CHAPTER II.

THE NOTABILITIES OF WEIMAR.

The Dowager Duchess Amalia - Mlle. Göchhausen - Wieland Einsiedel - Corona Schröter Bertuch Musæus Seckendorf- The Duchess Luise - Karl August-Gräfin Werther Frau von Stein

Knebel-Herder.

HAVING endeavored to reconstruct some image of Weimar and its people, we may now descend from generals to particulars, and sketch rapidly the principal figures which will move across that scene during the first years of Goethe's residence.

The Dowager Duchess Amalia is a very interesting figure. She had the Brunswick blood, with its capriciousness, love of pleasure and frivolity; but she had also a mind well cultivated, not poorly gifted, and ready in appreciating men of talent. Although a niece of Frederick the Great, she did not follow the princely fashion of the day, and turn her eyes away from German Literature to fix them only upon France. She chose Wieland as the tutor of her son, and made him her own dear friend. Schiller, a rash judge of persons, and not very keen in his perception of woman's character, wrote to Körner, after his first interview with the Duchess: She has made no conquest of me. I cannot like her physiognomy. Her intellect is extremely limited, nothing interests her but what is based on the sensuous: hence the taste she has,

or affects to have, for music, painting, and the rest. She is a composer herself, and has set Goethe's Erwin und Elmire to music. She speaks little; but has, at any rate, the merit of throwing aside all the stiffness of ceremony." Schiller's verdict cannot be accepted by any one who reflects, that, besides her appreciation of men of talent, who found delight in her society, she learned Greek from Wieland, read Aristophanes and translated Propertius, was a musical composer, a tolerable judge of art, discussed politics with the Abbé Raynal, and Greek and Italian Literature with Villoison; that, moreover, with all her multifarious reading and enjoyments, she contrived to superintend the education of her sons, and manage her kingdom with unusual success. This is not to be done by an 'extremely limited intellect.'

The sensuous basis' alluded to by Schiller was certainly there. One sees it in her portraits. One sees it also in the glimpses of her joyous, pleasure-loving existence. Biographers and eulogists omit such details; for in general the biographical mind moves only through periods of rhetoric, which may be applied with equal felicity to every prince or princess of whom it is the cue to speak. But it is by such details that the image of the Duchess can alone be made a living one. Here, for example, is a sketch of her, given by an anonymous traveller. She is small in stature, good-looking, with a very spirituelle phyiognomy; she has the Brunswick nose, lovely hands and feet, a light yet princely gait, speaks well but rapidly, and has something amiable and fascinating in her nature. . This evening there was a Redoute, tickets one gulden (two francs) each. The Court arrived

*Quoted from Bernouilli by Vehse: Geschichte der Deutschen Höfe, vol. xxviii. p. 60.

at eight. The Duchess was magnificent, en domino, and brilliant with jewels. She dances well, lightly and gracefully. The young princes, who were attired as Zephyr and Amour, also danced well. The masquerade was very full, lively and varied. A faro table was laid out: the smallest stake being half a gulden. The Duchess staked dollars and half-louis, played generously and lost. But as she was glad to dance, she did not play long. She danced with every mask who invited her, and stayed till nearly three o'clock, when almost every one had gone home.' The same writer also speaks of another Redoute. The Duchess appeared en reine grecque, a very beautiful costume, which suited her well. The ball was very brilliant ; some students from Jena were there. At the last ball of the season, the Duchess sent me one of her own Savoyard dresses, and I was frisé and dressed like a woman by the Countess von Görtz's maid. The young Count was likewise dressed as a woman, and we went to Court so, dined there, and drove thence to the ball, which lasted till six o'clock.'

6

This pleasure-loving Duchess, who knew so well how to manage her kingdom, cared little for the dignities' of her state. According to Wieland, she lived sometimes in 'student' fashion, especially at Belvedere, where studentsongs, not always the most decorous, rang joyously through the moonlit gardens. Driving once with seven friends in a haycart from Tiefurt, and overtaken by a storm, she made no more ado, but drew over her light clothing Wieland's great coat, and in that costume drove on!

Her letters, especially those to Goethe's mother, several of which I have seen, have great heartiness, and the most complete absence of anything like formality. In one of them, I remember, she apologizes for not having written for some time, not from want of friendship, but lack of

news; to show that she has been thinking of Frau Aja, she sends her a pair of garters worked by herself. 'Liebe Frau Aja!' she writes on another occasion, My joy at the receipt of your letter is not easily described, nor will I attempt it, for true feelings are too sacred to be set down in black and white. You know, dear mother, what you are to me, and can believe how infinitely your remembrance of me has rejoiced me.'*

She

Beside the figure of the Duchess Amalia, we see that of the merry and malicious little humpbacked Göchhausen, her maid of honor, by intimates named Thusnelda. One sees not why this spritely little démon de bonne compagnie should have been named after the wife of Arminius. was a great favorite with Amalia, with Karl August also, who was constantly engaged in wit combats' with her, not always of the mildest. She animated society with her devices, and kept up a voluminous correspondence with wits and notabilities in other cities. She was very fond of Goethe, and wrote constantly to his mother. But Karl August was her darling, perhaps because he plagued her so incessantly. As a sample of the lengths to which tricks were carried, consider the following anecdote, which I have from Frau von Goethe, who had it from her fatherin-law, an accomplice in the deed. One night as Thusnelda came up the stairs leading to her bedroom, her candle was blown out. Not much heeding this, she went on, reached the gallery into which her bedroom opened, and walked on, feeling for the door. There is no great difficulty in finding the door of your own room in the dark,

* Here is another extract, which I leave in the original: 'Ach Mutter, Mutter! - sie errathen wohl meiner Gedanken! was macht der alter Vater? er sollte ja nicht wohl seyn. Grüssen sie ihn von mir, und das tausendmal. Leben Sie wohl, beste Mutter; behalten Sie mir lieb und denken fleissig an ihre Freundin. Amalia.'

yet Thusnelda groped, and groped, and groped in vain: no lock met her hand, a smooth blank wall allowed her hand to pass and repass over it with increasing confusion. Where was the door? Where was she? After groping some time, her perplexity growing into undefined alarm, she descended to the Duchess's room; but she found that closed; the Duchess was asleep; and her gentle knockings. were not answered. Up stairs she went again, again to pass her hands along the wall, but still to find no door. The night was cold, and she was half-frozen with cold and fear before the mystery was explained: the Duke and Goethe had removed her door, and built up the wall in its place.

Wieland, who has already been characterized, had established his paper, the Teutsche Merkur, which was not without its influence. When he ceased to be the prince's tutor, he remained the valued friend of the Duchess. He was in all the pleasure parties. So also was Einsiedel, who, at first court page, became chamberlain to the Duchess Amalia in 1776. A jovial careless epicurean; everywhere known as l'ami, from his good nature and eccentricity; filling the mouth of gossip with his extravagances; poet and musician in a small way; actor and inventor of amusements, his name meets us on every page of the Weimar chronicles. Among his follies may be mentioned the characteristic adventure with the Frau von Werther, who gave herself out as dead, had a figure buried in her name, and went off with Einsiedel to Africa! She came back soon after, and separated from her husband in due form.

Einsiedel makes us think of Corona Schröter, the Hofsängerin (singer to the court we have no such word, because we have no such thing). This beautiful and accomplished creature Goethe had known while he was a