Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family Part 1

Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family.

by Elizabeth Rundle Charles.

NOTE.

To those unfamiliar with the history of Luther and his times, the t.i.tle of this unique work may not sufficiently indicate its character.

The design of the author is to so reproduce the times of the Reformation as to place them more vividly and impressively before the mind of the reader than has been done by ordinary historical narratives.

She does this with such remarkable success, that it is difficult to realize we are not actually hearing Luther and those around him speak.

We seem to be personal actors in the stirring scenes of that eventful period.

One branch of the Cotta family were Luther's earliest, and ever after, his most intimate friends. Under the t.i.tle of "Chronicles" our author makes the members of this family, (which she brings in almost living reality before us), to record their daily experiences as connected with the Reformation age.

This Diary is fict.i.tious, but it is employed with wonderful skill in bringing the reader face to face with the great ideas and facts a.s.sociated with Luther and men of his times, as they are given to us by accredited history, and is written with a beauty, tenderness and power rarely equalled.

I.

Else's Story.

Friedrich wishes me to write a chronicle of my life. Friedrich is my eldest brother. I am sixteen, and he is seventeen, and I have always been in the habit of doing what he wishes; and therefore, although it seems to me a very strange idea, I do so now. It is easy for Friedrich to write a chronicle, or anything else, because he has thoughts. But I have so few thoughts, I can only write what I see and hear about people and things. And that is certainly very little to write about, because everything goes on so much the same always with us. The people around me are the same I have known since I was a baby, and the things have changed very little; except that the people are more, because there are so many little children in our home now, and the things seem to me to become less, because my father does not grow richer: and there are more to clothe and feed. However, since Fritz wishes it, I will try; especially as ink and paper are the two things which are plentiful among us, because my father is a printer.

Fritz and I have never been separated all our lives until now. Yesterday he went to the University at Erfurt. It was when I was crying at the thought of parting with him that he told me his plan about the chronicle. He is to write one, and I another. He said it would be a help to him, as our twilight talk has been--when always, ever since I can remember, we two have crept away in summer into the garden, under the great pear-tree, and in winter into the deep window of the lumber-room inside my father's printing-room, where the bales of paper are kept, and old books are piled up, among which we used to make ourselves a seat.

It may be a help and comfort to Fritz, but I do not see how it ever can be any to me. He had all the thoughts, and he will have them still. But I--what shall I have for his voice and his dear face, but cold, blank paper, and no thoughts at all! Besides, I am so very busy, being the eldest; and the mother is far from strong, and the father so often wants me to help him at his types, or to read to him while he sets them.

However, Fritz wishes it, and I shall do it. I wonder what his chronicle will be like!

But where am I to begin? What is a chronicle? Two of the books in the Bible are called "Chronicles" in Latin--at least Fritz says that is what the other long word[1] means--and the first book begins with "Adam," I know, because I read it one day to my father for his printing. But Fritz certainly cannot mean me to begin so far back as that. Of course I could not remember. I think I had better begin with the oldest person I know, because she is the furthest on the way back to Adam; and that is our grandmother Von Schonberg. She is very old--more than sixty--but her form is so erect, and her dark eyes so piercing, that sometimes she looks almost younger than her daughter, our precious mother, who is often bowed down with ill-health and cares.

[Footnote 1: Paralipomenon.]

Our grandmother's father was of a n.o.ble Bohemian family, and that is what links us with the n.o.bles, although my father's family belongs to the burgher cla.s.s. Fritz and I like to look at the old seal of our grandfather Von Schonberg, with all its quarterings, and to hear the tales of our knightly and soldier ancestors--of crusader and baron. My mother, indeed, tells us this is a mean pride, and that my father's printing-press is a symbol of a truer n.o.bility than any crest of battle-axe or sword; but our grandmother, I know, thinks it a great condescension for a Schonberg to have married into a burgher family.

