‘It was already near four o’clock ere I bethought me of making any preparation for my lecture. The day had been, throughout, one of those heavy and sultry ones that autumn so often brings in our climate, and I felt from this cause much oppressed and disinclined to exertion, independently of the fact that I had been greatly over-fatigued during the preceding week, some cases of a most trying and arduous nature having fallen to my lot—one of which, from the importance of the life to a young and dependent family, had engrossed much of my attention, and aroused in me the warmest anxiety for success. In this frame of mind I was entering my carriage to proceed to the lecture-room, when an unsealed note was put into my hands; I opened it hastily, and read that poor H——-, for whom I was so deeply interested, had just expired. I was greatly shocked. It was scarcely an hour since I had seen him; and from the apparent improvement since my former visit, I had ventured to speak most encouragingly, and had even made some jesting allusions to the speedy prospect of his once more resuming his place at hearth and board. Alas! how short-lived were my hopes destined to be! how awfully was my prophecy to be contradicted.
‘No one but him who has himself experienced it knows anything of the deep and heartfelt interest a medical man takes in many of the cases which professionally come before him. I speak here of an interest perfectly apart from all personal regard for the patient, or his friends; indeed, the feeling I allude to has nothing in common with this, and will often be experienced as thoroughly for a perfect stranger as for one known and respected for years. To the extreme of this feeling I was ever a victim. The heavy responsibility, often suddenly and unexpectedly imposed; the struggle for success, when success was all but hopeless; the intense anxiety for the arrival of those critical periods which change the character of a malady, and divest it of some of its dangers or invest it with new ones; the despondence when that period has come only to confirm all the worst symptoms, and shut out every prospect of recovery; and, last of all, that most trying of all the trying duties of my profession, the breaking to the perhaps unconscious relatives that my art has failed, that my resources are exhausted, and, in a word, that there is no longer a hope—these things have preyed on me for weeks, for months long, and many an effort have I made in secret to combat this feeling, but without the least success, till at last I absolutely dreaded the very thought of being summoned to a dangerous and critical illness. It may then be believed how very heavily the news I had just received came upon me; the blow, too, was not even lessened by the poor consolation of my having anticipated the result and broken the shock to the family. I was still standing with the half-opened note in my hands, when I was aroused by the coachman asking, I believe for the third time, whither he should drive. I bethought me for an instant, and said, “To the lecture-room.”
‘When in health, lecturing had ever been to me more of an amusement than a labour; and often, in the busy hours of professional visiting, have I longed for the time when I should come before my class, and divesting my mind of all individual details, launch forth into the more abstract and speculative doctrines of my art. It so chanced, too, that the late hour at which I lectured, as well as the subjects I adopted, usually drew to my class many of the advanced members of the profession, who made this a lounge after the fatigues of the morning.
‘Now, however, I approached this duty with fear and trembling; the events of the morning had depressed my mind greatly, and I longed for rest and retirement. The passing glance I threw at the lecture-room through the half-opened door showed it to be crowded to the very roof, and as I walked along the corridor I heard the name of some foreign physician of eminence, who was among my auditory. I cannot describe the agitation of mind I felt at this moment. My confusion, too, became greater as I remembered that the few notes I had drawn up were left in the pocket of the carriage, which I had just dismissed, intending to return on foot. It was already considerably past the usual hour, and I was utterly unable to decide how to proceed. I hastily drew out a portfolio that contained many scattered notes and hints for lectures, and hurriedly throwing my eye across them, discovered some singular memoranda on the subject of insanity. On these I resolved at once to dilate a little, and eke out, if possible, the materials for a lecture.
‘The events of the remainder of that day are wrapped in much obscurity to my mind, yet I well remember the loud thunder of applause which greeted me on entering the lecture-room, and how, as for some moments I appeared to hesitate, they were renewed again and again, till at last, summoning resolution, I collected myself sufficiently to open my discourse. I well remember, too, the difficulty the first few sentences cost me—the doubts, the fears, the pauses, which beset me at every step as I went on—my anxiety to be clear and accurate in conveying my meaning making me recapitulate and repeat, till I felt myself, as it were, working in a circle. By degrees, however, I grew warmed as I proceeded; and the evident signs of attention my auditory exhibited gave me renewed courage, while they impressed me with the necessity to make a more than common exertion. By degrees, too, I felt the mist clearing from my brain, and that even without effort my ideas came faster, and my words fell from me with ease and rapidity. Simile and illustration came in abundance, and distinctions which had hitherto struck me as the most subtle and difficult of description I now drew with readiness and accuracy. Points of an abstruse and recondite nature, which under other circumstances I should not have wished to touch upon, I now approached fearlessly and boldly, and felt, in the very moment of speaking, that they became clearer and clearer to myself. Theories and hypotheses which were of old and acknowledged acceptance I glanced hurriedly at as I went on, and with a perspicuity and clearness I never before felt exposed their fallacies and unmasked their errors. I thought I was rather describing events, things actually passing before my eyes at the instant, than relating the results of a life’s experience and reflection. My memory, usually a defective one, now carried me back to the days of my early childhood; and the whole passages of a life lay displayed before me like a picture. If I quoted, the very words of the author rushed to my mind as palpably as though the page lay open before me. I have still some vague recollection of an endeavour I made to trace the character of the insanity in every case to some early trait of the individual in childhood, when, overcome by passion or overbalanced by excitement, the faculties run wild into all those excesses which in after years develop eccentricities of character, and in some weaker temperaments aberrations of intellect. Anecdotes illustrating this novel position came thronging to my mind; and events in the early years of some who subsequently died insane, and seemed to support my theory, came rushing to my memory.
