Home Life of Great Authors Part 1

Home Life of Great Authors.

by Hattie Tyng Griswold.

PREFACE.

The author of these sketches desires to say that they were written, not for the special student of literary biography, who is already familiar with the facts here given, but rather for those busy people who have little time for reading, yet wish to know something of the private life and personal history of their favorite authors. The sketches are not intended to be critical, or to present anything like complete biographies. They are devoted chiefly to the home life of the various authors,--which, though an instructive and fascinating study, seems commonly neglected in popular biographies.

It should be added that a few of these sketches have already appeared in print, but they have been rewritten to adapt them to their present purpose.

H. T. G.

COLUMBUS, WIS., October, 1886.

Home Life of Great Authors.

GOETHE.

In an old, many-cornered, and gloomy house at Frankfort-on-the-Main, upon the 28th of August, 1749, was born the greatest German of his day, Wolfgang Goethe. The back of the house, from the second story, commanded a very pleasant prospect over an almost immeasurable extent of gardens stretching to the walls of the city, but the house itself was gloomy, being shut in by a high wall. Over these gardens beyond the walls and ramparts of the city, stretched a long plain, where the young Wolfgang, serious and thoughtful, was wont to wander and to learn his lessons. He had the sort of superst.i.tious dread which is usually the inheritance of children with a poetic nature, and suffered greatly in childhood from fear. He was obliged by his father, who was a stern and somewhat opinionated old man, to sleep alone, as a means of overcoming this fear; and if he tried to steal from his own bed to that of his brothers, he was frightened back by his father, who watched for him and chased him in some fantastic disguise. That this did not tend to quiet his nerves may well be imagined, and it was only through time and much suffering that he overcame his childish terrors. His mother was a gay, cheerful woman, much younger than his father, and as she was only eighteen years old when Wolfgang was born, always said that they were young together. She had married with little affection for her elderly husband, and it was in her favorite son that she found all the romance and beauty of her life.

She was a woman of strong character, and presents one of the pleasantest pictures in German literature. With a warm, genial nature, full of spirit and enthusiasm, she retained to the last days of her life an ardent interest in all the things which delighted her in youth. She read much, thought much, and observed much, for one in her sphere of life, and many great people who came to know her through her son learned to value her very highly for herself alone. She corresponded long with the d.u.c.h.ess Amalia, and her letters were much enjoyed at the Court of Weimar. Princes and poets delighted to honor her in later life, and her son was enthusiastic in his devotion to her till the last. She comforted him through his rather fanciful and fantastic childhood as much as she could without directly interfering with the discipline of the didactic father. Goethe and his mother were both taught by this father, who considered her almost as much of a child as the boy himself. She was kept busy with writing, playing the clavichord, and singing, as well as with the study of Italian, in which the father much delighted; and the boy had grammar, and the Latin cla.s.sics, and a geography in memory-verses. The boy soon got beyond his teacher, but without being well-grounded in anything, and learned, as such children are apt to do, much more from his own desultory reading than from any instruction which was given him. In the library were the beautiful Dutch editions of the Latin cla.s.sics and many works relating to Roman antiquities and jurisprudence. There were also the Italian poets, and many books of travel, and many dictionaries of various languages, and encyclopaedias of science and art. Through all these the boy searched for himself, and took what was suited to his taste, astonishing the slow father very much by his readiness, and soon becoming famous in the neighborhood for his acquirements. Of course he wrote poetry from the earliest age, and of course many people predicted his future greatness. Most of all, his mother believed in him, and watched him with adoring solicitude. His love for art showed itself very early, and he made friends with artists, and visited their studios frequently when a mere boy. His father had a fondness for pictures, and had some good views of Italian scenery and art in his own house; and it was probably from him that the boy derived his earliest liking for such things. His pa.s.sion for the theatre also made itself known at the earliest age, and gave him his most intense youthful pleasures.

His taste for natural science was also very strong in early childhood, and he a.n.a.lyzed flowers, to see how the leaves were inserted into the calyx, and plucked birds to see how the feathers were inserted in the wings, when a mere infant, as it appeared to his mother. Indeed, all the strong tastes of the man showed themselves in a decided manner in this precocious child, and his hap-hazard training allowed his genius to develop along its own natural lines in a healthy manner.

