Part 14

Hard pressed as I am for space, I must find some to say, at any rate, just a few words about Wendish marriage customs. For its gaiety, and noise, and lavish hospitality, and protracted merriment, its finery and its curious ways, the Wendish wedding has become proverbial throughout Germany. Were I to detail all its quaint little touches, all its peculiar observances, each one pregnant with peculiar mystic meaning, all its humours and all its fun, I should have to give it an article by itself. It is a curious mixture of ancient and modern superstition and Christianity, diplomacy and warfare. The bride is still ostensibly carried off by force. Only a short time ago the bridegroom and his men were required to wear swords in token of warfare and conquest. But all the formal negotiation is done by diplomacy--very cautiously, very carefully, as if one were feeling his way. First comes an old woman, the _schotta_, to clear the ground. After that the _druzba_, the best man, appears on the scene--to inquire about pigs, or buckwheat, or millet, or whatever it may be, and incidentally also about the lovely Hilzicka, whom his friend Janko is rather thinking of paying his addresses to--the fact being all the while that long since Janko and Hilzicka have, on the sly, arranged between themselves that they are to be man and wife. But observe that in Wendland girls may propose as well as men; and that the bridegroom, like the bride, wears his "little wreath of rue"--_if he be an honest man_, in token of his virtue. The girl and her parents visit the suitor's house quite unexpectedly. And there and then only does the young lady openly decide. If she sits down in the house, that means "Yes." And forthwith preparations are busily set on foot. Custom requires that the bride should give up dancing and gaiety and all that, leave off wearing red, and stitch away at her _trousseau_, while her parents kill the fatted calf. Starve themselves as they will at other times, at a wedding they must be liberal like _parvenus_. Towards this hospitality, it is true, their friends and neighbours contribute, sending butter and milk, and the like, just before the wedding, as well as making presents of money and other articles to the young people at the feast itself. But we have not yet got to that by a long way. The young man, too, has his preparations to make. He has to send out the _braska_, the "bidder," in his gay dress, to deliver invitations. How people would stare in this country, were they to see a _braska_ making his rounds, with a wreath on his hat, one or two coloured handkerchiefs dangling showily from different parts of his coat, besides any quantity of gay ribbons and tinsel, and a herald's staff covered with diminutive bunting! Then there are the banns to be published, and on the Sunday of the second time of asking, the bride and bridegroom alike are expected to attend the Holy Communion, and afterwards to go through a regular examination--in Bible, in Catechism, in reading--at the hands of the parson. By preference the latter makes them read aloud the seventh chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. At the wedding itself, the ceremonial is so complicated that the _braska_, the master of ceremonies, has to be specially trained for his duties. There is a little farce first at the bride's house. The family pretend to know nothing of what is coming; their doors and windows are all closely barred, and the _braska_ is made to knock a long time before the door is cautiously opened, with a gruff greeting which bids him go away and not trouble peaceable folk. His demand for "a little shelter" is only granted after much further parleying and incredulous inquiry about the respectability of the intruding persons. When the bride is asked for, an old woman is produced in her stead, next a little girl, then one or two wrong persons more, till at last the true bride is brought forth in all the splendour of a costume to which it is scarcely possible to do justice in writing. As much cloth as will make up four ordinary gowns is folded into one