Produced by Emma Dudding; Dagny; John Bickers; David Widger
THE SURPRISING ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN
By Rudolph Erich Raspe
Published in 1895.
INTRODUCTION
It is a curious fact that of that class of literature to which
Munchausen belongs, that namely of _Voyages Imaginaires_, the three
great types should have all been created in England. Utopia, Robinson
Crusoe, and Gulliver, illustrating respectively the philosophical, the
edifying, and the satirical type of fictitious travel, were all written
in England, and at the end of the eighteenth century a fourth type,
the fantastically mendacious, was evolved in this country. Of this type
Munchausen was the modern original, and remains the classical example.
The adaptability of such a species of composition to local and topical
uses might well be considered prejudicial to its chances of obtaining a
permanent place in literature. Yet Munchausen has undoubtedly achieved
such a place. The Baron's notoriety is universal, his character
proverbial, and his name as familiar as that of Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, or
Robinson Crusoe, mariner, of York. Condemned by the learned, like some
other masterpieces, as worthless, Munchausen's travels have obtained
such a world-wide fame, that the story of their origin possesses a
general and historic interest apart from whatever of obscurity or of
curiosity it may have to recommend it.
The work first appeared in London in the course of the year 1785. No
copy of the first edition appears to be accessible; it seems, however,
to have been issued some time in the autumn, and in the _Critical
Review_ for December 1785 there is the following notice: "Baron
Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns
in Russia. Small 8vo, IS. (Smith). This is a satirical production
calculated to throw ridicule on the bold assertions of some
parliamentary declaimers. If rant may be best foiled at its own weapons,
the author's design is not ill-founded; for the marvellous has never
been carried to a more whimsical and ludicrous extent." The reviewer had
probably read the work through from one paper cover to the other. It was
in fact too short to bore the most blasé of his kind, consisting of
but forty-nine small octavo pages. The second edition, which is in the
British Museum, bears the following title; "Baron Munchausen's Narrative
of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia; humbly dedicated and
recommended to country gentlemen, and if they please to be repeated as
their own after a hunt, at horse races, in watering places, and other
such polite assemblies; round the bottle and fireside. Smith. Printed at
Oxford. 1786." The fact that this little pamphlet again consists of but
forty-nine small octavo pages, combined with the similarity of title
(as far as that of the first edition is given in the _Critical Review_),
publisher, and price, affords a strong presumption that it was identical
with the first edition. This edition contains only chapters ii., iii.,
iv., v., and vi. (pp. 10-44) of the present reprint. These chapters are
the best in the book and their substantial if peculiar merit can hardly
be denied, but the pamphlet appears to have met with little success,
and early in 1786 Smith seems to have sold the property to another
bookseller, Kearsley. Kearsley had it enlarged, but not, we are
expressly informed, in the preface to the seventh edition, by the hand
of the original author (who happened to be in Cornwall at the time). He
also had it illustrated and brought it out in the same year in book
form at the enhanced price of two shillings, under the title: "Gulliver
Reviv'd: The Singular Travels, Campaigns, Voyages and Sporting
Adventures of Baron Munnikhouson commonly pronounced Munchausen; as he
relates them over a bottle when surrounded by his friends. A new edition
considerably enlarged with views from the Baron's drawings. London.
1786." A well-informed _Critical Reviewer_ would have amended the title
thus: "Lucian reviv'd: or Gulliver Beat with his own Bow."
Four editions now succeeded each other with rapidity and without
modification. A German translation appeared in 1786 with the imprint
London: it was, however, in reality printed by Dieterich at Göttingen.
It was a free rendering of the fifth edition, the preface being a clumsy
combination of that prefixed to the original edition with that which
Kearsley had added to the third.
The fifth edition (which is, with the exception of trifling differences
on the title-page, identical with the third, fourth, and sixth) is
also that which has been followed in the present reprint down to the
conclusion of chapter twenty, where it ends with the words "the great
quadrangle." The supplement treating of Munchausen's extraordinary
flight on the back of an eagle over France to Gibraltar, South and North
America, the Polar Regions, and back to England is derived from the
seventh edition of 1793, which has a new sub-title:--"Gulliver reviv'd,
or the Vice of Lying properly exposed." The preface to this enlarged
edition also informs the reader that the last four editions had met with
extraordinary success, and that the supplementary chapters, all, that
is, with the exception of chapters ii., iii., iv., v., and vi., which
are ascribed to Baron Munchausen himself, were the production of another
pen, written, however, in the Baron's manner. To the same ingenious
person the public was indebted for the engravings with which the book
was embellished. The seventh was the last edition by which the classic
text of Munchausen was seriously modified. Even before this important
consummation had been arrived at, a sequel, which was within a fraction
as long as the original work (it occupies pp. 163-299 of this volume),
had appeared under the title, "A Sequel to the Adventures of Baron
Munchausen. . . . Humbly dedicated to Mr. Bruce the Abyssinian
traveller, as the Baron conceives that it may be some service to him,
previous to his making another journey into Abyssinia. But if this
advice does not delight Mr. Bruce, the Baron is willing to fight him on
any terms he pleases." This work was issued separately. London, 1792,
8vo.
Such is the history of the book during the first eight or constructive
years of its existence, beyond which it is necessary to trace it, until
at least we have touched upon the long-vexed question of its authorship.