He even exhibited at a very youthful period his fatal facility for falling in love, and naturally enough, with a girl older than himself, named Gretchen. He was cured of his first pa.s.sion only by finding out that the girl regarded him as a child, which filled him with great indignation. He says:--

"My judgment was convinced, and I thought I must cast her away; but her image!--her image gave me the lie as often as it again hovered before me, which indeed happened often enough.

"Nevertheless, this arrow with its barbed hooks was torn out of my heart; and the question then was, how the inward sanative power of youth could be brought to one's aid. I really put on the man; and the first thing instantly laid aside was the weeping and raving, which I now regarded as childish in the highest degree. A great stride for the better! For I had often, half the night through, given myself up to this grief with the greatest violence; so that at last, from my tears and sobbing, I came to such a point that I could scarcely swallow any longer; eating and drinking become painful to me; and my chest, which was so nearly concerned, seemed to suffer. The vexation I had constantly felt since the discovery made me banish every weakness.

"It seemed to me something frightful that I had sacrificed sleep, repose, and health for the sake of a girl who was pleased to consider me a babe, and to imagine herself, with respect to me, something very like a nurse."

Poor Goethe! but many a man since has fallen in love with a woman older than himself, and has afterward felt himself fortunate if he has been treated as Goethe was. The real unfortunates are the ones who have been for some reason encouraged in their pa.s.sion, and married by these mature women while mere boys. Taking into consideration the welfare of both parties, there is scarcely a more unfortunate occurrence in life than such a marriage. Soon after this first love episode Goethe went up to Leipsic to enter the University. He was sixteen years old, well-favored by nature, even handsome, and full of sensibility and enthusiasm. But he appeared to the inhabitants of Leipsic like a being from another world, on account of the grotesqueness of his costume. His father, who was of an economical turn of mind, always bought his own cloth, and had his servants make the clothing for the family. He usually bought good but old-fashioned materials, and tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs from some forgotten epoch in the world's history. These tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, of the Paleozoic period or some still remoter date, together with the unprofessional and antiquated cut of the garments, made up such a grotesque appearance that Goethe was received with undisguised mirth wherever he went in Leipsic, until he discovered what was the matter with his dress. He had not been noticed at home on this account, and he thought himself very well dressed when he first arrived in the city; but his chagrin and mortification knew no bounds when he discovered how he had been laughed at. It was not until he had visited the theatre and seen a favorite actor throw the audience into convulsions of laughter by appearing in a costume almost identical with his own, that he begun to suspect that he was ill-dressed. He went out and sacrificed his entire wardrobe, in the first tumult of his feelings, remorselessly leaving no vestige of it remaining, and supplying himself with a complete new outfit, not so ample as the old but much more satisfactory. In this act also he will find many sympathizers. Few things are recalled with more acute mortification than the outfit in which people leave their early homes, if they are in the country, and make their first visit to the city. Hundreds of men groan in spirit as they bring up before themselves the appearance they presented upon that momentous day. Comparatively few are able to do as Goethe did, and get rid of the whole vile accoutrement at one stroke. The majority are obliged, suffer as they may, to wear the obnoxious garments long after they have discovered their true character. When Goethe had clothed himself anew he was received with more favor at his boarding-house, and proceeded immediately to fall in love with the landlady's daughter. The thought of Gretchen was buried away out of sight, and the thought of Annette filled his whole heart. This Annette was young, handsome, sprightly, loving, and agreeable, and he saw her daily in the most unrestrained manner.

He says of her:--

"But since such connections, the more innocent they are, afford the less variety in the long run, I was seized with that wicked distemper which seduces us to derive amus.e.m.e.nt from the torment of a beloved one, and to domineer over a girl's devotedness with wanton and tyrannical caprice. By unfounded and absurd fits of jealousy I destroyed our most delightful days, both for myself and her. She endured it for a time with incredible patience, which I was cruel enough to try to its utmost. But to my shame and despair, I was at last forced to remark that her heart was alienated from me, and that I might now have good ground for the madness in which I had indulged without necessity and without cause. There were terrible scenes between us, in which I gained nothing; and I then first felt that I had truly loved her, and could not bear to lose her. My pa.s.sion grew and a.s.sumed all the forms of which it is capable under the circ.u.mstances; nay, I at last took up the _role_ which the girl had hitherto played. I sought everything possible in order to be agreeable to her, even to procure her pleasure by means of others; for I could not renounce the hope of winning her again.

