WOMAN HELD IN TIGHTENING BONDS
Vice was the keynote of the first half of the eighteenth century in
Europe. The moral miasma rising from that sink of iniquity, the late
court of Louis XIV., and, infinitely more, that of Louis XV., enveloped
Germany. Every little German court imagined itself a Versailles. Each
German princeling esteemed himself a "Sun god." Mistresses were
considered as necessary furnishings to every palace as tables or chairs.
Augustus the Strong, of Saxony, is said to have been the father of three
hundred and fifty-four illegitimate children. Vice spread through all
ranks, often blighting the innocent no less than the guilty woman.
Everywhere woman was man's toy. Faded, broken, ruined, she might be cast
aside at his caprice. Without semblance of law, he might hold her
captive, as in the case of the beautiful Baroness Cosel, a discarded
mistress of Frederick Augustus of Saxony, who was kept in prison for
fifty years by his majesty's command. Later, as we shall see, the wife
of Prince George Louis of Hanover afterward George I. of England
suffered a similar fate.
War continued. There were no long intervals of peace. Drunkenness, if
possible, increased; certainly it did not decrease. Obscene practical
jokes were constantly played. Ordinary conversation was interlarded with
indecent words and the most vulgar phrases. Society was rotten to the
core.
In a dumb, sub-conscious sort of way, the coarse eighteenth century felt
that its balance wheel was badly out of gear, and it attempted, though
futilely, to remedy the lawlessness born of vice and war by hedging in
each class, almost each individual, of the social order by a thousand
petty ceremonials. The eighteenth century was the age of etiquette. Rank
was cringingly worshipped. Titles became of paramount importance in the
eyes of the middle classes. Borne satirizes this title worship:
"I divide the Germans into two classes those who are Aulic Councillors,
and those who would be so if they could. Were I a German prince, it
would be quite otherwise. I would make all my subjects happy. I would
make them all Aulic Councillors, without discrimination of rank, title,
property, family, sex, or age. Then we should read in the Frankfort
Weekly Advertiser, 'On the 13th inst. died Mr. Aulic Councillor
Schinderhannis, after a few struggles, by hanging, in the thirty-sixth
year of his active life. How powerfully this would inflame our
patriotism.'" Women received the full benefit of their husband's titles.
Borne says:
"At a dinner we sat in this order. Myself, Mrs. Upper Criminal
Councilloress, Mr. Finance Councillor, Mrs. Upper Paymistress, Mr.
Court-theatre Director, Mrs. Privy-Legations Councilloress, Mr. State
Councillor, Mrs. Salt-mines Inspectoress. I was placed, happily, between
two lovely women. Mrs. Upper Criminal Councilloress was one of the
mildest, sweetest creatures in the world and Mrs. Tax-Gatheress was very
captivating. I fell in love with them both. As for my host and hostess,
I could hardly look at them without bursting into tears when I
recollected that two such amiable persons were the only individuals
present without titles."
In the general corruption of early eighteenth century society the single
resource for a woman of fine feeling was to turn to God. Small wonder
that, when Mysticism revived under the name of Quietism, it found
thousands of followers among German women. During that shameful, or,
rather, shameless, half century it would seem that the only pure men,
the only happy families, left in Germany must be sought for in the ranks
of the despised Quietists. Certainly, from no other class did woman, as
woman, receive the slightest consideration or respect. Of the Quietists'
attitude toward women, Freytag says:
"For the first time since the ancient days of Germany, with the
exception of a short period of chivalrous devotion to the female sex,
were German women elevated above the mere circle of family and household
duties. For the first time did they take an active share, as members of
a great society, in the highest interests of humankind. Gladly was it
acknowledged by the theologians of the Pietists that there were more
women than men in their congregations, and how anxiously and zealously
they performed all the devotional exercises, like the women who remained
by the cross when all the apostles had fled. Their inward life, their
striving after the love of Christ and light from above, were watched
with hearty sympathy, and they found trusty advisers and loving friends
among refined and honorable men. The new conception of faith, which laid
less stress on book-learning than on a pure heart, worked on women like
a charm."
Jacob Spener was the great apostle of Quietism in Germany. He introduced
and practised a refined mysticism that won him hosts of followers among
women. Personal holiness was the constant theme of Spener's teaching.
Just as the marvellous subjective songs of Keats and Shelly were born of
emotional Methodism in England, so, also, lyric poetry in Germany sprang
from Quietism. The soul struggles of individual seekers after God
ripened into a rich literary harvest by which the world will long
continue to be nourished.
Two autobiographies of Quietists, by Johann Peterssen and his wife
Johanna (born Von Merlau), are of extreme interest.
As in the case of all children in that militant age, Johanna's earliest
recollections are of war. One day her mother was alone in the house
except for her three little children a girl of seven, a babe, and
Johanna, aged four. Suddenly a regiment was heard marching down the
road. The mother knew, only too well, what horror that might mean for
herself and her little girls. Very hastily she knelt and prayed that
they might be saved. Then she led her little ones to a tall field of
corn near the house, bidding them lie down between the rows and to keep
quite still. Suckling the babe, she, too, lay down in the corn. They
were not discovered. When the last military straggler had passed, mother
and children hurried to the nearest town for safety. As soon as they
were well within the gates, Frau Merlau bade the children kneel down and
thank God for their deliverance. The oldest girl objected to the delay.
