CHAPTER X

TRAVELING WITH GOETHE AND FREDERIC THE GREAT

“Ici toute liberté, Monsieur, comme si nous étions au cabaret.”

FREDERIC THE GREAT.

There is a surprising parallelism between the fathers of these two greatest men of the eighteenth century. These fathers, whom narrow-minded critics usually call pedants, transmitted to their sons the great gift of “life’s serious conduct.” Rarely has the old Councillor Goethe found so much just appreciation as Carlyle has shown for Frederic William I. The character of both the sons constitutes a happy combination of this serious paternal heritage and the joyful element of sanguine optimism. Both, although they owe perhaps most to their fathers, feel themselves drawn to the softer natures of their mothers, who hardly ever refused them any wish. And most of us prefer to share with them the love of their charming mothers, Frau Rath and Sophie Dorothea,--because it is always more agreeable to be loved than to be educated,--and reserve for the fathers at best a cool esteem.

Travel for pleasure or sport was unknown to the old Spartan King of Prussia, as indeed it was to his greater son, who did not even appreciate the sport of hunting. When they traveled it was for the inspection of the administration of their country or to review their troops. Old Frederic William, in his great simplicity, preferred even to pass the night in airy barns than to sleep in stuffy rooms. “Dinner-table to be spread always in some airy place, garden-house, tent, big clean barn,--Majesty likes air, of all things;--will sleep too, in a clean barn or garden-house: better anything than being stifled, thinks his Majesty.” We never hear that he stopped at inns, and Frederic, too, we meet only rarely in taverns, once in Braunschweig in Korn’s Hotel, where he was received one night in the Freemasons’ lodge very secretly because his severe papa despised such childish fooleries utterly. Occasionally, perhaps, while in Potsdam he visits inns like “The Three Crowns,” where one could find better food, he says, than at the table of his Mecklenburg cousins in their castle Mirow. In the first year of his reign, when he traveled _incognito_ to French Alsace, he had very distressing experiences in different taverns. In a letter to Voltaire he describes in French verses the various accidents of this trip:--

“Avec de coursiers efflanqués En ligne droite issus de Rosinante, Et des paysans en postillons masqués, Butors de race impertinente, Notre carosse en cent lieux accroché, Nous allions gravement, d’une allure indolente, Gravitant contre les rochers.”

Traveling all day in the worst of weathers, as if the last day of judgment had come, and in the evening to get a poor meal in a miserable tavern--and a large bill:--

“Car des hôtes intéressés De la faim nous voyant pressés, D’une façon plus que frugale Dans une chaumière infernale En nous empoisonnant, nous volaient nos écus. O siècle différent des temps de Lucullus!”

The landlord of the “Post” in Kehl demands passes from Frederic and his companions, and Frederic fabricates them himself with his Prussian seal. Again in Strassburg they present the same passes to the custom officials, not without adding a gold coin:--

“L’or, plus dieu que Mars et l’Amour, Le même or sut nous introduire, Le soir, dans les murs de Strassbourg.”

Here they stop at “The Raven,” where Frederic immediately began to study the French people. His judgment is not very flattering, although he communicates it to his French friend:--

“Non, des vils Français vous n’êtes pas du nombre, Vous pensez, ils ne pensent point.”

In the evening he invites even French officers to dine with him and the following morning goes to a military review. Here one of his own soldiers, a Prussian deserter, “un malheureux pendard,” recognizes him; he quickly hurries back to “The Raven,” pays his bill, and leaves Strassburg, never to see it again.

Like the old king, Frederic preferred to stop in rectories when traveling through the Prussian lands, but sometimes was prevented from doing so by his very faithful but very independent coachman Pfund. If the pastor had forgotten to give this important person his due tip on the last visit, Pfund would surely cut him on future occasions, and force his old master to go on to the next town, where he was sure to find a host of better manners. This sin of omission was rarely committed by pastors who received the honor of a royal visit, because they could very well afford to humor old Pfund a little, when they themselves received from the otherwise economical king the handsome “royalty” of fifty dollars for a dinner and one hundred dollars for dinner and a night’s lodging. General von der Marwitz has told us the story of how Pfund once opposed the king, who was tired and wanted to stop in the rectory of Dolgelin, by saying the sun was not yet down and they could well reach the next town, and how the old king patiently submitted to the will of his Automedon. But there is a limit even to the patience of old kings, and on one occasion, when Pfund went too far in his rudeness, Frederic rebelled, and, to teach his coachman morals, ordered him forthwith to cart manure and fagots with a team of donkeys. After a year the king happened to meet him, busily engaged in his new and modest occupation, and kindly inquired: “How d’ye do?” The coachman’s classic answer August Kopisch has celebrated in a song which we venture to translate:--

“‘Well, if I can drive,’ says Pound, On his box quite firm and round, ‘I do not care How I fare, If with horses or with asses, carting Fagots or His Majesty the King.’

