A poet's study, when he has lain in his grave but one short year, and
the character and peculiarities which his presence gave to his
surroundings are yet undisturbed, is a sacred spot. In light mood, ready
to be agreeably entertained, we went out to pleasant Cannstadt to see
Freiligrath's books, and even in crossing the threshold of his library
the careless words died on our lips, so strong a personality has the
room, so heavy was the atmosphere with associations and memories of a
man who had lived and loved and toiled and suffered.
How much rooms have to say for themselves, indeed! How they catch tricks
and ways from their occupants! How faultily faultless and repellent are
some, how strangely some charm us and appeal to us! This room of
Freiligrath's speaks in touching little ways of the man who lived there
and loved it, as plainly as a young girl's room tells a sweet, innocent
story while the breeze moves its snowy curtains, beneath which in his
golden cage a canary trills, and the sunshine steals in on the low
chair, the bit of unfinished work, the handful of violets in a glass,
the book opened at a favorite poem. The girl is gone, but the room is as
warm from her presence as the glove that has just been drawn from her
hand. Freiligrath sleeps in the Cannstadt _Friedhof_, where for a
thousand years the sturdy little church, with its red roof and square
tower, has watched by the silent ones; but his chair is drawn up by the
great study-table, the familiar things he loved are as he left them, and
his presence is missed even by them who knew him not. It is, perhaps,
this air of having been touched by a _loving_ hand, that impresses one
especially in the arrangements here,--a corner room, looking north and
east, having two windows, through which air and sunshine freely come,
and from which the poet used to gaze upon a landscape lovely as a dream;
far extended, tranquil, idyllic, in the distance, the Suabian Alps,
rising against the horizon beyond long, soft slopes of fertile lands
crowned by vineyards, and broad, sunny meadows intersected by lines of
the martial poplar; a glimpse of the lovely, wooded heights of the park
of the "Wilhelma," that "stately pleasure dome," which King Wilhelm of
Wuertemberg decreed, and the Neckar close by, rushing over its dam, and
sweeping beneath the picturesque stone bridge with its fine arches, and
flowing on past the old mill and quaint gables of Cannstadt to meet the
distant Rhine. How Freiligrath must have loved the sound of the water
that sang to him ever, night and day, not loud but continuously,
soothing him as a cradle-song soothes a weary child, in these latter
years at quiet Cannstadt after his life-struggles, and fever, and pain!
They say he loved it well, and that he would often rise from his work
and stand long by the window, looking out on the singing water and the
peaceful landscape, watching it as we watch a loved face that has for us
a new, tender grace with every moment.
The room does not look like the abode of a solitary man. The easy-chairs
seem accustomed to be drawn near one another for a cosy chat between
friends, and the expression of all things is genial, _gemuethlich_. Not
a bookworm, not simply a great intellect lost in his own pursuits,
forgetting the world outside, but a strong, warm heart throbbing for
humanity, must have been the genius of a room like this.
Under his table lies a deerskin rug, a trophy of his son Wolfgang's
prowess in the chase. On the walls are pictures of different sizes,
irregularly hung in irregular places, and each one seems to say, "I was
selected from all others of my kind because Freiligrath loved me." They
are mostly heads of his favorite authors and poets, small pictures as a
rule,--the one of Schiller sitting by the open vine-clad
window,--Goethe, Heine, Uhland, and many more of the chief poets of
Germany; Byron, several of Longfellow and the Howitts (dear friends of
Freiligrath), Burns, Burns's sons and the Burns Cottage, Goldsmith,
Carlyle, Jean Paul; a small colored picture of Walter Scott bending his
gentle face over his writing in front of a great stained-glass window in
the armory at Abbotsford; a cast of the Shakespeare mask; a few scenes
from Soest, a picturesque old town, where Freiligrath was, when a boy,
apprenticed to a merchant; a lock of Schiller's hair,--quite red,--with
an autograph letter; a lock of Goethe's hair, which is dusky brown, with
letters, and an unpublished verse written for a lottery at a fair in
Weimar:--
"Manches herrliche der Welt
Ist in Krieg and Streit zerronnen;
Wer beschuetzet and erhaelt
Hat das schoenste Loos gewonnen."
--_Goethe._
_Weimar_, d. 3 Sept. 1826.