She wanted her supper. "What is the use of praying now?" she asked. "We
are safe here." At that moment Johanna's religious experience began. She
writes: "Then was I grieved to the heart at this ungrateful speech of my
sister, that she would not thank God. I rebuked her for it."
From that day the little maid thought and dreamed almost wholly of
spiritual mysteries. Soon after, believing that the midwife brought
babies from heaven, she sent by that functionary a greeting to Jesus. At
the age of nine Johanna lost her good mother. Her father, a stern,
saturnine man, hired a housekeeper, a captain's wife.
"But she was an unchristian woman and did not forget her soldier
tricks," writes Johanna. For once when she saw some strange turkeys on
the road she seized the best of them. To cook this stolen roast the
housekeeper sent Johanna up into a high tower to throw down some loose
dry boards. The child fell and lay stunned for a long time. When she
regained consciousness and returned to the house she was well scolded
for her clumsiness. Johanna refused to go to the table. "I sat apart,"
she writes, "because I would not eat any of the stolen fowl. It appeared
to me truly disgraceful, though I was too timid to say so." It makes a
pathetic little picture this baby's martyrdom for conscience' sake.
At the age of twelve, soon after her confirmation, Johanna was sent as
maid of waiting to the court of the Countess of Solms Roedelheim. The
countess was partially insane. "She imagined I was a little dog and
often beat me," Johanna writes. "Whenever we rode over the flooded
meadows, she would push me out of the carriage, bidding me swim." Prayer
was the lonely, unhappy child's only solace. The countess grew so
violent that, at last, Johanna was transferred to the court of the
Duchess of Holstein. She accompanied the stepdaughter of the duchess on
her bridal journey to Austria, and, in spite of her ever nagging
conscience, had an agreeable time.
"The drums and trumpets sounded beautiful on the water," says she; "only
I could not help being worried to think I was going to a popish country.
Whenever we stopped at an inn I sought a solitary place, fell on my
knees and prayed God to prevent my good fortune from working injury to
my salvation."
The Duchess of Holstein loved Johanna like a daughter. Johanna laments
her own fancied worldliness in girlhood: "I practised myself in all
kinds of accomplishments, so that I excelled in these vanities. They
were dear and pleasing to me. I had also a real liking for splendid
dress because it became me well. People considered me Godly because I
liked to read and pray and went to church and could always give a good
account of the sermon. I even knew what had been preached upon the same
text the preceding year. I was looked upon as a Godly maiden, but I was
not really a true follower of Christ."
Nevertheless, Johanna was not worldly enough to suit the bridegroom a
gay young lieutenant-colonel to whom her friends had affianced her. He
broke the engagement because he complained, "though pretty and
well-born, she is altogether too pious."
Johanna was glad to be free. She writes: "I always felt that among the
nobility there were many evil habits that were quite contrary to
Christ's teaching lust, drinking, and many idle words for which an
account must be given to God."
Upon a journey by a slow boat to the baths at Emser, a great thing
happened in Johanna's life. Among the passengers, she noticed a studious
looking man with a pleasant voice and refined manners. She writes:
"By God's special providence, he seated himself by me, and we fell into
a spiritual discourse which lasted some hours, so that the four miles
from Frankfort to Mainz seemed to me only a quarter of an hour's
journey. We talked without ceasing, and it seemed just as if he read my
heart. Then I gave vent to all concerning which I had hitherto lived in
doubt. Indeed, I found in this new friend what I had despaired of ever
finding in any man in the world. Long had I looked around me to discover
whether there really were in the world any true doers of God's word, and
it had been a great stumbling block to me that I had found none. But
when I perceived in this stranger such great penetration that he could
see into the very recesses of my heart, also such humility, gentleness,
holy love and earnestness to point the way of truth, I felt that I
desired, above all things, to give myself wholly up to God." The man
whom Johanna met on the boat was Jacob Spener. Johanna's conversion was
complete. She withdrew from court gayeties, dressed simply, lived
plainly. At first she was remonstrated with, then ridiculed
unmercifully, and, finally, let alone.
Johanna's marriage with Johann Peterssen was most happy. Together they
worked for God and for what they believed to be his cause Quietism.
Persecution, poverty, sorrows were theirs. But these crosses, though
hard to bear, they believed to be God's revelation of Himself. An
apocalyptic vision, too, they declared, had been vouchsafed them.
Sustained by the unseen bread of faith, they lived to a great age, true
to one another, to their fellowmen, and to God.
Very different is our next picture, taken from the court of Hanover.
From the moment of her arrival, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia and
Princess of the Palatinate, had felt herself at home in Germany. But her
youngest daughter, though born in Germany, was never at home there.
Sophie, Electress of Hanover, was thoroughly English. Mistress of five
languages, she loved only English, and, from choice, would have spoken
that alone. She knew more English history than the English ambassadors
accredited to her husband's court. To gain, through her remote claim,
the English throne either for herself or her descendants, Sophie of
Hanover all her life saved, and gathered, and schemed, and relentlessly
crushed human obstacles. At the age of eighty, her old eyes gleaming,
she said: "I could sink into the grave perfectly happy if I knew that
the words 'Queen of Great Britain and Ireland' would be inscribed upon
my tombstone." She died within sight of the promised land, only a few
weeks before Anne Stuart.
