received a thick letter; he had read no more than a few lines when he
became violently agitated and rushed off out of the room, not a little
to the consternation of the rest, who at once suspected some fresh
misfortune. Shortly afterwards Master Wacht called the young advocate
out. When they were alone together in the Master's own room, the
latter, vainly endeavouring to conceal his excessive agitation, began,
"I've got the most extraordinary news of your brother; here is a letter
from the governor of the prison relating fully all the circumstances of
what has taken place. As you cannot know them all, I must begin at the
beginning and tell you everything right to the end so as to make
credible to you what is incredible; but time presses." So saying,
Master Wacht fixed a keen glance upon the advocate's face, so that he
blushed and cast down his eyes in confusion. "Yes, yes," went on Master
Wacht, raising his voice, "you don't know how great a remorse took
possession of your brother a very few hours after he was put in prison;
there is hardly anybody whose heart has been more torn by it. You don't
know how his attempt at murder and theft has prostrated him. You don't
know how that in mad despair he prayed Heaven day and night either to
kill him or to save him that he might henceforth by the exercise of the
strictest virtue wash himself pure from bloodguiltiness. You don't know
how that on the occasion of building a large wing to the prison, in
which the convicts were employed as labourers, your brother so
distinguished himself as a clever and well-instructed carpenter that he
soon filled the post of foreman of the workmen, without anybody's
noticing how it came about so. You don't know how his quiet good
behaviour, and his modesty, combined with the decision of his
regenerate mind, made everybody his friend. All this you do not know,
and so I am telling it you. But to go on. The Prince-bishop has
pardoned your brother; he has become a master. But how could all this
be done without a supply of money?" "I know," said the young advocate
in a low voice, "I know that you, my good father, have sent money to
the prison authorities every month, in order that they might keep my
brother separate from the other prisoners and find him better
accommodation and better food. Later on you sent him materials for his
trade"---- Then Master Wacht stepped close up to the young advocate,
took him by both arms, and said in a voice that vacillated in a way
that cannot be described between delight, sadness, and pain, "But would
that alone have helped Sebastian to honour again, to freedom, and his
civil rights, and to property, however strongly his fundamental
virtuous qualities had sprung up again? An unknown philanthropist, who
must take an especially warm interest in Sebastian's fate, has
deposited ten thousand 'large' thalers with the court, to"---- Master
Wacht could not speak any further owing to his violent emotion; he drew
the young advocate impetuously to his heart, crying, though he could
only get out his words with difficulty, "Advocate, help me to penetrate
to the deep import of law such as lives in your breast, and that I may
stand before the Eternal Bar of justice as you will one day stand
before it.--And yet," he continued after a pause of some seconds,
releasing the young lawyer, "and yet, my dear Jonathan, if Sebastian
now comes back as a good and industrious citizen and reminds me of my
pledged word, and Nanni"---- "Then I will bear my trouble till it kills
me," said the young advocate; "I will flee to America." "Stay here,"
cried Master Wacht in an enthusiastic burst of joy and delight, "stay
here, son of my heart! Sebastian is going to marry a girl whom he
formerly deceived and deserted. Nanni is yours."
Once more the Master threw his arms around Jonathan's neck, saying, "My
lad, I feel like a schoolboy before you, and should like to beg your
pardon for all the blame I have put upon you, and all the injustice I
have done you. But let us say no more; other people are waiting for
us." Therewith Master Wacht took hold of the young lawyer and pulled
him along into the room where the wedding guests were assembled; there
he placed himself and Jonathan in the midst of the company, and said,
raising his voice and speaking in a solemn tone, "Before we proceed to
celebrate the sacred rite I invite you all, my honest friends, ladies
and gentlemen, and you too, my virtuous maidens and young men, six
weeks hence to a similar festival in my house; for here I introduce to
you Herr Jonathan Engelbrecht, the advocate, to whom I herewith
solemnly betroth my youngest daughter, Nanni." The lovers sank into
each other's arms. A breath of the profoundest astonishment passed over
the whole assembly; but good old Andreas, holding his little three-
cornered carpenter's cap before his breast, said softly, "A man's heart
is a wonderful thing; but true, honest faith overcomes the base and
even sinful resoluteness of a hardened spirit; and all things turn out
at last for the best, just as the good God wishes them to do."
FOOTNOTES TO "MASTER JOHANNES WACHT":
Footnote 1 Included in a collection of stories entitled _ Geschichten,
Märchen, und Sagen_, Von Fr. H. v. d. Hagen, E. T. A. Hoffmann, und H.