Munchausen's travels have in fact been ascribed to as many different
hands as those of Odysseus. But (as in most other respects) it differs
from the more ancient fabulous narrative in that its authorship has
been the subject of but little controversy. Many people have entertained
erroneous notions as to its authorship, which they have circulated with
complete assurance; but they have not felt it incumbent upon them to
support their own views or to combat those of other people. It has,
moreover, been frequently stated with equal confidence and inaccuracy
that the authorship has never been settled. An early and persistent
version of the genesis of the travels was that they took their origin
from the rivalry in fabulous tales of three accomplished students at
Göttingen University, Bürger, Kästner, and Lichtenberg; another ran that
Gottfried August Bürger, the German poet and author of "Lenore," had at
a later stage of his career met Baron Munchausen in Pyrmont and taken
down the stories from his own lips. Percy in his anecdotes attributes
the Travels to a certain Mr. M. (Munchausen also began with an M.)
who was imprisoned at Paris during the Reign of Terror. Southey in his
"Omniana" conjectured, from the coincidences between two of the tales
and two in a Portuguese periodical published in 1730, that the English
fictions must have been derived from the Portuguese. William West the
bookseller and numerous followers have stated that Munchausen owed its
first origin to Bruce's Travels, and was written for the purpose of
burlesquing that unfairly treated work. Pierer boldly stated that it was
a successful anonymous satire upon the English government of the day,
while Meusel with equal temerity affirmed in his "Lexikon" that the book
was a translation of the "well-known Munchausen lies" executed from a
(non-existent) German original by Rudolph Erich Raspe. A writer in the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1856 calls the book the joint production of
Bürger and Raspe.
Of all the conjectures, of which these are but a selection, the most
accurate from a German point of view is that the book was the work of
Bürger, who was the first to dress the Travels in a German garb, and
was for a long time almost universally credited with the sole
proprietorship. Bürger himself appears neither to have claimed nor
disclaimed the distinction. There is, however, no doubt whatever that
the book first appeared in English in 1785, and that Bürger's German
version did not see the light until 1786. The first German edition
(though in reality printed at Göttingen) bore the imprint London,
and was stated to be derived from an English source; but this was,
reasonably enough, held to be merely a measure of precaution in case the
actual Baron Munchausen (who was a well-known personage in Göttingen)
should be stupid enough to feel aggrieved at being made the butt of a
gross caricature. In this way the discrepancy of dates mentioned above
might easily have been obscured, and Bürger might still have been
credited with a work which has proved a better protection against
oblivion than "Lenore," had it not been for the officious sensitiveness
of his self-appointed biographer, Karl von Reinhard. Reinhard, in an
answer to an attack made upon his hero for bringing out Munchausen as
a pot-boiler in German and English simultaneously, definitely stated in
the _Berlin Gesellschafters_ of November 1824, that the real author of
the original work was that disreputable genius, Rudolph Erich Raspe, and
that the German work was merely a free translation made by Bürger from
the fifth edition of the English work. Bürger, he stated, was well aware
of, but was too high-minded to disclose the real authorship.
Taking Reinhard's solemn asseveration in conjunction with the
ascertained facts of Raspe's career, his undoubted acquaintance with the
Baron Munchausen of real life and the first appearance of the work in
1785, when Raspe was certainly in England, there seems to be little
difficulty in accepting his authorship as a positive fact. There is no
difficulty whatever, in crediting Raspe with a sufficient mastery of
English idiom to have written the book without assistance, for as early
as January 1780 (since which date Raspe had resided uninterruptedly
in this country) Walpole wrote to his friend Mason that "Raspe writes
English much above ill and speaks it as readily as French," and shortly
afterwards he remarked that he wrote English "surprisingly well." In
the next year, 1781, Raspe's absolute command of the two languages
encouraged him to publish two moderately good prose-translations, one of
Lessing's "Nathan the Wise," and the other of Zachariae's Mock-heroic,
"Tabby in Elysium." The erratic character of the punctuation may be
said, with perfect impartiality, to be the only distinguishing feature
of the style of the original edition of "Munchausen."
Curious as is this long history of literary misappropriation, the
chequered career of the rightful author, Rudolph Erich Raspe, offers a
chapter in biography which has quite as many points of singularity.
Born in Hanover in 1737, Raspe studied at the Universities of Göttingen
and Leipsic. He is stated also to have rendered some assistance to
a young nobleman in sowing his wild oats, a sequel to his university
course which may possibly help to explain his subsequent aberrations.
The connection cannot have lasted long, as in 1762, having already
obtained reputation as a student of natural history and antiquities,
he obtained a post as one of the clerks in the University Library at
Hanover.
No later than the following year contributions written in elegant
Latin are to be found attached to his name in the Leipsic _Nova Acta
Eruditorum_. In 1764 he alluded gracefully to the connection between
Hanover and England in a piece upon the birthday of Queen Charlotte, and
having been promoted secretary of the University Library at Göttingen,
the young savant commenced a translation of Leibniz's philosophical
works which was issued in Latin and French after the original MSS. in
the Royal Library at Hanover, with a preface by Raspe's old college
friend Kästner (Göttingen, 1765). At once a courtier, an antiquary,
and a philosopher, Raspe next sought to display his vocation for polite
letters, by publishing an ambitious allegorical poem of the age of
chivalry, entitled "Hermin and Gunilde," which was not only exceedingly
well reviewed, but received the honour of a parody entitled "Harlequin
and Columbine." He also wrote translations of several of the poems of
Ossian, and a disquisition upon their genuineness; and then with better
inspiration he wrote a considerable treatise on "Percy's Reliques of
Ancient Poetry," with metrical translations, being thus the first to
call the attention of Germany to these admirable poems, which were
afterwards so successfully ransacked by Bürger, Herder, and other early
German romanticists.
