Part 29
The Elector Frederick, finding his dominions threatened with invasion, was inclined to treat with the enemy, but first asked the fool what he thought of the matter. “Give me your best mantle,” said Klaus, “and I will tell you.” This having been done, Klaus withdrew, tore the mantle in two, and reappeared with one of the halves hanging from his shoulders. The Elector, enraged at the damage done to his best cloak, asked what was meant by such a joke. “It means,” said Klaus, “that if you treat with the foe, you will soon look as ridiculous with half your dominions, as I do with half a cloak.”
This was a more cumbersome sort of wit than was exercised by a contemporary fool, Peter Bärenhaut, at the court of Philip, Landgrave of Baden. The latter complained of headache on the morrow of a terrible drinking-bout, and the fool said he knew a cure for it. “What is your remedy?” asked the Landgrave, “Drink again today,” answered Peter. “Then I shall only suffer more tomorrow,” said the Prince. “Then,” rejoined Peter, “you must drink still more.” “But in what would such a remedy end?” asked the Landgrave. “Why,” said Peter, “in your being a bigger fool than I am!”
The jesters to small potentates rivalled the _Narrs_ of the Imperial Court in their boldness. It would seem that at grave ecclesiastical discussions, where a common man would not dare to make a remark, nor a courtier to venture on a comment, the fool spoke and acted without restraint. Eck has left an account of the great controversy on Articles of Faith which he held against Luther at Leipsic in 1519. “The citadel,” he says, “was prepared as our battle-field; the place was guarded by seventy-six soldiers, to protect us, in case of need, from the insults of the people of Wittemberg.” Against the wit or anger, however, of the fool of George, Duke of Saxony, who was present with his master, no precaution was thought necessary. To the jester, some of the courtiers whispered that Luther and Eck were disputing about his marriage, the former being for and the latter against it. The ducal fool had but one eye, but that was fired with indignation against the supposed opponent of his marriage. Eck bore his angry looks for a time with some patience. At length, annoyed at and not comprehending them, the grave churchman took to mimicking the infirmity of the fool, by screwing up one eye closely, and rolling the other at him in a sort of comical defiance. This drove the Saxon joker out of all bounds of moderation. He started up, pummelled old Eck with hard words, called him rogue, liar, and thief, and after overwhelming him with a torrent of similar amenities, took an indignant hop, skip, and jump out of the hall, amid the universal laughter of the delighted audience.
At a later period, Augustus II., of Saxony, had his own official fool in the person of Joseph Frohlich, for whom he had ninety-nine different suits made, and who in his full dress was often seen in the streets of Dresden. He was not the only fool at this court, for we learn that when the Prussian “joker” von Gundling died, the court fools of Dresden went into mourning for their colleague, wearing crape bands twenty ells in length, and mourning cloaks so long that they or others were always tumbling over them.
A singular instance of what was considered to qualify a man for being a court fool, presents itself in the case of Conrad Pocher, jester to Philip the Upright, Elector Palatine. Pocher was a cowherd, and was once sent a-field, with a boy to attend him. The boy was sick and feeble, and Pocher, out of compassion, hung him to the branch of a tree. He was tried for the murder, but he defended himself with such humour, on the ground that he had greatly benefited the helpless little cow-boy, that the court was in ecstasy, and the Elector, recognizing Pocher’s merits, immediately appointed him to the post of official jester. Little is said of his wit. His jokes were of a very lumbering nature. He would crop the tails of the Elector’s cows, that they might look like the Elector’s horses; and once, when his master laid siege to a small town, which he wanted to reduce by famine, and accordingly occupied the passes leading to it, Pocher lay for three days across a ditch which ran in the direction of the town, in order to hasten, as he said, the surrender of the place!
Another Palatine Prince, Duke Wolfgang of Neuberg, had a far wittier fool in “Squire Peter,” as he was jokingly called. It was once remarked to the Squire, that the Duke did not so much care for him as the Elector of Cologne did for _his_ fool. “I know that very well,” said Peter; “the reason is, that my master looks after his country and subjects, and therefore has not the leisure to play with fools, as _your_ master has.”
