member of this very old society, to which Nicolai had once belonged, It
was composed of officials of high rank, and a few scholars. When there
was any matter regarding which Lepsius wished to have a personal
interview with one of the former, he was glad to go thither to find him
and engage his attention.
The Archæological and Geographical Societies he visited occasionally
from scientific interest.
If we did not have Lepsius’ own assurance that nothing so refreshed him
as the exhilarating intercourse with superior men, it would be hard to
understand how, during the latter lustrums of his laborious life, he
could conduct such numerous and profound researches to their conclusion,
when we consider that he was quite frequently bidden to the evening
tea-drinkings in the imperial palace, that even when chief librarian he
was never to be counted among the negligent members of the Griechheit
or of the Wednesday Club, and that in addition to this he had official
and social duties. But his mind, cheered and invigorated, soon retrieved
by the active labors of the morning those evening hours which had been
spent at the “Clubs.”
One after another the children had all flown from the parental nest. A
portion of the beautiful garden had to be sold, when Hildebrand Street
was made to connect Thiergarten Street with the grand canal. The latter
we used to know as a modest sheep pond, upon which the green duck-weed
floated like mould, and across whose sandy shores a few isolated trees
cast their shadow. Lepsius yielded to the demands of the growing city of
Berlin, and the vigorous old man, ever ready for new enterprises,
decided to sell the dear old house. In consequence of the great rise in
its value it had become too expensive a dwelling for its few inmates,
especially as Lepsius had just at that time encountered heavy pecuniary
losses. But neither he nor his wife wished to leave the dear old home,
and therefore they caused it to be moved, after they had found a
suitable lot of ground in Kleist Street on the borders of
Charlottenburg, in the extreme western part of Berlin. There it was once
more reared, and anyone who once knew the old house, and now seeks and
finds the new, will feel, as all of us of that generation must, that he
is under the power of a magic spell; for there before him stands the old
Lepsius homestead, just as it was in Bendler Street. The interior too
has undergone no change, and it is not only that the new house
resembles the old, but, in a certain sense, it is the same, for Lepsius
did not sell the materials of which his first dwelling-place had been
constructed, and after the new owner had torn down the scholar’s home in
Bendler Street, in order to erect a large apartment house on the site,
Lepsius had it carried to Kleist Street, stone by stone, door by door,
and window by window, and thus actually succeeded in living in the old
house on the new site. Unluckily, the good fortune which had so long
remained faithful to him did not follow him to the new home. He there
saw beloved members of his family fall a prey to severe illness, and
when he had enjoyed the new dwelling for a short time he was himself
attacked by the malignant disease which deprived us of our revered
Master, and his children of their dear father.
But, on the other hand, the old house had fully and completely fulfilled
the destiny to which its builder had consecrated it in a beautiful
speech at the laying of the corner-stone, August fifth, 1854. He then
said, speaking of his children and his wife: “This house is not meant
chiefly for us, but for our children. But for them we should never have
thought of building a house. To them it will be the home of their
parents, where their youth will develop, therefore it shall give them as
large a portion of the fresh air of heaven and of nature’s green, as it
is possible to obtain in a large city. They will people every corner
with their childish phantasies, and throughout life their recollections
will cling to every tree and shrub.”
Thus it happened; and the wife too, in the old house, which then was
new, took the very place which he awarded her in the same speech; “But
besides the children,” he had said, “it is to the woman, to the mistress
of the house, that the house belongs. There indeed the man may often
command or rebuke, but there the woman rules. The husband will live
there, but the wife will work there, will govern and provide. Her heart,
her eye and her mouth are the true homes of domestic peace, that
beautiful jewel of a happy home. As was said of old, she is the ‘house
honor;’[101] that is, upon her rests the honor of the house, and to her
is due the honor of the house. The proverb says ‘Every wise woman
buildeth her house.’ That has been a true saying in this case, for many
times has the whole plan passed through the sieve of her wisdom, and
each time it has come out finer. Therefore it is just that we should lay
the foundation stone exactly here, under the future room of the
housewife, as the corner-stone of the house’s honor and the house’s
peace.”
