CHAPTER VIII. CHRISTIANE VULPIUS. ONE day in the autumn of 1788, Goethe, walking in the much-loved park, was accosted by a fresh, young, bright-looking girl, who, with many reverences, handed him a petition. He looked into the bright eyes of the petitioner, and then, in a conciliated mood, looked at the petition, which entreated the great poet to exert his influence to procure a post for a young author, then living at Jena by the translation of French and Italian stories. This young author was Vulpius, whose Rinaldo Rinaldini has doubtless made my readers shudder in their youth. His robber romances were at one time very popular; but his name is now only rescued from oblivion, because he was the brother of that Christiane who handed the petition to Goethe, and who thus took the first step on the path which led to their marriage. Christiane is on many accounts an interesting figure to those who are interested. in the biography of Goethe; and the love she excited, no less than the devotedness with which for eight-and-twenty years she served him, deserve a more tender memory than has befallen her. Her father was one of those wretched beings whose drunkenness slowly but surely brings a whole family to He would sometimes sell the coat off his back for drink. When his children grew up, they contrived to get want. away from him, and to support themselves; the son by literature, the daughters by making artificial flowers,* woollen work, etc. It is usually said that Christiane was utterly uneducated, and the epigrammatic pen glibly records that Goethe married his servant.' She never was his servant. Nor was she uneducated. Her social position indeed was very humble, as the foregoing indications suggest; but that she was not uneducated is plainly seen in the facts, of which there can be no doubt, namely, that for her were written the Roman Elegies, and the Metamorphoses of Plants; and that in her company Goethe pursued his optical and botanical researches. How much she understood of these researches, we cannot know; but it is certain that, unless she had shown a lively comprehension, he would never have persisted in talking of them to her. Their time, he says, was not spent only in caresses, but also in rational talk : Wird doch nicht immer geküsst, es wird vernünftig gesprochen. This is decisive. Throughout his varied correspondence we always see him presenting different subjects to different minds, treating of topics in which his correspondents are interested, not dragging forward topics which merely interest him; and among the wide range of subjects he had mastered, there were many upon which he might have conversed with Christiane, in preference to science, had she shown any want of comprehension of scientific phenomena. There is one of the Elegies, the eighth, which in six lines gives us a distinct idea of the sort of cleverness and the sort of beauty which she possessed; a cleverness not of the kind recognized by schoolmasters, because it does not display itself in aptitude for book * This detail will give the reader a clue to the poem Der neue Pausias. learning; a beauty not of the kind recognized by conventional taste, because it wants the conventional regularity of feature. Wenn du mir sagst, du habest als Kind, Geliebte, den Menschen Bis du grösser geworden und still dich entwickelt; ich glaub' es: Fehlet Bildung und Farbe doch auch der Blüthe des Weinstocks, Surely the poet's word is to be taken in such a case! While, however, rectifying a general error, let me not fall into the opposite extreme. Christiane had her charm ; but she was not a highly gifted woman. She was not a Frau von Stein, capable of being the companion and the sharer of his highest aspirations. Quick motherwit, a lively spirit, a loving heart, and great aptitude for domestic duties, she undoubtedly possessed: she was gay, enjoying, fond of pleasure even to excess, and as may be read in the poems which she inspired — was less the mistress of his Mind than of his Affections. Her goldenbrown locks, laughing eyes, ruddy cheeks, kiss-provoking lips, small and gracefully rounded figure, gave her the appearance of a young Dionysos.' Her naïveté, gayety and enjoying temperament completely fascinated Goethe, who recognized in her one of those free, healthy specimens of Nature which education had not distorted with artifice. She was like a child of the sensuous Italy he * When you tell me, dearest, that as a child you were not admired, and even your mother scorned you, till you grew up and silently developed yourself; I can quite believe it. I can readily imagine you as a peculiar child. If the blossoms of the vine are wanting in color and form, the grapes once ripe are the delight of gods and men.' † So says Madame Schopenhauer, not a prejudiced witness. had just quitted with so much regret; and there are few poems in any language which approach the passionate gratitude of those in which he recalls the happiness she gave him. Christ Why did he not marry her at once? His dread of marriage has already been shown; and to this abstract dread there must be added the great disparity of station; a disparity so great that not only did it make the liaison scandalous, it made Christiane herself reject the offer of marriage. Stahr reports that persons now living have heard her declare that it was her own fault her marriage was so long delayed; and certain it is that when mas, 1789 — she bore him a child (August von Goethe, to whom the Duke stood godfather), he took her with her mother and sister to live in his house, and always regarded the connection as a marriage. But however he may have regarded it, Public Opinion has not forgiven this defiance of social laws. The world blamed him loudly; even his admirers cannot think of the connection without pain. The Nation,' says Schäfer, has never forgiven its greatest poet for this rupture with Law and Custom; nothing has stood so much in the way of a right appreciation of his moral character, nothing has created. more false judgments on the tendency of his writings than this half-marriage.' 6 But let us be just. While no one can refrain from deploring that Goethe, so eminently needing a pure do mestic life, should have found no wife whom he could avow, one who would in all senses have been a wife to him, the mistress of his house, the companion of his life; on the other hand, no one who knows the whole circumstances, can refrain from confessing that there was also a bright side to this dark episode. Having indicated the dark side, and especially its social effect, we have to consider what happiness it brought him at a time when he was most lonely, most unhappy. It gave him the joys of paternity, for which his heart yearned. It gave him a faithful and devoted affection. It gave him one to look after his domestic existence, and it gave him a peace in that existence which hitherto he had sought in vain. Oftmals hab' ich geirrt, und habe mich wieder gefunden, There is a letter still extant (unpublished) written ten years after their first acquaintance, in which, like a passionate lover, he regrets not having taken something of her's on his journey-even her slipper that he might feel less lonely! To have excited such love, Christiane must have been a very different woman from that which it is the fashion in Germany to describe her. In conclusion, let it be added that his Mother not only expressed herself perfectly satisfied with his choice, received Christiane as a daughter, and wrote affectionately to her, but refused to listen to the officious meddlers who tried to convince her of the scandal which the connection occasioned. The Roman Elegies are doubly interesting: first, as expressions of his feelings; secondly, as perhaps the most perfect poems of the kind in all literature. In them we see how the journey to Italy had saturated his mind with the spirit of ancient Art. Yet while reproducing the Past with matchless felicity, he is, at the same time, thoroughly original. Nowhere in Greek or Roman literature do I *Often have I erred, and always found the path again, but never found myself happier ; now in this maiden lies my happiness! If this, too, is an error, O spare me the knowledge, ye gods, and let me only discover it beyond the grave.' |