Chapter 2

It was about this time that he first made the acquaintance of Christine Vulpius, who afterwards became his wife. She was the daughter of one of those men whose drunkenness slowly but surely brings a whole family to want. She was at this time very young. He thought her beautiful, and, although uneducated, she had a quick wit, a lively spirit, a loving heart, and great aptitude for domestic duties. She had no social position, and is often spoken of as his servant. Although never really occupying that position, her standing was not much above that plane. She fascinated Goethe as so many young faces had done before, and it seemed to be a thraldom of the mind as well as of the senses. There are few poems in any language which approach the passionate gratitude of those in which he recalls the happiness she gave him.

George Henry Lewes in his life of the poet has this passage, which will be read with peculiar interest, considering his own relations with the highest genius of her day, George Eliot. He says:--

"Why did he not marry her at once? His dread of marriage has already been shown; and to this abstract dread must be added the great disparity of station,--a disparity so great that it not only made the liaison scandalous, but made Christine herself reject the offer of marriage. There are persons now living who have heard her declare that it was her own fault that the marriage was so long delayed. And certain it is that when she bore him a child, he took her, with her mother and sister, to live in his house, and always regarded the connection as marriage. But, however he may have regarded it, public opinion has not forgiven this defiance of its social laws. The world blamed him loudly; even his admirers cannot think of the connection without pain. But let us be just. While no one can refrain from deploring that Goethe, so eminently needing a pure domestic life, should not have found a wife whom he could avow, no one who knows the circumstances can refrain from confessing that there is also a bright light to this dark episode."

He goes on to say:--

"The judgments of men are curious. No action in Goethe's life has excited more scandal than his final marriage with Christine. It is thought disgraceful enough for him to have taken her into his home, but for the great poet to actually complete such an enormity as to crown his connection with her by marriage was, indeed, more than society could tolerate. I have already expressed my opinion of this unfortunate connection, but I most emphatically declare my belief that the redeeming point in it is precisely this which caused the scandal. Better far had there been no connection at all; but if it was to be, the nearer it approached real marriage, and the further it was removed from a fugitive indulgence, the more moral and healthy it became."

He was in his fifty-eighth year when he married her. She had changed much in the passing years. From the bright, lively, pleasure-loving girl, she had grown into a coarse and almost repulsive woman. Her father, as we know, had ruined himself by intemperance, her brother also, and she herself had not escaped the fatal appetite. She was not restrained by the checks which refined society imposes, for in Weimar she had no society, and as the years went by she became openly and shamelessly given over to intemperance. This tragedy in Goethe's life would have been little suspected by those who saw how calmly he bore himself in public. The mere mention of the fact, however, tells its own tale of humiliation and woe. It is often asked why Goethe did not part from her at once. In answer we might ask, Why do not all the noble and right-principled women who wear out wretched lives as drunkards' wives part at once from their debauched husbands? The answer would no doubt be similar in the two cases. He was too weak to alter his position, he was strong enough to bear it. And he did bear it to the bitter end. And when that end came he mourned for her with sincere affection. Says Lewes:--

"She who had for twenty-eight years loved and aided him; who, whatever her faults, had been to him what no other woman had been, could not be taken from him without his feeling her loss. His self-mastery was utterly shaken. He knelt by her bedside, taking her cold hands in his, and exclaiming, 'Thou wilt not forsake me, thou must not forsake me,' and sobbing aloud. He had been to her the most tender of devoted husbands throughout all those weary years."