Of his dignity, Peter had a very exalted idea, and when a young Count once wished to bandy jokes with him, the Squire haughtily observed, “I am his Serene Highness’s jester, and not the tool of every sorry Count that comes to visit him!” He spared the clergy as little as the nobility; and to a priest who once asked him if he had prepared for the coming fast, Peter replied, “Better than you, Father, for you have bought fish and eggs enough to last a family fond of good living, for a month. Now _I_ have bought nothing at all; and _so_ am better prepared for fasting.” At the close of the fast, the same priest inquired how he had kept it. “I did away with a couple of hams,” said Peter;--at which the reverend gentleman looked shocked. “Don’t look so disgusted,” rejoined the Squire. “I did away with them in this sense,--I gave them, instead of money, to a neighbour who was a creditor of mine.” “You are a merry fellow,” said the priest; “let me now hear you say the Lord’s Prayer.” “I don’t know it,” answered the Squire. “It is wicked, it is shameful--” the priest began to remark, when Peter interrupted him by observing, “Exactly; that’s just the reason why I did not learn it.”
Numerous are the stories of this nature told of Squire Peter, who appears to have been something of a profane wit. Towards the end of the century in which he lived, we find a celebrated fool in Pomerania, Claus Hintze, in the service of Duke John Frederick of Stettin. Claus was originally only a cowherd, but after his appointment as official jester to the Duke, he so grew in his patron’s favour, that his master made him lord of the village of Butterdorf; and in consequence of a rhymed petition to that effect, declared that the district should never again serve as a wolf-chase. For this privilege the grateful people thanked a fool who had a fair share of fun in him, who served his ducal master well on very critical occasions, and who was as jolly a toper as any in Pomerania.
In the last character he was surpassed by a successor at the ducal court, Hans Miesko, A.D. 1600. Hans was imbecile, and it is surprising to find that, even in the age in which he lived, princes could derive pleasure from the mistakes and unclean acts of such persons, or could give them official standing in their household. Miesko died in extreme old-age, from reaching which his gluttony and excessive drinking had presented no obstruction; and he is perhaps the only fool who had the honour of a funeral sermon being preached over him. This was done by the command, and in the presence of, his master, Duke Francis, and the Reverend Philip Cradelius, who took his text from 1 Samuel xxi. 13–15: “And he changed his behaviour before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard. Then said Achish unto his servants, Lo, ye see the man is mad: wherefore then have ye brought him to me? Have I need of mad men, that ye have brought this fellow to play the mad man in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?” The preacher too much exalted the merits of Miesko, as Christian, servant, and fool; over-praised the condescension of princes towards such individuals, and founded on his text, scriptural warrant for the existence of such officials. But I think there is something satirical in the application of the text, which teaches us, says the preacher, that where great princes are, there too may you look to find great fools. The double meaning should have raised the Rector to a Deanery.--But perhaps Duke Francis did not relish the joke.
While Miesko was making Pomeranian princes glad by his imbecility and the fun drawn out of it, Frederick Taubman was keeping the Saxon court in merry humour by his conceits. But Taubman, though as lowly born as Miesko, was a scholar, and was not officially a fool. He was something of a poet, something of a philosopher, was well-read, was a collegiate professor; but therewith he was poor, yet was fond of luxurious living, and therefore he was glad to take his eccentricities to court, where their exhibition was paid for in ducats, rich viands, costly wines, and endless jollification. He was the court fool in all but being officially appointed; and, with better qualifications than many, used the license common to all. On one occasion, a courtier who was shaking hands with him, remarked, “Taubman, your coarse hands are only fit for digging.” Taubman squeezed the courtier’s fingers, and answered, “I am already handling a clod.” He once asked Cardinal Clesel, if he knew where God was _not_. “In hell,” answered the Cardinal readily.--“Nor in Rome,” rejoined the wit; “or wherefore is his Vicegerent there?”