‘As I proceeded, I became gradually more and more excited; the very ease and rapidity with which my ideas suggested themselves increased the fervour of my imaginings, till at last I felt my words come without effort and spontaneously, while there seemed a commingling of my thoughts which left me unable to trace connection between them, though I continued to speak as fluently as before. I felt at this instant a species of indistinct terror of some unknown danger which hung over me, yet which it was impossible to avert or to avoid. I was like one who, borne on the rapid current of a fast-flowing river, sees the foam of the cataract before him, yet waits passively for the moment of his destruction, without an effort to save. The power which maintained my mind in its balance had gradually forsaken me, and shapes and fantasies of every odd and fantastic character flitted around and about me. The ideas and descriptions my mind had conjured up assumed a living, breathing vitality, and I felt like a necromancer waving his wand over the living and the dead. I paused; there was a dead silence in the lecture-room. A thought rushed like a meteor-flash across my brain, and bursting forth into a loud laugh of hysteric passion, I cried, “And I, and I too am a maniac!” My class rose like one man; a cry of horror burst through the room. I know no more.
‘I was ill, very ill, and in bed. I looked around me—every object was familiar to me. Through the half-closed window-shutter there streamed one long line of red sunlight; I felt it was evening. There was no one in the room, and as I endeavoured to recall my scattered thoughts sufficiently to find out why I was thus, there came an oppressive weakness over me. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, and was roused by some one entering the room. It was my friend Dr. G———; he walked stealthily towards my bed, and looked at me fixedly for several minutes. I watched him closely, and saw that his countenance changed as he looked on me; I felt his hand tremble slightly as he placed it on my wrist, and heard him mutter to himself in a low tone, “My God! how altered!” I heard now a voice at the door, saying in a soft whisper, “May I come in?” The doctor made no reply, and my wife glided gently into the apartment. She looked deathly pale, and appeared to have been weeping; she leaned over me, and I felt the warm tears fall one by one upon my forehead. She took my hand within both of hers, and putting her lips to my ear, said, “Do you know me, William?” There was a long pause. I tried to speak, but I could not. I endeavoured to make some sign of recognition, and stared her fully in the face; but I heard her say, in a broken voice, “He does not know me now”; and then I felt it was in vain. The doctor came over, and taking my wife’s hand, endeavoured to lead her from the room. I heard her say, “Not now, not now”; and I sank back into a heavy unconsciousness.
‘I awoke from what appeared to have been a long and deep sleep. I was, however, unrefreshed and unrested. My eyes were dimmed and clouded, and I in vain tried to ascertain if there was any one in the room with me. The sensation of fever had subsided, and left behind the most depressing debility. As by degrees I came to myself, I found that the doctor was sitting beside my bed; he bent over me, and said, “Are you better, William?” Never until now had my inability to reply given me any pain or uneasiness; now, however, the abortive struggle to speak was torture. I thought and felt that my senses were gradually yielding beneath me, and a cold shuddering at my heart told me that the hand of death was upon me. The exertion now made to repel the fatal lethargy must have been great, for a cold, clammy perspiration broke profusely over my body; a rushing sound, as if of water, filled my ears; a succession of short convulsive spasms, as if given by an electric machine, shook my limbs. I grasped the doctor’s hand firmly in mine, and starting to the sitting posture I looked wildly about me. My breathing became shorter and shorter, my grasp relaxed, my eyes swam, and I fell back heavily in the bed. The last recollection of that moment was the muttered expression of my poor friend G———, saying, “It is over at last.”
‘Many hours must have elapsed ere I returned to any consciousness. My first sensation was feeling the cold wind across my face, which seemed to come from an open window. My eyes were closed, and the lids felt as if pressed down by a weight. My arms lay along my side, and though the position in which I lay was constrained and unpleasant, I could make no effort to alter it; I tried to speak, but I could not.
