THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN: MORAL, PO- ETICAL, AND HISTORICAL.
THE DIARY OF AN ENNUYEE.
MEMOIRS OF THE LOVES OF THE POETS. Bio- graphical Sketches of Women celebrated in Ancient and Mod- ern Poetry.
STUDIES, STORIES, AND MEMOIRS.
SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHAR- ACTER. With a Steel Engraving of Raphael's Madonna del San Sisto.
MEMOIRS OF THE EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS (Cimabue to Bassano).
LEGENDS OF THE MADONNA as represented in the Fine Arts.
SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART. In two volumes.
LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS as repre- sented in the Fine Arts. Forming the Second Series of Sacred and Legendary Art.
Each volume, i6mo, $1.25 ; the ten volumes, in box, $12.50; half calf, $25.00; tree calf, $35.00.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Publishers, BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
tvwa '/'•/ • &&.
FRE, AND CHAI1AC
MRS. JAMESON
EW YORK HOUGH TON, MlFf'LlN AND CO
IB?
SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER
BY
MRS. JAMESON
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Eijf Btijersttie Crests, 1885
PR
ORIGINAL PREFACE.
THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.
IT seems a foolish thing to send into the world a book requiring a preface of apologies; and yet more absurd to presume that any deprecation on the part of the author could possibly win indul- gence for what should be in itself worthless.
For this reason, and with a very deep feeling of the kindness I have already experienced from the public, I should now abandon these little volumes to their destiny without one word of preface or re- mark, but that a certain portion of their contents seems to require a little explanation.
It was the wish and request of my friends, many months ago, that I should collect various literary trifles which were scattered about in print or man- uscript, and allow them to be published together. My departure for the Continent set aside this in- tention for the time. I had other and particular objects in view, which still keep full possession of my mind, and which have been suspended not without reluctance, in order to prepare these vol- umes for the press : — neither had I, while travelling in Germany, the slightest idea of writing any thing
Vi ORIGINAL PREFACE.
of that country : so far from it, that except during the last few weeks at Munich, I kept no regular notes ; but finding, on my return to England, that many particulars which had strongly excited my interest with regard to the relative state of art and social existence in the two countries appeared new to those with whom I conversed, — after some hesi- tation, I was induced to throw into form the few memoranda I had made on the spot They are now given to the public in the first volume of this little collection with a very sincere feeling of their many imperfections, and much anxiety with regard to the reception they are likely to meet with ; yet in the earnest hope that what has been written in perfect simplicity of heart, may be perused both by my English and German friends, particularly the artists, with indulgence ; that those who read and doubt may be awakened to inquiry, and those who read and believe may be led to reflection ; and that those who differ from, and those who agree with, the writer, may both find some interest and amusement in the literal truth of the facts and im- pressions she has ventured to record.
It was difficult to give sketches of art, literature, and character, without making now and then some personal allusions ; but though I have often sketched from the life, I have adhered throughout to thia principle — never to give publicity to any name not already before the public, and in a manner public property.
ORIGINAL PREFACE. VD
While writing this preface, I learn that the sub- ject of the little sketch at the end of the first vol- ume is expected to return to England before she has finally quitted her profession. The first im- pulse was, of course, to cancel those pages which were written long ago, and under a far different impression, feeling that their purport might expose either the gifted person alluded to, or the author to misconstruction. But it has been found impossible to do so without causing not only a great expense, but also injury to my publishers, from the con- sequent delay. The allusion to her immediate retirement from the stage is the only error I am aware of; and that is only a truth deferred for a short period : for the rest — I have no shield against folly and malignity, neither has she —
" Une femme — une fleur, s'effeuille sans defence."
Under all the circumstances I would rather the sketch had been omitted ; but as this could not be done except by an obvious injustice, after some struggle with my own wishes and feelings, I have suffered the whole to stand as originally written ; and it is trusted to the best and kindest interpreta- tion of the public.
A. J. May, 1834.
NOTE. The original Edition was published in two vol umes.
CONTENTS.
1401
P-^face
SKETCHES or ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER, PART I. In three Dialogues.
L A Scene in a Steamboat 16
A Singular Character 26
Gallery at Ghent 28
The Prince of Orange's Pictures 31
A Female Gambler 88
Cologne—The Medusa 42
Professor Wallraf 47
Schlegel and Madame de Stae'l 49
Story of Archbishop Gerard 66
Heidelberg— Elizabeth Stuart 62
An English Farmer's Idea of the Picturesque. . . 71
IL Frankfort 73
The Theatre, Madame Haitsinger 76
The Versorgung Haus 80
The StadelMuseum 83
Dannecker, Memoir of his Life and Works 86
German Sculpture— Rauch, Tieck, Schwanthaler 113
HL Goethe and his Daughter-in-law 124
The German Women 128
German Authoresses 132
German Domestic Life and Manners 140
German Coquetterie and German Romance 141
Die Story of a Devoted Sister , 164
; CONTENTS.
SKETCHES OF ABT, LITEBATOBE, AND CHARACTER, PABI If.
Memoranda at Munich, Nuremberg, and Dresden.
PAQI
I. MUNICH 179
The Theatre— Representation of " Egmont ".. . . 180
Leo von Klenze 185
The Glyptothek — Its General Arrangement — Egina Marbles — Account of the Frescos of Cornelius— Canova's Paris and Thorwaldson's
Adonis 187-202
The Opera at Munich, the Kapel Meister Stuntz 204
The Poems of the King of Bavaria 207
A Public Day at the New Palace 209
Thoughts on Female Singers— Their Condition
and Destiny 211
The Munich Gallery— Thoughts on Pictures—
Their Moral Influence 213
Rubens and the Flemish Masters 216
The Gallery of Schleissheim 225
The Boissere"e Gallery — The old German School of Painting — Its Effects on the Modern German
School of Art 227
Representation of the Braut von Messina 280
The Hofgarten at Munich 282
The King's Passion for Building— The New Pal- ace—The Beauty of its Decorations— Partic- ular Account of the Modern Paintings on the
Walls 234-249
The Frescos of Julius Schnorr from the Nibe-
lungen-Lied 250
The Frescos in the Royal Chapel 262
The Opera— Madame Scheckner 265
The Kunstverein 268
Karl von Holtei 27C
F6te of the Obelisk 271
CONTENTS, »
PAOM
The Gallery— Pictures and Painters 278
Madame de Freyberg— A Visit to Thalkirchen. . 281
Tomb of Eugene Beauharnais 284
The Sculpture in the Glyptothek 289
Plan of the Pinakothek or National Gallery 292
The Revival of Fresco Painting. 801
Bavarian Sculptors 803
The Valhalla 804
Stieler, the Portrait Painter 308
Gallery of the Due de Leuchtenberg 809
Society at Munich. 812
The Liederkranz 816
II. NUKEMBEEO 820
The Old Fortress 824
Albert Durer 825
Hans Sachs and Peter Visoher 327
The Cemetery 330
Travelling in Germany 333
ID. DRESDEN 335
The Opera— Madame Schroder Devrient in the
" CapeUetti " 339
Ludwig Tieck 342
The Dresden Gallery and the Italian School. ... 847 Rosalba— Violante Siries— Henrietta Walters- Maria von Osterwyck— Elizabeth Sirani— The
Sofonisba 860
Thoughts on Female Artists — Louisa and Eliza Sharpe— The Countess Julie von Egloffstein. . 363
Moritz Retzsch 368
English and German Art 378
Catalogue of German Artists 381
adi
CONTENTS.
A Visit to Hardwicke
A Visit to Althorpe
Sketch of Mrs. Siddons. .. Sketch of Fanny Kemble.
PAGB
, 387 , 425 , 448 . 476
SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER.
PART I.
IN THREE DIALOGUES
SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER.
MEDON. And so we are to have no "Sentimen- tal Travels in Germany" on hot-pressed paper, illustrated with views taken on uic$ .^wi 't
ALDA. No.
MEDON. You have unloaded Time of his wallet only to deal out his '' scraps of things past," his shreds of remembrance, in beggarly, indolent fash- ion, over your own fireside ? You are afraid of being termed an egotist ; you, who within these ten minutes have assured me that not any opinion of any human being should prevent you from doing, saying, writing — any thing —
ALDA. Finish the sentence — any thing,/or truth's sake. But how is the cause of truth to be advanced by the insolent publication of a mass of crude thoughts and hasty observations picked up here and there, " as pigeons pick up pease," and which MOW lie safe within the clasps of those little great
16 SKETCHES OF ART;
books ? You need not look at them ; they do not contain another Diary of an Ennuye'e, thank Heav- en 1 nor do I feel much inclined to play the Enni*- yeuse in public.
MEDON. " Take any form but that, and my firm nerves shall never tremble ; " but with eyes to see, a heart to feel, a mind to observe, and a pen to record those observations, I do not perceive why you should not contribute one drop to that great ocean of thought which is weltering round the world !
ALDA. If I could.
MEDON. There are people, who when they trav- el open their eyes and their ears, (aye, and their mouths to some purpose,) and shut up their hearts and souls. I have heard such persons make it their boast, that they have returned to old England with ail their old prejudices thick upon them ; they have come back, to use their own phrase, " with no for- eign ideas — just the same as they went:" they are much to be congratulated 1 I hope you are not one of these?
ALDA. I hope not; it is this cold impervious pride which is the perdition of us English and of England. I remember, that in one of my several excursions on the Rhine, we had on board the steamboat an English family of high rank. There was the lordly papa, plain and shy, who never spoke to any one except his own family, and then only in the lowest whisper. There was the lady mamma, so truly lady-like, with fine-cut patrician
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 17
features, and in her countenance a kind of passive hauteur, softened by an appearance of suffering, and ill-health. There were two daughters, proud, pale, fine-looking girls, dressed a ravir, with that indescribable air of high pretension, so elegantly impassive — so self-possessed — which some people call Vair distingue, but which, as extremes meet, I would rather call the refinement of vulgarity — the polish we see bestowed on debased material — the plating over the steel — the stucco over the brick work I
MEDON. Good ; you can be severe then !
ALDA. I spoke generally: bear witness to the general truth of the picture, for it will fit others as well as the personages I have brought before you, who are, indeed, but specimens of a species. This group, then, had designedly or instinctively in- trenched themselves in a corner to the right of the steersman, within a fortification of tables and benches, so arranged as to forbid all approach within two or three yards; the young ladies had each their sketch-book, and wielded pencil and Indian rubber, I know not with what effect, — but I know that I never saw either countenance once relax or brighten in the midst of the divine scenery through which we glided. Two female attendants, leated on the outer fortifications, formed a kind of piquet guard ; and two footmen at the other end kept watch over the well-appointed carriages, and came and went as their attendance was required. No one else ventured to approach this aristocratic
18 SKETCHES OF ART,
Olympus; the celestials within its precincts, though not exactly seated " on golden stools at golden tables," like the divinities in the song of the Parcse,* showed as supreme, as godlike an indifference to the throng of mortals in the nether sphere : no word was exchanged during the whole day with any of the fifty or sixty human beings who were round them ; nay, when the rain drove us down to the pavilion, even there, amid twelve or fourteen others, they contrived to keep themselves aloof from contact and conversation. In this fashion they probably pursued their tour, exchanging the interior of their travelling carriage for the interior of an hotel ; and everywhere associating only with those of their own caste. What do they see of all that is to be seen ? What can they know of what is to be known ? What do they endure of what is to be endured ? I can speak from experience — I have travelled in that same style. As they went, BO they return ; happily, or rather pitifully, uncon- scious of the narrow circle in which move their factitious enjoyments, their confined experience, their half-awakened sympathies ! And I should tell you, that in the same steamboat were two German girls, under the care of an elderly relative, I think an aunt, and a brother, who was a celebrated juris- consulte and judge : their rank was equal to that of my country-women ; their blood, perhaps, more purely noble, that is, older by some centuries ; and
Jn Qoet.hp's Iphigenia
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 19
cLeir family more illustrious, by God knows how many quarterings ; moreover, their father was a minister of state. Both these girls were beautiful ; — fair, and fair-haired, with complexions on which " the rose stood ready with a blush ; " and one, the youngest sister, was exquisitely lovely — in truth, she might have sat for one of Guide's angels. They walked up and down the deck, neither seeking nor avoiding the proximity of others. They accepted the telescopes which the gentlemen, particularly some young Englishmen, pressed on them when any distant or remarkable object came in view, and repaid the courtesy with a bright kindly smile ; they were natural and easy, and did not deem it necessary to mount guard over their own dignity. Do you think I did not observe and feel the con- trast ?
MEDOJ*. If nations begin at last to understand each other's true interests, morally and politically, it will be through the agency of gifted men ; but if ever they learn to love and sympathize with each other, it will be through the medium of you women. You smile, and shake your head ; but in spite of a late example, which might seem to controvert, this idea, I still think so : our prejudices are stronger and bitterer than yours, because they are those which perverted reason builds up on a foundation of pride ; but yours, which are generally those of fancy and association, soon melt away before your own kindly affections. More mobile, more impres- sible, more easily yielding to external circurn-
80 SKETCHES OF ART,
stances, more easily lending yourselves to diffeient manners and habits, more quick to perceive, more gentle to judge ; — yes, it is to you we must look, to break down the outworks of prejudice — you, the advanced guard of humanity and civilization !
" The gentle race and dear, By whom alone the world is glorified ! "
Every feeling, well educated, generous, and truly refined woman who travels is as a dove sent out on a mission of peace ; and should bring back at least an olive-leaf in her hand, if she bring nothing else. It is her part to soften the intercourse between rougher and stronger natures ; to aid in the inter- fusion of the gentler sympathies ; to speed the in- terchange of art and literature from pole to pole : not to pervert wit, and talent, and eloquence, and abuse the privileges of her sex, to sow the seeds of hatred where she might plant those of love — to im- bitter national discord and aversion, and dissemi- nate individual prejudice and error.
ALDA. Thank you 1 I need not say how entirely \ agree with you.
MEDON. Then tell me, what have you brought home ? if but an olive-leaf, let us have it ; come, unpack your budget. Have you collected store ol anecdotes, private, literary, scandalous, abundantly interspersed with proper names of grand-dukes and little dukes, counts, barons, ministers, poeta, authors actors, and opera- dancers ?
ALDA. I!
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 21
MEDON. Cry you mercy ! — I did but jest, so do not look so indignant ! But have you then traced the cause and consequences of that under-curreni of opinion which is slowly but surely sapping the foundations of empires ? Have you heard the low booming of that mighty ocean which approaches, wave after wave, to break up the dikes and boun- daries of ancient power ?
ALDA. I! no; how should I — skimming over the surface of society with perpetual sunshine and favoring airs — how should I sound the gulfs and shoals which lie below ?
MEDON. Have you, then, analyzed that odd combination of poetry, metaphysics, and politics, which, like the three primeval colors, tinge in va- rious tints and shades, simple and complex, all liter- ature, morals, art, and even conversation, through Germany ?
ALDA. No, indeed !
MEDON. Have you decided between the dif- ferent systems of Jacobi and Schelling ?
ALDA. You know I am a poor philosopher ; but when Schelling was introduced to me at Munich, I remember I looked up at him with inexpressible admiration, as one whose giant arm had cut through an isthmus, and whose giant mind had new-model- fed the opinions of minds as gigantic as his own.
MEDON. Then you are of this new school, which reveals the union of faith and philosophy ?
ALDA. If I am, it is by instinct.
MEDON. Well, to descend to your own poculiai
fS SKETCHES OF ART,
Ftphere, hare you satisfied yourself as to the moral and social position of the women in Germany ?
ALDA. No, indeed ! — at least, not yet
MEDOX. Have you examined and noted down the routine of the domestic education of their chil- dren ? (we know something of the public and na- tional systems.) Can you give some accurate no- lion of the ideas which generally prevail on this subject ?
ALDA. O no ! you have mentioned things which would require a life to study. Merely to. have thought upon them, to have glanced at them, gives me no right to discuss them, unless I could bring my observations to some tangible form, and derive from them some useful result.
MEDOX. Yet in this last journey you had an object — a purpose?
ALDA. I had — a purpose which has long been revolving in my mind — an object never lost sight of; — but give me time ! — time !
MEDOX. I see ; but are you prepared for con- sequences ? Can you task your sensitive mind to stand reproach and ridicule ? Remember your own story of Runckten the traveller, who, when about to commence his expedition into the desarts of Africa, prepared himself, by learning beforehand to digest poisons ; to swallow without disgust rep- tiles, spiders, vermin —
ALDA. " Thou hast the most unsavory similes ! "
MKDOX. Take a proverb then — " Bisogna co- prirsi bene il viso innanzi di struzzicare il vespaio.
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 23
AI.DA. I will not hide my face ; nor can I an- swer you in this jesting vein, for to me it is a serious thought. There is in the kindly feelings, the spon- taneous sympathy of the public towards me, some- thing which fills me with gratitude and respect, and tells me to respect myself; which I would not ex- change for the greater eclat which hangs round greater names; which I will not forfeit by writing one line from an unworthy motive ; nor flatter, nor invite, by withholding one thought, opinion, or sen- timent which I believe to be true, and to which 1 can put the seal of my heart's conviction.
MEDON. Good ! I love a little enthusiasm now and then; so like Britomart in the enchanter's palace, the motto is,
" Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold. "
ALDA. I should rather say, be gentle, be gentle, everywhere be gentle ; and then we cannot be too bold*
MEDON. Well, then, I return once more to the charge. Have you been rambling about the world for these six months, yet learned nothing ?
ALDA. On the contrary.
MEDON. Then what, in Heaven's name, have you learned ?
ALDA. Not much ; but I have learned to sweep my mind of some ill-conditioned cobwebs. I have learned to consider my own acquired knowledge
* Over another iron door was writt, Be not too bold.
FAERY QUEEN, Bock III Cauto xl.
24 SKETCHES OF ART,
but as a torch flung into an abyss, making the darkness visible, and showing me the extent of my own ignorance.
MEDON. Then give us — give we, at least — the benefit of your ignorance ; only let it be all your own. I honor a profession of ignorance — if only for its rarity — in these all-knowing times. Let me tell you, the ignorance of a candid and not uncul- tivated mind is better than the second-hand wisdom of those who take all things for granted ; who are the echoes of others' opinions, the utterers of others words ; who think they know, and who think they think : I am sick of them all. Come, refresh me with a little ignorance — and be serious.
ALDA. You make me smile ; after all, 'tis only going over old ground, and I know not what pleas- are, what interest it can impart, beyond half an hour's amusement.
MEDON. Sceptic ! is that nothing ? In this harsh, cold, working-day world, is half an hour's amuse- ment nothing ? Old ground ! — as if you did not know the pleasure of going over old ground with a new companion to refresh half-faded recollections — to compare impressions — to correct old ideas and acquire new ones ! O I can suck knowledge out of ignorance, as a weazel sucks eggs ! — Begin.
ALDA. Where shall I begin ?
MEDON. Where, but at the beginning ! and then diverge as you will. Your first journey was one wf mere amusement ?
ALDA. Merely, and it answered its purpose ; w«
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTEB. 25
travelled a la milor Anglais — a partie carree-~- a barouche hung on the most approved principle— double-cushioned — luxurious — rising and sinking on its springs like a swan on the wave — the pockets Btuffed with new publications — maps and guides ad infinitum; English servants for comfort, foreign servants for use ; a chessboard, backgammon tables — in short, surrounded with all that could render us entirely independent of the amusements we had come to seek, and of the people among whom we had come to visit.
