Chapter 28

Two other persons must be mentioned as having exercised a lasting influence upon his early life. One of these was an old great-uncle, Justizrath Vöthöry, brother of both his grandmothers, and a gentleman of Hungarian origin. This excellent man was retired from all business, with the exception that he continued to act as justiciary for the estates of certain well-tried friends. He used to visit the various properties at stated seasons of the year, and was always a welcome guest; for this "hero of olden times in dressing-gown and slippers," as Wilibald Alexis called him, was the V---- who figures so genially in _Das Majorat_ ("The Entail"). The old gentleman once took his great- nephew with him on one of these trips, and to it we are indebted for this master-piece of Hoffmann. The other person who gave a bent to young Ernst's mind was Dr. Wannowski, the head of the German Reformed School in Königsberg, where the boy was sent in his sixth or seventh year. Wannowski, who possessed the faculty of awakening slumbering talent in his pupils, and attracting them to himself, enjoyed the friendship and intercourse of Kant, Hippel (the elder), Scheffner, Hamann, and others, and might perhaps lay claim to be called a Prussian Dr. Arnold, owing to the many illustrious pupils he turned out.

During the first seven years of his school-days, young Hoffmann was in nowise distinguished above his school-fellows either for industry or for quickness of parts. But when he reached his thirteenth or fourteenth year, his taste for both music and painting was awakened. His liking for these two arts was so genuine and sincere, and consequently his progress in them so rapid, that he came to be looked upon as a child-wonder. He would sit down at a piano and play improvisations and other compositions of his own creation, to the astonishment of all who heard him, for his performances, though somewhat fantastic, were not wanting in talent and originality, and his diminutive stature made him appear some years younger than he really was. In drawing he early showed a decided inclination for caricature, and in this his quickness of perception and accuracy in reproduction proved of permanent service to him. Later he endeavoured to improve himself both in theory and in practice in higher styles also: in the former by diligent study of Winckelmann, and in the latter by copying the models of the art treasures of Herculaneum preserved in the Royal Library.

In his eleventh year Hoffmann made the acquaintance of Theodor von Hippel, nephew of T. G. Hippel, author of _Die Lebensläufe in aufsteigender Linie_, a boy one month older than himself. The acquaintance ripened into a warm fast friendship when the two boys recognised each other again at the same school, and they continued faithful devoted friends until the day of Hoffmann's death. What tended principally to knit them together was the similarity and yet difference in their bringing up and family relations. Both grew up without the society of brothers or sisters or playfellows; but whilst Hoffmann was a son of the town, Hippel's early days had been spent in the country. In another respect, too, they presented a striking contrast in behaviour; Hoffmann's chief delight was to mystify and tease his uncle Otto, but Hippel was most scrupulous in paying to all the proper meed of respect which he conceived he owed them. Once when Hippel reproached his friend about his behaviour towards his uncle, young Hoffmann replied, "But think what relatives fate has blessed me with! If I only had a father and an uncle like yours such things would never come into my head." This saying is significant for the understanding of the early stages of Hoffmann's intellectual development.

The bonds of inclination and natural liking were drawn still closer by an idea of uncle Otto's. It was arranged that young Hippel should spend the Wednesday afternoons (when the Justizrath went out to make his round of visits amongst his acquaintances), along with his friend in studying together, principally the classics. And Saturday afternoons were also to be devoted to the same duties whenever practicable. But, as might very well be expected, the classics soon gave way to other books, such as Rousseau's _Confessions_ and Wiegleb's _Natürliche Magie_;4 and these in turn were forced to yield to such pastimes as music, drawing, mummeries, boyish games, masquerades, and even more pretentious adventures out in the garden, such as mimic chivalric contests, construction of underground passages, &c. The boys also discovered common ground in their desire to cultivate their minds by poetry and other reading. The last two years at school were most beneficial and productive in shaping Hoffmann's mind; he acquired a taste for classics and excited the attention of his teachers by his artistic talents, his graphic powers of representation being noticeable even at this early age. During this time also he cultivated the acquaintance of the painter Matuszewski, whom he introduces by name in his tale _Der Artushof_ ("Arthur's Hall").

When sixteen or seventeen years old Hoffmann conceived his first boyish affection, which only deserves mention as giving occasion to a frequent utterance of his at this time, that illustrates one of the most striking sides of his character. It appears that the young lady who was the object of his fancied passion either refused to notice his homage or else laughed it to scorn, for he remarked to his friend with great warmth of feeling, "Since I can't interest her with a pleasing exterior, I wish I were a perfect image of ugliness, so that I might strike her attention, and so make her at least look at me."

The beginning of Hoffmann's university career--he matriculated at Königsberg on 27th March, 1792--offers nothing of special interest. He decided to study jurisprudence. In making this decision he was doubtless influenced by the family connections and the traditional calling of the male members of the family. As already remarked, his father, his uncle, and his great-uncle had all followed the profession of law, and he had another uncle Dörffer in the same profession, who occupied a position of some influence at Glogau in Silesia. But it is also certain that he was determined to this decision--it cannot be called choice--from the desire to make himself independent of the family in Königsberg as soon as he could contrive to do so, in order that he might free himself from the shackles and galling unpleasantness of the untoward relations in life to which he was there subject. But he was devoted heart and soul to art--to music and painting. As the studies of the two friends, Hoffmann and Hippel, were different, they necessarily did not see so much of each other as previously; but once a week during the winter months they devoted a night to mutual outpourings of the things that were in them--the aspirations, hopes, dreams, and plans for the future, &c., such as imaginative youths are wont to cherish and indulge in. These meetings were strictly confined to their two selves; no third was admitted. Their rules were one bottle of wine for the whole evening, and the conversation to be carried on in rhymed verses; and Hoffmann we find looking back upon these hours with glad remembrance even in the full flush of his manhood and fame: even on his last sad birthday, a few months before his death, he dwells upon them with fond delight.