“Then old Frederic, taking snuff, Looked at Pound and told the rough: ‘Well, if you don’t care How you really fare, If with horses or with asses, logs or kings you cart, Quick unload, drive ME again, and take a start!’”

Goethe’s father, although himself the son of a landlord, disliked inns and public-houses very keenly, as we read in Goethe’s autobiography, “Dichtung und Wahrheit”: “This feeling had rooted itself firmly in him on his travels through Italy, France, and Germany. Although he seldom spoke in images, and only called them to his aid when he was very cheerful, yet he used often to repeat that he always fancied he saw a great cobweb spun across the gate of an inn, so ingeniously that the insects could indeed fly in but that even the privileged wasps could not fly out again unplucked. It seemed to him something horrible, that one should be obliged to pay immoderately for renouncing one’s habits and all that was dear to one in life and living after the manner of publicans and waiters. He praised the hospitality of the olden time, and reluctantly as he otherwise endured even anything unusual in the house, he yet practiced hospitality....” This excessive aversion to all inns the great son inherited from his father, although he admitted it was a weakness. We are therefore not surprised to see the student Goethe, when he for the first time traveled full of longing to Dresden in the yellow coach, lodge in the modest quarters of a philosophical cobbler, whose home seemed to him as romantic and picturesque as an old Dutch painting. Perhaps it was the memory of this interior that inspired Goethe later, when he was called “Doktor Wolf” by his proud mother, to arrange in “The Star” at Weimar, in honor of the Duchess Anna Amalie, a “festivity in clair-obscure” with the distinct purpose of creating a Rembrandt scene.

But before we wander in the far world with the student and doctor, let us take a stroll through the Frankfurt of his childhood and admire the many signs that still decorated, not inns alone, but also, houses of private citizens. The “Goldene Wage,” situated on the Domplatz and built in 1625, as well as the “Grosse Engel,” opposite the Römer, are still standing, and are filled to-day with the treasures of art-loving antiquarians. Recollections of his childhood passed through Goethe’s mind when he described in “Hermann und Dorothea” the pharmacy “Zum Engel,” near the “Golden Lion” on the market-place, and the old bachelor chemist who was too stingy to regild his angel-sign:--

“Who now-a-days can afford to pay for the numerous workmen? Lately I thought to have new-gilt the figure which stands as my shop-sign, The Archangel Michael with horrible dragon around his feet writhing: But as they are I have left them all dingy, for fear of the charges.”

The father of some boy friends of Goethe’s, a Herr von Senckenberg, “lived at the corner of Hare Street, which took its name from a sign on the house that represented one hare at least if not three hares.” Von Senckenberg’s three sons were consequently called the “three hares,” which nickname they could not shake off for a long while.

It was in the “Golden Lion” at Frankfurt that Voltaire was arrested and interned on his word of honor until his luggage containing the stolen “Œuvre de Poésies” of Frederic the Great should arrive. In these poems the king had ridiculed several crowned heads, and it was of the utmost importance for him to get them back before the revengeful Frenchman could make use of them against him. But for some reason or other the trunks did not arrive, and Voltaire, losing patience and “without warning anybody, privately revoked said word of honor” and tried to escape, an attempt that failed and ended in a tragic-comic fashion. Father Goethe, who loved to tell this story to his children as a warning example never to seek the favors of princes, does not agree here with Carlyle in the name of the tavern, but says it was “The Rose” in which “this extraordinary poet and writer was held as a prisoner for a considerable time.” When the fugitive was brought back, the landlord of the tavern refused to take him in again, and the “Bock” became for the rest of the time his involuntary lodging-place.

In spite of this bad example and his father’s distinct warnings, Goethe in 1778 accepted the invitation of the Duke of Weimar to the “Römische Kaiser” in Frankfurt, where he was “joyfully and graciously” received, and where definite arrangements were made for his removal to Weimar.

After the death of Goethe’s father, Mutter Aja sold the old homestead on the Hirschgraben and took a flat in the “Goldenen Brunnen” on the Rossmarket, where the golden fountain of her good humor continued to flow for all her friends, but where she no longer had such facilities for entertaining guests as in the roomy house of old. When, therefore, her daughter-in-law and her grandson, the “liebe Augst,” came to visit her, she ordered rooms for them in “The Swan.” Her apartment in the “Golden Fountain” we know from her own lively description in a letter to her son, who visited her here several times before her death in 1808.