MEDON. Admirable — and English 1 ALDA. Yes, and pleasant. I thought, not with- out gratitude, of the contrasts between present feelings and those of a former journey. To aban- don one's self to the quickening influence of new objects without care or thought of to-morrow, with a mind awake in all its strength; with restored health and cheerfulness ; with sensibility tamed, not dead ; possessing one's soul in quiet ; not seek- ing, nor yet shrinking from excitement ; not self- engrossed, nor yet pining for sympathy ; was not this much ? Not so interesting, perhaps, as playing the ennuyee ; but, oh ! you know not how sad it is to look upon the lovely through tearful eyes, and walk among the loving and the kind wrapped as ui a death-shroud ; to carry into the midst of the most glorious scenes of nature, and the divinest creations of art, perceptions dimmed and troubled mth sickness and anguish : to move in the morn- vng with aching and reluctance — to faint in the
26 SKETCHES OF ART,
evening with weariness and pain ; to feel all change, all motion, a torment to the dying heart ; all rest, all delay, a burden to the impatient spirit ; to shiver in the presence of joy, like a ghost in the sunshine, yet have no sympathy to spare for suf- fering. How could I remember that all this had been, and not bless the miracle- worker — Time ? And apropos to the miracles of time — I had on this first journey one source of amusement, which I am sorry I cannot share with you at full length ; it was the near contemplation of a very singular character, of which I can only afford you a sketch. Our CHEF de voyage, for so we chose to entitle him who was the planner and director of our excursion, was one of the most accomplished and most eccentric of human beings : even .courtesy might have termed him old, at seventy ; but old age and he were many miles asunder, and it seemed as though he had made some compact with Time, like that of Faust with the devil, and was not to surrender to his in- evitaole adversary till the very last moment. Years could not quench his vivacity, nor " stale his infinite variety." He had been one of the prince's wild companions in the days of Sheridan and Fox, and could play alternately blackguard and gentleman, and both in perfection ; but the high-born gentle- man ever prevailed. He had been heir to an enormous income, most of which had slipped through his fingers unknownst, as the Irish say, and had stood in the way of a coronet, which, somehow vr other, had passed over his head to light on thaf
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER 27
of his eldest son. He had lived a life which would have ruined twenty iron constitutions, and had suffered what might well have broken twenty hearts of common stuff; but his self-complacency was invulnerable, his animal spirits inexhaustible, his activity indefatigable. The eccentricities of this singular man Lave been matter of celebrity ; but against each of these stories it would be easy to place some act of benevolence, some trait of lofty, gentle- manly feeling, which would at least neutralize their effect. He often told me that he had early in life selected three models, after which to form his own conduct and character; namely, De Grammont, Hotspur, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury ; and he certainly did unite, in a greater degree than he knew himself, the characteristics of all three. Such was our CHEF, and thus led, thus appointed, away we posted, from land to land, from city to city —
MEDON. Stay — stay ! this is galloping on at the rate of Lenora and her phantom lover —
" Tramp, tramp across the land we go, Splash, splash across the sea 1 "
Take me with you, and a little more leisurely.
ALDA. I think Bruges was the first place which interested me, perhaps from its historical associa- tions. Bruges, where monarchs kissed the hand to merchants, now emptied of its former splendor, re- minded me of the improvident steward in Scrip- ture, who could not dig, and to beg was ashamed. (t had an air of grave idleness and threadbare
28 SKETCHES OF ART,
dignity ; and its listless, thinly scattered inhabitants looked as if they had gone astray among the wide streets and huge tenaatless edifices. There is one thing here which you must see — the tomb of Charles the Bold, and his daughter Mary of Burgundy. The tomb is of the most exquisite workmanship, com- posed of polished brass and enamelled escutcheons ; and there the fiery father and the gentle daughter lie, side by side, in sculptured bronze, equally still, cold, and silent. I remember that I stood long gazing on the inscription, which made me smile, and made me think. There was no mention of defeat and massacre, disgraceful flight, or obscure death. " But," says the epitaph, after enumerating his titles, his exploits, and his virtues, " Fortune, who had hitherto been his good lady, ungently turned her back upon him, on such a day of such a year, and oppressed him," — an amusing instance of mingled courtesy and naivete. Ghent was our next resting-place. The aspect of Ghent, so fa- miliarized to us of late by our travelled artists, made a strong impression upon me, and I used to walk about for hours together, looking at the strange picturesque old buildings coeval with the Spanish dominion, with their ornamented fronts and peaked roofs. There is much trade here, many flourishing manufactories, and the canals and quays often exhibited a lively scene of bustle, of which the form, at least, was new to us. The first ex- position, or exhibition, of the newly-founded Royal Academy of the Netherlands was at this seasoa
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 29
open. You will allow it was a fair opportunity of judging of the present state of painting, in the lelf-same land where she had once found, if not a temple, at least a home.
MEDON. And learned to be homely — but the result ?
ALDA. I can scarcely express the surprise I felt at the time, though it has since diminished on reflection. All the attempts at historical painting were bad, without exception. There was the usual assortment of Virgins, St. Cecilias, Cupids and Psyches, Zephyrs and Floras; but such incom- parable atrocities ! There were some cabinet pic- tures in the same style in which their Flemish ancestors excelled — such as small interior con- versation pieces, battle pieces, and flowers and fruit ; some of these were really excellent, but the proportion of bad to good was certainly fifty to one.
MEDON. Something like our own Royal Acad- emy.
ALDA. No ; because with much which was quite as bad, quite as insipid, as coarse in taste, as Btupidly presumptuous in attempt, and ridiculous m failure, as ever shocked me on the walls of Som- erset House, there was nothing to be compared to the best pictures I have seen there. As I looked and listened to the remarks of the crowd around me, I perceived that the taste for art is even as low in the Netherlands as it is here and else* where.
80 SKETCHES OF ART,
MEDON. And, surely, not from the want of models, nor from the want of facility in the meami of studying them. You visited, of course, Schamp's collection ?
ALDA. Surely; there were miracles of art crowded together like goods in a counting-house, with wondrous economy of space, and more la- mentable economy of light. Some were nailed against doors, inside and out, or suspended from screens and window-shutters. Here I saw Rubens' picture of Father Rutseli, the confessor of Albert and Isabella : one of those heads more suited to the crown than to the cowl — grand, sagacious, in- tellectual, with such a world of meaning in the eye that one almost shrunk away from the expression. Here, too, I found that remarkable picture of Charles the First, painted by Lely during the king's imprisonment at Windsor — the only one for which he sat between his dethronement and his death : he is still melancholy and gentlemanlike, but not quite so dignified as on the canvas of Vandyke. This is the very picture that Horace Walpole mentions as lost or abstracted from the collection at Windsor. How it came into Schamp's collection I could not learn. A very small head of an Italian girl by Correggio, or in his manner, hung close beside a Dutch girl by Mieris : equally exquisite as paintings, they gave me an opportunity of contrasting two styles, both founded in nature — but the nature, how different ! the one all life, the •tber life and soul. Schamp's collection is liberallt
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER SI
open to the public, as well as many others ; if art- ists fail, it is not for want of models.
MEDON. Perhaps for want of patronage ? Yet I hear that the late king of the Netherlands sent several young artists to Italy at his own expense, and that the Prince of Orange was liberal and even munificent in his purchases — particularly of the old masters.
ALDA. When I went to see the collection of the Prince of Orange at Brussels, I stepped from the room in which hung the glorious Vandykes, per- haps unequalled in the world, into the adjoining apartment, in which were two unfinished portraits disposed upon easels. They represented members of the prince's family; and were painted by a native artist of fashionable fame, and royally pat- ronised. These were pointed out to my admiration as universally approved. What shall I say of them ? Believe me, that they were contemptible beyond all terms of contempt ! Can you tell me why the Prince of Orange should have sufficient taste to select and appropriate the finest specimens of art, and yet purchase and patronise the vilest iaubs ever perpetrated by imbecility and pre- sumption ?
MEDON. I know not, unless it be that in the former case he made use of others' eyes and judg- ment, and in the latter of his own.
ALDA. I might have anticipated the answer; iut be that as it may, of all the galleries I saw in fee Netherlands, the small but invaluable collection
82 SKETCHES OF ART,
he had formed in his palace pleased me most. 1 remember a portrait of Sir Thomas More, by Holbein. A female head, bj Leonardo da Vinci, said to be one of the mistresses of Francis I., but this is doubtful; that most magnificent group, Christ delivering the keys to St. Peter, by Rubens, once in England; about eight or ten Vandykes, masterpieces — for instance, Philip IV. and his min- ister Olivarez; and a Chevalier le Roy and his wife, all that you can imagine of chivalrous dignity and lady-like grace. But there was one picture, a family group, by Gonsalez, which struck me more than all the rest put together. I had never seen any production of this painter, whose works are scarcely known out of Spain ; and I looked upon this with equal astonishment and admiration. There was also a small but most curious collection of pictures, of the ancient Flemish and German Bchools, which it is now the fashion to admire, and, what is worse, to imitate. The word fashion does not express the national enthusiasm on this subject which prevails in Germany. I can understand that these pictures are often most interesting as historic documents, and often admirable for their literal transcripts of nature and expression, but they can only possess comparative excellence and relative value ; and where the feeling of ideal beauty and classic grace has been highly cultivated, the eye shrinks involuntarily from these hard, grotesque, and glaring productions of an age when genius was blindly groping amid the darkness of ignorance.
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 88
To confess the truth, I was sometimes annoyed, and sometimes amused, by the cant I heard in Germany about those schools of painting which preceded Albert Durer. Perhaps I should not say cant — it is a vile expression ; and in German affectation there is something so very peculiar — so poetical, so — so natural, if I might say so, that I would give it another name if I could find one. In this worship of their old painters I really could sympathize sometimes, even when it most provoked me. Retzsch, whom I had the delight of knowing at Dresden, showed me a sketch, in which he had ridiculed this mania with the most exquisite humor: it represented the torso of an antique Apollo, (em- blematical of ideal grace,) mutilated and half- buried in the earth, and subject to every species of profanation ; it serves as a stool for a German student, who, with his shirt collar turned down, and his hair dishevelled, and his cap stuck on one side a la Rafaelle, is intently copying a stiff", hard, sour-looking old Madonna, while Ignorance looks on, gaping with admiration. No one knows better than Retzsch the value of these ancient masters — no one has a more genuine feeling for all that is admirable in them ; but no one feels more sensibly the gross perversion and exaggeration of the wor- ship paid to them. I wish he would publish this good-humored little bit of satire, which is too just and too graceful to be called a caricature.
I must tell you, however, that there were two most curious old pictures in the Orange Gallery
34 SKETCHES OF ART,
which arrested my attention, and of which 1 have retained a very distinct and vivid recollection ; and that is more than I can say of many better pictures. They tell, in a striking manner, a very interesting story : the circumstances are said to have occurred about the year 985, but I cannot say that they rest on any very credible authority.
Of these two pictures, each exhibits two scenes, A certain nobleman, a favorite of the Emperor Otho, is condemned to death by his master on the false testimony of the empress, (a sort of Potiphar's wife,) who has accused him of having tempted her to break her marriage vow. In the background wo see the unfortunate man ]ed to judgment ; he is in his shirt, bare-footed and bare-headed. His wife walks at his side, to whom he appears to be speak- ing earnestly, and endeavoring to persuade her of his innocence. A friar precedes them, and a crowd of people follow after. On the walls of the city stand the emperor and his wicked empress, looking down on the melancholy procession. In the foreground, we have the dead body of the victim, stretched upon the earth, and the execu- tioner is in the act of delivering the head to hit wife, who looks grim with despair. The severec head and flowing blood are painted with such a horrid and literal fidelity to nature, that it has been found advisable to cover this portion of the picture.
In the foreground of the second picture, the Emperor Otho is represented on his throne, SUP»
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER 35
rounded by his counsellor? and courtiers. Before him kneels the widow of the count : she has the ghastly head of her husband in her lap, and in her left hand she holds firmly and unhurt the red-hot iron, the fiery ordeal by which she proves to the satisfaction of all present the innocence of her murdered lord. The emperor looks thunderstruck; the empress stands convicted, and is condemned to death ; and in the background, we have the catas- trophe. She is bound to a stake, the fire is kindled, and she suffers the terrible penalty of her crime. These pictures, in subject and execution, might be termed tragico-comico-historical ; but in spite of the harshness of the drawing, and the thousand defects of style and taste, they fix the attention by thy vigor of the coloring and the expression of tht heads, many of which are evidently from the life. The story is told in a very complete though very inartificial manner. The painter, Derick Steuer- bout, was one of the very earliest of the Flemish masters, and lived about 1468, many years before Albert Durer and Holbein. I have heard that they were painted for the city of Lorraine, and until the invasion of the French they remained undisturbed, and almost unnoticed, in the Hotel- de-Ville.
MEDON. Does this collection of the Prince of Orange still exist at Brussels ?
ALDA. I am told that it does — that the whole palace, the furniture, the pictures, remain precisely as the prince and his family left them : that even
U6 SKKTC1IKS OF ART,
down to the princess's work-box, and the portraits of her children, which hang in her boudoir, nothing has been touched. This does not speak well for King Leopold's gallantry ; and, in his place, I think I would have sent the private property of my rival after him.
MEDON. So would not I, for this is not the age 01 chivalry, but of common sense. As to the pic- tures, the Belgians might plead that they were pur chased with the public money, Uierefore justly public property. No, no; he should not have a picture of them — " If a Vandyke would save his soul, he should not ; I'd keep them by this hand ! * that is, as long as I had a plausible excuse for keen- ing them; but the princess should have had her work-box and her children by the first courier. What more at Brussels ?
ALDA. I can recollect no more. The weather was sultry ; we dressed, and dined, and ate ices, and drove up and down the Alice Verte, and saw, I believe, all that is to be seen — churches, palaces, hospitals, and so forth. We went from thence to Aix-la-Chapelle and Spa. As it was the height of the season, and both places were crowded with gay invalids, perhaps I ought to have been very much amused, but J confess I was ennuyee to death.
MEDON. This I can hardly conceive ; for though there might have been little to amuse one of your turn of mind, there should have been much to observe.
LITERATURE, AND CIIARAC1ER. 37
There might have been matter for ob- icrvation, or ridicule, or reflection at the moment, but nothing that I remember with pleasure. Spa I disliked particularly. I believe I am not in my nature cold or stern ; but there was something in the shallow, tawdry, vicious gayety of this place which disgusted me. In all watering-places ex- tremes meet ; sickness and suffering, youth and dissipation, beggary and riches, collect together ; but Spa being a very small town, a mere village, the approximation is brought immediately under the eye at every hour, every moment; and the beauty of the scenery around only rendered it more disagreeable : to me, even the hill of Annette and Lubin was polluted. Our Chef de voyage, who had visited Spa fifty years before, when on his grand tour, walked about with great complacency, recalling his youthful pleasures, and the days when he used to gallant his beautiful cousin, the Duchess of Rutland, of divine memory. While the rest of the party were amused, I fell into my old habit of thinking and observing, and my contemplations were not agreeable. But, instead of dealing in these general remarks, I will sketch you one or two pictures which have dwelt upon my memory. We had a well-dressed laquais-de-place, whose honesty and good-humor rendered him an especial favor- fo. His wife being ill, 1 went to see her ; to my jjreat surprise he conducted me to a little mud tiovel, worse than the worst Irish, cabin I ever heard iescribei, whei-e his wife lay stretched upon some
38 SKETCHES OF ART,
'rtraw, covered with a rug, and a little neglected ragged child was crawling about the floor, and ahor.t her bed. It seeins, then, that this poor man, who every day waited at our luxurious table, dressed in smiles, arid must habitually have witnessed the wasteful expenditure of the rich, returned every night to his miserable home, if home it could be called, to feel the stings of want with double bitter- ness. He told me that he and his wife lived the greater part of the year upon water-gruel, and that the row of wretched cabins of which his own formed one was inhabited by those who, like him- self, were dependent upon the rich, extravagant, and dissipated strangers for the little pittance which was to support them for a twelvemonth. Was not this a fearful contrast ? I should tell you that the benevolence of our Chef rendered this poor couple independent of change or chance for the next year. My other picture is in a different style. You know that at Spa the theatre immediately joins the ball- room. As soon as the performances are over, the parterre is laid down with boards, and in a few minutes metamorphosed into a gambling saloon. One night curiosity led me to be a spectator at one of the rouge et noir tables. While I was there,
a Flemish lady of rank, the Baroness B , came
n, hanging on the arm of a gentleman ; she waa uot young, but still handsome. I had often met her in our walks, and had been struck by her fm€ eyes, and the amiable expression of her counte- nance. After one or two turns up and down the
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 39
room, laughing and talking, she carelessly, and aa if from a sudden thought, seated herself at the table. By degrees she became interested in the game, her stakes became deeper, her countenance became agitated, and her brow clouded. I left her playing. The next evening when I entered, I found her already seated at the table, as indeed I had anticipated. I watched her for some time with a painful interest. It was evident that she was not an habitual gambler, like several others at the same table, whose hard impassive features never varied with the variations of the game. There was onr little old withered skeleton of a woman, like a death's head in artificial flowers, who stretched out her harpy claws upon the rouleaus of gold and silver without moving a muscle or a wrinkle of her face, — with hardly an additional twinkle in her dull gray eye. Not so my poor baroness, who became every moment more agitated and more eager : her eyes sparkled with an unnatural keenness, her teeth became set, and her lips, drawn away from them, wore, instead of the sweet smile which had £»„ first attracted my attention, a grin of despera- tion. Gradually, as I looked at her, her counte- nance assumed so hideous and, I may add, so vile an expression, that I could no longer endure the Spectacle. I hastened from the room — more moved, more shocked than I can express ; and often, since that time, her face has risen upon my day and night dreams like a horrid supernatural mask. Her husband, for this wretched woman was a wife and
40 SKETCHES OF ART,
a mother, came to meet her a few days afterwardl and accompany her home ; but I heard that in the interval she had attempted self-destruction, and failed.
MEDON. The case is but too common ; and even jou, who are always seeking reasons and excuses for the delinquencies of your sex, would hardly find them here.
ALDA. And unless I could know what were the previous habits and education of the victim, through what influences, blest or unblest, her mind had been trained, her moral existence built up — should I condemn ? Who had taught this woman self- knowledge ? — who had instructed her in the ele- ments of her own being, and guarded her against her own excitable temperament? — what friendly voice had warned her ignorance ? — what secret burden of misery — what joyless emptiness oi heart — what fever of the nerves — what weariness of spirit — what " thankless husband or faithless lover n had driven her to the edge of the precipice ? In this particular case I know that the husband bore the character of being both negligent and dissi- pated ; and where was Ae, — what were his haunts and his amusements, while his wife staked with her gold her honor, her reason, and her life ? Tell me all this before we dare to pass judgment. O it is easy to compute what is done ! and yet, who but the Being above us all can know what is resisted ?
MEDON. You would plead then for a femalt gambler ?
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 41
ALDA. Why do you lay such an emphasis upon female gambler? In what respect is a female gambler worse than one of your sex ? The case is more pitiable — more rare— therefore, perhaps, more shocking ; but why more hateful ?
ME DON. You pose me.
ALDA. Then I will leave you to think ; or shall I go on ? for at this rate we shall never arrive at the end of our journey. I was at Aix-la-Chapelle, was I not ? Well, I spare you the relics of Charle- magne, and if you have any dear or splendid as- sociations with that great name, spare your imagina- tion the shock it may receive in the cathedral at Aix, and leave "Yarrow unvisited."* Luckily the theatre at Aix is beautiful, and there was a fine opera, and a very perfect orchestra; the singers tolerable. It was here I first heard the Don Juan and the Freyschutz performed in the German fashion, and with German words. The Freyschutz gave me unmixed pleasure. In the Don Juan I missed the recitative, and the soft Italian flow of syllables, from which the music had been divorced ; so that the ear, long habituated to that marriage of sweet sounds, was disappointed ; but to listen with- out pleasure and excitement was impossible. I remember that on looking round, after Donna Anna's song. I was surprised to see our Chef de voyage bathed in tears ; but, no whit disconcerted, he merely wiped them away, saying, with a smile,
* See Wordsworth's Poems.
42 SKETCHES OF ART,
"It is the very prettiest, softest thing to cr) to one's self!" Afterwards, when we were in the car- riage, he expressed his surprise that any man should be ashamed of tears. " For my own part," he added, "when I wish to enjoy the very high sublime of luxury, I dine alone, order a mutton cutlet, cuite a point, with a bottle of Burgundy on one side, and Ovid's epistle of Penelope to Ulysses on the other ; and so I read, and eat, and cry to myself." And then he repeated with en- thusiasm—
"Hanc tua Penelope lento tibi mittit Ulysse: Nil mihi rescribas attaraen ipse veni ; "
his eyes glistening as he recited the lines ; he made me feel their beauty without understanding a word of their sense. " Strangest and happiest of men ! " I thought, as I looked at him, " that after living seventy years in this world, can still have tears to spare for the sorrows of Penelope!" Well our next resting-place was Cologne.