An intellectual woman, an energetic woman, a virtuous woman, using the
word "virtue" in its narrower sense of chastity, a wonderfully able
woman, was Sophie of Hanover. An amiable woman, a lovable woman, a
generous woman, except occasionally for policy's sake, she most
certainly was not. But the hardness of her life should in some measure
extenuate the hardness of her heart.
Sophie possessed a keen analytical intellect that saw, without the
slightest tinge of emotion, clear down to the bottom of things. She
passed an almost loveless childhood in a royal nursery far away from her
mother, whom she never understood or cared for, and a sunless girlhood
as governess in the household of her brother Carl Ludwig, to whom the
Rhine Palatinate had been finally restored. Prince Carl and his wife
lived a cat and dog life. Disgraceful scenes were continually occurring
between them, sometimes even at the court table. The only member of the
Palatine household in the least congenial to Sophie was her quick-witted
niece Elizabeth Charlotte, afterward Duchess of Orleans.
Even bridal joys unalloyed were not to be poor, plain Sophie's. Duke
George William of Hanover, to whom she had been affianced, refused her
after seeing her, and, as if she were no more than a horse, foisted her
upon his younger brother Ernest Augustus, at that time Bishop of
Osnabrueck, but later, through Sophie's clever scheming, Electoral
Prince of Hanover.
Delving into the records of the court of Hanover, during the reign of
Ernest Augustus and Sophie, is like working in a sewer; the worker is
sickened by filth. A part of the time the electress escaped from the
court's noxious atmosphere into the purer, higher, colder regions of
philosophy. There was no courtier's flattery in the praise Leibnitz gave
to Princess Sophie's intellectual ability.
But Sophie of Hanover by no means dwelt continuously on Alma's heights.
Much of the time she was down among the sewer filth, contemptuous of it
always, but using it, for lack of more durable material, as a temporary
foundation for the steps which she meant should lead her and hers up to
the English throne. If Sophie of Hanover had been a different kind of
person, a gentle, timid, pious woman, or a gay, pleasure-loving,
lust-responding woman, the two characteristic types of her age, Edward
VII. would not be ruling in Great Britain to-day. Neither, for that
matter, would the present German emperor, descended from the electress's
daughter, the gifted Sophie Charlotte, be seated upon the throne of the
Hohenzollerns.
The attitude of the Electress of Hanover to her unhappy daughter-in-law
Sophie Dorothea was unfortunate for both women. Poor little Sophie
Dorothea! In passing judgment upon her, the historians all seem to
forget her extreme youth at the time of her marriage. Of this petted,
spoiled, beautiful child of sixteen, even Thackeray says: "She was a bad
wife;" and he sneers at her even while he is relating facts that should
go far to justify her in any missteps she may have made in trying to
escape from a boorish husband whom she found odiously cruel and selfish.
The girl lived in hell; and she sought, through passionate,
disinterested love, to gain what to her seemed heaven.
Sophie Dorothea was half French. Her mother, Eleanor d'Olbreuze, one of
the very few pure women connected with the court of Hanover in the
eighteenth century, was a Frenchwoman of good family. Eleanor d'Olbreuze
was legally married to Duke George William of Celle, elder brother of
Ernest Augustus of Hanover, although the Electress Sophie did all in her
power to prevent the marriage of her former fiance with the beautiful
Frenchwoman. Sophie Dorothea was a brunette of the most perfect type,
with vivid color and a charming rosebud mouth. Her neck, bust, and arms
were beautiful. By nature she was happy, lively, witty, and
affectionate.
On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Sophie Dorothea awoke in her
pretty yellow and white chamber with the pleasant consciousness of a
happy day before her. Her betrothal to a neighboring young noble of the
house of Wolfenbuttel was to be celebrated. The girl was not wildly in
love with the youth accepted by her parents. But she was satisfied. She
had known him all her life, and she liked him well enough, in
neighborly, frank, girlish fashion.
It was somewhat late, for Sophie Dorothea was rather an indolent little
princess. As she lay there dreaming, with her beautiful dark eyes wide
open, her mother, pale and agitated, entered the chamber. The Duchess of
Celle hurriedly informed her daughter that there had been a complete
change of plans. Early that morning, after travelling all night in her
haste, the Electress Sophie had arrived at the castle. It was the wish
of the reigning house, the electress said, that Sophie Dorothea should
marry her cousin, George Louis of Hanover, son of the Elector Ernest
Augustus and his wife, Sophie. The proposed marriage with the Prince of
Wolfenbuttel had therefore been hurriedly abandoned.
Now Sophie Dorothea knew her cousin George well. She hated and despised
him. Fastidious to a degree, she called her cousin a lout, and declared
amid a storm of tears and sobs that she would never marry him. Duke
George William was called in to persuade or command his daughter. He
came, bringing with him as a gift from the Duchess of Hanover a picture
of George Louis set in diamonds. Sophie Dorothea did not receive this
love token prettily. She threw it against the opposite wall with such
force that the miniature was hopelessly smashed, and the precious stones
were scattered on the floor.
