VARNHAGEN VON ENSE'S MEMOIRS.*

[LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW, 1838.]

THE Lady Rahel, or Rachel, surnamed Levin | in her maiden days, who died some five years ago as Madam Varnhagen von Ense, seems to be still memorable and notable, or to have become more than ever so, among our German friends. The widower, long known in Berlin and Germany for an intelligent and estimable man, has here published successively, as author, or as editor and annotator, so many volumes, nine in all, about her, about himself, and the things that occupied and environed them. Nine volumes, properly, of German Memoirs; of letters, of miscellanies, biographical and autobiographical; which we have read not without zeal and diligence, and in part with great pleasure. It seems to us that such of our readers as take interest in things German, ought to be apprized of this publication; and withal that there are in it enough of things European and universal to furnish out a few pages for readers not specially of that

class.

many."

Nine volumes of Memoirs cut of Berlin will surely contain something for us. Samuel Johnson, or perhaps another, used to say, there was no man on the streets whose biography he would not like to be acquainted with. No rudest mortal walking there who has not seen and known experimentally something, which, could he tell it, the wisest would hear willingly from him! Nay, after all that can be said and celebrated about poetry, eloquence, and the higher forms of composition and utterance; is not the primary use of speech itself this same, to utter memoirs, that is, memorable experiences to our fellow-crea tures? A fact is a fact; man is for ever the brother of man. That thou, Oh my brother, impart to me truly how it stands with thee in that inner man of thine, what lively images of things passed thy memory has painted there; what hopes, what thoughts, affections, knowledges, do now dwell there: for this and for no other object that I can see, was the gift of speech and of hearing bestowed on us two. I say not how thou feignest. Thy fictions, and thousand and one Arabian Nights, promul gated as fictions, what are they also at bottom but this, things that are in thee, though only images of things? But to bewilder me with falsehoods, indeed; to ray out error and dark. Atness,-misintelligence, which means misattainment, otherwise failure and sorrow; to go about confusing worse our poor world's confusion, and, as a son of Nox and Chaos, propagate delirium on earth: not surely with this view, but with a far different one, was that miraculous tongue suspended in thy head, and set vibrating there! In a word, do not two things, veracity and memoir-writing, seem to be prescribed by Nature herself and the very conLet us read, therefore, acstitution of man? cording to opportunity,-and, with judicious audacity, review!

One may hope, Germany is no longer to any person that vacant land, of gray vapour and chimeras, which it was to most Englishmen, not many years ago. One may hope that, as readers of German have increased a hundredfold, some partial intelligence of Germany, some interest in things German, may have increased in a proportionably higher ratio. all events, Memoirs of men, German or other, will find listeners among men. Sure enough, Berlin city, on the sandy banks of the Spree, is a living city, even as London is, on the muddy banks of Thames. Daily, with every rising of the blessed heavenly light, Berlin sends up the smoke of a hundred thousand kindled hearths, the fret and stir of five hundred thousand new-awakened human souls; -marking or defacing with such smoke-cloud, material or spiritual, the serene of our common all-embracing Heaven. One Heaven, the same for all, embraces that smoke-cloud too, adopts it, absorbs it, like the rest. Are there not dinner-parties, "æsthetic teas;" scandalmongeries, changes of ministry, police cases, literary gazettes? The clack of tongues, the sound of hammers, mount up in that corner of the planet too, for certain centuries of time. Berlin has its royalties and diplomacies, its traffickings, travailings; literatures, sculptures, cultivated heads, male and female; and boasts itself to be "the intellectual capital of Ger

Our nine printed volumes we called German Memoirs. They agree in this general character, but are otherwise to be distinguished into kinds, and differ very much in their worth for us.