MEDON. You pause: you have nothing to say of Cologne ? No English traveller, except your professed tourists and guide-book makers, ever has ; of the crowds who pass through the place, on their way up or down the Rhine, how few spend more than a night or a day there ! their walk is between the Rheinberg and the cathedral ; they look, per- haps, with a sneering curiosity at the shrine of the Three Kings ; cut the usual jests on the Leda and
L/TERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 43
ihe Cupid and Psyche ; * glance at the St. Petei of Eubens ; lounge on the bridge of boats ; stock themselves with Eau de Cologne ; and then away ! And yet this strange old city, which a bigoted priesthood, a jealous magistracy, and a variety of historical causes have so long kept isolated in the midst of Europe, with its Roman origin, its clas- sical associations, the wild gothic superstitions of which it has been the theatre, its legion of martyrs, its three kings and eleven thousand virgins, and the peculiar manners and physiognomy of the people, strangely take the fancy. What has be- come of its three hundred and fifty churches, and its thirty thousand beggars ? — Thirty thousand beg- gars ! Was there ever such a splendid establish- ment of licensed laziness and consecrated rags and wallets ! What a magnificent idea does it give one of the inexhaustible charity and the incalculable riches of the inhabitants ! But the French came with their besom of purification and destruction ; and lo ! the churches were turned into arsenals, the convents into barracks ; and from its old-accustom- ed haunts, " the genius of beggary was with sighing <ent." I really believe, that were I again to visit Cologne, I would not be content with a mere superficial glance, as heretofore.
ALDA. And you would do well. To confess the taith, our first impressions of the place were ex- ceedingly disagreeable ; it appeared a huge, ramb-
* Two celebrated antique gems which adorn the relics of th« Three Kings.
44 SKETCHES OF ART,
ling, gloomy old city, whose endless narrow dirty streets, and dull dingy-looking edifices, were any thing but inviting. Nor on a second and a third visit were we tempted to prolong our stay. Yet Cologne has since become most interesting to me from a friendship I formed with a Colonese, a de- scendant of one of the oldest patrician families of the place. How she loved her old city ! — how she worshipped every relic with the most poetical, if not the most pious, veneration ! — how she looked iown upon Berlin with scorn, as an upstart city, 4 une ville, ma chere, qui n'a ni histoire ni antiquite." The cathedral she used to call " mon Berceau" and the three kings " mes trois peres." Her profound knowledge of general history, her minute acquaint- ance with the local antiquities, the peculiar customs, the wild legends, the solemn superstitions of her '-'..•thplace, added to the most lively imagination and admirable descriptive powers, were to me au inexhaustible source of delight and information. It appears that the people of Cologne have a distinct character, but little modified by intercourse with the surrounding country, and preserved by continual intermarriages among themselves. They have a dialect, and songs, and ballads, and music, peculiar to their city ; and are remarkable for an original vein of racy humor, a 'vengeful spirit, an exceeding superstition, a blind attachment to their native customs, a very decided contempt for other people, and a surpassing hatred of all innovations. They never admitted the jurisdiction of the elector!
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 43
of Cologne, and, although the most bigoted people in the, world, were generally at war with their arch- bishops. Even Napoleon could not make theua conformable. The city is now attached to Prussia, but still retains most of its ancient privileges, and all its ancient spirit of insubordination and inde- pendence. When, in 1828, the King of Prussia wished to force upon them an unpopular magistrate, the whole city rose, and obliged the obnoxious pres- ident to resign ; the government, armed with all its legal and military terrors, could do nothing against the determined spirit of this half-civilized, fearless, reckless, yet merry, good-humored popu- lace. A history of this grotesque revolution, which had the same duration as the celebrated trois jours de Paris, and exhibited in its progress and issue some of the most striking, most characteristic, most farcical scenes you can imagine, were worthy of a Colonese Walter Scott. How I wish I could give you some of my friend's rich graphic sketches and humorous pictures of popular manner ! but I feel that their peculiar spirit would evaporate in my hands. The event is celebrated in their local his- tory as " la Revolution du Carnaval :" and this re- minds me of another peculiarity of Cologne. The carnival is still celebrated there with a degree of splendor and fantastic humor exceeding even the festivities of Rome and Naples in the present day but as the season of the carnival is not the season for flight with our English birds of passage, fe\< have ever witnessed theso extraordinary saturnalia
46 SKETCHES OF ART,
Such is the general ignorance or indifference: re- lative to Cologne, that I met the other day with a very accomplished man, and a lover of art, who had frequently visited the place, and yet he had never seen the Medusa.
MEDON. Nor I, by this good light ! — I never even heard of it !
ALDA. And how shall I attempt to describe it? Unless I had the " large utterance of the early gods," or could pour forth a string of Greek or German compounds, I know not in what words I could do justice to the effect it produced upon me. This wondrous mask measures about two feet and a half in height ; * the colossal features and, I may add, the colossal expression, — grand without exag- geration— so awfully vast, and yet so gloriously beautiful ; the full rich lips curled with disdain — the.mighty wings overshadowing the knit and tor- tured brow — the madness in the large dilated eyes — the wreathing and recoiling snakes, — came upon me like something supernatural, and impressed me at once with astonishment, horror, and admiration. I was quite unprepared for what I beheld. As I stood before it my mind seemed to elevate and en- large itself to admit this new vision of grandeur. Nothing but the two Fates in the Elgin marbles, and the Torso of the Vatican, ever affected me with the same inexpressible sense of the sublime : and this is not a fragment of some grand mystery
* It is nearly twice the size of the famous and well-known M* iusa Roudanini, now in the Glyptothck at Munich.
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 47
af which the remainder has been " to night and chaos hurled ; " it is entire, in admirable preserva- tion, and the workmanship as perfect as the con- ception is magnificent. I know not if it would have affected another in the same manner. For me, the ghastly allegory of the Medusa has a peculiar fasci- nation. I confess that I have never wholly under- stood it, nor have any of the usual explanations satisfied me ; it appears to me that the Greeks, in thus blending the extremes of loveliness and terror, had a meaning, a purpose, more than is dreamt of by our philosophy.
MEDON. But how came this wonderful relic to Cologne, of all places in the world ?
ALDA. It stopped there on its road to Eng- land.
MEDON. By what perverse destiny? — was it ivarice on our part, or force or fraud on that of others ?
ALDA. It was, as Desdemona says, " our wretched fortune : " but the story, with all its cir- cumstances, does so much honor to human nature, that it has half-reconciled me to our loss. You must have heard of Professor Wallraf of Cologne, one of the canons of the cathedral, who, with his professorship and his canonship together, may have possessed from five to seven hundred francs a year. He was one of those wonderful and universal •cholars of whom we read in former times — men who concentrated all their powers, and passions, %nd intellectual faculties in the acquirement and
48 SKETCHES OF ART,
advancement of knowledge, without any selfish aim or object, and from the mere abstract love of science. Early in life, this man formed the resolu- tion to remove from his native city the reproach of self-satisfied ignorance and monastic prejudices which had hitherto characterized it; and in the course of a long existence of labor and privation, as professor and teacher, he contrived to collect together books, manuscripts, pictures, gems, works of art, and objects of natural history, to an im- mense amount. In the year 1818, on recovering from a dangerous illness, he presented his whole collection to his native city ; and the magistracy, in return, bestowed on him a pension of three thou- sand francs for the remainder of his life. He was then more than seventy. About the same time a dealer in antiquities arrived from Rome, bringing with him this divine Medusa, with various other busts and fragments : he was on his way to Eng- land, where he hoped to dispose of them. He asked for his whole collection twelve thousand francs, and refused to sell any part of it separately. The city refused to make the purchase, thinking it too dear, and Wallraf, in despair at th« idea of this glorious relic being consigned to other lands, mortgaged his yearly pension in order to raise the money, pur- chased the Medusa, presented it to the city, and then cheerfully resumed his accustomed life of self- denial and frugality. His only dread was lest he should die before the period was expired. He lived, however, to pay off his debt, and in thre*
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 49
months afterward he died.* Was not this admi- rable ? The first time I saw the Medusa I d'd not know this anecdote ; the second time, as I looked at it, I thought of Wallraf, and felt how much a moral interest can add to the charm of what is in itself most perfect.
MEDON. I will certainly make a pilgrimage to this Medusa. She must be worth all the eleven thousand virgins together. What next ?
ALDA. Instead of embarking in the steamboat, we posted along the left bank of the Rhine, spend- ing a few days at Bonn, at Godesberg, and at Eh- renbreitstein ; but I should tell you, as you allow me to diverge, that on my second journey I owed much to a residence of some weeks at Bonn. There I became acquainted with the celebrated Schlegel, or, I should rather say, M. le Chevalier de Schlegel, for I believe his titles and his " starry honors " are not indifferent to him ; and, in truth, he wears them very gracefully. I was rather sur- prised to find in this sublime and eloquent critic, this awful scholar, whose comprehensive mind has grasped the whole universe of art, a most agree- able, lively, social being. Of the judgments passed on him in his own country I know little and under- stand less ; I am not deep in German literary po- lemics. To me he was the author of the lectures on " Dramatic Literature," and the translator of Shakspeare, and, moreover, all that was amiable and polite : and was not this enough ?
* Professor Wallraf died on the 18th of March 1824
4
50 SKE1CHES OF ART,
MEDON. Enough for you, certainly ; but, I be- lieve that at this time Schlegel would rather found his fame on being one of the greatest oriental critics of the age, than on being the interpreter of the beauties of Calderon and Shakspeare.
ALDA. I believe so ; but for my own part, I would rather hear him talk of Romeo and Juliet, and of Madame de Stael, than of the Ramayana, the Bhagvat-Gita, or even the "eastern Con-fut~ zee." This, of course, is only a proof of my own ignorance. Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords — philosophy, art, poetry, politics, love, scandal, and the weather. There are some professors who, like Paganini, " can dis- course most eloquent music " upon one string only ; and some who can grasp the whole instrument, and with a master's hand sound it from the top to the bottom of its compass. Now, Schlegel is one of the latter : he can thunder in the bass or caper in the treble ; he can be a whole concert in him- gelf. No man can trifle like him, nor, like him, blend in a few hours' converse, the critic, philolo- gist, poet, philosopher, and man of the world — no man narrates more gracefully, nor more happily illustrates a casual thought. He told me many in- teresting things. " Do you know," said he ono morning, as I was looking at a beautiful edition of Corinne, bound in red morocco, the gift of Madame de Stael, " do you know that I figure in that book ? " I asked eagerly in what character ? He bid me guess. I guessed playfully, the Comte
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 51
d'Erfeuil. " No ! no ! " said he, laughing, " I am immortalized in the Prince Castel-Forte, the faith- ful, humble, unaspiring friend of Corinne."
MEDON. To any man but Schlegel such an im« mortality were worth a life. Nay, there is no man, though his fame extended to the ends of the earth, whom the pen of Madame de Stael could not honor.
ALDA. He seemed to think so, and I liked him for the self-complacency with which he twined her little myrtle leaf with his own palmy honors. Nor did he once refer to what I believe everybody knows, her obligations to him in her De PAlle- magne.
MEDON. Apropos — do tell me what is the gen eral opinion of that book among the Germans themselves.
ALDA. I think they do not judge it fairly. Some speak of it as eloquent, but superficial:* others denounce it altogether as a work full of mistakes and flippant, presumptuous criticism : oth- ers again affect to speak of it, and even of Madame de Stael herself, as things of another era, quite gone by and forgotten ; this appeared to me too ridic- ulous. They forget, or do not know, what we know, that her De 1'Allemagne was the first book which awakened in France and England a lively and general interest in German art and literature. It is now five-and-twenty years since it was pub' l^ied. The march of opinion, and criticism, and
* Amongst others, Jean Paul, in the " Heidelberger Jahrbliche* lor Literatur," 1815.
52 SKETCHES OF ART,
knowledge of every kind, has been so rapid, tha» much has become old which then was new; but this does riot detract from its merit. Once or twice I tried to convince my German friends that they were exceedingly ungrateful in abusing Madame dt Stael, but it was all in vain ; so I sat swelling with indignation to hear my idol traduced, and called— O profanation ! — " cette. Stael."
MEDON. But do you think the Germans could at all appreciate or understand such a phenome- non as Madame de Stael must have appeared in those days ? She whisked through their skies like a meteor, before they could bring the telescope of their wits to a right focus for observation. How she must have made them open their eyes ! — and you see in the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller what they thought of her.
ALDA. Yes, I know that with her lively egotism and Parisian volubility, she stunne,d Schiller and teased Goethe ; but while our estimate of manner is relative, our estimate of character should be positive. Madame de Stael was in manner the French woman, accustomed to be the cynosure of a salon, but she was not ridiculous or egoiste in character. She was, to use Schlegel's expression, " femme grande et magnanime jusque dans lej replis de son ame." The best proof is the very spirit in which she viewed Germany, in spite of all her natural and national prejudices. To apply your own expression, she went forth, in the spirit tf peace, and brought back, not only an olive leaf
LITKRATURE, AND CHARACTER. 53
Dut a, whole tree, and it has flourished. She had a universal rnind. I believe she never thought, and Itill less made any one ridiculous in her life.*
At Bonn much of my time was spent in intimate and almost hourly intercourse with two friends, one of whom I have already mentioned to you — a rare creature .'—the other, who was herself the daughter of a distinguished authoress,f was one of the most generally accomplished women I evei met with. Opposed to each other in the constitu- tion of their minds — in all their views of literature and art, and all their experience of life — in their
* Since the above passage was written, Mrs. Austin has fa- ired me with the following note : " Goethe admired, but did not like, still less esteem, Madame de Stael. He begins a sentence about her thus — ' As she had no idea what duty meant,r &c.
" However, after relating a scene which took place at Weimar, he adds, ' whatever we may say or think of her, her visit wag certainly followed by very important results. Her work upon Germany, which owed its rise to social conversations, is to be re- garded as a mighty engine which at once made a wide breach in that Chinese wall of antiquated prejudices which divided us from France ; so that the people across the Rhine, and afterwards those across the channel, at length came to a nearer knowledge of us; whence we may look to obtain a living influence over the distant west. Let us, therefore, bless that conflict of national peculiarities which annoyed us at the time, and seemed by no means profitable.' " — Tag-und Jahres Hefte, vol. 31, last edit.
To that WOMAN who had sufficient strength of mind to break through a " Chinese wall of antiquated prejudices," surely lomething may be forgiven.
t Johanna Schopenhauer, well known in Germany for her ro- mances and her works on art. Her little book, " Johan van Eyk und seine Nachfolger," has become the manual of those <rhc study the old German schools of painting.
54 SKETCHES OF ART,
tastes, and habits, ami feelings — yet mutually ap- preciating each other : both were distinguished by talents of the highest order, and by great originality of character, and both were German, and very essentially German : English society and English education would never have produced two such women. Their conversation prepared me to form correct ideas of what I was to see and hear, and guarded me against the mistakes and hasty conclu- sions of vivacious travellers. At Bonn I also saw, for the first time, a specimen of the fresco painting, lately revived in Germany with such brilliant suc- cess. By command of the Prussian Board of Ed- ucation the hall of the university of Bonn is to be painted in fresco, and the work has been intrusted to C. Hermann, Gotzenberger, and Forster — all, I believe, pupils of Cornelius. The three sides of the hall are to represent the three faculties — The- ology, Jurisprudence, and Philosophy ; the first of these is finished, and here is an engraving of it You see Theology is throned in the centre. The four evangelists, with St Peter and St. Paul, stand on the steps of the throne ; around her are the fa- thers and doctors of the church, and (which is the chief novelty of th& composition) grouped together with a very liberal disregard to all religious differ- ences ; for there you see Pope Gregory, and Ignatiuf Loyola, and St. Bernard, and Abelard, and Dante and here we have Luther, and Melancthon, and Calvin, and Wicliffe, and Huss. On the opposite Htle of thn hall, Philosophy, under which head art
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 5A
•orapiised all science, poetry, and art, is represented Bu.-rounded by the great poets, philosophers, and artists, from Homer, Aristotle, and Phidias, down to Shakspeare, Raffaelle, Goethe, and Kant. Ju- risprudence, which is not begun, is to occupy the third side. The cartoons pleased me better than the paintings, for the drawing and grouping are really fine ; but the execution struck me as some- what hard and mannered. I shall have much to say hereafter of the fresco painting in Germany : for the present, proceed we on our journey.
Tell me, had you a full moon while you were on the Rhine ?
MEDON. Truly, I forget.
ALDA. Then you had not ; for it would so have blended with your recollections, that as a circum- stance it could not have been forgotten ; and take my advice, when next you are off on your annual flight, consult the calendar, and propitiate the fair- est of all the fair Existences of heaven to give you the light of her countenance. If you never tooK a solitary ramble, or, what is better, a tete-d-tete, urive through the villages and vineyards between Bonn and Plittersdorf, when the moon hung ovei the Drachenfels, when the undulating outlines of the Seven Mountains seemed to dissolve into the skies, and the Rhine was spread out at their feet like a lake — so ample, and so still; — if you have never seen the stars shine through the ruined arch Df the Rolandseck, and the height of Godesberg, frith its single giant tower stand out of the plain.—
56 SKETCHES OF AKT,
black, and frowning against the silvery distance- then you have not beheld one of the loveliest land- scapes ever presented to a thoughtful worshipper of nature. There is a story, too, connected with the ruins of Godesberg : — one of those fine trage- dies of real life, which distance all fiction. It is not so popular as the celebrated legend of the brave Roland and his cloistered love ; but it is at least aa authentic. You know that, according to tradition, the castle of Godesberg was founded by Julian the Apostate ; another, and a more interesting apostate, was the cause of its destruction.
Gerard * de Truchses, Count Waldbourg, who was archbishop and elector of Cologne in 1583, scandalized his see, and all the Roman Catholic powers, by turning Protestant. According to him- self, his conversion was owing to " the goodness of God, who had revealed to him the darkness and the errors of popery ;" but according to his enemies, it was owing to his love for the beautiful Agnes de Mansfeld, canoness of Gersheim ; she was a daugh- ter of one of the greatest Protestant houses in Germany ; and her two brothers, bigoted Calvin- ists, and jealous of the honor of their family, con- ceived themselves insulted by the public homage which a Catholic priest, bound by his vows, dared to pay to their sister. They were yet more incensed on discovering that the love was mutual, and loudly threatened vengeance to both. Gerard renounced the Catholic faith, and the lovers were united. H«
* Or Oebhard, for so the name is spelt in the German histories
LITERATURE, AUD CHARACTER. 57
was excommunicated and degraded, of course ; but he insisted on his right to retain his secular domin- ions and privileges, and refused to resign the elec- torate, which the emperor, meantime, had awarded to Ernest of Bavaria, Bishop of Liege. The con- test became desperate. The whole of that beauti- ful and fertile plain, from the walls of Cologne to the Godesberg, grew " familiar with bloodshed aa the morn with dew ; " and Gerard displayed quali- ties which showed him more fitted to win and wear a bride than to do honor to any priestly vows of sanctity and temperance. Attacked on all sides,— by his subjects, who had learned to detest him aa an apostate, by the infuriated clergy, and by the Duke of Bavaria, who had brought an army to enforce his brother's claims, — he carried on the struggle for five years, and at last, reduced to ex- tremity, threw himself, with a few faithful friends, into the castle of Godesberg. After a brave de- fence, the castle was stormed and taken by the Bavarians, who left it nearly in the state we now see it — a heap of ruins.