Steffens; Breslau, 1823.]
Footnote 2 See note p. 81, Vol. II.]
Footnote 3 The stern inexorable Republican patriot, who kills even his
friend Fiesco when the latter refuses to throw aside the purple dignity
he had assumed. See Schiller's _Fiesko_, act v., last scene (cf. I.
10-13; III. 1).]
Footnote 4 A long hilly street in Bamberg.]
Footnote 5 Pet name for Johannes, the name of Wacht's son.]
Footnote 6 _Rettel_ and _Rettelchen_ (little Rettel) are pet names for
Margaret.]
Footnote 7 The anniversary of the consecration of the church is made
the occasion of a great and general festive holiday in many parts of
Germany, particularly in the south.]
Footnote 8 "Noodles" are long strips of rolled-out paste, made up and
cooked in various ways.]
Footnote 9 Seehof or Marquardsburg, situated to the north-east of
Bamberg, was formerly a bishop's castle, and was rebuilt by Marquard
Sebastian Schenk of Stauffenberg in 1688.]
Footnote 10 Stracchino, a kind of cheese made in North Italy,
especially in Brescia, Milan, and Bergamo.]
Footnote 11 A pet name for Gretchen (Margaret), frequently used also as
equivalent to "sweetheart," "lass," just as we might say, "Every Johnny
has his Jeannie."]
Footnote 12 A long winding suburb of Bamberg.]
Footnote 13 Or Bug, as it is generally spelled, a pleasure resort on
the Regnitz, about half an hour distant from Bamberg. Hoffmann was in
the habit of visiting it almost daily when he lived at Bamberg.]
Footnote 14 In the days before ice was preserved on such an extensive
scale by the German brewers as it is at the present time, beer was kept
in excavations in rock, wherever a suitable place could be found; this
made it deliciously cool and fresh.]
Footnote 15 Goethe's well-known work.]
Footnote 16 A once rich and celebrated Benedictine abbey between
Bamberg and Coburg, founded in the eleventh century, and frequently
destroyed and sacked in war.]
Footnote 17 That is, they were golden, or gilded.]
Footnote 18 Hinze is Tieck's _Gestiefelter Kater_ (Puss in Boots). The
reference is perhaps to act ii. scene 2, where Hinze goes out to catch
rabbits, &c., and hears the nightingale singing, the humour of the
scene lying in the quick alternation of the human poetic sentiments and
the native instincts of the cat.]
Footnote 19 So named from the place where they were struck. See note,
p. 281, Vol. I., viz.--Imperial thalers varied in value at different
times, but estimating their value at three shillings, the sum here
mentioned would be equivalent to about £22,500. A _Frederick d'or_ was
a gold coin worth five thalers.]
Footnote 20 A church situated at the beginning of the Steinweg.]
Footnote 21 It need scarcely be said this refers to the excessively
sentimental hero of Goethe's _Leiden des jungen Werthers_.]
_BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE._1
Like many others whose pens have been employed in authorship, the
subject of this notice, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm2 Hoffmann, led a very
chequered life, the various facts and incidents of which throw a good
deal of light upon his writings.
Hoffmann was born at Königsberg in Prussia on the 24th January, 1776.3
His parents were very ill-assorted, and led such an unhappy life that
they parted in young Ernst's third year. His father, who was in the
legal profession, was a man of considerable talent and of acute
intellect, but irregular and wild in his habits and given to
reprehensible practices. His mother, on the contrary, the daughter of
Consistorialrath Dörffer, had been trained up on the strictest moral
principles, and to habits of orderliness and propriety; and to her
regard for outward conformity to old-established forms and conventional
routine was added a weak and ailing condition of body, which made her
for the most part a confirmed invalid. When, in 1782, the elder
Hoffmann was promoted to the dignity of judge and transferred to a
criminal court at Insterburg (Prussia), Ernst was taken into the house
of his maternal grandmother; and his father appears never to have
troubled himself further either about him or his elder brother, who
afterwards took to evil ways. The brothers in all probability never met
again, though an unfinished letter, dated 10th July, 1817, found
amongst Hoffmann's papers after his death, was evidently written to his
brother in reply to one received from him requesting pecuniary
assistance.
In his grandmother's house young Hoffmann spent his boyhood and youth.
