to me, “only you must know how to say it.” Arnold, like Carlyle and
others, preferred the old style of surgery. They thought that pain was
good in certain operations, and helped to accelerate a healthy reaction.
The only fault that one may find with Arnold, is that he did not himself
try to restore the original and true conception of the Trinity to that
clear and intelligible form which he as an historian and a man of
culture could have brought out better than any one else. The original
intention of the Lord’s Supper, or the Mass, can easily be learnt, as
Arnold has shown, from the very words of the Bible (St. Luke, xxii.,
20): “The cup is the new testament in my blood.” But the doctrine of the
Trinity requires a far more searching historical study. As the very name
of Trinity is a later invention, and absent from the New Testament, it
requires a thorough study of Greek, more particularly of Alexandrian
philosophy, to understand its origin, for it is from Greek philosophy
that the idea of the Word, the Logos, was taken by some of the early
Fathers of the Church.
As the Messiah was a Semitic thought which the Jewish disciples of
Christ saw realised in the Son of Man, the Word was an Aryan thought
which the Greek disciples saw fulfilled in the Son of God. The history
of the divine Dyas which preceded the Trias is clear enough, if only we
are acquainted with the antecedents of Greek philosophy. Without that
background it is a mere phantasm, and no wonder that in the minds of
uneducated people it should have become what Arnold describes it,[9]
father, son, and grandson, living together in the same house, or
possibly in the clouds. To make people shrink back from such a
conception is worth something, and Arnold has certainly achieved this,
if only he has caused hundreds and thousands to say to themselves: “We
never were so foolish or so narrow-minded as to believe in three Lord
Shaftesburys.”
For some reason or other, however, the “three Lord Shaftesburys” have
disappeared in the last edition of “Literature and Dogma” and have been
replaced by “a Supernatural Man.” Froude, who was an intimate friend
both of Arnold and of Sir James Stephen, told me that the latter had
warned Arnold that the three Lord Shaftesburys were really actionable,
and if Arnold hated anything it was a _fracas_. In the fifth edition
they still remain, so that the change must have been made later on, when
he prepared the cheap edition of his book. Anyhow, they are gone!
Arnold was a delightful man to argue with, not that he could easily be
convinced that he was wrong, but he never lost his temper, and in the
most patronising way he would generally end by: “Yes, yes! my good
fellow, you are quite right, but, you see, my view of the matter is
different, and I have little doubt it is the true one!” This went so far
that even the simplest facts failed to produce any impression on him. He
had fallen in love with Émile Burnouf’s attractive but not very
scholar-like and trustworthy “Science de la Religion.” I believe that at
first he had mistaken Émile for Eugène Burnouf, a mistake which has been
committed by other people besides him. But, afterwards, when he had
perceived the difference between the two, he was not at all abashed.
Nay, he was betrayed into a new mistake, and spoke of Émile as the son
of Eugène. I told him that Eugène, the great Oriental scholar—one of the
greatest that France has ever produced, and that is saying a great
deal—had no son at all, and that he ought to correct his misstatement.
“Yes, yes,” he said, in his most good-humoured way, “but you know how
they manage these things in France. Émile was really a natural son of
the great scholar, and they call that a nephew.” This I stoutly denied,
for never was a more irreproachable _père de famille_ than my friend and
master Eugène Burnouf. But in spite of all remonstrances, Émile remained
with Arnold the son of Eugène; “For, you see, my good fellow, I know the
French, and that is my view of the matter!” If that happened in the
green wood, what would happen in the dry!
We had a long-standing feud about poetry. To me the difference between
poetry and prose was one of form only. I always held that the same
things that are said in prose could be said in poetry, and _vice versâ_,
and I often quoted Goethe’s saying that the best test of poetry was
whether it would bear translation into prose or into a foreign language.
To all that, even to Goethe’s words, Arnold demurred. Poetry to him was
a thing by itself, “not an art like other arts,” but, as he grandly
called it, “genius.”
He once had a great triumph over me. An American gentleman, who brought
out a “Collection of the Portraits of the Hundred Greatest Men,” divided
them into eight classes, and the first class was assigned to poetry, the
second to art, the third to religion, the fourth to philosophy, the
fifth to history, the sixth to science, the seventh to politics, the
eighth to industry. Arnold was asked to write the introduction to the
first volume, H. Taine to the second, myself and Renan to the third,
Noah Porter to the fourth, Dean Stanley to the fifth, Helmholtz to the
sixth, Froude to the seventh, John Fiske to the eighth.
I do not know whether Arnold had anything to do with suggesting this
division of _Omne Scibile_ into eight classes; anyhow, he did not allow
the opportunity to pass to assert the superiority of poetry over every
other branch of man’s intellectual activity. “The men,” he began, “who
are the flower and glory of our race are to pass here before us, the
highest manifestations, whether on this line or that, of the force which
stirs in every one of us—the chief poets, religious founders,
philosophers, historians, scholars, orators, warriors, statesmen,
voyagers, leaders in mechanical invention and industry, who have
appeared among mankind. And the poets are to pass first. Why? Because,
of the various modes of manifestation through which the human spirit
pours its force, theirs is the most adequate and happy.”
This is the well-known _ore rotundo_ and _spiritu profundo_ style of
Arnold. But might we not ask, _Adequate_ to what? _Happy_ in what?
Arnold himself answers a little farther on: “No man can fully draw out
the reasons why the human spirit feels itself able to attain to a more
adequate and satisfying expression in poetry than in any other of its
modes of activity.” Yet he continues to call this a primordial and
incontestable fact; and how could we poor mortals venture to contest a
primordial and incontestable fact? And then, limiting the question “to
us for to-day,” he says, “Surely it is its solidity that accounts to us
for the superiority of poetry.” How he would have railed if any of his
Philistines had ventured to recognise the true superiority of poetry in
its solidity!
Prose may be solid, it may be dense, massive, lumpish, concrete, and all
the rest, but poetry is generally prized for its being subtle, light,
ideal, air-drawn, fairy-like, or made of such stuff as dreams are made
of. However, let that pass. Let poetry be solid, for who knows what
sense Arnold may have assigned to solid? He next falls back on his great
master Goethe, and quotes a passage which I have not been able to find,
but the bearing of which must depend very much on the context in which
it occurs. Goethe, we are told, said in one of his many moods: “I deny
poetry to be an art. Neither is it a science. Poetry is to be called
neither art nor science, but genius.” Who would venture to differ from
Goethe when he defines what poetry is? But does he define it? He simply
says that it is not art or science. In this one may agree, if only art
and science are defined first. No one I think has ever maintained that
poetry was science, but no one would deny that poetry was a product of
art, if only in the sense of the _Ars poetica_ of Horace, or the
_Dichtkunst_ of Goethe. But if we ask what can be meant by saying that
poetry is genius, Goethe would probably say that what he meant was that
poetry was the product of genius, the German _Genie_. Goethe, therefore,
meant no more than that poetry requires, in the poet, originality and
spontaneity of thought; and this, though it would require some
limitation, no one surely would feel inclined to deny, though even the
authority of Goethe would hardly suffice to deprive the decipherer of an
inscription, the painter of the “Last Supper,” or the discoverer of the
bacilli of a claim to that divine light which we call genius.
Arnold then goes on to say that poetry gives the idea, but it gives it
touched with beauty, heightened by emotion. Would not Arnold have
allowed that the language of Isaiah, and even some of the dialogues of
Plato, were touched with beauty and heightened by emotion though they
are in prose? I think he himself speaks somewhere of a poetic prose.
Where, then, is the true difference between the creations of Isaiah and
of Browning, between the eloquence of Plato and of Wordsworth?
Arnold has one more trump card to play in order to win for poetry that
superiority over all the other manifestations of the forces of the human
spirit which he claims again and again. I have always been a sincere
admirer of Arnold’s poetry, still I think there is more massive force in
some of his prose than in many of his poems; nay, I believe he has left
a much deeper and more lasting impression on what he likes to call the
_Zeitgeist_ through his essays than through his tragedies. What then is
his last card, his last proof of the superiority of poetry? Poetry, he
argues, has more stability than anything else, and mankind finds in it a
surer stay than in art, in philosophy, or religion. “Compare,” he says,
“the stability of Shakespeare with that of the Thirty-nine Articles.”
Poor Thirty-nine Articles! Did they ever claim to contain poetry, or
even religion? Were they ever meant to be more than a dry abstract of
theological dogmas? Surely they never challenged comparison with
Shakespeare. They are an index, a table of contents, they were a
business-like agreement, if you like, between different parties in the
Church of England. But to ask whether they will stand longer than
Shakespeare is very much like asking whether the Treaty of Paris will
last longer than Victor Hugo. There is stay in poetry provided that the
prose which underlies it is lasting, or everlasting; there is no stay in
it if it is mere froth and rhyme. Arnold always liked to fall back on
Goethe. “What a series of philosophic systems has Germany seen since the
birth of Goethe,” he says, “and what sort of stay is any one of them
compared with the poetry of Germany’s _one_ great poet?” Is Goethe’s
poetry really so sure a stay as the philosophies of Germany; nay, would
there be any stay in it at all without the support of that philosophy
which Goethe drank in, whether from the vintage of Spinoza or from the
more recent _crues_ of Kant and Fichte? Goethe’s name, no doubt, is
always a pillar of strength, but there is even now a very great part of
Goethe’s “Collected Works” in thirty volumes that is no longer a stay,
but is _passé_, and seldom read by any one, except by the historian.
Poetry may act as a powerful preservative, and it is wonderful how much
pleasure we may derive from thought mummified in verse. But in the end
it is thought in its ever-changing life that forms the real stay, and it
matters little whether that thought speaks to us in marble, or in music,
in hexameters, in blank verse, or even in prose. Poetry in itself is no
protection against folly and feebleness. There is in the world a small
amount of good, and an immense amount of bad poetry. The former, we may
hope, will last, and will serve as a stay to all who care for the music
of thought and the harmony of language; the twaddle, sometimes much
admired in its time (and there is plenty of it in Goethe also), will, we
hope, fade away from the memory of man, and serve as a lesson to poets
who imagine that they may safely say in rhythm and rhyme what they would
be thoroughly ashamed to say in simple prose. Nor is the so-called stay
or immortality of poetry of much consequence. To have benefited millions
of his own age, ought surely to satisfy any poet, even if no one reads
his poems, or translations of them, a thousand years hence.
Denn wer den Besten seiner Zeit genug
Gethan, der hat gelebt für alle Zeiten.[10]
It is strange to go over the old ground when he with whom one travelled
over it in former times is no more present to answer and to hold his own
view against the world. There certainly was a great charm in Arnold,
even though he could be very patronising. But there was in all he said a
kind of understood though seldom expressed sadness, as if to say, “It
will soon be all over, don’t let us get angry; we are all very good
fellows,” etc. He knew for years that though he was strong and looked
very young for his age, the thread of his life might snap at any moment.
And so it did—_felix opportunitate mortis_. Not long before his death he
met Browning on the steps of the Athenæum. He felt ill, and in taking
leave of Browning he hinted that they might never meet again. Browning
was profuse in his protestations, and Arnold, on turning away, said in
his airy way: “Now, one promise, Browning: please, not more than ten
lines.” Browning understood, and went away with a solemn smile.
Arnold was most brilliant as Professor of Poetry at Oxford, from 1857 to
1867. He took great pains in writing and delivering his lectures. He
looked well and spoke well. Some of his lectures were masterpieces, and
he set a good example which was followed by Sir Francis Doyle, 1867–77,
well known by his happy occasional poems, then by John Shairp from 1877
to his death, and lastly by Francis Palgrave from 1885–95. The best of
Arnold’s lectures were published as essays; Shairp’s lectures appeared
after his death, and have retained their popularity, particularly in
America. Palgrave’s lectures, we may hope, will soon appear. They were
full of most valuable information, and would prove very useful to many
as a book of reference. I have known no one better informed on English
poetry than my friend Palgrave. His “Golden Treasury” bears evidence of
his wide reading, and his ripe judgment in selecting the best specimens
of English lyric poetry. One had but to touch on any subject in the
history of English literature, or to ask him a question, and there was
always an abundance of most valuable information to be got from him. I
owe him a great deal, particularly in my early Oxford days. For it was
he who revised my first attempts at writing in English, and gave me good
advice for the rest of my journey, more particularly as to what to
avoid. He is now one of the very few friends left who remember my first
appearance in Oxford in 1846, and who were chiefly instrumental in
retaining my services for a University which has proved a true Alma
Mater to me during all my life. Grant (Sir Alexander), Sellar, Froude,
Sandars, Morier, Neate, Johnson (Manuel), Church, Jowett, all are gone
before me.
Here are some old verses of his which I find in my album:—
An English welcome to an English shore
Such as we could, some four years since we gave thee,
Not knowing what the Fates reserved in store
Or that our land among our sons would have thee;
But now thou art endenizen’d awhile
Almost we fear our welcome to renew:[11]
Lest what we seemed to promise, should beguile,
When all we are is open to thy view.
But yet if aught of what we fondly boast—
True-hearted warmth of Friendship, frank and free,
Survive yet in this island-circling coast,
We need not fear again to welcome thee:—
So may we, blessing thee, ourselves be blest,
And prove not all unworthy of our guest.
What happy days, what happy evenings we spent together lang syne! How
patient they all were with their German guest when he first tried in his
broken English to take part in their lively and sparkling conversations.
Having once been received in that delightful circle, it was easy to make
more acquaintances among their friends who lived at Oxford, or who from
time to time came to visit them at Oxford. It was thus that I first came
to know Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning, and others.
Ruskin often came to spend a few days with his old friends, and
uncompromising and severe as he could be when he wielded his pen, he was
always most charming in conversation. He never, when he was with his
friends, claimed the right of speaking with authority, even on his own
special subjects, as he might well have done. It seemed to be his pen
that made him say bitter things. He must have been sorry himself for the
severe censure he passed in his earlier years on men whose honest
labour, if nothing else, ought to have protected them against such cruel
onslaughts. Grote’s style may not be the very best for an historian, but
in his _Quellenstudium_ he was surely most conscientious. Yet this is
what Ruskin wrote of him: “There is probably no commercial establishment
between Charing Cross and the Bank, whose head clerk could not have
written a better History of Greece, if he had the vanity to waste his
time on it.” Of Gibbon’s classical work he spoke with even greater
contempt. “Gibbon’s is the worst English ever written by an educated
Englishman. Having no imagination and little logic, he is alike
incapable either of picturesqueness or wit, his epithets are malicious
without point, sonorous without weight, and have no office but to make a
flat sentence turgid.” I feel sure that Ruskin, such as I knew him in
later years, would have wished these sentences unwritten.
He was really the most tolerant and agreeable man in society. He could
discover beauty where no one else could see it, and make allowance where
others saw no excuse. I remember him as diffident as a young girl, full
of questions, and grateful for any information. Even on art topics I
have watched him listening almost deferentially to others who laid down
the law in his presence. His voice was always most winning, and his
language simply perfect. He was one of the few Englishmen I knew who,
instead of tumbling out their sentences like so many portmanteau, bags,
rugs, and hat-boxes from an open railway van, seemed to take a real
delight in building up their sentences, even in familiar conversation,
so as to make each deliverance a work of art. Later in life that even
temperament may have become somewhat changed. He had suffered much, and
one saw that his wounds had not quite healed. His public lectures as
Professor of Fine Art were most attractive, and extremely popular at
first. But they were evidently too much for him, and on the advice of
his medical friends he had at last to cease from lecturing altogether.
Several times his brain had been a very serious trouble to him. People
forget that, as we want good eyes for seeing, and good ears for hearing,
we want a strong, sound brain for lecturing.
I have seen much of such brain troubles among my friends, and who can
account for them? It is not the brain that thinks, nor do we think by
means of our brain; but we cannot think without our brain, and the
slightest lesion of our brain in any one of its wonderful convolutions
is as bad as a shot in the eye.
If ever there was an active, powerful brain, it was Ruskin’s. No doubt
he worked very hard, but I doubt whether hard work by itself can ever
upset a healthy brain. I believe it rather strengthens than weakens it,
as exercise strengthens the muscles of our body. His was, no doubt, a
very sensitive nature, and an overwrought sensitiveness is much more
likely to cause mischief than steady intellectual effort. And what a
beautiful mind his was, and what lessons of beauty he has taught us all.
At the same time, he could not bear anything unbeautiful; and anything
low or ignoble in men revolted him and made him thoroughly unhappy. I
remember once taking Emerson to lunch with him, in his rooms in Corpus
Christi College. Emerson was an old friend of his, and in many respects
a cognate soul. But some quite indifferent subject turned up, a heated
discussion ensued, and Ruskin was so upset that he had to quit the room
and leave us alone. Emerson was most unhappy, and did all he could to
make peace, but he had to leave without a reconciliation.
It is very difficult to make allowance for these gradual failures of
brain power.
Again and again I have seen such cases at Oxford, where men were clearly
no longer themselves, and yet had to be treated as if they were; nay,
continue to exercise their old influence till at last the crash came,
and one began to understand what had seemed so strange, and more than
strange, in their behaviour. I believe there are as many degrees of
insanity as there are of shortsightedness and deafness, and the line
that divides sanity from insanity is often very small. I have had to
watch the waverings of this line in several cases, and it is enough to
upset one’s own equilibrium to have to deal with a friend who to-day is
quite like himself and quite like ourselves, and the next day a raving
lunatic. My predecessor at Oxford, Dr. Trithen, half Russian, half Swiss
by birth, and a man of extraordinary gifts and wonderfully attractive,
went slowly out of his mind and had at last to be sent to an asylum. But
even then he wrote the most reasonable and touching letters to me on all
sorts of subjects, though when I went to see him he was quite
unapproachable. Fortunately he died soon after from brain disease, but
who could say what was the cause of it? Nothing remains of him but the
edition of a Sanskrit play, the Vîracharitra.
But his knowledge of Sanskrit and all sorts of languages, his peculiar
power of mimicry in imitating the exact pronunciation of different
dialects, and his knack of copying Oriental MSS. so that one could
hardly tell the difference between the original and the copy were quite
amazing. He might have grown to be another Mezzofanti if the fates had
not been against him. He was the very type of a fascinating Russian,
full of kindness and courtesy, sparkling in conversation, always ready
to help others and most careless about himself; but there always was an
expression in his coruscating eyes which spoke of danger, and foreboded
the tragedy which finished his young and promising life.
Painful as these intellectual breakdowns are, they are not half so
painful as when we see in our friends what is at first called mere
wrongheadedness, but is apt to lead to a complete deterioration of moral
fibre, and in the end to an apparent inability to distinguish between
right and wrong, between truth and falsehood. In the former case we know
that a slight lesion in one of the ganglion cells or nerve-fibres of the
brain is sufficient to account for any disturbance in the intellectual
clock-work. The man himself remains the same, though at times hidden
from us, as it were, by a veil, and we feel towards him the same
sorrowful sympathy which we feel towards a man who has lost the use of
his eyes or his legs, who cannot see or cannot walk. We know that the
instruments are at fault, not the operator. But it is very difficult to
make the same allowance in cases of moral deterioration. Here
instruments and operator seem to be the same, though, for all we know,
here too the brain may be more at fault than the heart. A well-known
oculist maintained that the peculiarities, or what he called the
distortions, in Turner’s latest pictures were due to a malformation in
the muscles of his eyes. He actually invented some spectacles by which
everything that seemed ill-proportioned in Turner’s latest productions
came right if looked at through these corrective lenses. May not what we
call shortsightedness, conceit, vanity, envy, hatred and malice—all, as
it seems, without rhyme or reason—be due in the beginning to some
weakness or dimness of sight that might have been corrected, if treated
in time, by those who are nearest and dearest to the sufferer? This may
seem a dangerous view of moral responsibility; but, if so, it can be
dangerous to the sufferer only, not to those who ought to sympathise,
_i.e._ to feel and suffer, with him. To me it has proved a solution of
many difficulties during a long and varied intercourse with men and
women; the only difficulty is how to make these invalids harmless to
themselves.
Ruskin’s influence among the undergraduates at Oxford was most
extraordinary. He could persuade the young Christ Church men to take
spade and wheelbarrow and help him to make a road which he thought would
prove useful to a village near Oxford. No other professor could have
achieved that. The road was made, but was also soon washed away, and, of
course, Ruskin was laughed at, though the labour undergone by his pupils
did them no doubt a great deal of good, even though it did not benefit
the inhabitants of the village for any length of time. It was sad to see
Ruskin leave Oxford estranged from many of his friends, dissatisfied
with his work, which nevertheless was most valuable and highly
appreciated by young and old, perhaps by the young even more than by the
old. His spirit still dwells in the body, and if any one may look back
with pride and satisfaction upon the work which he has achieved it is
surely Ruskin.
Another though less frequent visitor to Oxford was Tennyson. His first
visit to our house was rather alarming. We lived in a small house in
High Street, nearly opposite Magdalen College, and our establishment was
not calculated to receive sudden guests, particularly a Poet Laureate.
He stepped in one day during the long vacation, when Oxford was almost
empty. Wishing to show the great man all civility, we asked him to
dinner that night and breakfast the next morning. At that time almost
all the shops were in the market, which closed at one o’clock. My wife,
a young housekeeper, did her best for our honoured guest. He was known
to be a gourmand, and at dinner he was evidently put out when he found
the sauce with the salmon was not the one he preferred. He was pleased,
however, with the wing of a chicken, and said it was the only advantage
he got from being Poet Laureate, that he generally received the
liver-wing of a chicken. The next morning at breakfast we had rather
plumed ourselves on having been able to get a dish of cutlets, and were
not a little surprised when our guest arrived to see him whip off the
cover of the hot dish, and to hear the exclamation: “Mutton chops! the
staple of every bad inn in England.” However, these were but minor
matters, though not without importance at the time in the eyes of a
young wife to whom Tennyson had been like one of the Immortals. He was
simply delightful and full of inquiries about the East, more
particularly about Indian poetry, and I believe that it was then that I
told him that there was no rhyme in Sanskrit poetry, and ventured to ask
him why there should be in English. He was not so offended as Samuel
Johnson seems to have been when asked the same question. The old bear
would probably have answered my question by, “You are a great fool, sir;
use your own judgment,” while Tennyson gave the very sensible answer
that rhyme assisted the memory.
It is difficult to define the difference between an Oxford man and a
Cambridge man; but if Ruskin was decidedly a representative of Oxford,
Tennyson was a true son of the sister University. I had been taught to
admire Tennyson by my young friends at Oxford, many of whom were
enthusiastic worshippers of the poet. My friends often forgot that I had
been brought up on German poetry, and that though I knew Heine, Rückert,
Eichendorff, Chamisso, and Geibel, to say nothing of Goethe, Schiller,
Bürger, and even Klopstock, their allusions to Tennyson, Browning, nay,
to Shelley and Keats, often fell by the wayside and were entirely lost
on me.
However, I soon learnt to enjoy Tennyson’s poetry, its finish, its
delicacy, its moderation—I mean, the absence of all extravagance; yet
there is but one of his books which has remained with me a treasure for
life, his “In Memoriam.” To have expressed such deep, true, and original
thought as is contained in each of these short poems in such perfect
language, to say nothing of rhyme, was indeed a triumph. Tennyson was
very kind to me, and took a warm interest in my work, particularly in my
mythological studies. I well remember his being struck by a metaphor in
my first Essay on Comparative Mythology, published in 1856, and his
telling me so. I had said that the sun in his daily passage across the
sky had ploughed a golden furrow through the human brain, whence sprang
in ancient times the first germs of mythology, and afterwards the rich
harvest of religious thought.
“I don’t know,” he said, “whether the simile is quite correct, but I
like it.” I was of course very proud that the great poet should have
pondered on any sentence of mine, and still more that he should have
approved of my theory of seeing in mythology a poetical interpretation
of the great phenomena of nature. But it was difficult to have a long
discussion with him. He was fond of uttering short and decisive
sentences: his yes was yes indeed, and his no was no indeed.
It was generally after dinner, when smoking his pipe and sipping his
whiskey and water, that Tennyson began to thaw, and to take a more
active part in conversation. People who have not known him then, have
hardly known him at all. During the day he was often very silent and
absorbed in his own thoughts, but in the evening he took an active part
in the conversation of his friends. His pipe was almost indispensable to
him, and I remember one time when I and several friends were staying at
his house, the question of tobacco turned up. I confessed that for years
I had been a perfect slave to tobacco, so that I could neither read nor
write a line without smoking, but that at last I had rebelled against
this slavery, and had entirely given up tobacco. Some of his friends
taunted Tennyson that he could never give up tobacco. “Anybody can do
that,” he said, “if he chooses to do it.” When his friends still
continued to doubt and to tease him, “Well,” he said, “I shall give up
smoking from to-night.” The very same evening I was told that he threw
his pipes and his tobacco out of the window of his bedroom. The next day
he was most charming, though somewhat self-righteous. The second day he
became very moody and captious, the third day no one knew what to do
with him. But after a disturbed night I was told that he got out of bed
in the morning, went quietly into the garden, picked up one of his
broken pipes, stuffed it with the remains of the tobacco scattered
about, and then, having had a few puffs, came to breakfast, all right
again. Nothing was said any more about giving up tobacco.
He once very kindly offered to lend me his house in the Isle of Wight.
“But mind,” he said, “you will be watched from morning till evening.”
This was in fact his great grievance, that he could not go out without
being stared at. Once taking a walk with me and my wife on the downs
behind his house, he suddenly started, left us, and ran home, simply
because he had descried two strangers coming towards us.
I was told that he once complained to the Queen, and said that he could
no longer stay in the Isle of Wight, on account of the tourists who came
to stare at him. The Queen, with a kindly irony, remarked that she did
not suffer much from that grievance, but Tennyson, not seeing what she
meant, replied: “No, madam, and if I could clap a sentinel wherever I
liked, I should not be troubled either.”
It must be confessed that people were very inconsiderate. Rows of
tourists sat like sparrows on the paling of his garden, waiting for his
appearance. The guides were actually paid by sightseers, particularly by
those from America, for showing them the great poet. Nay, they went so
far as to dress up a sailor to look like Tennyson, and the result was
that, after their trick had been found out, the tourists would walk up
to Tennyson and ask him: “Now, are you the real Tennyson?” This, no
doubt, was very annoying, and later on Lord Tennyson was driven to pay a
large sum for some useless downs near his house, simply in order to
escape from the attentions of admiring travellers.
