Part 9 (2/2)
It is a positive fact that all this puzzled me amazingly. There were many things in which I, the friend and pupil of Navone, was as yet as innocent as a babe unborn. The lady seemed to be amused--as well she might. _Sancta simplicitas_! I asked her why the conductor had drawn the curtains. She laughed, and explained that he possibly thought we were a bridal pair or lovers. Common sense and ordinary politeness naturally inspired the reply that I wished we were, which declaration was so amiably received that I suggested the immediate inst.i.tution of such an arrangement. Which was so far favourably received that it was sealed with a kiss. However, the seal was not broken. I think the lady must have been very much amused. It is not without due reflection that I record this. Kissing went for very little in Germany in those days. It was about as common in Vienna as shaking hands. But this was my first experience in it. So I record it, because it seems as if some benevolent fairy had welcomed me to Germany; it took place just as we crossed the frontier. However, I found out some time after, by a strange accident, that my fairy was the wife of a banker who lived beyond Heidelberg; and at Heidelberg I left her and went to the first hotel in the town.
I had formed no plans, and had no letters to anybody. I had read Howitt's ”Student Life in Germany” through and through, so I thought I would study in Heidelberg. But how to begin? That was the question. I went into a shop and bought some cigars. There I consulted with the shopkeeper as to what I should do. Could he refer me to some leading authority in the University, known to him, who would give me advice? He could, and advised me to consult with the Pedell Capelmann.
Now I didn't know it, but Pedell--meaning beadle, commonly called Poodle by the students--was the head-constable of the University. In honest truth I supposed he must be the President or Pro-Rector. So I went to Pedell Capelmann. His appearance did not quite correspond to my idea of a learned professor. He was an immensely burly, good-natured fellow, who came in in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, and who, when he learned what I wanted, burst out into a _Her'r'r' Gottsdonerrwetter_! of surprise, as he well might. But I knew that the Germans were a very _sans facon bourgeois_ people, and still treated him with deep respect. He suggested that, as there were a great many American students there, I had better call on them. He himself would take me to see the Herr O--, with whom, as I subsequently learned, he had more than once had discussions relative to questions of University-munic.i.p.al discipline. As for the startling peculiarity which attended my introduction to University life, it is best summed up in the remark which the Herr O. (of Baltimore) subsequently made.
”Great G.o.d, fellows! _he made his first call on old Capelmann_!!”
He took me to the Herr O. and introduced me. I was overwhelmed with my cordial reception. There was at once news sent forth that a new man and a brother fellow-countryman had come to join the ranks. ”And messengers through all the land sought Sir Tannhauser out.” I was pumped dry as to my precedents, and as I came fresh from Princeton and had been through Italy, I was approved of. The first thing was a discussion as to where I was to live. The Frau Directorinn Louis in the University Place had two fine rooms which had just been occupied by a prince. So we went and secured the rooms, which were indeed very pleasant, and by no means dear as it seemed to me. I was to breakfast in my rooms, dine with the family at one o'clock, and sup about town.
Then there was a grand council as to what I had better study, and over my prospects in life; and it was decided that, as the law-students were the most distinguished or swell of all, I had better be a lawyer. So it was arranged that I should attend Mittermayer's and others' lectures; to all of which I cheerfully a.s.sented. The next step was to give a grand supper in honour of my arrival. After the dinner and the wine, I drank twelve _schoppens_ of beer, and then excused myself on the plea of having letters to write. I believe, however, that I forgot to write the letters. And here I may say, once for all, that having discovered that, if I had no gift for mathematics, I had a great natural talent for Rheinwein and lager, I did not bury that talent in a napkin, but, like the rest of my friends, made the most of it, firstly, during two semesters in Heidelberg:
”Then I bolted off to Munich, And within the year, Underneath my German tunic Stowed whole b.u.t.ts of beer; For I drank like fifty fishes, Drank till all was blue, For whenever I was vicious I was thirsty too.”
The result of which ”dire debos.h.i.+ng” was that, having come to Europe with a soul literally attenuated and starved for want of the ordinary gaiety and amus.e.m.e.nt which all youth requires, my life in Princeton having been one continued strain of a sobriety which continually sank into subdued melancholy, and a body just ready to yield to consumption, I grew vigorous and healthy, or, as the saying is, ”hearty as a buck.” I believe that if my Cousin Sam had gone on with me even-pace, that he would have lived till to-day. When we came abroad I seemed to be the weakest; he returned, and died in a few months from our hereditary disease. How many hecatombs of young men have been murdered by ”seriousness” and ”total abstinence,” miscalled _temperance_, in our American colleges, can never be known; perhaps it is as well that it never will be; for if it were, there would be a rush to the other extreme, which would ”upset society.” And here be it noted that, with all our inordinate national or international Anglo-Saxon sense of superiority to everybody and everything foreign, we are in the _main_ thing--that is, the truly rational enjoyment of life and the art of living--utterly inferior to the German and Latin races. We are for the most part either too good or too bad--totally abstemious or raving drunk--always in a hurry after excitement or in a worry over our sins, or those of our neighbours. ”Rest, rest, perturbed Yankee, _rest_!”
My rooms were on the ground-floor, the bedroom looking into the University Square and my study into a garden. Next door to me dwelt Paulus, the king of the Rationalists. He was then, I believe, ninety- four years of age. He remained daily till about twelve or one in a comatose condition, when he awoke and became lively till about three, when he sank into sleep again. His days were like those of a far Northern winter, lit by the sun at the same hours.
