It was hard for me to leave Keilhau, but our trip to Rudolstadt, to
which my dearest companions accompanied me, was merry enough. With
Barop’s permission we had a banquet in the peasant tavern there, whose
cost was defrayed by the kreutzers which had been paid as fines for
offences against table rules. At one of these tables where we larger
boys sat, only French was spoken; at another only the purest German; and
we had ourselves made the rule that whoever used a word of his native
tongue at one, or a foreign one at the other, should be fined a
kreutzer.
How merry were these banquets, at which usually several teachers were
welcome guests!
One of the greatest advantages of Keilhau was that our whole lives, and
even our pleasures, were pure enough not to shun a teacher’s eyes. And
yet we were true, genuine boys, whose overplus of strength found vent
not only in play, but all sorts of foolish tricks.
A smile still hovers around my lips when I think of the frozen snow-man
on whose head we put a black cap and then placed in one of the younger
teacher’s rooms to personate a ghost, and the difficulty we had
in transporting the monster, or when I remember our pranks in the
dormitory.
I believe I am mentioning these cheerful things here to give myself a
brief respite, for the portion of my life which followed is the one I
least desire to describe.
Rousseau says that man’s education is completed by art, Nature, and
circumstances. The first two factors had had their effect upon me, and
I was now to learn for the first time to reckon independently with the
last; hitherto they had been watched and influenced in my favour by
others. This had been done not only by masters of the art of pedagogy,
but by their no less powerful co-educators, my companions, among whom
there was not a single corrupt, ill-disposed boy. I was now to learn
what circumstances I should find in my new relations, and in what way
they would prove teachers to me.
I was to be placed at school in Kottbus, at that time still a little
manufacturing town in the Mark. My mother did not venture to keep me in
Berlin during the critical years now approaching. Kottbus was not far
away, and knowing that I was backward in the science that Dr. Boltze,
the mathematician, taught, she gave him the preference over the heads of
the other boarding-schools in the Mark.
I was not reluctant to undertake the hard work, yet I felt like a colt
which is led from the pastures to the stable.
A visit to my grandmother in Dresden, and many pleasures which I was
permitted to share with my brothers and sisters, seemed to me like the
respite before execution.
My mother accompanied me to my new school, and I can not describe the
gloomy impression made by the little manufacturing town on the flat
plains of the Mark, which at that time certainly possessed nothing that
could charm a boy born in Berlin and educated in a beautiful mountain
valley.
In front of Dr. Boltze’s house we found the man to whose care I was to
be entrusted. At that time he was probably scarcely forty years old,
short in stature and very erect, with a shrewd face whose features
indicated an iron sternness of character, an impression heightened by
the thick, bushy brows which met above his nose.
He himself said that people in Pomerania believed that men with such
eyebrows stood in close relations to Satan. Once, while on his way in a
boat from Greifswald to the island of Rugen, the superstitious sailors
were on the point of throwing him overboard because they attributed
their peril to him as the child of the devil, yet, he added--and he was
a thoroughly truthful man--the power which these strange eyebrows gave
him over others, and especially over men of humble station, induced them
to release him.
But after we had learned what a jovial, indulgent comrade was hidden
behind the iron tyrant who gazed so threateningly at us from the black
eyes beneath the bushy brows, our timidity vanished, and at last we
found it easy enough to induce him to change a resolute “No” into a
yielding “Yes.”
His wife, on the contrary, was precisely his opposite, for she wielded
the sceptre in the household with absolute sway, though so fragile a
creature that it seemed as if a breath would blow her away. No one could
have been a more energetic housekeeper. She was as active an assistant
to her husband with her pen as with her tongue. Most of my reports are
in her writing. Besides this, one pretty, healthy child after another
was born, and she allowed herself but a brief time for convalescence.
I was the godfather of one of these babies, an honour shared by my
school-mate, Von Lobenstein. The baptismal ceremony was performed in the
Boltze house. The father and we were each to write a name on a slip of
paper and lay it beside the font. We had selected the oddest ones we
could think of, and when the pastor picked up the slips he read Gerhard
and Habakkuk. Thanks to the care and wisdom of his excellent mother, the
boy throve admirably in spite of his cognomen, and I heard to my great
pleasure that he has become an able man.
This boyish prank is characteristic of our relations. If we did not go
too far, Frau Boltze always took our part, and understood how to smooth
her husband’s frowning brow quickly enough. Besides, it was a real
pleasure to be on good terms with her, for, as the daughter of a
prominent official, she had had an excellent education, and her quick
wit did honour to her native city, Berlin.
Had Dr. Boltze performed his office of tutor with more energy, it would
have been better for us; but in other respects I can say of him nothing
but good.
The inventions he made in mechanics, I have been told by experts, were
very important for the times and deserved greater success. Among them
was a coach moved by electricity.
My mother and I were cordially welcomed by this couple, on conversing
with whom my first feeling of constraint vanished.
