Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 359, September 1845
- -
- 100%
- +
The last rule which it seems material for the historical novelist to observe, is that characteristic or national manners, especially in middle or low life, should, wherever it is possible, be drawn from real life. The manners of the highest class over all Europe are the same. If a novelist paints well-bred person in one capital, his picture may, with a few slight variations, stand for the same sphere of society in any other. But in middle, and still more in low life, the diversity in different countries is very great, and such as never can be reached by mere reading, or study of the works of others. And yet, amidst all this diversity, so much is human nature at bottom every where the same, that the most inexperienced reader can distinguish, even in the delineation of manners to which he is an entire stranger, those which are drawn from life, from those which are taken from the sketches or ideas of others. Few in this country have visited the Sierra Morena, and none certainly have seen it in the days of Cervantes, yet we have no difficulty in at once perceiving that Sancho Panza, and the peasants and muleteers in Don Quixote, are faithfully drawn from real life. Few of the innumerable readers of Sir Walter have had personal means of judging of the fidelity of his pictures of the manners and ideas of the Scotch peasants in his earlier novels; but yet there is no one in any country who does not at once see that they have been drawn from nature, and contain the most faithful picture of it. It is the fidelity of this picture which gives the Scotch novels their great charm. It is the same with Fielding: his leading characters in low life are evidently drawn from nature, and thence his long-continued popularity. When Sir Walter comes to paint the manners of the middle classes or peasants in England, from plays, farces, and the descriptions of others, as in Kenilworth, Woodstock, Peveril of the Peak, and the Fortunes of Nigel, he is infinitely inferior, and, in truth, often insupportably dull. His dialogue is a jargon mixed up of scraps and expressions from old plays or quaint tracts, such as no man on earth ever did speak, and which it is only surprising a man of his sagacity should have supposed they ever could. The same defect is more signally conspicuous in the dialogue of several of the historical romances of James.
It is the accurate and faithful picture of national character from real life, joined to the poetical interest of his Indian warriors, and his incomparable powers of natural description, which has given Cooper his great and well-deserved reputation. In many of the essential qualities of a novelist, he is singularly defective. His story is often confused, and awkwardly put together. Unity of interest is seldom thought of. He has no conception of the refined manners and chivalrous feelings of European society: though he has of late years seen much of it in many countries, he has never been able to become familiar with its ideas, or imbibe its spirit. His heroes, among the white men at least, are never any thing above American skippers, or English subalterns or post-captains: his heroines have in general the insipidity which is, we hope unjustly, ascribed, with great personal charms, to the fair sex on the other side of the Atlantic. But in the forest or on the wave, he is superb. His Last of the Mohicans and Prairie are noble productions, to be matched with any in the world for the delineation of lofty and elevated character – the more interesting that they belong to a race, like the heroic age, now wellnigh extinct. He paints the adventures, the life, the ideas, the passions, the combined pride and indolence, valour and craft, heroism and meanness of the red men, with the hand of a master. Equally admirable is his delineation of the white man of the frontier of civilization – Hawkeye or Leather-stocking, with his various other denominations – who is the precursor, as it were, of European invasion, who plunges into the forest far ahead of his more tardy followers, and leads the roaming life of the Indian, but with the advantage of the arms, the arts, and the perseverance of the Anglo-Saxon. But he is strictly a national writer. It is in the delineation of Transatlantic character, scenes of the forest, or naval adventures, that his great powers are shown; when he comes to paint the manners, or lay the seat of his conceptions in Europe, he at once falls to mediocrity, and sometimes becomes ridiculous.