Why should not people be satisfied with the best that a poet is and can
give them, namely his poetry? Why should they wish to stare at him? Few
poets are greater than their poetry, and Tennyson was not one of them.
Like all really great men, Tennyson disliked the worship that was paid
him by many who came to stare at him and to pour out the usual phrases
of admiration before him. Tennyson frequently took flight from his
intending Boswells, and he was the very last man to appreciate the “_Il
parle_” by which in Paris all conversation was hushed whenever Victor
Hugo was present at a dinner and spoke to his neighbour, possibly only
to ask him for the _menu_.
People have learnt after his death what a possession they had in
Tennyson. He may not rank among the greatest poets of England, but there
was something high and noble in him which reacted on the nation at
large, even though that influence was not perhaps consciously realised.
Anyhow, after his death, it was widely felt that there was nobody worthy
to fill his place; and why was it not left empty, as in the Greek army,
where, we are told, a place of honour was reserved for a great hero who
was supposed to be present during the heat of the battle, and to inspire
those who stood near his place to great deeds of valour?
Browning was neither of Cambridge nor of Oxford, but his genius was much
more akin to Oxford than to Cambridge, and towards the end of his life,
particularly after his son had entered at Balliol College, he was very
often seen amongst us. Though he was not what we call a scholar, his
mind was saturated with classical lore, and his appreciation of Greek
poetry, Greek mythology, and Greek sculpture was very keen. He could not
quote Greek verses, but he was steeped in the Greek tragedians and lyric
poets. Of course this classical sympathy was but one side of his poetry.
Browning was full of sympathy, nay, of worship, for anything noble and
true in literature, ancient or modern. And what was most delightful in
him was his ready response, his generosity in pouring out his own
thoughts before anybody who shared his sympathies. For real and
substantial conversation there was no one his equal, and even in the
lighter after-dinner talk he was admirable. His health seemed good, and
he was able to sacrifice much of his time to society. He had one great
advantage, he never consented to spoil his dinner by making, or, what is
still worse, by having to make, a speech. I once felt greatly aggrieved,
sitting opposite Browning at one of the Royal Academy dinners. I had to
return thanks for literature and scholarship, and was of course
rehearsing my speech during the whole of dinner-time, while he enjoyed
himself talking to his friends. When I told him that it was a shame that
I should be made a martyr of while he was enjoying his dinner in peace,
he laughed, and said that he had said No once for all, and that he had
never in his life made a public speech. I believe, as a rule, poets are
not good speakers. They are too careful about what they wish to say. As
dinner advanced I became more and more convinced of the etymological
identity of _honor_ and _onus_. At last my turn came. Having to face the
brilliant society which is always present at this dinner, including the
Prince of Wales, the Ministers of both parties, the most eminent
artists, scientists, authors and critics, I had of course learnt my
speech by heart, and was getting on very well, when suddenly I saw the
Prince of Wales laughing and saying something to his neighbour. At once
the thread of my speech was broken. I began to think whether I could
have said anything that made the Prince laugh, and what it could have
been, and while I was thinking in every direction, I suddenly stood
speechless. I thought it was an eternity, and I was afraid I should have
to collapse and make the greatest fool of myself that ever was. I looked
at Browning and he gave me a friendly nod, and at that moment my
grapple-irons caught the lost cable and I was able to finish my speech.
When it was over I turned to Browning and said: “Was it not fearful,
that pause?” “Far from it,” he said, “it was excellent. It gave life to
your speech. Everybody saw you were collecting your thoughts, and that
you were not simply delivering what you had learnt by heart. Besides, it
did not last half a minute.” To me it had seemed at least five or ten
minutes. But after Browning’s good-natured words I felt relieved, and
enjoyed at least what was left of a most enjoyable dinner, the only
enjoyable public dinner I know.
The best place to see Browning was Venice, and I think it was there that
I saw him for the last time. He was staying in one of the smaller
palaces with a friend, and he was easily persuaded to read some of his
poems. I asked him for his poem on Andrea del Sarto, and his delivery
was most simple and yet most telling. He was a far better reader than
Tennyson. His voice was natural, sonorous, and full of delicate shades;
while Tennyson read in so deep a tone, that it was like the rumbling and
rolling sound of the sea rather than like a human voice. His admirers,
both gentlemen and ladies, who thought that everything he did must be
perfect, encouraged him in that kind of delivery; and while to me it
seemed that he had smothered and murdered some of the poems I liked
best, they sighed and groaned and poured out strange interjections,
meant to be indicative of rapture.
There is a definiteness in Tennyson’s poetry which makes it easy to
recite and even to declaim his poems, while many of Browning’s
compositions do not lend themselves at all to vivâ voce repetition.
There is always a superabundance of thought and feeling in them, and his
mastery of rhyme and rhythm proved a temptation which he could not
always resist. One often wished that some of Browning’s poems could have
passed through the Tennysonian sieve, to take away all that is
unnecessary in them, and to moderate his exuberant revelling in
language. Still his friends know what they possess in his poetry. When
they are sad, he makes them joyful; when they exult, he tones them down;
when they are hungry, he feeds them; when they are poor, he makes them
rich; and, like a true prophet, he knows how to bring fresh water out of
the rocks, out of the commonest events in our journey through the desert
of life. It is a pity that his poetry does not lend itself to
translation. Perhaps he is too thoroughly English, perhaps his sentences
are too labyrinthine even for German readers. Anyhow, Browning is known
abroad much less than Tennyson, and if translatableness is a test of
true poetry, his poetry would not stand that test well.
To have known such men as Tennyson and Browning is indeed a rare
fortune. It helps us in two ways. We are preserved from extravagant
admiration, which is always stupid; and, on the other hand, we can enjoy
even insignificant verses of theirs, as coming from our friends and
lighting up some corner of their character. There are cases where
personal acquaintance with the poets actually spoils our taste for their
poetry, which we might otherwise have enjoyed; and to imagine that one
knows a poet better because one has once shaken hands with him, is a
fatal mistake. It would be far better to go at once to Westminster
Abbey, and spend a few thoughtful moments at the tombs of such poets as
Tennyson or Browning, for there, at all events, there would be no
disappointment.
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS
IV
Authors complain, and in many cases complain justly, of the large number
of letters and visits which they receive from unknown friends and
distant admirers. I myself, though the subjects on which I write are not
exactly popular, have been sitting at the receipt of such custom for
many years. It is difficult to know what to do. To answer all the
letters, even to acknowledge all the books that are sent to me from
India, Australia, New Zealand, from every new sphere of influence in
Africa, from America, North and South, and from the principal countries
of Europe, would be physically impossible. A simple knowledge of
arithmetic would teach my friends that if I were only to glance at a
book in order to give an opinion, or say something pleasant about it,
one hour at least of my time in the morning would certainly be consumed
by every single book. Every writer imagines that he is the only one who
writes a letter, asks a question, or sends a book; but he forgets that
in this respect everybody has as much right as everybody else, and
claims it too, unmindful of the rights of others, and quite unconscious
that the sum total of such interruptions would swallow up the whole of a
man’s working day. And there is this further danger: however guarded one
may be in expressing one’s gratitude or one’s opinion of the merits of a
book, one’s letter is apt to appear in advertisements, if only far away
in India or the Colonies; nay, we often find that the copy of a book was
not even sent us by the author himself, but with the author’s
compliments, that is, by an enterprising publisher.
However, there is a compensation in all things, and I gladly confess
that I have occasionally derived great advantage from the letters of my
unknown friends. They have sent me valuable corrections and useful
remarks for my books, they have made me presents of MSS. and local
publications difficult to get even at the Bodleian and the British
Museum, and I feel sure that they have not been offended even though I
could not enter into a long correspondence with every one of my
epistolary friends on the origin of language or the home of the Aryan
race. My worst friends are those who send me their own writings and wish
me to give an opinion, or to find a publisher for them. Had I attempted
to comply with one half of these requests, I could have done nothing
else in life. What would become of me if everybody who cannot find a
publisher were to write to me! The introduction of postcards has proved,
no doubt, a great blessing to all who are supposed to be oracles, but
even an oracular response takes time. Speaking for myself, I may truly
say that I often feel tempted to write to a man who is an authority on a
special subject on which I want information. I know he could answer my
question in five minutes, and yet I hardly ever venture to make the
appeal, but go to a library, where I have to waste hours and hours in
finding the right book, and afterwards the right passage in it. Why
should not others do the same?
And what applies to letters applies to personal visits also. I do
sometimes get impatient when perfect strangers call on me without any
kind of introduction, sometimes even without a visiting card, and then
sit down to propound some theory of their own. Still, taking all in all,
I must not complain of my visitors. They do not come in shoals like
letters and books, and very often they are interesting and even
delightful. Many of them come from America, and the mere fact that they
want to see me is a compliment which I appreciate. They have read my
books, that is another compliment which I always value; and they often
speak to me of things that years ago I have said in some article of
mine, and which I myself have often quite forgotten.
It strikes me that Americans possess in a very high degree the gift of
sight-seeing. They possess what at school was called _pace_. They travel
over England in a fortnight, but at the end they seem to have seen all
that is, and all who are, worth seeing. We wonder how they can enjoy
anything. But they do enjoy what they see, and they carry away a great
many photographs, not only in their albums but in their memory also. The
fact is that they generally come well prepared, and know beforehand what
they want to see; and, after all, there are limits to everything. If we
have only a quarter of an hour to look at the Madonna di San Sisto, may
not that short exposure give us an excellent negative in our memory, if
only our brain is sensitive, and the lens of our eyes clear and strong?
The Americans, knowing that their time is limited, make certainly an
excellent use of it, and seem to carry away more than many travellers
who stand for hours with open mouths before a Raphael, and in the end
know no more of the picture than of the frame. It requires sharp eyes
and a strong will to see much in a short time. Some portrait painters,
for instance, catch a likeness in a few minutes; others sit and sit, and
stare and stare, and alter and alter, and never perceive the real
characteristic points in a face.
It is the same with the American interviewer. I do not like him, and I
think he ought at all events to tell us that we are being interviewed.
Even ancient statues are protected now against snap-shots in the museums
of antiquities. But with all that I cannot help admiring him. His skill,
in the cases where I have been under his scalpel or before his brush,
has certainly been extraordinary, and several of them seem to have seen
in my house, in my garden, in my library, and in my face, what I myself
had never detected there, and all that in about half an hour. I remember
one visit, however, which was rather humiliating. An American gentleman
(I did not know that he was interviewing me) had been sitting with me
for a long time, asking all sorts of questions and making evidently a
trigonometrical survey of myself and my surroundings. At last I had to
tell him that I was sorry I had to go, as I had to deliver a lecture. As
he seemed so interested in my work I naturally expected he would ask me
to allow him to hear my lecture. Nothing of the kind! “I am sorry,” he
said, “but you don’t mind my sitting here in your library till you come
back?” And, true enough, there I found him when I came home after an
hour, and he was delighted to see me again. Some months after I had my
reward in a most charming account of an interview with Professor Max
Müller, published in an American journal. This power of observation
which these interviewers, and to a certain extent most American
travellers, seem to possess, is highly valuable, and as most of us
cannot hope to have more than a few hours to see such monuments as St.
Peter or Santa Sophia, or such giants as Tennyson or Browning, we ought
to take a leaf out of the book of our American friends, and try to
acquire some of their pace and go.
And then, America does not send us interviewers only, but nearly all
their most eminent men and their most charming women pay us the
compliment of coming over to the old country. They generally cannot give
us more than a few days, or it may be a few hours only; and in that
short space we also have to learn how to measure them, how to appreciate
and love them. It has to be done quickly, or not at all. Living at
Oxford, I have had the good fortune of receiving visits from Emerson,
Dr. Wendell Holmes, and Lowell, to speak of the brightest stars only.
Each of them stayed at our house for several days, so that I could take
them in at leisure, while others had to be taken at one gulp, often
between one train and the next. Oxford has a great attraction for all
Americans, and it is a pleasure to see how completely at home they feel
in the memories of the place. The days when Emerson, Wendell Holmes, and
Lowell were staying with us, the breakfasts and luncheons, the teas and
dinners, and the delightful walks through college halls, chapels and
gardens are possessions for ever.
Emerson, I am grieved to say, when during his last visit to England he
spent some days with us, accompanied and watched over by his devoted
daughter, was already on the brink of that misfortune which overtook him
in his old age. His memory often failed him, but as through a mist the
bright and warm sun of his mind was always shining, and many of his
questions and answers have remained engraved in my memory, weak and
shaky as that too begins to be. I had forgotten that Emerson had ceased
to be an active preacher, and I told him that I rather envied him the
opportunity of speaking now and then to his friends and neighbours on
subjects on which we can seldom speak except in church. He then told me
not only what he had told others, that “he had had enough of it,” but he
referred to an episode in his life, or rather in that of his brother,
which struck me as very significant at the time. “There was an
ecclesiastical leaven in our family,” he said. “My brother and I were
both meant for the ministry in the Unitarian community. My brother was
sent by my father to Germany (I believe to Göttingen), and after a
thorough study of theology was returning to America. On the voyage home
the ship was caught in a violent gale, and all hope of saving the ship
and the lives of the passengers was given up. At that time my brother
said his prayers, and made a vow that if his life should be spared he
would never preach again, but give up theology altogether and earn an
honest living in some other way. The ship weathered the storm, my
brother’s life was saved, and, in spite of all entreaties, he kept his
vow. Something of the same kind may have influenced me,” he added:
“anyhow, I felt that there was better work for me to do than to preach
from the pulpit.” And so, no doubt, there was for this wonderfully
gifted man, particularly at the time and in the place where he lived. A
few years’ study at Göttingen might have been useful to the younger
Emerson by showing him the track followed by other explorers of the
unknown seas of religion and philosophy, but he felt in himself the
force to grapple with the great problems of the world without going
first to school to learn how others before him had grappled with them.
And this was perhaps the best for him and for us. His freshness and his
courage remained undamped by the failures of others, and the directness
of his judgment and poetical intuition had freer scope in his rhapsodies
than it would have had in learned treatises. I do not wonder that
philosophers by profession had at first nothing to say to his essays
because they did not seem to advance their favourite inquiries beyond
the point they had reached before. But there were many people,
particularly in America, to whom these rhapsodies did more good than any
learned disquisitions or carefully arranged sermons. There is in them
what attracts us so much in the ancients, freshness, directness,
self-confidence, unswerving loyalty to truth, as far as they could see
it. He had no one to fear, no one to please. Socrates or Plato, if
suddenly brought to life again in America, might have spoken like
Emerson, and the effect produced by Emerson was certainly like that
produced by Socrates in olden times.
What Emerson’s personal charm must have been in earlier life we can only
conjecture from the rapturous praises bestowed on him by his friends,
even during his lifetime. A friend of his who had watched Emerson and
his work and his ever-increasing influence, declares without hesitation
that “the American nation is more indebted to his teaching than to any
other person who has spoken or written on his themes during the last
twenty years.” He calls his genius “the measure and present expansion of
the American mind.” And his influence was not confined to the American
mind. I have watched it growing in England. I still remember the time
when even experienced literary judges spoke of his essays as mere
declamations, as poetical rhapsodies, as poor imitations of Carlyle.
Then gradually one man after another found something in Emerson which
was not to be found in Carlyle, particularly his loving heart, his
tolerant spirit, his comprehensive sympathy with all that was or was
meant to be good and true, even though to his own mind it was neither
the one nor the other.
After a time some more searching critics were amazed at sentences which
spoke volumes, and showed that Emerson, though he had never written a
systematic treatise on philosophy, stood on a firm foundation of the
accumulated philosophic thought of centuries. Let us take such a
sentence as “_Generalisation is always a new influx of divinity into the
mind—hence the thrill that attends_.” To the ordinary reader such a
sentence can convey very little; it might seem, in fact, a mere
exaggeration. But to those who know the long history of thought
connected with the question of the origin of conceptual thought as the
result of ceaseless generalisation, Emerson’s words convey the outcome
of profound thought. They show that he had recognised in general ideas,
which are to us merely the result of a never-ceasing synthesis, the
original thoughts or logoi underlying the immense variety of created
things; that he had traced them back to their only possible source, the
Divine Mind, and that he saw how the human mind, by rising from
particulars to the general, was in reality approaching the source of
those divine thoughts, and thus becoming conscious, as it were, of the
influx of divinity. Other philosophers have expressed similar thoughts
by saying that induction is the light that leads us up, deduction the
light that leads us down. Mill thought that generalisation is a mere
process of mother-wit, of the shrewd and untaught intelligence; and
that, from one narrow point of view, it is so, has been fully proved
since by an analysis of language. Every word is a generalisation, and
contains in itself a general idea, the so-called root. These first
generalisations are, no doubt, at first the work of mother-wit and
untaught intelligence only, and hence the necessity of constantly
correcting them, whether by experience or by philosophy. But these words
are nevertheless the foundation of all later thought, and if they have
not reached as yet the fulness of the Divine Logoi, they represent at
least the advancing steps by which alone the human mind could reach, and
will reach at last, the ideas of the Divine Mind.
Thus one pregnant sentence of Emerson’s shows, when we examine it more
closely, that he had seen deeper into the mysteries of nature, and of
the human mind, than thousands of philosophers, call them evolutionists
(realists) or nominalists. Evolutionists imagine that they have
explained everything that requires explanation in nature if they have
shown a more or less continuous development from the moneres to man,
from the thrills of the moneres to the thoughts of man. Nominalists
again think that by ascending from the single to the general, and by
comprehending the single under a general name, they have solved all the
questions involved in nature, that is, in our comprehension of nature.
They never seem to remember that there was a time when all that we call
either single or general, but particularly all that is general, had for
the first time to be conceived or created. Before there was a single
tree, some one must have thought the tree or treehood. Before there was
a single ape, or a single man, some one must have thought that apehood
or that manhood which we see realised in every ape and in every man,
unless we can bring ourselves to believe in a thoughtless world. If that
first thought was the concept of a mere moneres, still in that thought
there must have been the distant perspective of ape or man, and it is
that first thought alone which to the present day keeps the ape an ape,
and a man a man. Divine is hardly a name good enough for that first
Thinker of Thoughts. Still, it is that Divinity which Emerson meant when
he said that generalisation is always a new influx of divinity into the
mind because it reveals to the mind the first thoughts, the Divine
Logoi, of the universe. The thrill of which he speaks is the thrill
arising from the nearness of the Divine, the sense of the presence of
those Divine Logoi, or that Divine Logos, which in the beginning was
with God, and without which not anything was made that was made.
Evolution can never be more than the second act; the first act is the
Volition or the Thought of the universe, unless we hold that there can
be effect without a cause, or a Kosmos without a Logos.
Such utterances, lost almost in the exuberance of Emerson’s thoughts,
mark the distinction between a thoughtful and a shallow writer, between
a scarred veteran and a smooth recruit. They will give permanence to
Emerson’s influence both at home and abroad, and place him in the ranks
of those who have not lived or thought in vain. When he left my house, I
knew, of course, that we should never meet again in this life, but I
felt that I had gained something that could never be taken from me.
Another eminent American who often honoured my quiet home at Oxford was
James Russell Lowell, for a time United States Minister in England. He
was a Professor and at the same time a politician and a man of the
world. Few essays are so brimful of interesting facts and original
reflections as his essays entitled “Among my Books.” His “Biglow
Papers,” which made him one of the leading men in the United States,
appeal naturally to American rather than to Cosmopolitan readers. But in
society he was at home in England as much as in America, in Spain as
well as in Holland.
I came to know him first as a sparkling correspondent, and then as a
delightful friend.
Here is the letter which began our intimacy:—
LEGACION DE NOS ESTADOS UNIDOS
DE AMERICA EN ESPANA.
_18th Jan. 1880._
I read with great satisfaction what you wrote about _jade_.[12] One is
tempted to cry out, with Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, “How now, ye pampered
jades of Asia!” One thing in the discussion has struck me a good deal,
and that is, the crude notion which intelligent men have of the
migration of tribes. I think most men’s conception of distance is very
much a creature of maps—which make Crim Tartary and England not more
than a foot apart, so that the feat of the old rhyme—“to dance out of
Ireland into France,” looks easy. They seem to think that the shifting
of habitation was accomplished like a modern journey by rail, and that
the emigrants wouldn’t need tools by the way or would buy them at the
nearest shop after their arrival. There is nothing the ignorant and
the poor cling to so tenaciously as their familiar household utensils.
Incredible things are brought every day to America in the luggage of
emigrants—things often most cumbrous to carry and utterly useless in
the new home. Families that went from our seaboard to the West a
century ago, through an almost impenetrable wilderness, carried with
them all their domestic pots and pans—even those, I should be willing
to wager, that needed the tinker. I remember very well the starting of
an expedition from my native town of Cambridge in 1831, for Oregon,
under the lead of a captain of great energy and resource. They started
in waggons ingeniously contrived so as to be taken to pieces, the body
forming a boat for crossing rivers. They carried everything they could
think of with them, and got safely to the other side of the continent,
as hard a job, I fancy, as our Aryan ancestors had to do. There is
hardly a family of English descent in New England that doesn’t
cherish, as an heirloom, something brought over by the first ancestors
two hundred and fifty years ago. And besides the motive of utility
there is that also of sentiment—particularly strong in the case of an
old tool.
Faithfully yours, J. R. LOWELL.
Lowell’s conversation was inexhaustible, his information astonishing.
Pleasant as he was, even as an antagonist, he would occasionally lose
his temper and use very emphatic language. I was once sitting next to
him when I heard him stagger his neighbour, a young lady, by bursting
out with: “But, madam, I do not accept your major premiss!”
Poor thing, she evidently was not accustomed to such language, and not
acquainted with that terrible term. She collapsed, evidently quite at a
loss as to what gift on her part Mr. Lowell declined to accept.
Sometimes even the most harmless remark about America would call forth
very sharp replies from him. Everybody knows that the salaries paid by
America to her diplomatic staff are insufficient, and no one knew it
better than he himself. But when the remark was made in his presence
that the United States treated their diplomatic representatives
stingily, he fired up, and discoursed most eloquently on the advantages
of high thoughts and humble living. His cleverness and readiness in
writing occasional verses have become proverbial, and I am glad to be
able to add two more to the many _jeux d’esprit_ of this brilliant and
amiable guest.
Had I all tongues Max Müller knows,
I could not with them altogether
Tell half the debt a stranger owes
Who Oxford sees in pleasant weather.
The halls, the gardens, and the quads,
There’s nought can match them on this planet,
Smiled on by all the partial gods
Since Alfred (if ’twas he) began it;
But more than all the welcomes warm,
Thrown thick as lavish hands could toss ’em,
Why, they’d have wooed in winter-storm
One’s very umbrella-stick to blossom!
Bring me a cup of All Souls’ ale,
Better than e’er was bought with siller,
To drink (Oh, may the vow prevail)
The health of Max[13] and Mrs. Müller!
Abundant as was his wit in the true sense of that word, his kindness was
equally so. After he had written the above verses for my wife, my young
daughter Beatrice (now Mrs. Colyer Fergusson) asked him, as young ladies
are wont to do, for a few lines for herself. He at once resumed his pen
and wrote:—
O’er the wet sands an insect crept
Ages ere man on earth was known—
And patient Time, while Nature slept,
The slender tracing turned to stone.
’Twas the first autograph: and ours?
Prithee, how much of prose or song,
In league with the Creative powers,
Shall ’scape Oblivion’s broom so long?
In great haste,
Faithfully yours,
J. R. LOWELL.
_24th June, 1886._
I lost the pleasure of shaking hands with Longfellow during his stay in
England. Though I have been more of a fixture at Oxford than most
professors, I was away during the vacation when he paid his visit to our
University, and thus lost seeing a poet to whom I felt strongly
attracted, not only by the general spirit of his poetry, which was
steeped in German thought, but as the translator of several of my
father’s poems.
I was more fortunate with Dr. Wendell Holmes. His arrival in England had
been proclaimed beforehand, and one naturally remained at home in order
to be allowed to receive him. His hundred days in England were one
uninterrupted triumphal progress. When he arrived at Liverpool he found
about three hundred invitations waiting for him. Though he was
accompanied by a most active and efficient daughter, he had at once to
engage a secretary to answer this deluge of letters. And though he was
past eighty, he never spared himself, and was always ready to see and to
be seen. He was not only an old, but a ripe and mellow man.
There was no subject on which one could touch which was not familiar to
the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. His thoughts and his words were
ready, and one felt that it was not for the first time that the subject
had been carefully thought out and talked out by him. That he should
have been able to stand all the fatigue of his journey and the constant
claims on his ready wit seemed to me marvellous. I had the pleasure of
showing him the old buildings of Oxford. He seemed to know them all, and
had something to ask and to say about every one.
When we came to Magdalen College, he wanted to see and to measure the
elms. He was very proud of some elms in America, and he had actually
brought some string with which he had measured the largest tree he knew
in his own country. He proceeded to measure one of our finest elms in
Magdalen College, and when he found that it was larger than his American
giant, he stood before it admiring it, without a single word of envy or
disappointment.
I had, however, a great fright while he was staying at our house. He had
evidently done too much, and after our first dinner party he had
feverish shivering fits, and the doctor whom I sent for declared at once
that he must keep perfectly quiet in bed, and attend no more parties of
any kind. This was a great disappointment to myself and to many of my
friends. But at his time of life the doctor’s warning could not be
disregarded, and I had, at all events, the satisfaction of sending him
off to Cambridge safe and sound. I had him several days quite to myself,
and there were few subjects which we did not discuss. We mostly agreed,
but even where we did not, it was a real pleasure to differ from him. We
discussed the greatest and the smallest questions, and on every one he
had some wise and telling remarks to pour out. I remember one long
conversation while we were sitting in an old wainscoted room at All
Souls’, ornamented with the arms of former fellows. It had been at first
the library of the college, then one of the fellows’ rooms, and lastly a
lecture-room. We were deep in the old question of the true relation
between the Divine and the Human in man, and here again, as on all other
questions, everything seemed to be clear and evident to his mind.
Perhaps I ought not to repeat what he said to me when we parted: “I have
had much talk with people in England; with you I have had a real
conversation.” We understood each other, and wondered how it was that
men so often misunderstood one another. I told him that it was the
badness of our language, he thought it was the badness of our tempers.