‘As I lay thus, the footsteps of many persons traversing the apartment broke upon my ear, followed by a heavy dull sound, as if some weighty body had been laid upon the floor; a harsh voice of one near me now said, as if reading, “William H———, aged thirty-eight years; I thought him much more.” The words rushed through my brain, and with the rapidity of a lightning flash every circumstance of my illness came before me; and I now knew that I had died, and that for my interment were intended the awful preparations about me. Was this then death? Could it be that though coldness wrapped the suffering clay, passion and sense should still survive, and that while every external trace of life had fled, consciousness should still cling to the cold corpse destined for the earth? Oh, how horrible, how more than horrible, the terror of the thought! Then I thought it might be what is termed a trance; but that poor hope deserted me as I brought to mind the words of the doctor, who knew too well all the unerring signs of death to be deceived by its counterfeit, and my heart sank as they lifted me into the coffin, and I felt that my limbs had stiffened, as I knew this never took place in a trance. How shall I tell the heart-cutting anguish of that moment, as my mind looked forward to a futurity too dreadful to think upon—when memory should call up many a sunny hour of existence, the loss of friends, the triumph of exertion, and then fall back upon the dread consciousness of the ever-buried life the grave closed over; and then I thought that perhaps sense but lingered round the lifeless clay, as the spirits of the dead are said to hover around the places and homes they have loved in life ere they leave them for ever, and that soon the lamp should expire upon the shrine when the temple that sheltered it lay mouldering and in ruins. Alas! how fearful to dream of even the happiness of the past, in that cold grave where the worm only is a reveller! to think that though
yet that all felt in their cold and mouldering hearts the loves and affections of life, budding and blossoming as though the stem was not rotting to corruption that bore them. I brought to mind the awful punishment of the despot who chained the living to the dead man, and thought it mercy when compared to this.
‘How long I lay thus I know not, but the dreary silence of the chamber was again broken, and I found that some of my dearest friends were come to take a farewell look at me ere the coffin was closed upon me for ever. Again the horror of my state struck me with all its forcible reality, and like a meteor there shot through my heart the bitterness of years of misery condensed into the space of a minute. And then I remembered how gradual is death, and how by degrees it creeps over every portion of the frame, like the track of the destroyer, blighting as it goes, and said to my heart, All may yet be still within me, and the mind as lifeless as the body it dwelt in. Yet these feelings partook of life in all their strength and vigour; there was the will to move, to speak, to see, to live, and yet all was torpid and inactive, as though it had never lived. Was it that the nerves, from some depressing cause, had ceased to transmit the influence of the brain? Had these winged messengers of the mind refused their office? And then I recalled the almost miraculous efficacy of the will, exerted under circumstances of great exigency, and with a concentration of power that some men only are capable of. I had heard of the Indian father who suckled his child at his own bosom, when he had laid its mother in her grave; yet was it not the will had wrought this miracle? I myself have seen the paralytic limb awake to life and motion by the powerful application of the mind stimulating the nervous channels of communication, and awakening the dormant powers of vitality to their exercise. I knew of one whose heart beat fast or slow as he did will it. Yes, thought I, in a transport, the will to live is the power to live; and only when this faculty has yielded with bodily strength need death be the conqueror over us.
‘The thought of reanimation was ecstatic, but I dared not dwell upon it; the moments passed rapidly on, and even now the last preparations were about to be made, ere they committed my body to the grave. How was the effort to be made? If the will did indeed possess the power I trusted in, how was it to be applied? I had often wished to speak or move during my illness, yet was unable to do either. I then remembered that in those cases where the will had worked its wonders, the powers of the mind had entirely centred themselves in the one heart-filling desire to accomplish a certain object, as the athlete in the games strains every muscle to lift some ponderous weight. Thus I knew that if the heart could be so subjected to the principle of volition, as that, yielding to its impulse, it would again transmit the blood along its accustomed channels, and that then the lungs should be brought to act upon the blood by the same agency, the other functions of the body would be more readily restored by the sympathy with these great ones. Besides, I trusted that so long as the powers of the mind existed in the vigour I felt them in, that much of what might be called latent vitality existed in the body. Then I set myself to think upon those nerves which preside over the action of the heart—their origin, their course, their distribution, their relation, their sympathies; I traced them as they arose in the brain, and tracked them till they were lost in millions of tender threads upon the muscle of the heart. I thought, too, upon the lungs as they lay flaccid and collapsed within my chest, the life-blood stagnant in their vessels, and tried to possess my mind with the relation of these two parts to the utter exclusion of every other endeavoured then to transmit along the nerves the impulse of that faculty my whole hopes rested on. Alas! it was in vain. I tried to heave my chest and breathe, but could not; my heart sank within me, and all my former terrors came thickening around me, more dreadful by far as the stir and bustle in the room indicated they were about to close the coffin.
‘At this moment my dear friend B——— entered the room.