In 1767 Raspe was again advanced by being appointed Professor at the
Collegium Carolinum in Cassel, and keeper of the landgrave of Hesse's
rich and curious collection of antique gems and medals. He was shortly
afterwards appointed Librarian in the same city, and in 1771 he married.
He continued writing on natural history, mineralogy, and archæology, and
in 1769 a paper in the 59th volume of the Philosophical Transactions,
on the bones and teeth of elephants and other animals found in North
America and various boreal regions of the world, procured his election
as an honorary member of the Royal Society of London. His conclusion in
this paper that large elephants or mammoths must have previously existed
in boreal regions has, of course, been abundantly justified by later
investigations. When it is added that Raspe during this part of his
life also wrote papers on lithography and upon musical instruments, and
translated Algarotti's Treatise on "Architecture, Painting, and Opera
Music," enough will have been said to make manifest his very remarkable
and somewhat prolix versatility. In 1773 he made a tour in Westphalia in
quest of MSS., and on his return, by way of completing his education,
he turned journalist, and commenced a periodical called the _Cassel
Spectator_, with Mauvillon as his co-editor. In 1775 he was travelling
in Italy on a commission to collect articles of vertu for the landgrave,
and it was apparently soon after his return that he began appropriating
to his own use valuable coins abstracted from the cabinets entrusted
to his care. He had no difficulty in finding a market for the antiques
which he wished to dispose of, and which, it has been charitably
suggested, he had every intention of replacing whenever opportunity
should serve. His consequent procedure was, it is true, scarcely that of
a hardened criminal. Having obtained the permission of the landgrave to
visit Berlin, he sent the keys of his cabinet back to the authorities
at Cassel--and disappeared. His thefts, to the amount of two thousand
rixdollars, were promptly discovered, and advertisements were issued
for the arrest of the Councillor Raspe, described without suspicion of
flattery as a long-faced man, with small eyes, crooked nose, red hair
under a stumpy periwig, and a jerky gait. The necessities that prompted
him to commit a felony are possibly indicated by the addition that he
usually appeared in a scarlet dress embroidered with gold, but sometimes
in black, blue, or grey clothes. He was seized when he had got no
farther than Klausthal, in the Hartz mountains, but he lost no time in
escaping from the clutches of the police, and made his way to England.
He never again set foot on the continent.
He was already an excellent English scholar, so that when he reached
London it was not unnatural that he should look to authorship for
support. Without loss of time, he published in London in 1776 a volume
on some German Volcanoes and their productions; in 1777 he translated
the then highly esteemed mineralogical travels of Ferber in Italy and
Hungary. In 1780 we have an interesting account of him from Horace
Walpole, who wrote to his friend, the Rev. William Mason: "There is a
Dutch sçavant come over who is author of several pieces so learned that
I do not even know their titles: but he has made a discovery in my
way which you may be sure I believe, for it proves what I expected and
hinted in my 'Anecdotes of Painting,' that the use of oil colours was
known long before Van Eyck." Raspe, he went on to say, had discovered
a MS. of Theophilus, a German monk in the fourth century, who gave
receipts for preparing the colours, and had thereby convicted Vasari of
error. "Raspe is poor, and I shall try and get subscriptions to enable
him to print his work, which is sensible, clear, and unpretending."
Three months later it was, "Poor Raspe is arrested by his _tailor_. I
have sent him a little money, and he hopes to recover his liberty, but I
question whether he will be able to struggle on here." His "Essay on the
Origin of Oil Painting" was actually published through Walpole's good
service in April 1781. He seems to have had plans of going to America
and of excavating antiquities in Egypt, where he might have done good
service, but the bad name that he had earned dogged him to London. The
Royal Society struck him off its rolls, and in revenge he is said to
have threatened to publish a travesty of their transactions. He was
doubtless often hard put to it for a living, but the variety of his
attainments served him in good stead. He possessed or gained some
reputation as a mining expert, and making his way down into Cornwall,
he seems for some years subsequent to 1782 to have been assay-master and
storekeeper of some mines at Dolcoath. While still at Dolcoath, it is
very probable that he put together the little pamphlet which appeared
in London at the close of 1785, with the title "Baron Munchausen's
Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia," and having
given his _jeu d'esprit_ to the world, and possibly earned a few guineas
by it, it is not likely that he gave much further thought to the matter.
In the course of 1785 or 1786, he entered upon a task of much greater
magnitude and immediate importance, namely, a descriptive catalogue of
the Collection of Pastes and Impressions from Ancient and Modern Gems,
formed by James Tassie, the eminent connoisseur. Tassie engaged Raspe
in 1785 to take charge of his cabinets, and to commence describing
their contents: he can hardly have been ignorant of his employé's
delinquencies in the past, but he probably estimated that mere casts of
gems would not offer sufficient temptation to a man of Raspe's eclectic
tastes to make the experiment a dangerous one. Early in 1786, Raspe
produced a brief but well-executed conspectus of the arrangement and
classification of the collection, and this was followed in 1791 by "A
Descriptive Catalogue," in which over fifteen thousand casts of ancient
and modern engraved gems, cameos, and intaglios from the most renowned
cabinets in Europe were enumerated and described in French and English.