Manzoni is an author of the highest excellence, whose celebrity has been derived from the same faithful delineation from real life of national manners. He has written but one novel, the Promessi Sposi; though various other works, some religious, some historical, have proceeded from his pen. But that one novel has given him a European reputation. It is wholly different in composition and character from any other historical romance in existence: it has no affinity either with Scott or Cooper, Bulwer or James. The scene, laid in 1628, at the foot of the mountains which shut in the Lake of Como, transports us back two centuries in point of time, and to the south of the Alps in point of scene. As might be expected, the ideas, characters, and incidents of such a romance differ widely from those of northern climes and Protestant realms. That is one of its great charms. We are transported, as it were, into a new world; and yet a world so closely connected with our own, by the manners and ideas of chivalry, our once common Catholic faith, and the associations which every person of education has with Italian scenes and images, that we feel, in traversing it, the pleasure of novelty without the ennui of a strange land. No translation could give an idea of the peculiar beauties and excellences of the original. As might be expected, the feudal baron and the Catholic church enter largely into the composition of the story. The lustful passions, savage violence, and unbridled license of the former, strong in his men-at-arms, castle battlements, and retainers; the disinterested benevolence, charitable institutions, and paternal beneficence of the latter, resting on the affections and experienced benefits of mankind, are admirably depicted. His descriptions of the plague, famine, and popular revolt at Milan, are masterpieces which never were excelled. The saintlike character of Cardinal Borromeo, strong in the sway of religion, justice, and charity, in the midst of the vehemence of worldly passion and violence with which he is surrounded, is peculiarly striking. It is fitted, like Guizot's Lectures on History, to illustrate the incalculable advantage which arose, in an age of general rapine and unsettled government, from the sway, the disinterestedness, and even the superstitions, of religion.
But the greatest merit of the work is to be found in the admirable delineation of the manners, ideas, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, of humble life with which it abounds. The hero of the piece is a silk-weaver named Renzo, near Lecco, on the Lake of Como; the heroine Lucia, his betrothed, the daughter of a poor widow in the same village; and the story is founded on the stratagems and wiles of an unbridled baron in the vicinity, whose passions had been excited by Lucia's beauty, first to prevent her marriage, then to obtain possession of her person. In the conception of such a piece is to be seen decisive evidence of the vast change in human affairs, since the days when Tasso and Ariosto poured forth to an admiring age, in the same country, the loves of high-born damsels, the combats of knights, the manners, the pride, and the exclusiveness of chivalry. In its execution, Manzoni is singularly felicitous. He is minute without being tedious, graphic but not vulgar, characteristic and yet never offensive. His pictures of human life, though placed two centuries back, are evidently drawn from nature in these times: the peasants whom he introduces are those of the plains of Lombardy at this time; but though he paints them with the fidelity of an artist, it is yet with the feelings of a gentleman. His details are innumerable – his finishing is minute; but it is the minute finishing of Albert Durer or Leonardo da Vinci, not of Teniers or Ostade. In this respect he offers a striking contrast to the modern romance writers of France – Victor Hugo, Janin, Madame Dudevant, and Sue – by whom vice and licentiousness are exhibited with vast power, but more than their native undisguised colours. – But this wide and interesting subject must be reserved for a future occasion.
A FEW WORDS FOR BETTINA
There seems a very general belief among sensible people that we have had enough of the Germans. What with barons, and princes, and geheimraths, and consistorialraths, and poets, and philosophers, burying their profundity in tobacco smoke, and other "reek" more impervious still, we certainly have had enough in book and essay, for the last few years, of the German Man. And, latterly, the German women have come in for their share. If the men have been puffed and praised till their very names are ridiculous and offensive, it is not so with the gracious and high-born ladies. All the old dowagers that flourish a goose-quill make a simultaneous assault on the unfortunate "frau," or "fraulein;" pedantic old bachelors are horrified at the wildness of some of the female Godwin's observations, and fall to, in the general mélée, tugging and tearing at the miserable damsel till not a shred is left to cover her; and starched old maids, who have been wondering for twenty years if Woman can etherealize society, rejoice to see the punishment of such a presuming minx, and encourage the performers with all their might. The attack may be very spirited, and the culprit properly trounced in most cases – so we are contented to leave the fantastic and