Frau von Aufhammer.--Childhood-resonance.--Authorcraft.
The early piping which the little thrush, last night adopted by the
Quintaner from its nest, started for victual about two o'clock,
soon drove our Quintus into his clothes; whose calender-press and
parallel-ruler the hands of his careful mother had been, for she would
not send him to the Rittmeisterinn "like a runagate dog." The Shock was
incarcerated, the Quintaner taken with him, as likewise many wholesome
rules from Mother Fixlein, how to conduct himself towards the
Rittmeisterinn. But the son answered: "Mamma, when a man has been in
company, like me, with high people, with a Fraeulein Thiennette, he soon
knows whom he is speaking to, and what polished manners and Saver di
veaver (_Savoir vivre_) require."
He arrived with the Quintaner, and green fingers (dyed with the leaves
he had plucked on the path), and with a half-nibbled rose between his
teeth, in presence of the sleek lackeys of Schadeck. If women are
flowers--though as often silk and Italian and gum-flowers as botanical
ones--then was Frau von Aufhammer a ripe flower, with (adipose)
neck-bulb, and tuberosity (of lard). Already, in the half of her body,
cut away from life by the apoplexy, she lay upon her lard-pillow but as
on a softer grave; nevertheless, the portion of her that remained was
at once lively, pious, and proud. Her heart was a flowing cornucopia to
all men, yet this not from philanthropy, but from rigid devotion; the
lower classes she assisted, cherished, and despised, regarding nothing
in them, except it were their piety. She received the bowing Quintus
with the back-bowing air of a patroness; yet she brightened into a look
of kindliness at his disloading of the compliments from Thiennette.
She began the conversation, and long continued it alone, and said,--yet
without losing the inflation of pride from her countenance,--"She
should soon die; but the godchildren of her husband she would remember
in her will." Further, she told him directly in the face, which stood
there all over-written with the Fourth Commandment before her, that "he
must not build upon a settlement in Hukelum; but to the Flachsenfingen
Conrectorate (to which the Burgermeister and Council had the right of
nomination) she hoped to promote him, as it was from the then
Burgermeister that she bought her coffee, and from the Town-Syndic (he
drove a considerable wholesale and retail trade in Hamburg candles)
that she bought both her wax and tallow lights."
And now by degrees he arrived at his humble petition, when she asked
him sick-news of Senior Astmann, who guided himself more by Luther's
Catechism than by the Catechism of Health. She was Astmann's patroness
in a stricter than ecclesiastical sense; and she even confessed that
she would soon follow this true shepherd of souls, when she heard, here
at Schadeck, the sound of his funeral-bell. Such strange chemical
affinities exist between our dross and our silver veins; as, for
example, here between Pride and Love; and I could wish that we would
pardon this hypostatic union in all persons, as we do it in the
fair, who, with all their faults, are nevertheless by us--as, according
to Du Fay, iron, though mixed with any other metal, is by the
magnet--attracted and held fast.
Supposing even that the Devil _had_, in some idle minute, sown a
handful or two of the seeds of Envy in our Quintus's soul, yet they had
not sprouted; and to-day especially they did not, when he heard the
praises of a man who had been his teacher, and who--what he reckoned a
Titulado of the Earth, not from vanity, but from piety--was a
clergyman. So much, however, is, according to History, not to be
denied; that he now straightway came forth with his petition to the
noble lady, signifying that "indeed he would cheerfully content himself
for a few years in the school; but yet in the end he longed to be in
some small quiet priestly office." To her question, "But was he
orthodox?" he answered, that "he hoped so; he had, in Leipzig, not only
attended all the public lectures of Dr. Burscher, but also had taken
private instructions from several sound teachers of the faith, well
knowing that the Consistorium, in its examinations as to purity of
doctrine, was now more strict than formerly."
The sick lady required him to make a proof-shot, namely, to administer
to her a sick-bed exhortation. By Heaven! he administered to her one of
the best. Her pride of birth now crouched before his pride of office
and priesthood; for though he could not, with the Dominican monk,
Alanus de Rupe, believe that a priest was greater than God, inasmuch as
the latter could only make a World, but the former a God (in the mass);
yet he could not but fall in with Hostiensis, who shows that the
priestly dignity is seven thousand six hundred and forty-four times
greater than the kingly, the Sun being just so many times greater than
the Moon. But a Rittmeisterinn--_she_ shrinks into absolute nothing
before a parson.