Taubman died in 1613. The professional fools increased after his death. The Elector John George I. maintained, in the year 1639, no less than three at the same time. Two of them were named Michael, and one Caspar; and from a tailor’s bill quoted by Flögel, it is very clear that, gay as the official dress may have been, it was often patched and turned, before a new one was given in its place.
But, as in the case of Taubman, so in this later period were poor and witty scholars welcome at the German courts. Bolla was one of these; he was an Italian, who had his home in the palace at Heidelberg, where he proved himself to be, what was commonly said of him, _virum ad risum natum_, a man born for laughter. He excelled in macaronic poetry, and not only accepted the name of fool, but begged for fool’s largess in very indifferent Latin verse,--of which here is a sample:--
“Amate semper vestrum zanum, Sed aperite, vestro more, manum. Hoc precatur vester zanus, Corpore, non crumena sanus.”
It was not only the poor scholar that now was even more welcome for his wit than the official jester. As in Saxony, so in Poland, the liveliest sayings were uttered by non-professional individuals. At the courts in both places just named, the acknowledged court wit, for a long period, was Frederick, Baron of Kyau, who excelled, we are told, both as a general and as a joker. In the same list must be enrolled the Baron von Gundling, who commenced his career of eccentricity at the court of Frederick William I. of Prussia, at the commencement of the last century.
Von Gundling was a scholar and of good family, and he was chosen by the King as a companion for his few leisure hours, which he desired to turn to instruction and amusement combined. But the Baron was a pedantic fool, inflated with the most absurd pride, and addicted to hard drinking and filthiness, like any Silenus. The King loaded him with ridiculous titles, and he walked about in a dress that must have made him look like our burlesque King Arthur, in ‘Tom Thumb,’ or Justice Midas, in O’Hara’s operetta. It must have been pitiable to see a man of learning submit to any indignity at the hands of King and nobles. He would embrace a dressed-up monkey presented by a prince, as his son; and he took as a mark of favour, his being sent-for to the palace in a sedan-chair, the bottom of which, as previously contrived, fell out by the way, and the bearers of which had orders to push on and keep their passenger walking. He was seldom absent from the private evening parties of the King, where six or eight persons only were present; where beer and pipes were the refreshments which stood before each guest,--no servant being admitted; and where sometimes very serious business was transacted. Gundling died in 1731; his body may be said to have been pelted by epigrammatic epitaphs, but as it was carried to the grave in a wine-cask, long before prepared for the occasion, the clergy refused to bury it with any but maimed rites.
As pedantic and degraded a fool as Von Gundling, and at the same court, was a certain diminutive Doctor Bartholdi, whose buffoonery the King once rewarded by presenting him with a peruke which reached to his feet. But Bartholdi was for ever quarrelling with his patron or with the government, and he ended his days in prison. Nor were these the only persons who played the fool, without professing it, at the Prussian court. Among the latter, and they were all more or less scholars, was Kornemann, who had not wit enough to escape marrying a sham countess. A second was Von Hackmann, who was rogue as well as scholar and buffoon, and robbed the King who sheltered him at court. He fled to Vienna, changed and re-changed his religion, returned to Prussia, was whipped by the hangman, and died in misery. David Fassmann, a writer of considerable merit, was another of those buffoon-philosophers whom Frederick William distinguished as his “Learned Fools.” Fassmann held various offices at court, where his sufferings were as great as his absurd dignities, in both of which the monarch found opportunity for laughter. For losing a key entrusted to him by Frederick, Fassmann was condemned to carry a heavy wooden one, an ell long, round his neck for several days. On various occasions, these learned fools were excited against each other by noble persons, who found mirth in so doing. Then would they fly at each other; and Flögel describes one with a pair of tongs thrusting a burning coal in the face of his pedantic adversary, who, flying at his assailant, turns him on his face, strips down his dress, and beats him with the tongs, till he is tired, or, varying his attack, sets fire to the antagonistic pedant’s peruke by firing a pistol among the curls.