He had come many miles to see me once more, and they made way for him to approach me as I lay. He placed his warm hand upon my breast, and oh the throb it sent through my heart! Again, but almost unconsciously to myself, the impulse rushed along my nerves; a bursting sensation seized my chest, a tingling ran through my frame, a crashing, jarring sensation, as if the tense nervous cords were vibrating to some sudden and severe shock, took hold on me; and then, after one violent convulsive throe which brought the blood from my mouth and eyes, my heart swelled, at first slowly, then faster, and the nerves reverberated, clank! clank! responsive to the stroke. At the same time the chest expanded, the muscles strained like the cordage of a ship in a heavy sea, and I breathed once more.
‘While thus the faint impulse to returning life was given, the dread thought flashed on me that it might not be real, and that to my own imagination alone were referable the phenomena I experienced. At the same instant the gloomy doubt crossed my mind it was dispelled; for I heard a cry of horror through the room, and the words, “He is alive! he still lives!” from a number of voices around me. The noise and confusion increased.
I heard them say, “Carry out B——— before he sees him again; he has fainted!” Directions and exclamations of wonder and dread followed one upon another; and I can but call to mind the lifting me from the coffin, and the feeling of returning warmth I experienced as I was placed before a fire, and supported by the arms of my friend.
‘I will only add that after some weeks of painful debility I was again restored to health, having tasted the full bitterness of death.’
The Eil Wagen, into whose bowels I had committed myself on leaving Frankfort, rolled along for twenty-four hours before I could come to any determination as to whither I should go; for so is it that perfect liberty is sometimes rather an inconvenience, and a little despotism is now and then no bad thing; and at this moment I could have given a ten-gulden piece to any one who should have named my road, and settled my destination.
‘Where are we?’ said I, at length, as we straggled, nine horses and all, into a great vaulted porte cochère.
‘At the “Koenig von Preussen,” mein Herr,’ said a yellow-haired waiter, who flourished a napkin about him in truly professional style.
‘Ah, very true; but in what town, city, or village, and in whose kingdom?’
‘Ach, du lieber Gott!’ exclaimed he, with his eyes opened to their fullest extent. ‘Where would you be but in the city of Hesse-Cassel, in the Grand-Duchy of Seiner Königlichen Hoheit——-’
‘Enough, more than enough! Let me have supper.’
The Speisesaal was crowded with travellers and townspeople as I entered; but the room was of great size, and a goodly table, amply provided, occupied the middle of it. Taking my place at this, I went ahead through the sliced shoe-leather, yclept beef, the Kalbs-braten and the Gurken-salat, and all the other indigestible abominations of that light meal a German takes before he lies down at night. The company were, with the exception of a few military men, of that nondescript class every German town abounds with—a large-headed, long-haired, plodding-looking generation, with huge side-pockets in their trousers, from one of which a cherry-wood pipe-stick is sure to project; civil, obliging, good sort of people they are, but by no means remarkable for intelligence or agreeability. But then, what mind could emerge from beneath twelve solid inches of beetroot and bouilli, and what brain could bear immersion in Bavarian beer?
One never can understand fully how atrocious the tyranny of Napoleon must have been in Germany, until he has visited that country and seen something of its inhabitants; then only can one compute what must the hurricane have been that convulsed the waters of such a landlocked bay. Never was there a people so little disposed to compete with their rulers, never was obedience more thoroughly an instinct. The whole philosophy of the German’s mind teaches him to look within rather than without; his own resources are more his object in life than the enjoyment of state privileges, and to his peaceful temper endurance is a pleasanter remedy than resistance. Almost a Turk in his love of tranquillity, he has no sympathy with revolutions or public disturbances of any kind, and the provocation must indeed be great when he arouses himself to resist it. That when he is thus called on he can act with energy and vigour, the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 abundantly testify. Twice the French armies had to experience the heavy retribution on unjust invasion. Both Spain and Germany repaid the injuries they had endured, but with a characteristic difference of spirit. In the one case it was the desultory attacks of savage guerillas, animated by the love of plunder as much as by patriotism; in the other, the rising of a great people to defend their homes and altars, presented the glorious spectacle of a nation going forth to the fight. The wild notes of the Basque bugle rang not out with such soul-stirring effects as the beautiful songs of Körner, heard beside the watch-fire or at the peasant’s hearth. The conduct of their own princes might have debased the national spirit of any other people; but the German’s attachment to Fatherland is not a thing of courtly rule nor conventional agreement. He loves the land and the literature of his fathers; he is proud of the good faith and honesty which are the acknowledged traits of Saxon character; he holds to the ‘sittliche Leben,’ the orderly domestic habits of his country; and as he wages not a war of aggression on others, he resists the spoliation of an enemy on the fields of his native country.
When the French revolution fire broke out, the students were amongst its most ardent admirers; the destruction of the Bastile was celebrated among the secret festivals of the Burschenschaft; and although the fever was a brief one, and never extended among the more thinking portion of the nation, to that same enthusiasm for liberty was owing the great burst of national energy which in 1813 convulsed the land from the Baltic to the Tyrol, and made Leipsic the compensation for Jena.