huge skirt. On the bride's neck hangs all conceivable finery of pearls, and ribbons, and necklaces, and strings of silver coins--as much, in fact, as the neck will carry. There is any amount of starched frilling and collar above the shoulders; a close-fitting, blue silk bodice below; and a high cap, something like a conjuror's--the _borta_, or bride's cap--upon her head. Even her stockings are not of the ordinary make, but knitted particularly large so as to have to be laid in folds. The wedding party, driving off to church, preceded by at least six outriders, make as big a clatter as pistol-firing, singing, shouting, thumping with sticks, and discordant trumpeting will produce. On the road, and in church, a number of little observances are prescribed. At the feast the bride, like the bridegroom, has her male attendants, _swats_, whose duty it is, above all things, to dance with her, should she want a partner. For this is the last day of her dancing for life, except on Shrove Tuesdays, and, in some Prussian parishes, by express order of the Government, on the Emperor's birthday and the anniversary of Sedan. The bridegroom, on the other hand, must not dance at the wedding, though he may afterwards. Like the bride, he has his own _slonka_--his "old lady," that is--to serve him as guide, philosopher and friend. Hospitality flows in unstinted streams. Sometimes as many as two hundred persons sit down to the meals, and keep it up, eating, drinking and dancing, for three days at least, sometimes for a whole week at a stretch. It would be a gross breach of etiquette to leave anything of the large portions served out on the table. Whatever cannot be eaten must be carried home. Hence those waterproof pockets of phenomenal size which, in olden days, Wendish parsons used to wear under their long coat-tails, and into which, at gentlemen's houses, they used to deposit a goodly store of sundry meats, poultry, pudding and _méringues_, to be finally christened--surreptitiously, of course--with rather incongruous affusions of gravy or soup, administered by the mischievous young gentlemen of "the House," for the benefit of Frau Pastorin and her children at home. Sunday and Tuesday are favourite days for a wedding. Thursday is rigorously avoided. For two days the company feast at the bride's house. Taking her to bed on the first night is a peculiar ceremony. The young girls crowd around her in a close circle, and refuse to let her go. The young lads do the same by the bridegroom. When, at last, the two force an exit, they are formally received into similar circles of married men and women severally. The bride is bereft of her _borta_, and receives a _cjepc_, a married woman's cap, in its place. After some more hocuspocus, the two are accompanied severally by the _braska_ and the bride's _slonka_ into the bridal chamber, the bride protesting all the time that she is "not yet her bridegroom's wife." The _braska_ serves as valet to the bridegroom, the _slonka_ undresses the bride. Then the _braska_ formally blesses the marriage-bed, and out walk the two attendants to leave the young folk by themselves. Next morning the bride appears as "wife," looking very demure, in a married woman's garb. On that day the presents are given, amid many jokes--especially when it comes to a cradle, or a baby's bath--from the _braska_ and the _zwada_--the latter a sort of clown specially retained to amuse the bride, who is expected to be terribly sad throughout. The sadder she is at the wedding, the merrier, it is said, will she be in married life. There is any amount of rather rough fun. On the third day, the company adjourn to the house of the bridegroom's parents, where, according to an ancient custom, the bride ought to go at once into the cowhouse, and upset a can of water, "for luck." After that she is made to sit down to a meal, her husband standing by, and waiting upon her. That accomplished, she should carry a portion of meat to the poorest person in the village. A week later, the young couple visit the bride's parents, and have a "young wedding" _en famille_.