But Sophie of Hanover gained her point, as she did always. The marriage
was consummated, and the immense fortune of Sophie Dorothea was tightly
secured to the reigning electoral house of Hanover. Sophie of Hanover
never made a pecuniary mistake. In the present instance the wily
electress figured so closely that little Sophie Dorothea was practically
left without a penny.
The pretty, lively young bride found the court life of Hanover, with its
interminable rules of etiquette, stupid and tiresome. Of her bridegroom
even his mother said:
"Sophie Dorothea will find her match in him. A more obstinate, pigheaded
boy than my son George never lived. If he has any brains at all they are
surrounded by such a thick crust that nobody has ever been able to
discover what is in them." He did not want to marry this girl, but was
tempted by her ten thousand pounds a year.
Two children, a boy and a girl, were born to George Louis and Sophie
Dorothea. The electress superintended the babies and interfered at every
turn to thwart her daughter-in-law's wishes concerning them. The prince
was harsh, cold, and sullen toward his young wife. The elector was
always kind, but Sophie Dorothea found his conversation wearisome and
his gallantry distasteful.
The beautiful little princess was very homesick. Nobody cared. She was
unutterably lonely. Nobody cared. She was very dull. Nobody tried to
entertain her. Then Koenigsmark came. Koenigsmark, the dashing,
Koenigsmark, the handsome, with whom she had played in childhood when he
was a page in her father's palace. Koenigsmark cared. Koenigsmark loved
her. In some respects, Koenigsmark may have been the villain some
historians have painted him, but he was genuinely in love with his old
playmate, now the neglected, unhappy wife of Prince George Louis of
Hanover.
Into this, her first real love experience, Sophie Dorothea threw
herself, body and soul. She writes to Koenigsmark:
"I belong so truly to you that death alone can part us. No one ever
loved so strongly as I love you. Why am I so far from you? What joy to
be with you, to prove by my caresses how I love and worship you! If my
blood were needed to ransom you from danger I would give it gladly. I
cannot exist without seeing you. I lead a lingering life. I think of our
joy when we were together and then of my weariness to-day. Ah, my
darling, why am I not with you in battle? I would gladly die by your
side. Once more, good-bye. I belong to you a thousand times more than to
myself." The woman who wrote these passionate words was a mother. In
name, at least, though less well treated than her husband's mistresses,
she was a wife. But she was also a starving woman, hungering and
thirsting for expressed affection.
Koenigsmark and Sophie Dorothea planned an elopement. Discovery
followed. Koenigsmark was secretly murdered by agents of old Countess
Platen, one of the Elector Augustus's mistresses. Sophie Dorothea was
consigned to the dreary castle of Ahlden a prisoner for life, and there
she lived almost half a century. There, while her husband sat on the
English throne, she ate her heart out, slowly. Her son grew up and
became, after her death, George II. of England. Her daughter married the
Crown Prince of Prussia and became the mother of Frederick the Great and
of Wilhelmine, Princess of Baireuth.
Sophie Dorothea was constantly making plans to escape. But all such
plans proved futile, for she was surrounded by spies. Her one true
friend through life, her mother, died. Soon after, an official in whom
she had placed implicit confidence betrayed her almost accomplished plan
to escape and live quietly in a distant country. This last blow
shattered her mind. She wrote one last, madly cursing letter to King
George challenging him to meet her before a twelvemonth and a day at the
judgment bar of God. A few days later she died of brain fever. A
soothsayer had once told King George that he would not outlive his
divorced wife a year. Therefore, the superstitious king did his utmost
to keep the captive in good health. Physicians were ordered to visit her
frequently, and she was permitted daily exercise, both riding and
walking, in the open air.
Soon after Sophie Dorothea's death, King George's health began to fail.
He started for his beloved Hanover. Just outside Osnabriick a folded
paper was thrown into the royal carriage. It was Sophie Dorothea's last
maledictory letter. After reading it the king fell down in a fit from
the effects of which he died.
As every human emotion of love in princely marriage was crushed out by
reasons of state policy, so religion was subjected entirely to
expediency. When the Electress of Hanover was asked concerning her
daughter, Sophie Charlotte: "Of what religion is the princess?" she
replied: "The princess is of no religion, as yet. We are waiting to see
what faith the man whom she marries may prefer her to profess." When it
was decided that the Prince of Brandenburg should marry her it was found
by the politicians that the princess "of no religion at all" suited him
exactly. Sophie Charlotte remained true to her early training, or rather
to her lack of training. She was a vigorous freethinker to the end of
her days. She was much more worthy the name of philosopher than her
mother. "She insists, always," wrote Leibnitz, her lifelong friend and
admirer, "in knowing the Why of the Why." At Berlin, Sophie Charlotte
held a genuinely intellectual court. She gathered around her the
foremost scholars of the day. Where scholarship was concerned, the first
Queen of Prussia ignored race, creed, and even social station. She
cordially welcomed to the circle of her friendship any man or woman with
brains. The queen had inherited the grace and tact of her grandmother,
Elizabeth Stuart. She was immensely popular. Sophie Charlotte possessed
an ever ready sense of humor. She dearly loved to set an infidel and a
court chaplain arguing against each other. She delighted in doing things
incongruous to the occasion. At her husband's magnificent coronation,
during the most solemn and impressive moment, she calmly took a pinch of
snuff, thereby drawing down on her careless head the displeasure of her
royal consort. Up to the hour of her death, Sophie Charlotte jested.