The two quarto volumes are a monument of patient and highly skilled
industry, and they still fetch high prices. The elaborate introduction
prefixed to the work was dated from Edinburgh, April 16, 1790.
This laborious task completed, Raspe lost no time in applying himself
with renewed energy to mineralogical work. It was announced in the
_Scots Magazine_ for October 1791 that he had discovered in the extreme
north of Scotland, where he had been invited to search for minerals,
copper, lead, iron, manganese, and other valuable products of a similar
character. From Sutherland he brought specimens of the finest clay, and
reported a fine vein of heavy spar and "every symptom of coal." But in
Caithness lay the loadstone which had brought Raspe to Scotland. This
was no other than Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, a benevolent gentleman
of an ingenious and inquiring disposition, who was anxious to exploit
the supposed mineral wealth of his barren Scottish possessions. With
him Raspe took up his abode for a considerable time at his spray-beaten
castle on the Pentland Firth, and there is a tradition, among members
of the family, of Sir John's unfailing appreciation of the wide
intelligence and facetious humour of Raspe's conversation. Sinclair had
some years previously discovered a small vein of yellow mundick on the
moor of Skinnet, four miles from Thurso. The Cornish miners he consulted
told him that the mundick was itself of no value, but a good sign of
the proximity of other valuable minerals. Mundick, said they, was a
good horseman, and always rode on a good load. He now employed Raspe to
examine the ground, not designing to mine it himself, but to let it out
to other capitalists in return for a royalty, should the investigation
justify his hopes. The necessary funds were put at Raspe's disposal,
and masses of bright, heavy material were brought to Thurso Castle as a
foretaste of what was coming. But when the time came for the fruition
of this golden promise, Raspe disappeared, and subsequent inquiries
revealed the deplorable fact that these opulent ores had been carefully
imported by the mining expert from Cornwall, and planted in the places
where they were found. Sir Walter Scott must have had the incident
(though not Raspe) in his mind when he created the Dousterswivel of his
"Antiquary." As for Raspe, he betook himself to a remote part of the
United Kingdom, and had commenced some mining operations in country
Donegal, when he was carried off by scarlet fever at Muckross in 1794.
Such in brief outline was the career of Rudolph Erich Raspe, scholar,
swindler, and undoubted creator of Baron Munchausen.
The merit of Munchausen, as the adult reader will readily perceive, does
not reside in its literary style, for Raspe is no exception to the rule
that a man never has a style worthy of the name in a language that he
did not prattle in. But it is equally obvious that the real and original
Munchausen, as Raspe conceived and doubtless intended at one time to
develop him, was a delightful personage whom it would be the height of
absurdity to designate a mere liar. Unfortunately the task was taken
out of his hand and a good character spoiled, like many another, by mere
sequel-mongers. Raspe was an impudent scoundrel, and fortunately so; his
impudence relieves us of any difficulty in resolving the question,--to
whom (if any one) did he owe the original conception of the character
whose fame is now so universal.
When Raspe was resident in Göttingen he obtained, in all probability
through Gerlach Adolph von Munchausen, the great patron of arts and
letters and of Göttingen University, an introduction to Hieronynimus
Karl Friedrich von Munchausen, at whose hospitable mansion at
Bodenwerder he became an occasional visitor. Hieronynimus, who was born
at Bodenwerder on May 11, 1720, was a cadet of what was known as the
black line of the house of Rinteln Bodenwerder, and in his youth served
as a page in the service of Prince Anton Ulrich of Brunswick. When quite
a stripling he obtained a cornetcy in the "Brunswick Regiment" in the
Russian service, and on November 27, 1740, he was created a lieutenant
by letters patent of the Empress Anna, and served two arduous campaigns
against the Turks during the following years. In 1750 he was promoted to
be a captain of cuirassiers by the Empress Elizabeth, and about 1760 he
retired from the Russian service to live upon his patrimonial estate at
Bodenwerder in the congenial society of his wife and his paragon among
huntsmen, Rösemeyer, for whose particular benefit he maintained a fine
pack of hounds. He kept open house, and loved to divert his guests with
stories, not in the braggart vein of Dugald Dalgetty, but so embellished
with palpably extravagant lies as to crack with a humour that was all
their own. The manner has been appropriated by Artemus Ward and Mark
Twain, but it was invented by Munchausen. Now the stories mainly relate
to sporting adventures, and it has been asserted by one contemporary
of the baron that Munchausen contracted the habit of drawing such
a long-bow as a measure of self-defence against his invaluable but
loquacious henchman, the worthy Rösemeyer. But it is more probable, as
is hinted in the first preface, that Munchausen, being a shrewd man,
found the practice a sovereign specific against bores and all other
kinds of serious or irrelevant people, while it naturally endeared him
to the friends of whom he had no small number.
He told his stories with imperturbable _sang froid_, in a dry manner,
and with perfect naturalness and simplicity. He spoke as a man of the
world, without circumlocution; his adventures were numerous and perhaps
singular, but only such as might have been expected to happen to a man
of so much experience. A smile never traversed his face as he related
the least credible of his tales, which the less intimate of his
acquaintance began in time to think he meant to be taken seriously.
