VI YOUNG GERMANY (continued 2)

"We will sorrow for him whom we have lost, and for those who have not lost him. For he did not live for all. But the time is coming when he will be born for all, and then all will mourn for him. He stands with a patient smile at the gates of the twentieth century, waiting till his lagging people overtake him. Then he will lead the tired and the famishing into his city of love."

And there is clever character-drawing in such lines as the following:—

"In countries the towns only are counted; in towns, only the towers, the temples, and the palaces; in houses, their masters; in nations, parties; and in parties, their leaders.... By narrow, overgrown paths Jean Paul sought out the neglected village. In the nation he counted the human beings, in towns the house-roofs, and under every roof each heart."

It was possibly Jean Paul's political attitude which first brought Börne under his spell. Jean Paul early took his place in German literature as the inheritor of Herder's cosmopolitan sentiments and doctrines. Herder had persistently exalted love of humanity, at the expense of patriotism and national antipathy. Jean Paul continued to proclaim the common brotherhood of man. All his writings were, moreover, pervaded by a general spirit of political liberalism, resembling that formulated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which had electrified him; and he treats of sovereigns, courts, and the great world generally, in a tone of sustained irony. At times he regards as close at hand a coming golden age, in which it will no longer be possible for nations, but only for individuals, to sin, and from which the spectre of war shall have disappeared; at other times he relegates it to a very far off future; but the rapidity of what was and is called historic progress induced both him and his disciple to imagine that universal brotherhood was not very distant.

It was, however, not only his grand conception of the future that made Jean Paul so attractive to Börne, but also the idyllic and satiric qualities of his talent. Börne adopted some of his comical names of places (Kuhschnappel Flachsenfingen), and as a young man imitated his humorous style. Many of the short tales and sketches contributed to periodical literature—the comic Esskünstler am Hoteltisch, Allerhochstdieselben, Hof- und Commerzienräthe, Die Thurn und Taxissche Post (the postal system of the day), &c. &c.—are in Jean Paul's manner, though Börne keeps closer to reality both in his facts and his local colouring than Jean Paul does. Börne attacks State, Church, executive, manners, and customs in Jean Pauls farcical fashion; but he has not his predecessor's stores of observation to fall back on, and does not approach him in variety of knowledge.

By way of compensation, his style is in many ways superior to Jean Paul's.

Börne, who was not gifted with any profound artistic feeling, or delicate appreciation of style, admired the inartistic in Jean Paul as being unartificial. He did not feel that the profusion of imagery was collected from here, there, and everywhere, and was seldom the natural outgrowth of the subject it adorned. That Oriental wealth of simile, that flowery luxuriance of language, pleased his taste as being poetical; and the want of harmony in the periods, the heavy ballast of the innumerable parenthetic clauses, were to his ear only evidences of the naturalness of the style. To him, too, Goethe's plastic art was only coldness, while the impersonal style of Goethe's old age was a horror. When he read Jean Paul's works, the living, restless ego in them came forth to meet his own warm-hearted, passionate ego.

He unconsciously remoulded Jean Paul's style on the lines of his own individuality, that individuality which discloses itself in his earliest letters, and whose distinguishing traits were modified or developed, but never altered. There were no wildernesses, no primeval forests in his mind, as there were in Jean Paul's. He did not think of ten things at a time, all inextricably entwined. No; in his case both fancy and reasoning-power were clear, and concise in expression. His acquaintance with Johannes von Müller's works early produced a propensity for pithy, Tacitus-like brevity. From the first there was a half French, half Jewish tendency to antitheses and contrast in his style. He loved symmetry of thought and symmetry of language; his spiritual tempo was quick; as a writer he was short-winded. Hence short, sharp, strong sentences following each other at a gallop; no rounded periods. Metaphors abound; yet they are not so numerous as to jostle each other out of place, and all are apt and suggestive; he did not ransack note-books for them, like Jean Paul; they presented themselves in modest abundance. He employed similes freely; but in his clear-headed fashion he arranged them almost algebraically in his sentences, so that they produce the effect rather of equations than of scattered flowers.

By degrees his decidedly marked individuality took shape in a decidedly individual humorous style. Jean Paul's humour spreads itself throughout lengthy and discursive investigations, narratives, romances; not so Börne's. He was never able to produce a political, poetical, critical, or historical work of any length; he could not write books, only pages. His was an essentially journalistic talent.[6] And this determines the character of his humour.

Playful humour was his, but also that sarcastic wit which stings like a lash, and yet thrills and touches by an indirect appeal to the feelings; his that bitterness of complaint and accusation which assumes the conciliatory form of an attempt to comfort; and that melancholy, which with a smile and a whimsical conceit rises above time and place. But something similar to this might be said of other great humorists. What distinguishes Börne (from Sterne, Jean Paul, and others) is, in the first place, the strength, the violence of the reaction produced in him by all the occurrences of the day which came within the bounds of his horizon. A comparatively trifling incident in real, and especially in public, life is sufficient to set all the chords of his being in vibration. The second peculiarity is that all occurrences directly act upon one and the same point in his spiritual life, that passion for liberty which was born of the keenest sense of justice. One of his critics, Steinthal, explains in a masterly manner the connection between this fact and the fact of his inability to produce a great work. He never thought systematically, never combined with each other all the many things that one after the other occupied and affected his mind, but looked on each separately in its relation to the centre point of his being.[7] His humour brought the miserable reality into juxtaposition with the ideal demand of his intellect; but he gave no picture of the different elements of reality, he merely focussed them.

Given such a state of matters, it is easy to understand how inevitable it was, not only that Börne should place Schiller high above Goethe, but also that he should consider Jean Paul to be greatly Schiller's superior. And it is highly characteristic that what he objects to in Schiller is not his purely poetical shortcomings, but his want of moral idealism. We are accustomed to think of Schiller as unassailable on this point, but to Börne's ruthless severity of moral requirement he is not so. Börne's pronouncement on the character of Wilhelm Tell is especially enlightening. To him Tell is nothing but a Philistine— a good citizen, father, and husband, but a man the essence of whose character is submissiveness. He did not appear at the Rüth, that meeting-place of the elect, to take the oath; he had not the courage to be a conspirator. His words:

"Der Starke ist am mächtigsten allein"-- (The strong man is strongest alone)

are to Börne the philosophy of weakness; a man who has only the strength necessary to get the better of himself, is strongest alone, but he that has strength to spare after gaining the mastery over himself, will rule others also. The critic reviews Tell's actions one by one. Tell does not uncover to the hat on the pole, but his is not the noble defiance of the lover of liberty; it is only Philistine pride, a mixture of a sense of honour with fear; he passes the pole with his eyes cast down, that he may be able to say he has not seen it. And when Gessler calls him to account, he is humble—so humble that we are ashamed of him; he says the omission was accidental, and shall not occur again.

The famous apple incident arouses no admiration in Börne. A father may dare everything for his child's life, but he has no right to hazard that life. Why did Tell not shoot the tyrant at once instead of beseeching like a woman with his reiterated "Lieber Herr! lieber Herr!"? He deserved to have his ears boxed. And when the governor, in the storm on the lake, trusted himself to him, as enemy trusts enemy, was it not treachery and a knavish trick on Tell's part to leap on shore, push the boat out into the lake and leave him to the mercy of the storm? Börne finds strong cause of offence in the speech:

"Ich aber sprach: Ja, Herr mit Gottes Hilfe Getrau ich mir's, und helf uns wohl hindannen. So ward ich meiner Bande los und stand Am Steuerruder und fuhr redlich hin."[8]

"How," exclaims the critic, "are we to explain such Jesuitry in the simple-minded man? It is inconceivable to me, too, that any one can consider Tell's next action moral, much less beautiful—he lies in safe ambush, and kills his enemy, who has no idea that he is in danger."

No one can be surprised that a man in whose spiritual organism the sense of justice was so sharply, so intensely developed that it almost took the place of the æsthetic sense, should be wanting in the organ of appreciation for Goethe, whose craving for justice was undoubtedly less developed.

In 1802, after one or two years' residence with a professor at Giessen, young Börne was sent to Berlin, his father being obliged to give in to his desire to study, although on account of his religion this could only lead to his becoming a doctor, a profession for which as yet he showed no turn whatever. He boarded in the house of the famous physician and Kantian, Marcus Herz, whose public lectures on philosophy had drawn such crowded and influential audiences, that the appointment of Professor of Philosophy was conferred on him before any University of Berlin existed. Herz was an eminent physician, a clear thinker, and a good orator; a friend of Lessing, whose poetry he valued as highly as his critical writings. Hence the mysticism of the Romantic school, more especially Hardenberg's, was to him both meaningless and obnoxious. As he died in 1803, his influence on young Börne's development was inconsiderable. All the more powerful was the impression made on the youth by Herz's famous wife, Henriette, née Lemos. She was seventeen years younger than her husband, to whom she was betrothed, without her consent being asked, at the age of twelve. Remarkably beautiful, mistress of many languages, admired by numbers of the most eminent scientific men and authors of the day, she made her house one of the most frequented, most talked of, most looked up to in Berlin. She was thirty-eight, Börne sixteen, but this naturally did not prevent the young man from at once falling violently, though hopelessly, in love with the most beautiful, most distinguished woman it had been his lot to meet.