In the servants' hall he applied to the lackeys for the last annual
series of the _Hamburg Political Journal_; perceiving that with these
historical documents of the time they were scandalously papering the
buttons of travelling raiment. In gloomy harvest evenings, he could now
sit down and read for himself what good news were transpiring in the
political world--twelve months ago.
On a Triumphal Car, full-laden with laurel, and to which Hopes alone
were yoked, he drove home at night, and by the road advised the
Quintaner not to be puffed up with any earthly honor, but silently to
thank God, as himself was now doing.
The thickset blooming grove of his four canicular weeks, and the flying
tumult of blossoms therein, are already painted on three of the sides.
I will now clutch blindfold into his days, and bring out one of them;
one smiles and sends forth its perfumes like another.
Let us take, for instance, the Saint's day of his mother, _Clara_, the
twelfth of August. In the morning, he had perennial, fire-proof joys,
that is to say, Employments. For he was writing, as I am doing. Truly,
if Xerxes proposed a prize for the invention of a new pleasure, any man
who had sat down to write his thoughts on the prize-question had the
new pleasure already among his fingers. I know only one thing sweeter
than making a book, and that is, to project one. Fixlein used to write
little works, of the twelfth part of an alphabet in size, which in
their manuscript state he got bound by the bookbinder in gilt boards,
and betitled with printed letters, and then inserted them among the
literary ranks of his book-board. Every one thought they were novelties
printed in writing types. He had labored--I shall omit his less
interesting performances--at a _Collection of Errors of the Press_, in
German writings; he compared _Errata_ with each other; showed which
occurred most frequently; observed that important results were to be
drawn from this, and advised the reader to draw them.
Moreover, he took his place among the German _Masorites_. He observes
with great justice in his Preface: "The Jews had their _Masora_ to
show, which told them how often every letter was to be found in their
Bible; for example, the Aleph (the A) 42,377 times; how many verses
there are in which all the consonants appear (there are 26 verses), or
only eighty (there are 3); how many verses we have into which 42 words
and 160 consonants enter (there is just one, Jeremiah xxi. 7); which is
the middle letter in certain books (in the Pentateuch, it is in
Leviticus xi. 42, the noble V[41]), or in the whole Bible itself. But
where have we Christians any similar Masora for Luther's Bible to show?
Has it been accurately investigated which is the middle word, or the
middle letter here, which vowel appears seldomest, and how often each
vowel? Thousands of Bible-Christians go out of the world, without ever
knowing that the German A occurs 323,015 times (therefore above 7 times
oftener than the Hebrew one) in their Bible."
I could wish that inquirers into Biblical Literature among our
Reviewers would publicly let me know if, on a more accurate summation,
they find this number incorrect.[42]
Much also did the Quintus _collect_; he had a fine _Almanack
Collection_, a _Catechism_ and _Pamphlet Collection_; also, a
_Collection of Advertisements_, which he began, is not so incomplete as
you most frequently see such things. He puts high value on his
_Alphabetical Lexicon of German Subscribers for Books_, where my name
also occurs among the Js.
But what he liked best to produce were Schemes of Books. Accordingly,
he sewed together a large work, wherein he merely advised the Learned
of things they ought to introduce in Literary History, which History he
rated some ells higher than Universal or Imperial History. In his
Prolegomena to this performance, he transiently submitted to the
Literary republic that Hommel had given a register of Jurists who were
sons of wh--, of others who had become Saints; that Baillet enumerates
the Learned who _meant_ to write something; and Ancillon those who
wrote nothing at all; and the Luebeck Superintendent Goetze, those who
were shoemakers, those who were drowned; and Bernhard those whose
fortunes and history before birth were interesting. This (he could now
continue) should, as it seems, have excited us to similar muster-rolls
and matriculations of other kinds of Learned; whereof he proposed a
few; for example, of the Learned who were unlearned; of those who were
entire rascals; of such as wore their own hair,--of cue-preachers,
cue-psalmists, cue-annalists, and so forth; of the Learned who
had worn black leather breeches, of others who had worn rapiers;
of the Learned who had died in their eleventh year,--in their
twentieth,--twenty-first, &c.,--in their hundred and fiftieth, of which
he knew no instance, unless the Beggar Thomas Parr might be adduced; of
the Learned who wrote a more abominable hand than the other Learned
(whereof we know only Rolfinken and his letters, which were as long as
his hands[43]); or of the Learned who had clipt nothing from each other
but the beard (whereof no instance is known, save that of Philelphus
and Timotheus[44]).