The first book on our list, entitled "Rahel," is a book of private letters; three thick volumes of Letters written by that lady: selected from her wide correspondence; with a short introduction, with here and there a short note, and that on Varnhagen's part all. Then follows, in two volumes, the work nained

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Gallery of Portraits;" consisting principally of Letters to Rahel, by various persons, mostly persons of note; to which Varnhagen, as edi tor, has joined some slight commentary, some short biographical sketch of each. Of thes five volumes of German Letters we will say, for the present, that they seem to be calculated for Germany, and even for some special circle there, rather than for England or us. A glance

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at them afterwards, we hope, will be possible. | been a student of literature, an author, a stú But the third work, that of Varnhagen himself, dent of medicine, a soldier, a secretary, is the one we must chiefly depend on here; the diplomatist. A man withal of modest, affec four volumes of " Memoirs and Miscellanies;" tionate nature; courteous and yet truthful; a lively pieces; which can be safely recom- of quick apprehension, precise in utterance; mended as altogether pleasant reading to of just, extensive, occasionally of deep and every one. They are "Miscellaneous Writ- fine insight, this is a man qualified beyond ings," as their title indicates; in part col- most to write memoirs. We should call him lected and reprinted out of periodicals, or one of the best memoir-writers we have met wherever they lay scattered; in part sent forth with; decidedly the best we know of in these now for the first time. There are criticisms, days. For clearness, grace of method, easy notices literary or didactic; always of a praise- comprehensibility, he is worthy to be ranked worthy sort, generally of small extent. There among the French, who have a natural turn are narrations; there is a long personal nar- for memoir-writing; and in respect of honesty, rative, as it might be called, of service in the valourous gentleness, and simplicity of heart "Liberation War," of 1814, wherein Varnha- his character is German, not French. gen did duty, as a volunteer officer, in Tettenborn's corps, among the Cossacks: this is the longest piece, by no means the best. There is farther a curious narrative of Lafayette's escape (brief escape with recapture) from the Prison of Olmütz. Then also there is a curious biography of Doctor Bollmann, the brave young Hanoverian, who aided Lafayette in that adventure. Then other biographies not so curious; on the whole, there are many biographies: Biography, we might say, is the staple article; an article in which Varnhagen has long been known to excel. Lastly, as basis for the whole, there are presented, fitfully, now here, now there, and with long intervals, considerable sections of Autobiography :-not confessions, indeed, or questionable work of the Rousseau sort, but discreet reminiscences, personal and other, of a man who having looked on much, may be sure of willing audience in reporting it well. These are the four volumes written by Varnhagen von Ense; those are the five edited by him. We shall regard his autobiographic memorials as a general substratum, upholding and uniting into a certain coherence the multifarious contents of these publications: it is Varnhagen von Ense's passage through life; this is what it yielded him; these are the things and persons he took note of, and had to do with, in travelling thus far.

Beyond ascertaining for ourselves what manner of eyesight and way of judgment this our memoir-writer has, it is not necessary to insist much on Varnhagen's qualities or literary character here. He seems to us a man peculiarly fitted, both by natural endow ment and by position and opportunity, for writing memoirs. In the space of half a century that he has lived in this world, his course has been what we might call erratic in a high degree: from the student's garret in Halle or Tübingen to the Tuileries hall of audience and the Wagram battle-field, from Chamisso the poet to Napoleon the Emperor, his path has intersected all manner of paths of men. He has a fine intellectual gift; and what is the foundation of that and of all, an honest, sympathizing, maufully patient, manfully courageous heart. His way of life, too erratic we should fear for happiness or ease, and singularly checkered by vicissitude, has had this considerable advantage, if no other, that it has trained him, and could not but train him, to a certain Catholicism of mind. He has

Such a man, conducting us in the spirit of cheerful friendliness, along his course of life, and delineating what he has found most memorable in it, produces one of the pleasantest books. Brave old Germany, in this and the other living phasis, now here, now there, from Rhineland to the East-sea, from Hamburg and Berlin to Deutsch-Wagram and the Marchfield, paints itself in the colours of reality; with notable persons, with notable events For consider withal in what a time this man's life has lain: in the thick of European things, while the Nineteenth Century was opening itself. Amid convulsions and revolutions, outward and inward,-with Napoleons, Goethes, Fichtes; while prodigies and battle-thunder shook the world, and," amid the glare of conflagrations, and the noise of falling towns and kingdoms," a new era of thought was also evolving itself: one of the wonderfullest times! On the whole, if men like Varnhagen were to be met with, why have we not innumerable Memoirs? Alas, it is because the men like Varnhagen are not to be met with; men with the clear eye and the open heart. Without such qualities, memoir-writers are but a nuisance; which so often as they show themselves, a judicious world is obliged to sweep into the cesspool, with loudest possible prohibition of the like. If a man is not open-minded, if he is ignorant, perverse, egoistic, splenetic; on the whole, if he is false and stupid, how shall he write memoirs ?—

