Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus is a personage whom
we know, it must be confessed, more through the medium of Robert
Browning than through our own historical researches; and we were
therefore filled with wonder to learn that, in addition to the modest
cognomen above, _de Hohenheim_ also belonged to his name. This same
Hohenheim we have recently visited. Paracelsus never lived there, to be
sure, and was born far away in Switzerland. Browning puts him in
Wuerzburg, in Alsatia, in Constantinople; and a solid German authority
declares he lived in Esslingen, where his laboratory is still exhibited,
and in proof mentions that in this neighborhood was, not many years ago,
a Weingaertner whose name was Bombastes von Hohenheim, a descendant of
Paracelsus. However, he lived nowhere, everywhere, and anywhere, I
presume, as best suited such a conjurer, alchemist, philosopher, and
adventurer, and went wandering about from land to land, remaining in one
place so long as the people would have faith in his learning, his
incantations and magic arts; but what concerns us now is simply that he
was connected with the Hohenheim family, who, in the old days, occupied
the estate which still bears its name.
To Hohenheim is a pleasant walk or drive, as you please, from Stuttgart.
A castle, adjacent buildings, lawns, and fruit-trees are what there is
to see at the first glance,--at the second, many practical things in the
museum connected with the Agricultural College, which is what Hohenheim
at present is; models, and collections of stones and birds and beasts,
bones and skeletons, and other uncanny objects, pretty woods, grain,
seeds, etc. Students from the ends of the earth come here, and from all
ranks,--sons of rich peasants and also young men of family. An Hungarian
count is here at present, and youths from Wallachia, Russia, Sweden,
America, Australia, Spain, Italy, and Greece,--China too, for all I know
to the contrary,--with of course many Germans, learning practical and
theoretical farming. We sat under the pear-trees which were showering
white blossoms around us, ate our supper to fortify us for our homeward
walk, watched the sheep come home and the students walking in from the
fields with their oxen-carts. They wore blue blouses and high boots, and
cracked their long whips with a jaunty air, more like Plunket in
"Martha" than veritable farmers. From the balcony opening from the
largest _salon_ we looked upon pretty woods, and the whole chain of the
Suabian Alb, with Lichtenstein, Achalm, and other points of interest to
be studied through a telescope.
This is, then, what Hohenheim now is,--a place where you go and look
about a little, walk through large empty halls and long corridors
affording glimpses of the simple quarters of the students, see a
pleasant landscape, and, in short, enjoy an hour of unquestionably
temperate pleasure. What it was as the seat of the Hohenheim family,
which is mentioned as early as the year 1100, we do not know; but under
Duke Carl Eugen of Wuertemberg, in the last century, it was a sort of
Versailles, if all accounts be true: magnificent parks and gardens,
Roman ruins near Gothic towers and chapels, Egyptian pyramids and Swiss
chalets, catacombs, artificial waterfalls, baths, hothouses, grottos
with Corinthian pillars, a Flora temple with lovely arabesques on its
silver walls, and the palace itself, rising proud and stately at the end
of the park, furnished with every luxury, and filled with rare vases and
pictures. Four colossal statues stand now in one of the halls, arrayed
in garments which, in that freer time, they certainly could not boast.
The raiment is of cloth, dipped, stiffened so that it resembles marble,
unless you examine it too closely. No doubt it is more agreeable that
those huge figures are somewhat clothed upon, but it does seem too
absurd to think of ordering a new coat for "Apollo" when his old one
gets shabby. Making minute investigations, we discovered he had already
had several, wearing the last one outside of the others, as if to
protect himself from the inclemency of the weather.
All the old magnificence was lavished by Herzog Carl upon Franciska von
Hohenheim,--his "Franzel," as he called her in the soft Suabisch,--whose
most romantic story is, _par excellence_, the thing of interest here,
and the Suabians must love it, they tell it so very often.
From many narratives I gather the life-story of a woman who, in spite of
the stain upon her name, is deeply revered in Wuertemberg for her
strong, sweet influence upon its wild duke, for her wisdom and
gentleness, and the good that through her came upon the realm.