Whilst, however, devoting himself enthusiastically to the pursuit of art, he did not neglect his more serious studies. He made good and steady progress in the knowledge of law; and he also gave lessons in music. It was whilst officiating in this latter capacity that his heart was stirred by its first serious passion--a passion which left an indelible impress upon all his future life. He fell in love with a charming girl, who had a fine taste and true sentiment in art matters, but who was separated from her admirer by an impassable barrier of rank; but although her social position was far above Hoffmann's, yet she returned warmly his pure and ardent affection. Hoffmann, however, never disguised from himself the hopelessness of his love; and the fact that it was so hopeless embittered all the rest of his time in Königsberg, until he left it in June, 1796, for a legal appointment at Great Glogau in Silesia.

As these years seem to have been mainly instrumental in forming his character and shaping its outlines and giving depth and strength to its chief features, it is desirable to dwell for a moment upon the principal currents which at this time poured their influences upon him. By nature of a genial and gay temperament, gifted with an acute perception, which he had further trained in sharpness and accuracy, endowed with no small share of talent and with an ardent love for art, ambitious, vain in some respects, full of high spirits, and with a keen sense of humour, and not devoid of originality, he was daily chafed and galled in the depressing atmosphere of his home relations. He felt how illogical was the rigid methodicity, how unreasonable the arbitrary routine, how absurd the restrictions and restraints of his uncle's household regulations; he was eager to be quit of them, to turn his back upon them; he was anxious to find a congenial field for his powers-~a field where he could turn his accomplishments and genius to good account. The only way in which he could hope to do so at present, at least for some years to come, was by pursuing a legal career, and law he had no inclination for. He says, in a letter to Hippel, dated 25th Nov., 1795, "If it depended upon myself alone I should be a musical composer, and I have hopes that I could do something great in that line; as for the one I have now chosen, I shall be a bungler in it as long as I live." He gradually came to live upon a strained and barely tolerable footing with his uncle, since as he grew older his tricks and ironical behaviour towards little Otto assumed a more pronounced character, and stirred up in the old gentleman's mind feelings of suspicion against his unmanageable nephew. In these circumstances we may easily discern the germs of a dissatisfaction not only with his lot in life but also with himself.

Next came the fact of his hopeless love which has just been mentioned. And another and no less potent cause which tended to deepen and intensify this spirit of inward dissatisfaction was the delay that occurred between his passing his entrance examination into the legal profession in July, 1795, and his appointment to a definite post of active duty in June, 1796. To be compelled to wear out his independent, ambitious heart in forced inactivity must have been galling in the extreme, especially when it is remembered how eagerly he was longing to shake himself free from the relations amidst which he had grown up, and his no less earnest desire to get beyond the reach of the passion, or at any rate the object of the passion, that was gnawing at his very heart-strings. To an energetic spirit, longing for a useful sphere of activity, hardly anything can be more fruitful as a source of unhappiness than enforced idleness. And this sentiment Hoffmann gives frequent utterance to in his letters at this period.

During these same months he cultivated his mind by the perusal of the works of such writers as Jean Paul, Schiller, and Goethe, the intellectual giants upon whom the eyes of Germany were at that time fixed in wonder. But this course of reading, instead of counteracting, rather encouraged a native leaning towards poetic dreaming and sentimentality. In a letter to Hippel, dated 10th Jan., 1796, he even says, "I cannot possibly demand that she [the lady he loved] should love me to the same unmeasured extent of passionate devotion that has turned my head--and this torments me.... I can never leave her; she might weep for me for twenty-four hours and then forget me--I should _never forget her_." There was yet another cause or series of causes which co-operated with those mentioned above to increase the distracted and agitated condition of his heart. It has been already stated more than once that he was a diligent student of music and painting. These formed his recreation from the severe and dry study of law-books; but to these two arts he now added the fascination of literary composition, and wrote two novels, which he entitled _Cornaro_ and _Der Geheimnissvolle_. The former was rejected by a publisher, who had at first held out some hopes of being able to accept it, on the ground that its author was unknown. Besides this, the productions of his brush failed to sell. Hence fresh sources of disappointment and vexation.

Through all this, however, even in his darkest moods and most desperate moments, he was upheld by the feelings and sentiments associated with his friendship for his unshaken friend Hippel. To him he poured out all his troubles in a series of letters,5 which gave a most graphic account of his mental condition at this period. He led a very retired life, hardly seeing anybody; he calls himself an anchorite, and states he was living apart from all the world, seeking to find food for contemplation and reflection in his own self. He also fostered, perhaps unconscious to himself, high poetic aspirations, and also those extravagant dreams of friendship which were so fashionable in the days of "Posa" and "Werther" and Wieland; "his heart was never more susceptible to what is good," and "his bosom never swelled with nobler thoughts," he says in one of his letters. Then he goes on to describe the "flat, stale, and unprofitable" surroundings in the midst of which he was confined. "Round about me here it is icy cold, as in Nova Zembla, whilst I am burning and being consumed by the fiery breath within me," he says in another place. The violence of his inner conflict, of his heart-torture and unhappiness, finds vent in a wild burst in the letter before quoted of 10th Jan., 1796 (and also in others). He says:--

"Many a time I think it's all over with me, and if it were not for my 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.