From Varnhagen's young years, especially from his college years, we could extract many a lively little sketch, of figures partially known to the reader; of Chamisso, La Motte Fouqué, Raumer, and other the like; of Platonic Schleiermacher, sharp, crabbed, shrunken, with his wire-drawn logic, his sarcasms, his sly malicious ways; of Homeric Wolf, with his biting wit, with his grim earnestness and inextinguishable Homeric laugh, the irascible great-hearted man. Or of La Fontaine, the sentimental novelist, over whose rose-coloured moral-sublime what fair eye has not wept Varnhagen found him "in a pleasant house near the Saale-gate" of Halle, with an ugly good-tempered wife, with a pretty niece, which latter he would not allow to read a word of his romance stuff, but "kept it locked from het like poison;" a man jovial as Boniface, swol len out on booksellers' profit, church, preier ments, and fat things, "to the size of a hogs

"Visit to Jean Paul Friedrich Richter.—This | forenoon I went to Jean Paul's. Friend Harscher was out of humour, and would not go, say what I would. I too, for that matter, am but a poor, nameless student: but what of that?

"A pleasant, kindly, inquisitive, woman, who had opened the door to me, I at once recognised for Jean Paul's wife by her likeness to her sister. A child was sent off to call its father. He came directly: he had been forwarned of my visit by letters from Berlin and Leipsic; and received me with great kindness. As ne seated himself beside me on the sofa, I had almost laughed in his face, for in bending down somewhat he had the very look our Neumann, in his Versuchen und Hindernissen,' has jestingly given him, and his speaking and what he spoke confirmed that impression. Jean Paul is of stout figure; has a full, wellordered face; the eyes smal!, gleaming out on you with lambent fire, then again veiled in soft dimness; the mouth friendly, and with some slight motion in it even when silent. His speech is rapid, almost hasty, even stuttering somewhat here and there; not without a certain degree of dialect, difficult to designate, but which probably is some mixture of Frankish and Saxon, and of course is altogether kept down within the rules of cultivated language.