When dying she is said to have declined religious consolation on the
very true ground that she knew exactly what the parson would say, and it
was, therefore, not worth while to trouble him. "My funeral will give
the king a grand opportunity to enjoy a magnificent display," she
whispered. It did. Splendor-loving Frederick buried his wife with the
utmost pomp.
Sophie Charlotte left a son, afterward Frederick William I. of Prussia,
who married unfortunate Sophie Dorothea's daughter, also named, for her
mother; Sophie Dorothea. The world knows well through Carlyle and, also,
though one-sidedly, through the memoirs of Wilhelmine, sister of
Frederick the Great, the story of this union.
This second Sophie Dorothea was not a happy woman. The fate of her
imprisoned mother weighed heavily upon her. Secretly, she corresponded
with her mother, and did her best to set her free. Again, as in the case
of the Electress of Hanover, England furnished the life ambition of a
German princess. Sophie Dorothea ardently wished to effect a double
marriage between her two children, Frederick and Wilhelmine, and the son
and daughter of George II., then crown prince of England. Disappointment
at the failure of this project, embittered and shortened her life.
The tall grenadiers, the royal cane and the parsimony of Frederick
William and their effect upon his thoroughly subjugated family are
well-known. The intense brotherly and sisterly love that existed between
Frederick and Wilhelmine was cemented, verily, by a bond of affliction.
Hunger and blows were often the portion of these sensitive royal
children. Wilhelmine writes of their "summer vacation":
"We had a most sad life then. We were awakened at seven every morning by
the King's regiment, which exercised in front of the windows of our
rooms on the ground floor. The firing went on incessantly, piff, puff,
and lasted the whole morning. At ten we went to see our mother and
accompanied her into the room next the King's, where we sat and sighed
all the forenoon. Then came dinner time. The dinner consisted of six
small, badly cooked dishes, which had to suffice for twenty-four
persons, so that some had to be satisfied with the mere smell. At table
nothing else was talked of but economy and soldiers. The Queen and
ourselves, too unworthy to open our mouths, listened in humble silence
to the oracles which were pronounced. After dinner the King slept in his
armchair for two hours, and we had to keep as still as mice until he
awoke. Then we read with the Queen. When, at last, the King went to his
tobacco parliament we were free for a little while."
That Frederick and his sister grew up, under this repressive system,
into nothing worse than a pair of neurasthenics seems almost a miracle.
During the eighteenth century there were two distinct types of
history-making men in Germany the Frenchified-German, fond of pageants
and rich raiment, and the rugged, harsh, yet true-hearted, fighting men
of the Dessauer stamp.
The Prince of Anhalt-Dessau was the field-marshal of Frederick William
I. To Dessau the science of warfare owes an enormous debt. When a young
man, this impetuous prince fell in love with the daughter of an
apothecary named Fos. In spite of all obstacles of birth and wealth, he
determined to marry the girl of his choice; and because he was, says
Carlyle, "perhaps the biggest mass of inarticulate human vitality",
certainly, one of the biggest then going about in the world, marry her
he did. In spite of Dessauer's being, to quote Carlyle again, "a very
whirlwind of a man," the marriage was most happy.
During the first half of the eighteenth century French practically
superseded German as the language of polite society. The virile German
language largely owes its rehabilitation to a woman, Luise Gottsched,
wife of Johann Christopher Gottsched, the famous scholar. As usual, fame
has been unjust: the husband has received all the credit, while the wife
did all, or nearly all, of the work. Luise Gottsched was one of the
brightest women of the eighteenth century. She wrote, exceedingly well.
But after her husband began his Dictionary of the German Language and
his Model Grammar, Luise was obliged to do what a clever woman whose
husband writes a dictionary is always obliged to do, drop all her own
literary work to assist him. Morning, noon, and night, year in and year
out, Luise Gottsched toiled at this verbal drudgery; and when she was
sick, worn out at the age of forty-seven, her husband whined, publicly,
because she did not always "answer pleasantly" when he called her from
her invalid's couch to copy his interminable manuscripts. She died at
the age of fifty-nine. One happy time, though, Luise Gottsched had
before she died. She saw Maria Theresa at Vienna. If the following
extracts seem somewhat servile, it must be remembered that the letter
was written in an age in which royalty worship was a part of life. In
fact, Luise Gottsched's delighted description is mainly valuable as a
true reflection of the popular feeling about royalty in the eighteenth
century. The glimpse it gives of that noble woman, Maria Theresa
(1740-1780), is also interesting. The good empress's simple, friendly
reception of the husband and wife, her divination of what this visit to
Vienna meant in their narrow lives, her kindly desire that they should
see all there was to see of interest these things are charmingly
illuminative. They make one understand the enthusiastic shout of her
Hungarian subjects: "We will die for our King, Maria Theresa." This is
what Luise Gottsched wrote:
"To Fraulein Thomasius, of Troschenreuth and Widersberg, at Nuernberg.
