uncle's little musical evenings. I don't know what really would become
of me.... Let me stay here and eat my heart out.... Nothing can be made
of me, that you will see quite well.... I am ruined for everything; I
have been cheated in everything, and in a most exasperating way." ...
Again, "If I thought it possible that this frantic imp, my fancy, at
which I laugh right sardonically in my calmer moments, could ever
strain the fibres of my brain or could touch the feelers of my
emotional power, I should wish to cry with Shakespeare's Falstaff, 'I
would it were bedtime, and all well;'" ... and "I am accused by the
Santa Hermandad of my own conscience." And in another letter he unbares
the root of all his troubles in the exclamation, "Oh! that I had a
mother like you."
Tearing himself away from his lady-love with a violent wrench, Hoffmann
left Königsberg in a sort of "dazed or intoxicated state," his heart
bleeding with the anguish of parting. He arrived at Glogau on 15th
June, and met with a very friendly reception from his uncle and his
uncle's family, which consisted of his wife and a son and two
daughters. But though they appear to have exerted themselves to make
the unhappy youth comfortable, his heart and mind were too much
occupied with the dear one he had left behind for him to derive full
benefit from their kind and well-meant attentions. In the first letter
he wrote to his friend from his new home he says, "As Hamlet advised
his mother, I have thrown away the worser part of my heart to live the
purer with the other half.... Am I happy, you ask? I was never more
unhappy." In other letters, written some months later, he writes, "I am
tired of railing against Destiny and myself.... There are moments in
which I despair of all that is good, in which I feel it has been
enjoined upon me to work against everything that makes a vaunt of
specious happiness." But he took no manful and resolute steps to battle
against his unhappy state; he continued to correspond with the lady of
his affections, to gaze upon her portrait, to write to his friend about
her, and to dwell upon the past, the hours he had spent in her society.
His relatives, though treating him with all kindness, would seem to
have endeavoured to reason him out of his passion, since after he had
been some months in Glogau, he complains that those who had at first
been all love and sympathy were now cold and reserved towards him; he
was misunderstood; he was tormented with _ennui_, and looked with
contempt (partly amused and partly bitter) upon the childish follies
and fopperies, the trifling and dandling with serious feelings and
affections, of the folks amongst whom he lived, who spent their time in
"hunting after flies and _bonmots_." During these months, however, and
during the course of the two years he spent in Silesia, he penetrated
deeper into the secret constitution of his own nature than he ever did
before or after: we find him confessing to his hot passionate
disposition and his quickness to take offence, and making mention of
the change that had taken place in him since the days of his early
friendship with Hippel--he was become hypochondriacal, dissatisfied
with himself, ready to kick against destiny, and prone to assume a
defiant attitude towards her and to blame her and call her to account
for her treatment of him; then again he was melancholy and sad and
sentimental, using in his letters expressions built up after Jean
Paul's style, and indulging in gushing protestations of unalterable
friendship. But then this was the age of exaggerated friendships. His
humour and joviality did not, however, altogether desert him; he made
himself a welcome guest of an evening, and carried out amusing pranks
with his merry cousins.
In the spring of 1797 Hoffmann accompanied his uncle on a journey to
Königsberg, where he again saw the young girl he loved, but only to
open up again all the anguish of the wounds that had never yet fully
healed. On his return to Glogau things continued much as they were
previous to his visit to his native town.
Of his two favourite arts, painting seems to have occupied him more
than music just at this period. Probably this was due to the influence
of the painter Molinari, whose acquaintance he made before he had been
six months in Glogau; and besides this man, whom he styles a "child of
misfortune" like himself, he also enjoyed the society of Holbein,
dramatic poet and actor; of Julius von Voss, a well-known writer; and
of the Countess Lichtenau, formerly favourite of Frederick William II.
of Prussia, but at that time a sort of prisoner in the garrison at
Glogau.6 The serious study of law he also prosecuted most assiduously,
and to such good purpose that in June, 1798, he was able to surmount
successfully his second or "referendary" examination. But for this
earnest and persevering labour there was a special incitement--a
particular cause. However contradictory it may sound, he was already
engaged in another love affair; this time with the lady who afterwards
became his wife, Maria Thekla Michaelina Rorer, of Polish extraction.