The members of the household were four, the grandmother, her son, her
two daughters, of whom one was the boy's invalid mother. The old lady,
owing to her great age, was also virtually an invalid; so that both she
and her daughter scarcely ever left their room, and hence their
influence upon young Ernst's education and training was practically
nil. His uncle, however, after an abortive attempt to follow the law,
had settled down to a quiet vegetative sort of existence, which he
regulated strictly according to fixed rules and methodical procedure;
and these he imposed more or less upon the household. Justizrath Otto
(or Ottchen, as his mother continued to call him to her life's end),
though acting as a dead weight upon his high-spirited, quick-witted
nephew's intellectual development, by his efforts to mould him to his
own course of life and his own unpliant habits of thought, nevertheless
planted certain seeds in the boy's mind which proved of permanent
service to him throughout all his subsequent career. To this precise
and order-loving uncle he owed his first thorough grounding in the
elements of music, and also his persevering industry and sense of
method and precision. As uncle and nephew shared the same sitting-room
and the same sleeping-chamber, and as the former would never suffer any
departure from the established routine of things, the boy Ernst began
not only to look forward to the one afternoon a week when Otto went out
to make his calls, but also to study narrowly his uncle's habits, and
to play upon his weaknesses and turn them to his own advantage, so that
by the time he was twelve years old he was quite an adept at mystifying
the staid old gentleman. His aunt, an unmarried lady, was cheerful,
witty, and full of pleasant gaiety; she was the only one who understood
and appreciated her clever nephew; indeed she was so fond of him, and
humoured him to such an extent, that she is said to have spoiled him.
It was to her he poured out all his childish troubles and all his
boyish confidences and weaknesses. Her love he repaid with faithful
affection, and he has memorialised it in a touching way in the
character of "Tante Füsschen" in _Kater Murr_ (Pt. I.), where also
other biographical details of this period may be read. Of his poor
mother, feeble in body and in mind alike, Hoffmann only spoke
unwillingly, but always with deep respect mingled with sadness.
Two other persons must be mentioned as having exercised a lasting
influence upon his early life. One of these was an old great-uncle,
Justizrath Vöthöry, brother of both his grandmothers, and a gentleman
of Hungarian origin. This excellent man was retired from all business,
with the exception that he continued to act as justiciary for the
estates of certain well-tried friends. He used to visit the various
properties at stated seasons of the year, and was always a welcome
guest; for this "hero of olden times in dressing-gown and slippers," as
Wilibald Alexis called him, was the V---- who figures so genially in
_Das Majorat_ ("The Entail"). The old gentleman once took his great-
nephew with him on one of these trips, and to it we are indebted for
this master-piece of Hoffmann. The other person who gave a bent to
young Ernst's mind was Dr. Wannowski, the head of the German Reformed
School in Königsberg, where the boy was sent in his sixth or seventh
year. Wannowski, who possessed the faculty of awakening slumbering
talent in his pupils, and attracting them to himself, enjoyed the
friendship and intercourse of Kant, Hippel (the elder), Scheffner,
Hamann, and others, and might perhaps lay claim to be called a Prussian
Dr. Arnold, owing to the many illustrious pupils he turned out.
During the first seven years of his school-days, young Hoffmann was in
nowise distinguished above his school-fellows either for industry or
for quickness of parts. But when he reached his thirteenth or
fourteenth year, his taste for both music and painting was awakened.
His liking for these two arts was so genuine and sincere, and
consequently his progress in them so rapid, that he came to be looked
upon as a child-wonder. He would sit down at a piano and play
improvisations and other compositions of his own creation, to the
astonishment of all who heard him, for his performances, though
somewhat fantastic, were not wanting in talent and originality, and his
diminutive stature made him appear some years younger than he really
was. In drawing he early showed a decided inclination for caricature,
and in this his quickness of perception and accuracy in reproduction
proved of permanent service to him. Later he endeavoured to improve
himself both in theory and in practice in higher styles also: in the
former by diligent study of Winckelmann, and in the latter by copying
the models of the art treasures of Herculaneum preserved in the Royal
Library.
In his eleventh year Hoffmann made the acquaintance of Theodor von
Hippel, nephew of T. G. Hippel, author of _Die Lebensläufe in
aufsteigender Linie_, a boy one month older than himself. The
acquaintance ripened into a warm fast friendship when the two boys
recognised each other again at the same school, and they continued
faithful devoted friends until the day of Hoffmann's death. What tended
principally to knit them together was the similarity and yet difference
in their bringing up and family relations. Both grew up without the
society of brothers or sisters or playfellows; but whilst Hoffmann was
a son of the town, Hippel's early days had been spent in the country.