Perhaps we were both right. With him again good-bye was good-bye for
life, and at such moments one wonders indeed how kindred souls became
separated, and one feels startled and repelled at the thought that, such
as they were on earth, they can never meet again. And yet there is
continuity in the world, there is no flaw, no break anywhere, and what
has been will surely be again, though how it will be we cannot know, and
if only we trust in the Wisdom that pervades and overshadows the whole
Universe, we need not know.
Were I to write down my more or less casual meetings with men of
literary eminence, I should have much more to say, much that was of deep
interest and value to myself, but would hardly be of interest to others.
I felt greatly flattered, for instance, when years ago Macaulay invited
me to see him at the Albany, and to discuss with him the new regulations
for the Indian Civil Service. This must have been in about 1854. I was
quite a young and unknown man at the time, but I had already made his
acquaintance at Bunsen’s house, where he had been asked to meet Herr von
Radowitz, for a short time Prime Minister in Prussia, and the most
famous talker in Germany. It was indeed a tournament to watch, but as it
was in English, which Radowitz spoke well, yet not well enough for such
a contest, Macaulay carried the day, though Radowitz excelled in
repartee, in anecdotes, and in a certain elegance more telling in French
than in English.
I went to call on Macaulay in London, well provided as I thought with
facts and arguments in support of the necessity of Oriental studies,
which I knew he had always discouraged, in the preparation and
examination of candidates for the Indian Civil Service. He began by
telling me that he knew nothing of Indian languages and literature, and
that he wanted to know all I had to say on the real advantages to be
derived by young civilians from a study of Sanskrit. I had already
published several letters in _The Times_ on the subject, and had carried
on a long controversy with Sir Charles Trevelyan, afterwards published
in a pamphlet, entitled “Correspondence relating to the Establishment of
an Oriental College in London.”
Macaulay, after sitting down, asked me a number of questions, but before
I had time to answer any one of them, he began to relate his own
experiences in India, dilating on the difference between a scholar and a
man of business, giving a full account of his controversy, while in
India, with men like Professor Wilson and others, who maintained that
English would never become the language of India, expressing his own
strong conviction to the contrary, and relating a number of anecdotes,
showing that the natives learnt English far more easily than the English
could ever learn Hindustani or Sanskrit. Then he branched off into some
disparaging remarks about Sanskrit literature, particularly about their
legal literature, entering minutely into the question of what authority
could be assigned to the Laws of Manu, and of what possible use they
could be in determining lawsuits between natives, ending up with the
usual diatribes about the untruthfulness of the natives of India, and
their untrustworthiness as witnesses in a court of law.
This went on for nearly an hour and was very pleasant to listen to, but
most disappointing to a young man who had come well primed with facts to
meet all these arguments, and who tried in vain to find a chance to put
in a single word. At the end of this so-called conversation Macaulay
thanked me for the useful information I had given him, and I went back
to Oxford a sadder and I hope a wiser man. What I had chiefly wished to
impress on him was that Haileybury should not be suppressed, but should
be improved, should not be ended, but mended. But it was easier and more
popular to suppress it, and suppressed it was, so that in England, which
has the largest Oriental Empire in the world, there is now not a single
school or seminary for the teaching of Oriental languages, whereas
France, Italy, Prussia, Austria and Russia have all found it expedient
to have such establishments and to support them by liberal grants.
Everybody now begins to see that these governments are reaping their
rewards, but in England the old argument remains the same: “We can
always find interpreters if we pay them well, and if we only speak loud
enough the natives never fail to understand what we mean.”
This is no doubt much the same as what Mr. Layard meant when he
explained to me how he managed to keep his diggers in order: “I speak
English to them; if they do not understand I shout at them,” he said;
“if they won’t obey, I knock them down; and if they show fight, I shoot
them down.” No doubt this was an exaggeration, but it certainly does not
prove the uselessness of a thorough knowledge of Oriental languages for
those who are sent to the East to govern millions, and not to shout at
them, or to knock them down.
Another true friend of mine was Arthur Helps, the author of “Friends in
Council,” and for a long time clerk to the Privy Council. He often paid
us a visit on his way to or from Blenheim, where he used to stay with
the then Duke of Marlborough. He had a very high opinion of the Duke’s
ability as President of the Council, and considered his personal
influence most important. “At the time of a change of Ministry, you
should see the members of the Cabinet,” he said. “People imagine they
are miserable and disheartened. The fact is they are like a pack of
schoolboys going home for their holidays, and scrambling out of the
Council Chamber as fast as ever they can.”
Once when he came to stay with us on his return from Blenheim, he told
me how the Duke had left the day before for London, and that on that
very day the emu had laid an egg. The Duke had taken the greatest
interest in his emus and had long looked forward to this event. A
telegram was sent to the Duke, which, when shown to Mr. Helps, ran as
follows: “The emu has laid an egg, and, in the absence of your Grace, we
have taken the largest goose we could find to hatch it.”
Helps was a most sensible and thoroughly honest man; yet the last years
of his life were dreadfully embittered by some ill-advised speculations
of his which brought severe losses not only on himself, but, what he
felt far more keenly, on several of his friends whom he had induced to
share in his undertaking.
I missed the pleasure of knowing Lord Lytton. But this illustrious
writer, Lord Lytton, or in earlier days, Sir Lytton Bulwer Lytton, whose
“Last Days of Pompeii” had been the delight of my youth, paid me a great
and quite undeserved compliment by dedicating to me one of his last, if
not his very last work, “The Coming Race,” 1871. The book was published
anonymously, and as it was dedicated to me, I tried very hard to
discover the author of it, but in vain. It was only after his death that
Lord Lytton’s authorship became known. The book itself could hardly be
called a novel, nor was there anything very striking or sensational in
it. Yet, to the honour of the English public be it said, it was
discovered at once that it could not be the work of an ordinary writer.
It went through edition after edition, and, to the great delight of the
anonymous author, was received with universal applause. _Vril_ was the
name given by the author to the fluid which in the hands of a _Vrilya_
was raised into the mightiest agency over all forms of matter, animate
or inanimate. It destroyed like the flash of lightning, yet, differently
applied, it replenished or invigorated life. With it a way could be rent
through the most solid substances, and from it a light was extracted,
steadier, softer, and healthier than from all other inflammable
materials. The fire lodged in the hollow of a reed, and directed by the
hand of a child, could shatter the strongest fortress, or cleave its
burning way from the van to the rear of an embattled host. All this
reads almost like a prophecy of the electric fluid in its application to
engines of war and engines of peace, but its name now survives chiefly
in the powerful and invigorating fluid extracted from beef, and
advertised on every wall as _Bo-vril_—unless I am quite mistaken in my
etymology.
There are many more of the most eminent men in England from whom I have
received kindness, and with whom, even as a young man, I had some
interesting intercourse. But I become more and more doubtful whether I
can trust my memory, and whether, in writing down my recollections, I am
doing my friends full justice. When I gave my first lectures at the
Royal Institution (in 1861), I came into frequent contact with Faraday.
He was then what I thought an old man, and though it was quite beyond my
power to estimate his greatness, he was one of those men who at once
gave one the impression that they are really great. There was dignity
and composure in his conversation, and at the same time a kindly welcome
in his dark bright eyes which made one feel at home with him from the
very first meeting. Though the subject I had to lecture on was quite new
to him, he took the liveliest interest in my lectures. I told him how
disappointed his assistant had been—I believe his name was Anderson or
Robertson—when he offered me his services for my lectures, and I had to
tell him that I wanted nothing, no gas, no light, no magnets, that there
would be no experiments, not even diagrams to pull up and down. “O yes,”
said Faraday, “I know how he tells his friends that he does all the hard
work at my lectures, all the experiments, but that he lets me do the
talking.” He seemed much amused when I told him that I had had just the
same experience, and that one of my compositors was fully convinced that
he was really responsible for my books, and told his fellow-compositors
that I could not have brought out a single book without him.
Faraday sat patiently through most, if not all of my lectures, and it
was a pleasure to look at his face beaming with intelligence. When I
lectured for the first time on the Science of Language, I had in the
beginning to clear the ground of many prejudices, and amongst the rest,
to dispose of what was then almost an article of faith—namely, that all
the languages of the world were derived from Hebrew. I gave a whole
lecture to this question, and when it was over, an imposing old lady
came up to shake hands with me and to thank me for the beautiful lecture
I had delivered. “How delightful it is to know,” she continued, “that
Adam and Eve spoke Hebrew in Paradise, and that all the other languages
of the world, English not excepted, have come out of Hebrew and out of
Paradise.” I really felt very much humiliated, and when Faraday came up
I told him what had happened. “Oh, you must not be discouraged,” he
said, “I hardly ever lecture on chemistry without an old dowager coming
up to me with an incredulous smile and saying: ‘Now, Mr. Faraday, you
don’t really mean to say that the water I drink is nothing but what you
call oxygen and hydrogen?’ Go on,” he said, “something will always
stick.”
I certainly had splendid audiences; all the best men of the town were
there. But brilliant as my audiences were—they included A. P. Stanley,
Fredk. Maurice, Dean Milman, Bishop Thirlwall, Mill, Lady Stanley, even
royalty honoured me several times—the old _habitués_ of the Royal
Institution were not easy to please. The front row was generally
occupied by old men with hearing-trumpets, old Indians, old generals,
old clergymen, etc. A number of ladies came in with their newspaper and
unfolded it before the lecture began, and seemed to read it with their
eyes while their ears were supposed to follow my arguments. One’s
self-conceit is sometimes very much tried. After one of my lectures I
saw one of the old East Indians led out by his son or nephew, who
shouted in a loud voice into his father’s ear, “That was a splendid
lecture, was it not?” “Yes,” said the old man in a still louder voice,
“very interesting—very; didn’t understand a single word of it.” Such is
reputation. On another occasion the same deaf and loud-voiced gentleman
was heard to tell his neighbour who I was and what I had done. “Yes,” he
shouted, “I know him; he is a clever young man. And we have appointed
him to do some work for us, to publish the old Bible of India. We have
also made him our examiner for the Civil Service of India. A clever
young man, I assure you.”
That is how I rose in the estimation of the London world, and how
Albemarle Street became crowded with fashionable carriages, and people
could hardly find places in order to hear all about Aryan roots and our
Aryan ancestors, and our common Aryan home somewhere in Asia.
It was in the same Royal Institution that I first raised my voice
against the thoughtless extravagances of the so-called Darwinian School,
and this at a time when it required more courage to express a doubt on
any Darwinian theories than to doubt the descent of all languages from
Hebrew. As to Darwin himself, I had expressed my admiration of him in my
very first course of lectures, and I had more particularly tried to show
how the idea of evolution, or development, or growth, or whatever name
we like to use instead of the name of history, had at all times been the
guiding principle in the researches of the students of the “Science of
Languages.” Our object had always been to discover how languages came to
be what they are, to study the origin and growth, or more truly the
history of language. If we spoke of the development or evolution of
language (_Entwickelung_) it was simply in order to avoid the constant
use of the same word. We comparative philologists had, in fact, been
talking evolution for more than forty years, as M. Jourdain had been
talking prose all his life, without being aware of it (_sans que j’en
susse rien_). But we never went into raptures about that blessed word
“evolution,” or about the passage from the homogeneous to the
heterogeneous.
What I, from my own point of view, valued particularly in Darwin’s
philosophy was the technical term of Natural Selection. Logically it was
not quite correct, for, say what you like, selection presupposes a
selector. Without a selector there is no selection, and unless we speak
mythologically, we cannot speak of Nature as a selector. I should have
preferred, therefore, _Rational Elimination_, looking upon Reason, or
the Good of Plato, as the power that works for good or for fitness in
all that survives or is not crowded out. But with this restriction
Natural Selection was the very term we wanted to signify that process
which is constantly going on in language—“excluding caprice as well as
necessity, including individual exertion as well as general
co-operation, applicable neither to the unconscious building of bees nor
to the conscious architecture of human beings, yet combining within
itself both these operations, and raising them to a higher
conception.”[14] Natural selection was the very term we wanted for a
true insight into the so-called growth of language, and it was Darwin
who gave it us, even though for our own purposes we had to define it
more strictly.
I gave Darwin full credit for having discovered and popularised this new
“category of thought,” but the constant hallelujahs that were raised
over the discovery of Evolution showed surely an extraordinary ignorance
of the history of philosophical thought in Europe. Darwin himself was
the very last person to claim evolution as a discovery of his own; but
is there a single paper that has not called him the discoverer of
Evolution? He knew too well how, particularly in his own special field
of study, the controversy whether each so-called genus or species had
required a separate act of creation, had been raging for centuries. He
remembered the famous controversy in 1830 at the French Institute,
between Cuvier and Geoffray Saint-Hilaire, and Goethe’s equally famous
remarks on the subject. It would seem as if Darwin himself had
originally been under the spell of the old idea that every species, if
not every individual, required a special act of creation, and he
describes, if I remember rightly, the shock it gave him when he saw for
the first time that this idea had to be surrendered. It was evidently
considered to be the orthodox view of creation, though I do not know
why; nay, it seems to be so still, if we remember how the present
Archbishop of Canterbury was represented as unfit to wear a mitre
because he believed in evolution; that is, as I should say, in his
senses. I myself, on the contrary, was given to understand at the time
by my unorthodox friends that my want of belief in evolution was but a
survival of my orthodox opinions. I was much puzzled before I could
understand why I was looked at askance, till in one of the reviews I was
told in so many words that if I did not believe in evolution, I must
believe in the theory of special creations, or in nothing at all. Even
Tyndall, dear honest Tyndall, told me one day at the Royal Institution
that it was no use my kicking against the pricks, and I then had an
opportunity of telling him my mind. “When some substance is brought
you,” I said, “don’t you first of all analyse it to find out what it
consists of, before you use it for any further experiments? Well, that
is really what a student of language does. When you bring him a word
like evolution, the first thing he asks for is an analysis or
definition. That may often seem very discourteous, but it cannot be
otherwise in any decent laboratory of chemistry or thought. Now if
evolution is meant for an action, you cannot have an action without an
actor, whether his action is direct or indirect. Of course you will say
that we all know that, that it is mere childish logic; but, if so, we
should not imagine that we can neglect this childish logic with
impunity, that we can have a successful experiment without first wiping
our crucibles clean. If, on the contrary, evolution is to be taken in
the sense of a process excluding an actor or evolver, this should be
clearly stated, and in that case the more familiar word ‘growth’ would
have been far preferable, because it would not have raised unfounded
expectations. But even growth means very little unless it is
authenticated by history step by step.
“If then you tell me that there is growth, not only from the sperm to
men like you and me, not only from an egg to a caterpillar, from a
caterpillar to a chrysalis, and from a chrysalis to a butterfly, but
likewise from inorganic to organised matter, from plants to animals,
from reptiles to birds, from apes to men, I have not a word to say
against it. I know you to be an honest man, and if you can assure me
that there are historical facts, real, visible facts, to support this
transition from one species to another, or even from one genus to
another, I trust you. It would be simple arrogance were I to doubt your
word, within your own special sphere of study. You have seen the
transition or connecting links, you know that it is not only possible,
but real, and there is an end of it. Only allow me to say that from a
philosophical point of view there is nothing new in this concept of
growth, or, as you call it, evolution. You would never say that Lamarck
had been the discoverer of growth in nature, neither has it any definite
meaning to me when you say that Darwin was the discoverer of evolution.
I can understand enough of Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ to enable me to
admire his power of observation and his true genius of combination. I
can see how he has reduced the number of unnecessary species, and of
unnecessary acts of so-called special creation; and that possibly he has
traced back the whole of the animal and vegetable kingdoms to four
beginnings, and in the end to one Creator. Darwin did not go beyond
this, he required four beginnings and one Creator. It was left to his
followers to carry out his principles, as they thought, by eliminating
the Creator, and reducing the four beginnings to one. If you think that
all this rests on well ascertained facts, I have nothing to say except
to express my surprise that some men of great learning and undoubted
honesty are not so positive as to these facts as you are. But with the
exception of a Creator, that is, a subjective Author of the universe,
all this is really outside my special province, and I could afford to be
silent. Only when Darwin maintains the transition from some highly
developed animal into a human being, I say, Stop! Here the student of
language has a word to say, and I say that language is something that,
even in its most rudimentary form, puts an impassable barrier between
beast and man.”
Soon after, when I had been asked to give a new course of lectures at
the Royal Institution, I had selected this very point, the barrier which
language forms between man and brute, for my subject, and as Darwin’s
“Descent of Man” was then occupying the thoughts of philosophers, I
promised to give a course of lectures on “Darwin’s Philosophy of
Language.” Entertaining, as I did, a sincere admiration for Darwin, I
felt that it would have been even discourteous to attempt to be
courteous to such a man by passing over in silence what he had said on
language. This kind of courtesy is most offensive to a true man of
science. Otherwise nothing would have been easier than to find
antagonists for my purpose, beginning with Epicurus and ending with Mr.
H. Wedgwood’s “Etymological Dictionary of the English Language” (second
edition, 1872). It so happened that the author of that dictionary was a
friend of Darwin’s, and had easily persuaded him that interjections and
imitations of natural sounds formed the material elements of all human
speech, and that, as certain animals barked, and mocking birds and
parrots imitated sounds which they heard, there seemed to be no reason
whatever why animals in a few millions of years should not have invented
a language of their own. This naturally fell in with Darwin’s own views
and wishes, and though he always spoke with great reserve on the subject
of language, yet he would have been more than human if he had
surrendered his conviction of the descent of man from some kind of
animal on account of this, as his friend had assured him, so easily
removable barrier of language. Given a sufficient number of years, he
thought, and why should not bow-wow and pooh-pooh have evolved into “I
bark” and “I despise”? The fact that no animal had ever evolved such
words could not be denied, but it could be ignored, or explained away by
evidence clearly showing that animals communicated with each other; as
if to communicate were the same as to speak. My object in my lectures
(published at the time in _Longman’s Magazine_) was to show that no such
transition from _pooh-pooh_ to _I despise_ is possible; nay, that even
the first step, the formation of roots, that is, of general concepts out
of single sounds, that is, single percepts, is beyond the power of any
animal, except the human animal. Even now it is only the human baby or
puppy that can learn to imitate human language, and what is the mere
learning of a language, compared with the creation of language, which
was the real task of those human animals that became men? In all the
arguments which I used in support of my theory—a theory no longer
controverted, I believe, by any competent and independent scholar and
thinker—I never used a single disrespectful word about Mr. Darwin. But
for all that I was supposed to have blasphemed, again not by Mr. Darwin
himself, but by those who called themselves his bulldogs. I was actually
suspected of having written that notorious article in _The Quarterly
Review_ which gave such just offence to Darwin. Darwin himself was above
all this, and I have his letter in which he writes, 5th January, 1875:—
I have just read the few first pages of your article in _The
Contemporary Review_, and I hope that you will permit me to say that
neither I, nor my son, ever supposed that you were the author of the
review in the Quarterly. You are about the last man in England to whom
I should have attributed such a review. I know it was written by Mr.
M., and the utterly false and base statements contained in it are
worthy of the man.
But what was better still, Mr. Darwin gave me an opportunity of
discussing the facts and arguments which stood between him and me in a
personal interview. Sir John Lubbock took me to see the old philosopher
at his place, Down, Beckenham, Kent, and there are few episodes in my
life which I value more. I need not describe the simplicity of his
house, and the grandeur of the man who had lived and worked in it for so
many years. Darwin gave me a hearty welcome, showed me his garden and
his flowers, and then took me into his study, and standing leaning
against his desk began to examine me. He said at once that personally he
was quite ignorant of the science of language, and had taken his facts
and opinions chiefly from his friend, Mr. Wedgwood. I had been warned
that Darwin could not carry on a serious discussion for more than about
ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, as it always brought on his
life-long complaint of sickness. I therefore put before him in the
shortest way possible the difficulties which prevented me from accepting
the theory of animals forming a language out of interjections and sounds
of nature. I laid stress on the fact that no animal, except the human
animal, had ever made a step towards generalisation of percepts, and
towards roots, the real elements of all languages, as signs of such
generalised percepts, and I gave him a few illustrations of how our
words for one to ten, for father, mother, sun and moon had really and
historically been evolved. That man thus formed a real anomaly in the
growth of the animal kingdom, as conceived by him, I fully admitted; but
it was impossible for me to ignore facts, and language in its true
meaning has always been to my mind a fact that could not be wiped away
by argument, as little as the Himalayas could be wiped away with a silk
handkerchief even in millions of years. He listened most attentively
without making any objections, but before he shook hands and left me, he
said in the kindest way, “You are a dangerous man.” I ventured to reply,
“There can be no danger in our search for truth,” and he left the room.
He was exactly the man I had imagined, massive in his forehead, kind in
his smile, and hardly bent under the burden of his knowledge or the
burden of his years. I must give one more of his letters, because my
late friend Romanes, who saw it in my album, seems to have entirely
misapprehended its meaning. He saw in it a proof of Mr. Darwin’s
extraordinary humility. I do not deny his humility, it was
extraordinary, and, what is more, it was genuine. All great men know how
little they know in comparison with what they do not know. They are
humble, they do not only wish to appear so. But I see in Darwin’s letter
far more of humour than of humility. I see him chuckling while he wrote
it, and though I value it as a treasure, I never looked upon it as a
trophy.
DOWN, BECKENHAM, KENT,
_15th Oct., 1875_.
MY DEAR SIR,
I am greatly obliged to you for so kindly sending me your essay, which
I am sure will interest me much. With respect to our differences,
though some of your remarks have been rather stinging, they have all
been made so gracefully, I declare that I am like the man in the story
who boasted that he had been soundly horsewhipped by a Duke.
Pray believe me,
Yours very sincerely,
CHARLES DARWIN.
RECOLLECTIONS OF ROYALTIES
I
By royal I do not mean kings and emperors only, or queens and empresses.
I should have very little to tell of them. But royal, as is well known,
has a wider meaning. The families of all reigning sovereigns, whether
grand dukes, dukes, princes, landgraves, electors, etc., are royalty,
nay even certain mediatised families, families that have ceased to be
reigning, and which are very numerous on the continent, claim the same
status, and may therefore intermarry with royal princes and princesses.
Princes and princesses may also marry persons who are not royalty, but
in that case the marriage is morganatic—a perfectly good and legal form
of marriage both from an ecclesiastical and civil point of view, only
that the children of such marriages, though perfectly legitimate, cannot
succeed to the throne: in many cases no great loss to them. It has been
my good fortune to see a good deal of royalty during the whole of my
life. I say good fortune on purpose, for, with all the drawbacks
inherent in Court life, royal persons enjoy some great advantages. Their
position is assured and well defined. It requires no kind of
self-assertion, and wherever they appear, they have no equals, no
rivals, and hardly any enviers. They know that their presence always
gives pleasure, and that every kind word or look from them is highly
appreciated. They seldom have any inducement to try to appear different
from what they are, or to disguise what they think or feel. What is the
use of being a bishop, Stanley used to say, except that you can speak
your own mind! The same applies to crowned heads, and if some of them,
and it may be some bishops also, do not avail themselves of this
privilege, it is surely their own fault. No doubt, if a bishop wants to
become an archbishop, he has to think twice about what he may and what
he may not say. But a king or a prince does not generally want to become
anything else, and as they want nothing from anybody, they are not
likely to scheme, to flatter, or to deceive. Whatever people may say of
the atmosphere of courts and the insincerity of courtiers, the sovereign
himself, if only left to himself, if only seen in his own private
cabinet, is generally above the vitiated atmosphere that pervades his
palace, nor does he, as a rule, while speaking with perfect freedom
himself, dislike perfect freedom in others.
Of course there are differences among royalty as well as among
commonalty. Some sovereigns have become so accustomed to the daily
supply of the very cheapest flattery, that the slightest divergence from
the tone of their courtiers is apt to startle or to offend them. Still
most human beings like fresh air.
And have we not known persons who display their mitres and shake their
crosiers before our faces, far more than kings their crowns and their
sceptres? There is a whole class of people in ordinary life who have
_become_ something, and who seem always to be thanking God that they are
not as other men are. They have ceased to be what they were, quite
unaware that even in becoming something, there ought always to be or to
remain something that becomes or has become. They seem to have been
created afresh when they were created peers, temporal or spiritual.
But we must not be unfair to these new creations or creatures. I have
known bishops, and archbishops too, in England, who, to their friends,
always remained Thirlwalls or Thomsons, and in the second place only
Bishops of St. David’s or Archbishops of York. My friend Arthur Stanley
never became a dean. He was always Stanley; Dean of Westminster, if
necessary. If he had been what he ought to have been, Archbishop of
Canterbury, he would never have ceased to be A. P. Stanley, his chuckle
would always have been just the same, and if his admirers had presented
him with a mitre and crosier, he would probably have put the mitre on
his head sideways, and said to his friends what another bishop is
reported to have said on a similar occasion: “Thank you, my friends, but
a new hat and an alpaca umbrella would have been far more useful than a
mitre and a crosier.” With regard to royal personages, they have the
great advantage that they are to their business born. They have not
become, they were born royal. I was much struck by the extraordinary
power of observation of a French friend of mine, who, when in 1855 the
Queen and the Empress Eugénie entered the Grand Opera at Paris together,
and were received with immense applause, turned to his neighbour, an
Englishman, and said: “Look at the difference between your Queen and our
Empress.” They had both bowed most graciously, and then sat down. “Did
you not observe,” he continued, “how the Empress looked round to see if
there was a chair for her before she sat down. But your Queen, a born
Queen, sat down without looking. She knew a chair _must_ be there, as
surely as she is Queen of England.”
There must be something to hedge a king. While most people have to move
in a crowd, and hold their own even in a mob—and it is difficult to move
with ease when you are hustled and pushed—royal persons are never in a
crowd, and have never to adopt a position of self-defence or
self-assertion. Still there is a difference between royal persons also.
Some of them with all their dignity manage to hide their crown in
everyday life; others seem always conscious that it is there, and that
they must not condescend too low, lest it should tumble from their head.