Many accounts of her vulgarity and repulsiveness have been circulated; but in making up our estimate of her, the fact that she held Goethe in loyal bonds for eight and twenty years must not be passed over lightly. Fickle as he was in youth, and admiring as he did brilliant women in his manhood, Christine Vulpius must have had charms, and not of a light order, to have held him thus her willing slave. No mere fat and vulgar Frau without mind or sensibility could have done this. It is not in the nature of things. We often see men of brilliant minds in our own day choosing to marry women who are not intellectual or cultured,--women who have only beauty, or style and social elegance; but they are women who have some charm, and if the charm remains, the attraction holds indefinitely. But sad indeed is the case of the man of mind who has married a mere doll, and who, when youth has flown, finds he has a wife who is not capable of being companion or friend to him. Many a man holds himself steadfast to duty under these circumstances through a long life, but if the woman whom his maturity would have chosen--the sweet, companionable woman, with a mind that can sympathize with and appreciate his own--chances to dawn upon him, too late, there is apt to be a struggle which is long and hard.

Indeed, it is never the part of wisdom for the intellectual man or woman to marry one who is consciously an inferior. He or she who does this makes a high bid for an unhappy life. As regards Christine Vulpius, it is certain that, although not an intellectual woman, she was not without some taste for pursuits in consonance with those of Goethe. It was for her that he wrote the "Metamorphoses of Plants," and in her company he pursued his optical and botanical researches. Had she shown no comprehension of these things, assuredly Goethe would never have persisted in instructing her in them. It was for her, too, that he wrote the "Roman Elegies," which shows that he did not esteem her a mere drudge.

Whatever may be our general estimate of Goethe's character, it will certainly be conceded that he showed great capacity for domestic love and domestic happiness in continuing loyal for so many years to one who degraded herself as did Christine. He certainly cannot be counted among the sons of genius with whom it is found difficult, almost impossible even, to live. Rather must we rank him high among those genial and warm-hearted men who love too much, rather than too little, and who are easily led by the women to whom they give their devotion. Irregular and faulty, even immoral as he was, he yet possessed the redeeming domestic virtues in a large degree. Away beyond his seventieth year we find women still madly loving him, and him capable of reciprocating their affections. And well was it that this should be so, for otherwise he would have stood alone and friendless. One by one the companions of his youth and his manhood were taken from him, until, upon the death of Carl August, he could truthfully exclaim, "Nothing now remains." It was well that the end drew near.

When one can say, "Nothing now remains," it is surely time for the angel with the brazen trumpet to proclaim, "For him let time be no more."

Lightly let the silver cord be loosed and the golden bowl broken, rather than that the lonely life linger on, with its eyes fixed only on the past, which has become but a dim mirage where ghostly figures are seen walking but from which all warmth and light have fled. Happy indeed is he who, when the allotted years have been passed, and he lingers waiting on the stage for the signal which shall cause the curtain to fall forever on his little life drama, has something which to him is real and tangible to look forward to in the near future. The bitterness of a lingering death must be in all old age without this hope.

Let us trust that after that last low cry of Goethe for "more light," the morning dawned upon the great intellect and great heart which had been watching for it so long. Let us hope, also, that the world may yet learn to see him as did Emerson, who found him "a piece of pure nature, like an oak or an apple, large as morning or night, and virtuous as a brier-rose."

ROBERT BURNS.

"Oh, ye wha are sae guid yoursel', Sae pious and sae holy, Ye've nought to do but mark and tell Your neebors' fauts and folly,-- Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill, Supplied wi' store o' water, The heapèd happer's ebbing still, And still the clap plays clatter,--

"Hear me, ye venerable core, As counsel for poor mortals, That frequent pass douce Wisdom's door For glaikit Folly's portals! I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes, Would here propone defences, Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes, Their failings and mischances."

Alas for it! we must all say, in dwelling upon the life of poor Burns, that he so frequently needed to appear as counsel for poor mortals--in his own behoof; and that "their donsie tricks, their black mistakes, their failings and mischances" should form so large a portion of the record of that life, which under other circumstances might have been one of the most brilliant and beautiful of all in the annals of genius. For Burns, although born to such a lowly life, and having in his youth so few advantages of education or general culture, might by sheer force of genius have attained as proud a position as any man of his time, had he but learned to rule over himself in his youth, and not given full rein to those passions which his "veins convulsed," and which "still eternal galloped."