Gerard escaped with his wife, and fled to Hol- land, where Maurice, Prince of Orange, granted him an asylum. Thence he sent his beautiful and devoted wife to the court of Queen Elizabeth, to claim a former promise of protection, and suppli- tate her aid, as the great support of the Protestant uause, for the recovery of his rights. He could Dot have chosen a more luckless ambassadress ; for Agnes, though her beauty was somewhat impaired
58 SKETCHES OF ART,
Dy the persecutions and anxieties which had fol lowed her ill-fated union, was yet most lovely and stately, in all the pride of womanhood ; and her misfortunes and her charms, as well as the peculiar circumstances of her marriage, excited the enthu- siasm of all the English chivalry. Unhappily, the Earl of Essex was among the first to espouse her cause with all the generous warmth of his charac- ter ; and his visits to her were so frequent, and his admiration so indiscreet, that Elizabeth's jealousy was excited even to fury. Agnes was first driven from the court, and then ordered to quit the king- dom. She took refuge in the Netherlands, where she died soon afterward ; and Gerard, who never recovered his dominions, retired to Strasbourg, where he died. So ends this sad eventful history, which, methinks, would make a very pretty ro- mance. The tower of Godesberg, lasting as their love and ruined as their fortunes, still remains one of the most striking monuments in that land, where almost every hill is crowned with its castle, and every castle has its tale of terror or of love.*
Another beautiful picture, which, merely as a picture, has dwelt on my remembrance, was the city of Coblentz and the fort of Ehrenbreitsteiu, as viewed from the bridge of boats under a cloud- less moon. The city, with its fantastic steeples and masses of building, relieved against the clear deep
* For the story of Archbishop Gebhard and Agnes de Mansfeld use Schiller's History of the Thirty Years' War, and Coxe's Hta \vcy of the House of Austrif
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 59
blue of the summer sky — the lights which spai&led m the windows reflected in the broad river, and the various forms and tall masts of the craft an- chored above and opposite — the huge hill, with ita tiara of fortifications, which, in the sunshine and in the broad day, had disappointed me by its formality, now seen under the soft moonlight, as its long lines of architecture and abrupt angles were projected in brightness or receded in shadow, had altogether a most sublime effect. But apropos to moonlight and pictures — of all the enchanted and enchanting scenes ever lighted by the full round moon, give me Heidelberg ! Not the Colosseum of Rome— neither in itself, nor yet in Lord Byron's descrip- tion, and I have both by heart — can be more grand ; and in moral interest, in poetical associa- tions, in varying and wondrous beauty, the castle of Heidelberg has the advantage. In the course of many visits, Heidelberg became to me familiar as the face of a friend, and its remembrance still " haunts me as a passion." I have known it under every changeful aspect which the seasons, and the hours, and the changeful moods of my own mind could lend it. I have seen it when the sun, rising pver the Geisberg, first kindled the vapors as they floated away from the old towers, and when the ivy and the wreathed verdure on the walls sparkled with dewy light : and I have seen it when its huge black masses stood against the flaming sunset ; and its enormous shadow, flung down the chasm be- fteath, made it night there, while daylight lingerec
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around and above. I have seen it when mantled in all the bloom and foliage of summer, and when the dead leaves were heaped on the paths, and choked the entrance to many a favorite nook. I have seen it when crowds of gay visitors flitted along its ruined terraces,* and music sounded near ; and with friends, whose presence endeared every pleasure ; and I have walked alone round its deso- late precincts, with no companions but my own sad and troubled thoughts. I have seen it when clothed in calm and glorious moonlight. I have seen it when the winds rushed shrieking through its sculptured halls, and when gray clouds came rolling down the mountains, folding it in their am- ple skirts from the view of the city below. And what have I seen to liken to it by night or by day, in storm or in calm, in summer or in winter ! Then its historical and poetical associations —
MEDON. There now ! — will you not leave the picture, perfect as it is, and not forever seek in every object something more than is there ?
ALDA. I do not seek it — I find it. You will say — I have heard you say — that Heidelberg wants no beauty unborrowed of the eye ; but if history had not clothed it in recollections, fancy must have invested it in its own dreams. It is true, that it is a mere modern edifice compared with all the clas- ric, and most of the gothic ruins ; yet over Heidel-
* The gardens ani plantations round the castle are a favorite promenade of the citizens of Heidelberg, and there are in summei bauds of music, &c.
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 61
berg there hangs a terror and a mystery peculiai to itself: for the mind which acquiesces in decay recoils from destruction. Here ruin and desola- tion make mocks with luxurious art and gay mag- nificence. Here it is not the equal, gradual power of time, adorning and endearing what yet it spares not, which has wrought this devastation, but savage war and elemental rage. Twice blasted by the thunderbolt, three times consumed by fire, ten times ravaged, plundered, desecrated by foes, and at last dismantled and abandoned by its own princes, it is still strong to endure and mighty to resist all that time, and war, and the elements may do against it — and, mutilated rather than decayed, may still defy centuries. The very anomalies of architecture and fantastic incongruities of this fortress-palace are to me a fascination. Here are startling and terrific contrasts. That huge round tower — the tower of Frederic the Victorious — now " deep trenched with thunder fires," — looks as if built by the Titans or the Huns ; and those delicate «culptures in the palace of Otho-Henry, as if the genius of Raffaelle or Correggio had breathed on *ha stone. What flowing grace of outline ! what ."uxuriant life ! what endless variety and invention m those half-defaced fragments ! These are the work of Italian artists, whose very names have per- ished ; — all traces of their existence and of their destinies so utterly lost, that one might almost believe, with the peasantry, that these exquisite ••emains are not the work of mortal hands, but of
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fairies and spirits of air, evoked to do the will of an enchanter. The old palatines, the lords of Heidel- berg, were a magnificent and magnanimous race. Louis III., Frederic the Victorious, Frederic n.t Otho-Henry, were all men who had stepped in ad- vance of their age. They could think as well as light, in days when fighting, not thinking, was the established fashion among potentates and people. A liberal and enlightened spirit, and a love of all the arts that humanize mankind, seem to have been hereditary in this princely family. Frederic I. lay under the suspicion of heresy and sorcery, in consequence of his tolerant opinions, and his love of mathematics and astronomy. Hia personal prowess, and the circumstance of his never having been vanquished in battle, gave rise to the report that he was assisted by evil demons ; and for years, both before and after his accession, he was under the ban of the secret tribunal. Heidel- berg was the scene of some of the mysterious attacks on his life, but they were constantly frus- trated by the fidelity of his friends, and the watch- ful lov? of his wife.
It was at Heidelberg this prince celebrated a festival, renowned in German history ; and for the age in which it occurred, most extraordinary. He invited to a banquet all the factious barons whom he had vanquished at Seckingen, and who had previously ravaged and laid waste great part of the palatinate. Among them were the Bishop of Metz %nd the Margrave of Baden. The repast was
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 63
plentiful and luxurious, but there was no bread. The warrior guests looked round with surprise and inquiry. " Do you ask for bread ? " said Frederic, sternly ; " you, who have wasted the fruits of the earth, and destroyed those whose industry culti- vates it ? There is no bread. Eat, and be satis- fied ; and learn henceforth mercy to those who put the bread into your mouths." A singular lesson from the lips of an iron-clad warrior of the middle ages.
It was Frederic H and his nephew Otho-Henry, who enriched the library, then the first in Europe next to the Vatican, with treasures of learning, and who invited painters and sculptors from Italy to adorn their noble palace with the treasures of ait. In less than one hundred years those beauti- ful creations were defaced or utterly destroyed, and all the memorials and records of their authors are supposed to have perished at the time when the ruthless Tilly stormed the castle ; and the archives and part of the library of precious MSS. were taken to litter his dragoons' horses, during a tran- sient scarcity of straw.* — You groan !
MEDON. The anecdote is not new to me ; but 1 was thinking, at the moment, of a pretty phrase in the letters of the Prince de Ligne, " la guerre —
* When Gustavus Adolphus took Mayence, during the same war, he presented the whole of the valuable library to his chan- cellor, Oxenstiern ; the chancellor sent it to Sweden, intending to bestow it on one of the colleges ; but the vessel in which it was embarked foundered in the Baltic Sea, and the whole wen* o the bottom.
04 SKETCHES OF ART,
c'est un malheur — mais c'est le plus beau des mi 1- heurs."
ALDA. O, if there be any thing more terrifi. : more disgusting, than war and its consequences, i t is that perversion of all human intellect — that de- pravation of all human feeling — that contempt o; misconception of every Christian precept, which has permitted the great, and the good, and the tender-hearted, to admire war as a splendid game — a part of the poetry of life — and to defend it as a glorious evil, which the very nature and passions of man have ever rendered, and will ever render, necessary and inevitable ! Perhaps the idea of human suffering — though when we think of it in detail it makes the blood curdle — is not so bad as the general loss to humanity, the interruption to the progress of thought in the destruction of the works of wisdom or genius. Listen to this magnif- icent sentence out of the volume now lying open beiore me — " Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature — God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself. Many a man lives a burthen to the earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit embalmed and treas- ured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is ni great loss: and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse ; therefore we should be wary how we spill the seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books."
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 65
MEDON. " Methinks we do know the fine Roman hand." Milton, is it not ?
ALDA. Yes ; and after this, think of Milton's Areopagitica, or his Paradise Lost, under the hoofa of Tilly's dragoon horses, or feeding the fishes in the Baltic ! It might have happened had he written in Germany instead of England.
MEDON. Do you forget that the cause of the thirty years' war was a woman ?
ALDA. A woman and religion ; the two best or worst things in the world, according as they are understood and felt, used and abused. You allude to Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was to Heidelberg what Helen was to Troy ?
One of the most interesting monuments of Hei- delberg, at least to an English traveller, is the ele- gant triumphal arch raised by the Palatine Fred- eric V. in honor of his bride — this very Elizabeth Stuart. I well remember with what self-compla- cency and enthusiasm our Chef walked about in a heavy rain, examining, dwelling upon every trace of this celebrated and unhappy woman. She had been educated at his country-seat, and one of the avenues of his magnificent park yet bears her name. On her fell a double portion of the miseries of her fated family. She had the beauty and the wit, the gay spirits, the elegant tastes, the kindly disposition of her grandmother, Mary of Scotland. Her very virtues as a wife and a woman, not less than her pride and feminine prejudices, ruined her- self, her husband, and her people. When Frederic 5
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hesitated to accept the crown of Bohemia, his high- hearted wile exclaimed — " Let me rather eat dry bread at a king's table than feast at the board of ao elector ;" and it seemed as if some avenging demor hovered in the air, to take her literally at her word, for she and her family lived to eat dry bread — ay, and to beg it before they ate it ; but she would be a queen. Blest as she was in love, in all good gifts of nature and fortune, in all means of hap- piness, a kingly crown was wanting to complete her felicity, and it was cemented to her brow with the blood of two millions of men. And who was to blame ? Was not her mode of thinking the fashiqn of her time, the effect of her education ? Who had
" Put in her tender heart the aspiring flame Of golden sovereignty?"
For how many ages will you men exclaim against the mischiefs and miseries caused by the influence of women ; thus allowing the influence, yet taking no thought how to make that influence a means of good, instead of an instrument of evil !
Elizabeth had brought with her from England some luxurious tastes, as yet unknown in the pala- tinate ; she had been familiarized with the dramas of Shakspeare and Fletcher, and she had figured in the masques of Ben Jon son. To gratify her, Frederic added to the castle of Heidelberg the theatre and banqueting-room, and all that beauti- fy 1 group of buildings at the western angle, the
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 6?
mins of which are still called the English palace. She had inherited from her grandmother, or had early imbibed from education, a love of nature and of amusements in the open air, and a passion for gardening ; and it was to please her, and under her auspices, that Frederic planned those magnif- icent gardens, which were intended to unite within their bounds, all that nature could contribute or art devise ; had they been completed, they would have rendered Heidelberg a pleasure-palace, fit for fairy- land. Nor were those designs unworthy of a pros- perous and pacific sovereign, whose treasury was full, whose sway was just and mild, whose people had long enjoyed in tranquillity the fruits of their own industry. When I had the pleasure of spend ing a few days with the Schlossers, at their beauti- ful seat on the Necker, (Stift Neuburg,) I went over the ground with Madame de Schlosser, who had seen and studied the original plans. Her description of the magnitude and the sumptuoua taste of these unfinished designs, while we stood together amid a wilderness of ruins, was a com- mentary on the vicissitudes of this world, worth fifty moral treatises, and as many sermons.
" For in the wreck of is and WAS, Things incomplete and purposes betray'd, Make sadder transits o'er Truth's mystic glass, Than noblest objects utterly decay'd."
Close to the ruins of poor Elizabeth's palace, there where the effigies of he* handsome husband, and
l»8 SKETCHES OF ART,
his bearded ancestor Louis V. look down from tha ivy-mantled wall, you remember the beautiful ter- race towards the west ? It is still, — after four cen- turies of changes, of disasters, of desolation, — the garden of Clara. When Frederic the Victorious assumed the sovereignty, in a moment of danger and faction, he took, at the same time, a solemn vow never to marry, that the rights of his infant nephew, the son of the late palatine, should not be prejudiced, nor the peace of the country endan- gered by a disputed succession. He kept his oath religiously, but at that very time he loved Clara Dettin de Wertheim, a young girl of plebeian origin, and a native of Augsburg, whose musica1 talents and melody of voice had raised her to a high situation in the court of the late princess pala- tine. Frederic, with the consent of his nephew, was united to Clara by a left>hand marriage, an expedient still in use in Germany, and, I believe, peculiar to its constitution ; such a marriage ia valid before God and man, yet the wife has no acknowledged rights, and the offspring no supposed existence. Clara is celebrated by the poets and chroniclers of her time, and appears to have been a very extraordinary being in her way. In that age of ignorance, she had devoted herself to study — she could sympathize in her husband's pursuits, and share the toils of government — she collected arc md her the wisest and most learned men of the time — she continued to cultivate the beautiful voice which had won the heart of Frederic, arid hej
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. £9
long and her lute were always ready to soothe hifl cares. Tradition points out the spot where it ib said she loved to meditate, and, looking down upon the little hamlet, on the declivity of the hill, to re- call her own humble origin ; that little hamlet, em- bowered in foliage, and the remembrance of Clara, have survived the glories of Heidelberg. Her descendants became princes -of the empire, and still exist in the family of Lowenstein.
Then, for those who love the marvellous, there is the wild legend of the witch Jetta, who still flits among the ruins, and bathes her golden tresses in the Wolfsbrunnen ; but why should I tell you of these tales — you, whose head is a sort of black- letter library ?
MEDON. True ; but it is pleasant to have one'a old recollections taken down from their shelves and dusted, and placed in a new light; only do not require, even if I again visit Heidelberg, that I should see it as you have beheld it, with your quick spirit of association, and clothed in the hues of your own individual mind. While you speak, it ia not so much the places and objects you describe, as their reflection in your own fancy, which I see before me ; and every different mind will reflect them under a different aspect. Then, where ia truth? you say. If we want information as to mere facts — the situation of a town the measure- ment of a church, the date of a ruin, the catalogue of a gallery — we can go to our dictionaries and our guides des • vyageurs. But i£ besides form and
70 SKETCHES OF ART,
Dutline, we must have coloring too, we should re membei that every individual mind will paint the bcene with its own proper hues ; and if we judge of the mind and the objects it represents relatively to each other, we may come at the truth, not otherwise. I would ask nothing of a traveller, but ai. -curacy and sincerity in the expression of hia opinions and feelings. I have then a page out of the great book of human nature — the portrait of a particular mind ; when that is fairly before me I have a standard by which to judge : I can draw my own inferences. Will you not allow that it is pos- sible to visit Heidelberg, and to derive the most intense pleasure from its picturesque beauty, with- out dreaming over witches and warriors, palatines and princes ? Can we not admire and appreciate the sculpture in the palace of Otho-Henry, without losing ourselves in vague, wondering reveries over the destinies of the sculptors ?
ALDA. Yes; but it is amusing, and not less in- structive, to observe the manner in which the indi- vidual character and pursuits shall modify the impressions of external things ; only we should be prepared for this, as the pilot makes allowance for the variation of the needle, and directs his course accordingly. It is a mistake to suppose that hose who cannot see the imaginative aspect of things, see, therefore, the only true aspect ; they only see one aspect of the truth. Vous etes orfeore^ Monsieur Josse, is as applicable to travellers as U every other species of egotist.
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Once, in an excursion to the north, I fell into conversation with a Sussex farmer, one of that race of sturdy, rich, and independent English yeomen, of which I am afraid few specimens remain : he was quite a Character in his way. I must sketch him for you : but only Miss Mitford could do him justice. His coat was of the finest broad-cloth ; his shirt-frill, in which was stuck a huge agate pin, and his neck- cloth were both white as the snow ; his good beaver shone in all its pristine gloss, and an enormous bunch of gold seals adorned his watch-chain ; his voice was loud and dictatorial, and his language surprisingly good and flowing, though tinctured with a little coarseness and a few provincialisms. tie had made up his mind about the Reform Bill — the Catholic Question — the Corn Laws — and about things in general, and things in particular ; he had doubts about nothing : it was evident that he was accustomed to lay down the law in his own village — that he was the tyrant of his own fireside — that his wife was " his horse, his 01 , his ass, his any thing," while his sons went to college, and his daughters played on the piano. London was to him merely a vast congregation of pestilential vapours — a receptacle of thieves, cut-throats, and profligates — a place in which no sensible man, who had a care for his life, his health, or his pockets, would willingly set his foot ; he thanked God that he never spent but two nights in the metropolis, and at intervals of twenty-seven years : the first night he had passed in the streets, in dread of fire
T2 SKETCHES OF ART, KTC.
and vermin ; and on the last occasion, he had noi ventured beyond Smithfield. What he did not know, was to him not worth knowing; and the word French, which comprised all that was foreign, he used as a term, expressing the most unbounded abhorrence, pity, and contempt I should add, that though rustic, and arrogant, and prejudiced, he was not vulgar. We were at an inn, on the borders of Leicestershire, through which we had both recently travelled; my farmer was enthu- siastic in his admiration of the country. "A fine country, madam — a beautiful country — a splendid country ! "
" Do you call it a fine country ? " said I, ab- sently, my head full of the Alps and Apennines, the Pyrenean, and the river Po.
" To be sure I do ; and where would you see a finer ? "
" I did not see any thing very picturesque," said I.
"Picturesque!" he repeated with some con- tempt ; " I don't know what you call picturesque • but / say, give me a soil, that when you turn it up you have something for youi pains ; the fine soil makes the fine country, madam ! *
SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER.
H.
MEDON. I OBSERVED the other evening, that in making a sort of imaginative bound from Coblenta to Heidelberg, you either skipped over Frankfort, or left it on one side.
ALDA. Did I ? — if I had done either, in my heart or my memory, I had been most ungrateful ; but I thought you knew Frankfort well.
MEDON. I was there for two days, on my way to Switzerland, and it rained the whole time from morning till night. I have a vision in my mind of dirty streets, chilly houses, dull shops, dingy-looking Jews, dripping umbrellas, luxurious hotels, and exorbitant charges,— and this is all I can recollect Of Frankfort.
ALDA. Indeed ! — I pity you. To me it was associated only with pleasant feelings, and, in truth, it is a pleasant place. Life, there, appears in a very attractive costume : not in a half-holiday, half-beggarly garb, as at Rome and Naples ; nor in a thin undress of superficial decency, as at Berlin ;
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nor in a court domino, hiding, we know not what — as at Vienna and Munich ; nor half motley, half military, as at Paris; nor in rags and embroider) as in London ; but at Frankfort all the outside ai least is fair, substantial, and consistent. The shop? vie in splendor with those of London and Paris ; th? principal streets are clean, the houses spacious and airy, and there is a general appearance of cheer- fulness and tranquillity, mingled with the luxurr of wealth and the bustle of business, which, aftei the misery, and murmuring, and bitterness of fac- tion, we had left in London, was really a relief to the spirits. It is true, that during my last two visits, this apparent tranquillity concealed a good deal of political ferment. The prisons were filled »vith those unfortunate wretches who had endeav- ored to excite a popular tumult against the Prus- sian and Austrian governments. The trials were going forward every day, but not a syllable of the result transpired beyond the walls of the Rb'mei Saal. Although the most reasonable and liberal of the citizens agreed in condemning the rashness and folly of these young men, the tide of feeling was evidently in their favor : for instance, it was not the fashion to invite the Prussian officers, and I well remember that when Goethe's Egmont was announced at the theatre, it was forbidden by the magistracy, from a fear that certain scenes and passages in that play might call forth some open and decided expression of the public feeling ; in fact, only a few evenings before, some passages in
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 75
tne Massaniello had been applied and applauded by the audience, in a manner so ill-bred, that the wife of the Prussian minister rose and left her box, followed by some other old women, — male and female. The theatre is rather commodious than splendid ; the established company, both for the opera and the regular drama, excellent, and often varied by temporary visits of great actors and singers from the other theatres of Germany. On my first visit to Frankfort, which was during the fair of 1829, Paganini, then in the zenith of hia glory, was giving a series of concerts ; but do not ask me any thing about him, for it is a worn-out subject, and you know I am not one of the enthu- siastic, or even the orthodox, with regard to his merits.
MEDON. You do not mean — you will not tell me — that with all your love of music, you were insensible to the miraculous powers of that man ?
ALDA. I suppose they were miraculous, as I heard every one say so round me ; but I listened to him as to any other musician, for the sake of the pleasure to be derived from music, not for the sake of wondering at difficulties overcome, and impossibilities made possible — they might have re- mained impossibilities for me. But insensible I was not to the wondrous charm of his tone and expression. I was thrilled, melted, excited, at the moment, but it left no relish on the palatt?, if I may use the expression. To throw me into such con- vulsions of enthusiasm as I saw this man exci*«
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here and on the continent, I must havb the orchestra with all its various mingling world of sound, or the divine human voice breathing music and passion together ; but this is a matter of feel- ing, habit, education, like all other tastes in art.