The Baron von Poelnitz, at the court of the last-named King and at that of Frederick II., fulfilled a similar office, without being expressly named to it. In the intercourse which subsisted between the King and the Baron, it is difficult to say which was the greater fool, and it is inconceivable that reasonable creatures should be guilty of the absurd follies attributed to them. The most of the jokes were childish enough, and King and Baron quarrelled and became reconciled like children. As a specimen of the familiarity which existed between them, here is one in connection with a royal commission to the Baron to procure a pair of turkeys. Poelnitz sent the birds with a very laconic letter: “Here are the turkeys, Sire.” Frederick, rather nettled at the style, ordered the leanest ox that could be found to be decked ridiculously with flowers, and the horns to be gilded. This done, the animal was taken and tied up in front of the Baron’s house, carrying this inscription on the forehead:--“Here is the ox, Poelnitz.”
The Baron’s readiness at repartee is exemplified by a remark he made to a Baron Schwertz, who was of Jewish descent. Poelnitz, one wintry day, standing with his back to one of the royal stoves, set his long-tailed coat on fire. “Ah,” said Schwertz,
“Ainsi brûla jadis et Sodome et Gomorre.”
To which Poelnitz readily replied,
“Quoi, du Vieux Testament tu te souviens encore!”
Solomon Morgenstern is the last of the learned fools whom I shall mention. He, too, submitted to every indignity, that he might keep in favour by exciting the good-humour of the King. His dress was more caricatured than that of any of his fellows; and instead of a sword, he wore a fox’s brush at his side, and in his cocked hat, hare’s feet for feathers. The wisest thing that Morgenstern did, was his lecture on ‘Reasonable thoughts on Folly and Fools,’ in which there was much sly satire, which was probably lost on the monarch, who presided over the assembly of listeners.
Finally, the last of the privileged fools existed within the lifetime of some aged persons still surviving. He was seen by Dr. Edward Moore, in 1774, at the Electoral court at Mannheim. He was a Tyrolese who spoke German with so droll an accent that universal laughter was excited by it. He appeared when the Elector and his guests sat down to dinner; and he went round the table directing his sallies of wit against every one present, not even sparing the princesses. This was the _ultimus ex officio stultorum_; but the time then was at hand that was to bring with it that revolution which came in contact with nothing in Europe that it did not destroy,--the French Revolution. It touched the German Empire; and down went Empire, Electors, and Fools. The three indeed have reappeared, but under different names and modified forms.
Before closing the roll of German fools, I will notice one who was in the service of Prince Maurice of Orange. He was with the Prince with his forces before Nimeguen. Maurice having some trouble to set his own troops in order, turned to his fool, who accompanied him on the expedition, and asked him whether it would not have been better that he, the jester, should command the army, and the prince turn fool. “Things would not be much improved by that,” said the Dutch motley; “for you are as little able to make a jest, as I am to command an army. If we change places, the States General will dismiss both of us.” Here, however, the fool did Maurice injustice, for the Prince could say some excellent things; and his description of the martial qualities of the chief military nations of the period, is exactly in the spirit of a professional wit, more true than refined: “The German,” said Maurice, “is, in war, just like a louse, which lets itself be killed without flinching. The Frenchman is like a flea, which skips here and there, and does not willingly allow himself to be taken. The Spaniard resembles the insect which can only with difficulty be dislodged from where it burrows itself; and as for the Italian, he is like the bug, which, being killed, leaves an ill smell behind him.”--And now for the official fools of Italy.
THE JESTERS OF ITALY.
There are very few of the writers who have devoted their attention to the subject treated in this imperfect volume, who have ever alluded to the fool who suddenly appeared at the court of Alboin, King of the Lombards, (A.D. 572,) and who created a large measure of astonishment there, by his rude exterior and his ready wit. All Verona was, in popular phrase, “full of him.” The chronicle of his “Astuzie” was long the delight of the whole of Italy.