Such by-studies did he carry on along with his official labors; but I
think the State in viewing these matters is actually mad: it compares
the man who is great in Philosophy and Belles-Lettres at the expense of
his jog-trot officialities, to _concert-clocks_, which, though striking
their hours in flute-melodies, are worse time-keepers than your gross,
stupid steeple-clocks.
To return to St. Clara's day. Fixlein, after such mental exertions,
bolted out under the music-bushes and rustling trees; and returned not
again out of warm Nature, till plate and chair were already placed at
the table. In the course of the repast, something occurred which a
Biographer must not omit; for his mother had, by request, been wont to
map out for him, during the process of mastication, the chart of his
child's-world, relating all the traits which in any way prefigured what
he had now grown to. This perspective sketch of his early Past he
committed to certain little leaves which merit our undivided attention.
For such leaves exclusively, containing scenes, acts, plays of his
childhood, he used chronologically to file and arrange in separate
drawers in a little child's-desk of his; and thus to divide his
Biography, as Moser did his Publicistic Materials, into separate
_letter-boxes_. He had boxes or drawers for memorial-letters of his
twelfth, of his thirteenth, fourteenth, &c., of his twenty-first year,
and so on. Whenever he chose to conclude a day of pedagogic drudgery by
an evening of peculiar rest, he simply pulled out a letter-drawer, a
register-bar in his Life-hand-organ, and recollected the whole.
And here must I, in reference to these reviewing Mutes, who may be for
casting the noose of strangulation round my neck, most particularly
beg, that, before doing so on account of my Chapters being called
Letter-boxes, they would have the goodness to look whose blame it was,
and to think whether I could possibly help it, seeing the Quintus had
divided his Biography into such Boxes himself: they have Christian
bowels.
But about his elder brother he put no saddening question to his mother;
this poor boy a peculiar Fate had laid hold of, and with all his genial
endowment dashed to pieces on the iceberg of Death. For he chanced to
leap on an ice-board that had jammed itself among several others; but
these recoiled, and his shot forth with him; melted away as it floated
under his feet, and so sunk his heart of fire amid the ice and waves.
It grieved his mother that he was not found, that her heart had not
been harrowed by the look of the swoln corpse.--O good mother, rather
thank God for it!--
After breakfast, to fortify himself with new vigor for his desk,
he for some time strolled idly over the house, and, like a Police
Fire-inspector, visited all the nooks of his cottage, to gather from
them here and there a live ember from the ash-covered rejoicing-fire of
his childhood. He mounted to the garret, to the empty bird-coops of his
father, who in winter had been a birder; and he transiently reviewed
the lumber of his old playthings, which were lying in the netted
enclosure of a large canary breeding-cage. In the minds of children, it
is regular _little_ forms, such as those of balls and dies, that
impress and express themselves most forcibly. From this may the reader
explain to himself Fixlein's delight in the red acorn-blockhouse,
in the sparwork glued together out of white chips and husks of
potato-plums, in the cheerful glasshouse of a cube-shaped lantern, and
other the like products of his early architecture. The following,
however, I explain quite differently; he had ventured, without leave
given from any lord of the manor, to build a clay house; not for
cottagers, but for flies; and which, therefore, you could readily
enough have put in your pocket. This fly-hospital had its glass
windows, and a red coat of coloring, and very many alcoves, and three
balconies; balconies, as a sort of house within a house, he had loved
from of old so much, that he could scarcely have liked Jerusalem well,
where (according to Lightfoot) no such thing is permitted to be
built. From the glistening eyes with which the architect had viewed
his tenantry creeping about the windows, or feeding out of the
sugar-trough,--for, like the Count St. Germain, they ate nothing but
sugar,--from this joy an adept in the art of education might easily
have prophesied his turn for household contraction; to his fancy, in
those times, even gardeners'-huts were like large waste Arks and Halls,
and nothing bigger than such a fly-Louvre seemed a true, snug
citizen's-house. He now felt and handled his old high child's-stool,
which had in former days resembled the _Sedes Exploratoria_ of the
Pope; he gave his child's-coach a tug and made it run; but he could not
understand what balsam and holiness so much distinguished it from all
other child's-coaches. He wondered that the real sports of children
should not so delight him as the emblems of these sports, when the
child that had carried them on was standing grown up to manhood in his
presence.