The children and friends were attracted to the new home in Kleist Street
as they had been to the old, and it gave Lepsius special gratification
to build a studio, as an annex to the family dwelling, for his son
Reinhold, who had meanwhile developed into a very promising portrait
painter. In the evening of his days Lepsius saw his two eldest sons lead
home as brides the daughters of two of his friends.
Grandchild after grandchild grew up beside the pair who were now waxing
old. The wife had many things to attend to and to watch over, now here
and now there; during the last lustrum, too, she had to care for her
husband, whose vigorous body had been spared by serious illness until
the slight apoplectic attack, already mentioned, impaired the use of his
hand. In November, 1883, when we last visited our revered teacher and
dear friend, we found him and his wife animated and cheerful in spite of
the many terrible blows of destiny which they had encountered. His
letters, which, after the apoplectic attack, had been written with a
trembling hand, had long since exhibited almost the same firm strokes of
the pen as in earlier days, and the writings which date from his latter
years show that his mind had retained its old elasticity and depth. But
soon after our farewell visit a disorder of the stomach began to
undermine his vigorous health, and at the same time his mind was greatly
disturbed by the severe illness of his beloved wife.
At Easter, 1884, he felt a premonition of his approaching end and faced
it with that serenity of mind which had always distinguished him. At
that time, when, without being really ill, he began to feel weak, he
often spoke of his impending death. At Whitsuntide he was forced to take
to his bed, and he now steadfastly regarded his approaching departure,
and quietly prepared for it. He caused his children to be summoned, and
clearly and thoughtfully talked over with them everything in his and
their material affairs which still required to be set in order. He made
a new will, as it had become necessary to change that already in
existence on account of the illness of the faithful companion of his
life, which was such as to preclude any hope of recovery. After that he
was a little better again. The physicians believed that the ulcer of the
stomach might heal, on account of the unusual vigor and soundness of the
rest of the system: but he did not share their hopes, although he
allowed his children to depart.
But soon afterwards the physicians became convinced that the ulcer had
developed into an incurable cancer of the stomach. Nevertheless he would
not cease work, and his last efforts were devoted to his science.
A polemic article against a Heidelberg colleague had already been sent
to press, and had been put in type, in order that it might appear in the
next number of the Journal of Egyptian Language and Archaeology. But
before this occurred he felt the precursors of death, and recalled the
controversial paper and had the type distributed, because he would not
close his scientific career “with a discord.”
Then, while in bed, he himself corrected the last pages of his “Linear
Measures of the Ancients,” and with the same careful, indeed painful,
accuracy which had distinguished his work in the days of health. He also
directed to what persons this book should be sent. Like a true German
scholar, Lepsius died in the midst of his labors. During the last three
days he for the first time occasionally lost his clearness of thought,
in consequence of bodily exhaustion, as for the five previous weeks he
had been able to take very little nourishment. His end was painless, and
his failing eyes looked round upon his children, to whom it was granted
to stand beside his deathbed. At the end he tried to speak to his eldest
son, but the brothers and sisters could only distinguish the name
“Richard.”
Lepsius drew his last breath on the tenth of July, at nine o’clock in
the morning. With entire interest and consciousness he, together with
all his children, had eight days before received the holy sacrament from
the faithful pastor of the family, the chief Court Chaplain, Kögel. The
words spoken beside the coffin of the deceased by that excellent divine
were a model of what a funeral discourse should be, and proved that it
had been given to Kögel to recognize fully those great qualities of mind
and heart which had ennobled the departed.
RICHARD LEPSIUS AS A MAN.