"VIENNA, September 28, 1749.
"MY ANGEL:
"First, embrace me. I believe all good things should be shared with
one's friends. Hence must I tell you that never, in all my life, have I
had such cause to be joyfully proud as on this day. You will guess at
once, I know, that I have seen the Empress. Yes, I have seen her, the
greatest among women. She who, in herself, is higher than her throne. I
have not only seen her, but I have spoken with her. Not merely seen her,
but talked with her three quarters of an hour in her family circle.
Forgive me if this letter is chaotic and my handwriting uneven. Both
faults spring from the overwhelming joy I feel in the two delights of
this day the privilege of meeting the Empress and the pleasure of
telling your Highness of the honor.
"This morning at ten we went to the palace. We took our places where
Baron Esterhazy, who procured us admission, told us to stand. He
supposed, as we did, that we, with the hundreds of others who were
waiting, might be permitted to see her Majesty as she passed through the
apartment on her way to the Royal chapel. After half an hour we had the
happiness of seeing the three Princesses go by. They asked the
Court-mistress who we were. Then, on being told our names, they turned
and extended their hands for us to kiss. The eldest Princess is about
ten years old. As I kissed her hand, she paid me a compliment. She said
she had often heard me highly spoken of. I was pleased, of course, and
very grateful for her remarkable condescension. Forgive me if this
sounds proud. Worse is to follow. I cannot tell of the incredible favor
of these exalted personages without seeming to be vain. But you well
know that I am not vain.
"About eleven o'clock, a man-servant, dressed in gorgeous livery, came
and told us to follow him. He led us through a great many frescoed
corridors and splendid rooms into a small apartment which was made even
smaller by a Spanish screen placed across it. We were told to wait
there. In a few moments, the Mistress of Ceremonies came. She was very
gracious to us. In a little while, her Majesty entered followed by the
three Princesses. My husband and myself each sank upon the left knee and
kissed the noblest, the most beautiful hand that has ever wielded a
sceptre. The Empress gently bade us rise. Her face and her gracious
manner banished all the timidity and embarrassment we naturally felt in
the presence of so exalted and beautiful a figure as hers. Our fear was
changed to love and confidence. Her Majesty told my husband that she was
afraid to speak German before the Master of that language. 'Our Austrian
dialect is very bad, they say' she added.
"To which my man answered that, fourteen years before, when he listened
to her address at the opening of the Landtag, he had been struck by the
beauty and purity of her German. She spoke, on that occasion, he said,
like a goddess.
"Then the Empress laughed merrily, saying, ''Tis lucky I was not aware
of your presence or I should have been so frightened that I should have
stopped short in my speech.' She asked me how it happened that I became
so learned a woman. I replied, 'I wished to become worthy of the honor
that has this day befallen me in meeting your Majesty. This will forever
be a red-letter day in my life.'
"Her Majesty said, 'You are too modest. I well know that the most
learned woman in Germany stands before me.' My answer to that was,
'According to my opinion, the most learned woman, not of Germany only,
but of all Europe, stands before me as Empress.'
"Her Majesty shook her head. 'Ah, no,' she said, 'my familiar
acquaintance with that woman forces me to say you are mistaken.'"
Maria Theresa's husband joined the group and chatted most affably. Some
of the younger children were called in and properly reverenced. Then the
empress asked the visitors if they would like to see her remaining
babies, upstairs. Of course, the Gottscheds were enchanted at the
thought. Following the mistress of ceremonies, they went upstairs "to
the three little angels there," whom they found in the not exactly
celestial act of "eating their breakfast under the care of the Countess
Sarrau."
After kissing "the little, highborn hands," the happy visitors were
conducted through the private rooms of the palace, "an honor," Frau
Gottsched writes, ecstatically, "not vouchsafed to one stranger out of a
thousand." Not the least pleasant part of the whole visit naturally was
the return to the waiting room, now full, where all "congratulated them
upon the unusual honor shown them."
Luise begs her friend, a bit insincerely perhaps, to "burn this letter
and tell no one of its contents lest people may accuse us, hereafter, of
being proud."
In the eighteenth century the peasants of Germany were fairly well off.
Some of the most cruel political disabilities of the peasant class had
been removed. Agriculture, in consequence, had made great strides. In
the towns the condition of the workingwomen was about the same as in the
seventeenth century. To escape man's lust was still the main problem of
any virtuous working girl who was unfortunate enough to possess a pretty
face.
The chief diversion of rich and poor, alike, was the theatre. Acting was
the first profession, except teaching, opened to German women. Dramatic
art in Germany, when about to expire from sheer vulgarity, was saved by
a woman. She died a martyr to the cause of purity in art.
Frederica Caroline Weissenborn was born in Reichenbach. Her father, a
physician, was a man of Calvinistic sternness. Caroline had a lover,
Johann Neuber, an actor. Her father, learning of his daughter's
infatuation, determined to "whip it out of her." In those days all
fathers whipped their grown-up daughters, and their wives too, if they
felt like it. But Caroline did not propose to be whipped. She jumped
from a two-story window and, with no bones broken, landed in a hedge.