The charming Henriette presented in outward appearance, as well as in character, a marked contrast to her little, clever, ugly husband; she was a faultless beauty, tall and stately as Queen Louise, with the small head we see on Greek statues. She went by the name of the Tragic Muse or the Beautiful Circassian. She was worshipped by Wilhelm von Humboldt, by Mirabeau, by Schleiermacher, and after her husband's death she was surrounded by a bevy of men of position, who all wooed the fair widow in vain. She refused all offers, in spite of her poverty rejected even the hand of the richest noblemen in Germany, and took the place of governess to the future Empress of Russia. She was as severely virtuous as she was intoxicatingly beautiful. She was on terms of intimacy with more than one man, but always within the strict bounds of friendship.

In her circle a line was drawn between the admissible coquetry which aims at enthralling the whole man, and the inadmissible, which only aims at enthralling his senses. She herself belonged to the dangerous class of virtuous flirts. Of a passionless temperament and much addicted to sentimental moralising, she founded in her younger days a "Tugendbund" (league of virtue), in which Wilhelm von Humboldt played the principal part, and of which old and young, known and unknown men, were members. They called each other Thou, wrote long letters to each other in foreign languages or in Greek or Hebrew characters, exchanged rings or silhouettes, aimed at each other's "moral development," desired "to attain happiness by self-devotion" (unencumbered by duties, for self-devotion knows no duties), and ignored the rules and regulations of conventional propriety—but in all chastity and honour. Rahel laughed at them, and would have nothing to do with the league.

The letters the members of the league exchanged bear a strong resemblance to those which passed a little later in Denmark between Kamma Rahbek and Molbech. They were absorbed in their own feelings, but in constant self-examination, thereby naturally depriving their feelings of all freshness. Friends of different sexes explained to each other in interminable letters, with written tears, how they mutually supplemented and developed one another. They tore themselves up into lint, and contemplated themselves in this unravelled condition; they did not collect themselves for each other's benefit, but spun themselves out. They put their inner man under pressure till the result was a liquid—tears, heart's blood, or such like—and this they poured into the bosom of a like-minded friend, without themselves becoming in any way more remarkable or original under this treatment.

The beautiful and noble Henriette Herz herself was less an original personality than what the Germans call an "Anempfinderin." From the remarkable men with whom she came in contact, she seldom assimilated more than what she picked up from a surface knowledge of their ways and doings. What brought her particularly into notice was the tender friendship existing between her and Schleiermacher. It was much talked about in Berlin, but with no insinuation of evil. The contrast was too striking between the "Tragic Muse" and little Schleiermacher, whose distinguished head was set upon a fragile, slightly deformed body. People smiled good-naturedly when they saw the little pastor coming out of Henriettas house in the evening with a lantern fastened to the button of his coat, or when they met him in the daytime hanging on the arm of his majestic Melpomene. A caricature appeared, in which she was represented carrying him—the jewel, as he was called—in her hand, like a parasol.[9]

Even if young Börne had been the fresh, red-cheeked youth he was not, he would hardly have made much impression on his proud, spoiled foster-mother. At first she did not even understand what was the matter with the young man, whose passion—described in his own memoranda was a real school-boy worship, of the kind produced at his age by half-conscious instinct and exaggerated ideas of the perfection of woman. One or two attempts which he made, through the medium of the servant, to procure arsenic from an apothecary's, opened Henriette Herz's eyes to the position, and she did her best, by an admixture of kindness with strictness, to bring him to reason.[10] That she was not quite insensible to his adoration, or quite innocent of a certain amount of coquetry, which masqueraded in this case as motherliness, is shown by the following little incident. Börne had taken her to be between twenty-eight and thirty, but at the dinner-table, on the 3rd of December 1802, she told him that she was thirty-four. In the evening she added two to this figure, but she never acknowledged more than the thirty-six, and on the 5th of March 1803, Börne still supposes this to be her age. So the charming "Frau Mutter," as she allowed him to call her, made herself two years younger than she was. Naturally he continued to love, to admire, to despair, to suffer the pangs of hell because of her indifference, and to feel the bliss of heaven when she smiled at him or said a friendly word; also to be so suspicious, bitter, unreasonable, and capricious that at last it became necessary to send him away.

He went to Halle to continue his studies there. As he was leaving he handed her the diary of his emotions—she had, it seems, advised him to pour forth his sorrows on paper—and a number of passionate letters addressed to herself. He continued to write to her from Halle with unchangeable devotion and passionate longing, but in absence he soon so far recovers himself as no longer to be entirely absorbed in the sifting of his own feelings; we presently have calm and entertaining criticism of his surroundings, and a certain dignified self-esteem, combined with self-criticism. In these letters we already notice the characteristic combination of enthusiasm for ideas, indignant denunciation of slavishness, and sharp satire. They give us an understanding of Börne's real nature—a temperament to which licentiousness presents as little temptation as does drink, a soul that suffers under weakness of body, suffers from the inward conflict that ensues where there is courage without power, love that meets no return, undefined longing to do great deeds without any definite aim. Here and there we come upon a threat of what, when once his powers are matured, awaits the Philistine crowd that now smile at him—upon a wrathful presentiment of future humiliations, and fiery projects of revenge on those who, as he already knows, will shamelessly revile him because of his birth, and torture him by calling his reserve cowardice.[11] It is plain that one result of young Börne's stay in Berlin has been the maturing of his emotional life, and also that his intellectual powers have been stimulated by his being brought into contact, in Marcus and Henriette Herz's house, with the most eminent men of the day.

Börne was studying at Halle when the battle of Jena was fought. Shortly afterwards that university was suppressed by Napoleon, and he went to pursue his studies at Heidelberg, full of patriotic rancour against the French, to which he gave vent in a pamphlet which the censor refused to pass. Whilst one result of Napoleon's triumphal progress was the expulsion of the students from Halle, another was a complete revolution in the political conditions of Börne's native town. In 1806 Dalberg, as "Prince-Primas" of the newly formed Rhenish Confederation, took possession of Frankfort-on-Main. One of his first acts was to improve the position of the Jews, and in 1810 Napoleon issued an ordinance removing all burdens resting upon them and upon serfs. In 1811 the Jewish community in Frankfort received the full rights of citizens, in consideration of a sum of 440,000 guldens, which was paid up by the following year. The first result of all this, as far as Börne was concerned, was that he gave up the study of medicine, which he had taken to unwillingly, and only because he was debarred from every other, and entered on that of political economy and jurisprudence, as opening the way to a government appointment. In 1818 he took the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

His father, who had been extremely dissatisfied with his want of application as a student, and with being constantly called on to pay small debts, and who was now no less dissatisfied with him for throwing up the study of medicine, insisted that he should begin to support himself, and procured for him a small post in the Frankfort police establishment, an appointment which contrasts comically with the position which he afterwards took as an author.

He was appointed "Aktuarius," sat in the old, dark Römer building, examined passports and journeymen's certificates, entered minutes, and on state occasions, dressed in uniform and wearing a sword, represented local authority.

But he had also by this time made his début as a writer. He contributed to a Frankfort daily paper articles crammed with primeval German rhetoric, defying the mighty Corsican with a patriotic enthusiasm which he at times allows to run away with common sense. They are appeals to the youth of Germany, and passionate expressions of blind, loyal faith in the rulers of Germany.[12] He is absolutely hopeful of the result of "the war of liberation."

He had no foreboding that he himself would be one of the first victims of victory. Hardly had the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the King of Prussia entered Frankfort, when the seven years' rule of Prince Dalberg came to an end. The Grand Duchy of Frankfort was blotted from the list of States, and the old constitution came into force again. The citizenship which the Jews had acquired at such a high price was simply taken from them again, of course without the return of the money. "It was," writes Karl Gutzkow, "as if the couriers who rushed back and forwards between Vienna, where the Peace Congress was sitting, and the other German towns where reactionary congresses were being held, tore furrows in the blood-manured soil of Germany, in which the ruling powers dared to sow the seed of the old prejudices and privileges."

The fall of the French power deprived Börne of his appointment, and his brothers in misfortune of their rights as men; he was impersonal enough in his way of looking at things to consider the foreign rule a disgrace from first to last.

It is not surprising that Goethe's indifference to this, as to other results of the great reaction, strengthened Börne's hatred for a personality that appeared great upon no side accessible to him. In his notice of Bettina's book, Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde ("Goethe's Correspondence with a Child")—perhaps the most misleading criticism he ever wrote—Börne says: "What made Goethe, that greatest of poets, the smallest of men? What entwined hops and parsley in his wreath of laurel? What set a night-cap on his lofty brow? What made him a slave of circumstances, a cowardly Philistine, a mere provincial? He was a Protestant, and his family belonged to the ruling class in Frankfort, from among whom its senators were chosen. At the age of sixty, at the zenith of his fame, with the incense-clouds under his feet separating and sheltering him from the base passions of the valley-dweller, it angered him to hear that the Frankfort Jews demanded the rights of citizens, and he foamed with rage at the 'humanitarian twaddlers' who championed their cause."

It was his relations with the great ones of the earth that Börne could least of all forgive Goethe.