The reader of this biography, who has followed with us the development
and the subsequent life of Richard Lepsius, will think that he has
learned in him to know a character whose estimable and tranquil nature
needs no closer inspection. He will consider it a simple one, and
therefore of little interest. For although he has followed the life of
our hero step by step from his school days to the climax of fame, from
childhood to an advanced old age, yet he has at no time observed in it
any noticeable alteration. The reader has seen no great blows of destiny
interrupt the earthly existence of our friend, until a short time before
his death. Where obstacles have appeared in his path they have been seen
to sink of themselves, as if to be the more readily surmounted. For this
man Fortune seemed to have changed her nature, fickleness to have been
transformed to fidelity, and treachery to truth. But a perfectly happy
life is like summer at the North Pole where there is no night; always
bright, and without timidity or terror. Yet, though strange, it is
monotonous, and therefore the longer the day endures the more destitute
is it of charm.
The great natural talents, and the fullness of years granted to this
man, were used by him wisely and prudently. He left school and
university with the highest testimonials, and always fulfilled his duty
with the same active zeal and conscientious earnestness, whether as a
young scholar in Paris, Rome and London, as the prudent chief of a great
expedition which was crowned with rare success, as the famous master and
leader of a progressive science, as a teacher at the university, as the
director of a museum, or as chief librarian. Every honor which it was
possible for him to attain fell to his lot, and he conducted great
undertakings to their conclusion with circumspection, energy and
discernment. From his youth up his superior character, as well as his
personal appearance and bearing, secured him esteem and consideration,
and where it was necessary for him to lead he commanded wisely, justly,
vigorously and discreetly.
When he was six and thirty years old he found an admirable consort, who
loved him with all the warmth of an ardent young heart, and never ceased
to recognize his superiority with happy pride and to honor his great
qualities. In his own home his wife ruled freely, and yet he was ever
the absolute master. Four fine sons promised to maintain the honor of
his famous name, and his beloved daughters endowed him with charming
grandchildren. When he closed his eyes he might say that his work, and
with it his fame, would endure as long as the science to which he had
rendered such great services. He presented his complete works to his
native town, Naumburg, that all which he had accomplished might be
preserved at his birthplace in the BIBLIOTHECA LEPSIANA.
It is true that the story of this life shows few shadows amid many
lights, and he whom it presents to us underwent no marked change during
his years of maturity. Nevertheless, he had not, from childhood up, been
this unimpassioned and prudent master of himself, who knew how to
control every quick impulse, that he might follow or abandon it as his
searching mind decided on its worth or worthlessness. No! for him, too,
there must have been a time when an honest man could not have affirmed
as he did to his wife in his sixtieth year, that he never had anything
to repent, because he always did that which he thought right.
He was considered by many to be essentially a cold man of intellect, in
whom feeling was overshadowed by the fully developed and carefully
polished mind. This opinion sprang from his dispassionate prudence, the
well-bred reserve by which he knew how to hide the weaker parts of his
nature, the measured dignity with which he met strangers, and the quiet
and thoughtful composure which came from his habit of always holding a
dominating position and directing his own affairs as well as those of
others. To these were added the imposing dignity of his figure, the
clear symmetrical outlines of his fine features, the natural grace of
his movements, the finished tones of his speech, and especially the
earnest and utterly intolerant severity with which he opposed all
falsehood and injustice wherever he encountered them. It was impossible
to forget, too, with what energy, wherever he held command, he sought to
reduce all that was disorderly to order, or with what independence he,
when an attempt was made to depreciate his well won right to the
directorship of the Museum,[102] unhesitatingly declared that he would
resign his professorship and leave Berlin if his well-founded claims
were not accorded to him.
Yet in spite of all this those who would deny him warmth of soul are
wrong, indeed we can maintain this confidently, although even to his
wife the qualities of her husband’s intellect were always more apparent
than those of his heart.