She was a daughter of the Freiherr von Bernardin, a noble of ancient
family and limited income. Franciska lived far removed from the gayety
of courts, of which she and her sisters in their castle near Aalen
rarely heard. When she was scarcely sixteen her father gave her hand to
a Freiherr von Leutrum, a fussy, stuffy old man, who wrapped himself in
furs even in summer, and was so conspicuously ugly the boys in the
street would mock at him when he stood at his window. His great head, on
a broad, humped back, scarcely reached the sill.
In addition, a small intellect, hot temper, and suspicious nature made
him yet more of a monster; but Franciska was poor, and it appears it was
considered then, as it would be now, a good match, as Von Leutrum was of
an old family and rich. Whether the historians paint him blacker than he
deserves in order to make Franciska white in contrast, is not easy to
say. It certainly has that effect occasionally, however. Beauty, then,
married the Beast. In 1770 Herzog Carl Eugen came to Pforzheim, where
the nobles of the neighborhood, among them Baron von Leutrum, with his
young wife, assembled to form his court.
Franciska was no famous beauty. She had, however, a tall, graceful
figure, rich blond hair, and was very winning with her fresh, joyful
ways, and a certain indescribable sweetness and gentleness of manner.
The duke, from the first, singled her out by marked attention, which
undoubtedly flattered her, coming from so famous, clever, and
fascinating a man; and it is also probable that she made no especial
effort to repulse the homage in which she could see no harm. He was then
forty-two,--a man of stately beauty, one of the most renowned European
princes of that time, with a strong and highly cultivated intellect, and
of most winning manners where he cared to please. It also appears he
could be a bear, a savage, and a tyrant when he willed.
It was, then, scarcely surprising that a girl married at sixteen to a
fossil like Leutrum, who neglected and abused her, should be bewildered
by the distinguished attention offered by her prince. Meanwhile Leutrum
waxed more and more jealous, until one day in a rage, on account of
remarks of the courtiers, he struck his wife in the face.
The duke, furious at this, insisted upon taking Franciska under his
protection. But she, though agonized with fear and abhorrence of her
husband, yet knowing too well her feeling for the duke, chose to leave
the court at once and return with Leutrum to their castle.
Carl Eugen, never scrupulous as to means when he had anything to gain,
caused a wheel of Leutrum's coach to be put into a state of precarious
weakness, so that, going through some woods not far from Pforzheim, the
carriage broke down, when the duke appeared, rode off with the
trembling, miserable, happy Franciska, leaving Von Leutrum alone with
his broken carriage and his rage.
The duke had been married for political reasons at eighteen to a
princess of Bavaria, with whom he had lived but a year or two, their
natures being strongly incompatible. He, however, a Roman Catholic,
could not free himself from his first marriage until the death of his
wife released him in 1784, when he married Franciska.
The remarkable thing in her history is, that the voice of no
contemporary is raised against her. Noble ladies of unblemished name
visited her as "Graefin von Hohenheim," and all testimony unites in
praising her wisdom, sweetness, and grace, and her almost miraculous
influence for good upon the duke.
"He found in her womanly grace and devoted love, the deepest
appreciation of the beautiful and good, exquisite taste and tact, a
strong, warm interest in his career and calling, wise counsel given in
her soft, womanly words, and a heart for his people.
"In love and sorrow, in matters earnest and light, in his difficult
affairs of state, in enjoyment of the beautiful in art and nature, she
was ever by his side, filled with perfect appreciation of all that moved
him."
She taught him gradually his duty towards his folk, which the wild,
haughty duke had sadly ignored, and she, herself, was always loved and
revered by them.
She was graceful and sparkling in society, not wearing her sorrows upon
her sleeve, but in her private life and letters are marks of lifelong
grief.
"If I could tell you my whole story," she writes to a friend in 1783,
"if you could know the solemnity and repentance with which I look back
upon it, you would withhold from me neither your pity nor your
prayers.... Had I had in my sixteenth year, when, utterly inexperienced,
I entered society with not the slightest knowledge of the world, left
entirely to myself, surrounded by scenes whose meaning I could not
grasp,--had I then had one true friend to warn me, to advise me; had his
reason, his heart, his pureness of deed, inspired my respect and trust,
indeed--indeed--I might have been a better woman."