In short, so strangely entertaining were both manner and matter of his
narratives, that "Munchausen's Stories" became a by-word among a host of
appreciative acquaintance. Among these was Raspe, who years afterwards,
when he was starving in London, bethought himself of the incomparable
baron. He half remembered some of his sporting stories, and supplemented
these by gleanings from his own commonplace book. The result is a
curious medley, which testifies clearly to learning and wit, and also
to the turning over of musty old books of _facetiæ_ written in execrable
Latin.
The story of the Baron's horse being cut in two by the descending
portcullis of a besieged town, and the horseman's innocence of the fact
until, upon reaching a fountain in the midst of the city, the insatiate
thirst of the animal betrayed his deficiency in hind quarters, was
probably derived by Raspe from the _Facetiæ Bebelianæ_ of Heinrich
Bebel, first published at Strassburgh in 1508.
There it is given as follows: "De Insigni Mendacio. Faber clavicularius
quem superius fabrum mendaciorum dixi, narravit se tempore belli,
credens suos se subsecuturos equitando ad cujusdam oppidi portas
penetrasse: et cum ad portas venisset cataractam turre demissam, equum
suum post ephippium discidisse, dimidiatumque reliquisse, atque se
media parte equi ad forum usque oppidi equitasse, et caedem non modicam
peregisse. Sed cum retrocedere vellet multitudine hostium obrutus, tum
demum equum cecidisse seque captum fuisse."
The drinking at the fountain was probably an embellishment of Raspe's
own. Many of Bebel's jests were repeated in J. P. Lange's _Delicioe
Academicoe_ (Heilbronn, 1665), a section of which was expressly devoted
to "Mendacia Ridicula"; but the yarn itself is probably much older than
either. Similarly, the quaint legend of the thawing of the horn was told
by Castiglione in his _Cortegiano_, first published in 1528. This is
how Castiglione tells it: A merchant of Lucca had travelled to Poland
in order to buy furs; but as there was at that time a war with Muscovy,
from which country the furs were procured, the Lucchese merchant
was directed to the confines of the two countries. On reaching the
Borysthenes, which divided Poland and Muscovy, he found that the
Muscovite traders remained on their own side of the river from distrust,
on account of the state of hostilities. The Muscovites, desirous of
being heard across the river announced the prices of their furs in a
loud voice; but the cold was so intense that their words were frozen in
the air before they could reach the opposite side. Hereupon the Poles
lighted a fire in the middle of the river, which was frozen into a solid
mass; and in the course of an hour the words which had been frozen
up were melted, and fell gently upon the further bank, although the
Muscovite traders had already gone away. The prices demanded were,
however, so high that the Lucchese merchant returned without making any
purchase. A similar idea is utilised by Rabelais in _Pantagruel_, and by
Steele in one of his _Tatlers_. The story of the cherry tree growing out
of the stag's head, again, is given in Lange's book, and the fact that
all three tales are of great antiquity is proved by the appearance of
counterparts to them in Lady Guest's edition of the _Mabinogion_. A
great number of _nugoe canoroe_ of a perfectly similar type are narrated
in the sixteenth century "Travels of the Finkenritter" attributed to
Lorenz von Lauterbach.
To humorous waifs of this description, without fixed origin or
birthplace, did Raspe give a classical setting amongst embroidered
versions of the baron's sporting jokes. The unscrupulous manner in which
he affixed Munchausen's own name to the completed _jeu d'esprit_ is,
ethically speaking, the least pardonable of his crimes; for when Raspe's
little book was first transformed and enlarged, and then translated into
German, the genial old baron found himself the victim of an unmerciful
caricature, and without a rag of concealment. It is consequently not
surprising to hear that he became soured and reticent before his death
at Bodenwerder in 1797.
Strangers had already begun to come down to the place in the hope of
getting a glimpse of the eccentric nobleman, and foolish stories were
told of his thundering out his lies with apoplectic visage, his eyes
starting out of his head, and perspiration beading his forehead. The
fountain of his reminiscences was in reality quite dried up, and it
must be admitted that this excellent old man had only too good reason to
consider himself an injured person.
In this way, then, came to be written the first delightful chapters of
Baron Munchausen's "Narrative of his Travels and Campaigns in Russia."
It was not primarily intended as a satire, nor was it specially designed
to take of the extravagant flights of contemporary travellers. It
was rather a literary frivolity, thrown off at one effort by a
tatterdemalion genius in sore need of a few guineas.
The remainder of the book is a melancholy example of the fallacy
of enlargements and of sequels. Neither Raspe nor the baron can be
seriously held responsible for a single word of it. It must have been
written by a bookseller's hack, whom it is now quite impossible to
identify, but who was evidently of native origin; and the book is a
characteristically English product, full of personal and political
satire, with just a twang of edification. The first continuation
(chapters one and seven, to twenty, inclusive), which was supplied with
the third edition, is merely a modern _rechauffé_, with "up to date"
allusions, of Lucian's _Vera Historia_. Prototypes of the majority of
the stories may either be found in Lucian or in the twenty volumes of
_Voyages Imaginaires_, published at Paris in 1787. In case, however, any
reader should be sceptical as to the accuracy of this statement he will
have no very great difficulty in supposing, as Dr. Johnson supposed
of Ossian, that anybody could write a great amount of such stuff if he
would only consent to abandon his mind to the task.