In another respect, too, they presented a striking contrast in
behaviour; Hoffmann's chief delight was to mystify and tease his uncle
Otto, but Hippel was most scrupulous in paying to all the proper meed
of respect which he conceived he owed them. Once when Hippel reproached
his friend about his behaviour towards his uncle, young Hoffmann
replied, "But think what relatives fate has blessed me with! If I only
had a father and an uncle like yours such things would never come into
my head." This saying is significant for the understanding of the early
stages of Hoffmann's intellectual development.
The bonds of inclination and natural liking were drawn still closer by
an idea of uncle Otto's. It was arranged that young Hippel should spend
the Wednesday afternoons (when the Justizrath went out to make his
round of visits amongst his acquaintances), along with his friend in
studying together, principally the classics. And Saturday afternoons
were also to be devoted to the same duties whenever practicable. But,
as might very well be expected, the classics soon gave way to other
books, such as Rousseau's _Confessions_ and Wiegleb's _Natürliche
Magie_;4 and these in turn were forced to yield to such pastimes as
music, drawing, mummeries, boyish games, masquerades, and even more
pretentious adventures out in the garden, such as mimic chivalric
contests, construction of underground passages, &c. The boys also
discovered common ground in their desire to cultivate their minds by
poetry and other reading. The last two years at school were most
beneficial and productive in shaping Hoffmann's mind; he acquired a
taste for classics and excited the attention of his teachers by his
artistic talents, his graphic powers of representation being noticeable
even at this early age. During this time also he cultivated the
acquaintance of the painter Matuszewski, whom he introduces by name in
his tale _Der Artushof_ ("Arthur's Hall").
When sixteen or seventeen years old Hoffmann conceived his first boyish
affection, which only deserves mention as giving occasion to a frequent
utterance of his at this time, that illustrates one of the most
striking sides of his character. It appears that the young lady who was
the object of his fancied passion either refused to notice his homage
or else laughed it to scorn, for he remarked to his friend with great
warmth of feeling, "Since I can't interest her with a pleasing
exterior, I wish I were a perfect image of ugliness, so that I might
strike her attention, and so make her at least look at me."
The beginning of Hoffmann's university career--he matriculated at
Königsberg on 27th March, 1792--offers nothing of special interest. He
decided to study jurisprudence. In making this decision he was
doubtless influenced by the family connections and the traditional
calling of the male members of the family. As already remarked, his
father, his uncle, and his great-uncle had all followed the profession
of law, and he had another uncle Dörffer in the same profession, who
occupied a position of some influence at Glogau in Silesia. But it is
also certain that he was determined to this decision--it cannot be
called choice--from the desire to make himself independent of the
family in Königsberg as soon as he could contrive to do so, in order
that he might free himself from the shackles and galling unpleasantness
of the untoward relations in life to which he was there subject. But he
was devoted heart and soul to art--to music and painting. As the
studies of the two friends, Hoffmann and Hippel, were different, they
necessarily did not see so much of each other as previously; but once a
week during the winter months they devoted a night to mutual
outpourings of the things that were in them--the aspirations, hopes,
dreams, and plans for the future, &c., such as imaginative youths are
wont to cherish and indulge in. These meetings were strictly confined
to their two selves; no third was admitted. Their rules were one bottle
of wine for the whole evening, and the conversation to be carried on in
rhymed verses; and Hoffmann we find looking back upon these hours with
glad remembrance even in the full flush of his manhood and fame: even
on his last sad birthday, a few months before his death, he dwells upon
them with fond delight.
Whilst, however, devoting himself enthusiastically to the pursuit of
art, he did not neglect his more serious studies. He made good and
steady progress in the knowledge of law; and he also gave lessons in
music. It was whilst officiating in this latter capacity that his heart
was stirred by its first serious passion--a passion which left an
indelible impress upon all his future life. He fell in love with a
charming girl, who had a fine taste and true sentiment in art matters,
but who was separated from her admirer by an impassable barrier of
rank; but although her social position was far above Hoffmann's, yet
she returned warmly his pure and ardent affection. Hoffmann, however,
never disguised from himself the hopelessness of his love; and the fact
that it was so hopeless embittered all the rest of his time in
Königsberg, until he left it in June, 1796, for a legal appointment at
Great Glogau in Silesia.
As these years seem to have been mainly instrumental in forming his
character and shaping its outlines and giving depth and strength to its
chief features, it is desirable to dwell for a moment upon the
principal currents which at this time poured their influences upon him.