I have said enough, I hope, to shew what an interestingly childlike, happily disposed, curious and contented race those few surviving Wends are. And they are so peaceful and loyal. Russian and Bohemian Pan-slavists have tried all their blandishments upon them, to rouse them up to an anti-German agitation. In 1866 the Czar, besides dispensing decorations, sent 63 cwts. of inflammatory literature among them. It was all to no purpose. Surely these quiet, harmless folk, fathers as they are of the North German race, might have been spared that uncalled-for nagging and worrying which has often been pointed against them from Berlin for purely political purposes! In the day of their power they were more tolerant of Germanism. They fought side by side with the Franks, fought even under Frankish chieftains. Germany owes them a debt, and should at least, as it may be hoped that she now will, let them die in peace. Death no doubt is bound to come. It cannot be averted. But it is a death which one may well view with regret. For with the Wends will die a faithfully preserved specimen of very ancient Slav life, quite unique in its way, as interesting a piece of history, archæology and folk-lore as ever was met with on the face of the globe.

VI.--VOLTAIRE AND KING STANISLAS.[9]

One can scarcely help wondering that among all the books written about Voltaire and his varied experiences, there should be practically not one which treats of that brief but eventful period during which, in company with the "_sublime Emilie_," the great writer found himself the guest of hospitable King Stanislas--"le philosophe-roi chez le roi-philosophe." To Voltaire himself that was one of the most memorable episodes in his long and changeful life. It left on his mind memories which lasted till death. He showed this when, in 1757, looking about him for a peaceful haven of rest, he fixed his eyes once more, as if instinctively, upon Lunéville as a place in which to spend the evening of his days. Stanislas would have been only too thankful to receive him. Old and feeble, rapidly growing blind and helpless, and reduced by ill-health and the desertion of his Court to the poor resource of playing _tric-trac_--backgammon--in his lonely afternoons, with such uncourtly _bourgeois_ as his messengers could pick up in the town, the _fainéant_ Duke would have hailed Voltaire's presence, as he himself says, as a godsend. However, the _philosophe_ was once more out of favour with Louis XV. Accordingly, the permission was withheld, and the royal father-in-law found himself denied the small solace which surely he might have looked for at the hand of his daughter's husband.

The biographical neglect of Voltaire's stay in Lorraine appears all the more surprising since in Lorraine, almost alone of Voltaire's favourite haunts, are there visible memorials left of his sojourn. Nowhere else is anything preserved that could recall Voltaire. In Lorraine dragoons and _piou-pious_ now tramp where in his day courtiers sauntered, and nursemaids lounge where the first wits of the century made the air ring with their _bon-mots_. Still, the stone buildings, at any rate, of Lunéville and Commercy have been allowed to stand, and French destructiveness has spared some of the flower-beds that delighted Voltaire. In that pretty "Bosquet" of Lunéville you may walk where Voltaire trod, where he rallied Madame de Boufflers on her "Magdalen's tears," where Saint Lambert made sly appointments with Madame du Châtelet--and with not a few other ladies as well. In the Palace you may step into the upper room where Voltaire lived and wrote, and fought out his battles with the bigot Alliot. You may walk into "le petit appartement de la reine," on the ground-floor, which Stanislas good-naturedly gave up to Madame du Châtelet for her confinement--and her death. There it was that those impassioned scenes occurred of which every biographer of Voltaire speaks, and there that the Marchioness's ring was found to tell the mortifying tale of her unfaithfulness to her most devoted lover. You may walk through that side-door through which, dazed with grief, the stupefied philosopher stumbled; and sit on the low stone-step--one of a short flight facing the town--on which he dropped in helpless despair, "knocking his head against the pavement." In that hideously rococo church, tawdrily gay with gew-gaw ornament, you may stand by the black marble slab, still bare of any inscription, below which rest, rudely disturbed by the rough mobs-men of the first Revolution, the decayed bones of the _sublime_ but faithless _Emilie_.

Barring his rather unnecessary grief over the threatened production of a travestied _Semiramis_, there were for Voltaire no happier two years than those which saw him, with one or two interruptions, King Stanislas' guest. And to Stanislas, eager as he was to attach the great writer to his bright little court, there could have been no more welcome rigour than that which, at his daughter's instance, drove the leading spirit of the age into temporary exile. Voltaire had paid his court a little too openly to the powerful favourite. After that _cavagnole_ scandal at Fontainebleau, neither he nor Madame du Châtelet stood for the time in the best of odours at Court. Therefore, it probably required little persuasion on the part of the two royal princesses, prompted by their revengeful mother, to prevail upon Louis XV. in that one little square-rod of hallowed ground, over which the power of the mighty Circe did not extend, their nursery, to decree the banishment of the poet. Madame de Pompadour might have reversed the judgment had she been given the chance; but she was not given it, and, after all, Voltaire's exile did not make much difference to her. So the philosopher and Emilie were allowed to pursue their cold winter's journey, amid sundry break-downs and accidents, and prolonged involuntary star-gazing in a frosty night, to that pretty little oasis in ugly Champagne--a Lorrain _enclave_--in which stood the du Châtelets' castle.