With the supplementary chapters commence topical allusions to the
recently issued memoirs of Baron de Tott, an enterprising Frenchman who
had served the Great Turk against the Russians in the Crimea (an English
translation of his book had appeared in 1785). The satire upon this
gallant soldier's veracity appears to be quite undeserved, though
one can hardly read portions of his adventures without being forcibly
reminded of the Baron's laconic style. It is needless to add that the
amazing account of De Tott's origin is grossly libellous. The amount of
public interest excited by the æronautical exploits of Montgolfier and
Blanchard was also playfully satirised. Their first imitator in England,
Vincenzo Lunardi, had made a successful ascent from Moorfields as
recently as 1784, while in the following year Blanchard crossed the
channel in a balloon and earned the sobriquet _Don Quixote de la
Manche_. His grotesque appropriation of the motto "_Sic itur ad astra_"
made him, at least, a fit object for Munchausen's gibes. In the Baron's
visit to Gibraltar we have evidence that the anonymous writer, in common
with the rest of the reading public, had been studying John Drinkwater's
"History of the Siege of Gibraltar" (completed in 1783), which had
with extreme rapidity established its reputation as a military classic.
Similarly, in the Polar adventures, the "Voyage towards the North Pole,"
1774, of Constantine John Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave, is gently
ridiculed, and so also some incidents from Patrick Brydone's "Tour
through Sicily and Malta" (1773), are, for no obvious reason,
contemptuously dragged in. The exploitation of absurd and libellous
chap-book lives of Pope Clement XIV., the famous Ganganelli, can only
be described as a low bid for vulgar applause. A French translation
of Baron Friedrich von Trenck's celebrated Memoirs appeared at Metz in
1787, and it would certainly seem that in overlooking them the compiler
of Munchausen was guilty of a grave omission. He may, however, have
regarded Trenck's adventures less as material for ridicule than as a
series of _hâbleries_ which threatened to rival his own.
The Seventh Edition, published in 1793, with the supplement (pp. 142-
161), was, with the abominable proclivity to edification which marked
the publisher of the period (that of "Goody Two-Shoes" and "Sandford
and Merton"), styled "Gulliver Reviv'd: _or the Vice of Lying Properly
Exposed_." The previous year had witnessed the first appearance of the
sequel, of which the full title has already been given, "with twenty
capital copperplates, including the baron's portrait." The merit of
Munchausen as a mouthpiece for ridiculing traveller's tall-talk, or
indeed anything that shocked the incredulity of the age, was by this
time widely recognised. And hence with some little ingenuity the popular
character was pressed into the service of the vulgar clamour against
James Bruce, whose "Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile" had
appeared in 1790. In particular Bruce's description of the Abyssinian
custom of feeding upon "live bulls and kava" provoked a chorus of
incredulity. The traveller was ridiculed upon the stage as Macfable, and
in a cloud of ephemeral productions; nor is the following allusion in
Peter Pindar obscure:--
"Nor have I been where men (what loss alas!)
Kill half a cow, then send the rest to grass."
The way in which Bruce resented the popular scepticism is illustrated
by the following anecdote told by Sir Francis Head, his biographer. A
gentleman once observed, at a country house where Bruce was staying,
that it was not possible that the natives of Abyssinia could eat raw
meat! "Bruce said not a word, but leaving the room, shortly returned
from the kitchen with a piece of raw beef-steak, peppered and salted in
the Abyssinian fashion. 'You will eat that, sir, or fight me,' he said.
When the gentleman had eaten up the raw flesh (most willingly would he
have eaten his words instead), Bruce calmly observed, 'Now, sir, you
will never again say it is _impossible_.'" In reality, Bruce seems to
have been treated with much the same injustice as Herodotus. The truth
of the bulk of his narrative has been fully established, although a
passion for the picturesque may certainly have led him to embellish many
of the minor particulars. And it must be remembered, that his book was
not dictated until twelve years after the events narrated.
Apart from Bruce, however, the sequel, like the previous continuation,
contains a great variety of political, literary, and other allusions of
the most purely topical character--Dr. Johnson's Tour in the Hebrides,
Mr. Pitt, Burke's famous pamphlet upon the French Revolution, Captain
Cook, Tippoo Sahib (who had been brought to bay by Lord Cornwallis
between 1790 and 1792). The revolutionary pandemonium in Paris, and
the royal flight to Varennes in June 1791, and the loss of the "Royal
George" in 1782, all form the subjects of quizzical comments, and there
are many other allusions the interest of which is quite as ephemeral as
those of a Drury Lane pantomime or a Gaiety Burlesque.
Nevertheless the accretions have proved powerless to spoil "Munchausen."
The nucleus supplied by Raspe was instinct with so much energy that it
has succeeded in vitalising the whole mass of extraneous extravagance.
Although, like "Gulliver's Travels," "Munchausen" might at first sight
appear to be ill-suited, in more than one respect, for the nursery,
yet it has proved the delight of children of all ages; and there are
probably few, in the background of whose childish imagination the
astonishing Munchausen has not at one time or another, together with
Robinson Crusoe, Jack-the-Giant-Killer, and the Pied Piper of Hamelyn,
assumed proportions at once gigantic and seductively picturesque.
The work, as has been shown, assumed its final form before the close of
the eighteenth century; with the nineteenth it commenced its
triumphant progress over the civilised world. Some of the subsequent
transformations and migrations of the book are worthy of brief record.