Fritz feels with my mother, and says the true crusade will be waged by our father's black types far better than by our great-grandfather's lances. But the old warfare was so beautiful, with the prancing horses and the streaming banners! And I cannot help thinking it would have been pleasanter to sit at the window of some grand old castle like the Wartburg, which towers above our town, and wave my hand to Fritz, as he rode, in flas.h.i.+ng armour, on his war-horse, down the steep hill side, instead of climbing up on piles of dusty books at our lumber-room window, and watching him, in his humble burgher dress, with his wallet (not too well filled), walk down the street, while no one turned to look. Ah, well! the parting would have been as dreary, and Fritz himself could not be n.o.bler. Only I cannot help seeing that people do honour the bindings and the gilded t.i.tles, in spite of all my mother and Fritz can say; and I should like my precious book to have such a binding, that the people who could not read the inside, might yet stop to look at the gold clasps and the jewelled back. To those who can read the inside, perhaps it would not matter. For of all the old barons and crusaders my grandmother tells us of, I know well none ever were or looked n.o.bler than our Fritz. His eyes are not blue, like mine--which are only German Cotta eyes, but dark and flas.h.i.+ng. Mine are very good for seeing, sewing, and helping about the printing; but his, I think, would penetrate men's hearts and command them, or survey a battle-field at a glance.

Last week, however, when I said something of the kind to him, he laughed, and said there were better battle-fields than those on which men's bones lay bleaching; and then there came that deep look into his eyes, when he seems to see into a world beyond my reach.

But I began with our grandmother, and here I am thinking about Friedrich again. I am afraid that he will be the beginning and end of my chronicle. Fritz has been nearly all the world to me. I wonder if that is why he is to leave me. The monks say we must not love any one too much; and one day, when we went to see Aunt Agnes, my mother's only sister, who is a nun in the convent of Nimptschen, I remember her saying to me when I had been admiring the flowers in the convent garden, "Little Else, will you come and live with us, and be a happy, blessed sister here?"

I said, "_Whose_ sister, Aunt Agnes? I am Fritz's sister! May Fritz come too?"

"Fritz could go into the monastry at Eisenach," she said.

"Then I would go with him," I said. "I am Fritz's sister, and I would go nowhere in the world without him."

She looked on me with a cold, grave pity, and murmured, "Poor little one, she is like her mother, the heart learns to idolize early. She has much to unlearn. G.o.d's hand is against all idols."

That is many years ago; but I remember as if it were yesterday, how the fair convent garden seemed to me all at once to grow dull and cheerless at her words and her grave looks, and I felt it damp and cold like a church-yard; and the flowers looked like made flowers; and the walls seemed to rise like the walls of a cave, and I scarcely breathed until I was outside again, and had hold of Fritz's hand.

For I am not at all religious. I am afraid I do not even wish to be. All the religious men and women I have ever seen do not seem to me half so sweet as my poor dear mother; nor as kind, clever, and cheerful as my father; nor half as n.o.ble and good as Fritz. And the Lives of the Saints puzzle me exceedingly, because it seems to me that if every one were to follow the example of St. Catherine, and even our own St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and disobey their parents, and leave their little children, it would make everything so very wrong and confused. I wonder if any one else ever felt the same, because these are thoughts I have never even told to Fritz; for he _is_ religious, and I am afraid it would pain him.

Our grandmother's husband fled from Bohemia on account of religion; but I am afraid it was not the right kind of religion, because no one seems to like to speak about it; and what Fritz and I know about him is only what we have picked up from time to time, and put together for ourselves.

Nearly a hundred years ago, two priests preached in Bohemia, called John Huss and Jerome of Prague. They seem to have been dearly beloved, and to have been thought good men during their life-time; but people must have been mistaken about them, for they were both burnt alive as heretics at Constance in two following years--in 1415 and 1416; which of course proves that they could not have been good men, but exceedingly bad.

However, their friends in Bohemia would not give up believing what they had learned of these men, although they had seen what end it led to. I do not think this was strange, because it is so very difficult to make oneself believe what one ought, as it is, and I do not see that the fear of being burned even would help one to do it; although, certainly, it might keep one silent. But these friends of John Huss were many of them n.o.bles and great men, who were not accustomed to conceal their thoughts, and they would not be silent about what Huss had taught them. What this was, Fritz and I never could find out, because my grandmother, who answers all our other questions, never would tell us a word about this.

We are, therefore, afraid it must be something very wicked indeed. And yet, when I asked one day if our grandfather (who, we think, had followed Huss), was a wicked man, her eyes flashed like lightning, and she said vehemently,--

"Better never lived or died!"

This perplexes us, but perhaps we shall understand it, like so many other things, when we are older.

Great troubles followed on the death of Huss. Bohemia was divided into three parties, who fought against each other. Castles were sacked, and n.o.ble women and little children were driven into caves and forests. Our forefathers were among the sufferers. In 1458 the conflict reached its height; many were beheaded, hung, burned alive, or tortured. My grandfather was killed as he was escaping, and my grandmother encountered great dangers, and lost all the little property which was left her, in reaching Eisenach, a young widow with two little children, my mother and Aunt Agnes.