nea ;" for the rest, writing with such velocity | nothing forced, nothing studied, nothing tha (he did some hundred and fifty weeping vo- went beyond the burgher tone. His courtesy lumes in his time) that he was obliged to hold was the free expression of a kind heart; his in, and "write only two days in the week;" way and bearing were patriarchal, considerate this was La Fontaine, the sentimental novelist. of the stranger, yet for himself too altogether But omitting all these, let us pick out a fa- unconstrained. Neither in the animation to mily-picture of one far better worth looking which some word or topic would excite him, at, Jean Pau in his little home at Bai- was this fundamental temper ever altered; reuth, "little city of my habitation, which I nowhere did severity appear, nowhere any exbelong to on this side the grave!" It is Sun- hibiting of himself, any watching or spying of day, the 23d of October, 1808, according to his hearer; everywhere kindheartedness, free Varnhagen's note-book. The ingenious youth movement of his somewhat loose-flowing na of four-and-twenty, as a rambling student, ture, open course for him, with a hundred passes the day of rest there, and luckily for transitions from one course to the other, howus has kept memorandums: soever or whithersoever it seemed good to him to go. At first he praised every thing that was named of our new appearances in Literature; and then when we came a little closer to the matter, there was blame enough and to spare. So of Adam Müller's Lectures, of Friedrich Schlegel, of Tieck and others. He said, German writers ought to hold by the people, not by the upper classes, among whom all was already dead and gone; and yet he had just been praising Adam Müller, that he had the gift of speaking a deep word to cultivated people of the world. He is convinced that, from the opening of the old Indian world, nothing is to be got for us, except the adding of one other mode of poetry to the many modes we have already, but no increase of ideas: and yet he had just been celebrating Friedrich Schlegel's labours with the Sanscrit, as if a new salvation were to issue out of that. He was free to confess that a right Christian in these days, if not a Protestant one, was incor ceivable to him; that changing from Protestantism to Catholicism seemed a monstrous perversion; and with this opinion great hope had been expressed, a few minutes before, that the Catholic spirit in Friedrich Schlegel, combined with the Indian, would produce much good! Of Schleiermacher he spoke with respect; signified, however, that he did not relish his 'Plato' greatly; that in Jacobi's, in Herder's soaring flight of soul he traced far "First of all I had to tell him what I was more of those divine old sages than in the charged with in the shape of messages, then learned acumen of Schleiermacher; a deliver whatsoever I could tell in any way, about his ance which I could not let pass without proBerlin friends. He willingly remembered the test. Fichte, of whose Addresses to the Gertime he had lived in Berlin, as Marcus Herz's man Nation,' held in Berlin under the sound neighbour, in Leder's house where I, seven of French drums, I had much to say, was not years before, had first seen him in the garden a favourite of his; the decisiveness of that by the Spree, with papers in his hand, which energy gave him uneasiness; he said he could it was privately whispered were leaves of only read Fichte as an exercise, gymnastic'Hesperus.' This talk about persons, and ally,' and that with the purport of his Philo then still more about Literature growing out sophy he had now nothing more to do. of that, set him fairly underway, and soon he "Jean Paul was called out, and I staid had more to impart than to inquire. His con- awhile alone with his wife. I had now to versation was throughout amiable and good- answer many new questions about Berlin; her natured, always full of meaning, but in quite interest in persons and things of her native simple tone and expression. Though I knew town was by no means sated with what she beforehand that his wit and humour belonged had already heard. The lady pleased me exonly to his pen, that he could hardly write the ceedingly; soft, refined, acute, she united with shortest note without these introducing them- the loveliest expression of household goodness selves, while on the contrary his oral utterance an air of higher breeding and freer manage seldom showed the like,-yet it struck me ment than Jean Paul seemed to manifest. Yet, much that, in this continual movement and in this respect too, she willingly held herself vivacity of mood to which he yielded himself, inferior, and looked up to her gifted husband. I observed no trace of these qualities. His. It was apparent every way that their life toge. demeanour otherwise was like his speaking;ther was a right happy one. Their inree

children, a boy and two girls, are beautiful, healthy, well-conditioned creatures. I had a hearty pleasure in them; they recalled other dear children to my thoughts, whom I had lately been beside!

seen in Hamburgh. Jean Paul said he a n moment doubted, but the Germans, like the Spaniards, would one day rise, and Prussia would avenge its disgrace, and free the coun try; he hoped his son would live to see it, and did not deny that he was bringing him up for a soldier.

"With continual copiousness and in the best humour, Jean Paul (we were now at able) expatiated on all manner of objects. "October 25th.-I staid to supper, contrary Among the rest, I had been charged with a to my purpose, having to set out next morning salutation from Rahel Levin to him, and the early. The lady was so kind, and Jean Paul modest question, Whether he remembered himself so trustful and blithe, I could not withher still?' His face beamed with joyful satis- stand their entreaties. At the neat and wellfaction: How could one forget such a per- furnished table (reminding you that South son?' cried he impressively. That is a woman Germany was now near) the best humour alone of her kind: I liked her heartily well, and reigned. Among other things we had a good more now than ever, as I gain in sense au ap-laugh at this, that Jean Paul offered me an inprehension to do it; she is the only woman introduction to one of, what he called his dearest whom I have found genuine humour, the one friends in Stuttgart.-and then was obliged to woman of this world who had humour! He called me a lucky fellow to have such a friend; and asked, as if proving me and measuring my value, How I had deserved that?'

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give it up, having irrevocably forgotten his name! Of a more serious sort again was our conversation about Tieck, Friedrich and Wilhelm Schlegel, and others of the romantic school. He seemed in ill humour with Tieck at the moment. Of Goethe he said: Goethe is a consecrated head; he has a place of his own, high above us all.' We spoke of Goethe afterwards for some time: Jean Paul, with more and more admiration, nay, with a sort of fear and awe-struck reverence.

"Some beautiful fruit was brought in for dessert. On a sudden, Jean Paul started up, gave me his hand, and said: Forgive me, I must go to bed! Stay you here in God's name, for it is still early, and chat with my wife: there is much to say, between you, which my talking has kept back. I am a Spiessburger, (of the Club of Odd Fellows,) and my hour is come for sleep. He took a candle, and said, good night. We parted with great cordiality, and the wish expressed on both sides, that I might stay at Baireuth another time."