Let us hear the judgment which she pronounced on him; not during the
first ten years of marriage, when, overflowing with love, she found in
him something new to admire every day, but after she had shared the
pleasures and pains of life with him for nearly a quarter of a century,
and had come to feel with bitterness that she would never succeed in
leading him to the same conception of a strictly Christian and contrite
life which she had herself arrived at many years before.
She had sought once more, on Christmas eve, 1869, to win him over to the
charms of that pious faith in miracles which filled her own soul, and to
lead him to that fountain “whence alone flowed strength and happiness
for her.” He answered her that she should not desire impossibilities,
and should hold to that which was good in him, as he gladly contented
himself with the many things that were excellent in her. Thereupon she
wrote, “Truth and uprightness are family virtues of the Lepsius race.
They have usually serene and well disposed natures, noble minds, which
despise everything that is trivial, and a strong sense of honor. Richard
adds to these a disposition to mediate and reconcile which makes him
greatly beloved. Intelligence and clear sobriety of thought prevail
among all the brothers and sisters. Richard has attained self-control
and moderation amongst the manifold relations of life, and to this his
prudence and his knowledge have added. Vain he is not; in short an
_homme comme il faut_. At every moment he does what he thinks right, and
therefore never has anything to repent of, (he once told me so
himself.)” She then calls his character a well-regulated and symmetrical
one, with a prevailing intellectual tendency, and, (we repeat), she
exclaims after a married life of four and twenty years, and speaking
with irritation, “If there were even any positive faults that I had to
bear in Richard--but there are no faults, he has none, it is only
community of faith which I miss.”
In this analysis of his character there are certainly many words of warm
appreciation, and indeed his uprightness was such that every judgment,
every expression of opinion which we hear him utter either publicly or
in writing to his acquaintances, corresponds exactly to what is
contained in confidential letters to his family, and the memoranda
intended for himself alone. But his own wife sees in him only the
well-meaning, faultless and stainless man of intellect, and forgets that
for him, too, there must have been a time when he had to strive against
those impulses and emotions to which few men are strangers. Regarding
this conflict he had written to her in former years a beautiful and
perfectly unreserved letter.
In this document, which gives us a key to the understanding of both his
intrinsic and his external qualities, he writes: “I recognize an
impulsive disposition as an old fault in myself, and I think I have
observed it also in you. Impulsiveness is often beautiful and charming,
and often resembles, in a small way, that which, on a large scale, is
among the most splendid products of human inspiration and noble
self-sacrifice. But it does not go deep, is not enduring in action,
dissipates itself for inferior aims, impedes the quiet and blessed
development of those tender and precious germs of grace, resignation,
cheerful peace, and ready receptivity for whatever is good in all things
and men, which slumber in every well-disposed nature. An impulsive
temperament shows itself in every quick emotion which outruns kindness,
in hasty judgment which so easily becomes prejudice, in a variable
temper, upon which the blood should have no influence, in a tendency to
complaint, against oneself as well as against others, and in love of
criticism of oneself and others. On this account the diaries which I
have sometimes kept have only helped me on the wrong way. The best
remedy for an impulsive nature, and one which never fails in the long
run, is a determination strengthened by religious conviction and faith
to acknowledge to ourselves every disagreeable, disturbing, passionate
impulse as wrong and unworthy of ourselves, and simply to put it aside,
without regret and without considering ourselves martyrs. Besides this,
there is great benefit in a regard for external forms, and refined,
gentle manners. These require for their outer clothing freedom from
passion, delicate and careful consideration, and an upright endeavor to
reach what is really unattainable, and please _all_ at once, except the
wicked. It is an enviable thing to please whether among courtiers or in
a students’ tavern, and yet to be neither a courtier nor rude. As you
see, I say all these and a great many more things like them to myself,
but do not follow them much in practice.”