Stanislas did not allow the brilliant couple to remain long in their uncongenial retirement. He was anxious not to be forestalled by Prussian Frederick, who made wry faces enough on finding the preference over himself and his famous Sans-souci given to the _prince bourgeois_ and his _tabagie de Lunéville_. Stanislas' great ambition was, to make his Court a favoured seat of learning and letters. In his own, rather too complimentary opinion, he was himself something of a _littérateur_. Voltaire laughed pretty freely--behind the king's back--at his uncouth and incorrect prose and at those long and limping verses _de onze à quatorze pieds_, which the world has long since forgotten, as well it might. There are some well-put thoughts to be found in the king's _Réflexions sur divers sujets de morale_--for instance: "l'esprit est bien peu de chose quand ce n'est que de l'esprit," to say nothing of his oft-quoted motto: "malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem." But, at best his writings, however carefully revised by Solignac--his answer to Rousseau, and his _Oeuvres d'un Philosophe Bienfaisant_--are but ephemeral trash. Really, Stanislas could not even speak or write French correctly. But though he was nothing of a writer, and not much more of a wit, he knew thoroughly how to appreciate talent and genius in others. And in a man occupying nominally royal rank, placed at the head of a brilliant Court, having a civil list corresponding in value to at least 6,000,000 francs in the present day, and a pension list of perfectly amazing length in his bestowal, such appreciation must mean something.

To understand the life of the little world into which, in 1748, Voltaire entered, we ought to remember what at that time Lorraine and its Court were. Stanislas had not been put upon his ephemeral throne without a definite object. To lodge the French king's penniless father-in-law, who no doubt had to be maintained somewhere, in the Palace of Lunéville, instead of that of Meudon or of Blois, and to allow him to amuse himself with playing at being king, was one thing. But very much more was required of him. In 1737 France had, after toying for several centuries, with greedy eyes and hungry tongue, with the precious morsel of Lorraine, at length firmly and finally closed her jaws upon it. It was a bitter fate for the duchy, in which France was detested; and the hardship was felt by every one of its sons from the powerful "grands chevaux" down to the humblest peasant. Of what French government meant, the Lorrains had had more than one taste. They were sipping at the bitter cup at that very time; they were having it raised daily to their lips, while that ablest of French administrators, De la Galaizière--a veritable French Bismarck, hard-headed, hard-hearted, inexorably firm, and pitilessly exacting--was loading them with _corvées_, with _vingtièmes_, with the burden of conscription for the French army, plaguing them with high-handed judgments and oppressive penalties, all of which ran directly counter to the constitution which the nominal sovereign, Stanislas, had sworn to observe. It was Galaizière who was king, not Stanislas, the ornamental figure-head; and under his stern rule all Lorraine cried out.

Even courtly Saint Lambert, who, as a moneyless member of the _petite noblesse_, with his mouth wide open for French favours, represented in truth the least popular element in Lorrain Society, felt impelled by his Muse to record his protest in verse:

J'ai vu le magistrat qui régit la province L'esclave de la Cour, et l'ennemi du prince, Commander _la corvée_ à de tristes cantons, Où Cérès et la faim commandoient les moissons. On avoit consumé les grains de l'autre année; Et je crois voir encore la veuve infortunée, Le débile orphelin, le vieillard épuisé, Se trainer, en pleurant, au travail imposé. Si quelques malheureux, languissants, hors d'haleine, Cherchent un gazon frais, le bord de la fontaine, Un piqueur inhumain les ramène aux travaux, Ou leur vend à prix d'or un moment de repos.

But there was no help for it. Kind-hearted Stanislas was caused many a wretched hour by the incongruity of his position, which led his "subjects" to appeal to him against the oppression of "his chancellor," as he patronizingly called him who was in truth his master. He had begged Louis to appoint a more humane and merciful man, but his prayer had proved of no avail.