I think it was during our third visit to Frankfort that Madame Haitsinger-Neumann was playing the gast-rolles, for so they courteously denominate the parts filled by occasional visitors, to whom, as guests, the precedence is always given. Madame Haitsinger is the wife of Haitsinger, the tenor singer, who was in London, and sung in the Fidelio, with Madame Devrient-Schroeder. She is one of the most celebrated actresses in Germany for light comedy, if any comedy in Germany can be called light, in comparison with the same style of acting in France or England. Her figure is rather large—
MEDON. Like most of the German actresses — for I never yet saw one who had attained to celeb- rity, who was not much too embonpoint for our ideas of a youthful or sentimental heroine —
ALDA. Not Devrient-Schroeder ?
MEDON. Devrient is all impassioned grace ; but I think that in time even she will be in danger ol becoming a little — how shall I express it with suf- ficient delicacy ? — a little too substantial.
ALDA. No, not if a soul of music and fire, in forming a feverish, excitable temperament, which is to the mantling spirit within, what the high-pitched instrument is to the breeze which sweeps over ita
, AXD CHARACTER. 77
chords, — not if these can avert the catastiophe; but what if you had seen Mademoiselle Lindner, with a figure like Mrs. Liston's — all but spherical — enacting Fenella and Clarchen ?
MEDON. I should have said, that only a German imagination could stand it ! It is one of Madame de Stael's clever aphorisms, that on the stage, " II faut menager les caprices des yeux avec le plus grand scrupule, car ils peuvent detruire, sans appel tout effet serieux ; " but the Germans do not ap- pear to be subject to these caprices des yeux ; and have not these fastidious scruples about corporeal grace ; for them sentiment, however clumsy, is still sentiment. Perhaps they are in the right.
ALDA. And Mademoiselle Lindner has senti- ment ; she must have been a fine actress, and ia evidently a favorite with the audience. But to re- turn to Madame Haitsinger ; — she is handsome, with a fair complexion, and no very striking ex- pression ; but there is a heart and soul, and mel- lowness in her acting, which is delicious. I could not give you an idea of her manner by a compari- son with any of our English actresses, for she is essentially German; she never aimed at making points; she was never broadly arch or comic, but the general effect was as rich as it was true to na- ture. I saw her in some of her favorite parts : in the comedy of 4v Stille Wasser sind tiefe ; " (our rtule a Wife and Have a Wife, admirably adapted to the German stage by Schroeder ;) in the " Mi- randolina," (the famous Locandiera of Goldoni,)
78 SKETCHES OF AUT,
and iii the pretty lively vaudeville composed foi her by Holtei, " Die Wiener in Berlin," in which the popular waltzes and airs, sung in the genuine national spirit, and enjoyed by the audience with a true national zest, delighted us foreigners. Herr Becher is an excellent actor in tragedy and high comedy. Of their singers I could not say so much — there were none I should account first-rate, ex- cept Dobler, whom you may remember in Eng land.
One of the most delightful peculiarities of Frank- fort, one that most struck my fancy, is the public garden, planted on the site of the ramparts ; a gir- dle of verdure and shade — of trees and flowers circling the whole city ; accessible to all and on every side, — the promenade of the rich, the solace of the poor. Fifty men are employed to keep it in order, and it is forbidden to steal the flowers, or to kill the singing birds which haunt the shrub- beries.
MEDOX. And does this prohibition avail much in a population of sixty thousand persons ?
ALDA. It does generally. A short time before we arrived some mischievous wretch had shot a nightingale, and was caught in the fact. His pun- ishment was characteristic ; his hands were tied behind him, and a label setting forth his crime was fixed on his breast : in this guise, with a police offi- cer on each side, he was marched all round the gardens, and made the circuit of the city, pursued by the hisses of the populace and the abhorren
LITERATURE, AXD CHARACTER. j
.ooks of the upper classes ; he was not otherwi.*<j punished, but he never again made his appearan' j within the walls of the city. This was the culy instance which I could learn of the infraction of a law which might seem at least nugatory.
Of the spacious, magnificent, well-arranged cem- etery, its admirable apparatus for restoring sus- pended animation, and all its beautiful accompani- ments and memorials of the dead, there was a long account published in London, at the time that a cemetery was planned for this great overgrown city ; and in truth I know not where we could find a better model than the one at Frankfort ; it ap- peared to me perfection.
The institutions at Frankfort, both for charity and education, are numerous, as becomes a rich and free city ; and those I had an opportunity o* examining appeared to me admirably, managed. Besides the orphan schools, and the Burger schule, and the school for female education, established and maintained by the wives of the citizens, there are several infant schools, where children of a year old and upwards are nursed, and fed, and kept out of mischief and harm, while their parents are at work. These are also maintained by subscription among the ladies, who take upon them in turns the task of daily superintendence ; and I shall not easi- ly forget the gentle-looking, elegant, well-dressed girl, who, defended from the encroachments of dirty little paws by a large apron, sat in the midst of a awarm of thirty or forty babies, (the eldest not four
80 8KRTCHKS OF AKT,
years old,) the very personification of feminine charity ! But the hospital for the infirm poor — Das Versorgung Haus — pleased me particularly ; 'tis true, that the cost was not a third — what do I Bay ? not a sixth of the expense of some of our in- stitutions for the same purpose. There was no luxury of architecture, no huge gates shutting in wretchedness, and shutting out hope ; nor grated windows ; nor were the arrangements on so large a scale as in that splendid edifice, the Hopital des Vieillards, at Brussels ; — a house for the poor need not be either a prison or a palace. But here, I recollect, the door opened with a latch ; we entered unannounced, as unexpected. Here there was per- fect neatness, abundance of space, of air, of light, of water, and also of occupation. I found that, besides the inmates of the place, many poor old creatures, who could not have the facilities or ma- terials for work in their own dwellings, or whose relatives were busied in the daytime, might find here employment of any kind suited to their strength or capacity, — for which, observe, they were paid ; thus leaving them to the last possible moment the feeling of independence and useful- ness. I observed that many of those who seemed in the last stage of decrepitude, had hung round their beds sundry little prints and pictures, and slips of paper, on which were written legibly texts from scripture, moral sentences, and scraps of poe- try. The ward of the superannuated and the sick *as at a distance from the working and eating
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 81
rooms , and all breathed around that peace and quiet which should accompany old age, instead of that "life-consuming din" I have heard m such places. On the pillow of one bed there was laid by some chance a bouquet of flowers.
In this ward there was an old man nearly blind and lethargic ; another old man was reading to him. I remarked a poor bed-ridden woman, utter- ly helpless, but not old, and with good and even refined features ; and another poor woman, seated by her, was employed in keeping the flies from set- tling on her face. To one old woman, whose coun- tenance struck me, I said a few words in English — I could speak no German, unluckily. She took my hand, kissed it, and turning away, burst into tears. No one asked for any thing even by a look, nor apparently wanted any thing ; and I felt that from the unaffected good-nature of the lady who accom- panied us, we had not so much the appearance of coming to look at the poor inmates as of paying them a kind visit ; — and this was as it should be. The mild, open countenances of the two persons who managed the establishment pleased me partic- ularly ; and the manner of the matron superintend- ent, as she led us over the rooms, was so simple and kind, that I was quite at ease : I experienced none of that awkward shyness and reluctance I have felt when ostentatiously led over such places in England, — feeling ashamed to stare upon the mise- ry I could not cure. In such cases I have probably attributed to the sufferers a delicacy nr a sensibility I
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long blunted, if ever possessed ; but I was in pain for them and for myself.
One thing more : there was a neat chapel ; and we were shown with some pride the only piece of splendor in the establishment. The communion plate of massy silver was the gift of two brothers, who had married on the same day two sisters ; ar d these two sisters had died nearly at the same time — I believe it was actually on the same day. The widowed husbands presented this plate in memory of their loss and the virtues of their wives ; and 1 am sorry I did not copy the simple and affecting inscription in which this is attested. There was also a silver vase, which had been presented as an offering by a poor miller whom an unexpected leg- acy had raised to independence.
I might give you similar sketches of other insti- tutions, here and elsewhere, but I did not bestow sufficient attention on the practical details, and the comparative merits of the different methods adopt- ed, to render my observations useful. Though deeply interested, as any feeling, thinking being must be on such subjects, I have not studied them sufficiently. There are others, however, who are doing this better than I could; — blessings be on them, and eternal praise ! My general impression was, pleasure from the benevolence and simplicity of heart with which these institutions were conduct- ed and superintended, and wonder not to be ex- pressed at their extreme cheapness.
The day preceding my visit to the Versorgung
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 83
Haus, I had been in a fever of indignation at the
fate of poor R , one of the conspirators, who
had become insane from the severity of his confine- ment. I had descanted with great complacency on our open tribunals, and our trials by jury, and yet I could not help thinking to myself, " Well, if we have not their state-prisons, neither have they our poor-houses ! "
MEDON. It is plain that the rich, charitable, worldly prosperous, self-seeking Frankfort, would be your chosen residence after all !
ALDA. No — as a fixed residence I should not prefer Frankfort. There is a little too much of the pride of purse — too much of the aristocracy of wealth — too much dressing and dinnering — and society is too much broken up into sets and circles to please me; besides, it must be confessed, that the arts do not flourish in this free imperial 2ity.
The Stadel Museum was opened just before our last visit to Frankfort. A rich banker of that name bequeathed, in 1816, his collection of prints and pictures, and nearly a million and a half of florins, for the commencement and maintenance of this in- stitution, and they have certainly begun on a splendid scale. The edifice in which the collection is ar- ringed is spacious, fitted up with great cost, and generally with great taste, except the ceilings, which, being the glory and admiration of the good people of Frankfort, I must endeavor to describe to you particularly. The elaborate beauty of the
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arabesque ornaments, their endless variety, and the vivid coloring and gilding, reminded me of soni€ of the illuminated manuscripts ; but I was rather amused than pleased, and rather surprised to se€ art and ornament so misplaced — invention, labor, money, time, lavished to so little purpose. No ef- fect was aimed at — none produced. The strained and wearied eye wandered amid a profusion of un- meaning forms and of gorgeous colors, which never harmonized into a whole ; and after I had half- broken my neck by looking up at them through ail opera glass, in order to perceive the elegant inter- lacing of the minute patterns and exquisite finish of the workmanship, J turned away laughing and provoked, and wondering at such a strange perver- eion, or rather sacrifice, of taste. MEDON. But the collection itself? — ALDA. It is not very interesting. It contains some curious old German pictures : Stadel having been, like others, smitten with the mania of buying Van Eyks, and Hemlings, and Schoreels. Here, however, these old masters, as part of a school or history of art, are well placed. There are a few fine Flemish paintings — and, in particular, a wondrous portrait by Flinck, which you must see. It is a lady in black, on the left side of the door — of — J forget which room — but you cannot miss it : those .ioft eyes will look out at you, till you will feel in- clined to ask her name, and wonder the lips do not unc lose to answer you. Of first-rate pictures there are none — I mean none of the historical and Italic
LITERATI/UK, AND CHARACTER. Si
ichools . the collection of casts from the antique ia splendid and well selected.
MEDON. But Bethmann, the banker, had already set an example of munificent patronage of art : when he shamed kings, for instance, by purchas- ing Danrecker's Ariadne — one of the chief lion* of Frankrbrt, if fame says true.
ALDA. How ! have you not seen it ?
MEDON. No — unhappily. The weather, as I have told you, was dreadful. I was discouraged — I procrastinated. That flippant observation I had read in some English traveller, that " Dannecker's Ariadne looked as if it had been cut out of old Stilton cheese," was floating in my mind. In short, I was careless, as we often are, when the means of gratifying curiosity appear secure, and within our reach. I repent me now. I wish I had settled to my own satisfaction, and with mine own eyes, the disputed merits of this famous statue ; but I will trust to you. It ought to be something admirable. I do not know much of Dannecker, or his works, but by all accounts he has not to complain of the want of patronage. To him cannot be applied the pathetic common-place, so familiar in the mouths of our young artists, about " chill penury," the struggle to live, the cares that " freeze the genial current of the soul," the efforts of unassisted genius, and so forth. Want never came to him since he devoted himself to an. He appears to have had leisure and freedom to give full scope to his powers, tad to work out his own creations.
86 SKETCHES OF ART,
AI.DA. Had he? Had he, iudeed ? His own story would be different, I fancy. Dannecker, like every patronized artist I ever met with, would execrate patronage, if he dared. Good old man The thought of what he might have done, and could have done, breaks out sometimes in the midst of all his self-complacent naive exultation over what he ^as done. I will endeavor to give you a correct idea of the Ariadne, and then I will tell you something of Dannecker himself. His history is a good commentary upon royal patronage.
I had heard so much of this statue, that my curiosity was strongly excited. A part of its fame may be owing to its situation, and the number of travellers who go to visit Bethmann's Museum, as a matter of course. I used to observe that all travel- lers, who were on the road to Italy, praised it ; and all who were on their way home, criticized it. As I ascended the steps of the pavilion in which it is placed, the enthusiasm of expectation faded away from my mind : I said to myself, " I shall be disap- pointed ! " Yet I was not disappointed.
The Ariadne occupied the centre of a cabinet, hung with a dark gray color, and illuminated by a high lateral window, so that the light and shade, and the relief of the figure were perfectly well managed and effective. Dannecker has not rep- resented Ariadne in her more poetical and pictur- esque character, as, when betrayed and forsaken by Theseus, she stood alone on the wild shore of Naxos, :'her hair blown by the winch, and «*i
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 87
about her expressing desolation." It is Ariadne, immortal and triumphant, as the bride of Bacchus. The figure is larger than life. She is seated, or rather reclined, on the back of a panther. The light arm is carelessly extended : the left arm rests on the head of the animal, and the hand supports the drapery, which appears to have just dropped from her limbs. The head is turned a little up- wards, as if she already anticipated her starry home ; and her tresses are braided with the vine leaves. The grace and ease of the attitude, so firm, and yet so light ; the flowing beauty of the form, and the position of the head, enchanted me. Perhaps the features are not sufficiently Greek: for, though I am not one of those who think all beauty comprised in the antique models, and that nothing can be orthodox but the straight nose and short upper lip, still to Ariadne the pure classical ideal of beauty, both in form and face, are properly in character. A cast from that divine head, the Greek Ariadne, is placed in the same cabinet, and I confess to you that the contrast being immediately brought before the eye, Dannecker's Ariadne seemed to want refinement, in comparison. It is .true, that the moment chosen by the German sculptor required an expression altogether differ- ent. In the Greek bust, though already circled by the viny crown, and though all heaven seems to repose on the noble arch of that expanded brow, yet the head is declined, and a tender melancholy ingers round the all-perfect mouth, as if the .re-
88 SKETCHES OF ART,
inembrance of a mortal love — a mortal sorrow — yet shaded her celestial bridal hours, and made pale her immortality. But Dannecker's Ariadne is the flushed Queen of the Bacchante, and in the clash of the cymbals and the mantling cup, she has already forgotten Theseus. There is a look of life, an individual truth in the beauty of the form, which distinguishes it from the long-limbed vapid pieces of elegance called nymphs and Venuses, which
•* Stretch their white arras, and bend their marble necks,"
in the galleries of our modern sculptors. One ob- jection struck me, but not till after a second or third view of the statue. The panther seemed to me rather too bulky and ferocious. It is true, it is not a natural, but a mythological panther, such as we see in the antique basso-relievos and the arabesques of Herculaneum ; yet, methinks, if he appeared a little more conscious of his lovely bur- then, more tamed by the influence of beauty, it would have been better. However, the sculptor may have had a design, a feeling, in this very point, which has escaped me : I regret now that I did not ask him. One thing is certain, that the extreme massiveness of the panther's limbs serves to give a firmness to the support of the figure, and sets off to advantage its lightness and delicacy. It is equally certain that if the head of the animal had been ever so slightly turned, the pose of the right-arm, and with it the whole attitude, musf bave been altered
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 8i»
The window of the cabinet is so contrived, that uy drawing up a blind of stained glass, a soft crim- son tint is shed over the figure, as if the marble blushed. This did not please me : partly from a dislike to all trickery in art ; partly because, to my taste, the pale, colorless purity of the marble is one of the beauties of a fine statue.
It is true that Dannecker has been unfortunate in his material. The block from which he cut his figure is imperfect and streaky ; but how it could possibly have suggested the idea of Stilton cheese I am at a loss to conceive. It is not worse than Ca- nova's Venus, in the Pitti palace, who has a ter- rible black streak across her bosom. M. Pass- avant, * Avho was standing by when I paid my last visit to the Ariadne, assured me, that when the statue was placed on its pedestal, about sixteen years ago, these black specks were scarcely visible, and that they seemed to multiply and grow darker with time. This is a lamentable, and, to me, an unaccountable fact.
MEDON. And, I am afraid, past cure : but now tell me something of the sculptor himself. After looking on a grand work of art, we naturally turn to look into the mind which conceived and created it.
ALDA. Dannecker, like all the great modern
* M. Passavant is a landscape-painter of Frankfort, an Intel Ugent, accomplished man, and one of the few German artist* vho had a tolerably correct idea of the state of art in England. He ia the author of u Kunstreise durch England und Belgium.'
**(, SKETCHES OF ART,
sculptors, sprung from the people. Thorwaldsoo Flaxman, Chantrey, Canova, Schadow, Rauch — i believe we may go farther back, to Cellini, Bandi- nelli, Bernini, Pigalle — all I can at this moment recollect, were of plebeian origin. When I was at Dresden, I was told of a young count, of noble family, who had adopted sculpture as a profession This, I think, is a solitary instance of any person of noble birth devoting himself to this noblest of the arts.
MEDOX. Do you forget Mrs. Darner and Lady Dacre ?
ALDA. No ; but I do not think that either the exquisite modelling of Lady Dacre, or the merito* rious attempts of Mrs. Darner, come under the head of sculpture in its grand sense. By-the-by, when Horace Walpole said that Mrs. Darner waa the first female sculptor who had attained any celebrity, he forgot the Greek girl, Lala,* and the Properzia Rossi of modern times.
Dannecker was born at Stuttgard in 1758. On him descended no hereditary mantle of genius; i* was the immediate gift of Heaven, and apparently heaven-directed. His father was a groom in the duke's stable, and appears to have been merely an ill-tempered, thick-headed boor. How young Dan- necker picked up the rudiments of reading and
* She was contemporary with Cleopatra, (B. C. 38,) and was par tlcularly celebrated for her busts in ivory. The Romans raised I statue to her honor, which was in the Quistiniani collection.— r. PLINX.
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 9i
writing, he does not himself remember; nor by what circumstances the bent of his fancy and genius was directed to the fine arts. Like other great men, who have been led to trace the progress of their own minds, he attributed to his mother the first promptings to the fair and good, the first soft- ening and elevating influences which his mind ac- knowledged. He had neither paper nor pencils ; but next door to his father there lived a stone- cutter, whose blocks of marble and free-stone were every day scrawled over with rude imitations of natural objects in chalk or charcoal — the first es- says of the infant Dannecker. When he was beaten by his father for this proof of idleness, his mother interfered to protect or to encourage him. As soon as he was old enough, he assisted his father in the stable ; and while running about the pre- cincts of the palace, ragged and bare-foot, he ap- pears to have attracted, by his vivacity and alert- ness, the occasional notice of the duke himself.
Duke Charles, the. grandfather of the present king of Wurtemburg, had founded a military school, called the Karl Schiile, (Charles' School,) annexed to the Hunting Palace of the Solitude. At this academy, music and drawing were taught as well as military tactics. One day, when Dannecker was about thirteen, his father returned home in a very ill-humor, and informed his family that the duke intended to admit the children of his domes- tics into his new military school. The boy, with joyful eagerness, declared his intention of going
92 SKETCHES OF ART,
immediately to present himself as a candidate The father, with a stare of astonishment, desired him to remain at home, and mind his business, on his persisting, he resorted to blows, and ended by locking him up. The boy escaped by jumping out of the window ; and, collecting severaJ of his comrades, he made them a long harangue in praise of the duke's beneficence, then placing himself at their head, marched them up to the palace, where the whole court was assembled for the Easter fes- tivities. On being asked their business, Dannecker replied, as spokesman, — " Tell his highness the duke we want to go to the Karl Schule." One of the attendants, amused, perhaps, with this juvenile ardor, went and informed the duke, who had just risen from table. He came out himself and mus- tered the little troop before him. He first darted a rapid, scrutinizing glance along the line, then se- lecting one from the number, placed him on his right hand ; then another, and another, till only young Dannecker and two others remained on his left. Dannecker has since acknowledged that he suffer- ed for a few moments such exquisite pain and shame a( the idea of being rejected, that his first impulse was to run away and hide himself; and that hia surprise and joy, when he found that he and hii two companions were the accepted candidates, had nearly overpowered him. The duke ordered then to go the next morning to the Solitude, and then dismissed them. When Dannecker returned home, His father, enraged at losing the services of his son.