A voluminous German continuation was published at Stendhal in three
volumes between 1794 and 1800. There was also a continuation comprising
exploits at Walcheren, the Dardanelles, Talavera, Cintra, and elsewhere,
published in London in 1811. An elaborate French translation, with
embellishments in the French manner, appeared at Paris in 1862.
Immerman's celebrated novel entitled "Munchausen" was published in four
volumes at Dusseldorf in 1841, and a very free rendering of the Baron's
exploits, styled "Munchausen's Lugenabenteuer," at Leipsic in 1846.
The work has also been translated into Dutch, Danish, Magyar (_Bard de
Mánx_), Russian, Portuguese, Spanish (_El Conde de las Maravillas_), and
many other tongues, and an estimate that over one hundred editions have
appeared in England, Germany, and America alone, is probably rather
under than above the mark.
The book has, moreover, at the same time provided illustrations to
writers and orators, and the richest and most ample material for
illustrations to artists. The original rough woodcuts are anonymous,
but the possibilities of the work were discovered as early as 1809, by
Thomas Rowlandson, who illustrated the edition published in that year.
The edition of 1859 owed embellishments to Crowquill, while Cruikshank
supplied some characteristic woodcuts to that of 1869. Coloured designs
for the travels were executed by a French artist Richard in 1878, and
illustrations were undertaken independently for the German editions
by Riepenhausen and Hosemann respectively. The German artist Adolph
Schrödter has also painted a celebrated picture representing the Baron
surrounded by his listeners. But of all the illustrations yet invented,
the general verdict has hitherto declared in favour of those supplied
to Théophile Gautier's French edition of 1862 by Gustave Doré, who fully
maintained by them the reputation he had gained for work of a similar
_genre_ in his drawings for Balzac's _Contes Drôlatiques_. When,
however, the public has had an opportunity of appreciating the admirably
fantastic drawings made by Mr. William Strang and Mr. J. B. Clark for
the present edition, they will probably admit that Baron Munchausen's
indebtedness to his illustrations, already very great, has been more
than doubled.
PREFACE
TO
THE FIRST EDITION
Baron Munnikhouson or Munchausen, of Bodenweder, near Hamelyn on the
Weser, belongs to the noble family of that name, which gave to the
King's German dominions the late prime minister and several other public
characters equally bright and illustrious. He is a man of great original
humour; and having found that prejudiced minds cannot be reasoned into
common sense, and that bold assertors are very apt to bully and speak
their audience out of it, he never argues with either of them, but
adroitly turns the conversation upon indifferent topics and then tells
a story of his travels, campaigns, and sporting adventures, in a manner
peculiar to himself, and well calculated to awaken and shame the common
sense of those who have lost sight of it by prejudice or habit.
As this method has been often attended with good success, we beg leave
to lay some of his stories before the public, and humbly request
those who shall find them rather extravagant and bordering upon the
marvellous, which will require but a very moderate share of common
sense, to exercise the same upon every occurrence of life, and chiefly
upon our English politics, in which _old habits_ and _bold assertions_,
set off by eloquent speeches and supported by constitutional mobs,
associations, volunteers, and foreign influence, have of late, we
apprehend, but too successfully turned our brains, and made us the
laughing-stock of Europe, and of France and Holland in particular.
TO THE PUBLIC
Having heard, for the first time, that my adventures have been doubted,
and looked upon as jokes, I feel bound to come forward and vindicate my
character _for veracity_, by paying three shillings at the Mansion House
of this great city for the affidavits hereto appended.
This I have been forced into in regard of my own honour, although I have
retired for many years from public and private life; and I hope that
this, my last edition, will place me in a proper light with my readers.
AT THE CITY OF LONDON, ENGLAND.
_We_, the undersigned, as true believers in the _profit_, do most
solemnly affirm, that all the adventures of our friend Baron Munchausen,
in whatever country they may _lie_, are positive and simple facts.
_And_, as we have been believed, whose adventures are tenfold more
wonderful, _so_ do we hope all true believers will give him their full
faith and credence. GULLIVER. x SINBAD. x ALADDIN. x _Sworn at the
Mansion House 9th Nov. last, in the absence of the Lord Mayor._ JOHN
(_the Porter_).
TRAVELS OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN
CHAPTER I
[THE BARON IS SUPPOSED TO RELATE THESE ADVENTURES TO HIS FRIENDS OVER A
BOTTLE.]
_The Baron relates an account of his first travels--The astonishing
effects of a storm--Arrives at Ceylon; combats and conquers two
extraordinary opponents--Returns to Holland._
Some years before my beard announced approaching manhood, or, in other
words, when I was neither man nor boy, but between both, I expressed in
repeated conversations a strong desire of seeing the world, from which
I was discouraged by my parents, though my father had been no
inconsiderable traveller himself, as will appear before I have reached
the end of my singular, and, I may add, interesting adventures. A
cousin, by my mother's side, took a liking to me, often said I was
fine forward youth, and was much inclined to gratify my curiosity.
His eloquence had more effect than mine, for my father consented to my
accompanying him in a voyage to the island of Ceylon, where his uncle
had resided as governor many years.
