CHAPTER V. THE GARTENHAUS. THE visitor may still read the inscription, at once homage and souvenir, by which Goethe connected the happy hours of love with the happy hours of active solitude passed in his Garden House in the Park. Fitly is the place dedicated to the Frau von Stein. The whole spot speaks of her. Here are the flower-beds from which almost every morning flowers, with the dew still on them, came with letters, as fresh and beautiful, to greet the beloved. Here are the beds from which came the asparagus he was so proud to send her. Here is the orchard in which grew the fruit so often sent. Here is the room in which he dreamt of her; here the room in which he worked, while her image hovered around him. The house stands within twenty minutes' walk from the house where she lived, separated by clusters of noble trees. If the reader turns back to the description of the Park (page 325), he will ascertain the position of this Gartenhaus. Originally it belonged to Bertuch. One day when the Duke was earnestly pressing Goethe to take up his residence at Weimar, the poet (who then lived in the Jägerhaus in the Belvedere Allée), undecided as to whether he should go or remain, let fall, among other excuses, the want of a quiet bit of land, where his taste for gardening could be indulged. Bertuch, for example, is very comfortable; if I had but such a bit of ground as that!' Hereupon the Duke, very characteristically, goes to Bertuch, and without periphrasis, says, 'I must have your garden.' Bertuch starts: But your highness — ' 'But me no buts,' replies the young prince; I can't help you. Goethe wants it, and unless we give it to him we shall never keep him here; it is the only way to secure him.' This reason would probably not have been so cogent with Bertuch, had not the Duke excused the despotism of his act by giving in exchange a much more valuable house and grounds. In a few days Goethe received the Garden House as the gift of his princely friend. It is charmingly situated, and, although of modest pretensions, is one of the most enviable houses in Weimar. The Ilm runs through the meadows which front it. The town, although so near, is completely shut out from view by the thick-growing trees. The solitude is absolute, broken only by the occasional sound of the church clock, the music from the barracks, and the screaming of the peacocks spreading their superb beauty in the park. So fond was Goethe of this house, that winter and summer he lived there for seven years; and when in 1782, the Duke made him a present of the house in the Frauenplan, he could not prevail upon himself to sell the Gartenhaus, but continued to make it a favorite retreat. Often when he chose to be alone and undisturbed, he locked all the gates of the bridges which led from the town to his house, so that, as Wieland complained, no one could get at him except by aid of picklock and crowbar. It was here, in this little garden, he studied the development of plants, and made many of those experiments and observations which have given him a high rank among the Discoverers in Science. It was here the poet escaped from court. It was here the lover was happy in his love. How modest this Garden-house really is; how far removed from any thing like one's preconceptions of it! It is true that the position is one which many a rich townsman in England would be glad of, as the site for a handsome villa: a pretty orchard and garden on a gentle slope; in front, a good carriage road, running beside a fine meadow encircled by the stately trees of the park. But the house, a half-pay captain with us would consider a miserable cottage; yet it sufficed for the court-favorite and minister. Here the Duke was constantly with him; sitting up, till deep in the night, in earnest discussion, often sleeping on the sofa instead of going home. Here both Duke and Duchess would come and dine with him, in the most simple, unpretending way, the whole banquet in one instance consisting, as we learn from a casual phrase in the Stein correspondence, of a beer-soup and a little cold meat.' There is something very pleasant in noticing these traits of the simplicity which was then practised. The Duke's own hut― the Borkenhaus has already been described (page 326). The hut, for it was nothing else, in which Goethe lived in the Ilmenau mountains, and the more than bourgeois simplicity of the Garden House, make one aware of one thing among others, namely, that if he sacrificed his genius to a court, it assuredly was not for loaves and fishes, not for luxury, or material splendor of any kind. Indeed, such things had no temptation for his simple tastes. 'Rich in money,' he writes to his beloved, 'I shall never become; but, therefore, all the richer in Confidence, Good Name and Influence over the minds of men.' It was his love of Nature which made him so indifferent to luxury. That love gave him simplicity and hardihood. In many things he was unlike his nation—notably in his voluntary exposure to two bright, wholesome things, which to his contemporaries were little less than bugbears — I mean, fresh air and cold water. The nation which consented to live in the atmosphere of iron stoves, tobacco, and bad breath, and which deemed a pint of water all that man could desire for his ablutions, must have been greatly perplexed at seeing Goethe indulge in fresh air and cold water as if they were vices. Two anecdotes will bring this contrast into relief. So great was the German reluctance to even a necessary exposure to the inclemencies of open air exercise, that historians inform us a great proportion, especially among the learned classes, employed a miserable substitute for exercise in the shape of a machine, by means of which they comfortably took their dose of movement without leaving their rooms.'* And Jacobs, in his Personalien, records a fact which, while explaining how the abovenamed absurdity could have gained ground, paints a sad picture of the life of German youth in those days. Describing his boyish days at Gotha, he says: Our winter pleasures were confined to a not very spacious courtyard, exchanged in summer for a little garden within the walls, which my father hired. We took no walks. Only once a year, when the harvest was ripe, our parents took us out to spend an evening in the fields.† So little had Goethe of this prejudice against fresh air, that when he began the rebuilding of his Gartenhaus, instead of sleeping at an hotel or at the house of a friend, he lived there through all the building period, and we find him writing. At last I have a window once more, and can make a fire.' On the 3d of May he writes, "Good morning: here * Biedermann: Deutschland's Politische Materielle und Sociale Zustände, i. p. 343. + Quoted by Mrs. Austin: Germany from 1760 to 1814, p. 85. is asparagus. How were you yesterday? Philip baked me a cake; and thereupon, wrapped up in my blue cloak, I laid myself on a dry corner of the terrace and slept amid thunder, lightning and rain, so gloriously that my bed was afterwards quite disagreeable.' On the 19th he writes, Thanks for the breakfast. I send you something in return. Last night I slept on the terrace, wrapped in my blue cloak, awoke three times, at 12, 2 and 4, and each time there was a new splendor in the heavers.' There are other traces of this tendency to bivouac, but these will suffice. He bathed not only in the morning sunlight, but also when the moonlight shimmered on the Ilm. Always in the free air seeking vigor • Tauche mich in die Sonne früh Bad' ab im Monde des Tages Müh."' The Duke shared this love of bathing, which December's cold could not arrest. It was here Goethe learned to swim by the aid of 'corks' (which so often served him as an illustration), and no inclemency of the weather could keep him out of the water. The fascination of water luring into its treacherous depths, is wonderfully expressed by him in that ballad, which every one knows, and almost every one tries to translate. I have tried my hand in this version: THE FISHERMAN. The water rushed, the water swelled : A fisherman sat by, And gazed upon his dancing float With tranquil-dreaming eye. And as he sits, and as he looks, A maid, all bright with water-drops, |