He overlooked the fact that the generation that lay between him and Goethe meant a complete change in the position of the author towards men of rank and the public generally. In Germany in the eighteenth century authors did not live on their works, but on their dedications. Poets were obliged to seek the favour of a high-born patron, to educate young noblemen, or accompany young princes on their educational tours. Wieland accepted money in return for his dedications; Schiller gladly accepted the assistance which the Duke of Augustenburg procured for him from Denmark. In the end of the eighteenth century, kings, princes, and the aristocracy generally, took a true and keen interest in philosophy and poetry, in all the new truth and beauty; they sought the acquaintance of authors, and associated with them as with their equals. With the French Revolution these admirable relations came to an end, but Goethe's position dated from before the Revolution.

Börne blinded himself with gazing at disconnected expressions of Goethe's veneration for rank. Somewhere or other he copies this passage from Goethe's diary: "I afterwards had the unexpected happiness of being permitted to pay my homage to their Imperial Highnesses the Grand Duke Nicholas and his consort, in my own house and garden. The Grand Duchess graciously allowed me to write some lines of poetry in her elegantly splendid album." Börne adds: "This he wrote in his seventy-first year. What youthful power!" The older Börne grew, and the more he developed, by his own conscious volition, into a simple incarnation of political conviction, into a being of whose feelings, talents, and wit political conviction had taken possession, to whom it had become a religion, with all the outward expressions of religion, faith, worship, fanaticism—the more unworthy and contemptible did Goethe's rôle of spectator of the political struggles of the day appear to him. Elsewhere he writes: "I have finished Goethe's journal. No drier or more lifeless soul exists in the wide world, and nothing can be more comical than the simplicity with which he lays bare his own callousness.... And these are the consuls chosen by the German people—Goethe, who, more timid than a mouse, burrows in the ground, and gladly dispenses with light, air, liberty, everything, so long as he is left in peace in his hole gnawing at his stolen bacon; and Schiller, more noble, but equally faint-hearted, who seeks refuge from tyranny above the clouds, where he vainly cries to the gods for aid, and, dazzled by the sun, loses sight of the earth, and forgets the human beings whom he intended to help. And meanwhile the unhappy country, without leaders, without guardians, without advisers, without protectors, falls a prey to its kings, and the nation becomes a byeword among nations."

From the summer of 1818 onwards, Börne, who till then had only published an occasional pamphlet, appears as an independent journalist, publisher of the Die Wage ("The Balance"), most of the articles in which he wrote himself. He was the first German journalist in the grand style, and first to make the periodical press of Germany a power. The possessors of the now rare numbers of that old epoch-making magazine "of politics, science, and art," look on them as treasures. Its success is to be ascribed to its publisher and chief contributor's lively style and apt wit. It treated of politics, literature, and the drama, and had on its staff men like Görres (before his conversion) and Willemer, Goethe's rationalistic, liberal-minded friend ("Suleika's" husband); but whatever the subject under treatment might be, it took a political colouring from the manner in which it was approached. For three months of the four years during which Börne continued to publish Die Wage, he was also editor of the daily newspaper, Zeitung der freien Stadt Frankfurt, a position he had to give up because of the constant annoyance to which he was subjected by the censorship. He afterwards edited another daily paper, Die Zeitschwingen; but this was suppressed, and its editor sentenced to a short imprisonment. Börne now paid his first visit to Paris, whence he for a time wrote letters for Cotta's various periodical publications; but by 1822 he was again in Germany, where a long and dangerous illness soon swallowed up all his savings, and compelled him to apply to his father for assistance.

His father was exceedingly dissatisfied with him. All his other children did him credit, he said; but this son, now unable to support himself, had had a most expensive education, and what was there to show for it? He could do nothing but write articles with a tendency highly disapproved of by his (the father's) patron, Prince Metternich, in Vienna. What was the good of making enemies for himself? of attacking the great? Was it becoming in his position of life? What position, indeed, did he suppose himself to occupy, seeing he allowed himself such liberty of speech? By this time he might have been a doctor in good practice, or a barrister, and counsel for Rothschild; instead of which he elected to be a hack writer for periodicals, spending the trifle he got for his articles on travelling, and closing every avenue to success by his impious attacks on those in authority.

And Börne's father had sufficient political sagacity to be aware that it was quite unnecessary for his son to be either a doctor or an advocate in order to find lucrative employment. He knew very well where Herr von Gentz's and Herr Friedrich von Schlegel's bank-drafts came from. And besides, had not his son Maria Theresa's promise to fall back on?[13]

From the very commencement of Börne's career as a journalist, his talent had attracted the attention of the great reactionaries. On the 18th of May 1819, Rahel writes that Gentz has recommended Die Wage to her, as containing the cleverest, wittiest writing of the day, the best of its kind since Lessing's time. Börne's father was perfectly aware that Herr von Gentz praised his son's style, and Prince Metternich his grasp of politics.[14] So he privately set to work to secure an advantageous sphere of operation for him on the sunny side of society. Before young Börne was told anything about it, Metternich had eagerly come forward with the most liberal proposals: The young man was to live in Vienna with the title, position, and emoluments of an Imperial Councillor (kaiserlicher Rath), and with no claim made on him for any service in return. Everything he chose to write was to be entirely exempt from censorship; he should be his own censor. And if, in the course of a few months, he should elect to give up his appointment, he was to be free to do so. In such a position he would have the very best opportunity of working for the cause of progress and humanity.

His father wrote: "Dear Louis! I beg of you to read this letter as carefully as I have read it. Believe me, the independence you prize so highly is an uncertain possession; will you, can you retain it? Why should not you, too, at last think of making a settled position for yourself?... On what is your present bliss founded? Surely not on the 500 francs (Cotta's monthly payment)? Make up your mind, for the sake of your future, to take a journey to Vienna at my expense; I beseech of you not to throw away this chance of success...."

Börne refused everything point blank, refused to hold any communication with those in power.[15] Goethe might allow himself to be appointed Privy Councillor at a court, but he, Börne, would not. And yet the temptation must have been greater in the case of the born plebeian, who had had to take off his hat at the bidding of every passer-by, than it was in the case of the great patrician. In reading the hard, contemptuous, and unjust words which Börne wrote of Goethe, we must not forget that behind these words there was a man who would not do what Goethe did.

Börne was devoid of artistic sense in the strict acceptation of the term. He frankly confessed the fact himself, and, moreover, betrays it in his intolerance of those to whom it is a matter of indifference what the artist represents, but all-important how he represents it. Artists and connoisseurs of this type are utterly repugnant to him. It disgusts him that any man can prefer a painting of still life to a painting of a Madonna. His natural bias towards the lofty, the sublime, the divine, leads him to demand these qualities in art, and to declare frankly that all works of art in which these qualities are wanting, are to him simply daubs or monstrosities.[16]

We cannot agree with Steinthal when he says that Börne was at home in every domain of culture, every sphere of artistic production; for that very branch of art to which the name art is more specially applied, was a sealed book to him. This naturally did not prevent his writing much that is sensible and instructive about works of art; but what he wrote is not art criticism.

Börne has been often and much praised for his energetic condemnation of the German fatalistic tragedies (Schicksalstragödien) which began in his day to take possession of the stage and to confuse men's minds. But it is to be observed that it is not as æsthetically reprehensible that he objects to them; he looks at the matter from the moral or religious point of view. The belief that a certain date, say the 24th of February, is peculiarly fraught with fate for any family, is stupid and futile. It has no connection whatever either with the belief of the ancients in an inevitable, pre-ordained fate, or with the Christian belief in an omniscient Providence, or with the modern determinist theory of cause and effect, which has undermined the earlier belief in so-called freewill. But to Börne the belief in question is an unreasonable one only because it is a confusion of two theological systems. His chain of reasoning is this: death is either a loving father, who takes his child home, in which case fate is not tragic, or a Kronos, who devours his own children, in which case it is unchristian.[17] As if that were any objection! It might still be extremely poetical.

Börne is so clever and clear-headed that his opinion as to the worth or worthlessness of the many dramas it falls to his lot to criticise is almost always correct. He thoroughly enters into the spirit of Oehlenschläger's Correggio, and is full of indulgence for the weaknesses of the play, but quite oblivious to its scenic effect. He shows thorough appreciation of dramatists like Kleist and Immermann and young Grillparzer. But when he begins to give his reasons for blame or praise, the inartistic temperament invariably betrays itself, and he frequently displays all the many prejudices of the idealist. He is undoubtedly justified in his unfavourable opinion of Inland's Die Spieler ("The Gamblers"), for instance. But the justification he offers is most peculiar: "What has gambling to do on the stage?" he cries; "one might as well dramatise consumption in all its different stages." There is only this difference, one would imagine, that consumption is a physical ailment, gambling a vice. His position is one that is characteristic of idealism, namely, that there is no need to go to the theatre to see what we can see at home. He gives as examples poverty, debt, a faithful wife's patient endurance of hardships; and instead of remarking on the dull, inartistic spirit in which such things are represented, he exclaims: "Are these such rare sights that we should pay money to see them? On the stage, humanity ought to be raised a step above its common level." And he goes on to explain that it was for this reason the Greek and Roman tragedians had recourse to mythic fable, and to maintain that the modern dramatist ought to represent the real characters of ancient days; or, if nothing will serve him but to grapple with the present, that he must only venture to reproduce its passions. We perceive that Börne is possessed by the naïve belief that the "classic" characters of olden times stood on a higher level than the human beings of to-day; and that he does not understand how every-day reality, properly treated, can be refined into art.