But it was too late. I had lost her really; and the frenzy with which I revenged my fault upon myself, by a.s.saulting in various frantic ways my physical nature, in order to inflict some hurt on my moral nature, contributed very much to the bodily maladies under which I lost some of the best years of my life: indeed, I should perchance have been completely ruined by this loss, had not my poetic talent here shown itself particularly helpful with its healing power."

His next adventure was with the daughters of his dancing-master, both of whom seemed inclined to draw unwarranted conclusions from the freedom of his intercourse with them. The closing scene of this little drama must be given in Goethe's own words:--

"Emilia was silent, and had sat down by her sister, who became constantly more and more excited in her discourse, and let certain private matters slip out which it was not exactly proper for me to know. Emilia, on the other hand, who was trying to pacify her sister, made me a sign from behind to withdraw; but as jealousy and suspicion see with a thousand eyes, Lucinda seemed to have noticed this also. She sprang up and advanced to me, but not with vehemence. She stood before me and seemed to be thinking of something. Then she said, 'I know that I have lost you; I make no further pretensions to you. But neither shall you have him, sister.' So saying, she took a thorough hold of my head, thrusting both her hands into my locks and pressing my face to hers, and kissed me repeatedly on the mouth. 'Now,' cried she, 'fear my curse! Woe upon woe, for ever and ever, to her who kisses these lips for the first time after me! Dare to have anything more to do with him! I know Heaven hears me this time. And you, sir, hasten now, hasten away as fast as you can.' I flew down the stairs, with a firm determination never again to enter the house."

This conclusion, though doubtless very trying to an ardent young man who enjoyed the adoration of women, seems to have been an eminently wise one under the circ.u.mstances, and we believe the resolve was faithfully kept.

The dramatic Lucinda appears no more in his reminiscences.

Quite different was the next occupant of his heart. Frederika was the daughter of a country clergyman whom Goethe was taken to visit by his friend Weyland. The hospitality and agreeableness of the family had been highly praised by this friend, also the beauty and charms of the daughters. And indeed this Frederika does seem to have been a most beautiful and charming girl. Goethe constantly compares the family to that of the Vicar of Wakefield, and the daughters to Olivia and Sophia.

The affection which Goethe conceived for this beautiful and innocent maiden was one of the strongest and most enduring of his life, and even on into old age he was fond of talking of her and their youthful romance. Why he ever left Frederika at all has never been made clear, for it is plain that at last he truly loved,--the other pa.s.sions being mere boyish episodes, soon forgotten, while this one exerted a lasting influence upon his life. He writes:--

"Frederika's answer to my farewell letter rent my heart. It was the same hand, the same tone of thought, the same feeling, which had formed itself for me and by me. I now for the first time felt the loss which she suffered, and saw no means to supply it, or even to alleviate it. She was completely present to me; I always felt that she was wanting to me; and what was worst of all, I could not forgive myself for my own misfortune. Gretchen had been taken away from me, Annette had left me; now for the first time I was guilty.

I had wounded the most lovely heart to its very depths; and the period of a gloomy repentance, with the absence of a refreshing love to which I had grown accustomed, was most agonizing, nay, insupportable."

Even after eight years he revisits Frederika, with much of the old feeling still alive, although he had in the mean time had at least two new loves. One of these was the Charlotte immortalized in "Werther." She was already engaged when he made her acquaintance, but this did not preclude the possibility of his devoting himself a.s.siduously to her, and her betrothed seems to have laid no obstacles in the way. She was married in due time, and read "Werther" after its publication, not seeming to object to the part she is there made to play. She retained her friendship for Goethe throughout life; and to her husband the poet wrote many, many years after: "G.o.d bless you, dear Kustner, and tell Lottie that I often believe I can forget her, but then I have a relapse, and it is worse with me than ever."

Immediately following his infatuation with Lottie came the connection with Lili, which reconciled him to Lottie's marriage. It was of Lottie that he said, in the language of "The New Helose," "And sitting at the feet of his beloved, he will break hemp; and he will wish to break hemp to-day, to-morrow, and the day after,--nay, for his whole life." Whether he would have been as willing to break hemp with Lili we are not told; but he wrote a great deal of poetry addressed to her,--more perhaps than to any of his other loves,--much of which he reproduces in the "Autobiography."