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 93
turned him out of the house, and forbade him ever more to enter it; but his mother (mother-like) packed up his little bundle of necessaries, accompa- nied him for some distance on his road, and parted from him with blessings and tears, and words of en- couragement and love.
At the Karl Schlile Dannecker made but little progress in his studies. Nothing could be worse managed than this royal establishment. The in- ferior teachers were accustomed to employ the poorer boys in the most servile offices, and in this so called academy he was actually obliged to learn by stealth : but here he formed a friendship with Schiller, who, like himself, was an ardent genius pining and writhing under a chilling system ; and the two boys, thrown upon one another for con- solation, became friends for life. Dannecker must have been about fifteen when the Karl Schu'le was removed from the Solitude to Stuttgard. He was then placed under the tuition of Grubel, a profes- sor of sculpture, and in the following year he pro- duced his first original composition. It was a Milo of Crotona, modelled in clay, and was judged worthy of the first prize. Dannecker was at this time so unfriended and little known, that the duke, who appears to have forgotten him, learned with astonishment that this nameless boy^ the son of his groom, had carried off the highest honors of the school from all his competitors. For a few years He was employed in the duke's service in carving cornices, Cupids, and caryatides, to ornament fche
94 SKETCHES OF ART,
aew palaces at Stuttgard and Hohenheim ; thia task-work, over which he often sighed, may possi- bly have assisted in giving him that certainty and mechanical dexterity in the use of his tools for which he is remarkable. About ten years were thus passed ; he then obtained permission to travel for his improvement, with an allowance of three hundred florins a year from the duke. With these slender means Dannecker set off for Paris on foot. There, for the first time, he had opportunities of studying the living model. His enthusiasm for his art enabled him to endure extraordinary privations of every kind, for out of his little pension of twenty-three pounds a year he had not only to feed and clothe himself, but to purchase all the ma- terials for his art, and the means of instruction ; and this in an expensive capital, surrounded with temptations which an artist and an enthusiastic young man finds it difficult to withstand. He told me himself, that day after day he has studied in the Louvre dinnerless, and dressed in a garb which scarce retained even the appearance of decency He left Paris, after a two years' residence, as sim pie in mind and heart as when he entered it, and considerably improved in his knowledge of anat- omy and in the technical part of his profession The treasures of the Louvre, though far inferior to what they now are, had let in a flood of ideas upon his mind, among which (as he described his own feelings) he groped as one bewildered and intoxi- cated, amazed rather than enlightened.
T.TTKRATURE, AND CHARACTER. 95
ME DON. But Dannecker must have been poor in spirit as in pocket — simple indeed, if he did not profit by the opportunities which Paris afforded of studying human nature, noting the passions and their physiognomy, and gaining other experiences most useful to an artist.
ALDA. There I differ from you. Would you send a young artist — more particularly a young sculptor — to study the human nature of London or Paris ? — to seek the ideal among shop-girls and opera-dancers? Or the sublime and beautiful among the frivolous and degraded of one sex, the money-making or the brutalized of the other ? Is it from the man who has steeped his youthful prime in vulgar dissipation, by way of " seeing life," as it is called, who has courted patronage at the convivial board, that you shall require that union of lofty enthusiasm and patient industry, which are necessary, first to conceive the grand and the poetical, and then consume long years in shaping out his creation in the everlasting marble ?
MEDON. But how is the sculptor himself to live during those long years ? It must needs be a hard struggle. I have heard young artists say, that they have been forced on a dissipated life merely as a means of " getting on in the world," as the phrase is.
ALDA. So have I. It is so base a plea, that when I hear it, I generally regard it as the. excuse for dispositions already perverted. The men who talk thus are doomed; they will either creep \hrough life in mediocrity and dependence to their
96 SKETCHES OF ART,
grave ; or, at the best, if they have parts, as well as cunning and assurance, they may make them- selves the fashion, and make their fortune ; they may be clever portrait-painters and bust-makers, but when they attempt to soar into the historical and ideal department of their art, they move the laugh- ter of gods and men ; to them the higher, holier fountains of inspiration are thenceforth sealed.
MEDON. But think of the temptations of so- ciety !
ALDA. I think of those who have overcome them. " Great men have been among us," though they be rare. Have we not had a Flaxman ? but the artist must choose where he will worship. He cannot serve God and Mammon. That man of genius who thinks he can tamper with his glorious gifts, and for a season indulge in social excesses, stoop from his high calling to the dregs of earth, abandon himself to the stream of common life, and trust to his native powers to bring him up again ; — O, believe it, he plays a desperate game ! — one that in nearly ninety-nine cases out of a hundred is fatal.
MEDON. I begin to see your drift; but you would find it difficult to prove that the men who executed those works, on which we now look with wonder and despair, lived like anchorites, or were unexceptionable moral characters.
ALDA. Will you not allow that they worked in a different spirit ? Or do you suppose that it waa by the possession of some sleight-of-hand that these
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. &7
things were performed? — that it was by seme knack of chiselling, some secret of coloring now lost, that a Phidias or a Correggio still remains un- approached, and, as people will tell you, unap- proachable ?
MEDON. They had a different nature to work from.
ALDA. A different modification of nature, but not a different nature. Nature and truth are one, and immutable, and inseparable as beauty and love. I do maintain that, in these latter times, we have artists, who in genius, in the power of looking at nature, and in manual skill, are not beneath the great ancients, but their works are found wanting in comparison; they have fallen short of the models their early ambition set before them ; and why ? — because, having genius, they want the moral grandeur that should accompany it, and have neglected the training of their own minds from necessity, or from dissipation, or from pride, so that, having imagination and skill, they have yet wanted the materials out of which to work. "Recollect that the great artists of old were not mere painters, or mere sculptors, who were nothing except with the pencil or the chisel in their hatid. They were philosophers, scholars, poets, musicians, noble beings whose eyes were not ever on them- selves, but who looked ab^ve, before, and after. Our modern artists turn coxcombs, and then fancy themselves like Rafaelle ; or they are greedy of present praise, or greedy of gain ; or they will not
7
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pay the price for immortality ; or they have sold their glorious birthright of fame for a mess of pot- tage.
Poor Dannecker found his mess of pottage bitter now and then, as you shall hear. He set off for Italy, in 1783, with his pension raised to four ht ndred florins a year, that is, about thirty pounds. He reached Rome on foot, and he told me that, for some months after his arrival, he suffered from a terrible depression of spirits, and a painful sense of loneliness; like Thorwaldson, when he too visited that city some years afterwards a friendless youth, he was often home-sick and heart-sick. At this time he used to wander about among the ruins and relics of almighty Rome, lost in the sense of their grandeur, depressed by his own vague aspira- tions— ignorant, and without courage to apply him- self. Luckily for him, Herder and Goethe were then residing at Rome ; he became known to them, and their conversation directed him to higher sources of inspiration in his art than he had yet contemplated — to the very well-heads and mother- streams of poetry. They showed him the distinc- tion between the spirit and the form of ancient art Dannecker felt, and afterwards applied some of the grand revelations of these men, who were at once profound critics and inspired poets. He might have grasped at more, but that his early nurture was here against him, and his subsequent destinies as a court sculptor seldom left him suffi- cient freedom of thought or action to follow oul
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. CB
his own conceptions. While at Rome he also be came acquainted with Canova, who, although only one year older than himself, had already achieved great things. He was now at work on the monu- ment of the Pope Ganganelli. The courteous, kind-hearted Italian would sometimes visit the poor German in his studio, and cheer him by his remarks and encouragement.
Dannecker remained five years at Rome ; he was then ordered to return to Stuttgard. As he had already greatly distinguished himself, the Duke of Wurtemberg received him with much kindness, and promised him his protection. Now, the pro- tection and the patronage which a sovereign ac- cords to an artist generally amounts to this : — he begins by carving or painting the portrait of his patron, and of some of the various members of his patron's family. If these are approved of, he is allowed to stick a ribbon in his button-hole, and is appointed professor of fine arts, with a certain stipend, and thenceforth his time, his labor, and his genius belong as entirely to his master as those of a hired servant ; his path is marked out for him. It was thus with Dannecker ; he received a pen- sion of eight hundred florins a year and his pro fessorship ; and up^n the strength of this he married Henrietta Rapp. From this period his life has passed in a course of tranquil and uninterrupted occupation, yet, tbrvugh constantly employed, his works are not nur^erous; almost every «noment being taken up witk *he duties of his professorship,
I0t 8KETCI1KS OF ART,
in trying to teach what no man of genius can teacL, and in making drawings and designs after the fan- cies of the grand duke. He was required to com- pose a basso-relievo for the duke's private cabinet. The subject which he chose was as appropriate as it was beautifully treated — Alexander pressing his seal upon the lips of Parmenio. He modelled this in bas-relief, and the best judges pronounced it ex- quisite ; but it did not please the duke, and, in- stead of receiving an order to finish it in marble, he was obliged to throw it aside, and to execute some design dictated by his master. The original model remained for many years in his studio ; but a short time before my last visit to him he had pre- sented it as a birthday gift to a friend. The first great work which gave him celebrity as a sculptor was the mausoleum of Count Zeppelin, the duke's favorite, in which the figure of Friendship has much simplicity and grace ; this is now at Louis- berg. While he was modelling this beautiful figure, the first idea of the Ariadne was suggested to his fancy, but some years elapsed before it came into form. At this time he was much employed in exe- cuting busts, for which his fine eye for living nature and manly simplicity of taste peculiarly fitted him. In this particular department of his art he has neither equal nor rival, except our Chantrey. The best I have seen are those of Schiller, Gluck, and Lavater. Never are the fine arts, never are great artists, better employed, than when they serve \o illustrate and to immortalize each othor ! Abou/
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she ysar 1808, Dannecker was considered, beyond dispute, the first sc ulptor in Germany ; for as yet, Rauch, Tieck, and Sch wan thaler had not worked their way up to their present high celebrity. He received, in 1811, an intimation, that if he would enter the service of the King of Bavaria, he should be placed at the head of the school of sculpture at Munich, with a salary three times the amount of that which he at present enjoyed. —
MEDON. Which Dannecker declined ?
ALDA. He did.
MEDON. I could have sworn to it — extempore ! What is more touching in the history of men of genius than that deep and constant attachment they have shown to their early patrons ! Not to go back to the days of Horace and Mecaenas, nor even to those of Ariosto and Tasso and the family of Este, or Cellini and the Duke of Florence, or Lucas Kra- nach and the Elector John Frederic * — do you re- member Mozart's exclamation, when he was offered the most magnificent remuneration if he would quit the service of Joseph H. for that of the Elector of Saxony — " Shall I leave my good Emperor ? " In the same manner Metastasio rejected every in- ducement to quit the service of Maria Theresa —
ALDA. Add Goethe and the Duke of Weimar, and a hundred other instances. The difficulty
* Lucas Kranach (1472) was one of the most celebrated of th« old German painters ; from a principle of gratitude and attach- ment, he shared the Imprisonment of the eler*«r John Frederic* luring five years.
102 SKETCHES OF ART,
would be to find one, in which the patronage of the great has not been repaid ten thousand fold in gratitude and fame. Dannecker's love for his na- tive city, and his native princes, prevailed over his self-interest; his decision was honorable to his heart ; but it is not less certain that at Munich he would have found more enlightened patronage, and a wider scope for his talents. Frederic, the late King of Wurteinberg, who had married our princess-royal, was a man of a coarse mind and profligate habits. Napoleon had gratified his vul- gar ambition by making him a king, and thereupon he stuck a huge, tawdry gilt crown on the top of his palace, the impudent sign of his subservient majesty. I never looked at it without thinking of an overgrown child and its new toy ; he also, to commemorate the acquisition of his kingly titles, instituted the order of the Wurtemburg crown, and Dannecker was gratified by this new order of merit, and a bit of ribbon in his button-hole.
But in the mean time the model of the Ariadne remained in his studio, and it was not till the year 1809 that he could afford to purchase a block of marble, and begin the statue on speculation. It occupied him for seven years, but in the interval he completed other beautiful works. The king ordered him to execute a Cupid in marble, for which he gave him the design. It was a design which displeased the pure mind and high taste of Dan necker; he would not so desecrate his divine art u c'etait travailler pour le diable ! " said he to ma
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 103
m telling the story. He therefore only half ful« filled his commission : and, changing the purpose and sentiment of the figure, he represented the Greek Cupid at the moment that he is waked by the drop of burning oil from Psyche's lamp. An English general, I believe Sir John Murray, saw this charming statue, in 1814, and immediately com- manded a work from the sculptor's hands: he wished, but did not absolutely require, a duplicate of the statue he so admire^. Dannecker, instead of repeating himself, produced his Psyche, whom he has represented — not as the Greek allegorical Psyche, the bride of Cupid, "with lucent fans, fluttering" — but as the abstract personification of the human soul ; or, to use Dannecker's own words, " Ein rein, sittlich, sinniges Wesen," — a pure, moral, intellectual being. As he had an idea that Love had become moral and sentimental after he had been waked by the drop of burning oil, so I could not help asking him whether this was Psyche, grown reasonable after she had beheld the wings of Love ? He has not in this beautiful statue quite accom- plished his own idea. It has much girlish grace and simplicity- but it wants elevation ; it is not suffi- ciently ideal, and will not stand a comparison either with the Psyche of Westmacott or that of Canova. The Ariadne was finished in 1816, but the sculp- tor was disappointed in his hope that this, hia masterpiece, would adorn his native city. The king showed no desire to possess it, and it was purchased by M. Bethmann, of Frankfort, for a sum equal to
104 SKETCHES OF ART,
about one thousand pounds. Soon after the Ariadne was finished, Dannecker conceived, in a moment of pious enthusiasm, his famous statue of the Re- d ierner, which has caused a great deal of discussion in Germany. This was standing in his work-room when we paid our first visit to him. He told me what I had often heard, that the figure had visited him in a dream three several times ; and the good old man firmly believed that he had been divinely inspired, and predestined to the work. While the visionary image was fresh in his imagination, he first executed a small clay model, and placed it be- fore a child of five or six years old ; — there were none of the usual emblematical accompaniments — no cross — no crown of thorns to assist the fancy — • nothing but the simple figure roughly modelled; yet the child immediately exclaimed, " The Re- deemer ! " and Dannecker was confirmed in his de- sign. Gradually the completion of this statue be- came the one engrossing idea of his enthusiastic mind : for eight years it was his dream by night, his thought by day ; all things else, all the affairs and duties of life, merged into this. He told me that he frequently felt as if pursued, excited by some strong, irresistible power, which would even visit him in sleep, and impel him to rise from his bed and work. He explained to me some of the difficulties he encountered, and which he was per- suaded that he had perfectly overcome only through divine aid, and the constant study of the Scrip- tures. They were not few nor trifling. Physica.1
LITERATURE. AND CHARACTER. lOk
power, majesty, and beauty, formed no part of tha character of the Saviour of the world : the glory that was around him was not of this earth, nor visible to the eye ; " there was nothing in him that he should be desired ; " therefore to throw into the impersonation of exceeding humility and benignity a superhuman grace, and from material elements work out a manifestation of abstract moral gran- deur— this was surely not only a new and difficult, but a bold and sublime enterprise.
You remember Michael Angelo's statue of Christ in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva at Borne?
MEDON. Perfectly; and I never looked at it without thinking of Neptune and his trident.
ALDA. The same thought occurred to me, and must inevitably have occurred to others. Dan- necker is not certainly so great a man as Michael Angelo, but here he has surpassed him. Instead of emulating the antique models, he has worked Vn the antique spirit — the spirit of faith and en- thusiasm. He has taken a new form in which to clothe a grand poetical conception. Whether the being he has represented be a fit subject for the plastic art, has been disputed ; but it appears to me that Dannecker has more nearly approached the Christian ideal than any of his predecessors ; there is nothing to be compare^ to it, except Ti- tian's Christo della Moneta, and that is a head merely. The sentiment chosen by the sculptor ii expressed in the inscription on the
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14 Through me, to the Father." The proportions, of the ligure are exceedingly slender and delicate the attitude a little drooping ; one hand is pressed on the bosom, the other extended ; the lips are unclosed, as in the act to speak. In the head and facial line, by carefully throwing out every indica- tion of the animal propensities, and giving added importance and development to all that indicates the moral and intellectual faculties, he has suc- ceeded in imbodying a species of ideal, of which there is no other example in art. I have heard (not from Dannecker himself) that, when the head of the Jupiter Tonans was placed beside the Christ, the merely physical grandeur of the former, compared with the purely intellectual expression of the latter, reminded every one present of a lion's head erect and humanized.
MEDON. But what were your own impressions ? After all this eulogium, which I believe to be just, tell me frankly, were you satisfied yourself?
ALDA. No — not quite. The expression of the mouth in the last finished statue (he has repeated the subject three times) is not so fine as in tho model, and the simplicity of the whole bordered on meagreness. This, I think, is a general fault in all Dannecker's works. He has, of course, avoided nudity, but the flowing robe, which completely en- velopes the figure, is so managed as to disclose the exact form of the limbs. One little circumstance will give you an idea of the attention and accuracy with which he seized and imbodied every touch of
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER 107
individual character conveyed in holy writ. In the original model he had made the beard rather full and thick, and a little curled, expressing the prime of majihood ; but recollecting that in the gospel the Saviour is represented as sinking under the weight of the cross, which the first man they met accidentally was able to carry, he immediately altered his first conception, and gave to the beard that soft, flowing, downy texture which is supposed to indicate a feeble and delicate temperament.
I shall not easily forget the countenance of the good and gifted old man, as, leaning on the ped- estal, with his cap in his hand, and his long gray hair waving round his face, he looked up at hia work with a mixture of reverence and exultation, saying, in his imperfect and scarce intelligible French, " Oui, quand on a fait comme cela, on reste sur la terre ! " meaning, I suppose, that this statue had insured his immortality on earth. He added, " They ask me often where are the modela after which I worked? and I answer, here and here ;" laying his hand first on his head, then on his heart.
I remember that when we first entered his room he was at work on one of the figures for the tomb of the late Queen Catherine of Wurtemburg. You perhaps recollect her in England when only Duchess of Oldenburg?
MEDON. Yes ; I remember, as a youngster, joining the mob who shouted before the windows of the Pulteney-hotel and hailed her and her
l08 SKETCHES OF ART,
brother Alexander as if they had been a newl) descended Jupiter and Juno ! O verily, times are changed !
ALDA. But in that woman there were the ele- ments of a fine nature. She had the talents, the strength of mind, and far-reaching ambition of her grandmother, Catherine of Russia, but was not so perverted. During her short reign as Queen ol Wurtemburg, the influence of her active mind was felt through the whole government. She founded, among other institutions, a school for the daughters of the nobility connected with the court, — in plain English, a charity-school for the nobility of Wur- temburg, who are among the most indigent and most ignorant of Germany. There are a few, very few brilliant exceptions. One lady of rank said to me, " As to an English governess, that is an ad- vantage I can never hope to have for my daughters. The princesses have an English governess, but we cannot dream of such a thing." The late queen really deserved the regrets of her people. The king, whose sluggish mind she ruled or stimulated, is now devoted to his stables and hunting. He has married another wife, but he has erected to the honor of Catherine a splendid mausoleum, on the peak of a high hill, which can be seen from almost every part of the city ; and on the summer even- ings when the red sunset falls upon its white col- umns, it is a beautiful object. The figure on which Dannecker was occupied, represented prayer or what he called, *' La triomphe de la Priere ; " it
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 109
recalled to my mind Flaxman's lovely statue of the same subject, — the " Our Father which art in Heaven," but suffered by the involuntary compari- son. On the rough base of the statue he had tried to spell the name of Chantrey, but not very success- fully. I took up a bit of chalk and wrote under- neath in distinct characters, FRANCIS CHANTREY. "I grow old," said he, looking from his work to the bust of the late queen, which stood op- posite. "I have carved the effigies of three generations of poets, and as many of princes. Twenty years ago I was at work on the tomb of the Duke of Oldenburg, and now I am at work apon hers who gave me that order. All die away : soon I shall be left alone. Of my early friends none remain but Goethe. I shall die before him, and perhaps he will write my epitaph." He spoke with a smile, not foreseeing that he would be the survivor.