The beginning of his intimacy with her dates, strange to say, from the
early part of the year 1797, just previous to his journey to Königsberg
with his uncle. Soon after passing his "referendary" examination, he
was moved to the Supreme Court at Berlin, as a consequence of the
promotion of his uncle to be _geheimer Obertribunalsrath_ in the
capital. But before proceeding to Berlin to take up his residence
there, Hoffmann made a tour through the Silesian mountains, partly with
an eccentric friend of his uncle's and partly alone, finishing up the
trip by an inspection of the art treasures of Dresden, where he was
specially struck with works by Correggio and Battoni (mentioned in _Der
Sandmann_, &c.) and Raphael. One very remarkable incident which
happened to him during this trip must not be passed over in silence. He
was induced to play at faro at a certain place where he stopped, and
though he was perfectly unskilled in the game, yet he had such an
extraordinary run of good luck, that he rose from the table with what
was for him a small fortune. Next morning the event made so deep and
powerful an impression upon his excitable temperament--his mind was so
awed by the magnitude of his winnings--that he vowed never to touch a
card again so long as he lived; and this vow he faithfully kept. In the
tale _Spielerglück_ ("Gambler's Luck") we find the incident recorded in
the experiences of Baron Siegfried; and in the third volume of the
_Serapionsbrüder_ (Part VI.) he relates some of the very amusing
eccentricities of his travelling companion, which are too long to be
given here.
We next find Hoffmann in Berlin, where, whilst the impressions which he
had brought back with him from his excursion were still fresh upon his
mind, he began to revel in the enjoyment of the picture-galleries and
other opportunities for cultivating his taste in art. Here he saw
really how little his own skill in painting was developed; he threw
away colours, and took up drawing again like a beginner. His position
in a professional regard now took a more favourable turn. Freiherr von
Schleinitz, the first president of the court to which Hoffmann was
attached, was a friend of Hippel's; and both he and the genial good-
hearted second president Von Kircheisen noticed and encouraged his
talents. In consequence, he laboured at his duties and studies with
such zeal that he succeeded in passing his third and last examination,
the so-called _examen rigorosum_, and so qualifying for the position of
judge in the highest courts of Prussia, in the summer of 1799. He was
recommended for an appointment as councillor in a provincial supreme
court; but before proceeding to the dignity of councillor it was
obligatory upon him to serve a probationary year as _assessor_. He was
accordingly sent down to the newly-acquired Polish provinces (South
Prussia, as they were called), to the town of Posen, where work was
plentiful and talented and energetic workers were in demand. Before
leaving the capital he had the pleasure of seeing his friend Hippel,
who spent two happy months with him, living the past over again,
visiting Potsdam, Dessau, Leipsic, Dresden, &c., and discussing the
journey to Italy, which through all his life Hoffmann continued to
dream of as an ideal plan to be some time consummated, but which
unfortunately never was consummated. Hippel accompanied his friend to
Posen.
The Polish provinces were fraught with great danger for any young man
who was not possessed of exceptional firmness and sound moral
principles. For a young lawyer, the work was severe and exacting, but
the emoluments were large. Time, however, failed to allow of
cultivating the higher sources of enjoyment; hence all hastened to make
the most of it by throwing themselves into the lower. Drinking was a
habit of the country; and the drink that was drunk was of the strongest
kinds, the fiery wines of Hungary and strong liquors. There reigned
also a deplorable laxity of morals; and the graceful Polish women were
very seductive. That Hoffmann followed the example of his colleagues,
and plunged into the giddy whirlpool of miscalled pleasure, will
perhaps appear natural when we take into consideration the sources of
discontent that had for some time been fermenting in his spirit. Having
been submitted to the trammels of unreasonable constraint, it need not
be wondered at that his passionate restless nature should be enticed by
the temptations to which he was now so suddenly and unreservedly
exposed, that he forgot all his higher strivings and cast his better
purposes to the winds, and drank greedily of the pleasures of life
which his newly-won freedom brought in so easy and seductive a form
within his reach. He candidly states, "for some months a conflict of
feelings, principles, &c., which are directly contradictory the one to
the other, has been raging within me; I wished to stifle all
recollection, and become what schoolmasters, preachers, uncles, and
aunts call profligate." There was none in the circles which he
frequented to encourage him in his desire to reach out after better
things, to live himself into "the poetry of life," as Hitzig expresses
it; and hence he fell into the mire of demoralisation, and his fall was
the greater since he set about it with deliberate intent.