The next morning a very gentlemanly young man knocked at my door, and entered and asked in perfect English for a Mr. Bell, who lived in the same house. I informed him that Mr. Bell was out, but asked him to enter my room and take a chair, which he did, conversing with me for half an hour, when he departed, leaving a card on a side-table. In a few minutes later, O., who was of the kind who notice everything, entered, took up the card, and read on it the name and address of the young Grand Duke of Baden, who was naturally by far the greatest man in the country, he being its hereditary ruler.
”Where the devil did you get this?” asked O., and all, in amazement.
”Oh,” I replied, ”it's only the Duke. He has just been in here making a call. If you fellows had come five minutes sooner you'd have seen him.
Have some beer!”
The impression that I was a queer lot, due to my making my first call on Capelmann _et cetera_, was somewhat strengthened by this card, until I explained how I came by it. But as Dr. Johnson in other words remarked, there are people to whom such queer things happen daily, and others to whom they occur once a year. And there was never yet a living soul who entered into my daily life who did not observe that I belong to the former cla.s.s. If I have a guardian angel, it must be Edgar A. Poe's Angel of the Odd. But he generally comes to those who belong to him!
It was a long time before I profited much by my lectures, because it was fearful work for me to learn German. I engaged a tutor, and worked hard, and read a great deal, and talked it _con amore_; but few persons would believe how slowly I learned it, and with what incredible labour. How often have I cursed up hill and down dale, the Tower of Babel, which first brought the curse of languages upon the world! And what did I ever have to do with that Tower? Had I lived in those days, I would never have laid hand to the work in merry, sunny, lazy Babylon, nor contributed a brick to it. By the way, it was a juvenile conjecture of mine that the Tower of Babel was destroyed for being a shot-tower, in which ammunition was prepared to be used by the heathen. Which theory might very well have been inspired by a verse from the old Puritanical rendering of the Psalms:--
”Ye race itt is not alwayes gott By him who swiftest runns, Nor ye Battell by ye Peo-pel Who shoot with longest gunnes.”
Even before I had gone to Princeton I had read and learned a great deal relative to Justinus Kerner, the great German supernaturalist, mystic, and poet, firstly from a series of articles in the _Dublin University Magazine_, and later from a translation of ”The Seeress of Prevorst,” and several of the good man's own romances and lyrics. I suppose that, of all men on the face of the earth, I should have at that time preferred to meet him. Wherefore, as a matter of course, it occurred that one fine morning a pleasant gentlemanly German friend of mine, who spoke English perfectly, and whose name was Rucker, walked into my room, and proposed that we should take a two or three days' walk up the Neckar with our knapsacks, and visit the famous old ruined castle of the Weibertreue. My mother had read me the ballad-legend of it in my boyhood, and I had learned it by heart. Indeed, I can still recall it after sixty years:--
”Who can tell me where Weinsberg lies?
As brave a town as any; It must have sheltered in its time Brave wives and maidens many: If e'er I wooing have to do, Good faith, in Weinsberg I will woo!”
”And then, when we are there,” said Rucker, ”we will call on an old friend of my father's, named Justinus Kerner. Did you ever hear of him?”
Did a Jew ever hear of Moses, or an American of General Was.h.i.+ngton? In five minutes I convinced my friend that I knew more about Kerner than he himself did. Whereupon it was decided that we should set forth on the following morning.
Blessed, beautiful, happy summer mornings in Suabia--green mounts and grey rocks with old castles--peasants harvesting hay--a _Kirchweih_, or peasant's merry-making, with dancing and festivity--till we came to Weinsberg, and forthwith called on the ancient sage, whom we found with the two or three ladies and gentlemen of his family. I saw at a glance that they had the air of aristocracy. He received us very kindly, and invited us to come to dinner and sup with him.
The Weibertreue is an old castle which was in or at the end of Dr.
Kerner's garden. Once, when all the town had taken refuge in it from the Emperor Conrad, the latter gave the women leave to quit the fort, and also permission to every one to carry with her whatever was unto her most valuable, precious, or esteemed. And so the dames went forth, every one bearing on her back her husband.
In the tower of the castle, or in its wall, which was six feet thick, were eight or ten windows, gradually opening like trumpets, through which the wind blew all the time, and pleasantly enough on a hot summer day. In each of these the Doctor had placed an AEolian harp, and he who did not believe in fairies or the gentle spirit of a viewless sound should have sat in that tower and listened to the music as it rose and fell, as in endless solemn glees or part-singing; one harp stepping in, and pealing out richly and strangely as another died away, while anon, even as the new voice came, there thrilled in unison one or two more Ariels who seemed to be hurrying up to join the song. It was a marvellous strange thing of beauty, which resounded, indeed, all over Germany, for men spoke of it far and wide.
Quite as marvellous, in the evening, was the Doctor's own performance on the single and double Jew's harp. From this most unpromising instrument he drew airs of such exquisite beauty that one could not have been more astonished had he heard the sweet tones of Grisi drawn from a cat by twisting its tail. But we were in a land of marvels and wonders, or, as an English writer described it, ”Weinsberg, a place on the Neckar, inhabited partly by men and women--some in and some out of the body--and partly by ghosts.” There were visions in the air, and dreams sitting on the staircases; in fact, when I saw the peasants working in the fields, I should not have been astonished to see them vanish into mist or sink into the ground.
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