Family. We saw them coming from a distance, and Goethe separated from me to stand aside: say what I would, I could not make him advance another step. I pressed my hat down upon my head, buttoned up my greatcoat, and walked with folded arms through the thickest of the throng. Princes and pages formed a line, the Archduke Rudolph took off his hat, and the empress made the first salutation. Those gentry know me. I saw to my real amusement the procession file past Goethe. He stood aside with his hat off, bending lowly. I rallied him smartly for it; I gave him no quarter." 1

This anecdote is usually quoted as evidence of Beethoven's independence and Goethe's servility. A very little consideration will make us aware that Beethoven was ostentatiously rude in the assertion of his independence, and that Goethe was simply acting on the dictates of common courtesy in standing aside and taking off his hat, as all Germans do when royalty passes them. It is as much a matter of courtesy to stand still, and take off the hat, when a royal personage passes in carriage or on foot, as it is to take off the hat when an acquaintance passes. Beethoven might choose to ignore all such courtesies; indeed his somewhat eccentric nature would not move in conventional orbits; and his disregard of such courtesies might be pardoned as the caprices of an eccentric nature; but Goethe was a man of the world, a man of courtesies, and a minister; to have folded his arms, and pressed down his hat upon his head, would have been a rudeness at variance with his nature, his education, his position, and his sense of propriety.

It is possible, nay probable, that the very education Goethe had received may have given to his salutation a more elaborate air than was noticeable in other

1 Schindler's "Life of Beethoven," edited by Moscheles, vol. i. pp. 133-135.

bystanders. In bowing, he may have bowed very low, with a certain formality of respect, for I have no wish to deny that he did lay stress on conventional distinctions. Not only was he far from republican sternness, but he placed more value on his star and title of Excellency than his thoroughgoing partisans are willing to admit. If that be a weakness, let him he credited with it; but if he were as vain of such puerilities as an English duke is of the Garter, I do not see any cause for serious reproach in it. So few poets have been Excellencies, so few have worn stars on their breasts, that we have no means of judging whether Goethe's vanity was greater or less than we have a right to expect. Meanwhile it does seem to me that sneers at his title, and epigrams on his stars, come with a very bad grace from a nation which is laughed at for nothing more frequently than for its inordinate love of titles. Englishmen indeed are not so remarkable for their indifference to rank, that they are the fittest censors of such weakness in a Goethe.

CHAPTER IV.

ELECTIVE AFFINITIES.

As

AMONG the Jena friends whom Goethe saw with constant pleasure was Frommann, the bookseller, in whose family there was an adopted child, by name Minna Herzlieb, strangely interesting to us as the original of Ottilie in the "Wahlverwandtschaften." a child she had been a great pet of Goethe's; growing into womanhood, she exercised a fascination over him which his reason in vain resisted. The disparity of years was great: but how frequently are young girls found bestowing the bloom of their affections on men old enough to be their fathers! and how frequently are men at an advanced age found trembling with the passion of youth! In the Sonnets addressed to her, and in the novel of "Elective Affinities," may be read the fervour of his passion, and the strength with which he resisted it. Speaking of this novel, he says: "No one can fail to recognise in it a deep passionate wound which shrinks from being closed by healing, a heart which dreads to be cured. . . . In it, as in a burial-urn, I have deposited with deep emotion many a sad experience. The 3d of October, 1809 (when the publication was completed), set me free from the work; but the feelings it embodies can never quite depart from me." If we knew as much of the circumstances out of which grew the "Elective Affinities," as we do of those out of which grew "Werther," we should find his experience as clearly embodied in this novel as it is in

"

Werther;" but conjecture in such cases being perilous, I will not venture beyond the facts which have been placed at my disposal; and may only add therefore that the growing attachment was seen by all with pain and dismay, because, not to mention the disparity of their ages, there was the fact of his own marriage staring him and them in the face. Had he not already placed it beyond his power to marry her, who knows to what his passion might not have hurried him? And although divorce is easy in Germany, and the idea may have crossed his mind, yet we see from the tragedy of the "Wahlverwandtschaften" what his real opinion was on such an immoral issue. The marriage of her younger sister was seized as the occasion of getting her away from Jena, and the dangerous intimacy with Goethe. (In the novel Ottilie is got rid of by sending her to school.) She only returned to Jena as the betrothed wife of a young professor, whom however she did not marry. Not until 1821 did she become a wife -and a wretched one, according to Stahr, who first made public this strange story. It was probably her poverty and loneliness which at the age of two and thirty made her accept the hand of a man twenty years her senior, horribly ugly, and intellectually narrow, though honourable and honoured for his private worth. It is said that she was persuaded to overcome her repugnance and to accept him by the insistent advice of her protectress, Frau Frommann; it is certain that she quitted her husband's roof almost immediately after the marriage, and never returned to him. She had become deranged, and died in a lunatic asylum July, 1865, in her 76th year.

It is very curious to read "Die Wahlverwandtschaften," by this light; to see not only the sources of its inspiration, but the way in which Goethe drama

1 Adolf Stahr: "Goethe's Frauengestalten," 3te Auflage, 1870, ii. 261 seq.

tises the two halves of his own character. Eduard and Charlotte loved each other in youth. Circumstances separated them; and each made a mariage de convenance from which, after a time, they were released by death. The widower and the widow, now free to choose, naturally determine on fulfilling the dream of their youth. They marry. At the opening of the story we see them placidly happy. Although a few quiet touches make us aware of a certain disparity between their natures, not enough to create unhappiness but enough to prevent perfect sympathy, the keenest eye would detect no signs which threatened the enduring stability of their happiness. Eduard has a friend, almost a brother, always called "The Captain," whom he invites to come and live with them. Charlotte strongly opposes this visit at first, having a dim presentiment of evil; but she yields, the more so as she desires that her adopted daughter, Ottilie, should now be taken from school and come to live with them.

Thus are the four actors in the drama brought together on the stage; and no sooner are they brought together than the natural elective affinities of their natures come into play. Charlotte and the Captain are drawn together; Eduard and Ottilie are drawn together. This is shown to be as inevitable as the chemical combinations which give the novel its title. A real episode in the tragedy of life is before us; felt to be inevitable; felt to be terrible; felt also to present a dilemma to the moral judgment on which two parties will pronounce two opposite opinions.

Those critics who look at human life, and consequently at Art, from the abstract point of view, who, disregarding fact and necessity, treat human nature as a chess-board, on which any moves may be made which the player chooses, the player himself being considered an impersonal agent, untroubled by rashness, incapable of overlooking what is palpable to the bystanders,