By nature of a genial and gay temperament, gifted with an acute
perception, which he had further trained in sharpness and accuracy,
endowed with no small share of talent and with an ardent love for art,
ambitious, vain in some respects, full of high spirits, and with a keen
sense of humour, and not devoid of originality, he was daily chafed and
galled in the depressing atmosphere of his home relations. He felt how
illogical was the rigid methodicity, how unreasonable the arbitrary
routine, how absurd the restrictions and restraints of his uncle's
household regulations; he was eager to be quit of them, to turn his
back upon them; he was anxious to find a congenial field for his
powers-~a field where he could turn his accomplishments and genius to
good account. The only way in which he could hope to do so at present,
at least for some years to come, was by pursuing a legal career, and
law he had no inclination for. He says, in a letter to Hippel, dated
25th Nov., 1795, "If it depended upon myself alone I should be a
musical composer, and I have hopes that I could do something great in
that line; as for the one I have now chosen, I shall be a bungler in it
as long as I live." He gradually came to live upon a strained and
barely tolerable footing with his uncle, since as he grew older his
tricks and ironical behaviour towards little Otto assumed a more
pronounced character, and stirred up in the old gentleman's mind
feelings of suspicion against his unmanageable nephew. In these
circumstances we may easily discern the germs of a dissatisfaction not
only with his lot in life but also with himself.
Next came the fact of his hopeless love which has just been mentioned.
And another and no less potent cause which tended to deepen and
intensify this spirit of inward dissatisfaction was the delay that
occurred between his passing his entrance examination into the legal
profession in July, 1795, and his appointment to a definite post of
active duty in June, 1796. To be compelled to wear out his independent,
ambitious heart in forced inactivity must have been galling in the
extreme, especially when it is remembered how eagerly he was longing to
shake himself free from the relations amidst which he had grown up, and
his no less earnest desire to get beyond the reach of the passion, or
at any rate the object of the passion, that was gnawing at his very
heart-strings. To an energetic spirit, longing for a useful sphere of
activity, hardly anything can be more fruitful as a source of
unhappiness than enforced idleness. And this sentiment Hoffmann gives
frequent utterance to in his letters at this period.
During these same months he cultivated his mind by the perusal of the
works of such writers as Jean Paul, Schiller, and Goethe, the
intellectual giants upon whom the eyes of Germany were at that time
fixed in wonder. But this course of reading, instead of counteracting,
rather encouraged a native leaning towards poetic dreaming and
sentimentality. In a letter to Hippel, dated 10th Jan., 1796, he even
says, "I cannot possibly demand that she [the lady he loved] should
love me to the same unmeasured extent of passionate devotion that has
turned my head--and this torments me.... I can never leave her; she
might weep for me for twenty-four hours and then forget me--I should
_never forget her_." There was yet another cause or series of causes
which co-operated with those mentioned above to increase the distracted
and agitated condition of his heart. It has been already stated more
than once that he was a diligent student of music and painting. These
formed his recreation from the severe and dry study of law-books; but
to these two arts he now added the fascination of literary composition,
and wrote two novels, which he entitled _Cornaro_ and _Der
Geheimnissvolle_. The former was rejected by a publisher, who had at
first held out some hopes of being able to accept it, on the ground
that its author was unknown. Besides this, the productions of his brush
failed to sell. Hence fresh sources of disappointment and vexation.
Through all this, however, even in his darkest moods and most desperate
moments, he was upheld by the feelings and sentiments associated with
his friendship for his unshaken friend Hippel. To him he poured out all
his troubles in a series of letters,5 which gave a most graphic account
of his mental condition at this period. He led a very retired life,
hardly seeing anybody; he calls himself an anchorite, and states he was
living apart from all the world, seeking to find food for contemplation
and reflection in his own self. He also fostered, perhaps unconscious
to himself, high poetic aspirations, and also those extravagant dreams
of friendship which were so fashionable in the days of "Posa" and
"Werther" and Wieland; "his heart was never more susceptible to what is
good," and "his bosom never swelled with nobler thoughts," he says in
one of his letters. Then he goes on to describe the "flat, stale, and
unprofitable" surroundings in the midst of which he was confined.
"Round about me here it is icy cold, as in Nova Zembla, whilst I am
burning and being consumed by the fiery breath within me," he says in
another place. The violence of his inner conflict, of his heart-torture
and unhappiness, finds vent in a wild burst in the letter before quoted
of 10th Jan., 1796 (and also in others). He says:--