A still stronger proof than these academic utterances of Börne's inability to appreciate simple, primitive poetry, is his indifference to the Old Testament. In a letter to Henriette Herz, written in his nineteenth year, we come upon a passage of absolutely alarming sterility, dry and senile as a joke on the Pentateuch by Voltaire— and this after Goethe: "It has always appeared to me as if it had been the intention of the old Jews, from Abraham down to Solomon the Wise, to parody the history of the world. Read Joshua or the Book of Kings, and you will at once be struck by their resemblance to Blumau."[18] A comparison between these venerable compilations of memorable legends and historical events and a clumsy German parody of Virgil's Æneid could only be instituted by a critic who, devoid of all appreciation of antique literary form, set himself to find in every work some modern sentimental, religious, or political moral. It is quite of a piece with this that Börne should end by blindly admiring the vague, half Biblical, half modern unctuous pathos of Lamennais' Paroles d'un Croyant.

VIII

BÖRNE

But for this lack of poetic-artistic understanding, it would be difficult to explain how Börne came to take the share he did in the reaction against Goethe which was set on foot by some of the leading men of the day. For, though he had a quite individual, spontaneous animosity to Goethe, Börne was certainly not the originator of the reaction, which was in full swing before he took any part in it. About the time when the Pietists were gloating over Pastor Pustkuchen's parody of the Wanderjahre, with its attack on the impiety of Goethe, the pagan, progressive, youthful politicians were beginning to approve of investigations into Goethe's political convictions, which measured them by the very latest standard and made him out to be an "aristocrat," with no feeling for the people, and in reality with no genius.

The first writer of any note who perseveringly and fanatically devoted himself to the systematic disparagement of Goethe was Wolfgang Menzel (born in 1798), a man who before the age of thirty had made his name famous and feared by the help of a certain coarse literary ability, tremendous self-assurance, and the severity of his creed as a Liberal, Nationalist, and moralist. Like Börne, he was originally a disciple of Jean Paul. But his Streckverse (1823), which were much admired in their day, and which are unmistakable imitations of that master, carry Jean Paul's peculiar kind of humour to the verge of caricature. Things that have no natural connection whatever with each other are forced into juxtaposition to produce an aphorism, in much the same manner as totally unconnected ideas are coupled together in a pun. He writes: "All Saints' Day comes before All Souls'; the prophets reach heaven before the people." "The religion of antiquity was the crystal-matrix of many resplendent gods; the Christian religion is the mother-of-pearl that encloses one god only, but one beyond all price." "This mortal life is a bastinado." "Every church bell is a diving-bell, beneath which the pearl of religion is found."[1]

In his periodical, Deutsche Litteratur, he began, in 1819, an attack upon Goethe, which he carried on with insane conceit and immovable faith in the justice of his cause. He first tried to undermine the admiration of the reading world for Goethe's originality, examined his works with the aim of discovering imitations or plagiarisms, and demonstrated the existence of foreign influence everywhere throughout them.

In his first connected work on the history of literature, Die deutsche Litteratur, which was published in 1828, in two parts, he calmly accuses Goethe of having flattered all the prejudices and vanities of his time. He declares him to be possessed of nothing more than great descriptive ability, great "talent," which is a thing unattended by inward conviction, "a hetaira, who is at every one's beck and call." Goethe has always, he declares, swum with the stream, and on its surface, like a cork; he has ministered to every weakness and folly that happened to be in fashion; under the fair mask of his works a refinement of sensuality lies concealed; these works are the blossom of that materialism which prevails in the modern world. Goethe has no genius, but a very high degree of "the talent for making his readers his accomplices," &c., &c.[2] Heine, who was uncritical enough in his review of the book to praise both it and its author—praise which he was soon to regret—would have nothing to say to Menzel's doctrine that Goethe's gift was not genius, only talent. He expresses the opinion that this doctrine will be accepted by few, "and even these few will confess that Goethe at times had the talent to be a genius."[3]

Menzel continued the cannonade in his numerous contributions to periodicals, and in a new, very much enlarged, edition of his work on German literature. He convicts Goethe of three distinct kinds of personal vanity and six kinds of voluptuousness ("dreierlei Eitelkeiten und sechserlei Wollüsteleien"). He analyses his works, great and small, one by one, measures them by his own patriotic standard, and declares them to be despicable. Clavigo he condemns, because Goethe makes Clavigo desert Marie. That he afterwards makes him die by the hand of her brother goes for nothing, in fact is only an additional cause of offence to Menzel, who knows that in real life Clavigo lived on happily, which make his death on the stage a mere coup de théâtre.[4] To find sufficient immorality in the play, the critic must, we observe, take advantage of his knowledge of circumstances that do not concern it. Tasso is to him Goethe's Höflingsbekenntniss ("Confessions of a Courtier"), in which he betrays the vanity of the parvenu, to whom the high rank of a woman is an irresistible attraction.[5] The reader will have no difficulty in imagining for himself all the moral reflections for which Menzel finds occasion in Die Mitschuldigen, in Die Geschwister, where "voluptuousness casts sidelong glances at the pretty sister," in Stella, where it craves the excitement of bigamy ("nach dem Reiz der Bigamie gelüstet") and in the Mann von fünfzig Jahren, which is the special object of his indignation. Even Wilhelm Meister is to Menzel only an expression of the shamefully light esteem in which Goethe held true virtue, and the strong attraction which the outward conditions of rank possessed for him.[6] Die Wahlverwandschaften he regards as the type of "the novel of adultery," which takes for its theme the desire of voluptuousness after untried sensations ("die Wollüstelei, die das Fremde begehrt"). Die Braut von Korinth is simply the expression of the voluptuousness whose desire is set on corpses, "die sogar noch in den Schauern des Grabes, in der Buhlerei mit schönen Gespenstern einen haut goût des Genusses findet"—(which even amidst the horrors of the grave finds a haut goût of sensual enjoyment in intercourse with beautiful spectres).

Where it is impossible to bring an accusation of immorality, Menzel returns to his accusation of want of originality. It is not only its glorification of middle-class Philistinism that stamps Hermann und Dorothea as an inferior work, but also the direct imitation of Voss's Luise. According to Menzel, Goethe showed real originality only in Faust and Wilhelm Meister, because in these two works he copied himself. In his youth he borrowed from Moliere and Beaumarchais, from Shakespeare and Lessing, and his later iambic tragedies are "the fruits of his rivalry with Schiller." Added to all this, he was, God knows, no patriot.

Let us compare Börne's attacks on Goethe with Menzel's, and we shall find, in spite of similar extravagance of expression, this great difference, that Börne does not attempt to judge, still less to condemn Goethe's great works, nor does he condescend to accusations of sexual immorality; he invariably confines himself to attacking Goethe in his political relations. Saint-René Taillandier correctly observes that Börne gave expression to everything that was rankling in his heart when he took as motto for his review of Bettina's Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde ("Goethe's Correspondence with a Child"), these words from Prometheus:

"Ich dich ehren? Wofür? Hast du die Schmerzen gelindert Je des Beladenen? Hast du die Thränen gestillet Je des Geängsteten?"[7]

Though he could only appreciate those of Goethe's works in which the fire of youth was perceptible, his attacks are not based on contempt for the other works, but on the fact that Goethe, so highly favoured in the matter of ability and of social position, never thought of devoting that ability, that position, to the improvement of the existing conditions of life in Germany. It is easy to cull foolish passages conceived in Menzel's strain from Börne's works. In his Journal of 1830, for instance, he writes of Goethe's luck in having succeeded in imitating with his talent the handwriting of genius for sixty years without being detected; and in another place he calls Goethe the rhyming, Hegel the rhymeless, thrall.[8] But to understand these wild and regrettable outbursts, we must make ourselves acquainted with Börne's bill of accusation against both Goethe and Schiller.

He started from the premise (in all probability quite a false one) that Goethe, by making timely and energetic protest, could have prevented the Resolutions of Karlsbad, could have secured the liberty of the press and the other spiritual rights of which the reaction had deprived the German nation. In any case, whatever the results might have been, he was firmly convinced that it was Goethe's duty to have protested. Instead of this, what happens? "Geheimrath von Goethe, the Karlsbad poet," as Börne, knowing that he goes there every year to drink the waters, satirically nicknames him, subscribes himself servant among other servants of his Prince ("wir sämmtlichen Diener"); confesses in his Tag- und Jahres-Hefte that he wrote his stupid little play Der Bürgergeneral (the whole plot of which hinges on the stealing of a pail of milk from the peasant Martin), with the intention of ridiculing the French Revolution; also confesses that, far from taking Fichte's part when that philosopher was accused of teaching atheism in the University of Jena, he was much annoyed at the vexation caused to the court by the outside interference which Fichte's utterances provoked.[9] Another cause of offence was the way in which, when Oken's Isis was published, Goethe bewailed the peaceful times brought to an end by the establishment of the liberty of the press in Weimar, "the further consequences of which every right-thinking man with any knowledge of the world foresees with alarm and regret."[10] And the same feeling of disappointment and mortification was aroused in Börne when he read that Schiller, whom he highly esteemed, had at the very crisis of the French Revolution declared in his announcement of the new periodical Die Horen, that from this publication everything in the nature of criticism of the government, of religion, or of the political questions of the day, would be expressly and strictly excluded.[11]