He was at length so far carried away by the delirious whirl into which
he had been caught as to engage in a piece of wanton folly that threw
him back upon his career by some years, just as he was about to plant
his foot securely upon the path leading to the summits of his
profession. Beguiled by his striking talent for caricature, he designed
and executed a series of sketches, satirising in an exquisitely witty
and humorous style various situations and characters and well-known
relations of Posen society. The inscriptions appended to the
caricatures were not less skilfully done than were the caricatures
themselves. No rank of society was spared, and hardly any person of
consequence in the town. One of his friends, who afterwards became his
brother-in-law, distributed the leaves at a masked ball in the disguise
of an Italian hawker of pictures, cleverly contriving to place each
individual sketch in the hands of the person to whom it would most
likely be most welcome. Hence for several minutes universal glee at the
excellent jest! But when they came to compare notes, _i.e._, the
presents they had received, the merriment gave way to hot indignation.
The author of the outrage was very speedily guessed at, since there was
only one person in Posen with proved ability enough to wield the pencil
so as to produce such striking likenesses--unfortunate Hoffmann! That
very same night it is said that a man of high rank, General von
Zastrow, deeply incensed at several of the pieces in which he himself
played a ridiculous _rôle_, sent off an express courier to Berlin with
a report of the whole affair. The consequence of the thoughtless trick
was that Hoffmann's patent as councillor to the government at Posen,
which lay all ready for signing, was exchanged for one appointing him
to the town of Plock (on the R. Vistula). Thither he went early in
1802, accompanied by his wife, whose maiden name was "Rorer, or rather
Trzczynska, a Poless by birth, daughter of the former town-councillor
T. of Posen, twenty-two years old, of medium stature and good figure,
with dark-brown hair and dark blue eyes," as he himself describes her.
He had taken the step of marriage in face of the earnest dissuasion of
his uncle Otto, in the last months of his residence in Posen. But
previous to this, late in the autumn of 1801, he had paid another visit
to Königsberg, meeting on his return journey his friend Hippel; and
together they saw Elbing and Dantzic. To this latter visit we owe the
story of _Der Artushof_ ("Arthur's Hall"), published in 1817. Hippel,
be it remarked, was disagreeably struck by the change in his friend:
Hoffmann gave himself up to an unhealthy degree, to wild and
extravagant gaiety, and disclosed a liking for what was low and lewd.
In Plock Hoffmann spent two years. This was a quiet, stagnant place,
where, according to his own account, he "was buried alive," and "walked
in a morass covered with low thorny shrubs which lacerated his feet;"
he "thought of Yorick and the imprisoned starling;" and he should have
given way to despair had not the bitter experiences which he was made
to drain to the lees been sweetened by the affection of his dear good
wife, who gave him strength for the present and encouraged him to hope
for the future. Owing to the external circumstances in the midst of
which he was fixed, he again turned his attention seriously to music
and painting, and also to authorship. He wrote short essays, composed
masses, vespers, and sonatas, and translated Italian canzonets, &c. _
Scherz, List, und Rache_, a _Singspiel_ of Goethe's, he had already set
to music in Posen. During these two years he led a more strictly
domestic life, and spent more of his time out of the hours of official
duty in his own house, than he ever did afterwards. Here also, as
almost everywhere throughout his life he was zealous and industrious in
discharging the duties of his position. At length, just as he was
beginning to settle down and feel contented with his lot in Plock, his
friends in Berlin succeeded in securing his removal (1804) to a better
and more congenial sphere of activity in Warsaw. After once more
visiting Königsberg in February, 1804, and then spending several days
with Hippel on his estate at Leistenau (province Marienwerder, East
Prussia), he eventually proceeded to his new post in Poland in the
spring of that same year.