His name was Bertoldo. He was hideously ugly, and not very clean in his person; dwarfed, and deformed. His eyebrows resembled pigs’ bristles; but his eyes beneath them, gleamed like two torches; his hair was as red as carrots, and if you can fancy humanity caricatured to the very utmost extent, you will not, even then, be able to see with your mind’s eye the never-matched hideousness of this rustic, who set all the court in a roar by entering the great hall where Alboin was presiding, and, without even uncovering, seating himself by the side of the grim husband of Rosamunda.
The Lombard King smiled sourly at his impudence, and inquired what he was, when he was born, and in what country.
“I am a man,” said the monster; “was born the night my mother bore me; and” (this is something of Ancient Pistol’s phrase, which, indeed, often smacked of the fool’s humour or philosophy,) “the world is my native country.” King and court understood, now, with whom they had to do, and they tried his wit by plying him with questions, “What is the swiftest thing on earth?” asked one. “Thought,” was the reply of Bertoldo. To other questions he replied, that the best wine was the wine drunk in another man’s house; and that the worst fire at home was to be found in an angry wife and an impudent servant.
“Bertoldo,” said the King, “could you contrive to bring me water in a sieve without spilling any?”
“Certainly,” answered the fool; “in a hard frost, I could bring you any quantity.”
“Tor so clever a rejoinder, you shall have from me any boon you desire.”
“La, you there!” cried Bertoldo, “I shall have nothing of the sort. You cannot give me what you do not possess. I am in eager search of happiness, of which you have not a grain; and how could you give me any?”
Alboin alluded to his kingly power and glory, which the fool mocked mightily. He pointed to the glittering crowds of nobles who stood around his throne. “Oh yes,” was the comment of Bertoldo, “they stand round your throne; so do hungry ants round a crab-apple, and with the same purpose,--to devour it.” And therewith he so satirized the condition of a King, that Alboin threatened to have him whipped out of court. Some rather sorry jests followed; but as they were rewarded with unaccountable peals of laughter, the Lombard lords and ladies may be supposed to have been more merry, or much wiser, than we are. The riotous fun was checked for awhile, by the entrance of two women in search of the King and his royal justice. The subject in dispute was a crystal mirror, which was claimed by both, but which had been stolen by one from the other. Alboin, being a most religious as well as gracious King, was, of course, reminded of the Judgment of Solomon, and thought he could not do better than imitate it. He first ordered the mirror to be broken into powder, and divided equally between the rival claimants; and then he commanded it to be delivered whole to the woman who had expressed regret that so splendid a mirror should be destroyed. The entire court was in ecstasy at this rather second-hand wisdom of the King, who, with more conceit than might have been expected in such a stern personage, looked at Bertoldo and asked something tantamount to whether he was not a second Daniel come to judgment?
“Your excellent mightiness,” observed the fool, “can only be said to be an ass.” Nevertheless, the King seems to have had the best of it, for Bertoldo simply confined himself to abusing ladies generally, and the two who were lately plaintiff and defendant, in particular,--as impostors, whose wickedness was past imagining. Thereupon the gallant monarch burst forth into a passionate panegyric on the entire female sex, dealing in warm terms and honeyed phrases, like those in a grand _scena_, by some enamoured _tenore robusto_, and which, set to music by a fashionable _maestro_, and trilled by the darling of the season, would make the fortune of Mr. Chappell, were he only lucky enough to secure the copyright.
“If I don’t make you change your tune before tomorrow night’s sleep,” said Bertoldo, “gibbet me as high as Haman.”
“Be it so!” cried Alboin; “by the bones of the Wise Kings, I will keep thee to thy bargain, Sir Wisdom. Look to it.”
Bertoldo flung himself on some straw in the royal stable: he was resolved not to go to sleep till he had provided for his triumph; and in five minutes a chuckle of satisfaction was suddenly succeeded by the loudest snore that had ever startled the affrighted ears of the steeds of Alboin the King.