My first acquaintance with royalty was at Dessau, my native town. Much
has been written to ridicule the small German princes and their small
Courts. And it cannot be denied that the etiquette kept up by the
courtiers, and the nobility, in some of the small capitals of Germany is
ludicrous in the extreme. But there is in the sovereigns themselves an
inherited dignity, a sentiment of _noblesse oblige_, which demands
respect. The reigning Duke of Anhalt-Dessau was to us boys a being by
himself, and no wonder. Though the Duchy was so small that on one
occasion a troublesome political agitator, who had been expelled from
the Duchy, threatened to throw stones and break the Duke’s windows as
soon as he had crossed the frontier, to us children Dessau was our
world. When I was a child, the town of Dessau, the capital of the Duchy,
contained not more than 10,000 or 12,000 inhabitants, but the Duke,
Leopold Friedrich (1817–1871), was really the most independent sovereign
in Europe. He was perfectly irresponsible, a constitution did not exist,
and was never allowed to be mentioned. All appointments were made by the
Duke, all salaries and pensions were paid from the Ducal chest, whatever
existed in the whole Duchy belonged, or seemed to belong, to him. There
was no appeal from him, at least not in practice, whatever it may have
been in theory. If more money was wanted, the Dukes, I believe, had only
to issue a new tax, and the money was forthcoming. And with all that one
never, or hardly ever, heard of any act of injustice. The Duke was rich,
nearly the whole of the Duchy belonged to him, and he had large landed
property elsewhere also. Taxation was low, and during years of war and
distress, taxes were actually remitted by the Dukes. The only public
opinion there was, was represented by the Duke’s own permanent civil
service, and certainly in it tradition was so strong that even the Duke,
independent as he was, would have hesitated before going against it.
But the Duke himself was a splendid example of uprightness, fairness,
and justice. He belonged to one of the oldest reigning families in
Europe. The Hohenzollern, and even the Hohenstaufen, were but of
yesterday compared with the glorious ancestors of the Ascanian princes.
They did not actually claim descent from Ascanius, the son of Aeneas,
nor from Askenas, the grandson of Japhet, though some crazy genealogists
may have done so; but there is no flaw in their pedigree from the
present Duke to Albrecht the Bear, Markgrave of Brandenburg in 1134.
Some people would probably say that he belonged to a _totemistic_ age.
The Duke whom I knew, and who died in 1871, was the eighteenth successor
of this Albrecht the Bear, and though his possessions had been much
reduced in the course of centuries, he knew what was due from him to his
name, and to the blood of his ancestors. He never forgot it. He was a
tall and very handsome man, very quiet, very self-contained,
particularly during the later part of his life, when his increasing
deafness made any free intercourse between him and his friends and
officials extremely difficult. He worked as hard as any of his
ministers, and no wonder, considering that everything, whether important
or not, had finally to be decided by him. As he had been much attached
to my father, and as my grandfather was his president or prime minister,
he took some interest in me when I was a boy at school in Dessau, and I
can remember standing before him and looking up to him in his cabinet
with fear and trembling, although nothing could be kinder than the
handsome tall man with his deep voice and his slowly uttered words; he
seemed to move in an atmosphere of his own, far removed from the life of
his subjects. The ducal castle at Dessau was a grand old building, a
quadrangle open in front, with turrets that held the staircases leading
up to the reception rooms. Some of his ancestors had been highly
cultivated men, who had travelled in Italy, France, and England, and had
collected treasures of art, which were afterwards stored up in the old
Palace (Schloss) at Dessau, and in several beautiful parks in the
neighbourhood that had been laid out a hundred years ago after the model
of English parks. The orange trees (Orangerie) in those parks and
gardens were magnificent, and I do not remember having seen such an
abundance of them anywhere else; but they suddenly began to wither and
die, and even replanting them by their heads and letting the roots grow
as new branches does not seem to have saved them.
The Duke and his highly cultivated Duchess were the little gods of
Dessau. They seemed to live on their own Olympus. Everything depended on
them; everything, such as theatre, concerts, or any public amusements,
had to be provided out of their private purse. No wonder that the people
looked up to them, and that whatever they did was considered right,
whatever they said was repeated as gospel.
Scholars are just now writing learned essays as to whether the idea of
the apotheosis of Augustus came to the Romans from Greece or from Egypt,
or whether it may be a survival of fetishism. It may have had a much
more homely origin, however. To the common people in the villages round
Dessau, I feel sure that the Duke was little short of a god, provided
always that they knew what was meant by a god. He might not have created
the world, even _Divus Augustus_ was not credited with that _tour de
force_; but there was nothing else, I believe, that the peasants would
have thought beyond the power of their Duke. To us children also, the
Duke, the Duchess, and all the members of the Ducal family, were
something quite different from the rest of the world, and some of these
impressions of childhood often remain for life. When their carriage
passed through the streets, everybody stood still, took off his hat, and
remained bareheaded till they had passed. There was nothing servile in
all this, as little as there is in a Frenchman signing himself _Votre
très-obéissant serviteur_, for no one ever thought at that time that it
could be otherwise. Nor am I at all certain that this outward respect
for a sovereign is a mistake, for in honouring their sovereign, people
after all but honour themselves. Whether he is supposed to be a
sovereign by the grace of God, or by hereditary right, or by the voice
of the people, he represents the country and the people; he is their
duke, their king, their emperor, and if they wish to see him honoured by
others, they must not fail to honour him themselves. When I saw the
other day a king passing through the streets of his own capital, and no
one touching his hat, I thought, “What a low opinion these people must
have of themselves.” Even as boys at school we felt a pride in our Duke,
and, though we knew scraps only of the glorious history of his
ancestors, we knew how they had borne the brunt of the battle in all the
greatest episodes of the history of Germany.
Little is said of these numerous small principalities in the history of
Germany, but without them German history would often be quite
unintelligible, and Germany would never have had so intense a vitality,
would never have become what it is now. No doubt there was also an
element of danger in them, particularly during the first half of this
century, when as members of the German Confederation they could band
together and support either Austria or Prussia in their fatal rivalry.
They were the horses, as Bismarck said, harnessed to the chariot of
Germany, some before and some behind, and pulling in different
directions, so that it was impossible to advance. But that danger is
past, thanks chiefly to Bismarck’s policy, and for the future the
smaller principalities that have escaped from his grasp will form the
most useful centres of intellectual life, nor are they likely now to be
absorbed by Prussia, if well advised. There was a time during the
Austro-Prussian war in 1866 when everybody expected that Anhalt, being
almost an enclave of Prussia, would share the fate of Hanover, Nassau,
and the Electorate of Hessia. The reigning Duke had the strongest
sympathies for Austria. But he had a clever minister, who showed him
that there were only two ways open to him under the circumstances,
either to abdicate of his own free will, and make as advantageous an
arrangement with Prussia as possible, or to say yes to whatever demand
was made from Berlin. He chose the latter alternative, and it is
reported that it was of him that Bismarck said: “I know what to do with
my enemies, but what to do with my friends, I don’t.”
I cannot resist the temptation of giving here a short sketch of the
really glorious history of the duchy and the Dukes of Anhalt, such as it
was known to us as boys. Nor should it be supposed that I exaggerate the
importance of my native duchy. I doubt, indeed, whether there is any
reigning house now that can produce such a splendid record as Anhalt. If
it has remained small and lost much of its former political influence,
that is due chiefly to a law of inheritance which prevailed in the ducal
family. Instead of making the eldest son the ruler of the whole duchy,
it was the custom to divide the land among all the princes. Thus instead
of one Duchy of Anhalt there were four duchies, Anhalt-Dessau,
Anhalt-Cöthen, Anhalt-Zerbst, and Anhalt-Bernburg, some of them again
subdivided. From time to time the duchies were reunited, and so they are
at present, the last of the collateral branches having died out in 1863,
when they were united once more into one duchy.
If we go slowly back into the past, and that seems to me the real task
of the historian, we shall find that there is no critical epoch in the
history of Germany, and of the history of the world, where we do not
meet with some of the princes of the small Duchy of Anhalt, standing in
the very front of the fight. I only wonder that no one has yet attempted
to write a popular history of the four principalities of Anhalt, in
order to show the share which they took in the historical development of
Germany. I have tried to refresh my memory by reading a carefully
written manual, “Anhalt’s Geschichte in Wort und Bild,” by Dr. Hermann
Lorenz, 1893, but instead of quoting his opinion, or the opinions of any
historians, as to the personal merits and the historical achievements of
the princes of Anhalt, whether as warriors or as rulers, I shall try to
quote, wherever it is possible, the judgments pronounced on them by some
of their own contemporaries, whose names will carry greater weight.
The beginning of the nineteenth century was dominated by Napoleon’s
invasion and almost annihilation of Germany. Dessau was then ruled by
Prince Leopold Friedrich Franz (1740–1806). He had done an immense
amount to raise both the material and the intellectual status of his
people, and had well earned the name he is still known by, of “Father
Franz.” Many of the princes of that time were far in advance of the
people, and they met, as he did, with considerable difficulty in
overcoming the resistance of those whom they wished to benefit by their
reforms. The young prince of Dessau had travelled in Holland, England,
and Italy. He avoided France, which he said was dangerous to young
princes, and yet he was enlightened enough to erect a monument to
Rousseau in his beautiful park at Wörlitz. He loved England. “In
England,” he used to say, “one becomes a man.” Nor did he travel for
pleasure only. While in England, he studied agriculture, architecture,
gardening, brewing, and various other manufactures, in order to
introduce as many improvements as possible among his own people. In
Italy he studied art, both ancient and modern, under Winckelmann, and
this great antiquarian was so delighted with the young prince and his
companion that he spoke of their visit as the appearance of two young
Greek gods. At that time it was still possible to buy old classical
statues and old Italian pictures, and the young prince gladly availed
himself of his opportunities as far as his financial resources would
allow, and brought home to Dessau many valuable specimens of ancient and
modern art. These he arranged in his various palaces and museums, all
open to the people, and in the beautiful parks and gardens which he had
created after English models in the neighbourhood of his capital. After
a hundred years some of these parks, particularly that of Wörlitz, can
vie with some of the finest parks in England. Like the neighbouring
duchy of Weimar, Dessau soon attracted visitors from all parts of
Germany. Goethe himself and his enlightened patron, the Duke Karl
August, were often the guests of the Duke of Dessau, and Goethe has in
several places spoken in rapturous terms of the beauties of Wörlitz, and
the charm of the Duke’s society. Wieland, Lavater, Matthison, and other
celebrities often passed happy days at Dessau as guests of the Duke.
But after Duke Franz had spent all his life in embellishing his land and
inspiring his subjects with higher and nobler ideals, the Napoleonic
thunder-cloud, which had long threatened Germany, burst over his head,
and threatened to destroy everything that he had planted. After the
battle of Jena in 1806 Prussia and the whole of Germany were at the
mercy of the great French conqueror, and Napoleon, with his army of
100,000 men, who had to be lodged and fed in every town of Germany
through which they passed, appeared at Dessau on 21st October, 1806. The
old Prince had to receive him bareheaded at the foot of the staircase of
his castle. My mother, then a child of six, remembered seeing her own
grand and beautiful prince standing erect before the small and pale
Corsican. The Prince, however, in his meeting with the Emperor, was not
afraid to wear the Prussian order of the Black Eagle on his breast, and
when he was asked by Napoleon whether he too had sent a contingent to
the Prussian army, he said, “No, sir.” “Why not?” asked the Emperor.
“Because I have not been asked,” was the answer. “But if you had been
asked?” continued the Emperor. “Then I should certainly have sent my
soldiers,” the Prince replied; and he added: “Your Majesty knows the
right of the stronger.” This was a not very prudent remark to make, but
the Emperor seems to have liked the outspoken old man. He invited him to
inspect with him the bridge over the Elbe which had been burnt by the
Prussians to cover their retreat. He demanded that it should be rebuilt
at once, and on that condition he promised to grant neutrality to the
duchy. Nay, before leaving Dessau in the morning he went so far as to
ask his host whether he could do anything for him. “For myself,” the
Prince replied, “I want nothing. I only ask for mercy for my people, for
they are all to me like my children.”
The next critical period in the history of Germany is that of Frederick
the Great, marked by the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and the
establishment of Prussia as one of the great Powers of Europe.
Here again we find a prince of Anhalt as one of the principal actors.
The instrument with which Frederick the Great won his victories was his
well-drilled army, and the drill-master of that army had been Leopold,
Fürst zu Anhalt, the Field-Marshal of Frederick’s father. At the head of
his grenadiers and by the side of Prince Eugène, Prince Leopold of
Dessau had won, or helped to win, the great battles of Höchstadt,
Blindheim (corrupted to Blenheim), Turin, and Malplaquet in the War of
the Spanish Succession, and had thus helped in establishing against the
overweening ambition of Louis XIV. what was then called the political
equilibrium of Europe. The Prussian Field-Marshal was known at the time
all over Germany as the “Alte Dessauer,” and through Carlyle’s “Life of
Frederick the Great” his memory has lately been revived in England also.
Having completely reorganised the Prussian army and having led it ever
so many times to brilliant victories, he was for Prussia in his time
what Bismarck was in our own. But after the death of Frederick I. and
Frederick William II., Frederick II., or the Great, disliked the old
general’s tutelage and dismissed him: much as Bismarck has been
dismissed in our own time. The young King wrote to the old Field-Marshal
quite openly: “I shall not be such a fool as to neglect my most
experienced officers, but this campaign (in Silesia) I reserve for
myself lest the world should think that the Prussian King cannot go to
war without his tutor.” His old tutor was very angry, but he did not
rebel, and in a State like Prussia, Frederick the Great was probably as
right as the present Emperor in saying “Let one be King.” However, after
Frederick had once established his own position as a general, he
recalled his old tutor, and in the second Silesian War it was the brave
warrior who stormed the heights of Kesselsdorf at the head of his old
grenadiers, and won one of the most difficult and most decisive
victories for his King. The King after the battle took off his hat
before his tutor and embraced him in the sight of the whole army. The
inscription placed on the Field-Marshal’s monument at Berlin, probably
composed by the King himself, is simple and true: “He led the Prussian
auxiliary forces victoriously to the Rhine, the Danube, and the Po; he
took Stralsund and the island of Rügen. The battle of Kesselsdorf
crowned his military career. The Prussian army owes him its strict
discipline and the improvement of its infantry.” The successors of
Frederick the Great have never forgotten what they owe to the “Alte
Dessauer,” and I doubt not they may be counted on in the future also as
the stoutest friends and supporters of the illustrious house of Albrecht
the Bear, the first Markgrave of Brandenburg.
If stronger testimony to the military genius of the Old Dessauer were
wanted from the mouth of his own contemporaries, it might easily be
quoted from the despatches of Prince Eugène. That great general freely
admits that the Prince’s troops surpassed his own in courage and
discipline; nay, he adds, “the Prince of Dessau has done wonders in the
battle of Turin.” The Emperor of Austria endorsed this judgment, and
added, “that he had earned immortal glory,” and he conferred on him the
title of Serene Highness.
So much for the eighteenth century. If now we look back to the
seventeenth, the century of the Thirty Years’ War, we find Anhalt the
constant trysting-ground of the two parties, the Catholic and the
Protestant Powers, and we see the princes of Anhalt again and again at
the head of the Northern or Protestant armies. The Elbe often divided
the two, and the bridge over the river near Dessau was contested then as
it was during the Napoleonic wars. Well do I remember, when as a boy I
went to the Schanzenhaus, a coffeehouse on the way to the new bridge
over the Elbe, how it was explained to me that these Schanzen or
fortifications were what was left of the works erected by Wallenstein:
just as I learnt at a later time that my own house at Oxford called
_Park’s End_, was so called not because it stood as it does now at the
end of the Park, but because what is now called the Park was originally
the Parks, _i.e._, the parks of artillery erected by Cromwell’s army
against the walls of Oxford. The right name of my house should therefore
have been not Park’s End, but Parks’ End. A more merciless war than the
Thirty Years’ War was seldom waged; villages and whole towns vanished
from the ground, and many tracts of cultivated land, particularly along
the Elbe, were changed into deserts. Yet during all that time the Anhalt
princes never wavered. When the Elector of the Palatinate, Frederick
II., had been proclaimed King in Bohemia in 1619, his commander-in-chief
was Prince Christian of Anhalt. When after years of slaughter Gustavus
Adolphus came to the assistance of the Protestant Powers in Germany and
won the decisive battle of Lützen, one of Prince Christian’s sons,
Prince Ernest, fought at his side and died of his wounds soon after the
battle. The memory of Gustavus Adolphus has been kept alive in Dessau to
the present day. He has become the hero of popular romance, and as a
schoolboy I heard several stories told by the common people of his
adventures during the war. There stands a large red brick house which I
often passed on my way from Dessau to Wörlitz, and which is simply
called Gustavus Adolphus. The story goes that the Swedish king was in
hiding there under a bridge while the enemy’s cavalry passed over it.
One more century back brings us to the time of the Reformation, and once
more among the most prominent champions of the Protestant cause we see
the princes of Anhalt. The very cradle of the Reformation, Wittenberg,
was not far from Dessau, and the reigning family of Anhalt was closely
connected by marriage with the Saxon princes of the house of Wettin, the
chief protectors of the reforming movement in Germany. Prince Wolfgang
of Anhalt was present at the Diet of Worms, in 1521, and again in 1529,
at the Diet of Speier. He openly declared in favour of ecclesiastical
reform, and he extended his patronage to Luther when he came to preach
at Zerbst. This was at that time a most dangerous step to take, but the
young prince was not to be frightened by Pope or Emperor, and at the
Diet of Augsburg he was again one of the first princes to sign the
Augsburg Confession. During the momentous years that followed, the
Anhalt princes were willing, as they declared, to risk life and wealth,
land and throne, for the Gospel. Nor was this a mere phrase, for Prince
Wolfgang, when he found himself surrounded at Bernburg by the Imperial
army, chiefly Spanish, had in good earnest to fly for his life and
remain in hiding for some time. When he was able to return to his duchy,
he devoted his remaining years to repairing, as much as possible, the
ravages of the war, and he then retired into private life of his own
free will, leaving the government to his three cousins, and ending his
days as a simple citizen in the small town of Zerbst. Let me quote once
more the judgment passed on him by the most eminent of his own
contemporaries. Luther and Philip Melanchthon have spoken in no
uncertain tone of the merits of the Anhalt princes during the most
critical period of the Reformation. Of Prince Wolfgang Melanchthon said:
“No one will come again, equal to him in authority among princes, in
love towards churches and schools, in zeal to maintain peace and
concord, and in readiness to give up his life for his faith.” Of Prince
George, called the _Gottselige_, Luther is reported to have declared:
“He is more pious than I am, and if he does not get into heaven, I too
shall certainly have to remain outside.” Nay, even his antagonist, the
Emperor Charles V., confessed that he knew no other person in the whole
of his empire who could be compared in piety or ability to Prince George
of Anhalt. Who knows of him now outside the limits of the Duchy of
Dessau? but it is all the more the duty of his descendants to keep his
memory fresh as one of that small band of men who have done their duty.
So much for the princes of the house of Anhalt during the period of the
Reformation. No other reigning family could produce a brighter
escutcheon during the troubles of the sixteenth century, and we saw how
that escutcheon was preserved bright and brilliant during the centuries
that followed, the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth. If the title
of Grand Duke does not depend on the number of square miles, surely no
family has deserved that title so well as the ducal family of Anhalt.
Beyond the sixteenth century, the history of Germany tells us little of
the private character of the Anhalt princes, but we may look forward to
new information which the Ducal Archives will yield if examined, as they
have been of late by competent historians. Much useful work has been
done during the last twenty-two years by a historical society
established at Dessau. A Codex Anhaltinus has been published and much
light has been thrown on transactions in which some princes of Anhalt
had taken a prominent part. If during the time of the Crusades the names
of the Ascanians are but seldom mentioned, there was a good reason for
it. Bernhard of Clairvaux himself, wise man as he was with all his
fanaticism, had persuaded them to turn their arms against the heathen on
the eastern borders of Germany, rather than against the heathen who had
conquered the Holy Land. Slavonic tribes, particularly the Wends and
Sorbs, who were still heathen, were constantly threatening the eastern
parts of the German Empire, the very ramparts of civilisation and
Christianity, and it was felt to be absolutely necessary to drive them
back, or to induce them to adopt a civilised and Christian mode of life.
In 1134 Albrecht, commonly called Albrecht the Bear, had been invested
by the Emperor Lothar with the Northern Mark, or the Mark Brandenburg,
as his fief, in order to defend it as best he could against these
Slavonic inroads. This Albrecht the Bear is the ancestor of the reigning
Dukes of Anhalt, the present duke being his nineteenth successor. It was
the same Mark Brandenburg which was afterwards to become the cradle of
Prussia and indirectly of the German Empire. Albrecht’s influence was so
great at the time that, after the death of the Emperor Lothar, he
succeeded in carrying the election of the Emperor Konrad III., the
Hohenstaufen, against the Welfic party, who wished to raise the Duke of
Bavaria, Henry the Proud, to the Imperial throne of Germany. The Emperor
rewarded Albrecht’s services by taking the Duchy of Saxony away from the
Welfic Duke of Bavaria, and bestowing it on him. This led to a bloody
war between the two claimants, and ended in the defeat of Albrecht. But
though deprived again of his Saxon fief, Albrecht proved so successful
in his own mark against the Sorbs and Wends that he received the title
of Markgrave of Brandenburg, and as such became one of the Electors of
the German Empire. All those fierce fights against the Slavonic races on
the western frontier of Germany are now well-nigh forgotten, and only
the names of towns and rivers remain to remind us how much of what is
now German soil, between the Elbe and Oder, had for a long time been
occupied by Slavonic tribes, uncivilised and pagan. Albrecht had really
inherited this task of subduing and expelling these enemies from German
soil from his father, Count Otto, who was the grandson of Count Esiko of
Ballenstädt (1050). All these princes and their knights had to spend
their lives in settling and defending the frontiers or marks of Germany,
or of what had been German soil before the southward migrations of the
German tribes began. They held their fiefs from the German Emperors, but
were left free to do whatever they deemed necessary in the defence of
their strongholds (burgs) and settlements. The first of the Saxon
Emperors, Henry I. (919–936), was called the _Burgenbauer_, because he
encouraged all over Germany the building of strongholds which afterwards
grew into villages and towns, and thus led gradually to a more civilised
life in the German Empire. Wherever it was possible churches were built,
bishoprics were founded, monasteries and schools established and
supported by liberal grants of land. A great share in this Eastern
conquest fell to the Counts of Anhalt, and their achievements were
richly rewarded by the great Saxon Emperors, Henry I. and Otto the
Great. There can be no doubt that these bloody crusades of the German
Markgraves against their pagan enemies in the East of Europe, though
less famous, left more lasting and more substantial benefits to Germany
than all the crusades against the Saracens.
I shall carry my historical retrospect no farther, but it may easily be
imagined how this long and glorious history of the princes of the house
of Anhalt made a deep impression on the minds of the young generation,
and how even as boys we felt proud of our Duke. Though the belief in
heredity was not then so strong as it is now—and I must confess that
even now my own belief in acquired excellencies being inherited is very
small—yet standing before our Ascanian[15] Duke, the descendant and
representative of so many glorious ancestors, one felt something like
the awe which one feels when looking at an oak that has weathered many a
storm, and still sends forth every year its rich green foliage. It was a
just pride that made even the schoolboys lift their caps before their
stately Duke and his noble Duchess, and I must confess that something of
that feeling has remained with me for life, and the title of Serene
Highness, which has since been changed to Royal Highness (Hoheit), has
always sounded to my ears not as an empty title or as inferior to Royal
Highness or even Majesty, but as the highest that could be bestowed on
any sovereign, if he had deserved it by high ideals, and by true
serenity of mind in the storms and battles of life.
As to myself, if as a boy I was not quite so much overawed by the
inhabitants of the old stately palace at Dessau as my friends and
schoolfellows, it was due perhaps to their personal kindness to our
family, and likewise to a strange event that happened while I was still
very young. The reigning Duke had three brothers and only one son, and
in the absence of male heirs it was supposed that the duchy would have
gone to Prussia. One of his brothers had married a Countess von Reina,
and their children therefore could not succeed. The other brother was
married to a Hessian princess, and they had no sons. But for that, they
would possibly have succeeded to the throne of Denmark, as it was only
due to the resignation of the elder in favour of her younger sister that
this younger sister, the mother of the Princess of Wales, became Queen
of Denmark, and her husband King. Both the ducal family and the whole
country were anxious, therefore, that the only remaining brother of the
Duke should marry and have children, when suddenly he announced to the
world that he had fallen in love with a young lady at Dessau, a cousin
of mine, and that no power on earth should prevent him from marrying
her. There was a considerable flutter in the dovecotes of the Dessau
nobility; there was also a very just feeling of regret among the people,
who disliked the idea of a possible amalgamation with Prussia.
Everything that could be thought of was done to prevent the marriage,
but after waiting for several years the marriage was celebrated, and my
cousin, as Baronne von Stolzenberg, became the Prince’s (morganatic)
wife, and sister-in-law of the reigning Duke. The Prince was a handsome
man, and extremely good-natured and kind, there was not an atom of pride
in him. They lived very happily together, and after a few years they
were received most cordially even by the old Duke and his relations. In
this way the doings and sayings of the Duke and the ducal court became
less hidden behind the mysterious veil that formerly shrouded Olympus,
and one began to see that its inhabitants were not so very different
after all from other human beings, but that they acted up to their sense
of duty, did a great deal of good work unknown to the world at large,
and were certainly in many respects far more cultivated and far more
attractive than those who were inclined to sneer at the small German
courts, and to agitate for their suppression.
