Corona painted, sang, played, was learned in music, and declaimed with peculiar elegance, "The Muses lavished on her every art." According to Karl August, she was "marble-beautiful, but marble-cold;" Goethe says of her: "Und hoch erstaunt, seht Ihr in ihr vereint There is a notion current, originating with Riemer, but shown by Schöll to be very improbable, that Goethe had a liaison with Corona. I not only agree with Schöll's reasoning, but can corroborate it by the testimony of the Frau von Goethe, who assured me her father-in-law expressly and emphatically told her that he never had a passion for any actress. Varnhagen von Ense suspects that Corona was privately married to Einsiedel; if not, her letters, still extant although inedited, prove that they were on the footing of lovers. Another chamberlain, poet, and musician was Seckendorf, who translated "Werther" into French, a year after Goethe's arrival ("Les Souffrances du Jeune Werther." Par le B. S. d. S. Erlangen, 1776); and to these gay companions must be added Bode, the translator of Smollett; Bertuch, the treasurer and the translator of Cervantes (whose desire for reputation. was greater than his industry, since he induced Batsch to write a "Natural History" in his name, and had to pay a large sum for the expenses, without purchasing anything better than the disrespect attendant on a failure); and Musæus, a passionate lover of gardening, who gave Weimar its pleasant Erohlung, and who might have been seen daily crossing the quiet streets with a cup of coffee in one hand, his garden tools in the other, 1 And gently awed, you feel in her combined trudging along to that loved retreat. At other times he might be seen plying the ex-drummer, Rüppler, with inspiring Schnapps to unlock the casket of his memory, wherein were stored the legends and superstitions of the peasantry which Musaus afterward dressed up in his own style in his celebrated Volksmärchen. There was much humour in Musæus; he furnished his Weimar friends with many a pleasant quip and crank. Heinrich Schmidt tells the following. One day Musæus, after a long illness, came to dine with the Schmidts. Every one was amazed at his healthy aspect. He received their reiterated compliments with perfect gravity, till his wife, unable longer to contain herself, confessed that before setting out he had rouged his cheeks!1 These are the principal figures of Amalia's court. We may now glance at the court of the reigning duke and duchess Karl August and Luise. Of the Duchess Luise no one ever speaks but in terms of veneration. She was one of those rare beings who, through circumstances the most trying, as well as through the ordinary details of life, manifest a noble character. The Queen of Prussia and the Duchess of Saxe-Weimar are two of the great figures in modern German history; they both opposed the chief man of the age, Napoleon, and were both admired by him for that very opposition. Luise was of a cold temperament, somewhat rigid in her enforcement of etiquette (unlike the dowager), and wore to the last the old costume which had been the fashion in her youth; apt in the early years of her marriage to be a little querulous with her husband, but showing throughout their lives a real and noble friendship for him. And he was worthy of that friendship, much as his strange, and in many respects opposite nature, may Erinnerungen eines weimarischen Veteranen," 1 Schmidt: 66 p. 21. have tried her. Karl August, whom Frederick the Great pronounced, at fourteen, to be the prince, of all he had seen, who gave the greatest promise, was in truth a very mixed, but very admirable, character. He can afford to be looked at more closely and familiarly than most princes. He was a man whose keen appreciation of genius not only drew the most notable men of the day to Weimar, but whose own intrinsically fine qualities kept them there. It is easy for a prince to assemble men of talent. It is not easy for a prince to make them remain beside him, in the full employment of their faculties, and in reasonable enjoyment of their position. Karl August was the prince who with the smallest means produced the greatest result in Germany. He was a man of restless activity. His eye was on every part of his dominions; his endeavours to improve the condition of the people were constant. The recently published correspondence shows how active were his intellectual sympathies. In his tastes no man in Germany was so simple, except his dearest friend, Goethe, with whom, indeed, he had many cardinal points in common. remember, on first seeing their busts together, being struck with a sort of faint family resemblance between them. Karl August might have been a younger brother, considerably "animalised," but still belonging to the family. They had both, on the paternal side, Thuringian blood in their veins; and in many respects Amalia and Frau Aja were akin. But while Karl August had the active, healthy, sensuous, pleasureloving temperament of his friend, he wanted the tact which never allowed Goethe, except in his wildest period, to overstep limits; he wanted the tenderness and chivalry which made the poet so uniformly acceptable to women. He was witty, but his bons mots were mostly of that kind which, repeated after dinner, are not considered fit for drawing-room publication. Very I characteristic is it of him, who had bestowed unusual pains in collecting a Bibliotheca Erotica, that when Schiller wrote the "Maid of Orleans," he fancied Schiller was going to give another version of "La Pucelle," and abetted his mistress, the Frau von Heygendorf, in her refusal to play the part of the rehabilitated maiden. He was rough, soldierly, brusque, and imperious. He was at home when in garrison with Prussian soldiers, but out of his element when at foreign courts, and not always at ease in his own. Goethe describes him longing for his pipe at the Court of Brunswick in 1774: De son coté notre bon Duc s'ennuie terriblement, il cherche un interet, il n'y voudrait pas etre pour rien, la marche très bien mesurée de tout ce qu'on fait ici le gene, il faut qu'il renonce a sa chere pipe et une fee ne pourroit lui rendre un service plus agreeable qu'en changeant ce palais dans une cabane de charbonnier." 1 In a letter (unprinted), he writes to Goethe, then at Jena, saying he longs to be with him to watch sunrise and sunset, for he can't see the sunset in Gotha, hidden as it is by the crowd of courtiers, who are so comme il faut, and know their "fish duty" with such terrible. accuracy, that every evening he feels inclined to give himself to the devil. His delight, when not with soldiers, was to be with dogs, or with his poet alone in their simple houses, discussing philosophy, and "talking of lovely things that conquer death." He mingled freely with the people. At Ilmenau he and Goethe put on the miners' dress, descended into the mines, and danced all night with peasant girls. Riding across country, over rock and stream, in manifest peril of his neck; teazing the maids of honour, sometimes carrying this so far as to offend his more princely 1 Briefe an Frau von Stein," iii. p. 85. The French is Goethe's, as also the spelling and accentuation, or rather want of accentuation. wife; wandering alone with his dogs, or with some joyous companion; seeking excitement in wine, and in making love to pretty women, without much respect of station; offending by his roughness and wilfulness, though never estranging his friends - Karl August, often grieving his admirers, was, with all his errors, a genuine and admirable character. His intellect was active, his judgment, both of men and things, sound and keen. Once, when there was a discussion about appointing Fichte as professor at Jena, one of the opponents placed a work of Fichte's in the duke's hands, as sufficient proof that such a teacher could not hold a chair. Karl August read the book—and appointed Fichte. He had great aims; he also had the despotic will which bends circumstances to its determined issues. "He was always in progress," said Goethe to Eckermann; "when anything failed, he dismissed it at once from his mind. I often bothered myself how to excuse this or that failure; but he ignored every shortcoming in the cheerfullest way, and always went forward to something new." Such was Karl August, as I conceive him from the letters of the period, and from the reports of those who knew him. Eight years younger than Goethe, he attached himself to him as to a brother. We shall see this attachment and its reciprocal influence in the following pages; clouds sometimes gather, quarrels and dissatisfaction are not absent (from what long friendship are they absent?); but fifty years of mutual service, and mutual affection, proved the genuineness of both their characters. Among the Weimar notables, Frau von Stein must always have conspicuous eminence. In a future chapter we shall learn more of her. Enough for the present to say that she was Hofdame (lady of honour) to the Duchess Amalia, and for many years passionately loved by Goethe. Beside her we may mention |