"Heart, my heart, oh, what hath changed thee?

What doth weigh on thee so sore?

What hath thus from me estranged thee, That I know thee now no more?

Gone is all which once seemed dearest, Gone the care which once was nearest, Gone thy toils and tranquil bliss!

Ah! how could'st thou come to this?

"Does that bloom, so fresh and youthful, That divine and lovely form, That sweet look, so good and truthful, Bind thee with unbounded charm?

If I swear no more to see her, If I man myself to flee her, Soon I find my efforts vain, Back to her I'm led again."

But even this love affair, which went as far as a betrothal, came to nothing,--Goethe drawing back at the last through a pretended or real fear that he could not support the lady in the style she had been accustomed to; though it is more reasonable to believe that his usual repugnance to marriage overcame all the fervor of his love, and made him feel a real relief when the whole affair was over. This was just previous to his removal to Weimar at the invitation of Carl August, and it was there that the remainder of his life-drama was enacted.

Soon after his arrival there he made the acquaintance of the Frau Von Stein. She was the wife of the Master of Horse at Weimar, and Goethe, who had now pa.s.sed thirty years of age, for the first time loved a mature woman. She was the mother of seven children and was thirty-three years old. With moral deficiencies which were securely covered up, she was a thoroughly charming woman, and retained her charm even to old age.

She was said to have remarked when asked if she would be presented to Goethe, "With all my heart. I have heard as much about him as I ever did about Heaven, and I feel a deal more curiosity about him." She completely ensnared his heart, and held it in undisputed sway for more than ten years; which, considering his proverbial inconstancy, speaks very highly for her charms.

The connection was well known and perfectly understood at Weimar, and appears to have caused no scandal. The love on Goethe's part seemed to have begun even before seeing her; as it is recorded that at Pyrmont he first saw her portrait, and was three nights sleepless in consequence.

And when he came to see her, instead of a raw girl such as he had hitherto fancied, he found an elegant woman of the world, whose culture and experience had a singular fascination for him, tired as he was of immaturity and overfondness. She sang well, played well, sketched well, talked well, and showed her appreciation of the poet, not like a gushing girl, but with the delicate tact of a woman of the world. Some years after her first acquaintance with Goethe, Schiller thus writes to his friend Korner:--

"She is really a genuinely interesting person, and I quite understand what has attached Goethe to her. Beautiful she can never have been, but her countenance has a soft earnestness and a quite peculiar openness. A healthy understanding, truth, and feeling lie in her nature. She has more than a thousand letters from Goethe, and from Italy he writes her every week. They say the connection is perfectly pure and blameless."

Even before he went away from Weimar at all, the letters were incessant, often trivial, and sometimes made up of homely details of eating and drinking, but loving always. The reader who remembers Charlotte cutting bread and b.u.t.ter will not be shocked at the poet eloquently begging his true love to send him a sausage. All the years of his life in the Gartenhaus are intimately a.s.sociated with her. The whole spot speaks of her. She was doubtless the grand pa.s.sion of his life. But even this wore itself out, and after his absence in Italy he never seemed to feel the full ardor of his former love. He returned to Weimar still grateful to her for the happiness she had given, still feeling for her a sincere affection, but retaining little of the pa.s.sion which for ten years she had inspired. The feeling seemed to have died a natural death. It is not recorded that she had ever really shared his fervor, but she greatly resented his defection, and considered him ungrateful and disloyal to the end.

It was about this time that he first made the acquaintance of Christine Vulpius, who afterwards became his wife. She was the daughter of one of those men whose drunkenness slowly but surely brings a whole family to want. She was at this time very young. He thought her beautiful, and, although uneducated, she had a quick wit, a lively spirit, a loving heart, and great apt.i.tude for domestic duties. She had no social position, and is often spoken of as his servant. Although never really occupying that position, her standing was not much above that plane. She fascinated Goethe as so many young faces had done before, and it seemed to be a thraldom of the mind as well as of the senses. There are few poems in any language which approach the pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude of those in which he recalls the happiness she gave him.