philosophic heroines – so bepraised by their countrymen – to the tender mercies of our Amazons at home; but we couch the lance, in Maga's lists, on behalf of one whose name is known very widely, but whose character is little understood, and constitute ourselves champion à l'outrance of Bettina Brentano. Yes, we are in love – over head and ears – with Bettina Brentano. But we must guard ourselves a little in making this confession. It is towards the nice, clever, black-eyed, light-figured little houri of that name, in the pleasant years 1807-8-9, and 10, that we own the soft impeachment, or rather make proud profession of our feelings. With regard to the present bearer of the denomination, who has gone, in despite of our affection, and married a man of the name of Arnini, we confess we are utterly indifferent to her; and shall maintain till our dying day, that the authoress of the Letters to Goethe died in the early part of the year 1811, universally lamented, and giving promise of a mind, when matured and steadied, such as no petticoated genius – not De Staël herself – has equalled. Such letters, so full of wild fancies, poetical descriptions, and burning declarations, were never written by man to woman, or woman to man, before or since. They could not be written by woman to man – they were written by a child to Goethe. And this is the key to the wonders of the correspondence. Don't let people talk nonsense about the improprieties of her behaviour – and shake their foolish heads, and lift their puritanic eyes up to heaven: her conduct, we grant them, would have been very improper in them; but in Bettina Brentano it was beautiful, graceful, and as free from impropriety as the morning and evening walks of Paul and Virginia. Perhaps we may condescend on some of the particulars dwelt on in the accusation – but perhaps we may not – for the people who see errors and grossnesses in the language or behaviour of Bettina, blush "celestial rosy red" at the Apollo and the Venus. Let them get trousers and petticoats for the god and goddess, and leave poor Bettina alone.
There lived in Frankfort, in the summer of 1807, a little girl of fourteen or fifteen years of age, very small in stature, and so light and dancing in her movements that she might have passed for an attendant of Queen Titania; but in her deep black eyes there was a sort of light that the fairies have not yet arrived at – and her voice was musical – and her lips were rosy; and every where she was known as the cleverest little girl that ever was seen, either in fairyland or Frankfort, or any where else. She was of a sweet, affectionate, trusting nature, and entered with a romantic tenderness into an alliance with a wild, half-insane enthusiast, several years older than herself – the sister Günderode, a canoness of a convent on the Rhine. The lay-sister talked and reasoned herself into the persuasion that she would be happier out of the world than in it; so, instead of marrying the surgeon or other respectable inhabitant of the free city, and having a large family to provide for, which would have put more sensible thoughts into her head, she stabbed herself one fine day on the bank of the river – and Bettina had no longer a friend.
But there dwelt in the same town a majestic woman – strong-minded, tender-hearted – and with talent enough to compensate for the stupidity of all the other old women (male and female) in Frankfort; and her name was Madame Goethe, and she was seventy-five years old, and lived in an old house by herself. Bettina went to her, with her head sunk in grief, and her heart yearning for somebody to make a friend of, and sat down on a stool at the old lady's feet, and said, "I have lost my Günderode, will you be my friend in her stead?" And the old lady was delighted, and kissed her; and Bettina sat at her feet, day after day, from that time forth; and they were the two tenderest friends in Germany. And a pleasant thing it would be to have been a mouse in the wall to hear such conversation as was carried on by the two.
Now, in the year 1749, there was born a boy in Frankfort, – a poet, great in soul – the maker of his country's literature – no other than the illustrious Goethe – a son worthy of such a mother as Bettina's friend; and while all Germany and France – the whole civilized world in short – were almost worshipping his matured, perhaps his decaying genius, the noble mother was loud and eloquent in her description of him as a boy – as a youth – as a poet of twenty years old; and the little girl of fifteen sat and listened, till there arose in her heart – or rather in her brain, for it was a stirring of the intellect more than the affections – a feeling of intense admiration, softened under the mother's teaching into something that she herself fancied was love; for which audacious fancy the sagacious old woman gave her some raps over the knuckles – (we are not sure that they were altogether figurative either, but good substantial raps) – enough to make the fingers tingle in a very disagreeable manner indeed. But in spite of raps, whether figurative or not, she went on feeding her fancy with all these glowing accounts; and for a while we have no doubt that she never gave the almanac a thought – nor the baptismal register – nor the fact, known to all arithmeticians, that a person born in 1749 was fifty-eight years old in 