We must bear all this in mind when we read Börne's flaming denunciations—ablaze with a passion for liberty that forgets to be just—of Schiller and of Goethe, his lament that in their correspondence these two greatest minds of Germany show themselves so small that nothing at all would be better ("so Nichts sind—nein weniger als Nichts, so wenig"), and that they actually are what he, the confirmed democrat, considers the worst thing possible, a pair of confirmed aristocrats. He sees in Schiller a worse aristocrat than Goethe, for Goethe's partiality is merely for the upper classes of society, whereas Schiller will associate with none but the élite of humanity. It is Börne's belief that Goethe might have been the Hercules who should cleanse the Augean stables of his country; but he rather elected to fetch the golden apples of the Hesperides, and to keep them for himself.[12] He compares him in his own mind with the great productive spirits of other countries; with Dante, who championed the cause of justice; with Alfieri, who preached liberty; with Montesquieu, who wrote the Lettres Persanes; with Voltaire, who dared everything and gave up all his other occupations to assist a persecuted man, or to vindicate the memory of one who had been unjustly condemned to death; with the republican Milton; with Byron, whose life was one struggle against tyranny, intelligent or unintelligent—and he summons him before the judgment seat of posterity. "That terrible, incorruptible judge will say to Goethe: A mighty mind was given to thee, didst thou ever employ it to oppose baseness? Heaven gave thee a tongue of fire, didst thou ever champion justice? Thou hadst a good sword, but it was drawn to defend thyself alone."[13]

We cannot deny that Börne has pointed to real flaws in Goethe's greatness, and to real limitations in his nature, even though we know that some of his qualities were bought at the price of these defects, and that a certain limitation was inevitable if the many-sidedness of his genius was not to be its bane. It was not for him to do what Börne required of him. Still we must understand the proportion of justice there is in Börne's attacks, to be able to forgive him this violent and foolish expression of resentment against Goethe during those years when the hopes of the Liberals in the results of the Revolution of July were receiving their double death-blow, from the subjection of the French Government to the power of the great financiers, and from the suppression of the Polish revolt. He is now more bitter and violent than ever. He calls Goethe a prodigious obstructive power, compares him to a cataract on the eye of Germany, and expresses the opinion that not until the old man of Weimar dies will German liberty be born. (Nov. 20, 1830.)[14]

It was on the 1st of October 1831, after whole days spent in despair over events which conveyed the impression, specially painful to this obstinately hopeful man, that France was lost and the reaction victorious, that his anger reached boiling-point. He took up Goethe's Tag- und Jahres-hefte, and was horrified by its author's "apathy." Goethe tells how, when he was with the army in Silesia in 1790, he wrote one or two epigrams, and how later, at the royal headquarters in Breslau, he lived the life of a hermit, completely engrossed in the study of comparative anatomy. He adds that what originally led to his taking up this study was his finding a half-cloven sheep's skull one evening in Venice on the sand-hills of the Lido.

"What!" writes Börne, "Goethe, a highly gifted man, a poet, in the best years of his manhood ... to be in the council of war, in the camp of the Titans, on the very spot where, forty years before, the audacious yet sublime war of kings against their peoples began, and to find no inspiration in these surroundings, to be moved to neither love nor hatred, neither prayer nor curse, to nothing but a few epigrams, which he himself does not consider worth offering the reader. And with the finest of regiments, the handsomest of officers passing in review before him, he finds nothing better to turn his attention to than comparative anatomy! And walking by the sea-shore in Venice—Venice, that Arabian Night in stone and mortar, where everything is melody and colour, both nature and art, man and state, past and present, liberty and despotism; where even tyranny and murder merely clank like the chains in some gruesome ballad (the Bridge of Sighs and the Council of Ten are scenes from Tartarus)—Venice, towards which I turn my longing eyes, but cannot turn my steps, because the Austrian police lies in wait like a serpent at the city gates and repels with the terror of its poisonous gaze—there, after sunset, when the red glow of evening was spread over sea and land, and the waves of crimson light broke upon the man of stone, and imparted their colour to his eternal greyness; when, perhaps, the spirit of Werther came upon him, and he felt that he still had a heart, that there were human beings around him and a God above him; and the beat of his heart, the apparition of his dead youth terrified him, and he felt the hair standing up on his head—he behaved as usual, escaped from his terrors, avoided all disagreeable reflection, by creeping into a cloven sheep's skull and hiding there till night and coldness once more descended upon his heart! And I am to honour that man! to love that man! I would sooner throw myself in the dust at the feet of Vitzli-Putzli, sooner lick the spittle of the Dalai Lama!"

Certainly Börne ought to have honoured this man, and for the very reason for which he despises him. For perhaps at no time was he more clearly worthy of all honour. Börne, by his own showing, would, like the ordinary tourist in Venice, have spent himself in vague moonlight and sunset romancings on the subject of the Bridge of Sighs, the terrors of tyranny, the blessings of liberty, and all the melody and colour—Goethe gazed at his sheep's skull. What was there remarkable about it? It was split; and with his naked eye, that seeing eye which pierced into the deepest recesses of nature, into the innermost workshop of life, whence issue all its various forms, Goethe saw the great truth, which he had already suspected, that all the bones of the skull were in reality metamorphosed vertebræ, thus making a discovery in the science of osteology that was closely connected with one he had already given to the world in his work on the Metamorphosis of Plants, and founding philosophic anatomy, as he had already founded philosophic botany. Börne did not perceive that this man, whose life-work is one of the foundation-stones in the edifice of the modern world, in this particular instance, with his intuition of the unity underlying all variety of form, in his divine simplicity, resembles one of the fathers of ancient science, a Thales or a Heraclitus.

Börne's attacks on Goethe do not come under the same category as Menzel's. They are never malicious, much less base. Though they certainly now and again hit some vulnerable spot in the great man, they throw more light on Börne's own nature than they do on Goethe's; and, even where they most clearly show the limitation of his intelligence, they witness to the purity of his character. They have been powerless to affect men's admiration for Goethe's genius. It would be as foolish to judge Goethe by the false political standard set up by Börne in 1830 as to judge Börne himself by the false German standard of 1870, which those do, who say of him, what he said of Goethe, that he was no true patriot. It was natural, nay inevitable, that Börne should undervalue Goethe. It is possible to understand his want of understanding without sharing his dislike. And it is possible to do full justice to the rush of his pathos, to the elasticity and keen sparkle of his wit, without forgetting, as our eyes light on the seething, flashing cascades of his prose, that there is a deep, calm, wide ocean, called Goethe.

IX

BÖRNE

It is in the first volumes of the Letters from Paris that Börne reaches his high-water mark as an author. He was not capable of writing books, not even of writing essays and dissertations; for his explosions of emotion or thought there was no form so suitable as that of a letter. And these are real letters, not newspaper-articles, nor even newspaper correspondence, but letters written to a friend, without thought of publication until that friend took the initiative, and asked Börne's permission to make an experimental selection of passages which might be of interest to the general public.

The friend in question was Frau Jeannette Wohl, a lady who plays an important part in Börne's life, though perhaps not so important a part as he plays in hers. For upwards of twenty years, from 1816, when he made her acquaintance, till his death in 1837, he gave her his entire confidence, and rarely took any step without consulting her; and to her, during the same period, his career as an author, his health, his circumstances generally, were of more importance than all else.

When they saw each other for the first time, he was thirty and she thirty-three. She had been married to a rich man, with whom she had lived unhappily. After nursing him through a long illness, she got a divorce from him, refusing to accept any share of his fortune or to retain his name. When Börne and she lived in the same town, he read aloud to her everything that he wrote; when they were separated, she would at one time urge him to work, eager that he should win fame and independence; at another, fearing that he was too diligent, and that his health, at all times precarious, might suffer, she would beg him not to be too conscientious in the fulfilment of his engagements to the publishers, but to allow himself sufficient leisure and recreation.

Jealous of his honour, she underwent long periods of anxiety and irritation when it seemed to her that he was neglecting his duty to the public. Börne had taken payment in advance from the subscribers to Die Wage for the second volume of that periodical, and then, after bringing out only five numbers, made a lengthy pause, partly because he was tired of the work, and partly because, being in pecuniary difficulties, he was anxious to find more remunerative employment. Her letters, which he always looked for with almost feverish eagerness, at this time keep Die Wage before his eyes by every device which the ingenuity and perseverance of an anxious woman can suggest. She entreats and threatens, she scolds and teases, she sends him four long pages with nothing upon them except Die Wage, Die Wage.

But she is often quite as anxious to distract and amuse him, to prevent him from over-exerting himself and to keep up his spirits. When he is taken seriously ill at a distance from her, she grieves that she is not able to look after him, has once actually made up her mind to hazard her reputation by going to him; she knows very well that if she does, people will no longer believe that what unites them is only friendship.

It was in reality a feeling midway between friendship and love, for which no name exists. After Jeannette's death there was found among her papers an ordinary Gesindebüchlein der freien Stadt Frankfurt,[1] on the cover of which Börne had written his name, with the usual particulars. On its first page stands:

Took service when?With whom?For how longIn what capacity?Left service when?

15. Jan. 1818Frau Wohl.For ever.As friend.On the day of his death.

There could be no more laconic expression of a voluntary lifelong devotion. And the last words were literally fulfilled, for it was on Jeannette's face that the dying man's last look rested, and to her that he spoke his last words: "You have given me much happiness."