With all his grandeur of intellect, Napoleon never understood the national character—perhaps he may have despised it. One of his most fatal errors, undoubtedly, was the little importance he attached to the traits which distinguish one country from another, and the seeming indifference with which he propounded notions of government diametrically opposed to all the traditions and prejudices of those for whom they were intended. The great desire for centralisation; the ambition to make France the heart of Europe, through whose impulse the life-blood should circulate over the entire Continent; to merge all distinctions of race and origin, and make Frenchmen of one quarter of the globe—was a stupendous idea, and if nations were enrolled in armies, might not be impossible. The effort to effect it, however, cost him the greatest throne of Christendom.
The French rule in Spain, in Italy, and in Holland, so far from conciliating the good-will and affection of the people, has sown the seeds of that hatred to France in each of these countries that a century will not eradicate; while no greater evidence of Napoleon’s ignorance of national character need be adduced than in the expectations he indulged in the event of his landing an army in England. His calculation on support from any part of the British people—no matter how opposed to the ministry of the day, or how extreme in their wishes for extended liberties—was the most chimerical thought that ever entered the brain of man. Very little knowledge of our country might have taught him that the differences of party spirit never survive the mere threat of foreign invasion; that however Englishmen may oppose one another, they reserve a very different spirit of resistance for the stranger who should attack their common country; and that party, however it may array men in opposite ranks, is itself but the evidence of patriotism, seeking different paths for its development.
It was at the close of a little reverie to this purpose that I found myself sitting with one other guest at the long table of the Speisesaal; the rest had dropped off one by one, leaving him in the calm enjoyment of his meerschaum and his cup of black coffee. There was something striking in the air and appearance of this man, and I could not help regarding him closely; he was about fifty years of age, but with a carriage as erect and a step as firm as any man of twenty. A large white moustache met his whiskers of the same colour, and hung in heavy curl over his upper lip; his forehead was high and narrow, and his eyes, deeply set, were of a greenish hue, and shaded by large eyebrows that met when he frowned. His dress was a black frock, braided in Prussian taste and decorated by a single cordon, which hung not over the breast, but on an empty sleeve of his coat, for I now perceived that he had lost his right arm near the shoulder. That he was a soldier and had seen service, the most careless observer could have detected; his very look and bearing bespoke the militaire. He never spoke to any one during supper, and from that circumstance, as well as his dissimilarity to the others, I judged him to be a traveller. There are times when one is more than usually disposed to let Fancy take the bit in her mouth and run off with them; and so I suffered myself to weave a story, or rather a dozen stories, for my companion, and did not perceive that while I was inventing a history for him he had most ungratefully decamped, leaving me in a cloud of tobacco-smoke and difficult conjectures.
When I descended to the Saal the next morning I found him there before me; he was seated at breakfast before one of the windows, which commanded a view over the platz and the distant mountains. And here let me ask, Have you ever been in Hesse-Cassel? The chances are, not. It is the highroad—nowhere. You neither pass it going to Berlin or Dresden. There is no wonder of scenery or art to attract strangers to it; and yet if accident should bring you thither, and plant you in the ‘König von Preussen,’ with no pressing necessity urging you onward, there are many less pleasant things you could do than spend a week there. The hotel stands on one side of a great platz, or square, at either side of which the theatre and a museum form the other two wings; the fourth being left free of building, is occupied by a massive railing of most laboured tracery, which opens to a wide gate in a broad flight of steps, descending about seventy feet into a spacious park. The tall elms and beech-trees can be seen waving their tops over the grille above, and seeming, from the platz, like young timber; beyond, and many miles away, can be seen the bold chain of the Taunus Mountains stretching to the clouds, forming altogether a view which for extent and splendour I know no city that can present the equal. I could scarce restrain my admiration; and as I stood actually riveted to the spot, I was totally inattentive to the second summons of the waiter, informing me that my breakfast awaited me in another part of the room.
‘What, yonder?’ said I, in some disappointment at being so far removed from all chance of the prospect.
‘Perhaps you would join me here, sir,’ said the officer, rising, and with a most affable air saluting me.
‘If not an intrusion——’
‘By no means,’ said he. ‘I am a passionate admirer of that view myself. I have known it many years, and I always feel happy when a stranger participates in my enjoyment of it.’
I confess I was no less gratified by the opportunity thus presented of forming an acquaintance with the officer himself than with the scenery, and I took my seat with much pleasure. As we chatted away about the town and the surrounding country, he half expressed a curiosity at my taking a route so little travelled by my countrymen, and seemed much amused by my confession that the matter was purely accidental, and that frequently I left the destination of my ramble to the halting-place of the diligence. As English eccentricity can, in a foreigner’s estimation, carry any amount of absurdity, he did not set me down for a madman—which, had I been French or Italian, he most certainly would have done—and only smiled slightly at my efforts to defend a procedure in his eyes so ludicrous.