What would Germany have been without her small courts? Without a Duke
Charles Augustus of Weimar, there would probably have been no Wieland,
no Herder, no Goethe, and no Schiller. It is not only plants that want
sunshine, genius also requires light and warmth to bring it out, and the
refining influence of a small court was nowhere so necessary as during
the period of storm and stress in Germany. It cannot be denied that some
of these small courts were hotbeds of corruption of every kind. I
remember how in my younger days the small Duchy of Anhalt-Cöthen, for
instance, suffered extremely from maladministration during the reign of
the last Duke, who died without heirs, and had no scruples in
impoverishing the country, and suppressing all opposition, however
legitimate. He was a sovereign by divine rights, as much as the King of
Prussia, and with the assistance of his ministers he could alienate and
sell whatever he liked. He actually established a public gambling house
on the railway station at Cöthen. In the third Duchy of Anhalt, that of
Anhalt-Bernburg, the reigning Duke was for a time almost out of his
mind, but no one had the power to restrain or to remove him. The
ministers did all they could to prevent any public scandal, but it was
not easy to prevent, if not a revolution—that would have been difficult
on so small a scale—at least a complaint to the German Diet, and that
might have become serious. Many were the stories told of the poor Duke
and believed by the people. Like all court stories they went on growing
and growing, and they were repeated “on the highest authority.” One day,
it was said, the Duke of Bernburg had been reading the history of
Napoleon, how he had decorated a sentinel, and made him an officer on
the field of battle. The Duke, so we are told, carried away by his
enthusiasm, rushed out of his room, embraced the sentinel, fastened some
medal on his breast and said: “Thou art a captain.” The soldier, not
losing his presence of mind, said to the Duke: “I thank your Serene
Highness, but would you please give it me in writing?” The Duke did, and
nothing remained for his ministers but to grant to the private the title
and the pension of a captain, and to let him wear the small medal which
the Duke had given him. I confess I could never come face to face with
the fortunate captain or find out his whereabouts. Still to doubt the
truth of the story would have been considered the extreme of historical
scepticism. Another time the Duke’s enthusiasm was fired by reading an
account of a wild-boar hunt in the neighbouring duchy of Anhalt-Dessau,
which had been attended by a number of princes from all parts of
Germany. He summoned his Prime Minister and told him, “I must have wild
boars in my forests. Turn out a herd of pigs, they will do quite as
well.” This command too had to be obeyed, and the extraordinary part of
it was that in a few years these tame pigs had completely reverted to
their wild state, probably not without some intermarriages with
neighbouring wild boars, and the Duke of Bernburg could invite the Duke
of Dessau and other princes to hunt wild boars in the Hartz mountains,
as well as in the forest of Dessau. Again I cannot vouch for the truth
of the story, but I have been assured by competent authorities that such
a return from the tame to the savage state is by no means incredible.
Very soon after this exploit, however, the ducal race of Bernburg became
extinct, and the three duchies now form a happy union under the old name
of Duchy of Anhalt.
The year 1848 came at last, and everything was changed. There were
_émeutes_ in the streets of Dessau, and when one of my uncles, the
General commanding the ducal army, was telling his men that they would
have to fire on the people, he received a message from some of them to
say that they would willingly fire on anybody outside the town in the
open, but not in the streets, because they might smash their own
fathers’ windows. This respect for window-glass served, however, another
good purpose. When my uncle, in default of a large enough prison, had to
confine a number of people in the Duke’s hothouses, they were as quiet
as lambs, because here too they were afraid of breaking the glass. In
spite of this innate respect for glass and established authority, much
mischief was done at Dessau in 1848. Splendid old oaks in the ducal
forests were cut down, the game was killed by hundreds, and a new
constitution was proclaimed. There was a chamber, I believe there was
even a desire for a House of Peers, if Peers could be found; there were
two responsible ministers, and the Duke had to be satisfied with a Civil
List.
The Duke bore all this with wonderful serenity, but the Duchess died, I
believe, from anxiety and nervous prostration. In 1848 even Dukes and
Duchesses were hustled, and this was more than she could bear. She had
done all that was in her power to make herself useful in her exalted
position, and she deeply felt the ingratitude of those whom she had
helped and befriended in former years, and who had joined the
opposition. She told me herself that she had once to walk out on foot
from her palace with an umbrella, because every one of her four
carriages had been ordered by the Prime Minister, the Second Minister,
the wife of the Prime, and some friend of the Second Minister. This
Second Minister was a young man who had left the University not many
years before, and was practising at Dessau as a lawyer. Of course, there
was great joy among his former University friends; many were invited to
Dessau, and as there was an abundance of old wine in the castle, the
gates of the ducal cellar, so I was informed, were thrown open, and the
thirsty young students soon reduced the store of wine to what they
thought more reasonable dimensions. Some of the Rhenish wines in that
cellar were more than a hundred years old, so old that but a few bottles
were fit for drinking. A thick crust had formed inside the bottles, and
only one or two glasses of wine were left. But what was left was
considered so useful as medicine in certain illnesses that any doctor
was allowed to prescribe and order bottles of it from the ducal cellars.
My uncle, the Commander-in-chief of the small Anhalt army, had been
through all the Napoleonic wars, had marched twice into Paris, and was
such a _Franzosenfresser_, that, fond as he was of wine, he would never
touch French wine, least of all French champagne. He lived to a very
considerable age, he celebrated his silver, his golden, his diamond, and
his iron (sixty-five years) wedding, and danced at his diamond wedding
with his wife and one of the bridesmaids. He was my godfather, and as he
had made the acquaintance of his wife at my christening, he never called
me by any other name but “mein Wohlthäter,” my benefactor. As he had
been at the battle of Jena (1806) with the Emperor William, then a mere
cadet in the Prussian army, and afterwards through many campaigns, the
Emperor treated him to the very end of his life as his personal friend.
Once every year he had to go to Berlin to stay with the Emperor, and
talk over old times. He was about five years older than the Emperor, and
almost the last time he saw him the Emperor said to him: “Well,
Stockmarr, we are both getting old, but as long as you march ahead, I
shall follow.” “Yes, your Majesty,” Stockmarr replied, “and as long as
you are behind to support me, I hope we shall get on and bring our
shares up to par.” “Oh, Stockmarr,” the Emperor replied, “you are not a
courtier. If you knew what the courtiers say to me, you would have said,
‘Oh, your Majesty, your Majesty, your shares will rise to at least 15
per cent. premium.’” General Stockmarr told me the story himself, and it
gave me a new idea of the old Emperor’s humour, and his insight into the
character of his surroundings.
Kind-hearted as the Duke of Dessau was, there were certain things that
he could not stand. As his deafness grew upon him his chief amusement
was shooting and driving about in his open carriage through the
beautiful oak-forests that surround Dessau. There are long avenues
through the old oak-forests like bowers formed by the lower branches of
the trees, so that one can see the deer a mile off. Here the old Duke
was to be seen almost every day. The common people had many endearing
names for him, and when they saw his carriage from a distance they
shouted _Hä Kimmet_, and the whole village was soon gathered to see
their kind old Duke passing. He knew every tree, every stone, every
road. In a wood not far from Dessau there was a large boulder, dropped
there by a passing iceberg long before the time even of Albrecht the
Bear and Count Esiko. One day, as he was passing by, the Duke missed the
stone and drove straight to the next village to find out who had dared
to move it. The Schulze of the village stood trembling before the Duke,
and had to confess that as the road had had to be mended, the village
commune had decided to blast the old useless stone and to break it up
for that purpose. The Duke declared that it was his stone, that they had
no right to touch it, and that they must replace it. That was, of
course, an impossibility, without going back as far as the Glacial
period. But the peasants had to go on searching all over the
neighbourhood till at last they found two similar boulders, not quite so
large as the original stone of offence, still, large enough to cause
them much trouble and expense in transporting them to their village.
This was their punishment, and from it there was no appeal. The two new
stones may now be seen in a public park near Dessau, dedicated to the
memory, one of Bismarck, the other of Moltke.
The sound of the Duke’s carriage was well known, not only in the town,
but, as the people said, even by the deer in the forest. Other carriages
might pass and the deer would not budge, but as soon as the Duke’s
carriage was heard approaching they would all scamper away. The fact was
that no one was allowed to shoot in the large ducal preserves except the
Duke himself. It was a very great favour if he allowed even his brothers
or his best friends to accompany him now and then.
Some of his forests were stocked with wild boars. These animals were
quite tame while they were being fed in winter, but in summer they would
attack the horses of a carriage and become really dangerous. If they
could break out by night, which happened not unfrequently, the peasants
would find next morning whole fields of corn ploughed up, trampled down,
and destroyed. Large damages had to be paid by the Duke, but he never
demurred as long as he was unshackled by his two responsible ministers.
After 1848, however, not only was the amount to be paid for damages
considerably reduced by his ministers, but the Duke was told that this
pig-preserving was a very expensive amusement, and that it might make
him very unpopular. The Duke knew better. He knew the peasants liked his
boars, and still more the ample damages which he paid, but he did not
like the advice of his ministers. So whenever any mischief had been done
by the boars, the peasants ran after his carriage in the forest and told
him how much they had lost. In his good-nature he used to say: “I will
pay it all, let me know how much it is; only do not tell my ministers.”
After a time things settled down again at Dessau, still the old state of
things could never come back. The three duchies of Anhalt-Dessau,
Cöthen, and Bernburg with its beautiful Hartz mountains, when united,
formed a more considerable principality, and it was thought necessary to
have a regular parliament to control its finances, and watch over its
legislation. Everything assumed a grander air; the Duke, who since the
days of the Old Dessauer had been Serene Highness (Durchlaucht), now
became Highness (Hoheit), which is supposed to be a step higher than
Serene Highness (Durchlaucht), though I cannot see how language could
ever produce a finer title than Serene Highness. The railway, which as
the Berlin jokers said, had led to the discovery of Dessau, brought it
at all events close to Berlin, Leipzig, Magdeburg, and the great
Continental net of railways. People from all parts of Germany came to
settle in the quiet, beautiful town on the Mulde; the Elbe had been made
navigable nearly as far as Dessau, and the port near the Walwitzberg
became an important commercial centre for export and import.
Whenever I pay a visit to Dessau I find the town more and more enlarged
and much improved. The old lamps that swung across the streets are gone,
the gurgoyles frown no longer on large red and green umbrellas; there
are gas lamps, and there are waterworks, and cabs, and tramways. The
grass is no longer allowed to grow in the chinks of the pavement. The
old Duke is gone, and the old people whom I knew as a boy are gone too.
The wild boars are still there, but they are no longer allowed to break
out of bounds. Old men and women are still seen sawing wood and cutting
it up in the street, but I do not know their faces, nor the faces of the
old women from whom I bought my apples. I look at every man and woman
that passes me, there is not one whose face or name I know. It is only
when I go to the old cemetery outside the town that old names greet me
again, some very dear to me, others almost forgotten during my
_Wanderjahre_. No doubt the present is better, and the future, let us
trust, will be better still; but the past had its own charms; our
grandfathers were as wise as their sons and grandsons, and possibly they
were happier.
RECOLLECTIONS OF ROYALTIES
II
My first and very pleasant contact with Royalty had taken place at
Dessau, while I was a schoolboy. When afterwards I went to the
University of Berlin, the Duchess of Dessau had given me an introduction
to Alexander von Humboldt, and while I was in Paris, working at the then
Bibliothèque Royale, Humboldt had used his powerful influence with the
King, Frederick William IV., to help me in publishing my edition of the
“Rig Veda” in Germany. Nothing, however, came of that plan; it proved
too costly for any private publisher, even with Royal assistance. But
when, after having published the first volume in England, under the
patronage of the East India Company, I passed some weeks at Berlin, in
1850, collating some of the Vedic MSS. in the Royal Library there, I
received a message from Humboldt that the King wished to see me.
Frederick William IV. was a man of exceptional talent, nay, a man of
genius. I had heard much about him from Bunsen, who was a true friend
and confidant of the King, ever since they had met at Rome. I had seen
some of the King’s letters to Bunsen; some of them, if I remember
rightly, signed, not by the King’s name, but by _Congruentia
Incongruentium_, probably from his imagining that the different opinions
and counsels of his various friends and advisers would find their
solution in him. This idea, if it was entertained by the King, would
account for the many conflicting sides of his character, and the
frequent changes in his opinions. I presented my volume of the “Rig
Veda” to him at a private audience. He knew all about it, and had so
much to tell me about the oldest book of mankind, that I had hardly a
chance to say anything myself. But it was impossible to listen to him
without feeling that one was in the presence of a mind of very
considerable grasp and of high and noble ideals.
A few days after this audience I received an invitation to dine with the
King at Potsdam, and Humboldt wrote to me that he would take me in his
carriage.
But a curious intermezzo happened. While I was quietly sitting in my
room with my mother, a young lieutenant of police entered, and began to
ask a number of extremely silly questions—why I had come to Berlin, when
I meant to return to England, what had kept me so long at Berlin, etc.
After I had fully explained to him that I was collating Sanskrit MSS. at
the Royal Library, he became more peremptory, and informed me that the
police authorities thought that a fortnight must be amply sufficient for
that purpose (how I wished that it had been so), and that they requested
me to leave Berlin in twenty-four hours. I produced my passport,
perfectly _en règle_; I explained that I wanted but another week to
finish my work. It was all of no avail, I was told that I must leave in
twenty-four hours. I then collected my thoughts, and said very quietly
to the young lieutenant, “Please to tell the police authorities that I
shall, of course, obey orders, and leave Berlin at once, but that I must
request them to inform His Majesty the King that I shall not be able to
dine with him to-night at Potsdam.” The poor young man thought I was
laughing at him, but when he saw that I was in earnest he looked
thunderstruck, bowed, and went away. All this seems now almost
incredible even to myself while I am writing it down, but so it was. Nor
was the explanation far to seek. One of my friends, with whom I had been
almost every day, was Dr. Goldstücker, a young Sanskrit scholar, who had
been mixed up with political intrigues, and had long been under strict
surveillance. I was evidently looked upon as an emissary from England,
then considered the focus of all political conspiracies; possibly my
name had been found in the Black Book as a dangerous man, who, when he
was about eighteen, had belonged to a secret society, and had sung
Arndt’s song, “Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland,” before Bismarck sang it
in his own way. It was not long, however, before another police official
appeared, an elderly gentleman of very pleasant manners, who explained
to me how sorry he was that the young lieutenant of police should have
made so foolish a mistake. He begged me entirely to forget what had
happened, as it would seriously injure the young lieutenant’s prospects
if I lodged a complaint against him. I promised to forget, and, at all
events, not to refer to what had happened in the Royal presence.
Humboldt and I drove to Potsdam, and I had a most delightful dinner and
evening party. The King was extremely gracious, full of animated
conversation, and evidently in the best of humours. While the Queen was
speaking to me, he walked up to us, bowed to the Queen, and said to her,
not to me, “S’il vous plait, monsieur.” With this sally he took her arm
and walked into the dining-room. We followed and sat down, and during
the whole dinner the King carried on a conversation in a voice so loud
that no one else ventured to speak. I watched the King, and saw how his
face became more and more flushed, while he hardly touched a drop of
wine during the whole of dinner.
After dinner we all stood, and the King walked about from one to the
other.
Humboldt, who was at that time an old man, about eighty, stood erect for
several hours like all the rest. When we drove home it was very late,
and I could not help remarking on the great sacrifice he was making of
his valuable time in attending these court functions.
“Well,” he said, “the Hohenzollern have been very kind to me, and I know
they like to show this old piece of furniture of theirs. So I go
whenever they want me.” He went on to say how busy he was with his
“Kosmos,” and how he could no longer work so many hours as in former
years. “As I get old,” he said, “I want more sleep, four hours at least.
When I was young,” he continued, “two hours of sleep were quite enough
for me.” I ventured to express my doubts, apologising for differing from
him on any physiological fact. “It is quite a mistake,” he said, “though
it is very widely spread, that we want seven or eight hours of sleep.
When I was your age, I simply lay down on the sofa, turned down my lamp,
and after two hours’ sleep I was as fresh as ever.”
“Then,” I said, “your Excellency’s life has been double the life of
other people, and this accounts for the immense amount of work you have
been able to achieve.” Humboldt was never married and, I was told, had
never been in love. But I did not tell him what was in my mind, that
under such circumstances his life had really been four times that of
ordinary mortals.
“Yes,” he said, “I have had a long span of life to work, but I have also
been very much helped by my friends and colleagues. I know,” he
continued, “I have been abused for not building my own stoves for making
chemical experiments; but a general, in order to make great conquests,
must have colonels, captains, lieutenants, and even privates under him.”
And those who served under him and assisted him had certainly no cause
to regret it. He helped them whenever he could, and his influence at
that time was very great. To be mentioned in a note in his “Kosmos” was
for a scholar what it was for a Greek city to be mentioned in the
catalogue of ships in the “Iliad.” I could not resist telling him in
strict confidence my little adventure with the police lieutenant, and he
was highly amused. I hope he did not tell the King; anyhow, no names
were mentioned and the poor lieutenant of police, who, of course, had
only done what he was told, may, long ago I hope, have become a
president of police, or some “grosses Thier.” When I left Humboldt I
felt I should not see him again, and the old man was moved as much as I
was in saying good-bye. These old heroes had very large and tender
hearts. After all, I was only one out of hundreds of young men in whom
he took an interest, and I happen to know that his interest was not only
in words, but in deeds also. He was by no means what we should call a
rich man, but I know that he sent young Brugsch, afterwards the great
Egyptian scholar, Brugsch Pasha, a handsome sum of money to enable him
to finish his studies at the University of Berlin, though no one at the
time heard anything about it.
I did not see Humboldt again, nor Frederick William IV. Long before this
time it had become clear that King William IV. was not what he imagined
himself to be—the congruence of all the incongruent elements then
fermenting in Prussia and Germany at large. There can be little doubt
that towards the end of his life his mind, or rather his judgment, had
given way. His mind, I believe, remained lively to the very end; but, in
a State like Prussia, the Government without a clear-sighted King is
like a runaway engine without its driver. It may keep to the rails for a
time, but there is sure to be a smash at the end. The King had parted
with one friend after another. His own brother, the Prince of Prussia,
afterwards the first German Emperor, fell into disgrace, and had in the
end to leave the country and take refuge in England. The name by which
he was known in the family was not flattering. He was a soldier,
clear-headed and straightforward. His whole heart was in the army, and
when he afterwards came to the throne, he wisely left everything else to
his responsible ministers, after he had once learnt to trust them. The
army was the pride of his life, and to see that army ordered out of
Berlin, and not allowed to restore order in the streets of the capital,
had nearly broken his heart. He was intensely unpopular in 1848. His own
palace was taken possession of, and, in order to preserve it from
pillage, a large inscription was put on the walls, “National Property.”
I was not in Germany that year, but I heard much from my friends
there—v. Schlœzer, Ernst Curtius, and others—all personal friends of the
Prince and Princess of Prussia. The Prince was not even allowed to
command his own, the Prussian army, in the Schleswig-Holstein war, then
just beginning; and the following letter, written in London, and
addressed to one of his comrades, shows how deeply he felt it:—
Mit welchen Gefühlen habe ich gestern Euren Sieg bei Schleswig
vernommen!!! Gott sei Dank dass unser alter Waffenruhm auch gegen
einen ehrlichen Feind sich bewährt hat! Sage doch Deinen Untergebenen,
wie glücklich ich wäre über diese Siegesnachricht: wie der Geist, der
Euch zum Siege führte, der alte preussische war, der vor nichts
zurückschreckt. Wie beneide ich Dir das Glück, diese Lorbeeren
geerntet zu haben. Du weisst, wie nahe es daran war, dass ich sie mit
Dir hätte theilen können. Wie wären dabei alle meine Wünsche in
Erfüllung gegangen: Truppen meiner beiden lieben Corps geführt zu
haben, im Ernst - Kampfe!—Es sollte nicht sein!—Aber ich kann es nicht
verschmerzen, da die Möglichkeit vorhanden war! Nun, Gott wird es doch
wohl noch einst so fügen, dem wir ja Alles anheim stellen müssen. Wer
kann und muss es wohl mit mehr Resignation als ich! Er prüft mich
schwer, aber mit einem reinen Gewissen erwarte ich den Tag der
Wahrheit, damit ich dem neuen Preussen meine Kräfte widmen kann, wie
dem alten, wenngleich das Herz trauern muss, über den Fall des alten
Preussen, des Selbständigen. Lebe wohl! Gott schütze Dich ferner und
erhalte Dich den Deinen, die sehr besorgt sein müssen. Ich kenne die
Verluste noch nicht, mir bangt etwas vor ihnen.
Ewig Dein treuer Freund,
WILHELM.
LONDON, d. 29. 4. 48.
I was at that time in London, and often with Bunsen at the Prussian
Legation in Carlton House Terrace. There was a constant succession of
couriers bringing letters from Berlin. On one occasion a sub-editor from
_The Times_ office rushed in and said: “Well, another one is gone, the
King of Bavaria!” He did not see that the Bavarian minister, Baron
Cetto, was in the room, and thus received this very informal
notification of his sovereign’s fate. It was known that the King had
remained at his palace, but that the Prince of Prussia had left Berlin.
For several days no one knew where he was. I was quietly sitting on the
sofa with Bunsen (27th March, 1848, 8 A.M.) discussing some question of
Vedic mythology, when a servant came in and whispered something in
Bunsen’s ear. Bunsen rose, took me by the arm and said: “Make haste, run
away.” I did so, and as I ran out of the door I rushed against the
Prince of Prussia. I hardly knew him at first, for he was not in
uniform, and had no moustache. In fact, I saw him as few people have
ever seen him. He stayed in London for many weeks at the Prussian
Legation, where I met him several times, and, honest and hardworking as
he was all through life, he did not waste the time in Bunsen’s house,
nor did Bunsen lose the opportunity of showing the Prince how well a
free and popular form of government could be carried on with due respect
for order and law, and with love and devotion to the throne. This London
episode of the Prince’s life has borne ample fruit in the hey-dey of the
German Empire, and he by whom the seed was sown has but seldom been
remembered, or thanked for the good work he did then for his sovereign
and for his country.
There was no sovereign more constitutional than the King of Prussia at
the beginning of his reign. He surrounded himself with enlightened and
liberal-minded ministers, and never interfered with their work. Having
been brought up to look upon his brother as a great genius, he was very
humble about his own qualifications, and he even thought for a time of
abdicating in favour of his son. This, however, would not have suited
Bismarck’s hand. When the Prince of Prussia came to the throne, he
stipulated one thing only with his ministers: they must give him a free
hand to strengthen the army; for all the rest he would follow their
advice. And so he did for several years. But when they failed to keep
their promise, and to get Parliament to pass the necessary military
budget, he parted with them and invited Bismarck to form a new ministry
in 1862. This was the beginning of the political drama which ended at
Sedan, if indeed it ended then.
I had heard much from my friends Roggenbach, Schlœzer, and E. Curtius
about the Princess of Prussia (afterwards the Queen of Prussia, and the
first German Empress), and my expectations were not deceived when I was
presented to her during her stay in England in the spring of 1851. She
was _grand’ dame_, highly gifted, highly cultivated. She wanted to see
everything and know everybody worth knowing in England. It was she who
went to Eton to see a cricket match played. She had heard much about it,
and was most anxious to watch it. After the game had been going on for a
good quarter of an hour, she turned impatiently to the Provost, and
asked: “When are the boys going to begin?” She had evidently expected
some kind of fight or skirmish, and was rather disappointed at the quiet
and business-like way in which the boys, who were on their best
behaviour, threw the ball and hit it back. However, at that time
everything English, even the games, was perfect in the eyes of the
Germans, and nothing more perfect than the Princess Royal, when she had
been won by the young Prince of Prussia in 1857. The Princess of Prussia
never forgot people whom she had once taken an interest in, and I had
several interesting interviews with her later on—at Coblentz in 1863, at
Baden in 1872. I confess I was somewhat taken aback when, after dinner,
the Empress took me by the hand, and stepped forward, addressing the
whole company present, and giving the ladies and gentlemen a full
account of what this Oxford professor had done for Germany during the
Franco-German war by defending their cause in _The Times_. All I could
reply was that I had done little enough, and that I could not help
saying what I had said in _The Times_, and that I was proud of having
been well abused for having spoken the truth.
Whatever disappointments she may have had in life, she lived long enough
to see the fulfilment of her patriotic dreams; she wore the Imperial
crown of Germany, and she saw in the Crown Prince Frederick the
fulfilment of all that a mother can dream of for her son. One wishes
that she had died a year sooner, so as to be spared the terrible tragedy
of her son’s illness and death in 1888.
That son, our _Princeps juventutis_, had been educated by my friend
Ernst Curtius, and was on most friendly terms with many of my German
friends. I made his acquaintance when he came to Oxford as a very young
man in 1857. He brought George Bunsen and two friends with him, and I
took rooms for them at the Angel Hotel, which stood where the
Examination School, the so-called Chamber of Horrors, now stands. For
several days I took the Prince to all the Colleges and to some of the
lectures, even to one of the public examinations. No one knew him, and
we preserved the strictest _incognito_. He quickly perceived the
advantages of the English university system, particularly of the college
life and the tutorial teaching. But he saw that it would be hopeless to
attempt to introduce that system into Germany. Though at that time
everything English was admired in Germany, he was clear-sighted enough
to see that it is better to learn than simply to copy. The weak point in
the German university system is that, unless an undergraduate is
personally known to a professor, he receives very little guidance. He
generally arrives from school, where he has been under very strict
guidance, without any choice as to what he really wishes to learn. He
then suddenly finds himself independent, and free to choose from an
immense _menu_ (_Index lectionum_) whatever tempts his appetite. Most
German students, when they leave school, have not only a natural
curiosity, but a real thirst for learning. They have also a feeling of
great reverence for the professors, particularly for the most famous
professors in each university. They often select their university in
order to hear the lectures of a certain professor, and if he is moved to
another university they migrate with him. In the strictly professional
faculties of medicine, law, and theology, there is no doubt a certain
routine, and students know by a kind of tradition what lectures they
should attend in each semester. But in the philosophical faculty there
is little, if any, tradition, and looking at my book of lectures,
attested by the various professors at Leipzig, I am perfectly amazed at
the variety of incongruous subjects on which I attended professorial
classes. Unless they were all properly entered and attested in my book I
could not believe that at that time (1840–41), when I was only seventeen
years of age, I had really attended lectures on so many heterogeneous
subjects. In this respect, in preventing waste, the college or tutorial
system has, no doubt, many advantages, but the young Prince saw very
clearly that what is called in Germany academic freedom cannot be
touched, that the universities could not be changed into schools, if for
no other reason, because it would be impossible to find the necessary
funds to inaugurate the college system by the side of the professorial
system. All that could possibly be done would be to establish a closer
relation between professors and undergraduates, to increase, in fact,
the number of seminaries and societies, and to make it obligatory on
each professor to have some personal intercourse with the students who
attend his lectures.