Jeannette Wohl's portrait, which Börne declared to be a good one, shows us a woman with a longish face, regular, pleasing features, a high forehead, an expressive, beautifully formed mouth, and bright, kindly eyes; the firm chin indicates energy. Her voice is said to have been remarkably sweet. Hers was not a particularly original, and still less was it a productive mind; she was one of those women who can merge their own individuality in that of the man to whom they are devoted. To Börne, the author, her natural feminine capacity for inspiring a man with confidence in himself was invaluable; she was as much offended by any disparaging remark he made on the subject of his own ability or deserts, as if it had been made by another. She was comfort and consolation to him in human form. In her he had a being on whom he could place absolute reliance, to whom he could confide everything without the slightest fear of ever being misunderstood, far less betrayed, and to whom he could address all his literary efforts. She was to him an epitome of the ideal public for whom he wrote.

In one of his confidential letters he writes that his feeling for Jeannette is described in the following passage from La Nouvelle Heloïse: "C'est cette union touchante d'une sensibilité si vive et d'une inaltérable douceur; c'est cette pitié si tendre à tous les maux d'autrui; c'est cet esprit juste et ce goût exquis qui tirent leur pureté de celle de l'âme; ce sont, en un mot, les charmes des sentiments, bien plus que ceux de la personne, que j'adore en vous." And we learn, from a letter of Jeannette's written in 1833, after this friendship had lasted seventeen years, that the attraction he exercised was at least equal to that which he experienced. She describes as a sort of idée fixe, or chronic ailment, the excitement that takes possession of her about the time when the mail may be expected. The day she writes, she had been obliged to give up her usual occupations and lie on the sofa, and when at last the letter arrives, she weeps for joy.

She looks after his money matters, calculates the payments due to him, draws his police pension for him; at one time, when he has a great longing to travel in Italy, but cannot do it for want of means, she takes a lottery ticket, in the hope of winning the necessary sum, and when she is disappointed in this, wishes to sell her piano, but finds she cannot raise the required amount in this way either.[2] And all this without the incentive of love, in the narrower sense of the word. Her friends believed her to be capable of doing even more for him. At the time that it first occurred to her that Börne ought to publish his letters to her, she expressed to a cousin the naïve doubt if it were possible to publish letters before the death of the person to whom they were addressed, to which the cousin replied that she had not the least doubt that Jeannette was quite ready to let herself be buried if it would do any good to Dr. Börne.

They often travelled together, and sometimes, it would seem, lived together; but the nature of their relation to each other never altered. It is probable that at one time, in the first stage of their friendship, Börne tried to persuade Jeannette to marry him, but her fear lest the relation existing between them might lose its charm by being turned into an ordinary, everyday marriage, a fear which Börne himself afterwards shared, proved an insurmountable obstacle. Considering that they were both free to dispose of themselves as they would, it seems hardly possible that their relation could have remained what it was for all these years without the existence of some slight, it might be almost unconscious, physical antipathy on her side, or on both sides. An outward hindrance to their union undoubtedly existed in the difference of their creeds. Börne belonged to the Christian, Jeannette to the Jewish confession; her orthodox mother was strongly opposed to her becoming a Christian, and in those days great difficulties were placed in the way of mixed marriages. But this was not the main difficulty. Jeannette herself writes that to marry Börne would require "more courage and more self-confidence" than she possesses. And in this instance we see the man whom we knew in his youth as the passionate lover, and who all his life long suffered from a jealous disposition, quickly rise to the height of pure devotion; he constantly urges Jeannette, for her own sake, to marry a man worthy of her, and make a happy home.

In 1821, in answer to the words just quoted, Börne writes: "I swear to you by Almighty God that, ardent and often expressed as my desire to make you mine may have been, it has always been more of your happiness than of my own that I have thought. My love for you makes me happy; what more could marriage give me, since it could not increase that love? Though I did not confess it to you, I always dreaded that marriage might drag down our beautiful friendship to the level of everyday, sordid reality. But I thought, what I still think, that you would gain something by it, and this would indirectly have increased my happiness. So there is nothing to prevent you from marrying another man; you and I should lose nothing by that."

Strange to say, the truth of this last, audacious assertion was put to the proof. At a somewhat advanced age, Jeannette actually fell in love with and married a man much younger than herself. It was their mutual admiration for Börne that brought the couple together, and in Jeannette's answer to the letter in which Straus asks her to marry him there is a long reference to Börne, so enlightening in its simple eloquence that it cannot be dispensed with in this estimate of his character as a man and as an author. She writes:

"The Doctor has no one in the world but me; I am to him friend, sister, all that these words convey of kindliness, friendliness, sympathy. Can you grudge this to him, to whom life has given nothing else, and who has reconciled himself to his fate ... is even contented with it.... Ican think of no other possibility than that the Doctor should be free to come to us when, where, and for as long as he chooses; for altogether, if he wishes. I can't say you, my heart is too full; canst thou think anything else possible? If so, then all is different from what I thought. I!—we!—dream of deserting a man like the Doctor—why, he would be a ruined, a lost man! I would rather give up everything, rather die, than have that upon my conscience; I could not do it, even if I would.... I am trembling all over, and as pale as death from writing even these few words on the subject. For nothing agitates me so deeply as the very thought of such treason, of such infidelity to such fidelity. As long as I live, till I draw my last breath, I shall feel for Börne the love of a daughter for her father, of a sister for her brother, of a friend for a friend. If you do not understand, cannot grasp the situation, do not know me well enough—then all is over, all is night. I can write no more. But no more is necessary. I am thankful this is over."[3]

Events proved that Straus thoroughly entered into Jeannette's feelings, indeed shared them. He, too, became a faithful friend to Börne. For five months in the summer of 1833 Börne lived with them in Switzerland. They then removed, for his sake, to Paris; where they all lived together from the end of 1833 till his death, spending the summers at Auteuil. The one person who permitted himself to make disparaging comment on this arrangement was Heine, in that unfortunate passage in his book, Ludwig Börne, which led to the duel in which he was wounded by Straus. Heine afterwards, of his own free will, expunged the passage. But in anger and grief at the harm done to his reputation by this work on Börne, he was heard to call Jeannette the baleful woman who, on his triumphal progress as Germany's chosen poet, crossed his path, prophesying evil, and caused him to start back and drop his laurel wreath in the dirt.[4]

It is certain that Jeannette never forgave Heine his unpardonable molestation; yet no one could have been less of a Megæra. What Börne once wrote to her, joking, as he often did, on the subject of her faulty orthography, was almost true, namely, that in the letter he had received that day there were more faults than she had herself, for there was one.

In her opinions we can follow the different steps of Börne's political development. After the Revolution of July she, too, is a radical democrat. In the expressive words of her biographer, Schnapper-Arndt: "She most frequently thinks with Börne, at times in opposition to him, never without him. But she does seem to be perfectly independent in her passionate sympathy with the revolt of the Polish nation, a feeling so strong that it leads her to heap reproaches on Börne for being capable at such a moment of writing about the Italian opera in Paris. The Polish scythemen, the liberty of Poland—nothing else is worthy to be mentioned along with this. It seems to her that every one must help; she gives her own most cherished possessions to the cause; and nothing can exceed her shame when Germany shows itself indifferent to it, nothing her joy when she can send Börne proofs of the fact that a storm of sympathy and enthusiasm is sweeping over the country."

X

BÖRNE

The progress of the insurrection in Poland, which lasted from the winter of 1830 till the summer of 1831, was followed with lively sympathy by almost all the nations of Europe. All knew that the struggle in Poland was deciding whether absolutism or national liberty was to prevail in the Europe of the future. The movements of the combatants were eagerly noted; every victory of the Poles was hailed with popular rejoicing, every defeat was heard of with sorrow. Towards the close of the struggle, when it became evident that the Poles, unaided, could not triumph, numerous appeals were addressed by German subjects to their respective governments, urging them to assist Poland. The Germans then possessed the quality, which Bismarck afterwards laid to their charge as a fault—a fault of which he has cured them—of being almost more interested in the welfare of other nations than in their own, to the extent even of desiring that welfare when it could only be purchased by some surrender of power on the part of Germany.

When all was over with the Poles, the Germans tried to give proof of their sympathy by showing as much hospitality as possible to the Polish refugees on their wanderings through Central Europe to France. They everywhere met with a warm reception; a committee was appointed in almost every German town to collect money for them and help them on their journey. Jeannette Wohl's letters to Börne at this time contain many significant details. She tells that a number of Polish officers who came by water from Hanau to Frankfort-on-Main were escorted all the way by enthusiasts, that bands played and salutes were fired as they entered the town, and that, they were carried shoulder high through the crowd. When bands of Poles march through the town, all heads are uncovered as they pass. The town defrays their expenses at the hotels. A wounded Polish officer, who dies at one of the hotels, is followed to his grave by thousands, including the city militia. A goldsmith sets a splinter of iron taken from the wound of another Polish officer in the shape of a little sword, and presents it to him.

With the fall of Poland the bulwark which protected Germany from the influence of the Russian autocracy was broken down. The defeat of the Poles was a defeat for the champions of liberty in every country. The shock was a violent one.

