Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected Volume I Part 9

ALDA.

They were far--very far! I am afraid that I appear very stupid?

MEDON.

O not at all! you know there are stars which appear dim and fixed to the eye, while they are taking flights and making revolutions, which imagination cannot follow nor science compute.

ALDA.

Upon my word, you are very sublimely ironical--my thoughts were not quite so far.

MEDON.

May one beg, or borrow them?--What is your book?

ALDA.

Mrs. Austin's "Characteristics of Goethe." I came upon a pa.s.sage which sent back my thoughts to Weimar. I was again in his house; the faces, the voices of his grandchildren were around me; the room in which he studied, the bed in which he slept, the old chair in which he died,--and, above all, _her_ in whose arms he died--from whose lips I heard the detail of his last moments--

MEDON.

What! all this emotion for Goethe?

ALDA.

For Goethe!--I should as soon think of weeping because the sun set yesterday, which now is pouring its light around me! Our tears are for those who suffer, for those who die, for those who are absent, for those who are cold or lost--not for those who cannot die, who cannot suffer,--who must be, to the end of time, a presence and an existence among us! No.

But I was reading here, among the Characteristics of Goethe, who certainly "knew all qualities, with a learned spirit in human dealings,"

that he was not only the quick discerner and most cordial hater of all affectation;--but even the unconscious affectation--the _nature de convention_,--the taught, the artificial, the acquired in manner or character, though it were meritorious in itself, he always detected, and it appeared to impress him disagreeably. Stay, I will read you the pa.s.sage--here it is.

"Even virtue, laboriously and painfully acquired, was distasteful to him. I might almost affirm, that a faulty but vigorous character, if it had any real native qualities as its basis, was regarded by him with more indulgence and respect than one which, at no moment of its existence, is genuine; which is incessantly under the most unamiable constraint, and consequently imposes a painful constraint on others.

'Oh,' said he, sighing, on such occasions, 'if they had but the heart to commit some absurdity, that would be something, and they would at least be restored to their own natural soil, free from all hypocrisy and acting: wherever that is the case, one may entertain the cheering hope that something will spring from the germ of good which nature implants in every individual. But on the ground they are now upon, nothing can grow.' 'Pretty dolls,' was his common expression when speaking of them.

Another phrase was, 'That's a piece of nature,' (literally, _das ist eine Natur_, that is a nature,) which from Goethe's lips was considerable praise."[24]

This last phrase threw me back upon my remembrances. I thought of the daughter-in-law of the poet,--the trusted friend, the constant companion, the devoted and careful nurse of his last years. It accounted for the unrivalled influence which apparently she possessed--I will not say _over_ his mind--but _in_ his mind, in his affections; for in her he found truly _eine Natur_--a piece of nature, which could bear even _his_ microscopic examination. All other beings who approached Goethe either were, or had been, or might be, more or less modified by the action of that universal and master spirit. Consciously, or unconsciously, in love or in fear, they bowed down before him, and gave up their individuality, or forgot it, in his presence; they took the bent he chose to impress, or the colour he chose to throw upon them. Their minds, in presence of his, were as opake bodies in the sun, absorbing in different degrees, reflecting in various hues, his vital beams; but HER'S was, in comparison, like a transparent medium, through which the rays of that luminary pa.s.sed,--pervading and enlightening, but leaving no other trace.

Conceive a woman, a young, accomplished, enthusiastic woman, who had qualities to attach, talents to amuse, and capacity to appreciate, GOETHE; who, for fourteen or fifteen years, could exist in daily, hourly communication with that gigantic spirit, yet retain, from first to last, the most perfect simplicity of character, and this less from the strength than from the purity and delicacy of the original texture.

Those oft-abused words, _nave_, _navete_, were more applicable to her in their fullest sense than to any other woman I ever met with. Her conversation was the most untiring I ever enjoyed, because the stores which fed that flowing eloquence were all native and unborrowed: you were not borne along by it as by a torrent--_bongre_, _malgre_,--nor dazzled as by an artificial _jet d'eau_ set to play for your amus.e.m.e.nt.

There was the obvious wish to please--a little natural _coquetterie_-- vivacity without effort, sentiment without affectation, exceeding mobility, which yet never looked like caprice; and the most consummate refinement of thought, and feeling, and expression. From that really elegant and highly-toned mind, nothing flippant nor harsh could ever proceed; slander died away in her presence; what was evil she would not hear of; what was malicious she would not understand; what was ridiculous she would not see. Sometimes there was a wild, artless fervour in her impulses and feelings, which might have become a feather-cinctured Indian on her savannah; then, the next moment, her bearing reminded you of the court-bred lady of the bed-chamber. Quick in perception, yet femininely confiding, uniting a sort of restless vivacity with an indolent gracefulness, she appeared to me by far the most poetical and genuine being of my own s.e.x I ever knew in highly-cultivated life: one to whom no wrong could teach mistrust; no injury, bitterness; one to whom the common-place realities, the vulgar necessary cares of existence, were but too indifferent;--who was, in reality, all that other women try to appear, and betrayed, with a careless independence, what they most wish to conceal. I draw from the life,--now, what would you say to such a woman if you met with her in the world?