1807. Fifty-eight years old, with long white hair. But Bettina had never seen him. She only knew him in his works as a poet, and as a man – or rather as a boy – in the beautiful recollections of his mother. "You don't ask after Wolfgang," says that sensible old matron in one of her letters; "I've always said to you – wait a while till some one else comes, you'll not trouble your head about him any more." But in the mean time she did trouble her head about him to an intolerable extent; and great was her rejoicing when her brother-in-law offered to take her as companion to his wife, in a journey he was forced to make to Berlin, and afterwards to Weimar. The country was at that time the seat of war; camps and positions of many different armies had to be passed through; and as a protection to the ladies they were dressed in men's clothes. Bettina sat on the box the whole time – passed as a little tiger at the inns where they slept – making herself generally useful, harnessing and unharnessing the horses – sleeping all night outside, though the weather was piercingly cold; and finally, after a week of hard travelling, arrived at the city of the sages – the literary capital of Germany. Her first care here was to change her dress, and find out her relation Wieland – from him she got a note to Goethe, and, armed with that, presented herself at his house. This is her account of the meeting in her letter to his mother: —
"The door opened, and there he stood, solemn and still, and looked steadily at me. I stretched my hands to him, I believe – but soon I was unconscious of every thing. Goethe catched me to his breast. – 'Poor child, have I frightened you?' These were the first words that made their way to my heart. He led me into his room, and placed me on a sofa opposite him. We were both silent – at last he said, 'You have read in the newspapers that we have lately met with a severe loss, in the death of the Duchess Amelie.' 'Ah! I said, 'I never read the newspapers.' 'Indeed! I thought you took an interest in all that goes on at Weimar.' 'No, no, I take no interest in any thing at Weimar but you; and I have not patience enough to toil through a newspaper.' 'You are an affectionate little girl.' A long pause – I, banished all the while to the horrid sofa, and very fidgety of course. You know how impossible it is for me to sit there and do the pretty behaved. Ah, mother, can a person change his nature all at once? I said plump – 'Here, on this sofa, I can't stay,' and sprang up. 'Make yourself comfortable, by all means,' said he. So I flew to him, and put my arms round his neck. He took me on his knee, and pressed me to his heart. All was still. I had not slept for such a time. I had sighed to see him for years. I fell asleep with my head on his breast; and, when I awoke, it was to a new existence; – and that is all at this present writing."
Bettina, we repeat, was fifteen – Goethe was fifty-eight; and this narrative was sent to his mother. We will only add, that Voltaire affected an interesting blush when he thought on the improprieties of the Book of Ruth. So, hold up your head, our bright-eyed, beautiful Bettina, and cheer the heart of the old man eloquent with your affection; and tell him over and over, in your own wild and captivating manner, that you love him, and worship him, and think of him always, and sing his ballads, and read his books – and nobody in their senses will think a bit the worse of you for it – not even your worthy husband, who was five or six and twenty years old when you married him; and, very likely, was nearly as enthusiastic about Wolfgang as yourself. And as to kissing and jumping on people's knees, and hugging close to the heart, these seem equivalent, among the Germans of all ranks and ages, to a good hearty shake of the hand among our more sedately behaved population; and though we think that, under ordinary circumstances, our national customs in those respects are preferable, we are not prepared to say that we should be sorry for the introduction of a little Germanism in our own case, if we were a great poet at the age of fifty-eight, and were acquainted with a lively, happy, charming little genius like Bettina, of fifteen. And that she was all that we have called her – and more – we will now proceed to show, by giving a few translations from her letters; and, if we can find an opportunity of introducing a story or two by the mother, we will not let it pass. – And here let us make a remark, savouring, perhaps, of national vanity – of which failing we have heard our countrymen not unfrequently accused. Our remark is this, that the Frau Rath, as Goethe's mother is called, has many characteristics about her which we have been in the habit of considering Scotch. If we reduced her reported conversations to our native Doric, they would read exactly like the best parts of Scott and Galt – a great deal of shrewdness, mixed with a wild sort of humour, sarcastic and descriptive; but in her, perhaps, elevated by an occasional burst of poetry into something higher than is met with in the Ayrshire Legatees, or even in Cyril Thornton. In saying this, we allude, of course, to none of the tedious "havers" contained in the book dedicated to the King of Prussia, or at least to the anti-biblical parts of them – the old Frau Rath being about the worst commentator it has ever been our fortune to meet.