We sailed from Amsterdam with despatches from their High Mightinesses
the States of Holland. The only circumstance which happened on our
voyage worth relating was the wonderful effects of a storm, which
had torn up by the roots a great number of trees of enormous bulk and
height, in an island where we lay at anchor to take in wood and water;
some of these trees weighed many tons, yet they were carried by the wind
so amazingly high, that they appeared like the feathers of small birds
floating in the air, for they were at least five miles above the earth:
however, as soon as the storm subsided they all fell perpendicularly
into their respective places, and took root again, except the largest,
which happened, when it was blown into the air, to have a man and his
wife, a very honest old couple, upon its branches, gathering cucumbers
(in this part of the globe that useful vegetable grows upon trees): the
weight of this couple, as the tree descended, over-balanced the trunk,
and brought it down in a horizontal position: it fell upon the chief man
of the island, and killed him on the spot; he had quitted his house
in the storm, under an apprehension of its falling upon him, and was
returning through his own garden when this fortunate accident happened.
The word fortunate, here, requires some explanation. This chief was a
man of a very avaricious and oppressive disposition, and though he had
no family, the natives of the island were half-starved by his oppressive
and infamous impositions.
The very goods which he had thus taken from them were spoiling in his
stores, while the poor wretches from whom they were plundered were
pining in poverty. Though the destruction of this tyrant was accidental,
the people chose the cucumber-gatherers for their governors, as a mark
of their gratitude for destroying, though accidentally, their late
tyrant.
After we had repaired the damages we sustained in this remarkable storm,
and taken leave of the new governor and his lady, we sailed with a fair
wind for the object of our voyage.
In about six weeks we arrived at Ceylon, where we were received with
great marks of friendship and true politeness. The following singular
adventures may not prove unentertaining.
After we had resided at Ceylon about a fortnight I accompanied one of
the governor's brothers upon a shooting party. He was a strong, athletic
man, and being used to that climate (for he had resided there some
years), he bore the violent heat of the sun much better than I could; in
our excursion he had made a considerable progress through a thick wood
when I was only at the entrance.
Near the banks of a large piece of water, which had engaged my
attention, I thought I heard a rustling noise behind; on turning about
I was almost petrified (as who would not be?) at the sight of a lion,
which was evidently approaching with the intention of satisfying his
appetite with my poor carcase, and that without asking my consent. What
was to be done in this horrible dilemma? I had not even a moment for
reflection; my piece was only charged with swan-shot, and I had no other
about me: however, though I could have no idea of killing such an animal
with that weak kind of ammunition, yet I had some hopes of frightening
him by the report, and perhaps of wounding him also. I immediately let
fly, without waiting till he was within reach, and the report did but
enrage him, for he now quickened his pace, and seemed to approach me
full speed: I attempted to escape, but that only added (if an addition
could be made) to my distress; for the moment I turned about I found a
large crocodile, with his mouth extended almost ready to receive me. On
my right hand was the piece of water before mentioned, and on my left a
deep precipice, said to have, as I have since learned, a receptacle at
the bottom for venomous creatures; in short I gave myself up as lost,
for the lion was now upon his hind-legs, just in the act of seizing
me; I fell involuntarily to the ground with fear, and, as it afterwards
appeared, he sprang over me. I lay some time in a situation which no
language can describe, expecting to feel his teeth or talons in some
part of me every moment: after waiting in this prostrate situation a few
seconds I heard a violent but unusual noise, different from any sound
that had ever before assailed my ears; nor is it at all to be wondered
at, when I inform you from whence it proceeded: after listening for
some time, I ventured to raise my head and look round, when, to my
unspeakable joy, I perceived the lion had, by the eagerness with which
he sprung at me, jumped forward, as I fell, into the crocodile's mouth!
which, as before observed, was wide open; the head of the one stuck
in the throat of the other! and they were struggling to extricate
themselves! I fortunately recollected my _couteau de chasse_, which was
by my side; with this instrument I severed the lion's head at one
blow, and the body fell at my feet! I then, with the butt-end of my
fowling-piece, rammed the head farther into the throat of the crocodile,
and destroyed him by suffocation, for he could neither gorge nor eject
it.
Soon after I had thus gained a complete victory over my two powerful
adversaries, my companion arrived in search of me; for finding I did not
follow him into the wood, he returned, apprehending I had lost my way,
or met with some accident.
After mutual congratulations, we measured the crocodile, which was just
forty feet in length.
As soon as we had related this extraordinary adventure to the governor,
he sent a waggon and servants, who brought home the two carcases. The
lion's skin was properly preserved, with its hair on, after which it
was made into tobacco-pouches, and presented by me, upon our return to
Holland, to the burgomasters, who, in return, requested my acceptance of
a thousand ducats.
The skin of the crocodile was stuffed in the usual manner, and makes a
capital article in their public museum at Amsterdam, where the exhibitor
relates the whole story to each spectator, with such additions as he
thinks proper. Some of his variations are rather extravagant; one of
them is, that the lion jumped quite through the crocodile, and was
making his escape at the back door, when, as soon as his head appeared,
Monsieur the Great Baron (as he is pleased to call me) cut it off,
and three feet of the crocodile's tail along with it; nay, so little
attention has this fellow to the truth, that he sometimes adds, as soon
as the crocodile missed his tail, he turned about, snatched the _couteau
de chasse_ out of Monsieur's hand, and swallowed it with such eagerness
that it pierced his heart and killed him immediately!
The little regard which this impudent knave has to veracity makes me
sometimes apprehensive that my _real facts_ may fall under suspicion, by
being found in company with his confounded inventions.