Monday, 24th October.-Being invited, I went a second time to dine. Jean Paul had just returned from a walk; his wife, with one of the children, was still out. We came upon his writings; that questionable string with most authors, which the one will not have you touch, which another will have you keep jingling continually. He was here what I expected him to be; free, unconstrained, goodnatured, and sincere with his whole heart. His 'Dream of a Madman,' just published by Cotta, was what had led us upon this. He said he could write such things at any time; the mood for it, when he was in health, lay in his own power; he did but seat himself at the harpsichord, and fantasying for a while on it, in the wildest way, deliver himself over to the feeling of the moment, and then write his imaginings, according to a certain predetermined course, indeed, which however he would often These biographic phenomena; Jean Paul's alter as he went on. In this kind he had once loose-flowing talk, his careless variable judg undertaken to write a 'Hell,' such as mortal ments of men and things; the prosaic basis never heard of; and a great deal of it is actu- of the free-and-easy in domestic life with the ally done, but not fit for print. Speaking of poetic Shandean, Shakspearean, and even descriptive composition, he also started as in Dantesque, that grew from it as its public outfright when I ventured to say that Goethe was come; all this Varnhagen had to rhyme and less complete in this province; he reminded reconcile for himself as he best could. The me of two passages in Werter,' which are in- loose-flowing talk and variable judgments, the deed among the finest descriptions. He said fact that Richter went along, "looking only that to describe any scene well the poet must right before him as with blinders on," seemed make the bosom of a man his camera obscura, to Varnhagen a pardonable, nay, an amiable and look at it through this, then would he see peculiarity, the mark of a trustful, spontane t poetically. ous, artless nature; connected with whatever The conversation turned on public occur- was best in Jean Paul. He found him on the rences, on the condition of Germany, and the whole (what we at a distance have always oppressive rule of the French. To me discus-done) " a genuine and noble man: no decep sions of that sort are usually disagreeable; but tion or impunity exists in his life: he is alloit was delightful to hear Jean Paul express, on gether as he writes, loveable, hearty, robust, such occasion, his noble patriotic sentiments; and brave. A valiant man I do believe: did and for the sake of this rock-island I willingly the cause summon, I fancy he would be rea swam through the empty tide of uncertain dier with his sword too than the most." And news and wavering suppositions which envi-so we quit our loved Jean Paul, and his sun roned it. What he said was deep, considerate, ple little Baireuth home. The lights are blowe hearty, valiant, German to the marrow of the out there, the fruit platters swept away, a de bone. I had to tell him much; of Napoleon, zen years ago, and all is dark now,-swal whom he knew only by portraits; of Johannes lowed in the long night. Thanks to Varnha von Müller; of Fichte, whom he now as a gen that he has, though imperfectly, resoned patriot admired cordially; of the Marquez de any glimpse of it, one scene of it, still visible la Romana and his Spaniards, whom I had to eves, by the magic of pen and ink

The next picture that strikes us is not a | again as far as Marcheck, that, in the event family-piece, but a battle-piece: Deutsch-Wag- of a battle on the morrow, he might act on the ram, in the hot weather of 1809; whither enemy's right flank. With us too a resolute Varnhagen, with a great change of place and engagement was arranged. On the 4th of plan, has wended, proposing now to be a sol- July, in the evening, we were ordered, if there dier, and rise by fighting the tyrannous French. was cannonading in the night, to remain quiet It is a fine picture; with the author's best ta- till daybreak; but at daybreak to be under lent in it. Deutsch-Wagram village is filled arms. Accordingly, so soon as it was dark, with soldiers of every uniform and grade; in there began before us, on the Danube, a vio all manner of movements and employments; lent fire of artillery; the sky glowed ever and Archduke Karl is heard "fantasying for an anon with the cannon flashes, with the courses hour on the piano-forte," before his serious ge- of bombs and grenadoes: for nearly two hours neralissimo duties begin. The Marchfeld has this thunder-game lasted on both sides; for its camp, the Marchfeld is one great camp of the French had begun their attack almost at many nations-Germans, Hungarians, Italians, the same time with ours, and while we were Madshars; advanced sentinels walk steadily, striving to ruin their works on the Lobau, drill serjeants bustle, drums beat; Austrian they strove to burn Enzersdorf town, and ruin generals gallop, "in blue-gray coat and red ours. The Austrian cannon could do little breeches"-combining "simplicity with con- against the strong works on the Lobau. On spicuousness." Faint on our south-western the other hand, the enemy's attack began to horizon appears the Stephans-thurm (St. Ste-tell; in his object was a wider scope, more phen's Steeple) of Vienna; south, over the Danube, are seen endless French hosts defiling towards us, with dust and glitter, along the hill-roads; one may hope, though with misgivings, there will be work soon.