Three years after * I again paid Dannecker a visit, but a change had come over him ; his feeble, tremb- ling hand could no longer grasp the mallet or guide he chisel ; his eyes were dim ; his fine benevolent countenance wore a childish, vacant smile, now and then crossed by a gleam of awakened memory 01 thought — and yet he seemed so perfectly happy ! He walked backwards and forwards, from his Christ to his bust of Schiller, with an unwearied self-corn- jJacency, in which there was something mournful
* In September, 1833-
110 SKETCHES OF ART,
aiid yet delightful. While I sat looking at tho magnificent head of Schiller, the original of thi multifarious casts and copies which are dispersed through all Germany, he sat down beside me, and taking my hands between his own, which trembled with age and nervous emotion, he began to speak of his friend. " Nous etions amis des 1'enfance , aussi j'y ai travaiile avec amour, avec douleur — on ne peut pas plus faire." He then went on — " When Schiller came to Louisberg, he sent to tell me that he was very ill — that he should not live very long, and that he wished me to execute his bust. It was the first wish of my own heart. I went immediately. When I entered the house, I found a lady sitting on the canape — it was Schiller's wife, and I did not know her ; but she knew me. She said, * Ah ! you are Dannecker ! — Schiller ex- pects you ; ' then she ran into the next room, where Schiller was lying down on a couch, and in a mo- ment after he came in, exclaiming as he entered, 4 Where is he ? where is Dannecker ? ' That was the moment — the expression I caught — you see it here — the head raised, the countenance full of in- spiration, and affection, and bright hope ! I told him that to keep up this expression he must have some of his best friends to converse with him while I took the model, for I could not talk and work too. ' O if I could but remember what glorious thing* then fell from those lips ! Sometimes I stopped in my work — I could not go on — I could only listen." Ajid here the old man wept ; then suddenly chang
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. Ill
jig his mood, he said — " But I must cut o.i* that long hair ; he never wore it so ; it is not in the fashion, you know ! " I begged him for Heaven's sake not to touch it ; he then, with a sad smile, turned up the sleeve of his coat and showed me his wrist, swelled with the continual use of his imple- ments— " You see I cannot I " And I could not help wishing, at the moment, that while his mind was thus enfeebled, no transient return of physical strength might enable him to put his wild threat in execution. What a noble bequest to posterity is the effigy of a great man, when executed in such a spirit as this of Schiller ! I assure you I could not look at it without feeling my heart " overflow in silent worship " of moral and intellectual power, till the deification of great men in the old times ap- peared to me rather religion than idolatry. I have been affected in the same manner by the busts of Goethe, Scott, Homer, Milton, Howard, Newton ; never by the painted portraits of the same men, however perfect in resemblance and admirable in execution.
ME DON. Painting gives us the material, sculp- ture the abstract, ethical aspect of the man. In the bust, whatever is commonplace, familiar, and actual, is thrown out or kept down : in a picture it is not only retained, but in most cases it is neces- sarily obtrusive. Goethe, in a blue coat and metal buttons, and a white neckcloth, would not recall the author of the " Iphigenia ;" still less does that wrinkled, decrepit-looking face in the gallery at Hardwicke, portray Boyle, the philosopher.
112 SKETCHES OF ART,
ALDA. Dannecker told me that he first mod- elled the head of Schiller the exact size of life, and conscientiously rendered each, even the slightest, individual trait ; yet this head appeared to every one smaller than nature, and to himself almost mest/uin.* He was in despair. He re- peated the bust in a colossal size ; and the develop- ment of the intellectual organization on a larger scale immediately gave what was wanting : it ap- peared to the eye or to the mind's eye as only the size of life. He showed me a beautiful basso- relievo of the Muse of Tragedy, listening with an inspired look to the revelations of the Muse of History. This admirable little group struck me the more, because long ago I had clothed nearly the same idea in imperfect words.
I took leave of Dannecker with emotion ; I shall never see him a°*ain ! But he is one of those who cannot die ; to use his own expression, " Quand on a fait comme cela, on reste sur la terre." When Canova, then a melancholy invalid, paid him a visit, he was so struck by the childlike simplicity, the pure unworldly nature, the genuine goodness, and lively happy temperament of the German sculptor, that he gave him the surname of il Beato ; and if the epithet blessed can, with propriety, be bestowed on any mortal, it is on him whose long life has been one of labor and of love ; who has left behind him lasting memorials of his genius ; who has never
* His own expression.
t
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 113
profaned the talents which God has given him to any unworthy purpose ; but in the midst of all the beautiful and exciting influences of poetry and art, has kept from youth to age a soul serene, a conscience and a life pure in the sight of God and man. Such was our own Flaxman, such is Dan- necker !
MEDON. Who are now the principal sculptors in Germany ?
ALDA. Rauch, of Berlin ; Christian Frederic Tieck, the brother of the celebrated poet and critic, Ludwig Tieck ; and Schwanthaler, of Munich. Bauch is the court sculptor of Berlin. He has, like Dannecker,* his professorship, his order of merit,f and, I believe, one or two places under the government, besides constant employment in his art. He works by the piece, as the laborers say- But though he, too, has yoked his genius to the car of power and patronage, he has done great things. The statue of the late queen of Prussia is reck- oned his chef-cFceuvre, and is not, perhaps, ex- ceeded in modern sculpture. It was conceived and worked out in all the inspiration of love and grief; as Dannecker would say, "Mit Lieb und Schmerzen." He had been attached to the queen's
•Dannecker has been ennobled; his proper titles run thus : Johann Heinrich von Dannecker, Hofrath, (court counsellor,) Knight of the orders of the Wurtemburg crown, and of Wladi- taer, and professor of sculpture at Stuttgardt.
t Rauch is knight of the Red Eagle, and member of tb» •anakv
8
*14 SKETCHES OF ART,
personal service, and shared, in an intense degree, the enthusiastic, devoted affection with which all her subjects regarded that beautiful and amiable woman. This statue he executed at Carrara ; and a living eagle, which had been taken captive among the Apennines, was the original of that magnificent eagle he has placed at her feet: nothing, you see, like going at once to nature! In the "ourse of twenty-five years, Rauch has executed sixty-nine busts, of which twenty are colossal. Among his numerous other works, de- signed or executed within the same time, there is the colossal statue of Blucher, now at Breslau ; this is in bronze, upon a granite pedestal. There is another statue of Blucher at Berlin, of which the pedestal, rich with bas-reliefs, is also in bronze. Rauch has been employed for the last twenty years in modelling field-marshals and generals, and has devoted his best powers to vanquish the difficulties presented by monotonous faces, drilled figures, military uniforms, and regimental boots and buttons; and all that man can do, I am told, he has done. I have seen some of his busts, which are quite admirable. At Peterstein, near Munich, I saw his statue of a little girl, about ten years old, which, in its simplicity, truth, and elegance re- minded me of Chantrey's Lady Louisa Russell, though in conception and manner as distinct as possible. The full length of Goethe, in his dressing- gown, of which there is such an infinitude of casts and copies throughout Germany, is also by Rauch
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 115
Christian Tieck is the old and intimate friend of Rauch. They live, or did live, under the same roof, and it is not known that a moment of jealousy or rivalship ever disturbed the union between ihese two celebrated and gifted men, who, starting nearly at the same time,* have run their brilliant career together in the self-same path, and, what- ever judgment the world or posterity may form of their comparative merits, seem determined to enter the temple of immortality hand in hand. Tieck's works are dispersed from one end of Germany to the other. His statue of Neckar, his busts of Ma- dame de Stae'l, of her second husband Rocca, of the Duke and Duchess de Broglie, and of A. W. Schlegel, I have seen; and all, particularly the busts of Rocca and Schlegel, are exceedingly fine. At Munich, at Dresden, and at Weimar, I saw many of his works ; and at Manheim the bust of Madame de Heygendorf,f full of beauty, and life,
* Christian Rauch was born in 1777, and Christian Frederic Tieck in 1776.
t Formerly Madame Jageman, the principal actress of the theatre at Weimar. Her talents were developed under the auspices of Goethe and Schiller. She was the original Thekla of the Wallenstein, and the original Princess Leonora of the Tasso. In these two characters she has never yet heen equalled. The quietness, amounting to passiveness, in the external de- lineation of the Princess in Tasso affords so little material for the itage, that Madame Wolff, then the first actress, preferred the character of Leonora Sanvitale, and Madame Jageman was sup- posed to derogate in accepting that of the Princess. Such ifl the consummate, but evanescent delicacy of the conception \hatGoi5the never expected to see it developed on the stage
116 SKETCHES OF ART.
»nd expression. At Berlin, Tieck has been en> ployed for many years in designing and executing the sculptured ornaments of the new theatre. There is a colossal Apollo ; a Pegasus, striking the fountain of Helicon from the rock, colossal Muses, and a variety of other heathen perpetrations, a!l, (as I am assured,) exceedingly fine in their way. I believe his seated statue of Iffland (the Garrick of Germany) is considered one of his chef-d'ceuTrcs. He also, like Rauch, has been much employed in modelling generals, and trophies in memory of the late war.
Schwanthaler, the son of a statuary of Munich, is still a young man ; his works first began to create a sensation in Germany in the year 1823. In spirit and fire, and creative talent, in a fine classic feeling for his art, he appeared to me to be treading in the steps of Flaxman, and, like him, he is a profound and accomplished scholar, who has sought inspiration at the very fountain of Greek poetry. His basso-relievo of the battle of the shipa in the Iliad, his games of Greece, his designs from the theogony of Hesiod, and a variety of other
Hid at the rehearsal he threw himself back in his chair and •but his eyes, that the image which lived in his imagination might not be profaned by any tasteless exaggeration of action or expression. He soon opened them, however, and before th«» rehearsal was finished, started off the chair, and nearly em- braced the actress. She looked and felt the part as only a woman of exceeding taste and delicacy would have done; the rery tone of her mind, and the character of her beauty flttetf her to represent the fair, gentle, fragile, but dignified Leonora.
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 117
works which I have seen, appeared to me full of imagination, and in a pure and vigorous style ot art. Of him, and some other sculptors, you will find more particulars in the note-book I kept at Munich ; we will look over it together one of these days.
MEDON. Thank you ; but I must needs ask you a question. In the works you have enumerated, nothing has struck me as new, or in a new spirit, except, perhaps, the Christ of Dannecker, and the statue of the queen of Prussia. Now, why should not sculpture have its Gothic (or romantic) school, as well as its antique or classical school?
ALDA. And has it not ?
MEDON. If you allude to the sculpture of th( middle ages, that has not become a school of art, like their architecture and their painting ; yet can it be true that there is something in our modern institutions, our northern descent, our Christian faith, inimical to the spirit of sculpture ? and while poetry in every other form is regenerate around us, that in sculpture alone we are doomed to imitate, never to create ? doomed to the servile reproduction of the same ideas? that this alone, of all the fine arts, is to belong to some peculiar mode of existence, some peculiar mode of thinking, feeling, and believing ? " Qui me delivrera des Grccs et des Remains ?" — who will deliver me from gods and goddesses, and from all these
" Repetitions, wearisome of sense, Where soul is dead, and feeling hatL na place?"
118 SKETCHES OF ART,
ALDA. lou are little better than a heretic in these matters. But I will admit thus much — that the classical and mythological sculpture of our nodern artists is to the ancient marbles what Ra- tine's tragedies are to those of Sophocles ; that we ire so far condemned to the " repetition wearisome df forms" from which the ancient spirit has evapo- rated ; but that is not the fault of the subjects, but jhe manner of treating them, for never can the beautiful mythology of ancient Greece, which has woven itself into our earliest dreams of poetry, be- come a u creed outworn." Its forms, and its sym- bols, and its imagery, have mingled with every branch of art, and become a universal language, /t is the deification of the material world; and therefore that art, which in its perfection may be called the apotheosis of form, finds there its proper region and element.
MEDON. You do not suppose that, with all my Gothic tastes, I aM such a Goth as not to feel the truth of what you jay ? But I am an enemy to the exclusive in every thing ; and — pardon me — your wor&aip of the Elgm marbles and the Niobe is, I think, a little too exclusive. All I ask is, that modern sculpture should be allowed, like painting and po^oy, to have its romantic as well as its clas- uical sciiojl.
ALDA. It has I ecu otherwise decided.
ME DO A But it has not been otherwise proved. There hat, been *sach theoretical eloquence and Criticism expend , , n the subject, but I deny that
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 119
the experiment has been fairly and practically brought before us. I know very well you are ready with a thousand instances of attempt and failure, but may we not seek the cause in the mistaken ap- plication of certain classical, or I should say pe- dantic, ideas on the subject ? If I ask for Milton's Satan, standing like a tower in his spiritual might, his thunder-scarred brow wreathed with the diadem of hell, why am I to be presented with an Athlete, or an Achilles ? Why would Canova give us for the head of Dante's Beatrice that of a muse, or an Aspasia ? and for Petrarch's Laura, a mere tete de nymphe f I contend, that to apply the forms sug- gested by the modern poetry demands a different spirit from that of classic art. How to apply or modify the example bequeathed to us by the great masters of old, Flaxman has shown us in his Dante. And why should we not have in sculpture a Lear as well as a Laocoon ? a Constance as well as a Niobe V a Gismunda as well as a Cleopatra ?
ALDA. Or a Tarn O'Shanter as well as a laugh- ing Faun V
MEDON. When I am serious and poetical, which is not often, I will not allow you to be perverse and ironical !
ALDA. See, here is a passage which I have just found among Mrs. Austin's beautiful specimens of translation : " The critic of art ought to keep in view, not only the capabilities, but the proper ob- jects of art. Not all that art can accomplish ought «he to attempt. It is from this cause alone, and
120
SKETCHES OF ART,
because we have lost sight of these principles, thai art among us has become more extensive and dif- ficult, and less effective and perfect" *
MEDON. Very well, — and very true : but who shall bring a rule and compass to measure the capabilities of art, and define its proper objects ? May there not exist in the depths or heights of philosophy and art truths yet to be revealed, aa there are stars in heaven whose light has not yet reached the naked eye ? and why should not crit- icism have its telescope for truth, as well as its microscope for error ? Art may be finite ; but who shall fix its limits, and say, " Thus far shalt thou go ? n There are those who regard the distant as the unattainable, the unknown as the unexisting, the actual as the necessary ; — are you one of such, O you of little faith ! For my own part, I look forward to a new era in sculpture. I believe that the purely natural and the purely ideal are one, and susceptible of forms and modifications as yet untried. For Nature, the infinite, sits within her tabernacle not made by human hands, and Genius and Love are the cherubim, to whom it is permitted to look into her unveiled eyes and reflect their light ; Art is the priestess of her divine mysteries, and Criticism, the door-keeper of her temple, should be Janus-headed, looking forward as well as back ward. Reason estimates what has been done Imagination alone divines what may be done. Ba/
* Leasing.
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 121
I am losing myself in these reveries. To attempt something new, — perfectly new in style and con- ception— and spend, like Dannecker, eight years in working out that conception — and then perhaps eight years more waiting for a purchaser, and thia in a country where one must eat and pay taxes — truly, it is not easy.
SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER.
HI.
MEDON. You have been frowning and musing in your chair for the last half-hour, with your fore- finger between the leaves of your book — where were your thoughts?
ALDA. They were far — very far ! I am afraid that I appear very stupid V
MEDON. O not at all ! you know there are start which appear dim and fixed to the eye, while they are taking flights and making revolutions, which imagination cannot follow nor science compute.
ALDA. Upon my word, you are very sublimely ironical — my thoaghts were not quite so far.
MEDON. May one beg, or borrow them ? — What i? your book ?
ALDA. Mrs. Austin's " Characteristics of Goethe " I came upon a passage which sent back my thoughts to Weimar I was again in his house ; the faces, the voices of his grandchildren were around me ; the room in which he studied, the bed in which he ilept, the old chair in which he died, — and, above
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 123
all, her in whose arms he died — from whose lips 1 heard the detail of his last moments —
*****
MEDON. What ! all this emotion for Goethe V
ALDA. For Goethe ! — I should as soon think of weeping because the sun set yesterday, which now is pouring its light around me ! Our tears are for those who suffer, for those who die, for those who are absent, for those who are cold or lost — not for those who cannot die, who cannot suffer, — who must be, to the end of time, a presence, and an existence among us ! No.
But I was reading here, among the Characteris- tics of Goethe, who certainly " knew all qualities, with a learned spirit in human dealings," that he was not only the quick discerner and most cordial hater of all affectation ; — but even the unconscious affectation — the nature de convention, — the taught, the artificial, the acquired in manner or character, though it were meritorious in itself, he always de- tected, and it appeared to impress him disagree- ably. Stay, I will read you the passage — here it is.
"Even virtue, laboriously and painfully ac- quired, was distasteful to him. I might almost affirm, that a faulty but vigorous character, if it had any real native qualities as its basis, was re- garded by him with more indulgence and respect than one which, at no moment of its existence, is genuine ; which is incessantly under the most un- amiablc constraint, and consequently imposes a
124 SKETCHES OF ART,
painful constraint on others. * Oh,' said he, sigh- ing, on such occasions, ' if they had but the heart to commit some absurdity, that would be something and they would at least be restored to their own natural soil, free from all hypocrisy and acting: wherever that is the case, one may entertain the cheering hope that something will spring from the germ of good which nature implants in every in- dividual. But on the ground they are now upon nothing can grow.' ' Pretty dolls,' was his common expression when speaking of them. Another phrase was, * That's a piece of nature,' (literally, das ist eine Natur, that is a nature,) which from Goethe's lips was considerable praise." *
This last phrase threw me back upon my re- membrances. I thought of the daughter in law of the poet, — the trusted friend, the constant com- panion, the devoted and careful nurse of his last years. It accounted for the unrivalled influence which apparently she possessed — I will not say over his mind — but in his mind, in his affections ; for in her he found truly eine Natur — a piece of nature, which could bear even his microscopic examination. All other beings who approached Goethe either were, or had been, or might be, more or less modified by the action of that universal and mas- ter spirit Consciously, or unconsciously, in love or in fear, they bowed down before him, and gave Up their individuality, or forgot it, in his presence
* Characteristics of Goethe, vol. i p. 29.
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 12ft
they took the bent lie chose to impress, or the coloi he chose to throw upon them. Their minds, in presence of his, were as opake bodies in the sun, absorbing in different degrees, reflecting in various hues, his vital beams ; but HER'S was, in compari- son, like a transparent medium, through which the rays of that luminary passed, — pervading and en- lightening, but leaving no other trace. Conceive a woman, a young, accomplished, enthusiastic woman, who had qualities to attach, talents to amuse, and capacity to appreciate, GOETHE ; who, for fourteen or fifteen years, could exist in daily, hourly com- munication with that gigantic spirit, yet retain, from first to last, the most perfect simplicity of character, and this less from the strength than from the purity and delicacy of the original texture. Those oft-abused words, naioe, nawete, were more applicable to her in their fullest sense than to any other woman I ever met with. Her conversation was the most untiring I ever enjoyed, because the stores which fed that flowing eloquence were all native and unborrowed : you were not borne along by it as by a torrent — bongre, malgre, — nor dazzled as by an artificial jet d'eau set to play for your amusement. There was the obvious wish to please —a little natural coquetterie — vivacity without ef- fort, sentiment without affectation, exceeding mo- bility, which yet never looked like caprice ; and the most consummate refinement of thought, and feeling, and expression. From that really elegant and highly-toned mind, nothing flippant nor harsh
/26 SKETCHES OF ART,
could ever proceed ; slander died away in her pres ence ; what was evil she would not hear of; what was malicious she would not understand ; what wan ridiculous she would not see. Sometimes there was a wild, artless fervor in her impulses and feelings, which might have become a feather-cinctured In- dian on her savannah; then, the next moment, her bearing reminded you of the court-bred lady of the bed-chamber. Quick in perception, yet femininely confiding, uniting a sort of restless vivacity with an indolent gracefulness, she appeared to me by far the most poetical and genuine being, of my own sex, I ever knew in highly-cultivated life : one to whom no wrong could teach mistrust ; no injury, bitterness; one to whom the commonplace reali- ties, the vulgar necessary cares of existence, were but too indifferent ; — who was, in reality, all that other women try to appear, and betrayed, with a careless independence, what they most wish to con- ceal. I draw from the life, — now, what would you say to such a woman if you met with her in the world ?