This beautiful monition from a rigorously truthful man contains the
confession that impulsiveness was an old fault of his own. But it
includes at the same time a strong condemnation thereof, and a summons
to battle against it. The remedy which he here declared to be
efficacious he had tried on himself, and who knows with what grievous
struggles he arrived at that dominion over the impulses of a strong
nature, that restraint of external forms, and the practice of those
refined and well-bred manners, which already distinguished him when he
came to Rome, and which awakened the regard of Frau v. Bunsen (See page
98). It was certainly his honest and firm will and his manly strength,
which led him to victory, but not these alone, for through his
admonition we can hear the echo of Luther’s “Nothing is done by our own
might, ... may the Right Man aid us in the fight.” His firm trust in
God, his simple but genuine Christianity, free from every
misinterpretation, self-torment and extravagance, supported him in that
hard conflict.
In the beginning of his twentieth year he had already set before himself
his ideal of life, and this, supported by the energy of his harmoniously
constituted nature, he pursued to the end, first with struggle and
conflict, and finally without any extraordinary effort, and as if of his
own free will.
In Paris, on the occasion of the unveiling of the Vendôme column (Page
61) he wrote: “What can make a deeper impression than the strength of
mind which shows itself in a composed bearing and an expression of
control, in contrast with the unbridled passions of similar human
minds.” To win this “composed bearing,” to acquire perfect command over
unbridled impulses, was the aim of all his labor with himself. No, the
character of a Lepsius did not come into the world as a thing completed,
did not spring like Pallas Athene from the head of Zeus: it was won by
hard, prolonged and repeated struggles.
In this campaign against an adversary who, however often he may be
slain, continually wakens to new life, he accustomed himself to consider
impulsiveness as an enemy, as a peace-breaker, as a disease of sound
human nature. This latter, to his eyes, could only be truly great when
ruled by calm self-control. Here we find an explanation of the words
which he wrote to Bunsen when twenty-nine years old, and which must
appear paradoxical and startling to the uninitiated. During his sojourn
in England in 1839 his heart had been won by a lovely maiden, but his
material circumstances would not permit him to woo her. All this he
confessed to his sympathetic patron in reply to his enquiries, and
added, “I hold every passion to be a defect in love, and why shall I, at
the very outset, declare myself too weak to preserve the purity of true
love, and keep it from cooling into passion?”
To all asceticism the healthy nature of this man, with his keen
enjoyment of life, was a stranger, but for him the words “impulse” and
“impulsiveness” had come to embody everything which transgresses the
limits of an orderly and law-abiding life, everything which compels the
rider, who should seek to govern his steed and guide it according to his
will, to follow the animal instead wherever it may bear him. He at least
knew how to compel the steed to submission. In England he seems to have
shed warm heart’s blood in his effort to obtain the mastery over
himself. There, where he found friendship, love, and the fullest
inspiration, we often see him dissatisfied with himself, and hear him
complain of “faint-heartedness and every sort of bondage.” (See page
100). He chiefly means here by “bondage” his faulty control over the
powerful impulses of his nature, which he endeavors to subdue. Here he
confesses to Bunsen (See page 127), that he daily feels he has not yet
passed beyond the period of education.
His vivacious wife was astonished, when he was a mature man, to behold
him rule over himself with entire and sovereign power, and guide the
ship of his and her life. She was often forced to give expression to
what she felt at this sight. “Richard,” she says, “always the same, I
always depressed or excited.” On one occasion she compares herself with
her husband in a different way, and says: “It is very true that it is
better and makes one’s path easier through life, to be so passionless.
One does not hope for too much, one is not so timid, one is not so much
troubled, one does not have to struggle so much. But that is the way I
am made, and at the bottom, I would not even care to be so self-poised;
if one has a harder struggle, one has also more ardor and heartfelt
delight.”
But the nature of this man cannot be called so perfectly self-poised,
for he was as much beloved as a companion as he was esteemed as a
scholar. He never showed in his manner the least trace of pedantry, and,
as she herself had previously acknowledged, (See page 247) he gave
himself up entirely and thoroughly to everything in which he engaged,
whether it was social pleasures or the most serious affairs.