George Henry Lewes in his life of the poet has this pa.s.sage, which will be read with peculiar interest, considering his own relations with the highest genius of her day, George Eliot. He says:--

"Why did he not marry her at once? His dread of marriage has already been shown; and to this abstract dread must be added the great disparity of station,--a disparity so great that it not only made the liaison scandalous, but made Christine herself reject the offer of marriage. There are persons now living who have heard her declare that it was her own fault that the marriage was so long delayed. And certain it is that when she bore him a child, he took her, with her mother and sister, to live in his house, and always regarded the connection as marriage. But, however he may have regarded it, public opinion has not forgiven this defiance of its social laws. The world blamed him loudly; even his admirers cannot think of the connection without pain. But let us be just. While no one can refrain from deploring that Goethe, so eminently needing a pure domestic life, should not have found a wife whom he could avow, no one who knows the circ.u.mstances can refrain from confessing that there is also a bright light to this dark episode."

He goes on to say:--

"The judgments of men are curious. No action in Goethe's life has excited more scandal than his final marriage with Christine. It is thought disgraceful enough for him to have taken her into his home, but for the great poet to actually complete such an enormity as to crown his connection with her by marriage was, indeed, more than society could tolerate. I have already expressed my opinion of this unfortunate connection, but I most emphatically declare my belief that the redeeming point in it is precisely this which caused the scandal. Better far had there been no connection at all; but if it was to be, the nearer it approached real marriage, and the further it was removed from a fugitive indulgence, the more moral and healthy it became."

He was in his fifty-eighth year when he married her. She had changed much in the pa.s.sing years. From the bright, lively, pleasure-loving girl, she had grown into a coa.r.s.e and almost repulsive woman. Her father, as we know, had ruined himself by intemperance, her brother also, and she herself had not escaped the fatal appet.i.te. She was not restrained by the checks which refined society imposes, for in Weimar she had no society, and as the years went by she became openly and shamelessly given over to intemperance. This tragedy in Goethe's life would have been little suspected by those who saw how calmly he bore himself in public. The mere mention of the fact, however, tells its own tale of humiliation and woe. It is often asked why Goethe did not part from her at once. In answer we might ask, Why do not all the n.o.ble and right-principled women who wear out wretched lives as drunkards' wives part at once from their debauched husbands? The answer would no doubt be similar in the two cases. He was too weak to alter his position, he was strong enough to bear it. And he did bear it to the bitter end. And when that end came he mourned for her with sincere affection. Says Lewes:--

"She who had for twenty-eight years loved and aided him; who, whatever her faults, had been to him what no other woman had been, could not be taken from him without his feeling her loss. His self-mastery was utterly shaken. He knelt by her bedside, taking her cold hands in his, and exclaiming, 'Thou wilt not forsake me, thou must not forsake me,' and sobbing aloud. He had been to her the most tender of devoted husbands throughout all those weary years."

Many accounts of her vulgarity and repulsiveness have been circulated; but in making up our estimate of her, the fact that she held Goethe in loyal bonds for eight and twenty years must not be pa.s.sed over lightly.

Fickle as he was in youth, and admiring as he did brilliant women in his manhood, Christine Vulpius must have had charms, and not of a light order, to have held him thus her willing slave. No mere fat and vulgar Frau without mind or sensibility could have done this. It is not in the nature of things. We often see men of brilliant minds in our own day choosing to marry women who are not intellectual or cultured,--women who have only beauty, or style and social elegance; but they are women who have some charm, and if the charm remains, the attraction holds indefinitely. But sad indeed is the case of the man of mind who has married a mere doll, and who, when youth has flown, finds he has a wife who is not capable of being companion or friend to him. Many a man holds himself steadfast to duty under these circ.u.mstances through a long life, but if the woman whom his maturity would have chosen--the sweet, companionable woman, with a mind that can sympathize with and appreciate his own--chances to dawn upon him, too late, there is apt to be a struggle which is long and hard.

Indeed, it is never the part of wisdom for the intellectual man or woman to marry one who is consciously an inferior. He or she who does this makes a high bid for an unhappy life. As regards Christine Vulpius, it is certain that, although not an intellectual woman, she was not without some taste for pursuits in consonance with those of Goethe. It was for her that he wrote the "Metamorphoses of Plants," and in her company he pursued his optical and botanical researches. Had she shown no comprehension of these things, a.s.suredly Goethe would never have persisted in instructing her in them. It was for her, too, that he wrote the "Roman Elegies," which shows that he did not esteem her a mere drudge.