decisive energy; his guns were more nume. rous, more effectual: in a short time Enzers. dorf burst out in flames, and our artillery struggled without effect against their superi ority of force. The region round had been illuminated for some time with the conflagration of that little town, when the sky grew black with heavy thunder: the rain poured down, the flames dwindled, the artillery fired seldomer, and at length fell silent altogether. A frightful thunder-storm, such as no one thought he had ever seen, now raged over the broad Marchfeld, which shook with the crashing of the thunder, and, in the pour of rain. floods and howl of winds, was in such a roar, that even the artillery could not have been heard in it."

On the morrow morning, in spite of Austria and the war of elements, Napoleon, with his endless hosts, and "six hundred pieces of artillery" in front of them, is across, advancing like a conflagration, and soon the whole Marchfeld, far and wide, is in a blaze.

Meanwhile, in every regiment there is but one tent, a chapel, used also for shelter to the chief officers; you, a subaltern, have to lie on the ground, in your own dug trench, to which, if you can contrive it, some roofing of branches and rushes may be added. It is burning sun and dust, occasionally it is thunder-storm and water-spouts; a volunteer, if it were not for the hope of speedy battle, has a poor time of it: your soldiers speak little, except unintelligible Bohemian Sclavonic; your brother ensigns know nothing of Xenophon, Jean Paul, of patriotism, or the higher philosophies; hope only to be soon back at Prague, where are billiards and things suitable. "The following days were heavy and void: the great summer-heat had withered the grass and grove; the willows of the Russbach were long since leafless, in part bark- "Ever stronger batteries advanced, ever less; on the endless plain fell nowhere a sha- larger masses of troops came into action; the dow; only dim dust-clouds, driven up by whole line blazed with fire, and moved for. sudden whirlblasts, veiled for a moment the ward and forward. We, from our higher poglaring sky, and sprinkled all things with a sition, had hitherto looked at the evolutions hot rain of sand. We gave up drilling as im- and fightings before us, as at a show; but now possible, and crept into our earth-holes." It the battle had got nigher; the air over us sang is feared, too, there will be no battle: Varnha- with cannon-balls, which were lavishly hurled gen has thoughts of making off to the fighting at us, and soon our batteries began to bellow Duke of Brunswick-Oels, or some other that in answer. The infantry got order: to lie flat will fight. However," it would seem, "the on the ground, and the enemy's bails at first worst trial was already over. After a hot, did little execution; however, as they kept in wearying, wasting day, which promised no cessantly advancing, the regiments ere long thing but a morrow like it, there arose on the stood to their arms. The Archduke General 30th of June, from beyond the Danube, a issimo, with his staff, came galloping along, sound of cannon-thunder; a solacing refresh- drew bridle in front of us; he gave his com. ment to the languid soul! A party of French, mands; looked down into the plain, where the as we soon learned, had got across from the French still kept advancing. You saw by his Lobau, by boats, to a litt.e island named Mühle-face that he heeded not danger or death, tha ninsel, divided only by a small arm from our he lived altogether in his work; his whole side of the river; they had then thrown a bearing had got a more impressive aspect, a bridge over this too, with defences; our bat-loftier determination, full of joyous courage, teries at Esslingen were for hindering the enemy's passing there, and his nearest cannons about the Lobau made answer." On the fourth day after,

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which he seemed to diffuse round him; the soldiers looked at him with pride and trust, many voices saluted him. He had ridden a little towards Baumersdorf, when an adjutant "Archduke John got orders to advance came galloping back, and cried: "Volunteer