Later, after a delightful evening at the Princess of Dessau's, where
Lavater also was, she wrote:--
"I was inexpressibly moved by your assurance that you thought of me in
this circle. Could I have felt worthier of such society, the pleasure
would undoubtedly have been more unalloyed. But, as it was--Still I must
not complain."
Such, briefly, is her story. She lived with the duke at the Solitude as
well as here, and Hohenheim he made for her as beautiful as a fairy
palace. He troubled neither her nor himself with scruples. His
conscience was, indeed, not tender, and his life with her was
unquestionably so innocent and idyllic in comparison with his mad past,
that, to him at least, it no doubt seemed blameless. He loved her
faithfully till his death, wrote to her when absent for a day or two as
his good angel, with utter reverence as well as tenderest love. The
proud respected her; the poorest and humblest came to her with their
wants and sorrows.
She died in 1811 in her small, quiet court at Kirchheim unter Teck,
where she had resided after the death of the duke; but her story and the
remembrance of her eventful life will always haunt quiet Hohenheim, and
invest it with a romance it cannot otherwise claim for itself.
"NUREMBERG THE ANCIENT."
The breeze of morning stole in and kissed our cheeks and whispered, "You
have a day and a half to spend in dear, delicious old Nuremberg,--be up
and doing!" Only a day and a half, and yet how infinitely better than no
day at all there! We came, we saw, and were conquered, even by the huge
knockers with bronze wreaths of Cupids and dragons' heads, the ornate,
intricate locks, the massive doors, before we were within the portals of
those proud patrician palaces with their stately inner courts and
galleries, their frescos, painted windows and faded tapestries,
time-stained grandeur, and all their relics of mediaeval magnificence.
O, we stretched our day and a half well, and filled it full of
treasures, and our hearts with lovely thoughts and pictures of the
unique old town, its high quaint gables, stone balconies, beautiful
fountains, double line of walls, and seventy sentinel towers; its castle
and wide moat, where now great trees grow and prim little gardens; its
arched bridges and streams, with shadows of the drooping foliage on the
banks; its oriel windows; its narrow, shady ways and odd corners; its
memories of Albrecht Duerer and Hans Sachs, of Kaiser and knight and
Meistersinger,--its Nurembergishness!
The St. Lorenz Church was our first halting-place. The whole world knows
that its portal and painted windows are beautiful, and that it retains
all the rich old objects of the Roman ritual; that being the condition
under which Nuremberg pranced over in a twinkling to Protestantism, and
people were ordered by the municipal authorities to believe to-day what
they had disbelieved yesterday; and most of the world, perhaps, has seen
the tabernacle for the vessels of the sacrament, but they who have not
can never know from words how it rests on the bowed forms of its
sculptor, Adam Kraft, and his two pupils and assistants, and rises like
frozen spray sixty-four feet in the choir, with the warm light from the
painted windows coloring its exquisite traceries and carvings. It looks
like a holy thought or a hymn of praise caught in stone, aspiring
heavenwards.
We saw there heavy gold chalices from old, old times, and some Gobelin
tapestry only recently discovered hidden away; one scene represented the
weighing of the soul of St. Lawrence to see if it were too light for
heaven. The saint's soul had a shape, in fact was an infant's body, and
the Devil was crouching near by, and St. Lawrence, full-grown, stood
waiting, anxious to know his fate.
Then came a few hours in the German Museum, where, as usual in such
places, the weary lagged behind, the elegant looked _blase_, the
contrary-minded saw the wrong thing first, the energetic pushed
valiantly on, striving to see all and remember all, from earliest forms
of sculpture down through the ages,--all the gold and silver and
carvings and costumes, the immense square green stoves, with the warm,
cosy seat for the old grandmother in the corner; to glance at rare old
lace without neglecting the ancient caps and combs and gewgaws; to look
long at a few of the pictures,--the great one of Duerer's, "Otto at the
Grave of Charlemagne," is here, you know,--and so our straggling party
wandered on through corridor and chamber and staircase, past knights in
effigy, some of whom looked like such jolly old souls, with gallons of
wine beneath their breastplates, past a memorial tablet to a baby prince
who died dim ages ago, to whom a small death-angel is offering an apple;
and then, after seeing the bear, who guards a glass case of precious
things in gold and silver, lowered down to his domain every night, and
after sprinkling beer on his nose to see if he were of German parentage,
we gathered ourselves together and wondered if we quite liked museums.