MEDON.

I should say--she had no business there.

ALDA.

How?

MEDON.

I repeat that the woman you have just portrayed is hardly fit for the world.

ALDA.

Say rather, the world is not fitted for her. As the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, so the world was made for man, not man for the world--still less woman.

MEDON.

Do you know what you mean?

ALDA.

I think I do, though I am afraid I can but ill-explain myself. By the world, I mean that system of social life in all its complicate bearings by which we are surrounded; which was, I suppose, devised at first with a reference to the wants, the happiness, and the benefit of men, but for which no _man_ was specifically created; his being has a high and individual purpose beyond the world. Now, it seems to me one reason of the low average of what we call _character_, that we judge a human soul, not as it is abstractedly, but simply in relation to others, and to the circ.u.mstances around it. If it be in harmony with the world, and worldly, we praise it--it is a very respectable soul; if so const.i.tuted, that it is in discord with a world, (which, observe, all our philosophers, our pastors, and our masters, unite to a.s.sure us, is a sad wicked place, and must be reformed or renounced forthwith,) then--I pray your attention to this point--_then_ the fault, the bitter penalty, lies not upon this said wicked world,--O no!--but on that unlucky "piece of nature," which in its power, its goodness, its purity, its truth, its faith, and its tenderness, stands aloof from it. Is it not so?

MEDON.

Do you apply this personally?

ALDA.

No, generally; but I return to her who suggested the thought, and whom I ought not, perhaps, to have made the subject of such a conversation as this: it is against all my principles, contrary to my custom; and, in truth, I speak of one in whom there is so much to love, that we cannot praise without being accused of partiality; and so much to admire, that we could not censure without being suspected of envy. I might as well be silent therefore. Yet shall such a woman bear such a name, and hold such a position as the mother of Goethe's posterity;[25]--shall she be rendered by both a mark for observation, from one end of Europe to the other;--shall she be "condemned to celebrity," and shall it be allowed to ignorance, or ill-nature, or vanity, to prate of her;--and shall it be forbidden to friends.h.i.+p even to speak?--that were hardly just. Of those effusions of her creative and poetical talents, which charm her friends, I say nothing, because in all probability neither you nor the public will ever benefit by them. I met with several other women in Germany who possessed striking poetical genius, and whose compositions were equally destined to remain unknown, except to the circle of their immediate friends and relatives.

MEDON.

Mr. Hayward, in his notes to his translation of Faust, remarks on the strong prejudice against female authors.h.i.+p, which still exists in Germany; but he has hopes that it will not endure, and that something may be done "to unlock the stores of fancy and feeling which the Ottilies and the Adeles have hived up." Tell me--did you find this prejudice entertained by the women themselves, or existing chiefly on the part of the men?

ALDA.

It was expressed most strongly by the women, but it must have originated with the men. All your prejudices you instil into us; and then we are not satisfied with adopting them, we exaggerate them--we mix them up with our fancies and affections, and transmit them to your children. You are "the mirrors in which we dress ourselves."

MEDON.

For which you dress yourselves!

ALDA.

Psha!--I mean that your minds and opinions are the mirrors in which we form our own. You legislate for us, mould us, form us as you will. If you prefer slaves and playthings to companions and helpmates, is that our fault? In Germany I met with some men who, perhaps out of compliment, descanted with enthusiasm on female talent, and in behalf of female authors.h.i.+p; but the women almost uniformly spoke of the latter with dread, as something formidable, or with contempt, as of something beneath them: what is an unworthy prejudice in your s.e.x, becomes, when transplanted into ours, a _feeling_;--a mistaken, but a genuine, and even a generous feeling. Many women, who have sufficient sense and simplicity of mind to rise above the mere _prejudice_, would not contend with the _feeling_: they would not scruple to encounter the public judgment in a cause approved by their own hearts, but they have not courage to brave or to oppose the opinions of friends and kindred--

MEDON.

Or risk the loss of a lover. You remember the axiom of that clever Frenchman,[26] who certainly spoke the existing opinions of his country only a few years ago, when he said--"Imprimer, pour une femme de moins de cinquante ans c'est mettre son bonheur a la plus terrible des lotteries; si elle a un amant elle commencera par le perdre."

ALDA.

I really believe that in Germany the latter catastrophe would be in most cases inevitable; and where is the woman who knowingly would risk it?

MEDON.