Could he but have governed himself--

"When social life and glee sat down All joyous and unthinking, Till, quite transmogrify'd, they've grown Debauchery and drinking,"--

there would have been a far different story to have told of the life of Robert Burns.

What ripe fruits of his genius we might have had, had he not burned out the torch of that brilliant intellect at the early age of thirty-eight. What poems he might have written--he who did immortal work with all his drawbacks--had he kept his brain clear and his life sweet even for the short span of life allotted him! How high might he have soared in the years which he might have hoped from life, had he but moved at a slower pace, in those reckless years, the record of which is so painful to the great world of admiring and pitying friends, who cherish his memory so tenderly. Yet there is in his case everything to mitigate a severe judgment upon his youthful follies; and the great world has always judged him leniently, knowing the story of his early life, and the temptations which at that day must have surrounded a youth of his temperament among the peasants of Scotland. Of the strength of those temptations we probably can form but a slight idea.

"What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted."

And surely, there must have been much that was worthy of honor and esteem, even of reverence, in the heart of the man, to have brought the whole world to his feet, in spite of the faults and follies to which we allude in passing, but upon which we have no disposition to dwell. As a friendly hand long ago wrote, after visiting his poor, mean home and his unhonored burial place:--

"We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, but found that it robbed the poet's memory of some of the reverence that was its due. Indeed, this talk over his grave had very much the same effect as the home-scene of his life, which we had been visiting just previously. Beholding his poor, mean dwelling and its surroundings, and picturing his outward life and earthly manifestations from these, one does not so much wonder that the people of that day should have failed to recognize all that was admirable and immortal in a disreputable, drunken, shabbily-clothed, and shabbily-housed man, consorting with associates of damaged character, and as his only ostensible occupation gauging the whiskey which he too often tasted. Siding with Burns, as we needs must, in his plea against the world, let us try to do the world a little justice too. It is far easier to know and honor a poet when his fame has taken shape in the spotlessness of marble, than when the actual man comes staggering before you, besmeared with the sordid stains of his daily life. For my part, I chiefly wonder that his recognition dawned as brightly as it did while he was still living. There must have been something very grand in his immediate presence, some strangely impressive characteristic in his natural behavior, to have caused him to seem like a demigod so soon."

To do even faintest justice to the memory of the poet, we must go to Ayr, and look upon the humble cottage which was his birthplace. It consisted of but two small rooms paved with flag-stones, and with but one window of four small panes, while the thatched roof formed the only ceiling. The whole place is inconceivably small for the dwelling of a family, for there is not even an attic-room, or any other spot where children could have been hidden away. In such a hut as this it is hard to conceive of a family being reared in purity and delicacy, even though the parents should have done their best by their children, and been, like the father of Burns, prudent and well-disposed.

This housing of the poor is of immense moral significance in all cases; and it is growing to be a recognized fact that no help which can be rendered them is of much avail, when they are left in these little, one or two room dwellings.

There were seven children in the Burns household, and during the childhood of Robert the family were very poor; and he and his brother were expected to do the work of men, at the age of thirteen. He had some schooling before that age, and must have improved his time, for he could read and spell well, and had some knowledge of English grammar.

Near by the cottage flows the beautiful Bonny Doon, through deep wooded banks, and across it is an ancient ivy-covered bridge with a high arch, making a very picturesque object in the landscape, which is one of great loveliness. Kirk Alloway is not far away,--the smallest church that ever filled so large a place in the imagination of the world. The one-mullioned window in the eastern gable might have been seen by Tam O'Shanter blazing with devilish light as he approached it along the road from Ayr, and there is a small square one on the side next the road; there is also an odd kind of belfry, almost the smallest ever made, with a little bell in it,--and this is all. But no grand and storied cathedral pile in all Europe is better known, and to no shrine of famous minster do more pilgrims journey than to this wee kirk immortalized by the pen of Burns.