Whatever it was that my great grandfather believed wrong, his wife did not seem to share it. She took refuge in the Augustinian Convent, where she lived until my Aunt Agnes took the veil, and my mother was married, when she came to live with us. She is as fond of Fritz as I am, in her way; although she scolds us all in turn, which is perhaps a good thing, because as she says, no one else does. And she has taught me nearly all I know, except the Apostles' Creed and Ten Commandments, which our father taught us, and the Paternoster and Ave Mary which we learned at our mother's knee. Fritz, of course, knows infinitely more than I do. He can say the Cisio Ja.n.u.s (the Church Calendar) through without one mistake, and also the Latin Grammar, I believe; and he has read Latin Books of which I cannot remember the names; and he understands all that the priests read and sing, and can sing himself as well as any of them.

But the legends of the saints, and the multiplication table, and the names of herbs and flowers, and the account of the Holy Sepulchre, and of the pilgrimage to Rome,--all these our grandmother has taught us. She looks so beautiful, our dear old grandmother, as she sits by the stove with her knitting, and talks to Fritz and me, with her lovely white hair and her dark bright eyes, so full of life and youth, they make us think of the fire on the hearth when the snow is on the roof, all warm within, or, as Fritz says,--

"It seems as if her heart lived always in the summer, and the winter of old age could only touch her body."

But I think the summer in which our grandmother's soul lives must be rather a fiery kind of summer, in which there are lightnings as well as suns.h.i.+ne. Fritz thinks we shall know her again at the Resurrection Day by that look in her eyes, only perhaps a little softened. But that seems to me terrible, and very far off; and I do not like to think of it. We often debate which of the saints she is like. I think St. Anna, the mother of Mary, mother of G.o.d, but Fritz thinks St. Catherine of Egypt, because she is so like a queen.

Besides all this, I had nearly forgotten to say I know the names of several of the stars, which Fritz taught me. And I can knit and spin, and do point st.i.tch, and embroider a little. I intend to teach it to all the children. There are a great many children in our home and more every year. If there had not been so many, I might have had time to learn more, and also to be more religious; but I cannot see what they would do at home if I were to have a vocation. Perhaps some of the younger ones may be spared to become saints. I wonder if this should turn out to be so, and if I help them, if any one ever found some little humble place in heaven for helping some one else to be religious. Because then there might perhaps be hope for me after all.

Our father is the wisest man in Eisenach. The mother thinks, perhaps, in the world. Of this, however, our grandmother has doubts. She has seen other places besides Eisenach, which is perhaps the reason. He certainly is the wisest man I ever saw. He talks about more things that I cannot understand than any one else I know. He is also a great inventor. He thought of the plan of printing books before any one else, and had almost completed the invention before any press was set up. And he always believed there was another world on the other side of the great sea, long before the Admiral Christopher Columbus discovered America.

The only misfortune has been that some one else has always stepped in just before he had completed his inventions, when nothing but some little insignificant detail was wanting to make everything perfect, and carried off all the credit and profit. It is this which has kept us from becoming rich,--this and the children. But the father's temper is so placid and even, nothing ever sours it. And this is what makes us all admire and love him so much, even more than his great abilities. He seems to rejoice in these successes of other people just as much as if he had quite succeeded in making them himself. If the mother laments a little over the fame that might have been his, he smiles and says,--

"Never mind, little mother. It will be all the same a hundred years hence. Let us not grudge any one his reward. The world has the benefit if we have not."

Then if the mother sighs a little over the scanty larder and wardrobe, he replies,--

"Cheer up, little mother, there are more Americas yet to be discovered, and more inventions to be made. In fact," he adds, with that deep far seeing look of his, "something else has just occurred to me, which, when I have brought it to perfection, will throw all the discoveries of this and every other age into the shade."

And he kisses the mother and departs into his printing-room. And the mother looks wonderingly after him, and says,--

"We must not disturb the father, children, with our little cares. He has great things in his mind, which we shall all reap the harvest of some day."

So, she goes to patch some little garment once more, and to try to make one day's dinner expand into enough for two.

What the father's great discovery is at present, Fritz and I do not quite know. But we think it has something to do, either with the planets and the stars, or with that wonderful stone the philosophers have been so long occupied about. In either case, it is sure to make us enormously rich all at once; and, meantime, we may well be content to eke out our living as best we can.