A man who lived at Bremerhafen at the time when the infernal machine devised by the wholesale murderer, Thomas, exploded, tells how, immediately after he had heard the report of the fearful explosion, a torn, bleeding hand flew in at his open window and fell upon the desk at which he sat writing. Something of the same kind happened to German authors' when Warsaw capitulated. Shattered Poland's dissevered hand fell without warning upon their desks. Heine writes in 1831, in his introduction to Kahldorf's book on the aristocracy: "I feel while I am writing as if the blood shed at Warsaw were gushing from my paper, and as if the Berlin officers' and diplomatists' shouts of joy were ringing in my ears."

The three Powers that had divided Poland determined to take immediate advantage of the victory to overpower dismayed European Liberalism, and this in four countries at the same time—in Germany, where the Bundestag was to inaugurate, and Prussia and Austria to carry out, a still more energetic reaction; in Italy, which was once more to be occupied by Austria; in Portugal, where Don Miguel was to be supported against his brother; and in the Netherlands, where the King of Holland was to be assisted in his struggle with rebellious Belgium.

Immediately after the suppression of the Polish revolt, a note was addressed by the Cabinet of St. Petersburg to the German governments, in which Russia advised them to keep the revolutionary tendencies in their respective countries in check, and offered them her assistance in doing so. The censorship at once became more severe, and many Liberal newspapers and periodicals were suppressed. The Chambers of the South German States protested, and the utterances of the Liberal press, in spite of all warnings and threats, became more violent and reckless from day to day. The general belief had hitherto been that it was the desire of the sovereigns to meet the wishes of their people, but that they were held back by their advisers. Now this belief fell to the ground. The conviction became general that the unification of all the German countries in one constitutional, strongly democratic State was at hand. Politically short-sighted, and imbued with all manner of optimistic ideas, the general public were unable to believe that such a movement as that originated by the Revolution of July could exhaust itself without any political result. The champions of Liberalism had preached "progress" as a religion, and people had arrived at the belief that progress must inevitably be victorious, and that each attempt at reaction would actually work for good in the end.

Such was the state of public opinion at the time of the publication of the first volume of Börne's Letters from Paris, which gained him great popularity. They were promptly suppressed. (November 1831.) This suppression, and the abuse heaped on the author by his opponents, added to the sensation which the bold language of the book had created.

In these letters, Börne's style is only occasionally humorous, whereas in his earlier writings it invariably was so. We seldom find the quiet, resigned sort of humour distinguishing, for instance, his characteristic description of his capture by night and his imprisonment in Frankfort in 1820: "I was refused a boot-jack (Stiefelknecht = boot servant or slave), that the distressing symbol of servitude might not be always before my eyes. I was only allowed to use knife and fork in the presence of a warder, in case I should injure myself. Paper, pen, and ink were granted me only after repeated entreaties, and paper in restricted quantity; they were afraid my health might suffer from my sitting still too much. Every evening a warder came with a lantern to examine the stove and see that it did not smoke, as smoke might be injurious to my fine eyes; he also examined the grating in front of the window, to make sure that thieves could not break in, &c., &c."

It is only at the commencement of his stay in Paris, while he is kept in a state of constant elation by the supposed attainment of great political results, that he still jests lightly and freely (as, for example, on the subject of the many Princes Henry of Reuss, Greiz, and Schleiz, who are now being punished by the revolution in Gera for all the agony the committing to memory of their respective numbers cost him at school); the jesting tone soon vanishes from his letters, and the striking, convincing similes are all that remains of his old style.

His chief feeling, when he thinks of his Fatherland, is shame. In the Days of July, Englishmen and Dutchmen, Spaniards and Italians, Poles and Greeks, helped to fight for the liberty of France, which means the liberty of all nations; but no Germans were there. With its administration of justice, its censorship, and its guilds, Germany will soon be the antiquarian museum of Europe. But more obnoxious to him than anything else is the German spirit of loyalty and humility. The Spaniards, the Italians, the Russians, and all the others are slaves; the people that speak the German tongue are lackeys. Slavery only makes men unhappy, it does not degrade them; servitude degrades. (January 25th 1831.) At an international dinner in Paris, when speeches were being made by Liberals of every nationality, shame for his country prevented him from getting up to speak on its behalf. He thought: These Poles, these Spaniards, who have spoken, represent their country. "But what do I represent? what achievements do I recall? I stand alone, I am a lackey, wearing, like all other Germans, the livery of Count Münch-Bellinghausen." (14th December 1831.)

Closely connected with this feeling of shame is an irritability, an inclination to be indignant with every one and everything, which gives a certain impression of weakness, of failing health. Everything, great and small, is "infuriating—from the long-suffering of the nations and their slowness to rise in revolt, to a rude letter from Spontini to the Berlin orchestra; from the proposal to grant Louis Philippe a liberal civil-list, to the deficiencies of an encyclopædia."[1] As time goes on he actually seeks out provocations. We come upon such expressions as: "I am cheerful, for I have been angry;" or "You cannot give me greater pleasure than by reporting cases of German stupidity to me."

But in the years immediately following the Revolution of July, shame and anger are drowned in a storm-tossed sea of hope. Börne feels as absolutely certain of the speedy approach of a universal conflagration, followed by the victory of liberty, as the first Christians felt of the immediate end of the world, followed by the day of judgment, with its decree of salvation for the elect, and damnation for the hard of heart. He is in a state of excitement which makes it impossible for him to be the chronicle-writer of his time; he feels that it is his mission to be its prophet, in twelve long volumes, if need be.[2]

Alas, it is only the pessimistic prophets who, sooner or later, always prove to be right. And Börne was an optimistic prophet, an enthusiast, naïvely and incorrigibly given to believing in what he wished. Events in France have inspired him with the belief that the death-knell of the reaction has sounded. He seriously reproaches himself for being ashamed to kiss such and such a Frenchman's hand, "the hand which has burst our fetters, and given to us serfs the accolade of knighthood." (17th September 1830.) He knows that the end is at hand. On the occasion of Charles X.'s laying some foundation-stone, Börne remarks that it is high time for kings to stop making themselves ridiculous by laying the foundation-stones of buildings. It would be more suitable for them now to nail the last tile on the roofs. For the time is at hand when the royal cooks will ask each other: "For whom shall we be preparing dinner to-morrow?" (19th September 1830.) A month after this, being asked what he thinks likely to happen, he expresses his firm conviction that the following spring will see the whole of Europe in conflagration. He pities the diplomatists, positively feels sympathy for them. When the Polish insurrection breaks out, he does not believe, taking the great strength of the Russians into consideration, that it will be as easy for the Poles as for the Belgians to attain their object, but is sure that they will succeed in the end. And like a refrain recurs the assertion that, one after another, all the countries of Europe will emancipate themselves, Germany alone remaining in its miserable condition. And yet at times he foresees the salvation of Germany. When the cholera is raging in Moscow, he understands its signification, sees the finger of God in it: "This is once more the naked hand of God. The Powers are prevented from gathering together great armies, and if, in spite of everything, they persist in doing so ... I have a presentiment—no, it is more than that, I know that the cholera will do what as yet nothing else has had the power to do, it will rouse the most procrastinating and timid nation on the face of the earth to show courage." (3rd November 1830.) His confidence in the ultimate success of the Poles increased, supporting itself on the theory that those always win who have no choice but victory or death. At the close of the year 1830 he is certain that the ruling sovereigns are doomed; his "modest" New Year's wish for his friend and himself is, that 1831 maybe a better year for them than it will be for emperors and kings. He will have to say to his servant: "If an emperor comes, keep your eye upon him, and don't leave him alone in my room." And he ends by assuring him that in 1831 a dozen of eggs will be of more value than a dozen princes. (26th December 1830.)

On the 8th of January 1831, he maintains that if only the Poles can avoid a pitched battle, the Russians, "powerful as they are, are lost." And he still takes it for granted that the French will take up arms in defence of Poland: France would be insane (ganz von Sinnen) if she did not take advantage of this unique opportunity to weaken the power of Russia. On the 11th of February he is perfectly positive that there will be war. He himself has never doubted it for a single day, and many who would not believe it before, have come round to his opinion. Outbursts of rejoicing are frequent. The Poles have once more received help from above; there is "tolerably certain" news of rebellion having broken out in several Russian provinces. On the 6th of March, when things are looking extremely bad for Poland, he has another false piece of news to rejoice over. A Parisian commercial house has received intelligence that the Russian forces have been scattered, and also that the Lithuanians are in revolt behind them, "which will decide matters." He is jubilant. From this time onwards, tyrants will be threatened with the Poles, as naughty children are threatened with the chimney-sweep. Nicholas boasted that he would roll the Poles together like a ball of yarn; the ball has turned into a bomb, which has blown him to pieces! Börne actually has visions of Paris illuminated on the occasion. On the 18th of March, when it is no longer possible to believe in the truth of the favourable news, he is already mounted on a new chimera. All is well; for in France itself a great change is impending: "Matters here are in such a position, that I daily, nay hourly, expect a revolution. Things cannot continue as they are for four weeks longer...."