One illustrative and very characteristic anecdote of this period
deserves mention. In a letter to Hippel, dated "Plock, 3rd October,
1803," Hoffmann writes, "My uncle in Berlin will never do much more to
recommend me, for he has become 'a grave man,' as Mercutio says in
Shakespeare;7 he died on the night of 24-25th September of inflammation
of the lungs." But in his diary of October 1 he writes, in allusion to
the same sad event, "My tears did not flow, nor did fear and grief draw
from me any loud lamentations; but the image of the man whom I loved
and honoured is constantly before my eyes; it never leaves me. The
whole day through my mind has been in a tumult; my nerves are so
excited that the least little noise makes me start." Thus he could jest
in the midst of pain; and it is a type of the man's character.
Warsaw, in notable contrast to other places in the Polish provinces,
possessed many things calculated to excite and engage the attention of
an active mind, of a mind so eager for knowledge and so keenly alive to
all that was especially interesting and extraordinary as was
Hoffmann's. The new scene of his labours cannot be better described
than in the words of Hitzig and of Hoffmann himself. The former says
the city had
"Streets of magnificent breadth, consisting of palaces in the finest
Italian style and of wooden huts which threaten every moment to tumble
together about the ears of their indwellers; in these edifices Asiatic
sumptuousness most closely mingled with Greenland filth; a populace
incessantly on the stir, forming, as in a procession of maskers, the
most startling contrasts--long-bearded Jews, and monks clad in the garb
of every order, closely veiled nuns of the strictest rules and
unapproachable reserve, and troops of young Polesses dressed in the
gayest-coloured silk mantles conversing to each other across the
spacious squares, venerable old Polish gentlemen with moustaches,
caftan, _pass_ (girdle), sabre, and yellow or red boots, the coming
generation in the most matchless of Parisian fashions, Turks and
Greeks, Russians, Italians, and Frenchmen in a constantly varying
crowd; besides this an almost inconceivably tolerant police, who never
interfered to prevent any popular enjoyment, so that the streets and
squares were always swarming with 'punch-and-judy' shows, dancing-
bears, camels, and apes, whilst the occupants of the most elegant
equipage equally with the common porter stopped to stare at them open-
mouthed; further, a theatre conducted in the national language, a
thoroughly good French troupe, an Italian opera, German comedians, who
were at least ready to undertake almost anything, 'routs' of a quite
original but extremely attractive kind, and resorts of pilgrims in the
immediate vicinity of the town--was there not something for an eye like
Hoffmann's to see and for a hand like Hoffmann's to sketch?"8
Thus far Hitzig. Hoffmann writes on May 14, 1804:--
"Yesterday ... I resolved to enjoy myself; I threw away my deeds and
sat down to the piano to compose a sonata, but soon found myself in the
situation of Hogarth's _Musicien enragé_ (Wrathful Musician).