Before one article in the house he stood heart-melted and sad; before a
little angular clothes-press, which was no higher than my table, and
which had belonged to his poor drowned brother. When the boy with the
key of it was swallowed by the waves, the excruciated mother had made a
vow that this toy-press of his should never be broken up by violence.
Most probably there is nothing in it but the poor soul's playthings.
Let us look away from this bloody urn.----
Bacon reckons the remembrances of childhood among wholesome, medicinal
things; naturally enough, therefore, they acted like a salutary
digestive on the Quintus. He could now again betake him with new heart
to his desk, and produce something quite peculiar,--petitions for
church livings. He took the Address-calendar, and, for every country
parish that he found in it, got a petition in readiness; which he then
laid aside, till such time as the present incumbent should decease. For
Hukelum alone he did not solicit.--It is a pretty custom in
Flachsenfingen, that, for every office which is vacant, you are
required, if you want it, to sue. As the higher use of Prayer consists,
not in its fulfilment, but in its accustoming you to pray; so likewise
petitionary papers ought to be given in, not indeed that you may get
the office,--this nothing but your money can do,--but that you may
learn to write petitions. In truth, if, among the Calmucks, the turning
of a calabash[45] stands in place of Prayer, a slight movement of the
purse may be as much as if you supplicated in words.
Towards evening--it was Sunday--he went out roving over the village; he
pilgrimed to his old sporting-places, and to the common where he had so
often driven his snails to pasture; visited the peasant who, from
school-times upwards, had been wont, to the amazement of the rest, to
_thou_[46] him; went, an Academic Tutor, to the Schoolmaster; then to
the Senior; then to the Episcopal-barn or church. This last no mortal
understands, till I explain it. The case was this. Some three-and-forty
years ago a fire had destroyed the church (not the steeple), the
parsonage, and, what was not to be replaced, the church-records. (For
this reason it was only the smallest portion of the Hukelum people that
knew exactly how old they were; and the memory of our Quintus himself
vibrated between adopting the thirty-third year and the thirty-second.)
In consequence, the preaching had now to be carried on where formerly
there had been threshing; and the seed of the divine word to be
turned over on the same threshing-floor with natural corn-seed. The
Chanter and the School-boys took up the threshing-floor; the female
mother-church-people stood on the one sheaves-loft, the Schadeck
womankind on the other; and their husbands clustered pyramidically,
like groschen and farthing-gallery men; about the barn-stairs; and far
up on the straw-loft, mixed souls stood listening. A little flute was
their organ, an upturned beer-cask their altar, round which they had to
walk. I confess, I myself could have preached in such a place, not
without humor. The Senior (at that time still a Junior), while the
parsonage was building, dwelt and taught in the Castle; it was here,
accordingly, that Fixlein had learned the _Irregular Verbs_ with
Thiennette.
These voyages of discovery completed, our Hukelum voyager could still,
after evening prayers, pick leaf-insects, with Thiennette, from the
roses; worms from the beds, and a Heaven of joy from every minute.
Every dew-drop was colored as with oil of cloves and oil of gladness;
every star was a sparkle from the sun of happiness; and in the closed
heart of the maiden, there lay near to him, behind a little wall of
separation, (as near to the Righteous man behind the thin wall of
Life,) an outstretched blooming Paradise.... I mean, she loved him a
little.
He might have known it, perhaps. But to his compressed delight he gave
freer vent, as he went to bed, by early recollections on the stair. For
in his childhood he had been accustomed, by way of evening-prayer, to
go over, under his coverlet, as it were, a rosary, including fourteen
Bible Proverbs, the first verse of the Psalm, "All people that on
Earth," the Tenth Commandment, and, lastly, a long blessing. To get the
sooner done with it, he had used to begin his devotion, not only on the
stair, but before leaving that place where Alexander studied men, and
Semler stupid books. Moored in the haven of the down-waves, he was
already over with his evening supplication; and could now, without
further exertion, shut his eyes and plump into sleep.----Thus does
there lurk, in the smallest _homunculus_, the model of--the Catholic
Church.
So far the Dog-days of Quintus Zebedaeus Egidius Fixlein.--I, for the
second time, close a Chapter of this _Life_, as Life itself is closed,
with a sleep.