It is undoubtedly a strong proof of Börne's honesty that he allowed Jeannette to publish his letters as they came from his pen, unedited, without any suppression or modification of prophetic passages to which facts speedily gave the lie. But their perusal does not increase our faith in him as a politician. The contradiction between what is prophesied and what happens is at times so marked as to be comical. On the 25th of December he is in despair because of Lafayette's indecision: Lafayette is omnipotent, can bring about whatever he pleases, has only to threaten to give up the command of the National Guard to reduce the king, the ministers, and the Chambers to immediate submission. Next day, the 26th of December, he announces shortly that Lafayette has been deposed from his command, without so much as a dog barking. Strange, says the reader to himself, that such an eager politician should never have felt it a necessity to study the science of politics, in order to be able to form his conclusions with some understanding of the subject—that he should have been perfectly satisfied to produce ephemeral journalistic effusions, of value to-day, to-morrow cast into the oven.

What constantly misleads Börne is that optimism of his, which has been already alluded to, an optimism at once naïve and fanatical, which perpetually discovers reasons why the evil that happens is at the same time the best thing that could happen. In March 1831, he trembles for the Poles, and declares that he is prepared for the worst. "But," he continues, "such a victory would be more disastrous for the Russians than all their defeats. The arrogant Nicholas would become presumptuous, and believe that he could dispose of France as easily as of Poland." What a ground of comfort! Börne goes on hoping for a revolution in Paris which shall shake all thrones. But it does not come. He presently discovers that this quietness of France is more dangerous for the crowned heads than anything else could be. On the 30th of November 1831, he writes: "For forty years France has been the crater of Europe. When that crater ceases to shoot forth flames, no throne in Europe will be safe for one night.... Nothing could have been so disastrous for the monarchs as the fall of Warsaw. They have ruined a miracle, and therefore now believe themselves capable of working miracles." In other words: A revolution in Paris is good, no revolution is still better. The victory of Poland would have been the ruin of the monarchs; the fall of Poland is more fatal for them still.

At the bottom of all this is Börne's very remarkable, implicit faith in God, which is but rarely disturbed by the doubts of his ever active brain. The formula to which he almost always has recourse when he needs comfort is, that he trusts in God. Nicholas advances against the Poles with an overwhelming force; Börne "trusts in God." It is, as a matter of fact, only the Polish nobility who have risen in revolt, but Börne "trusts in the wisdom of God and the stupidity of his so-called representatives." He himself is, he declares, wiser than all the rest in France, as he was wiser than the rest in Germany; why? Because he "believes in God and nature," while the others believe in men and politics.

Yet at times his faith wavers. We saw how at first he rejoiced over the cholera, saw the finger of God in it, felt that it would drive even the Germans to revolution. Only two months later (19th January 1831) he describes its actual effect, the manner in which it is paralysing the nations and aiding in the demolition of such liberty as still exists. At first he wrote: "What nothing else has been able to do, the cholera will do;" now it is the exact opposite: "What no Emperor of Russia, no devil could prevent, the cholera prevents." And he who saw in that plague "God's naked hand," now exclaims: "And the priests would have us believe that this is a judgment of God!" Nine months later (25th November) he gets out of the difficulty with a witty, thoughtless joke: "It is not often that God sends a heavenly commission of justice down to earth to investigate into the stewardship of his representatives, and so far, when such a thing has happened, it has not improved matters. The heavenly emissaries are out of their element on earth; they make mistakes, they even allow themselves to be bribed. We saw this lately, in the case of the Asiatic cholera, which punished the oppressed in place of the oppressors. God only helps those who help themselves."[3]

Once only, when the fall of Poland is evidently at hand (5th March 1831), we feel that Börne's faith in his system is seriously shaken. When the Russians are getting the upper hand, he, as usual, makes free use of his favourite words—God, the devil, &c. He comes to the conclusion that "not even the wisdom of God, nothing but the stupidity of the devil can save Poland now." And then he interrupts himself with a question: "But is there a God at all? My heart does not doubt it yet, but one's brain feels bewildered enough at times. And even if he does exist, of what use is an eternal God to mortal man? Were he mortal like us ... he would take account of time and life, would not delay justice so long, would not wait to pay to future generations that which was their forefathers' due. Liberty can and will triumph, sooner or later; but why not now? It may triumph the very day after the fall of Poland; and that would be enough to break one's heart.... Can there be a God? Is this justice? We loathe cannibals, stupid savages, who only eat the flesh of their enemies. But we are reconciled to a far worse cannibalism—to the torturing, slaughtering, hewing asunder of the present, body and soul, with its joys and its happiness, its wishes and its hopes, to satisfy the appetite of the future."[4]

A few days later, however, he returns to his accustomed faith in God and to that optimism over which no disappointments can prevail.

Here and there in these letters we come upon sheer political twaddle, such as the fantasies on the consequences of the revolt in Hanover, and here and there on proofs of a positively foolish credulity, as, for example, when Börne allows himself to be persuaded that it is Metternich who has instigated the disturbances in South Germany in order that he may take possession of Bavaria while the troops are occupied; and again, that it is Louis Philippe's secret intention to reinstate the dynasty of Charles X. on the throne.[5]

But frequently too we come upon utterances that show real political sagacity, a natural capacity for grasping a situation, and an unusual gift of prevision.

On the 9th of November 1830, only four months after the Revolution, Börne already perceives that all that has happened amounts to no more than this, that the industrial magnates, those who understand nothing but "fear and money," have come into power. And he is quite certain that, since this Revolution has not attained its object, those in power refusing to see anything in it but a change of dynasty, a new revolution is unavoidable, "and may be expected without fail." A week later, with correct appreciation of the facts, and logical deduction, he explains how events will follow on one another: As these merchants and manufacturers, who for fifteen years have been declaiming against aristocracy, have hardly got into power before they endeavour to form a new aristocracy, of monied men, of adventurers, not based like the old on a principle, but upon privileges conferred by the possession of property; the French people, with their passion for equality, will, the next time they make a revolution, attack that which is now the foundation of privilege, namely, property; and this process will be accompanied by such horrors as no previous revolution has witnessed. Börne, we observe, has a prevision of socialism as a power; he prophesies the Commune. A year later (1st December 1831) he feels so certain how things will go that he writes: "I so plainly foresee the great war between the poor and the rich that I feel as if we were in the middle of it now;" and at this period, in spite of his strong moral bias, he has come to the conclusion that the first thing to be aimed at is the support of right by might. If this is not practicable, then all that can be done is to touch men's hearts, to gain them for the good cause by working upon their feelings, and to pursue tyranny with ridicule, hate, and contempt. It is of no use whatever to be simply honest, to have the right on one's side. No; "their honesty is their bane. They imagine that the main thing is to be, and to prove that they are, right. They talk of liberty as a barrister would talk of some piece of property. As if it were reasons that were wanted here!" (1st February 1831.)

The man who shows himself to us in these letters, is, after all, a political enthusiast, a lover of liberty, rather than a statesman. He not only loves the common people but, like Rousseau, he has a true admiration for those who have not been "spoiled" by wealth or education; and this admiration goes hand in hand with a steadily increasing hatred of all the legitimate sovereigns and princes of Europe, which, when Börne casts all moderation from him along with his illusions, turns into veritable nihilism. "To think that ten yards of hempen cord would suffice to give the world peace, happiness, and quiet."[6] The peoples—the sovereigns,—the peoples—the sovereigns; it was between these poles that the pendulum of Börne's political thought incessantly swung; they were the poles of the political thought of the time. And it was natural enough that he should stop short at this antithesis, because he was essentially a democrat, such a confirmed democrat that, as he himself plainly tells us, he took no interest whatever in the study of the individual human being. It was as much of a nuisance to him to have to inquire into the peculiarities distinguishing one human being from another, as it was to have to decipher extremely minute handwriting. He preferred to occupy himself with humanity in the mass and with books. (3rd November 1830.) It is no wonder that we miss in him the delicate psychological insight which we look for in a great writer. To compensate for this deficiency we have the sympathy with whole nations, with whole classes, with a wide circle of readers, which enables an author to electrify a public, and ensures popularity during his lifetime even to a peculiarly audacious writer occupying a peculiarly precarious position.

Not that Börne is unjust or prejudiced in his judgment of individuals. On the contrary, he shows the calm benevolence of superior intelligence; though he also undoubtedly at times evinces a real middle-class antipathy to what is over-aristocratic, and corresponding indulgence towards what is commonplace. When De Musset appears, he is at once struck by a kinship with Heine which surprises him in a Frenchman. He promptly recognises, even over-estimates Berlioz's genius, and every one knows how neglected and misunderstood Berlioz was. Prince Pückler he criticises appreciatively, without any warmth, but with a proper discernment of his merits; only he cannot understand how it was possible for any one to believe that Pückler's bright, but essentially unpoetical letters, could have been written by Heine. As regards Heine himself, it is for long only his worship of Napoleon that is distinctly antipathetic to Börne, who appreciates, nay admires him in every other respect.

There is something suggestive in Börne's sincere admiration for Paul de Kock, in the warm appreciation with which he mentions him, and the zest with which he perseveringly reads eight volumes of his novels on end. It is their naïve and faithful representation of the life of the Parisian petit bourgeois that seems to Börne so admirable. He goes the length, though half in jest, of praising De Kock's philosophy of life, and on this hardly suitable occasion mounts his old hobby, and writes: "Though he does not, like Goethe in Wilhelm Meister, serve up didactic letters with truffles, he gives us good strong philosophy dressed in bourgeois fashion." (3rd March 1831.) Paul de Kock exalted at the expense of Goethe!