Young Neuber, the actor, seems to have been strolling near the hedge
that day, for he appeared promptly upon the scene and took Caroline to a
neighboring town, where they were speedily married. Fate led the couple
to Leipzig. Both Neuber and his wife played there. They became friends
with the Gottscheds. Gottsched was deeply interested in the restoration
of the German drama. Caroline Neuber was the one woman in the world to
carry out, to improve and broaden, the pedant's plans. Upon Luise
Gottsched, of course, fell the immense labor of translation and
arrangement. The three worked enthusiastically. Neuber kept the accounts
and did the marketing.
But the heart and soul of the new movement to improve the German stage
was Caroline Neuber, keen-sighted, energetic, sympathetic. Caroline
Neuber organized a theatrical troupe upon moral lines hitherto unknown
in the history of the stage. All unmarried actresses of the troupe lived
with her. She watched their conduct closely and insisted upon decorum.
The unmarried actors of the company were obliged to dine at her table.
No tavern temptations were to be put in their way. Madame Neuber began
by presenting only classic tragedies, but public demand forced her to
alternate tragedy with farce. From Hamburg she wrote: "Our tragedies and
comedies are fairly well attended. The trouble we have taken to improve
taste has not been thrown away. I find here various converted hearts.
Persons whom I have least expected to do so have become lovers of
poetry, and there are many who appreciate our orderly, artistic plays."
Of Caroline Neuber, Lessing says: "One must be very prejudiced not to
allow to this famous actress a thorough knowledge of her art. She had
masculine penetration, and in one point only did she betray her sex. She
delighted in stage trifles. All plays of her arrangement are full of
disguises and pageants, wondrous and glittering. But, after all, Neuber
may have known the hearts of the Leipzig burghers, and put these
settings in to please them, as flies are caught with treacle."
For a while, Madame Neuber scored a brilliant success in Saxony. Then
the public, following a corrupt court, grew tired of classical poetry
and virtue on the stage, and clamored for its old diet of buffoonery and
immorality. Neuber refused to lower the standard of her plays. In 1733
her contract with the court theatre expired, and the king refused to
renew it. He placed a Merry Andrew at the head of the court theatre. In
Hamburg and Saint Petersburg, Madame Neuber received similar treatment.
But this true artist would not give up her fight for a pure stage. She
wrote:
"We could earn a great deal of money if we would play only the
tasteless, the obscene, the cheap blood-curdling or the silly,
fashionable plays. But we have undertaken what is good. We will not
forsake the path as long as we have a penny. Good must continue good."
Caroline Neuber and her husband were growing old. They were bitterly
poor. They played subordinate, but never immoral, parts now in any
troupe that would take them. They had broken with Gottsched, whose wife
was dead. One good friend, Dr. Loeber, remained, however. Dr. Loeber
gave the old couple a room, rent free, in Dresden. In the war of 1756,
Prussian soldiers, quartered in Dresden, slept in the same room with the
Neubers. But the soldiers treated the aged actress with the greatest
respect. Not an indecent word was ever uttered by them in her presence.
Not a pipe was ever laid upon her poor little writing table. When her
husband died in that over-crowded attic, Prussian soldiers bore him,
tenderly and reverently, to his grave.
In 1760 the city was bombarded. A shell crashed through the roof of the
room where old Madame Neuber lay ill. Dr. Loeber carried her for safety
to a suburban village. But the owner of the house to which she was
taken, when he found out who she was, refused to let an actress die
under his roof; so she was moved again, this time to a room in a cottage
nearby. From her bed she could see the vine-covered slopes of Pillnitz.
Dying, she folded her withered hands, and murmured: "I will lift up mine
eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help."
Her final exit from the troubled stage of earth was accomplished with
difficulty. The village pastor, determined that no actress should be
buried in the consecrated ground over which he held sway, locked the
churchyard gates and refused to yield up the key. Madame Neuber's coffin
was therefore hoisted over the wall and lowered into the grave by two or
three old friends. No prayer was spoken; no hymn was sung. But Caroline
Neuber's influence for good lives. She performed two great services: she
purified the German drama, and she introduced Lessing to the world.
In every time and clime, belles have danced and flirted and laughed and
chatted and been happy. Madame Johanna Schopenhauer, the famous mother
of her more famous philosopher son, Arthur, has left a pleasing
description of fashion's whimseys in the eighteenth century:
"We had no thin ball dresses, for the simple reason that thin varieties
of woven material had not then been invented. And yet we danced in our
cumbrous company gowns made of heavy silk we were passionately fond of
dancing. We were courted, admired, nay, even as much admired as our
granddaughters are now in their cloudlike, treacherously diaphanous
garments. How it happened, in our hideous disguises, I cannot, at this
distance of time, pretend to explain. How well I remember my first ball!
"At least an ell was added to my stature by a monstrous tower of hair
which was built up on a wire and horsehair frame, and which was crowned
with flowers, feathers, and ribbons. The high heels of my white ball
slippers, which were adorned with golden ties, contributed to
counterbalance the disproportion in my little person at the other
extremity. Though my shoes fell far short of the preposterous height of
my hair, they raised my heels so far from the ground as to pitch me on
the tips of my toes. A pair of stays with whalebones close together, of
a thickness sufficient to turn a musket ball, forced back the arms and
shoulders and threw the chest forward. Down toward the hips the corset
was laced so tightly as to make one's figure resemble that of a wasp.