Still, there was something which Stanislas could do. Affable, genial, kind, free-handed to a fault, the stranger puppet-king--the originally distrusted "Polonais"--might, in spite of all harsh government administered in his name, by tact and liberality gain the personal affections of his nominal subjects, and so in the character of a Lorrain Prince discharge better than any one else that odious task of un-Lorraining the Lorrains. All things considered, he earned his civil list.

French writers have very needlessly contended over the motives which led Father Menoux, of all men, the King's Jesuit confessor, to urge Stanislas to invite the great _philosophe_ to his Court. Although repeatedly assailed on the score of its inherent improbability, Voltaire's own version is doubtless the most plausible. One of the leading characteristics of the Lorrain Court, as Voltaire knew it, was the sharp division prevailing between French and Lorrains, Jesuits and _philosophes_. By all his antecedents--by his rigidly Romanist education, by the principles carefully instilled into him, first by his parents, later by his wife--Stanislas was predisposed to take sides staunchly with the Jesuits. A more devout Catholic was not to be found. The king made all his household attend mass, appointed a special almoner for his _gardes-du-corps_, and directed the kitchen-folk to select a monastery for the scene of their daily devotions. In respect of offerings, the Church bled him freely, and found him a willing victim. More especially during the lifetime of his wife, that homely, very religious Catherine Opalinska whose _bourgeois_ manners gave such great offence to the courtiers of Versailles, the Jesuit faction had it all their own way.

But when Voltaire came to the Court, Catherine had been nearly a year in her grave. King Stanislas' immediate _entourage_, it is true, was still wholly Jesuit--the French governor, Galaizière; the King's _intendant_, Alliot; his father-confessor, Menoux; his useful secretary, de Solignac; Bathincourt, Thiange, and Madame de Grafigny's "Panpan," De Vaux. But otherwise a decided change had come over the scene. The lady head of the Court now was the peculiarly attractive Marquise de Boufflers, a declared _philosophe_, and, in virtue of her birth, the powerful leader of the Lorrain faction. She was a Beauvau, the daughter of that lovely Princesse de Craon who had ruled the heart of the late Duke Leopold. Her husband (who had not stood seriously in the way of her _amours_) was dead; and she was therefore quite free to give herself up to her _liaison_ with Stanislas, who had formally installed her in some of the best apartments in the palace, in a suite adjoining his own, and handed over to her the management of the Court. She must have been a remarkably fascinating woman. We find Voltaire, in his courtly way, writing of her:

Vos yeux sont beaux, mais votre âme est plus belle, Vous êtes simple et naturelle, Et sans prétendre à rien, vous triomphez de tous. Si vous eussiez vécu du temps de Gabrielle, Je ne sais ce qu'on eût dit de vous, Mais l'on n'aurait point parlé d'elle.

She is described as possessing a fine girlish figure, a peculiarly clear and delicate complexion, exceptionally beautiful hair, and neat hands (which made de Tressan enamoured of her "_comme un fou_") and, moreover, a charming lightness and grace of movement and manner--endowments of nature which scarcely needed a fine discriminating taste and more than average intellectual powers to render effective. She sang, played, painted pastel, and possessed an inexhaustible fund of tact and self-command. Whenever she happened to be absent from the Court, de Tressan writes to Devaux, "Je me meurs, je péris d'ennui. On ne joue point, la société est décousue." Her nickname at Court was "La Dame de Volupté," which, as is shown by the following lines, composed by herself for her epitaph, she accepted good-humouredly:--

Ci gît, dans une paix profonde, Cette Dame de Volupté, Qui, pour plus grande sûreté, Fit son paradis dans ce monde.

To the priests her relations with Stanislas constituted a serious stumbling-block, and many a lecture had the king to listen to from his confessor, Menoux. He accepted it submissively, and even performed the penances which on the score of Madame de Boufflers the Jesuit decreed. But discard her he would not, on any consideration. Just as little, on the other hand, would he discard the Jesuit, however good-humouredly he might listen to Madame de Boufflers' rather violent abuse of him.