Immediately underneath my window there arose certain differences
between three women selling meal, two wheelbarrow-men, and one sailor;
each of the parties pleaded its cause with a good deal of violent
demonstration before the tribunal of the hunchback, who stands with a
stall under the door-way below. Whilst this was going on the bells of
the parish church, of the Bennonites, and of the Dominican church (all
close to me) began to clang; in the churchyard of the last named (right
opposite to me) the hopeful catechumens were hammering away on two old
kettle-drums, with which all the dogs of the neighbourhood, spurred by
the strong powers of instinct, joined with a chorus of barkings and
howlings--at that moment too Wambach and his musical band of
Janissaries trotted gaily past to the merry strains of their own
music--meeting them out of [another] street came a herd of swine. A
tremendous friction in the middle of the street--seven swine were
ridden over! Terrific squealing!--Oh!--oh! a _tutti_ invented for the
torture of the damned! Here I threw aside my pen and paper, pulled on
my top-boots, and ran away out of the wild mad tumult through the
Cracow suburb--through the 'new world'--down the hill. A sacred Grove
received me in its shade; I was in Lazienki.9 Ay, truly, the pleasant
palace swims upon the mirror-like lake like a virgin swan. Zephyrs come
wafted through the blossoming trees loaded with voluptuous delight. How
pleasant to stroll through the thickly foliaged walks! That is the
place for an amiable Epicurean to live in. What! why this man with the
white nose galloping10 along here through the dark-leaved trees must be
the 'Commendatore' in _Don Juan_. Ah! John Sobieski! _Pink fecit-- male
fecit_. Oh! what a state of things! He is riding over writhing
prostrate slaves, who are stretching up their withered arms to the
rearing horse--an ugly sight! What! is it possible? Great Sobieski--as
a Roman with _wonçi_11 has girt a Polish sabre about his waist, and it
is made--of wood--ridiculous!... You ask me, my dear friend, how I like
Warsaw. A motley world! too noisy--too wild--too harum-scarum--
everything topsy-turvey! Where can I find time to write, to sketch, to
compose music? The king ought to give up Lasienki to me; _there_ one
could live nicely, if you like!"12
The first few months of his residence in this "new world," as it
appeared to immigrants from the "old land" of Prussia, Hoffmann spent
in familiarising himself with the novelty and strangeness of the place,
in wondering at and admiring the motley scenes which daily met his
view; and doubtless his acute perceptive faculties gleaned a valuable
harvest of notes for use on future occasions, both for his pencil and
his pen. About the end of June he formed the acquaintance of J. E.
Hitzig, who came down to Warsaw with the rank of _assessor_ in the
administrative college in which Hoffmann held that of councillor. The
crust of formal courtesy and commonplaces was broken through by
Hitzig's pithy answer, to a question asking his opinion about some
newly-arrived colleague, that he was "a man in buckram." The borrowed
words of Falstaff banished Hoffmann's reserve, and caused his sombre
face to light up with joy and his tongue to pour out a brilliant gush
of talk. This new-made friend, who had previously (1800, 1801) lived in
Warsaw, where he began his career, introduced Hoffmann into a pleasant
and intellectual set of men, amongst whom was Zacharias Werner, author
of _Söhne des Thales_, _Das Kreuz an der Ostsee_,13 &c. Hitzig had
spent the interval from 1801 in Berlin, where he had kept fully abreast
of the newest productions in literature and art, whilst Hoffmann had
been living, partly a rude and riotous life, and partly a solitary and
monkish one, at Posen and Plock. Hence the one had plenty to
communicate and the other great eagerness to listen, especially as the
little he had begun to hear roused anew his slumbering better feelings,
and whetted with a keen edge his native desire for self-improvement
through art and literature.
In the following year, 1805, one of the Prussian administrative
officials, an enthusiast in music, conceived the idea of establishing a
club or society for the purpose of amusement and mutual instruction in
his favourite art, and for the purpose also of training singers of both
sexes. Hoffmann's interest was enlisted in the scheme; and things
proceeded at an energetic rate, the first concert being successful
beyond expectation. With this encouragement the society was induced to
go to work on a larger and more pretentious scale. The Miniszeki
Palace, injured by fire, was bought for the seat of the new academy;
and then Hoffmann threw himself into the plans of the society with all
his soul, working indefatigably in preparing architectural designs, and
later in decorating the halls and corridors. During all the mild days
of the spring of 1806 he was never to be met with at home. If not in
the government office, he was invariably to be found perched up on a
high scaffolding in the new musical Ressource, painter's jacket on and
surrounded by a crowd of colour-pots, amongst which was sure to be a
bottle of Hungarian or Italian wine; there he painted and thence he
conversed with his friends below. If, on occasion, parties requiring
the services of Councillor Hoffmann came to look for him at the new
Ressource, whither they had been directed from his own house, they were
greatly surprised to see him drop nimbly to the floor from before an
elaborate wall-painting of ancient Egyptian gods, mixed up with
caricature figures and animal-like fragments of modems (his friends
with tails, wings, etc.), hastily wash his hands, trot along in front
of them to his place of business, and in a brief space of time turn out
some complicated legal instrument with which it would defy the sharpest
critic to find anything amiss.