Let us now accompany the student Goethe to Strassburg and pay a visit to the inn “Zum Geist,” where his friendship with Herder, so important for his future development, was formed. “I visited Herder morning and evening, I even remained whole days with him ... and daily learned to appreciate his beautiful and great qualities, his extensive knowledge, and his profound views.” In Leipzig, the next university where Goethe studied, he lived in a house, between the old and the new market, which was called after its sign “Die Feuerkugel.” One of the first calls he made was to the literary dictator Gottsched, who “lived very respectably in the first story of the ‘Golden Bear,’ where the elder Breitkopf, on account of the great advantage which Gottsched’s writings had brought to the trade, had assured him a lodging for life.” This Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf was the inventor of music printing and the founder of the famous publishing firm of to-day. His house, the “Golden Bear,” number 11 Universitätsstrasse, is to-day the home of the Royal Saxon Institute for universal history and the history of civilization, founded by the distinguished historian Lamprecht. In Goethe’s day Breitkopf’s son built a great new house opposite the “Golden Bear” which was called “Zum Silbernen Bären.”

A very popular sign in those days, in Germany, and especially in the neighborhood of Frankfurt, was the pentacle. Goethe calls it simply the beer-sign in his autobiography, where he tells us a charming story based on an ingenious and humorous interpretation of the two triangles which compose the sign. While still living as a young lawyer in Mutter Aja’s house, he entertained two distinguished visitors, the famous Lavater and the educational reformer Basedow. To amuse them he arranged carriage drives in the pleasant country around his native town. We see the young fire-brand sitting between these two dignified men:--

“The prophets sat on either side, The world-child sat between them.”

On one of these excursions Basedow had offended the pious and sweet-tempered Lavater by his cynical remarks about the Trinity and so spoiled the pleasant atmosphere of good comradeship. Goethe punished him in the following humorous manner. “The weather was warm and the tobacco smoke had perhaps contributed to the dryness of Basedow’s palate; he was dying for a glass of beer. Seeing a tavern at a distance on the road he eagerly ordered the coachman to stop there.” But Goethe urged him to go on without seeming to mind the furious protest of the thirsty Basedow, whom he simply calmed with the words: “Father, be quiet, you ought to thank me! Luckily you didn’t see the beer-sign! It was two triangles put together across each other. Now, you commonly get mad about one triangle, and if you had set your eye on two we should have had to put you in a strait-jacket.”

On his first journey to Switzerland, in company with the Stollbergs, he stayed at the hotel “Zum Schwert,” which is still standing. “The view of the lake of Zürich which we enjoyed from the Gate of the Sword is still before me.” On the Rigi they lodged in the “Ochsen,” and here from the window of his room, he sketched one Sunday morning the chapel of the “Madonna in the Snow.” In the evening they sat before the tavern door, under the sign, and enjoyed the music of the gurgling fountain and a substantial meal consisting of baked fish, eggs, and “sufficient” wine. On his second trip to Switzerland in 1779-80 we meet him, together with his noble friend the Duke of Weimar, in “The Eagle” at Constance, where Montaigne had lodged more than two hundred years before.

We could mention many other hospitable thresholds which the great genius crossed: “The Red Cock” in Nuremberg, now an elegant building that reminds us little of the ancient low house with its large gate; or the “Hotel Victoria” in Venice, whose owner recalls to the modern traveler Goethe’s visit in a proud memorial tablet. “I lodged well in the ‘Königin von England,’ not far from the market-place, the greatest advantage of the inn.” But if he could find private quarters he preferred them to public-houses; so in Rome, where he was very glad to be received in the home of the painter Tischbein.

There is sufficient evidence that Goethe took an artistic interest in signs, since he invented one himself for his puppet play “Hanswurst’s Hochzeit,” where we read the bewitching rhyme:--

“The wedding-feast is at the house Of mine host of the Golden Louse.”

In “Truth and Poetry” he has given us the scheme of the play, which was never really executed. Like a born stage manager, he proposed a kind of turning stage: “The tavern with its glittering insignia was placed so that all its four sides could be presented to view by being turned upon a peg.” This patent idea of a turning inn showing its golden sign and its door open to travelers from the four quarters of the globe, might please the modern landlord too, even if he did not care exactly for the super-sign of a “Golden Louse,” “magnified by the solar-microscope!”