The Prince’s _incognito_ was carefully preserved at Oxford, though it
was not always easy to persuade his attendants not to bow and take off
their hats whenever they met the Prince. The very last day, however, and
just before I asked for the bill at the hotel, one of his A.D.C.’s
forgot himself, bowed very low before the door of the hotel, and stood
bareheaded before the Prince. The hotel-keeper smiled and came to me
with a very knowing look, telling me of the discovery he had made. He
was very proud of his perspicacity; but I am sorry to say that the
discovery had its painful influence on the bill also, which, under the
circumstances, could not be helped.
What struck the Prince most at Oxford was the historical continuity of
the University. I reminded him of the remark which Frederick William IV.
made when at Oxford:—
“Gentlemen,” he said, “in your University everything that is young is
old, everything that is old is young.” “We cannot do everything,” the
Prince used to say, “but we shall do our best in Germany.” Though the
Prince was still very young, he could at times be very serious. There
had actually been rumours, as I have said before, that his father,
always one of the most humble-minded men, would abdicate in favour of
his son, who was very popular, while the father at one time was not, and
the thought that he might soon be called upon to rule the destinies of
Prussia and of Germany was evidently not unfamiliar to him. How
different was his destiny to be! What terrible events had happened
before I saw much of the Prince again; for though I saw him in his own
happy home life at the Neue Palais at Potsdam in 1863, it was not until
after the Prusso-Austrian and Franco-German wars that I had again some
real personal intercourse with the Prince at Ems in the year 1871. He
had sent me a very kind letter immediately after his return to Berlin
from Paris. Even Bismarck had sent me a message through his private
secretary that he was proud of his new ally. I had defended the policy
of the German Emperor in _The Times_, simply because I could not keep
silent when the policy of Germany was misrepresented to the people of
England.
Here is the Prince’s letter, which I received in May, 1871:—
BERLIN, _Mai 1871_.
Ich habe mit aufrichtigem Danke und ganz besonderem Interesse Ihre
“Letters on the War” entgegengenommen, welche Sie die Freundlichkeit
hatten, mir zu übersenden.
Mit der einmüthigen Hingebung unseres Volkes während der grossen Zeit
die wir durchkämpft, steht im schönsten Einklang die patriotische
Haltung welche unsere deutschen Brüder, oft unter den schwierigsten
Verhältnissen und mit Opfer aller Art bewährt und durch die sie sich
für immer einen Anspruch auf die Dankbarkeit des Vaterlandes erworben
haben.
Dass die Erfahrungen, welche die Deutschen in England während unseres
ruhmvollen Krieges gemacht, nicht immer erfreulich waren, ist mir
freilich bekannt, Gründe der verschiedensten Art kamen zusammen um
eine Verstimmung zu erzeugen, die hüben und drüben von allen
einsichtigen und patriotischen Männern gleich schmerzlich empfunden
ist.
Meine feste und zuversichtliche Hoffnung bleibt es aber dass dieselbe
bald jenem herzlichen Einvernehmen wieder Platz machen wird, welches
die Natur unserer gegenseitigen Beziehungen und Interessen verlangt.
Dieses Ziel wollen wir verfolgen, unbeirrt durch Aufregungen und
Eindrücke des Augenblicks, überzeugt, dass es für das Gedeihen beider
Länder ebenso heilsam wie für den Frieden Europa’s unerlässlich ist.
Sie haben Ihrerseits niemals aufgehört in diesem Geiste thätig zu sein
und es ist mir deshalb Bedürfniss, Ihnen meine dankbare Anerkennung
für Ihr erfolgreiches Wirken hierdurch auszusprechen.
Ihr wohlgeneigter
FRIEDRICH WILHELM.
At Ems the Prince was the popular hero of the day, and wherever he
showed himself he was enthusiastically greeted by the people. He sent me
word that he wished to see me. When I arrived the antechambers were
crowded with Highnesses, Excellencies, Generals, all covered with stars
and ribands. I gave my card to an A. D. C. as simple Max Müller, and was
told that I must wait, but I soon saw there was not the slightest chance
of my having an audience that morning. I had no uniform, no order, no
title. From time to time an officer called the name of Prince So-and-So,
Count So-and-So, and people became very impatient. Suddenly the Prince
himself opened the door, and called out in a loud voice, “Maximiliane,
Maximiliane, kommen Sie herein!”
There was consternation in the crowd as I walked through, but I had a
most pleasant half-hour with the Prince. Once when I began to bubble
over and tried to express, as well as I could, my admiration for his
splendid achievements in the war, he turned away rather angrily, and
said, “Na, sind Sie denn auch unter die Schmeichler gegangen!” I wrote a
sonnet at the time, which I find among my old papers:—
IN EMS AM 19. JULI 1871.
DEM KRONPRINZEN VON DEUTSCHLAND.
Wie jungen Most von altem Holz umschlungen
Fühlt ich mein Blut, das sich im Herzen rührte,
Als es den Druck der Heldenhand verspürte,
Die Deutschlands Schwert so ritterlich geschwungen.
Oft hört ich’s schon gesagt und auch gesungen,
Wie Dich dein Stern von Sieg zu Siege führte,
Doch fühlt ich nie, wie sich’s für Dich gebührte,
Das Herz so ganz von Lieb und Stolz durchdrungen.
Einst sah ich in der Jugend schönen Hüllung
In Dir die Zukunft Deutschlands sich entfalten,
Die neue Zeit erstehen aus der alten:—
Heut stand vor mir die herrlichste Erfüllung—
Ein deutscher Fürst, das Aug’ vol Treu und Adel,
Ein ganzer Mann, Held ohne Furcht und Tadel.
This was followed by another sonnet at the time of his death:—
DEM KAISER FRIEDRICH—1888.
Wir warteten im Stillen lange Jahre,
Und nimmer wankte unsres Herzens Glaube;
Wir sah’n im dunklen Grün die reiche Traube,
Und wussten, welchen Saft sie uns bewahre.
Und jetzt! O klaget nicht an seiner Bahre,
Wenn auch der Leib zerfällt zum Erdenstaube,
Nie werde das dem blinden Tod zum Raube,
Was er gewollt das Hohe, Schöne, Wahre!
Dem edlen Geiste woll’n wir Treue halten,
In stillem Dulden wie in kühnem Wagen;
Wir ehren ihn durch Thaten, nicht durch Klagen,
Und lassen unsre Liebe nie erkalten:
Was wir verloren, kann kein Blick ermessen,
Was wir gehabt, das bleibe unvergessen.
The old Emperor was at Ems at the same time, and so was the Emperor
Alexander of Russia. It was a surprise to me to see these two Emperors
walking together in the crowd, and fetching their glass of water at the
spring, apparently without any protection. The people did not much crowd
round them, but neither were they kept back by the police officers. I
asked one of the higher officials how they managed to keep out any
dangerous Poles or Frenchmen, who might have shot the two Emperors with
a double-barrelled pistol at any moment. The place was swarming with
people of every nationality; but he said that there was no one at Ems
who was not known. I confess it was a riddle to me. The good old
Emperor, who had heard of my presence, asked me to dine, and he also
thanked me for my advocacy of Germany in _The Times_. What a change
since I ran against him in Bunsen’s room! Abeken, who during the war had
been Bismarck’s right hand, was there, and I learnt from him that the
famous Ems telegram had been written by him, though, of course, inspired
and approved of by Bismarck. This is now well known, and has become
ancient history. Great as was the enthusiasm at Ems, it was
heart-breaking to see the invalided soldiers, looking young and
vigorous, but without arms or legs, their only wish being to catch a
glimpse of the Emperor or the Crown Prince. Some of them had been
blinded in the war; others walked about on crutches, some with both arms
cut off, and using iron forks instead of hands and fingers. All was done
that could be done for them, and the Emperor and the Crown Prince shook
hands with as many of them, officers or privates, as they could. The
Crown Prince had sent me word that he wished to see me once more; but
his surroundings evidently thought that I had been favoured quite
enough, and our meeting again was cleverly prevented. No doubt princes
must be protected against intruders, but should they be thwarted in
their own wishes? I had another happy glimpse, however, of the Crown
Prince in his family circle, in 1876.
In the year 1879 the Crown Prince came once more to Oxford, this time
with his young son, the present German Emperor, and accompanied by the
Prince of Wales. He had not forgotten his former visit, when he was not
much older than his son was then, and he reminded me of what had
happened to us in the Examination Schools on his former visit. The
Prince had preserved the strictest _incognito_, but when we entered the
schools his appearance, and that of several foreign-looking gentlemen,
had attracted some attention. However, we sat down and listened to the
examination. It was in Divinity, and one of the young men had to
translate a chapter in the Gospel of St. John. He translated very badly,
and the Prince, not accustomed to the English pronunciation of Greek,
could not follow. Suddenly there was a burst of laughter. The Prince did
not perceive that it was due to a really atrocious mistranslation. He
turned to me and said: “Let us go; they are laughing at us.” When we
were outside I explained to him what had happened; but it was really so
bad that I must not repeat it here. The passage was St. John, iv., 9:
Λέγει οὔν αὐτῷ ἡ γυνὴ ἡ Σαμαρειτῖς.
The young Prince, the present Emperor, who was with his father, was very
much pleased with what he saw of Oxford, of the river, and of the life
of the young men. He would have liked to spend a term or two at Oxford,
but there were objections. Fears of English influence had begun to show
themselves at Berlin. Several young ladies tried their powers of
persuasion on the young Prince, who told me at the time, in true
academic German, “In all my life I have not been canvassed so much” (In
meinem Leben bin ich noch nicht so gekeilt worden).
It is well known how warm an interest the young Prince, now the German
Emperor, has always taken in the success of Oxford, and for how many
years he has always sent his congratulations by telegram to the
successful, and now almost charmed, Oxford crew.
When the Crown Prince with his son and the Prince of Wales honoured my
College (All Souls’) with their presence at luncheon, I remember
presenting to them three tumblers of the old ale that is brewed in the
College, and is supposed to be the best in the University, very
drinkable (süffig), but very strong. One year when several men from
Cambridge were passing their long vacation at Oxford (one of them was
Lightfoot, afterwards Bishop of Durham, another Augustus Vansittart),
they were made free of all the common-rooms at Oxford, and constituted
examiners of the beers brewed in the different Colleges. All Souls’ came
out at the head of the tripos, but there was to be a new examination in
the year following, and competitors were invited to send their essays to
F. M. M., Professor of Comparative Palaeontology, at All Souls’. I took
a tumbler of the old ale myself and drank to the health of “The three
Emperors.” The Crown Prince did not see what I meant, and asked again
and again, “But how so (Wie so)?” “The future German Emperor,” I said,
“the future Emperor of India (the Prince of Wales), and, in the very
distant future, the third Emperor of Germany.” The Crown Prince smiled,
but an expression of seriousness or displeasure passed over his face,
showing me that I touched a sensitive nerve. The Crown Prince was a
curious mixture. In his intercourse with his friends he liked to forget
that he was a Prince, he spoke most freely and unguardedly, and enjoyed
a good laugh about a good joke. He allowed his friends to do the same,
but suddenly, if any of his friends made a remark that did not quite
please him, he drew back, and it took him some time to recover himself.
He was a noble and loyal nature. He knew Bismarck, he knew his strong,
and he knew his very weak, and more than weak, points; but such was his
gratitude for what the old statesman had done for Prussia and Germany
that he never said an unkind word against him. I believe he would never
have parted with him, though he was quite aware of the danger of a
_major domus_ in the kingdom of Frederick the Great. History will have
much to say about those years, and will teach us once more the old
lesson—how small the great ones of the earth can be.
Once more I met the Prince at Venice, when he was enjoying himself with
the Crown Princess and some of his daughters. He was then incognito, and
he had the best cicerone in his learned and charming wife. They worked
hard together from morning till evening. At last the people of Venice
found out who he was, and crowded round him to that extent that he had
to take refuge in the royal palace. What struck me at the time was a
sadness and far greater reticence in the Prince. Still, at times, the
old joyous smile broke out, as if he had forgotten how serious life had
become to him.
Again some years passed. The accounts of the old Emperor’s health showed
that his end was drawing near, but at the same time began the
disquieting rumors about the Crown Prince’s health. The Prince sent for
me shortly after his arrival in London, where he had come for the
Queen’s Jubilee, 1887. He looked as grand as ever, and in his eyes there
was the same light and life and love, but his voice had become almost a
whisper. Nevertheless, he spoke hopefully, almost confidently, and went
through all the festivities like a hero. Who will ever forget him on
horseback in the white uniform of the Prussian Cuirassiers, in the midst
of the sons and sons-in-law of the Queen? I saw him once more at
Windsor, the day before he left for Germany. In the evening, after
dinner, he walked up to me and spoke to me for a long time. His voice
had regained its timbre, and I felt convinced like himself that the
downward course of his malady was over, and that the uphill work was now
to begin.
After he had spoken to me for nearly half an hour, one of his
aides-de-camp came up to him, and said: “Not another word, your Royal
Highness.” He shook my hand: I looked up to him full of hope; it was for
the last time. He himself, I believe, retained his hopefulness to the
very end. The Greeks said: “Those whom the gods love die young.” When
the Prince Consort died, and when the Emperor Frederick died, one felt
inclined to say: “Those whom all men love die young.” Five reigns have
thus passed before my eyes, those of Frederick William III., 17971840;
Frederick William IV., 1840–1861; Wilhelm I., 1861–1888; Frederick III.,
1888; Wilhelm II., 1888; and if there is one lesson which their history
teaches us, and which everybody should take to heart, it is that the
wonderful work which they have achieved is due to the hard work, the
determined purpose, and the persevering industry of these sovereigns. I
did not know much of the personal work of Frederick William III., but,
beginning with Frederick William IV. to the present Emperor, I have had
occasional glimpses of their private life, enough to show that none of
these men looked upon his place in life as a sinecure. In no case was
their throne an easy chair. Their bed was in very truth a bed of iron,
not a bed of roses. These sovereigns have been at work day and night;
they have shared not only in the triumphs, but in the privations and
sufferings of their army. I shall never forget, when I was at Ems in
1871, passing the house where the old Emperor resided; and there in the
first storey, behind a green curtain, one could clearly see him standing
at his desk, with a lamp by his side, reading and signing despatches,
while everybody else enjoyed the cool air of the evening, nay, long
after most people had gone to bed. The Emperor Frederick, before he was
Emperor, was unhappy about one thing only, that he had not work enough
to do, and if there is a sovereign indefatigable in the service of his
country it is surely the present King of Prussia, the German Emperor. I
must say no more, for I have made it a rule in these Recollections not
to say anything about living persons, least of all royalties. Besides,
through all my life I have tried to follow the rule that Ruskin lays
down for himself: “In every person who comes near you look for what is
good and strong; honour that; rejoice in it, and, as you can, try to
imitate it.”
Though I did not see much of Prince Albert—I am thinking of the time
when he was still called Prince Albert, and not yet the Prince Consort—I
heard much about him, partly from Bunsen, who admired him greatly,
partly through one of his private secretaries, my old friend Dr. Karl
Meyer.[16] By this time the world knows not only the nobility of the
Prince’s character, but the strength of his intellect, his unceasing
industry, and his loyal devotion to his queen and country. But there was
a time when those who knew him felt indignant, nay, furious, at the
treatment which he received in England. It would be well if that page
could be torn out of the history of England, and as she who suffered
most has long forgiven, if not forgotten, who has a right to _renovare
dolores_? Apart from all personal considerations, it seemed a most
extraordinary hallucination to imagine that he who was the consort of
the Queen should exercise no influence on his wife. Human nature after
all is superior even to the English constitution. One can imagine a
political philosopher indulging in so Utopian a theory as a marriage
without influence, but that practical men, men of the world, men of
common sense, should have imagined such a possibility—that English
statesmen should have imagined that a wife, because she was a Queen,
would never be influenced by her husband, will hardly sound credible to
future historians. I remember only one analogous case. When Lord John
Russell was proposed as Secretary for Foreign Affairs, several members
of the Cabinet objected, fearing Lady Russell’s influence, and pointing
out the danger of Cabinet secrets oozing out through her indiscretion.
Lord Palmerston listened for a long time, and then turned to his
colleagues and said: “Well, I see one remedy only—one of us must always
sleep with them.” When he saw blank consternation on the faces of his
colleagues, “Well, well,” he said, “we shall take it by turns.” At a
time when it was fully believed that Prince Albert had been taken to the
Tower for high treason, no wonder that even a young German student who
spent his days in the Bodleian Library should have been attacked as a
spy. It was a passing madness, and the wonder is that it passed without
more serious consequences.
Prince Albert took a most lively interest in a scheme which I had
strongly advocated in _The Times_ and elsewhere, namely, that there
should be a school of Oriental languages in England, as in every other
country that has political and commercial relations with the East. I
pointed out that for years France had maintained its _École des Langues
Orientales vivantes_; that Austria had its Oriental School for the
diplomatic service and for the education of official interpreters; that,
long before the Afghan disaster, there was a professor teaching the
Afghan language in the University of St. Petersburg (and, I may add now,
that Prussia has a flourishing Oriental seminary in which even African
languages are taught by professors and native teachers); but no one
would listen to me except Prince Albert. The different offices, Foreign
Office, Horse Guards, Colonial Office, etc., declared that interpreters
could always be had, and that the best way to secure their fidelity was
to pay them well. That others might pay them better seemed never to have
entered their minds. Prince Albert saw clearly the disadvantage under
which England was labouring, nay, the danger that threatened her trade
and her general influence in the East. He spoke to Lord Granville, and
Lord Granville wrote to me to make further proposals. This I did; but
beyond that I decided I would not go, for such was the feeling at that
time, that the name of Prince Albert and my own, as that of a German
scholar, would have been sufficient to wreck the whole scheme. I
remember writing at the time to Prince Albert that we must wait till
“Her Majesty, Public Opinion, became more favourable.” In the meantime,
to speak of commercial interests only, how much has England lost by her
unwillingness to incur an expense which other countries have readily
incurred, which the people of England have a right to demand, and which
would not have amounted to anything like the cost of a single
man-of-war! The Prince of Wales took the same warm interest in the
foundation of an Oriental school in London, as may be seen from the
speech he delivered at the Royal Institution in 1890, when the scheme of
a school of Oriental languages was taken up by the Imperial Institute,
but even his persuasive eloquence has hitherto proved ineffectual to
realise a wish that was so near his father’s heart, and of such enormous
importance to English interests in the East.
As I think it right to abstain from recording my recollections of royal
persons still alive, I must say nothing of the stay of the young Prince
of Wales at Oxford; but, among the many things which I treasure in my
memory, I may at least produce one small treasure, a sixpence, which I
won from His Royal Highness at whist. I have always been a very bad
whist player, but good luck would have it that I won a sixpence at
Frewen Hall, the Prince’s residence at Oxford. The Prince maintained
that I had calculated my points wrongly, but not being a courtier, I
held my own, and actually appealed to General Bruce. When he decided in
my favour, the Prince graciously handed me my sixpence, which I have
kept ever since among my treasures. I may speak more fully of Prince
Leopold, the late Duke of Albany, a deeply interesting character of whom
much was expected, and in whom much has been lost. He was often a great
sufferer while at Oxford, but when he was well, no one was so well as he
was, no one looked more brilliant or more vigorous. His little dinner
parties were charming. His tutor, Mr. (now Sir) R. Collins, knew how to
collect his guests, and the Prince was the most excellent host. Whenever
I had some distinguished man staying with me, a note was sure to come
from the Prince, asking whether he might invite Emerson or Froude, or
whoever it might be, and I well remember his adding: “You may tell Mr.
Froude that I have read the whole of his ‘History.’” And so he had.
Being often confined to his bed he had read a great deal, and was read
to by his devoted tutor, Sir R. Collins. How many fond hopes centred in
that life, and how anxious many of the best men that Oxford has produced
were to inspire him with a love each of his own subject. Sanskrit, I
soon perceived, had no chance. But for a time astronomy was in the
ascendant, then history, then art. But there was always the danger to be
guarded against of the young student becoming too much absorbed in any
one subject, and losing that general sympathy with learning and art
which is so desirable in a Prince. The Prince had a quick eye for small
weaknesses, but his kindness was likewise extreme. I so well remember
sitting by him at dinner, and enjoying the most exquisite real
Johannisberger from the royal cellar. Prince Metternich used to send
every year some of the best of his _crue_ to the royalties represented
at the Congress of Vienna, having received Johannisberg from that
Congress. Prince Leopold knew how to appreciate the wines sent him from
the royal cellar. “They like port better at Oxford,” he said to me, “but
we shall keep to the _Rheinwein_.” It was really a quite exceptional
wine, the aroma of it being perceptible even at the dinner-table. I
quoted some of my father’s drinking songs, “Das Essen, nicht das
Trinken, bracht’ uns um’s Paradies,” etc. Many delightful evenings were
thus spent in the Prince’s drawing-room. I often played _à quatre mains_
with him, fearing only to touch and hurt his fingers, which was always
most painful to him. But to return to the Johannisberger. Long after the
Prince had settled at Boyton, I was staying with him, and at dinner he
said: “Now we must drink the health of the Princess of Wales; it is her
birthday. I have one bottle left of the Oxford Rheinwein. I kept it for
you. It has travelled about with me from place to place; but there will
be no more of it, it is the last bottle.”
Once more the Prince was most kind to me under most trying
circumstances. I was to dine at Windsor, and when I arrived my
portmanteau was lost. I telegraphed and telegraphed, and at last the
portmanteau was found at Oxford station, but there was no train to
arrive at Windsor before 8.30. Prince Leopold, who was staying at
Windsor, and to whom I went in my distress, took the matter in a most
serious spirit. I thought I might send an excuse to say that I had had
an accident and could not appear at table; but he said: “No, that is
impossible. If the Queen asks you to dinner, you must be there.” He then
sent all round the Castle to fit me out. Everybody seemed to have
contributed some article of clothing—coat, waistcoat, tie, shorts, shoes
and buckles. I looked a perfect guy, and I declared that I could not
possibly appear before the Queen in that attire. I was actually penning
a note when the 8.30 train arrived, and with it my luggage, which I tore
open, dressed in a few minutes, and appeared at dinner as if nothing had
happened.
Fortunately the Queen, who had been paying a visit, came in very late.
Whether she had heard of my misfortunes I do not know. But I was very
much impressed when I saw how, with all the devotion that the Prince
felt for his mother, there was this feeling of respect, nay, almost of
awe, that made it seem impossible for him to tell his own mother that I
was prevented by an accident from obeying her command and appearing at
dinner.
Oxford is an excellent place for seeing illustrious visitors from all
parts of the world. It is the cynosure of all Americans, and it is
strange to see how many travellers know all about the beauties of
Oxford, and seem often to be quite unaware of the similar, nay, in
some respects greater, beauties of Cambridge. There is only one
drawback. Most travellers come to Oxford during the Long Vacation, and
during the Long Vacation most professors naturally go away. In that
way I have missed seeing some people whose acquaintance I should have
highly valued. I thus lost the pleasure of showing the late Emperor of
Brazil the historical sights of Oxford, being absent when he passed
through. He saw everything in a marvellously short time, but then he
was up sight-seeing at five in the morning. However, I made his
acquaintance afterwards in Switzerland. We were staying at an
out-of-the-way place at Gimmelwald, and one day about five in the
morning there was a loud knock at my bedroom door. The whole wooden
cottage trembled. When I got up to see what was the matter, I saw my
friend Mr. Ralston, standing breathless on the staircase and saying,
“The Emperor of Brazil wants to see you. He is staying at Interlaken,
and has persuaded the Empress to stay another day to see you. But you
must get up at once and take a carriage and drive to Interlaken.” I
did so, and was with the Emperor and Empress soon after breakfast. The
Empress and the gentlemen-in-waiting were not in the best of humours
on account of this unexpected delay in their journey. We had a long
and undisturbed talk in a private room. I was sorry the Emperor would
speak French, though, having been at school in Switzerland, he spoke
German quite as well. He was full of questions about Sanskrit
literature and the Vedic religion. I was amazed at his knowledge, for
he had actually begun to study Sanskrit, and was fully aware of all
the difficulties that had to be met before we could hope to gain an
insight into the heart of the ancient religion of the Vedic Rishis. He
had a young German with him who acted as his tutor in Sanskrit, and
likewise in Hebrew. It was very pleasant to be examined by a man who
really knew what questions to ask, and who was bent on finding out by
himself what the “Rig Veda,” the most ancient of all the books in the
world, really contained. Like many others he seemed to expect too
much, and I had to tell him he must not be disappointed, and that,
though the Veda was certainly the oldest book in the proper sense of
that word, which had been preserved to us in an almost miraculous
manner, still it bore already traces of a long growth, nay, even of a
long decay of religious thought. If the Vedic poets were different
from what we expected them to be, it was our fault, not theirs. They
showed us what the world was like in the second millennium B.C., and
if we thought that there was in that millennium much that sounds
childish and absurd to us, it was well that we should know that fact,
and talk no longer of the mysterious or esoteric wisdom of the East.
Like most students, the Emperor wished to know the exact date of the
Veda, and I did not find it easy to explain to him that where we have
no contemporaneous history we cannot expect an exact chronology. If
some scholars placed the Veda 5000 or 10,000 B.C., we should find it
difficult to refute them, but we should gain nothing, it would be like
one of the distant dates in Egyptian and Babylonian chronology, a mere
point _in vacuo_. He was surprised when I confessed to him that even
the low date of about 1200 B.C., which I had fixed upon, seemed to me
too high rather than too low, and that I should feel it a relief if
anybody could establish a lower date for at least some of the Vedic
hymns. I think the Emperor saw that in spite of this inevitable
uncertainty, the “Rig Veda” would always maintain its unique position
in the history of religion, nay, of literature, being without an equal
anywhere, and allowing us an insight into the growth of thought, such
as we find in no other literature. Whatever the antecedents of the
Vedic religion may have been, however rudely its original features may
have been effaced even before the beginning of the Brâhmana period, we
can still see here and there in the Veda some germ ideas, some
thoughts requiring no antecedents, and in that sense primitive, more
primitive even than the thoughts of Egypt, Babylon, and Nineveh,
whatever their merely chronological antiquity may have been. I do not
know how it happened—that from discussing the ancient names of metals
and the relative value of gold and silver, as fixed, we do not know
how, in Egypt, Babylon, and afterwards in Greece, in Italy, and the
rest of the civilised world at about 1 to 15—our conversation drifted
away into financial questions. Here I must have been betrayed into
uttering some financial heresy, possibly savouring of bimetallism, for
I well remember the Emperor becoming rather impatient and saying: “I
know all about that, and have studied the question for many years. Let
us return to the Veda.”