The father of Burns has been thus described by one who knew him well:--

"He was a tender and affectionate father; he took pleasure in leading his children in the path of virtue, not in driving them as some parents do to the performance of duties to which they are themselves averse. He took care to find fault but seldom; and therefore when he did rebuke, he was listened to with a kind of reverential awe. A look of disapprobation was felt; a reproof was severely so; and a stripe even on the skirt of the coat, gave heartfelt pain."

He was, indeed, a frugal, industrious, and good man, and his wife seems to have been a woman of good report; so that the little group of children, in spite of their poverty, were really happily situated in life, compared with many of their neighbors. There was always a tinge of melancholy in Robert's disposition, however, and in his earliest youth he used to embody it in verse. The sensibility of genius was his by birthright, and the depressions and exaltations of spirit which marked his later life began at a very early day. He himself describes his earliest years thus:--

"I was by no means a favorite with anybody. I was a good deal noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn, sturdy something in my disposition, and an enthusiastic, idiot piety."

Again he says:--

"This kind of life--the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing toil of a galley-slave--brought me to my sixteenth year; a little before which period I first committed the sin of rhyme."

It was at this time that he first fell in love, and it may be added that after this he was never out of that interesting state. He says:--

"My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language; but you know the Scottish idiom,--she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she, altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me into that delicious passion, which in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below! I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an Æolian harp; and particularly, why my pulse beat such a furious rattan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Thus with me began love and poetry, which at times have been my only, and till within the last twelve months, have been my highest enjoyment."

To a later period than this belongs the episode of Highland Mary, of which the

"Banks and braes and streams around The castle of Montgomery"

still whisper to the lovers of Burns, as they keep a solemn tryst with old-time recollections there.

"How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk, How rich the hawthorn's blossom, As underneath their fragrant shade I clasped her to my bosom! The golden hours on angel wings Flew o'er me and my dearie; For dear to me as light and life Was my sweet Highland Mary."

It was the sweetest and tenderest romance of his life; and it is with unbidden tears that the world still remembers that there

"fell death's untimely frost, That nipt my flower sae early! Now green's the sod and cauld's the clay That wraps my Highland Mary."

After a hundred years there are still hearts that take a tender interest in poor Mary's fate, and that feel for poor Robbie as he wrote:--

"Oh, pale, pale now those rosy lips I aft hae kissed sae fondly, And closed for aye the sparkling glance That dwelt on me sae kindly! And mouldering now in silent dust That heart that lo'ed me dearly! But still within my bosom's core Shall live my Highland Mary."

In the monument to Burns, near his old home, are deposited the two volumes of the little pocket Bible which Burns gave to Mary when they pledged their faith to one another. It is poorly printed on coarse paper. A verse of Scripture is written within each cover by the poet's hand, and fastened within is a lock of Mary's golden hair. It is fitting that some memorial of her should find a place in that splendid monument which the Scottish people erected to his memory, after his life of poverty and sorrow had been brought to an untimely end.

Burns in his twenty-third year took the farm at Mossgiel, where he first became acquainted with Jane Armour. This lady was the daughter of a respectable mason in the village of Mauchline, where she was the reigning beauty and belle. It was almost love at first sight upon the part of both, and a close intimacy soon sprung up between them. Burns was very handsome at this time, gay and fascinating in manners, and a more experienced and highly-placed woman than Jane Armour might have been excused for loving the wild young poet. For wild he undoubtedly was, even at this time,--so much so that her parents objected to the friendship. He was nearly six feet high, with a robust yet agile frame, a finely formed head, and an uncommmonly interesting countenance. His eyes were large, dark, and full of ardor and animation. His conversation was full of wit and humor. He was very proud, and would be under pecuniary obligation to no one. He was also very generous with his own money. Of the first five hundred pounds which he received for his poems, he immediately gave two hundred to his brother Gilbert to help toward the support of their mother; and he was always as ready to share whatever sum he had with those he loved.