The examination next morning almost placed me higher than I expected,
for the head-master who heard me translate at first thought me prepared
for the first class; but Pro-Rector Braune, who examined me in Latin
grammar, said that I was fitted only for the second.
When I left the examination hall I was introduced by Dr. Boltze to one
of my future school-fellows in the person of an elegant young gentleman
who had just alighted from a carriage and was patting the necks of the
horses which he had driven himself.
I had supposed him to be a lieutenant in civilian’s dress, for his
dark mustache, small whiskers, and the military cut of his hair,
which already began to be somewhat thin, made me add a lustrum to his
twenty-one years.
After my new tutor had left us this strange school-fellow entered into
conversation with me very graciously, and after telling me many things
about the school and its management which seemed incredible, he passed
on to the pupils, among whom were some “nice fellows,” and mentioned a
number of names, principally of noble families whose bearers had come
here to obtain the graduation certificate, the key without which so many
doors are closed in Prussia.
Then he proceeded to describe marvels which I was afterwards to witness,
but which at that time I did not know whether I ought to consider
delightful or quite the contrary.
Of course, I kept my doubts to myself and joined in when he laughed; but
my heart was heavy. Could I avoid these companions? Yet I had come to
be industrious, prepare quickly for the university, and give my mother
pleasure.
Poor woman! She had made such careful inquiries before sending me here;
and what a dangerous soil for a precocious boy just entering the years
of youth was this manufacturing town and an institution so badly managed
as the Kottbus School! I had come hither full of beautiful ideals and
animated by the best intentions; but the very first day made me suspect
how many obstacles I should encounter; though I did not yet imagine the
perils which lay in my companion’s words. All the young gentlemen who
had been drawn hither by the examination were sons of good families,
but the part which these pupils, and I with them, played in society, at
balls, and in all the amusements of the cultivated circle in the town
was so prominent, the views of life and habits which they brought with
them so completely contradicted the idea which every sensible person has
of a grammar-school boy, that their presence could not fail to injure
the school.
Of course, all this could not remain permanently concealed from the
higher authorities. The old head-master was suddenly retired, and one
of the best educators summoned in his place man who quickly succeeded
in making the decaying Kottbus School one of the most excellent in all
Prussia. I had the misfortune of being for more than two years a pupil
under the government of the first head-master, and the good luck
of spending nearly the same length of time under the charge of his
successor.
My mother was satisfied with the result of the examination, and the next
afternoon she drove with me to our relatives at Komptendorf. Frau
von Berndt, the youngest daughter of our beloved kinsman, Moritz von
Oppenfeld, united to the elegance of a woman reared in a large city the
cordiality of the mistress of a country home. Her husband won the entire
confidence of every one who met the gaze of his honest blue eyes. He
had given up the legal profession to take charge of his somewhat
impoverished paternal estate, and soon transformed it into one of the
most productive in the whole neighbourhood.
He was pleased that I, a city boy, knew so much about field and forest,
so at my very first visit he invited me to repeat it often.
The next morning I took leave of my mother, and my school life began. In
many points I was in advance of the other pupils in the second class,
in others behind them; but this troubled me very little--school seemed a
necessary evil. My real life commenced after its close, and here also
my natural cheerfulness ruled my whole nature. The town offered me few
attractions, but the country was full of pleasures. Unfortunately,
I could not go to Komptendorf as often as I wished, for it was a two
hours’ walk, and horses and carriages were not always at my disposal.
Yet many a Saturday found me there, enjoying the delight of chatting
with my kind hostess about home news and other pleasant things, or
reading aloud to her.
Even in the second year of my stay at Kottbus I went to every dance
given on the estates in the neighbourhood and visited many a delightful
home in the town. Then there were long walks--sometimes with Dr. Boltze
and my school-mates, sometimes with friends, and often alone.
We frequently took a Sunday walk, which often began on Saturday
afternoon, usually with merry companions and in the society of our stern
master, who, gayer than the youngest of us, needed our care rather
than we his. In this way I visited the beautiful Muskau, and still more
frequently the lovely woodlands of the Spree, a richly watered region
intersected by numerous arms of the river and countless canals, resting
as quietly under dense masses of foliage as a child asleep at noontide
beneath the shadow of a tree.
The alders and willows, lindens and oaks, which grow along the banks,
are superb; flocks of birds fly twittering and calling from one bush
and branch to another; but all human intercourse is carried on, as in
Venice, by boats which glide noiselessly to and fro.
Whoever desires a faithful and minute picture of this singular region,
which reminded me of many scenes in Holland and many of Hobbema’s
paintings, should read The Goddess of Noon. It contains a number of
descriptions whose truth and vividness are matchless.
Every trip into the woodlands of the Spree offered an abundance of
beautiful and pleasurable experiences, but I remember with still greater
enjoyment my leafy nooks on the river-bank.