MEDON. I should say — she had no business there.
ALDA. How?
MEDON. I repeat that the woman you have just portrayed is hardly fit for the world.
ALDA. Say rather, the world is not fitted for her. As the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, so the world was made for man, aot man for the world — still less woman.
JLITKRATURE, AND CHARACTER i'27
MED ON. Do you know what you mean ?
ALDA. 1 think I do, though I am afraid 1 can but ill-explain myself. By the world, I mean that system of social life in all its complicate beaiings by which we are surrounded ; which was, I sup- pose, devised at first with a reference to the wants, the happiness, and the benefit of men, but for which no man was specifically created; his being has a high and individual purpose beyond the world. Now, it seems to me one reason of the low average of what we call character, that we judge a human soul, not as it is abstractedly, but simply in relation to others, and to the circumstances around it. If it be in harmony with the world, and worldly, we praise it — it is a very respectable soul if so constituted, that it is in discord with a world, (which, observe, all our philosophers, our pastors, and our masters, unite to assure us, is a sad wicked place, and must be reformed or renounced forth- with,) then — I pray your attention to this point— then the fault, the bitter penalty, lies not upon this said wicked world, — O no ! — but on that unlucky " piece of nature," which in its power, its goodness, its purity, its truth, its faith, and its tenderness, stands aloof from it. Is it not so ?
MEDON. Do you apply this personally ?
ALDA. No, generally ; but I return to her who suggested the thought, and whom I ought not, per- haps, to have made the subject of such a conversation as this : it is against all my principles, contrary to my custom ; and, in truth, I speak of one in whom
128 SKETCHES OF ART,
there is so much to love, that we cannot praise without being accused of partiality ; and so much to admire, that we could not censure without being suspected of envy. I might as well be silent therefore. Yet shall such a woman bear such a oame, and hold such a position as the mother of Goethe's posterity;* — shall she be rendered by both a mark for observation, from one end of Europe to the other ; — shall she be " condemned to celebrity," and shall it be allowed to ignorance, or ill-nature, or vanity, to prate of her ; — and shall it be forbidden to friendship even to speak ? — that were hardly just. Of those effusions of her crea- tive and poetical talents, which charm her friends, I say nothing, because in all probability neither you nor the public will ever benefit by them. I met with several other women in Germany who possessed striking poetical genius, and whose com- positions were equally destined to remain unknown except to the circle of their immediate friends and relatives.
MEDON. Mr. Hayward, in his notes to his trans- lation of Faust, remarks on the strong prejudice against female authorship, which still exists m Germany ; but he has hopes that it will not en- dure, and that something may be done " to unlock the stores of fancy and feeling which the Ottilies and the Adeles have hived up." Tell me — did
* I believe it was in allusion to this distinction, and her own nohle birth, that her fether-in-law used to call her playfully ' die kleine Ahnfrau" (the little ancestress.)
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 1*1
iiou find this prejudice entertained by the women themselves, or existing chiefly on the part of the men?
ALDA. It was expressed most strongly by the women, but it must have originated with the men. All your prejudices you instil into us; and then we are not satisfied with adopting them, we exag- gerate them — we mix them up with our fancies and affections, and transmit them to your children. You are " the mirrors in which we dress ourselves.''
MEDON. For which you dress yourselves !
ALDA. Psha ! — I mean that your minds and opinions are the mirrors in which we form our own. You legislate for us, mould us, form us as you will. If you prefer slaves and playthings to companions and helpmates, is that our fault ? In Germany I met with some men who, perhaps out of compli- ment, descanted with enthusiasm on female talent, and in behalf of female authorship : but the women almost uniformly spoke of the latter with dread, as something formidable, or with contempt, as of something beneath them: what is an unworthy prejudice in your sex, becomes, when transplanted into ours, a feeling ; — a mistaken, but a genuine, and even a generous feeling. Many women, who have sufficient sense and simplicity of mind to rise above the mere prejudice, would not contend with the feeling : they would not scruple to encounter the public judgment in a cause approved by their own hearts, but they have not courage to brave or
to oppose the opinions of friends and kindred
9
130 SKETCHES OF ART,
MEDON. Or risk the loss of a lover. You re- member the axiom of that clever Frenchman,* who certainly spoke the existing opinions of hia country only a few years ago, when he said — • " Imprimer, pour une femme de moins de cinquante ans c'est mettre son bonheur a la plus terrible des lotteries ; si elle a un amant elle commencera par le perdre."
ALDA. I really believe that in Germany the latter catastrophe would be in most cases inevit- able ; and where is the woman who knowingly would risk it ?
MEDON. All, however, have not lovers to lose, or husbands to displease, or friends to affront ; and if the women, in compliance with our self-revolving egotism, affect to prostrate themselves, and under- value one another — do the men allow it to this extent ? Do not the Germans most justly boast, that in their land arose the first feeling of venera- tion for women, the result of the Christian dispen- sation, grafted on the old German manners ? Do they not point to their literature and their insti- tutions, as more favorable to your sex than any other? Does not even Madame de Stael exalt the fine earnestness of the German feeling towards you, infinitely above the system of French gal- lantry ? — that flimsy veil of conventional good- breeding, under which we seek to disguise the de moralization of one sex, and the virtual slavery of
«M. Besle, otherwise the Comte de Stendhal, and, I believo, h« %aa half a dozen other aliases.
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 131
the other ? Have I not heard you say, that it is the present fashion among the poets, artists, and writers of Germany, to defer in all things to the middle ages ? Are not the maxims and sentiments of chivalry ready on their lips, the forms and symbols of the old chivalrous times to be traced in every department of literature and art among them?
ALDA. All this is true; and I will believe that all this is something more than mere theory, when I see the Germans less slovenly in their interior, and less egotistical in their domestic relations. The theme is unwelcome, unpleasant, ungraceful, — in fact, I can scarcely persuade myself to say one word against those high-minded, benevolent, admirable, and " most-thinking people ; " so I will not dwell upon it : but I must confess that the personal neg- ligence of the men, and the forbearance of the women on this point, astonished me. I longed to remind these worshippers of the age of chivalry of that advice of St. Louis to his son — " II faut <*tre toujours propre et bien proprement habille, afin d'etre mieux dime de sa femme ; " the really good- natured and well-bred Germans will, I am sure, forgive this passing remark, and allow its truth; they did at once agree with me, that the tavern- life of the men, more particularly the clever pro- fessional men in the south of Germany, (anothei remnant, I presume, either of the age of chivalry* yr the Biirschen-sitten — I know not which,) was calf 'ilated to retard the social improvement and
LS2
SKETCHES OF ART,
refinement of both sexes. And, apropos to chiv- alry, the fact is, that the institutions of a generous but barbarous period, invented to shield our help- lessness, when women were exposed to every hard- ship, every outrage, have been much abused, and must be considerably modified to suit a very differ- ent state of society. That affectation of poetical homage, which your strength paid to our weakness, when the laws were not sufficient to defend us, we would now gladly exchange for more real honor, more real protection, more equal rights. I speak thus, knowing that, however open to perversion these expressions may be, you will not misappre- hend me ; you know that I am no vulgar, vehe- ment arguer about the " rights of women ; " and, from my habitual tone of feeling and thought, the last to covet any of your masculine privileges.
MEDON. I do perfectly understand you; but pray what are our strictly masculine privileges, that you should covet them? Fighting! getting drunk ! and keeping a mistress ! — I beg your par- don if I shock your delicacy ; but certainly, upon the score of masculine privileges, the less that is said the better : there are nations in which it is a masculine privilege to sit and smoke, while women draw the plough. It was some time ago, — and now, in some countries, it is still a masculine privi- lege to cultivate the mind at all ; and in Germany, apparently, it is still a masculine privilege to pub- lish a book without losing caste in society ; whereas acre, in England, we have fallen into the opposite
1.1'IKRATURK, AND CHARACTER. IS*
extreme ; female authorship is in danger of becoming a fashion, — which Heaven avert ! I should be sorry to see you women taking the pen you have hith- erto so honored, in the same spirit in which you used to make filigree, cobble shoes, and paint velvet.
ALDA. It is too true that mere vanity and fashion have lately made some women authoresses ; — more write for money, and by this employment of their talents earn their own independence, add to the comforts of a parent, or supply the extrava- gance of a husband. Some, who are unhappy in their domestic relationsr yet endowed with all that feminine craving after sympathy, which was in- tended to be the charm of our sex, the blessing of yours, and some how or other has been turned to the bane of both, look abroad for what they find not at home ; fling into the wide world the irre- pressible activity of an overflowing mind and heart, which can find no other unforbidden issue, — and to such "fame is love disguised." Some write from the mere energy of intellect and will ; some few from the pure wish to do good, and to add to the stock of happiness and the progress of thought ; and many from all these motives combined in di£ Cerent degrees.
MEDON. And have none of these motives pro* luced authoresses in Germany ?
AID A. Yes- but fashion and vanity, and the ove tf excitement, have not as yet tempted the Rennan women to print tneir effusions ; their most
184
8KKTCHE8 OF ART,
distinguished authoresses have become so, either from real enthusiasm or from necessity; and in the lighter departments of literature they boast at present some brilliant names. I will run over a few.
There is Helmina von Chezy — but before I speak of her, I should tell you of her famous grand- mother, Anna Louisa Karshin, though she belonged to the last century. The Karshin was the daugh- ter of a poor innkeeper and brewer, in a little vil- lage of Silesia. She spent her early years in herding cows. She learned to read by stealth, by stealth she became a poetess ; was first married to a boorish sulky weaver, secondly to a drunken tailor, and suffered for years every extremity of poverty and misery ; at one time she travelled about the neighboring country, the first example of an itinerant poetess, declaiming her own verses, and always ready with an ode or a sonnet to cele- brate a wedding, or hail a birthday. In this strange profession she excited much astonishment — went through some singular, but not disreputable adven- tures— and earned considerable sums of money, which her husband spent in drink and profligacy. Drifted with as much energy as genius, she strug- gled through all, and gradually became known to teveral of the critics and poets of the last century, particularly Count Stolberg and Gleim, and ob- tained the title of the German Sappho. She found means to reach Berlin, where she worked her way up to distinction, and supported herself, two chil
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 135
Ai*.., and an orphan brother, by her talents. She was recommended to Frederick the Great as worthy of a pension, and — would you believe it ? — that munificent patron of his country's genius sent her a gratuity of two dollars, in a piece of paper. This extraordinary and spirited woman, who had probably subsisted for half her life on charity, in- stantly returned them to the niggardly despot, after writing in the envelop four lines impromptu, which are yet repeated in Germany. I am not quite sure that I remember them accurately, and it is no matter, for they have not much either of poe- try or point.
" Zwei Thaler sind zu wenig,
Zwei Thaler gibt kein Konig.
Zwei Thaler machen nichtmein Gluck;
Fritz, hier sind sie zuriick."
She died in 1791, and a selection of her poems was published in the following year.
The granddaughter of the Karshin, the more celebrated Helmina von Chezy, is likewise a poet- ess ; her principal work is a tale of chivalry, in verse, Die drei Weissen Rosen, (The Three White Roses,) which was published in 18 — , and she wrote the opera of Euryanthe, for Weber to set to music. Her songs and lighter poems are. I am told, exceedingly beautiful.
Caroline Pichler, of Vienna, I need only men- tion. I believe her historical romances have been translated into half-a-dozen languages. The Siege of V'«nn<* is reckoned her best.
«36 SKETCHES OF ART,
Madame Schopenhaur, the daughter of a senator of Dantzic, is celebrated for her novels, travels, and works on art. She resided for many years at Weimar, where she drew round her a brilliant lit- erary circle, which the talents of her daughter far ther adorned. Since Goethe's death she has fixed her residence at Bonn, where it is probable the re- mainder of her life will be spent. One of the best of her novels, " Die Xante," has been translated by Madame de Montolieu, under the title of " La Tante et la Niece." Another very pretty little book of hers, " Ausflucht an dem Rhein," I should like to see translated. Besides being an elegant writer on art, Madame Schopenhaur is herself no mean artist. Moreover, she is a kind-hearted, ex- cellent old lady, with a few old lady-like prejudices about England and the English, which I forgave her, — the more easily as I had to thank her in my own person for many and kind attentions.
Madame von Helvig, of Weimar, (born Amalia von Imhoff,) was the friend of Schiller, under whose auspices her first poems were published. Her rare knowledge of languages, her learning and critical taste in works of art, have distinguished her almost as much as her genius for poetry.
The first wife of the Baron de la Motte-Fouquet, was a very accomplished woman, and the author o< several poems and romances.
Frederica Brun, (born Miinter,) the daughter of % learned ecclesiastic of Gotha, is celebrated for her prose writings, and particularly her travels ir
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. i37
ItaJy, where she resided at different periods. Mad- Kiue Brun was a friend of Madame de Stael, who mentions her in her de 1'Allemagne, and describes the extraordinary talents for classical pantomime possessed by her daughter Ida Brun.
Louisa Brachmann is, I believe, more renowned for her melancholy death than her poetical talents; both together have procured her the name of the " German Sappho." The wretched woman threw herself into the river at Halle, and perished, as it was said, for the sake of some faithless Phaon. This was in 1822, when she must have been be- tween forty and fifty ; and pray observe, I do not notice this fact of her age in ridicule. A woman's heart may overflow inwardly for long, long years, till at last the accumulated sorrow bursts the bounds of reason, and then all at once we see the result of causes to which none gave heed, and of secret agonies to which none gave comfort — in folly, mad- ness, destruction. Whatever might have been the cause, — thus she died. Her works in prose and verse may be found in every bookseller's shop in Germany. There is also a life of this unhappy and gifted woman by professor Schutz.
Fanny Tarnow is one of the most remarkable %nd most fertile of all the modern German author- esses. Her genius was developed by misfortune and suffering : while yet an infant, she fell from a window two stories high, and was taken up, to the amazement of the assistants, without any apparen* njury, except a few bruises ; but all the vital funo
138 SKETCHES OF ART,
tions suffered, and during ten or twelve years she was extended on a couch, neither joining in any of the amusements of childhood, nor subjected to the usual routine of female education. She educated herself. She read incessantly, and, as it was her only pleasure, books of every description, good and bad, were furnished her without restraint. She was about eleven years old when she made her first known poetical attempt, inspired by her own feel- ings and situation. It was a dialogue between her- self and the angel of death. In her seventeenth year she was sufficiently recovered to take charge of her father's family, after he had lost, by some sudden misfortune, his whole property. He held subsequently, a small office under government, the duties of which were principally performed by his admirable daughter. Her first writings were anony- mous, and for a long time her name was unknown. Her most celebrated novel, the " Thekla," was published in 1815 ; and from this time she has en- joyed a high and public reputation. Fanny Tar- now resides, or did reside, in Dresden.
I have yet another name here, and not the least interesting, that of Johanna von Weissenthurn, one of the most popular dramatic writers in Ger- many. She was educated for the stage, even from infancy, her paren ts and relations being, I believe, strolling players. She lived, for many years, a various life of toil, and adventure, and excitement such, perhaps, as Goethe describes in the Wilhelm Meister; a life which does sometimes blun* th«
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 139
nicer feelings, but is sure to develop talent where it exists. Johanna at length rose through all the grades of her profession, and became the first ac- tress at the principal theatre at Vienna. She played in the " Phoedra," before Napoleon, when he occupied the Austrian capital in 1806, and the conqueror sent to her, after the performance, a complimentary message, and a gratuity of three thousand francs ; but her lasting reputation is found- ed on her dramatic works, which are played in every theatre in Germany. The plots, which, I am told, are remarkable for fancy and invention, have been borrowed, without acknowledgment, both by French and English playwrights. I was quite charmed with one of her pieces which I saw at Munich, (Die Erden — the Heirs,) and with another which was represented at Frankfort. Johanna von Weissenthurn has also written poems and tales.
I have come to the end of my memoranda on this subject, and regret it much. I might easily give you more names, and quote second-hand the opinions I heard of the merits and characteristics of these authoresses ; but I speak of nothing but what I know, and not being able to form any judg- ment myself, I will give none. Only it appears to me that the Germans themselves assign to no female writer the same rank which here we proudly give to Joanna Baillie and Mrs. Hemans. I could hear of none who had ever exercised any thing like the moral influence possessed by Maria Edgeworth and Harriet Martineau, in their respective departments ,'
140 SKETCHES OF ART,
Dor could learn that any German woman had yet given public proof that the most feminine quali- ties were reconcilable with the highest scientific attainments — like Mrs. Marcet and Mrs. Somer- ville.
MEDON. You said the other night, that you had not formed any opinion as to the moral and social position of the women in Germany ; but you must have brought away some general impressions of manner and character ; — frankly, were they favor- able or unfavorable ?
ALDA. Frankly, they were most favorable. Re- member that I am not prepared with any general sweeping conclusions : I cannot assure you from my own knowledge, that among my own sex the proportion of virtue and happiness is greater in Germany than in England. On the contrary —
In every land
I saw, wherever light illumineth,
Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand The downward slope to death.
In every land I thought that, more or less, The stronger, sterner nature overbore
The softer, uncontroll'd by gentleness, And selfish evermore ! *
—Why do you smile ?
MEDON. You amuse me with the perseverance with which you ring the changes on your favorite text, in prose and in verse; and yet, to adopt
* Alfred Tennyson.
LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER. 141
Voltaire's witty metaphor, we are the hammers and wou the anvils all the world over. But is that all ? You need not have gone to Germany to verify that!
ALDA. No, sir ; it is not all. In the first place, you know I have a sufficient contempt for our English intolerance, with regard to manners —
MEDON. Why, yes ; with reason. The influence of mere manner among our fashionable people, and the stress laid upon it as a distinction, have become so vulgarized and abused, that I should be relieved even by a reaction which should throw us out of the insipidity of conventional manner into primeval rudeness.
ALDA. No, no, no ! — no extremes ; but though so sensible to the ridicule of referring the social habits, opinions, customs, of other nations, to the arbitrary standard of our own, still I could not help falling into comparisons ; certain distinctions between the German and the English women struck me involuntarily. In the highest circles a stranger finds society much alike everywhere. A court-ball — the soiree of an ambassadress — a min- ister's dinner — present nearly the same physiog- nomy. It is in the second class of society, which is also everywhere and in every sense the best, that we behold the stamp of national character. I was not condemned to see my German friends always en grande toilette; I had better opportu- nities of judging and appreciating their domestic oabits and manners than most travellers enjoy.
142 SKETCHES OF ART,
I thought the German women, of a certain rank, more natural than we are. The moral edur.ation of an English girl is, for the most part, negative ; the whole system of duty is thus presented to the mind. It is not " this you must do ; " but always, " you must not do this — you must not say that — you must not think so ; " and if by some hardy, expanding nature, the question be ventured, " Why ? " the mamma or the governess are ready with the answer, " It is not the custom — it is not lady-like — it is ridiculous ! " But is it wrong ? — why is it wrong ? — and then comes answer, pat — " My dear, you must not argue — young ladies never
argue." " But, mamma, I was thinking " " My
dear, you must not think — go write your Italian exercise," and so on ! The idea that certain pas- sions, powers, tempers, feelings, interwoven with our being by our almighty and all-wise Creator, are to be put down by the fiat of a governess, or the edict of fashion, is monstrous. Those who educate us imagine that they have done every thing, if they have silenced controversy, if they have suppressed all external demonstration of an excess of temper or feeling ; not knowing or not reflecting that unless our nature be self-governed and self-directed by an appeal to those higher faculties which link us immediately with what is divine, their labor is lost.
Now, in Germany the women are less educated to suit some particular fashion ; the cultivation of the intellect, and the forming of the manners, do
LITERATURE, AXD CHARACTER. 113
not so generally supersede the training of the moral sentiments, the affections, the impulses ; the latter are not so habitually crushed or disguised ; consequently the women appeared to me more natural, and to have more individual character.
MEDON. But the English women pique them- selves on being natural, at least they have the word continually in their mouths. Do you know that I once overheard a well-meaning mother in- structing her daughter how to be natural ? You laugh, but I assure you it is a simple fact. Now, I really do not object to natural insipidity, but I do object to conventional insipidity: I object to a rule of elegance which makes the negative the test of the natural. It seems hard that those who have hearts and souls must needs put them into a strait -waistcoat, in order to oblige those who choose to have none ; and be guilty of the gross- est affectation, to escape the imputation of being affected !
ALDA. I think there is less of this among the Germans; more of the individual character