You see so much more than you can comprehend; you see so much more than
you want to see; you feel so astoundingly ignorant; you have information
thrust upon you so ruthlessly. One wilful maiden says, "I'll go and live
on a desert island, provided no one will show me an object of interest."
Then in the shady cloisters we drank foaming beer with our German
friends, and gathered strength for our next onslaught; and I beg no one
to be captious about the length and out-of-breath character of this
paragraph, for it is quite in keeping with our Nuremberg visit, with
worlds to see in a little day and a half.
There was the old Rath Haus with the Duerer frescos and the Duerer house
and pictures, which everybody mentions; and the rude, dark little den of
a kitchen, which nobody to my knowledge has ever deigned to mention,
where Mrs. Xantippe Duerer used to rattle her sauce-pans and scold her
_Mann_. There was the Fraumkirche and St. Sebald, rich in painted
windows and sculpture. In one room, so rich and dark with its oak
wainscoting and Gobelin tapestry, we involuntarily searched behind the
arras for Polonius, and then stared silently and felt quite flippant
before the antique candelabra and Persian rugs and hopelessly
indescribable ever-to-be-coveted furniture within those memory-laden
walls. An antique, impressive writing-table was a model of rich, quaint
beauty. Poems and romances would feel proud and pleased to simply write
themselves under its aegis, and what a delicious aroma of the past would
cling to them!
We visited the castle, of course, and streams of information about the
Hohenzollerns were poured upon us. We were wicked enough to enjoy
ourselves particularly among the instruments of torture,--exhibited by
the jolliest, fattest, most _debonair_ Mrs. Jarley in the world. She
regaled us with awful tales, that sounded worse than the "Book of
Martyrs," and we were not disgusted, neither did we faint or scream.
There was a lamentable want of feeling, and a marked inclination to
laugh prevailed in our party. Indeed, we saw some sweet things there,--a
hideous dragon's head, worn by women who beat their husbands; a kind of
yoke in which two quarrelsome women were harnessed; a huge collar, with
a bell attached, for gossips; and an openwork iron mask, with a great
protruding, rattling tongue, for inveterate slanderers. We made liberal
proposals to our jolly show-woman for a few of these articles, thinking
we might be able to send them where they were needed, and strongly
inclined to favor their readoption. An iron nose a foot long was worn by
thieves, and the article stolen hung on the end of it.
It is grievous to think there will come a time when people who visit
Nuremberg will see no walls and towers and moats. They are pulling down
the walls at present, for they are as inconvenient as they are
picturesque. Heavy teams and people on foot seeking egress and ingress
at one time through the narrow passages in the massive structure, the
city cramped, its growth retarded, dangerous accidents, as well as the
most reasonable grounds in a commercial point of view, lead the wise to
destroy something selfish tourists would fain preserve intact. But "if I
were king of France, or, still better, pope of Rome," or emperor of
Germany, I'd let the commerce go elsewhere where there is room for it,
and guard old Nuremberg jealously as a precious, beautiful memorial and
heirloom from ancestors who have slept for centuries.
The Johannes Cemetery here is the only lovely one I have yet seen in
Germany. It is not beautiful in itself, as our cemeteries are; but the
solemnity, the dignity of death is here, and no gaudy colors and tinsel
wreaths jar upon your mood and pain you. Only great flat, gray stones,
tablets with the arms in bronze of the old Nuremberg patricians, tell us
wanderers who lies beneath. It was like a solemn poem to be there
deciphering the proud armorial bearings on the great blocks placed there
centuries ago, and the sweet-brier blooming all around with such an
unconscious air on its pale pink blossoms, like fair young faces. One of
Columbus's crew lies there. So many old names and dates!