‘You confess,’ said I, at last, somewhat nettled by the indifference with which he heard my most sapient arguments—‘you confess on what mere casualties every event of life turns, what straws decide the whole destiny of a man, and what mere trivial circumstances influence the fate of whole nations, and how in our wisest and most matured plans some unexpected contingency is ever arising to disconcert and disarrange us; why, then, not go a step farther—leave more to fate, and reserve all our efforts to behave well and sensibly, wherever we may be placed, in whatever situations thrown? As we shall then have fewer disappointments, we shall also enjoy a more equable frame of mind, to combat with the world’s chances.’
‘True, if a man were to lead a life of idleness, such a wayward course might possibly suffice him as well as any other; but, bethink you, it is not thus men have wrought great deeds, and won high names for themselves. It is not by fickleness and caprice, by indolent yielding to the accident of the hour, that reputations have been acquired——’
‘You speak,’ said I, interrupting him at this place—‘you speak as if humble men like myself were to occupy their place in history, and not lie down in the dust of the churchyard undistinguishable and forgotten.’
‘When they cease to act otherwise than to deserve commemoration, rely upon it their course is a false one. Our conscience may be—indeed often is—a bribed judge; and it is only by representing to ourselves how our modes of acting and thinking would tell upon the minds of others, reading of but not knowing us, that we arrive at that certain rule of right so difficult in many worldly trials.
‘And do you think a man becomes happier by this?’
‘I did not say happier,’ said he, with a sorrowful emphasis on the last word. ‘He may be better.’
With that he rose from his seat, and looking at his watch he apologised for leaving me so suddenly, and departed.
‘Who is the gentleman that has just gone out?’ asked I of the waiter.
‘The Baron von Elgenheim,’ replied he; ‘but they mostly call him the Black Colonel. Not for his moustaches,’ added he, laughing with true German familiarity, ‘they are white enough, but he always wears mourning.’
‘Does he belong to Hesse, then?’
‘Not he; he’s an Auslander of some sort—a Swabian, belike; but he comes here every year, and stays three or four weeks at a time. And, droll enough too, though he has been doing so for fifteen or sixteen years, he has not a single acquaintance in all Cassel; indeed, I never saw him speak to a stranger till this morning.’
These particulars, few as they were, all stimulated my curiosity to see more of the colonel; but he did not present himself at the table d’hôte on that day or the following one, and I only met him by chance in the Park, when a formal salute, given with cold politeness, seemed to say our acquaintance was at an end.
Now, there are certain inns which by a strange magnetism are felt as homes at once; there is a certain air of quietude and repose about them that strikes you when you enter, and which gains on you every hour of your stay. The landlord, too, has a bearing compounded of cordiality and respect; and the waiter, divining your tastes and partialities, falls quickly into your ways, and seems to regard you as an habitué while you are yet a stranger; while the ringleted young lady at the bar, who passed you the first day on the stairs with a well-practised indifference, now accosts you with a smile and a curtsy, and already believes you an old acquaintance.
To an indolent man like myself, these houses are impossible to leave. If it be summer, you are sure to have a fresh bouquet in your bedroom every morning when you awake; in winter, the garçon has discovered how you like your slippers toasted on the fender, and your robe de chambre airing on the chair; the cook learns your taste in cutlets, and knows to a nicety how to season your omelette aux fines herbes; the very washerwoman of the establishment has counted the plaits in your shirt, and wouldn’t put one more or less for any bribery. By degrees, too, you become a kind of confidant of the whole household. The host tells you of ma’mselle’s fortune, and the match on the tapis for her, and all the difficulties and advantages, contra and pro; the waiter has revealed to you a secret of passion for the chambermaid, but for which he would be Heaven knows how many thousand miles off, in some wonderful place, where the wages would enable him to retire in less than a twelvemonth; and even Boots, while depositing your Wellingtons before the fire, has unburdened his sorrows and his hopes, and asks your advice, ‘if he shouldn’t become a soldier?’ When this hour arrives, the house is your own. Let what will happen, your fire burns brightly in your bedroom; let who will come, your dinner is cared for to a miracle. The newspaper, coveted by a dozen and eagerly asked for, is laid by for your reading; you are, then, in the poets words—
and let me tell you, there are worse sovereignties.
Apply this to the ‘König von Preussen,’ and wonder not if I found myself its inhabitant for three weeks afterwards.