After a very pleasant luncheon we parted, and soon after the Emperor
lost his crown, as some would have it, because he had given too much
thought and time to his studies instead of keeping in touch with the
leaders of the different parties around his throne. However that may be,
Brazil has not been long before regretting her learned Emperor. I heard
afterwards that to the very end of his reign, and even when in exile,
the Emperor kept his tutor and carried on his studies in Sanskrit and
Hebrew. When at Stockholm in 1889, attending the International Oriental
Congress, under the auspices of the King of Sweden, I received a letter
from the Emperor of Brazil giving an account of his Sanskrit studies. I
showed the letter to the King of Sweden, Oscar II., himself a man
extremely well informed on Eastern literature, and full of the warmest
sympathy for Oriental scholars and scholarship. He read the letter and
sighed. “I have no leisure for Sanskrit,” he said. “The happy Emperor of
Brazil has but one people to govern, I have two.”
I might go on for a long time with my royal recollections, but it is, of
course, impossible to do so when living persons are concerned. Most of
the royal persons with whom I was brought into contact were eminent
among their peers, but were I to say what I think of them, I should at
once be called ugly names—courtier, flatterer, etc. Such things cannot
be helped, and the only excuse I could, perhaps, plead as a
_circonstance atténuante_ would be the reverence I imbibed with my
mother’s milk for my own Duke and my own Duchess of Anhalt-Dessau.
There is only one more sovereign about whom I may say a few words, the
late Queen of Holland, highly gifted as she was, and most charming in
society. She frequently came to England; according to the newspapers, as
a friend and advocate of the Emperor Napoleon. She was far too wise,
however, to attempt to play such a part at the English court. But that
she was much admired and won the hearts of many people in London is
certainly true. She came to lunch with Stanley at the Deanery. She had
asked him to invite a number of literary men—Tennyson, Monckton Milnes
(Lord Houghton), Huxley, and several more. We were waiting and waiting,
but Tennyson did not appear. Stanley suggested that we should not wait
any longer, but the Queen refused to sit down before the great poet’s
arrival. At last it was suggested that Tennyson might be mooning about
in the Cloisters, and so he was. He was caught, and was placed next to
the Queen. The Queen knew wonderfully how to hide her Crown, and put
everybody at their ease. She took the conversation into her own hands,
and kept the ball rolling during the whole luncheon. But she got nothing
out of Tennyson. He was evidently in low spirits, and, sitting next to
him, I could hear how to every question the Queen addressed to him he
answered, “Yes, Ma’am,” “No, Ma’am,” and at last, by a great effort,
“Ma’am, there is a good deal to be said on both sides of the question.”
He then turned to me and said in a whisper, but a loud whisper: “I wish
they had put some of you talking fellows next to Regina.”
While I am finishing these “Recollections of Royalties,” and sending the
proof sheets to press, the last echoes of the greatest triumph that has
ever been granted to royalty, which has ever been celebrated by royalty,
are vanishing from our ears. May those royal recollections never vanish
from our memories! We need not, nay, we cannot exaggerate their
importance. Magnificent as the pageant has been of the Diamond Jubilee
of the Queen of England, what was invisible in it was far greater than
what was so brilliantly visible in the royal procession passing through
the crowded streets of London. Has there ever been an empire like the
British, not excluding the Babylonian, the Persian, the Macedonian, or
the Roman empires? Sixty years of one reign is not a mere numerical
expression; no, it means permanent vitality, unbroken continuity,
sustained strength and vigour, such as, I believe, have never been
witnessed in any reign during the whole history of the world.
And England is not only the greatest, it is also the freest, country in
the world, so free that even republics may well envy it its fresh and
pure air; and yet was there ever among the vast masses, rich and poor, a
more universal outburst of hearty loyalty to the Throne, of personal
love of the sovereign, than in the days of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee?
It was said early in her reign by a royal and loyal thinker that
constitutional government was then on its trial in England. So it was,
but it has come out triumphant, and stronger than ever. Constitutional
government under a royal protector will henceforth be recognised as the
most perfect form of government which human ingenuity has been able to
devise, after many centuries of patient and impatient search. Royalty
has proved its right to exist, and that under the sceptre of a Queen
who, if compared to other sovereigns, will be famous not only for much
that she has done, but also for much that she has not done.
Constitutional government has proved its superiority over any form of
government by the triumph on 22nd June.
If the people have been loyal to the Queen, how loyal has the Queen been
to her people; if her subjects have shared her joys and sorrows, how
warmly has she taken the sufferings of her people to heart. Royalty has
its dangers, and mankind has suffered much from kings and emperors, but
the greatness of England during the last sixty years has chiefly been
due to the mutual esteem and love of her people and their sovereign. The
world will know henceforth one at least of the secret springs of
England’s health and wealth and strength—namely, the true sympathy that
for years has knitted ruler and ruled together. England has had great
ministers and counsellors, but ask those ministers, who for years has
been their truest and most trusted counsellor, and they will not
hesitate in their answer. No wonder that England, celebrating the
Sixty-years’ Jubilee of her Sovereign, should have roused the
admiration—and it may be, the envy also—of other nations. Let us hope
that the admiration, so ungrudgingly bestowed, may last, and that the
envy, if any, may pass away. “Viel Ehr, viel Feind” is as true here as
elsewhere. Let other nations blame and criticise, it is the highest
compliment they can pay. But let them ponder what Europe would have been
without England, what the world would have been without the sceptre of
the wise and good Queen Victoria.
BEGGARS
Often when I had related to my friends some of my painful experiences
with beggars and they laughed at me, “Wait,” I said, “I shall have my
revenge; and when I am unfit to do anything else, I shall write a book
about Beggars.” Now it has sometimes happened to me of late that, when I
had sat down to do the work to which I have been accustomed for so many
years, I could not get on at all, or if by a great effort of will I
managed to do something, it was of no use, and had to be done again. I
felt, therefore, that the time had come for rest, or at all events, for
a change of occupation, and, though I had not yet sufficient time to
spare for writing a whole book on beggars, I thought I might jot down a
few of my experiences, not only as an amusement to myself, but possibly
as a useful lesson to some of my friends. It seems to me that my
experience has been large, larger than that of most of my acquaintances.
Why, I cannot tell; but beggars, and extremely clever beggars too, have
evidently singled me out as an easy prey. They seem to have imagined—in
fact they told me so again and again—that I was a rich man, and could
well afford to help a poor beggar. They little knew what a poor beggar I
was myself, and how hard I have had to work through life to keep myself
afloat, and to live as I was expected to live among my wealthy
colleagues at Oxford. They would have smiled incredulously if I had told
them how many hours, nay, how many weeks, a scholar has often to do the
hardest drudgery without getting a penny for his work. He has often to
be thankful if he can find a publisher for what is the outcome of years
of hard labour. It is schoolbooks only that are remunerative, or novels
and sermons, and novels he has to leave to his worldly, sermons to his
unworldly, fellow-labourers.
Some of my beggar acquaintances were so clever and so well educated that
they might easily have made a living for themselves; but, as one of them
told me when I thought I had made him thoroughly ashamed of himself, and
quite confidential, they preferred begging to any other kind of
occupation. “Talk of shooting partridges or pheasants,” he said, “talk
of racing or gambling, there is no sport like begging. There must always
be risk in sport, and the risk in begging is very great. You are
fighting,” my half-penitent informant said, “against tremendous odds.
You ring at the door, and you must first of all face a servant, who
generally scrutinises you with great suspicion, and declines to take
your name or your card, unless you have a clean shirt and a decent pair
of boots. Then, after you have been admitted to the presence, you have
to watch every expression of your enemy or your friend, as the case may
be. You have to face the cleverest people in the world, and you know all
the time that the slightest mistake in your looks or in the tone of your
voice may lead to ruin. You may be kicked out of the house, and if you
meet with a high-minded and public-spirited gentleman, who does not mind
trouble and expense, you may find yourself in the hands of the police
for trying to obtain money under false pretences. No,” he concluded, “I
have known in my time what hunting and shooting and gambling are; but I
assure you there is no sport like begging.”
What is one to do with such a visitor—in appearance, in manners, and in
language, quite a gentleman, or a _ci-devant_ gentleman, a man who has
been at a university, and who, when asked, will translate a page of
Homer to you very fairly, who bears, of course, a noble name, and has
friends, as he gives you to understand, in every university or at every
court in Europe—what is one to do with him, if not to accelerate his
departure by means of a small gift, for which he is generally very
grateful? But that is really the worst one can do. For, on the strength
of it, your noble sportsman will at once go to other covers, to all your
friends, tell them that you have helped him, describe your generosity,
your room, your dog, your cat, and thus among your unsuspecting friends
secure a fresh bag, dearer to him, if you may believe him, than any
number of pheasants and partridges.
The information which these beggars possess is quite astounding. They
have stepped into my room, and given me the most minute information
about my friends and relations in Germany, who live in a small and
little-known town, describing their houses, their gardens, their
dogs—everything, in fact, to show that they had been on the most
familiar terms with them. This happened to me some years ago when the
organisation among the foreign beggars in London was far more perfect
than it is, or seems to be, at present. It may be, of course, that they
know that an old fox who has been hunted again and again is difficult to
catch. Anyhow, I have not of late heard of any such exploits as,
unfortunately, I have had to suffer from in former years.
It was after the Schleswig-Holstein war, in about 1850, that one morning
a young military-looking man stepped into my room. He limped, and told
me he had still a ball in his leg, which must be removed. He presented
himself as an officer in the Danish Army—the only officer who had joined
the rebels, the Schleswig-Holsteiners—and had been taken prisoner at the
battle of Idstedt in 1850. He described most graphically how he was
confronted with his former Danish comrades, how his epaulettes were torn
off, how his sword was broken, and he himself sent to a military prison,
previous, as he thought, to being _fusillé_ for high treason. All this
naturally appealed to my sympathy, and then he went on telling me, in
the most confidential way, that when at last sentence of death had been
pronounced against him, he knew quite well that it would never be
carried out, because the Queen of Denmark was his dearest friend, and
would never have allowed such a thing. “Give me some paper,” he said; “I
must write to my beloved Queen, and tell her I am safe in England. She
will be in deep distress till she hears of me.” He sat down and wrote a
letter, which he wished me to read. I only saw the beginning of it: that
was quite enough; it was in a style which only the most devoted lover
could have used. That letter was stamped—I supplied the stamps—dropped
into the pillar-box, sent to Copenhagen, and must have been delivered to
the Queen, though I doubt its being preserved in the royal archives. And
that was not all. In a few days a letter came from Copenhagen, delivered
by post, which again I was asked to read, but declined. I did not wish
to pry into State or Court secrets. But all this showed, at all events,
how cleverly the whole scheme had been laid, so that a confederate could
send from Copenhagen a letter apparently written by the Queen, in answer
to a letter despatched to her a few days before. I was completely taken
in. The young officer went to London to have the ball extracted. I doubt
now whether there was any ball to extract. There he made many
acquaintances, and was helped by some very influential people. I
remember one, who afterwards rose to the highest post in our Diplomatic
Service, and was at that time known among his friends as never having a
five-pound note in his possession. He gave him £10, and when I asked
him: “But, my dear fellow, where in the world did you get that ten-pound
note?” he used, as was his wont, very strong language, and said: “I
borrowed it from the porter at my club.” This little comedy went on for
some time. The man himself must have enjoyed his sport thoroughly, and
he never lost his presence of mind. I still think that he must have been
at one time in the Danish Service, as he possessed very accurate
information about Danish officials and Danish affairs in general, though
in what capacity he served his country and his Queen has never been
found out. His ostensible correspondence with the Queen continued for
some time. Even remittances arrived, as we were told from his royal
patroness, but most of his funds were drawn, I am sorry to say, from
English pockets, and might have served some better purpose. As far as I
remember—for I am trying to recall events that happened nearly fifty
years ago—a collection was made for our clever adventurer, and he left
England uninjured to look for more dupes in the United States.
Though I might have learnt a lesson, I have to confess that hardly a
month passed without something of the same kind happening to me. Few
swindlers were so clever or had their schemes so beautifully prepared as
my Danish friend, but I generally felt whenever I was taken in that I
could hardly have acted differently. Nay, when I mustered courage to say
“No,” I often regretted it. Let me give an instance. A gentleman steps
into your room, tells you that he has been robbed, offers you his gold
watch, and asks you to lend him a pound to pay his bill at the hotel.
What are you to do? I declined to advance any money, particularly as my
visitor behaved rather like a sturdy beggar, and what was the
consequence? He broke out into violent abuse, mentioned a number of
newspapers whose correspondent he professed to be, and told me I should
rue the day when I had insulted him. And it was not a vain threat. From
time to time I received extracts, not indeed from _The Times_ or the
_Débats_ or the _Augsburger Zeitung_, but from some obscure local
papers, with violent tirades against me as an ignoramus, as a Jesuit, as
a German spy, as a hard-hearted miser, etc. For all I know, the man may
have been in momentary distress, but was I to open a pawnbroker’s shop
in my house?
There was a time, and it lasted for several years, when a man, though he
never tried his hand on me, victimised a large number of my friends. He
called himself my brother, evidently unaware of the fact that I never
had a brother. He must have taken the “Clergy List,” for week after week
came letters from my friends, mostly clergymen in London who had known
me at Oxford and who had been swindled by my brother.
Twice _The Times_ was kind enough to print a letter from me in large
type to warn my friends. It was of no use. I seldom went to London
without some friend coming up to me and asking after my brother, or
expressing himself thoroughly ashamed of having allowed himself to be so
stupidly victimised by a common impostor. One friend told me that he was
so convinced that the man was a swindler that he had him turned out of
the house. But then it struck him that after all the man might really be
my brother, who only wanted a ticket to go to Oxford, so he rushed into
the street after him, apologised, and pressed a sovereign into his hand.
“There were telegraphs in those days, and why did you not telegraph to
me?” I said. But my brother went on unabashed. He once called at the
house of Lord W., telling the old story of having been robbed, and
wanting a ticket to go to Oxford to see his dear brother. Lord W. was
not to be taken in so easily, but Lady W., who came into the room and
heard the story, said to the young man: “Perhaps you are not aware that
you are speaking to a very near relation of your brother, who is the
husband of my niece?” The man never flinched, but was rushing up to Lady
W. to shake hands most affectionately and to embrace her, if she had not
beaten a sudden retreat. Lord W. was quite convinced that the man was an
impudent beggar, took him to the front door, and told him to be gone.
“Would you tell your servant to call a cab for me,” he said, “to go to
the station?” A servant, who was present, hailed a cab. “Please to give
the man half a crown,” my brother said. The half-crown was given, and
the man got away unharmed, having swindled one of the cleverest
financial men in London out of half a crown. Only a few minutes after,
my wife called at her aunt’s house, and regretted that she was just too
late to make the long-desired personal acquaintance of my lost brother.
After carrying on this business for more than two years in England, and
chiefly in London, the place seems to have become too hot at last. He
vanished from the soil of England without ever having called on his
brother at Oxford, and the next I heard of him was through some friends
in New Zealand, who had suffered as others had suffered before in
England.
The worst of such experiences is that they make us very hard-hearted.
One believes nothing that a man tells one who comes begging to the door.
And yet how much of real misery there is! It is a problem which really
seems to admit of no solution. Of course we must not expect angels to
come to us in the disguise of beggars. All beggars are more or less
disreputable; not one of them would venture to tell the true story of
his life. Yet they generally have something to say for themselves, and
they hardly know the mischief they are doing by making it impossible for
any one with any self-respect to believe the old, old stories which they
are telling. They say: “What can we do? We must say something to appeal
to your pity, and the unvarnished tale of our life is too long and too
dry, and not likely to excite your sympathy.” All this is true, but what
is to be done to alleviate or to cure this terrible evil of poverty and
beggary? Nothing really seems to remain but to adopt the example of the
Buddhists, and give to the beggar a recognised status in society. The
Buddhists have no poor rates, but whoever is admitted to the brotherhood
has a right to go round the village or town once or twice a day, to hold
out his begging bowl, and to take home to his monastery whatever is
given him. No householder likes these Bhikshus or beggars to depart from
his house without having received a gift, however small, while the
Bhikshu himself is not degraded, but enjoys, on the contrary, the same
respect which the begging friars enjoyed during the middle ages. Even in
later times we hear in Scotland of the Gaberlunzie men, and elsewhere of
Bedesmen, Bluegowns, etc., all forming a kind of begging fraternity, and
having a recognised position in society.
Free above Scot-free, that observe no laws,
Obey no governor, use no religion,
But what they draw from their own ancient custom,
Or constitute themselves, yet they are no rebels.
“Antiquary,” chap. xii.
All this is extinct now, but the beggar is not extinct, and never will
be, as we are told. What then is to be done? for we are all more or less
responsible for their existence. It seems to me that there is only one
thing to be done, namely, to give up, every one of us, whatever quotum
of our income we think right, and to hand it over to such societies as
take the trouble to find out for us some not quite undeserving poor. Our
Charity Organisation Society does no doubt much good, but it should have
another branch, the members of which should be understood to give, say,
a tenth part, or any other quotum of their annual income for charitable
purposes. Such a society existed formerly. The members of it were not
subjected to any inquisitorial questions. They simply declared that they
would regularly devote a tenth of their income to the alleviation of
poverty, and they were left perfectly free to do it each in his own way.
What has become of that society? The organiser and leading spirit of it
died, and no one seems to have taken it up again.
There is, however, one class of beggars and impostors more objectionable
than any—people who do not beg for money, but borrow, and never mean to
return either the money or any thanks. I have known of a good many cases
where young men visiting Oxford and having made a few acquaintances
among the undergraduates, were invited to dinner in college, and not
only borrowed from their young companions, but, introduced by their
young friends, ran up bills among the tradesmen of the town, and then
quietly slipped away, leaving their friends to satisfy their creditors
as best they could. All this goes on, and it seems impossible to stop
it. Even if now and then these swindlers make a mistake, and place
themselves within the clutches of the law, what satisfaction is it to
keep them in prison for a month or two? No one knows their real names.
They are boarded and fed at the expense of the country, and enjoy a
little rest from their labours. That is all. They go in and come out of
prison as if nothing had happened, and all they have learnt in prison is
how to be more careful in future.
Who can doubt that there is much poverty and suffering, even undeserved
suffering, among the poor, more particularly among poor foreigners in
London? The Society for the Relief of Foreigners in Distress does much,
but that much is but like a drop of milk in an ocean of salt water. The
stories of the applicants printed each year, and carefully sifted by the
committee, are simply heart-rending. And those who go to see for
themselves often wish they had never crossed the thresholds of these
hovels in which whole families live huddled up together, hungry, sick,
dying, dead. One feels utterly hopeless and helpless at the sights one
sees. One might as well jump into the Atlantic to save a sinking vessel
and a drowning crew as attempt to rescue this drowning humanity.
And the men, after all, can help themselves. They can work, they may
fight and beg, and even steal, and be sent to prison. But what is the
fate of the poor unfortunate women!
There is one more class of beggars, though they would indignantly
protest against such a name, who have given me great trouble. They are
gentlemen who have something to sell and who are willing to sell it to
you as a great favour. In Oxford these gentlemen have generally
manuscripts to sell, ancient, valuable, unique. As I spent a good deal
of my time at the Bodleian Library, and was there every day for several
years as Oriental librarian, I made some curious acquaintances. After
some time I never trusted a man who offered to sell scarce manuscripts
or unique books to the library. My experiences were many, most of them
painful. Perhaps the most interesting was when we received a visit from
the famous forger, Simonides. Fortunately his fame had preceded him.
There had been a full account of his doings and misdoings abroad, yet he
arrived quite unabashed with a box full of Greek MSS. I had warned our
librarian, the Rev. H. O. Coxe, and it was amusing to watch the two when
their _pourparlers_ began. Simonides—so called, not because he was a
descendant of the poet Simonides, but (with a long _î_) because his
ancestor was one Simon, a Jew—addressed the librarian half in ancient
Greek, half in modern English. He knew both equally well. His manners
were most engaging. The librarian was equally polite, and began to
examine some of the Greek MSS. “These are of small value,” Simonides
said, “they are modern. What century would you assign to them?” The
librarian assigned the thirteenth century to them, and Simonides fully
agreed. He then went on producing MS. after MS., but claiming for none
of them more than the twelfth or tenth century. All went on most
amicably until he produced some fragments of an uncial Greek MS. The
librarian opened his eyes wide, and, examining them very carefully, put
some of them aside for further consideration. Becoming more and more
confidential, Simonides at last produced a real treasure. “This,” he
said, “ought to repose nowhere but in the Bodleian Library. And what
century would you assign to it, Mr. Librarian?” Simonides said with a
smile and a respectful bow. Mr. Coxe turned over a few pages, and,
looking very grave, though never quite without his usual twinkle, “The
second half of the nineteenth century, sir,” he said, “and now pack up
your MSS. and _Apage_ (begone).”
Simonides did as he was told, and, with an injured expression, walked
away. Next day he wrote a Greek letter to the librarian, bitterly
complaining about the _Apage_, and offering some more MSS. for his
inspection. But all was in vain; too much had been discovered about him
in the meantime. He was certainly a most extraordinary man—a scholar
who, if he had applied his ingenuity to editing instead of forging Greek
MSS., might have held a very high position. His greatest achievement
was, of course, the newly discovered Greek text of the history of
ancient Egypt by Uranios. The man possessed a large quantity of later
Greek MSS. It seems that in the Eastern monasteries, where he sold, he
also acquired some Greek MSS., by what means we must not ask. He tried
several of these MSS. with chemicals to see whether, as was the fashion
during the middle ages, the parchment on which they were written had
been used before, and the old writing scraped off in order to get
writing material for some legends of Christian saints or other modern
compositions. When that has been the case, chemical appliances bring out
the old writing very clearly, and he knew that in this way some very old
and valuable Greek texts had been recovered. In that case the old uncial
writing comes out generally in a dark blue, and becomes quite legible as
underlying the modern Greek text. As Simonides was not lucky enough to
discover or recover an ancient Greek text, or what is called a
Palimpsest MS., the thought struck him that he might manufacture such a
treasure, which would have sold at a very high price. But even this did
not satisfy his ambition. He might have taken the text of the Gospels
and written it between the lines of one of his modern Greek MSS., adding
some startling various readings. In that case detection would have
seemed much more difficult. But he soared higher. He knew that a man of
the name of Uranios had written a history of Egypt which was lost.
Simonides made up his mind to write himself in ancient Greek a history
of Egypt such as he thought Uranios might have written. And, deep and
clever as he was, he chose Bunsen’s “Egypt” and Lepsius’ “Chronology” as
the authorities which he faithfully followed. After he had finished his
Greek text, he wrote it in dark blue ink and in ancient uncial Greek
letters between the letters of a Greek MS. of about 1200 a.d. Anybody
who knows the smallness of the letters in such a MS. can appreciate the
enormous labour it must have been to insert, as it were, beneath and
between these minute lines of each letter the supposed earlier writing
of Uranios, so that the blue ink should never encroach on the small but
true Greek letters. One single mistake would have been fatal, and such
is the knowledge which antiquaries now possess of the exact changes of
Greek letters in every century that here, too, one single mistake in the
outline of the old uncial letters would have betrayed the forger.
When Simonides had finished his masterpiece, he boldly offered it to the
highest tribunal, the Royal Berlin Academy. The best chemists of the
time examined it microscopically, and could find no flaw. Lepsius, the
great Egyptologist, went through the whole text, and declared that the
book could not be a forgery, because no one except Uranios could have
known the names of the ancient Egyptian kings and the right dates of the
various dynasties, which were exactly such as he had settled them in his
books. The thought that Simonides might have consulted these very books
never entered anybody’s mind. Great was the excitement in the camp of
the Egyptologists, and, though the price demanded by Simonides was
shamefully extravagant, Bunsen persuaded the then King of Prussia,
Frederick William IV., to pay it and to secure the treasure for Berlin.
Dindorf, the famous Greek scholar, had been entrusted by Simonides with
the editing of the text, and he had chosen the Clarendon Press at Oxford
to publish the first specimen of it. In the meantime unfavourable
reports of Simonides reached the German authorities, and during a new
examination of the MS. some irregularities were detected in the shape of
the uncial M, and at last one passage was discovered by a very strong
microscope where the blue ink had run across the letters of the modern
Greek text. No doubt could then remain that the whole MS. was a forgery.
Part of it had actually been printed at the Clarendon Press, and I was
able to secure six copies of Dindorf’s pamphlet, which was immediately
destroyed, and has now become one of the scarcest books in any library.
After I had secured my copy, I read on the first page κὰτ’ ἐμὴν ἰδέαν,
which was intended for “According to my idea.” I went straight to the
then Master of Balliol, Dr. Scott, of Greek Lexicon fame. I asked him
whether he thought such an expression possible before the fifteenth
century A.D. He took down his Stephanus, but after looking for some time
and hesitating, he admitted at last that such an expression was
certainly not quite classical. Simonides had, of course, to refund the
money, and was sent to prison, never to appear again in the libraries of
Europe. A number of his forgeries, however, exist in England, in public
and private collections; among them portraits of the Virgin Mary and
some of the Apostles painted by St. Luke, a copy of Homer with a
dedication from Perikles to the tyrant of Syrakuse, other Greek MSS.
written on paper made of human skin, etc. His forged MS. of Uranios was
such a masterpiece that he was offered £100 for it, but he declined, and
I have never been able to find out what has been the end of it.
Some years afterwards another forger of the name of Shapira offered to
the British Museum some scrolls of parchment containing the text of the
Pentateuch from the hand of Moses. They, too, were very closely
criticised, and were exhibited for some time at the Museum; nay, a
Commission was appointed to report on the MS., for which, very
naturally, an enormous sum was demanded. It was perfectly well known, of
course, among Semitic scholars that writing for literary purposes was
unknown at the time of Moses, and that the very alphabet used by the
forger belonged to a much later period. Poor Shapira, whose name had
already become notorious as connected with the spurious Moabite
antiquities, which he had sold at Berlin, professed to be so dejected
when the fraud was discovered, a fraud, as he stated, not committed by
himself, but practised on him by some Arabs, that he went to Belgium,
and there, according to the newspapers, committed suicide; while some of
his victims maintained that even then the newspaper paragraphs on his
suicide were a forgery, and that he had retired from an ungrateful world
under the veil of a new name.