These stays restricted all freedom of motion. They had only one sensible
thing about them, and that was a rather stout iron which kept them from
pressing on the breast.
"And now, the hooped petticoat over which was worn a silk skirt with
flounces and all kinds of indescribable trimmings up to the knees. Over
this was worn a robe of the same material, with a long train. In front
this robe was open, sloping on each side from the waist. The sides of
the robe were ornamented with the same kind of trimming as adorned the
skirt. The neck and bosom were considerably exposed. The whole was
completed with an immense bouquet of artificial flowers. The sleeves
reached only to the elbows, and were richly trimmed with blond lace and
ribbons to the shoulders.
"This, however, was the dress of young ladies only. Our mothers were
splendid in stiff brocades and ruffles of blond or point lace. Long
sleeves were not worn at all, even for everyday dresses, summer or
winter. Hardened by habit, we did not suffer more than we do now. Our
mothers dressed much more richly than we did. They were heavily loaded
with jewels.
"The fashions were obtained from Paris, but only when they had become
rather obsolete there. Though disfigured by exaggeration, they were
eagerly sought after. One exception only was made, in our part of the
country at least: the French habit of using rouge was not adopted. The
few ladies who dared be so heterodox as to paint themselves did it with
fear and trembling and with the greatest secrecy, for they ran the risk
of being publicly reprimanded from the pulpit. Our Lutheran shepherd was
very strict with his flock.
"Another fashion, however, found universal favor with our elegant
ladies. A fashion so senseless that I should, certainly, have doubted
its existence if I had not, as a child, often played with my mother's
mother-of-pearl box of patches. All ladies wore patches, and my mother
always kept her box handy, its lid being provided with a small
looking-glass, so that if a patch fell off she might at once replace it
with another. These little ornaments, made of English court-plaster,
were cut in the shape of full, half and crescent moons, stars, hearts,
etc., and were stuck on the face with much forethought and ingenuity to
heighten the charms of the wearer, and to add a graceful expression to
the countenance. A row of tiny moons, gradually increasing in size from
the crescent to the full, at the outer corner of the eye, was supposed
to make that organ look larger, and to heighten its brightness. A couple
of small stars at the corner of the mouth was thought to impart an
enchantingly roguish expression to it. A patch on the cheek was thought
to bring out a dimple to advantage. There were, besides, patches of
larger size doves, cupids, suns, and others known by the general name of
'assassins,' probably because of their killing effect on masculine
hearts."
In the last analysis, the position of woman in any given period depends
upon the currently accepted philosophy underlying that period. The
philosophy of the seventeenth century that of Descartes and Leibnitz
maybe condensed in one word mechanism. Woman, with her emotional nature,
her wayward, irregular fancies, her insistence upon personal love
instead of rigid law, her lack of logic, and her perplexing, often
keenly puncturing intuitions, had no place in the well-arranged system
of Descartes and Leibnitz. It was even questioned, satirically in
France, but seriously in Germany, whether or not woman was a human
being. If not, said the learned divines who argued the question in their
pulpits, she could not be eligible to salvation. The conclusion, not
unanimous, however, finally reached was that women ought to be looked
upon as human beings, lower, of course, than man, but a grade or two
higher than the beasts of the field.
Of seventeenth century philosophers, Spinoza, "the God-intoxicated man,"
alone met any of the conscious higher needs of woman. Hence, women, by
thousands, accepted the philosophy of Spinoza under the name of
Quietism.
Seventeenth century philosophy made woman nothing. Eighteenth century
philosophy, springing from the English utilitarians, Hobbes, Locke, and
Hume, made woman a mere adjunct, a tool of man. Above all things else,
an Englishman loves his home. A good wife makes a man more comfortable
in his home than a bad one. "Therefore," said eighteenth century
philosophy, "'tis the part of worldly prudence to train women toward
virtue." This thought is the substance of Locke's Treatise on Education,
so far as it concerns women. "A husband of high social standing may be
the reward of persistent virtue," added Samuel Richardson, the man
through whom Locke's philosophy became potent over women of all ranks in
all civilized countries.
For more than half a century Locke's philosophy, filtered through
Richardson's novels, colored feminine ideals almost as deeply on the
continent as in the author's own country. Rousseau was a third link in
the chain a very strong, a mighty link.
Richardson's first novel was Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. Clarissa
Harlowe and Sir Charles Grandison soon followed. Each of these books,
translated into German, passed through many editions. French renderings
of Richardson's novels also flooded German book stores. This author's
books struck both new and old chords in the heart of German womanhood.
They dealt with heroines who moved in the humbler walks of life. Before
Richardson and Rousseau wrote, the memoirs of highborn dames may be
searched in vain for a single expression of sisterly feeling toward
women in a lower rank of society than their own. Compassion and
almsgiving were not lacking, but the "put yourself in her place" feeling
seems never previously to have been awakened. Richardson emphasized
chastity a virtue which the early eighteenth century world most sadly
lacked. He made the hearthstone once more an altar.
Out of the sentimentalism of the Locke-Richardson-Rousseau school was
evolved a type of womanhood which, during the second half of the
eighteenth century, made the world purer and better.