Madame Freiligrath was Ida Melos, daughter of Professor Melos of Weimar,
and when a child was an especial pet of Goethe. She and her sister tell
many pleasant anecdotes of their life there, and of their playfellows,
Goethe's grandchildren, with whom they have always been on terms of
close intimacy; and of Goethe as a beautiful old man, smiling and
throwing bonbons from his window to the group of children at play in the
garden below. Mrs. Freiligrath told us she was a tall, mature girl, with
a wise, grave look far beyond her years, and they always made her enact
Mignon in the _tableaux vivants_. She was so young she did not know what
it was all about, but she "remembers she liked wearing the wings." Two
gentlewomen, speaking with a tender sadness of their long, eventful
lives, telling us of associations with some of the leading spirits of
the age, charming in their stories of the past, appreciative of all that
is best in the latest literature, they harmonize well with the quiet old
house where they graciously dispense their hospitality.
Gently and gravely they showed us the treasures of the library, which
probably during the spring will come under the auctioneer's hammer, and
be scattered through the world. Seeing it in its completeness,--seven or
eight thousand volumes amassed through the skill and patience of a true
book-lover, who allowed himself in his frugal life the one luxury of a
rich binding now and then, and who had a perfect genius for discovering
rare old books hidden away in dusty odd corners in London bookshops,
being, in this respect, as his friend Wallesrode says, in a recent
article in "Ueber Land and Meer," a real "Sunday child,"--one must
regret it cannot be preserved intact, and given as a Freiligrath
memorial to some college.
There are first editions here, which on account of their rareness could
command from connoisseurs their weight in gold: Schiller's "Robbers,"
Frankfort and Leipsic, 1781, first edition; the second edition, 1782,
and many other early editions of Schiller's works, small, rough,
curious-looking, precious books: also, first edition Goethe's "Gotz von
Berlichingen," 1773; "Werther," Leipsic, 1774. The German and English
classics stand in noble, stately rows, with much of value in Italian,
French, and Spanish. The English collection is especially rich, however.
There is a "Hudibras," first edition, 1662; "Rasselas," first edition; a
"Don Quixote" with Thackeray's autograph on the fly-leaf, written in
Trinity College; and there are "Elzevirs" of 1640-47. The ballads,
legends, Eastern fairy-tales, and imaginative lore are very attractive.
There is a fine selection of works on German, French, English, Scotch,
and Irish dialects, in all of which Freiligrath was extremely
proficient. How many "Miltons" there are I do not dare say, and the
number is not important, since this does not pretend to be an inventory;
but there was a whole shelf of them, from the first edition on.
On the library-table lay superb volumes, bound in richest
calf,--Beaumont and Fletcher, London, 1679, in folio; Ben Jonson, 1631,
folio; Spenser, 1611; Shakespeare, the rare folio of 1685, and many
other valuable Shakespeares. If only some one who knows how to love them
will buy these books! It seems like sacrilege to imagine them in the
hands of the unworthy or careless.
One could spend days, years, in that quiet room, with its subtle
influences and suggestions, surrounded by old friends on the shelves,
and by books that look as if they would deign to open their hearts to us
and become our friends also. And there must one ponder long upon the
varied life of the poet and patriot,--how Fate was always putting
fetters on his Pegasus, binding him as an apprentice as a boy in Soest,
later making him a clerk in a banking-house in Amsterdam, and forcing
him again to write at a clerk's desk in London; and how, nevertheless,
he sang himself, as some one says of him, into the hearts of the German
people. They say he was so loved, and his face so well known through his
photographs, that often, upon going through a town where he personally
was unknown, the school-children in the streets would recognize him, and
instantly begin to sing poems of his that were set to music and sung
everywhere throughout Germany, particularly the well-known
_O, lieb, so lang du lieben kannst!_
"O, love, while love is left to thee!"
It is said, too, that once on a steamer, during the Franco-Prussian war,
a woman came up to him and suddenly put her arms round his neck and
kissed him. "That's for Wolfgang in the field," said she, having a son
herself at the front.
And after his struggles for freedom, the persecution he endured because
of his political principles and his immense influence upon the people,
after his flight into England and long exile, he came back finally,
honored and revered, to his native land, and spent his last years in
this peaceful abode. He breathed his last, like Goethe, sitting in his
chair. The Neckar still sang on, outside the vine-clad window. Within,
the poet's voice was hushed forever.