It is extraordinary how low a man may sink who once takes to this kind
of trade. A Greek gentleman whom I knew, and who moved in the very best
society in London, who held a responsible position in a bank, where he
was trusted with any amount of money, roused the suspicions of the
authorities in the coin department of the British Museum. He possessed
himself a very valuable collection of ancient coins, and was admitted to
all the privileges of a special student of numismatics.
Nearly all the employees of the British Museum were his personal
friends, and no one would have ventured to doubt his honour. However,
some unique specimens of Greek coins disappeared, or rather were found
to be replaced by inferior specimens. A trap was laid, and there
remained little doubt that he had transferred the better specimens to
his own collection, substituting inferior specimens in his possession.
At first no one would believe it, but an English jury found him guilty,
and he was condemned to five years’ penal servitude. Great efforts were
made by some of the Foreign Ministers, and by the directors of the bank
in which he had been employed, and a pardon was obtained for him on
condition of his never returning to England. When, however, inquiries
were made as to his behaviour in the hulks where he had been detained in
the meantime, it turned out that this perfect gentleman had behaved
there worse than the lowest criminal, so that it was quite out of the
question to release him, and he was kept to serve his full sentence.
What may have become of him afterwards, who knows? But it shows how
scientific devotion can go hand in hand with moral degradation, nay, can
blunt the conscience to such an extent that exchange seems no robbery,
and even the abstraction of a book from a public or private library is
looked upon as a venial offence. MSS. have again and again disappeared
from libraries, and have been returned after the death of the scholar
who took them, showing, at least, a late repentance. But I have also
known of cases where MSS. seemed to have vanished and suspicion fell on
scholars who had consulted them last, while after a time the MSS. turned
up again, having been placed in a wrong place in the library; which, of
course, in a large library is tantamount to throwing them out of window.
There was a well-known case in the same coin-room of the British Museum,
where, during a visit of a number of gentlemen and ladies, it was
observed that a very valuable and almost unique Sicilian coin had
disappeared. All the gentlemen present in the room at the time had to be
searched, and no one objected except one. He protested his innocence,
but declared that nothing would induce him to allow his pockets to be
searched. All the other visitors were allowed to go home, but he was
detained while the coin-room was swept, and every corner searched once
more. At last the missing coin was found in a chink of the floor.
Every apology was made to the suspected person, but he was asked why he
had so strongly objected to being searched. He then produced from his
pocket another specimen of the very same coin. “I came here,” he said,
“to compare my specimen, which is very perfect, with the only other
specimen which is thought to be superior to mine, and almost unique in
the world. Now, suppose,” he added, “that you had not found your coin,
and had found my specimen in my pocket, would anybody have believed in
my innocence?”
Such cases will happen, though no doubt a man must have been born under
a very unlucky star to come in for such a trial. In most museums unique
specimens are now never shown except under precautions which make such
accidents, as well as deliberate thefts, almost impossible.
After all the sad experiences which one has had, it is perhaps quite
right that we should shut our ears and our house against all beggars,
whether in rags or in the disguise of gentlemen. But even our servants
have hearts, and though they have orders not to admit beggars, they
often are, or imagine they are, better judges than ourselves. I know
that they sometimes give something where their masters, rightly or
wrongly, decline to do anything. Physical suffering appeals to them,
though they also have learnt how beggars who ask for a crust of bread
throw away what has been given them as soon as they leave the house.
I remember once my servant coming in and saying: “There is a poor man at
the door, I believe he is dying, sir!” I confess I did not believe it,
but I went to see him, and he looked so ill that the doctor had to be
sent for. The doctor declared he was in the last stage of consumption,
and I was glad to send him to the Infirmary.
He was a poor tailor, a German by birth, but who had lived many years in
England and spoke English perfectly well. Being well taken care of, he
got better for a time. I went to see him and tried to cheer him as well
as I could. He was surprised to see me, and said with a frown: “Why do
you come to see me?” I said that he seemed quite alone in the world,
without any friends or relations in England.
“Friends and relations!” he said. “I have never had any in all my life.”
“You had father and mother?” I said.
“No,” he answered, “I never had. I never knew anybody that belonged to
me. I was brought up at a Government school for poor children, was
apprenticed to a tailor, and when I was quite young sent to England,
where I have been working in different places for nearly twenty years. I
have never begged, and have always been able to support myself.”
He told me the name of the tailor for whom he had been working in
Oxford, and I received the most satisfactory account both from his
employer and from the men with whom he had been working.
“Why do you come to see me?” he said again and again. “No one has ever
been kind to me. I want to die; I have nothing to care for in this
world. The few things that belong to me I wish to leave to the poor
servant girl in the house where I have last been at work, the little
money in my purse may go to the Infirmary. I know no one else; no one
cares for me, or has ever cared for me.”
Who can imagine such a life? Without father or mother, without friends,
without the sense of belonging to anybody in the world, of ever being
loved or pitied by a single human soul. Even the idea of a kind and
loving Father in heaven had no meaning for him. His one wish was to have
done with it all. It was no trouble to him to leave this world and to
cease from stitching. He could not even express anything like gratitude.
All he could say was that it was so strange that any one should care for
him, and come to see him. He passed away without suffering, anyhow
without a sound of complaint. Whatever he left was given to the poor
servant girl, who was equally surprised that the poor tailor should have
thought of her. What an empty, purposeless life it seemed to have been,
and yet his, too, was a precious soul, and meant to be more on earth
than a mere sewing machine.
Yes, now and then one can do a little good, even to professional
beggars; but very, very seldom—and it is right that such cases should be
known and remembered. The most difficult people to deal with are
educated young foreigners, who always came to me with the same tale.
Some of them were hardened sinners, and had to end their visits to
Oxford and to the always open rooms of undergraduates in college, with a
visit to our gaol. I have no doubt whatever that some of them belonged
to good families, and had received an excellent education. Some of them
had run away from home with a woman they had fallen in love with; others
may have committed some crime, mostly while serving in the army, and had
tried to escape punishment by deserting. But there were others who had
come to England to learn English, hoping to support themselves by giving
lessons, for as soon as a foreigner arrives in England he imagines that
a dozen people are ready to learn his language, which in many cases he
is quite unable to teach. I remember one of this class whom, by mere
accident, I was able to help. He came to me in a ragged and very
disreputable state. He told me he was starving, and wished me to find
pupils for him at Oxford. Well, I managed with some effort to get hold
of him and shake him. He showed that he knew Greek and Latin, and his
German was that of an educated man. “My dear fellow,” I said, “how in
the world did you sink so low?” He saw that I meant it, and, with tears
in his eyes, told me his simple, and this time true, story. He had been
a teacher in a well-known German watering-place, and, as he had several
English pupils, he was anxious to perfect himself in English. He arrived
in London without knowing anybody, and with but a small sum of money
left. “I don’t know what happened to me,” he said; “I must have had a
very serious illness, and I was told that for weeks I was in a delirious
fever. When I came to myself, I was in a miserable hovel occupied by a
poor German family in Whitechapel. I know nothing about them, nor how I
had fallen into their hands. But they had taken me in; they had nursed
me, as I found out, for several weeks; and they now asked me to repay
what they had spent on me. My money was gone; I knew no one who would
have sent me any money from Germany. My Whitechapel friends were kind to
me, and at last they advised me, as I knew Greek and Latin, to go to
Oxford and Cambridge and beg. I did not like it at all; but what could I
do? I owed them the money, and I had no means of earning anything in
London. I was starving, and my friends had little to eat and drink
themselves.” I believed his story, and this time I had no reason to
regret it. The master of a school for boys near London had written to me
to recommend a German teacher as a stop-gap. I wrote to him, giving him
a full account of my man, and told him that he had experience in
teaching, and wished to stay for a time in England to improve his
knowledge of English. The master said he would give him a trial. I told
the young man to get rid of every article of clothing he had on, and had
him clothed as well as I could before I sent him off. He acquitted
himself admirably at the school, and his first thought was to pay the
poor Samaritans in Whitechapel for what they had done for him. After a
time he went back to Germany to resume his work as a teacher of German
at the fashionable watering-place he had come from; and for several
years I regularly received letters of thanks from him, telling me how
well he was getting on in the world, that he was happily married, and
hoped that he would see me once more, though not in England, but at his
watering-place in Germany. Here I had my reward.
During the first year I was in England I sometimes saw harrowing scenes
among the poor German families stranded and wrecked in London. These
poor people flocked to the Prussian Legation. Generally they could only
see the porter. If they were lucky, they saw a secretary; and, if very
lucky, the Minister himself, Bunsen, came to see them in the hall. Now
and then I was sent to find out what might be true in the heart-rending
stories they told. And often there was plenty of truth in them. Father,
mother, and children had been tempted away from a small village in the
Black Forest or the Erzgebirge. They had been told that England was made
of gold and silver, and that they had only to scratch the soil to get as
much as they wanted and bring it home. They believed it all, and when
they saw the glistening white chalk cliffs near Dover, they thought they
were all of silver. Then when they came to London, the misery began, and
began very soon. They were hungry, the children were sickly, and there
was nothing for them to do to earn an honest penny. Nothing remained but
to earn dishonest pennies, and in this they were readily helped by all
the people around them.
I cannot tell the harrowing scenes I saw. Those who care to know what is
going on among the poor German families in London should go themselves,
and they would see more than they would wish ever to have seen. One case
I shall never forget, and it is perhaps as well that people should know
these things. In one room on a miserable bed there lay a poor girl,
quite young, who had given birth to a child. The child had fortunately
died. The people about her had been kind to her, and done all they could
be expected to do. But, oh! the sad, half-delirious face of the dying
mother, for there could be no doubt that she was dying. And what was her
story? As far as I could find out from the women about her, she was the
daughter of a German clergyman. A young Englishman had come to their
vicarage to learn German. He had fallen in love with his pretty German
teacher, and the poor girl had fallen in love with him. He had promised
her marriage, and when she could no longer hide her state from her
parents she had been persuaded by her lover to follow him to England. In
London he had left her with a small sum of money at a little German
hotel, promising to come back as soon as possible after he had seen his
father. When the money which he had left for her became low, she had
been sent to a poor German family. She never believed that he whom she
called her English husband had forsaken her. Something, she felt sure,
had happened to prevent him from coming back to her. I hope she was
right. However, he never came; she died, and died in agonies, calling
for him, for her child, for her happy home in Germany, and with her last
breath and her last tears for her mother! She never divulged any names.
She died and was buried with her child.
Can society do nothing for these poor victims? Can we only call them
hard names—some of them being the most gentle, the most loving, the most
innocent creatures in the world! Have we not even some Pharisees left
among us who will go out one by one, beginning at the eldest even unto
the last, instead of throwing a stone at her? Who is to solve this
problem if not He who said: “Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no
more”? And she, the poor girl, was she really so great a sinner? She did
not look so. And if she was, had she not expiated her sin and been
purified by the most awful suffering? She looked so pure and innocent
that Heine’s lines were constantly coming into my mind:—
Mir ist’s als ob ich die Hände
Auf’s Haupt Dir legen sollt’,
Und beten dass Gott Dich behüte,
So fromm, so rein, so hold.
Poor girl! I felt for her with all my heart, but I had but few words of
comfort for her. How difficult it is to judge. Love, youth, nature, and
ignorance have to be reckoned with in our judgments; and society, which
no doubt has to enforce certain laws for its own protection, should
distinguish at least between sins against society and sins against God,
before whom one untrue and unkind word, written or spoken, may weigh
heavier in the scales, for all we know, than the sin of many a
heart-broken girl.
INDEX
Abeken, 265
Albany, Duke of, 276–280
Albrecht the Bear, 211, 228–230
Alliterative poetry, 44–47
Americans, 167, 169
Anhalt-Coethen, last Duke of, 235–237
Anhalt-Dessau, Duke of, 230, 231
Anhalt-Dessau, Duchess of, 78, 245
Arndt, Moritz, 66, 67
Arnold, Matthew, 86, 120,1 28–142
Ascania, 230 _n._
Basedow, 6, 53
Basedow, Adolf von, 68, 69
Beck, Karl, 67
Bedesmen, 299, 300
Beethoven, 3, 4
Begging, excitement of, 290–292
Bennett, Sterndale, 30
Bernhard of Clairvaux, 227
Bhikshus, 299
Bird, R. Mertyns, 87
Bismarck, 248, 261, 269
Bluegowns, 299
Blum, Robert, 66, 69, 70
Boeckh, 24
Boetticher, Karl. _See_ Lagarde.
Brahms, 3
Brazil, late Emperor of, 280–285
Brother, M. M.’s, 296–299
Browning, Robert, 41, 86, 120, 143, 159–162
Brugsch Pasha, 251
Bunsen, 306
Burnouf, Eugène, 136
Byron, 49
Carlyle, 86, 102, 103
Cetto, Baron, 254
Charity Organization Society, 300
Chorus = dance, 43, 44
Christian, Prince of Anhalt, 224
Church, Dean, 145
Clough, 86, 127, 128
Conservatoire, Paris, 15
Coxe, Rev. H. O., 303
Crown Prince (Emperor Frederick), 257–272
Curtius, Ernst, 256
Danish officer begging, 293–295
Darwin, 86, 202–204
Darwinian School, 194, 200–202
David, 3, 13, 18
Dessau, 5, 6
Dickens, 126, 127
Dindorf, 306, 308
Donkin, Professor, 36
Doyle, Sir F., 144
Eckstein, Baron von, 72
Emerson, 86, 148, 149, 170–177
Eugénie, the Empress, 208
Evolution, 194–200
Faraday, 86, 191–193
Feet in poetry, 42–45
Fiske, John, 137
Fontane, Theodor, 61
Foreigners in distress, Society for relieving, 302
Frederick the Great, 221, 222
Frederick William IV., 245–247, 249, 251, 260, 270, 271
Froude, J. A., 49, 86, 88–106, 138, 146
Gaberlunzie men, 299
Gaisford, Dean, 35
George, Prince of Anhalt, 226
German girl dying, 318
German principalities, 215
German tailor, poor, 312–315
German teacher, poor, 315–317
Gewandhaus Concerts, 13, 16, 27
Gibbon, 98, 99, 146
Goethe, 48, 52–54, 76, 137–139, 141, 142, 218, 234
Goldstücker, 247
Grant, Sir A., 145
Granville, Lord, 275
Greek coins, theft of, 309, 310
Grote, 86, 146
Gustavus Adolphus, 224, 225
Haupt, Professor, 56
Haydn, 3
Heine, H., 41, 48, 57–62
Helmholtz, 137
Helps, Sir A., 86, 188
Hensel, Fanny, 22–25, 27
Herder, 234
Herlossohn, 67
Herodotus, 99
Herwegh, 64–66
Hiller, 13, 17, 30, 31
Holland, late Queen of, 284, 285
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 86, 169, 181–184
Hugo, Victor, 72, 158
Humboldt, Alexander von, 245, 248–251
Hummel, 21
Hundred Greatest Men, 137
Huxley, 86, 120
Jellineck, 70
Johnson, Manuel, 145
Jowett, 145
Jubilee, the Diamond, 285–288
Kalliwoda, 14, 18
Karl, August, Duke of Weimar, 219, 234
Kerner, J., 54, 55
Kingsley, Charles, 47, 86, 105–119
Klingemann, 32
Kühne, 67
Lagarde, Paul de, 82
Lamartine, 71–74
Lamennais, 72
Laube, 67
Lavater, 219
Leopold Friedrich, late Duke of Dessau, 210–215, 233, 237, 243
Leopold Friedrich Franz, Duke of Dessau, 217–220
Leopold, the old Dessauer, 220–223
Lepsius, 305, 307
Lightfoot, Bishop of Durham, 268
Lind, Jenny, 16, 34, 35
Liszt, 16–21
Livy, 99
Longfellow, 181
Lowell, 86, 170, 177–181
Luther, 224–226
Lyall, 86
Lytton, Lord, 188–190
Macaulay, 86, 99, 102, 185–187
Martineau, Rev. Dr., 86
Matthison, 219
Maurice, Frederick, 86, 192
Melody, 1, 27
Mendelssohn, 3, 4, 9, 10, 13, 18, 19, 21–27, 31–33
Metre, 42–45
Meyer, Dr. Karl, 273 _n._
Mill, J. S., 192
Milman, Dean, 192
Morier, 145
Moscheles, 21, 30
Mozart, 3, 4, 8
Müller, Wilhelm, 16, 48–55, 56, 84
Napoleon, 219
Natural selection, 195
Neate, 125, 145
Newman and Kingsley, 113–116
Novello, Clara, 30
Oriental languages, School of, 275, 276
Orléans, Duchesse d’, 73, 74
Ouseley, Sir F., 38
Owen, Sir Richard, 86
Palgrave, F., 144, 145
Platen, 40–42
Poetry, 139–143
Porter, Noah, 137
Prince Consort, 271, 272–275
Prussia, Prince of, 252–256
Prussia, Princess of, 256, 257
Pusey and Kingsley, 116
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 99
Ranke, 100
Renan, 137
Rhyme, 40–48
Roggenbach, Baron, 256
Rosen, F., 32
Royal Institution, 193
Rückert, 42, 46, 75–85
Ruskin, 86, 147–152
Russell, Lord John, 274
Sandars, 145
Sand, George, 72
Schiller, 234
Schlœzer, 256
Schneider, F., 8, 10, 12
Schubert, 16, 49
Schumann, 4, 18, 27–30
Schwab, G., 54
Sedgwick, 86
Sellar, 145
Sewell, Dr., 89
“S. G. O.,” 88
Shaftesburys, the three Lord, 130–133, 135
Shairp, John, 144
Shakespeare, 141
Shapira, 308
Simonides, 303–308
Socialism, Christian, 111
Stainer, Sir John, 37
Stanley, Dean, 1, 34, 86, 107, 116, 137, 193, 208, 285
Stanley, Lady, 193
Stern, Daniel, 73
Stockhausen, 16
Stockmarr, General, 240
Strophe, antistrophe, 43
Stubbs, Dr., 104, 105
Taine, H., 137
Tennyson, 41, 47, 86, 152–159, 285
Thackeray, 124–126
Thalberg, 30
Thirlwall, Bishop, 86, 192
Thirty-nine Articles, 141
Translations, 93, 97
Trinity, doctrine of the, 130–135
Trithen, Dr., 149
Turner’s pictures, 151
Tyndall, 120
Uhland, 54, 56
Uranios, Simonides’ forgery of, 304–308
Versus, 43
Vineta, 50
Wagner, 4
Wales, Prince of, at Oxford, 276
Weber, C. M., 11
Whewell, 86
Wieck, Clara (Madame Schumann), 17, 21, 28, 29
Wieland, 219, 234
William I., 265, 272
William II., 267
Winckelmann, 218
Wörlitz, 219, 225
Wolfgang, Prince of Anhalt, 225
Wolfsohn, 62
Wolverton, Lord, 86
-----
Footnote 1:
See M. M., “Vedic Hymns,” S.B.E., vol. xxxii., p. 96.
Footnote 2:
Autobiographie, p. 224.
Footnote 3:
“Neugriechische Volkslieder,” gesammelt von C. Fauriel, übersetzt von
Wilhelm Müller, Leipzig, 1825.
Footnote 4:
See J. Kerner, “Die Seherin von Prevorst,” 1829.
Footnote 5:
The metre used in his volume of “Tragödien nebst einem lyrischen
Intermezzo,” Berlin, 1823. I possess a copy of it with Heine’s
dedication: “Als ein Zeichen seiner Achtung und mit dem besonderen
Wunsche, dass der Waldhornist das lyrische Intermezzo seiner
Aufmerksamkeit würdige, überreicht dieses Buch der Verfasser.”
Footnote 6:
As many of my unknown friends have come to my assistance and sent me
Herwegh’s poem I feel bound to give it here in its entirety:—
STROPHEN AUS DER FREMDE.
Ich möchte hingeh’n wie das Abendroth,
Und wie der Tag mit seinen letzten Gluthen—
O! leichter, sanfter ungefühlter Tod!—
Mich in den Schoosz des Ewigen verbluten.
Ich möchte hingeh’n wie der heitre Stern,
In vollstem Glanz in ungeschwächtem Blinken;
So stille und so schmerzlos möchte gern
Ich in des Himmels blaue Tiefen sinken.
Ich möchte hingeh’n wie der Blume Duft,
Der freudig sich dem schönen Kelch entringet
Und auf dem Fittig blüthenschwangrer Luft
Als Weihrauch auf des Herrn Altar sich schwinget.
Ich möchte hingeh’n wie der Thau im Thal,
Wenn durstig ihm des Morgens Feuer winken;
O wollte Gott, wie ihn der Sonnenstrahl,
Auch meine lebensmüde Seele trinken!
Ich möchte hingeh’n wie der bange Ton,
Der aus den Saiten einer Harfe dringet;
Und, kaum dem irdischen Metall entfloh’n,
Ein Wohllaut, in des Schöpfers Brust verklinget.
Du wirst nicht hingeh’n wie das Abendroth,
Du wirst nicht stille, wie der Stern, versinken,
Du stirbst nicht einer Blume leichten Tod,
Kein Morgenstrahl wird deine Seele trinken.
Wohl wirst du hingeh’n, hingeh’n ohne Spur,
Doch wird das Elend deine Kraft erst schwächen
Sanft stirbt es einzig sich in der Natur,
Das arme Menschenherz muss stückweis brechen.
Footnote 7:
See Brugsch, “Mein Leben,” p. 104.
Footnote 8:
“Literature and Dogma,” 1873, pp. 305, _seq._
Footnote 9:
“Literature and Dogma,” p. 143.
Footnote 10:
Schiller’s “Wallenstein,” Prolog, vv. 48, 49.
Footnote 11:
This was written in 1851, and here in 1897 that Welcome has never
ceased to be a blessing to me.
Footnote 12:
I had written some articles in _The Times_ to show that when we meet
with jade tools in countries far removed from the few mines in which
jade is found, we must admit that they were carried along as precious
heirlooms by the earliest emigrants from Asia to Europe, by the same
people who carried the tools of their mind, that is the words of their
language, from their original homes to the shores of the
Mediterranean, to Iceland, to Ireland, and in the end to America.
Footnote 13:
(“Professor” I would fain have said,
But the pinched line would not admit it,
And where the nail submits its head,
There must the hasty hammer hit it!)
Footnote 14:
“Lectures on the Science of Language,” vol. ii., p. 343.
Footnote 15:
Ascania seems to have been the Latin rendering of Asgaria, which
appears on the map as Ascharien, and is now called Aschersleben. It
must have been very tempting for a mediæval Latin scholar to see in
Asgaria or Ascharia a trace of Ascanius, the son of Aeneas. Old local
names, however, are difficult to explain, particularly if they occur
on German soil that was formerly occupied by Slavonic tribes, because
the Germans often mispronounced and then misinterpreted Slavonic
names. It is easy to guess, but often difficult to prove their
original form and meaning. If, as seems but fair, we admit a German
origin for _Asgaria_ or Ascharien, it is most natural to see in it a
modification of the well-known word _As-gard_, _i.e._, the home of the
gods. Âs (or ass), plus-aesir, was a name of the gods in Old Norse; in
Gothic it would have been, as Grimm has shown (“Deutsche Mythol.,” p.
22), Anses, and this is found in several proper names such as Ansgâr,
AS. Oscar, god-spear. The Swedish åska, lightning, thunder, if it
stands for ás-ekja, meant originally the driving of the god, _i.e._,
of Thor, thunder being supposed to be due to the rattle of his
chariot. Proper names such as Ásbjörn, Ásmodr display the same
element. Asgard is the abode of the gods, by the side of Mitgart, the
abode of men, or the earth, and would have supplied a very natural
name either for a sanctuary or for any place sacred to the gods. But
though our way seems easy from Asgard to Asgaria, Ascania, Ascharien
and even Aschersleben, and though in Esics also, the name of a Prince
of Asgaria, we may recognise a derivation of Âs, meaning divine or
beloved by the gods, Gottlieb, there is another word that may put in a
claim on Askanius if that was not a more learned corruption of
Asgaria. For Askr in German mythology (Grimm, _l.c._, p. 327) is the
first man, and means ashtree, and from him the Iscaevones, mentioned
by Tacitus, derived their name (Grimm, _l.c._, p. 324). According to
tradition the first King of the Saxons also was called Aschanes, and
he is said to have sprung from a rock in the midst of a wood (Grimm,
_l.c._, p. 537). We must admit therefore the possibility that our
Ascanius was a German word Aschanes, and in that case had nothing to
do with Âs, aesir, the ancient gods of the Scandinavians. Having met
with these various traces of the gods as the names of men and places
in Anhalt, one feels tempted to see in the An of Anhalt too a remnant
of the same name. Anhalt is explained as the place ane holt, without
wood, but as it seems to have stood in the very midst of a wood, or an
der halde, near the precipice, this derivation is not very likely.
Others take it in the modern sense of Anhalt, a firm hold or safe
refuge. All this is possible, but it is likewise possible to take An
for Ans, so that Anhalt might have been the wood or grove of the gods.
We must not lay too much stress on the loss of the s, particularly if
by a popular etymology Anhalt had been made to convey the meaning of
support or stronghold. All these are and can only be guesses, and
certainty could only be gained, if at all, from old historical
documents giving the original forms of all these names and trustworthy
indications as to how they arose. The whole question is one for the
historian rather than for the philologist, and I gladly leave it to
them to solve the riddle if they can.
Footnote 16:
Dr. Meyer was a most interesting character. He had been for years in
Bunsen’s house, formerly private secretary to Schelling, the
philosopher. He was a poet and a scholar, very strong in Welsh, having
spent many years travelling about in Wales. He certainly was not cut
out for life at court. After leaving England he spent the last years
of his life as reader to the old Emperor of Germany; a most faithful
soul, and full of varied information. Some of his occasional poems
were beautiful, his “Bellone Orientalis” a masterwork; but they are
all forgotten now. Dr. Meyer was devoted to the Prince, and much that
the world does not know of him, and never will know, I learnt at the
time from Dr. Meyer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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