But let us go back to Bettina. "Morris Bethman tells me," says the Frau Rath, in a letter to her pet, "that the De Staël is going to call on me. She has been in Weimar. I wish you were here, for I must get up my French as well as I can." And the jealousy of the fiery Bettina bursts out at the very thought of any one being at Weimar and visiting Goethe but herself.
"I have not heard from your son since the 13th of August, and here is the end of September. De Staël has made his time pass quickly, and driven me out of his head. A celebrated woman is a curiosity. Nobody else can compete with her. She is like brandy, which the poor grain it is made from can never be compared to. For brandy smacks on the tongue and gets into the heard, and so does a celebrated woman. But the simple wheat is better far to me; – the sower sows it in the loosened soil, and the bounteous sun and fruitful showers draw it from the earth again, and it makes green the whole field, and bears golden ears, and at last gives rise to a happy harvest-home. I would rather be a simple wheat-grain than a celebrated woman; and rather, far rather, that he should break me for his daily bread than that I should get into his head like a dram. And now I will tell you that I supped last night with De Staël in Maintz. No woman would sit next her at table, so I sat down beside her myself. It was uncomfortable enough; for the gentlemen stood round the table, and crowded behind our chairs, to speak to her and see her close. They bent over me. I said – 'Vos adorateurs me suffoquent.' She laughed. She told me that Goethe had spoken to her of me. I would fain have sat and listened, for I should like to hear what it was he said. And yet I was wrong; for I would rather he did not speak of me to any one – and I don't believe he did – she perhaps only said so. At last so many came to speak to her, and pressed upon me so much, that I couldn't bear it any longer. I said to her – 'Vos lauriers me pèsent trop sur les épaules;' and I stood up, and pushed my way through the crowd. Sismondi, her companion, came to me and kissed my hand, and told me I was very clever, and said it to the rest, and they repeated it twenty times over, as if I had been a prince whose sayings are always thought so wise though ever so commonplace.
"After that I listened to what she said about Goethe. She said she expected to find him a second Werther, but she was disappointed – neither his manners nor appearance were like it, and she was very sorry that he fell short of him so entirely. Frau Rath, I was in a rage at this, (that was of no use you will say,) and I turned to Schlegel, and said to him in German, 'Madame de Staël has made a double mistake – first in her expectation, and then in her judgment. We Germans expect that Goethe can shake twenty heroes from his sleeve to astonish the French – but in our judgment he himself is a hero of a very different sort.' Schlegel is very wrong not to have informed her better on this. She threw a laurel leaf that she had been playing with on the ground. I stamped on it, and pushed it out of the way with my foot, and went off. That was my interview with the celebrated woman."
But the De Staël is made the heroine of another letter, in which Bettina give Goethe an account of her presentation to his mother. The ceremony took place in the apartments of Morris Bethman.
"Your mother – whether out of irony or pride – had decked herself wonderfully out – but with German fancy, not in French taste; and I must tell you that, when I saw her with three feathers on her head, swaying from side to side – red, white, and blue – the French national colours – which rose from a field of sun-flowers – my heart beat high with pleasure and expectation. She was rouged with the greatest skill; her great black eyes fired a thundering volley; about her neck hung the well-known ornament of the Queen of Prussia; lace of a fine ancestral look and great beauty – a real family treasure – covered her bosom. And there she stood, with white glacée gloves; – in one hand an ornamented fan, with which she set the air in motion; with the other, which was bare, and all be-ringed with sparkling jewels, she every now and then took a pinch from the snuff-box with your miniature on the lid – the one with long locks, powdered, and with the head leant down as if in thought. A number of dignified old dowagers formed a semicircle in the bedroom of Morris Bethman; and the assemblage, on a deep-red carpet – a white field in the middle, on which was worked a leopard – looked very grand and imposing. Along the walls were ranged tall Indian plants, and the room was dimly lighted with glass-lamps. Opposite the semicircle stood the bed, on an estrade raised two steps, also covered with a deep-red carpet, with candelabra at each side.