In somewhat less than a fortnight’s time I had made a bowing acquaintance with some half-dozen good subjects of Hesse, and formed a chatting intimacy with some three or four frequenters of the table d’hôte, with whom I occasionally strolled out of an afternoon into the Park, to drink coffee, and listen to the military band that played there every evening. The quiet uniformity of the life pleased and never wearied me; for happily—or unhappily, as some would deem it—mine is one of those tame and commonplace natures which need not costly amusements nor expensive tastes to occupy it. I enjoyed the society of agreeable people with a gusto few possess; I can also put up with the association with those of a different stamp, feeling sensibly how much more I am on a level with them, and how little pretension I have to find myself among the others. Fortunately, too, I have no sympathy with the pleasures which wealth alone commands—it was a taste denied me. I neither affect to undervalue their importance, nor sneer at their object; I simply confess that the faculty which renders them desirable was by some accident omitted from my nature, and I never yet felt the smallness of my fortune a source of regret.
There is no such happiness, to my notion, as that which enables a man to be above the dependence on others for his pleasures and amusements, to have the sources of enjoyment in his own mind, and to feel that his own thoughts and his own reflections are his best wealth. There is no selfishness in this; far from it. The stores thus laid by make a man a better member of society, more ready to assist, more able to advise his fellow-men. By standing aloof from the game of life, you can better estimate the chances of success and the skill of the players; and as you have no stake in the issue, the odds are that your opinion is a correct one. But, better than all, how many enjoyments which to the glitter of wealth or the grandeur of a high position would seem insignificant and valueless, are to the humble man sources of hourly delight! And is our happiness anything but an aggregate of these grains of pleasure? There is as much philosophy in the child’s toy as in the nobleman’s coronet; all the better for him who can limit his desires to the attainable, and be satisfied with what lies within his reach. I have practised the system for a life long, and feel that if I now enjoy much of the buoyancy and the spirit of more youthful days, it is because I have never taxed my strength beyond its ability, nor striven for more than I could justly pretend to. There is something of indolence in all this—I know there is; but I was born under a lazy star, and I cannot say I regret my destiny.
From this little exposé of my tastes and habits it may be gathered that Cassel suited me perfectly. The air of repose which rests on these little secluded capitals has something—to me at least—inexpressibly pleasurable. The quaint old-fashioned equipages, drawn along at a gentle amble; the obsolete dress of the men in livery; the studious ceremony of the passers to each other; the absence of all bustle; the primitive objects of sale exposed in the various shops—all contrasting so powerfully with the wealth-seeking tumult of richer communities—suggest thoughts of tranquillity and contentment. They are the bourgeoisie of the great political world. Debarred from the great game which empires and kingdoms are playing, they retire within the limits of their own narrow but safe enjoyments, with ample means for every appliance of comfort; they seek not to astonish the world by any display, but content themselves with the homely happiness within their reach.
Every day I lingered here I felt this conviction the stronger. The small interests which occupied the public mind originated no violent passions, no exaggerated party spirit. The journals—those indices of a nation’s mind—contained less politics than criticism; an amicable little contention about the site of a new fountain or the position of an elector’s statue was the extent of any discussion; while at every opportunity crept out some little congratulating expression on the goodness of the harvest, the abundance of the vintage, or, what was scarcely less valued, the admirable operatic company which had just arrived. These may seem very petty incidents for men to pass their lives amongst, thought I, but still they all seem very happy; there is much comfort, there is no poverty. Like the court whist-table, where the points are only for silver groschen, the amusement is just as great, and no one is ruined by high play.
I am not sure but I should have made an excellent Hessian, thought I, as I deposited two little silver pieces, about the size of a spangle, on the table, in payment for a very appetising little supper, and an ink-bottleful of Rhine wine. And now for the coffee.
I was seated beneath a great chestnut-tree, whose spreading branches shaded me from the rays of the setting sun that came slanting to my very feet. At a short distance off sat a little family party—grandfather, grandchildren, and all—there was no mistaking them; they were eating their supper in the Park, possibly in honour of some domestic fête. Yes, there could be no doubt of it; it was the birthday of that pretty, dark-eyed little girl, of some ten years of age, who wore a wreath of roses in her hair, and sat at the top of the table, beside the Greis. A peal of delighted laughter broke from them all as I looked. And now I could see a little boy of scarce five years old, whose long yellow locks hung midway down his back; he was standing beside his sister’s chair, and I could hear his infant voice reciting a little verse he had learned in honour of the day. The little man, whose gravity contrasted so ludicrously with the merry looks about, went through his task as steadily as a court preacher holding forth before royalty; an occasional breach of memory would make him now and then turn his head to one side, where an elder sister knelt, and then he would go on again as before. I wished much to catch the words, but could only hear the refrain of each verse, which he always repeated louder than the rest—
Scarcely had he finished when his mother caught him to her arms and kissed him a hundred times; while the others struggled to take him, the little fellow clung to her neck with all his strength.
It was a picture of such happiness, that to look on it were alone a blessing. I have that night’s looks and cheerful voices fresh in my memory, and have thought of them many a long mile away from where I then heard them.
A slight noise beside me made me turn round, and I saw the Black Colonel, as the waiter called him, and whom I had not met for several days past. He was seated on a bench near, but with his back towards me, and I could perceive he was evidently unaware of my presence. I had, I must confess it, felt somewhat piqued at his avoidance of me, for such the distant recognition with which he saluted me seemed to imply. He had made the first advances himself, and it was scarcely fair that he should have thus abruptly stopped short, after inviting acquaintance. While I was meditating a retreat, he turned suddenly about, and then, taking off his hat, saluted me with a courtly politeness quite different from his ordinary manner.
‘I see, sir,’ said he with a very sweet smile, as he looked towards the little group—‘I see, sir, you are indeed an admirer of pretty prospects.’
Few and simple as the words were, they were enough to reconcile me to the speaker; his expression, as he spoke them, had a depth of feeling in it which showed that his heart was touched.
After some commonplace remark of mine on the simplicity of German domestic habits and the happy immunity they enjoyed from that rage of fashion which in other countries involved so many in rivalry with others wealthier than themselves, the colonel assented to the observation, but expressed his sorrow that the period of primitive tastes and pleasures was rapidly passing away. The French Revolution first, and subsequently the wars of the Empire, had done much to destroy the native simplicity of German character; while in latter days the tide of travel had brought a host of vulgar rich people, whose gold corrupted the once happy peasantry, suggesting wants and tastes they never knew nor need to know.
‘As for the great cities of Germany,’ continued he, ‘they have scarcely a trace left of their ancient nationality. Vienna and Berlin, Dresden, and Munich, are but poor imitations of Paris; it is only in the old and less visited towns, such as Nuremberg, or Augsburg, that the Alt Deutsch habits still survive. Some few of the Grand-Ducal States—Weimar, for instance—preserve the primitive simplicity of former days even in courtly etiquette; and there, really, the government is paternal, in the fullest sense of the term. You would think it strange, would you not, to dine at court at four o’clock, and see the grand-ducal ministers and their ladies—the élite of a little world of their own—proceeding, many of them on foot, in court-dress, to dinner with their sovereign? Strange, too, would you deem it—dinner over—to join a promenade with the party in the Park, where all the bourgeoisie of the town are strolling about with their families, taking their coffee and their tea, and only interrupting their conversation or their pleasure to salute the Grand-Duke or Grand-Duchess, and respectfully bid them a “good-e’en”; and then, as it grew later, to return to the palace, for a little whist or a game of chess, or, better still, to make one of that delightful circle in the drawing-room where Goethe was sitting? Yes, such is the life of Weimar. The luxury of your great capitals, the gorgeous salons of London and Paris, the voluptuous pleasures which unbounded wealth and all its train of passions beget, are utterly unknown there; but there is a world of pure enjoyment and of intercourse with high and gifted minds which more than repay you for their absence. A few years more, and all this will be but “matter for an old man’s memory.” Increased facilities of travel and greater knowledge of language erase nationality most rapidly. The venerable habits transmitted from father to son for centuries—the traditional customs of a people—cannot survive a caricature nor a satire. The esprit moqueur of France and the insolent wealth of England have left us scarce a vestige of our Fatherland. Our literature is at this instant a thing of shreds and patches—bad translations of bad books; the deep wisdom and the racy humour of Jean Paul are unknown, while the vapid wit of a modern French novel is extolled. They prefer the false glitter of Dumas and Balzac to the sterling gold of Schiller and Herder; and even Leipsic and Waterloo have not freed us from the slavish adulation of the conquered to the conqueror.’
‘What would you have?’ said I.
‘I would have Germany a nation once more—a nation whose limits should reach from the Baltic to the Tyrol. Her language, her people, her institutions entitle her to be such; and it is only when parcelled into kingdoms and petty States, divided by the artful policy of foreign powers, that our nationality pines and withers.’
‘I can easily conceive,’ said I, ‘that the Confederation of the Rhine must have destroyed in a great measure the patriotic feeling of Western Germany. The peasantry were sold as mercenaries; the nobles, little better, took arms in a cause many of them hated and detested——’
‘I must stop you here,’ said he, with a smile; ‘not that you would or could say that which should wound my feelings, but you might hurt your own when you came to know that he to whom you are speaking served in that army. Yes, sir, I was a soldier of Napoleon.’
Although nothing could be more unaffectedly easy than his manner as he spoke, I feared I might already have said too much; indeed, I knew not the exact expressions I had used, and there was a pause of some minutes, broken at length by the colonel saying—
‘Let us walk towards the town; for if I mistake not they close the gates of the Park at midnight, and I believe we are the only persons remaining here now.’
Chattering of indifferent matters, we arrived at the hotel; and after accepting an invitation to accompany the baron the next day to Wilhelms Höhe, I wished him good-night and retired.