Chapter 29

The Polish provinces were fraught with great danger for any young man who was not possessed of exceptional firmness and sound moral principles. For a young lawyer, the work was severe and exacting, but the emoluments were large. Time, however, failed to allow of cultivating the higher sources of enjoyment; hence all hastened to make the most of it by throwing themselves into the lower. Drinking was a habit of the country; and the drink that was drunk was of the strongest kinds, the fiery wines of Hungary and strong liquors. There reigned also a deplorable laxity of morals; and the graceful Polish women were very seductive. That Hoffmann followed the example of his colleagues, and plunged into the giddy whirlpool of miscalled pleasure, will perhaps appear natural when we take into consideration the sources of discontent that had for some time been fermenting in his spirit. Having been submitted to the trammels of unreasonable constraint, it need not be wondered at that his passionate restless nature should be enticed by the temptations to which he was now so suddenly and unreservedly exposed, that he forgot all his higher strivings and cast his better purposes to the winds, and drank greedily of the pleasures of life which his newly-won freedom brought in so easy and seductive a form within his reach. He candidly states, "for some months a conflict of feelings, principles, &c., which are directly contradictory the one to the other, has been raging within me; I wished to stifle all recollection, and become what schoolmasters, preachers, uncles, and aunts call profligate." There was none in the circles which he frequented to encourage him in his desire to reach out after better things, to live himself into "the poetry of life," as Hitzig expresses it; and hence he fell into the mire of demoralisation, and his fall was the greater since he set about it with deliberate intent.

He was at length so far carried away by the delirious whirl into which he had been caught as to engage in a piece of wanton folly that threw him back upon his career by some years, just as he was about to plant his foot securely upon the path leading to the summits of his profession. Beguiled by his striking talent for caricature, he designed and executed a series of sketches, satirising in an exquisitely witty and humorous style various situations and characters and well-known relations of Posen society. The inscriptions appended to the caricatures were not less skilfully done than were the caricatures themselves. No rank of society was spared, and hardly any person of consequence in the town. One of his friends, who afterwards became his brother-in-law, distributed the leaves at a masked ball in the disguise of an Italian hawker of pictures, cleverly contriving to place each individual sketch in the hands of the person to whom it would most likely be most welcome. Hence for several minutes universal glee at the excellent jest! But when they came to compare notes, _i.e._, the presents they had received, the merriment gave way to hot indignation. The author of the outrage was very speedily guessed at, since there was only one person in Posen with proved ability enough to wield the pencil so as to produce such striking likenesses--unfortunate Hoffmann! That very same night it is said that a man of high rank, General von Zastrow, deeply incensed at several of the pieces in which he himself played a ridiculous _rôle_, sent off an express courier to Berlin with a report of the whole affair. The consequence of the thoughtless trick was that Hoffmann's patent as councillor to the government at Posen, which lay all ready for signing, was exchanged for one appointing him to the town of Plock (on the R. Vistula). Thither he went early in 1802, accompanied by his wife, whose maiden name was "Rorer, or rather Trzczynska, a Poless by birth, daughter of the former town-councillor T. of Posen, twenty-two years old, of medium stature and good figure, with dark-brown hair and dark blue eyes," as he himself describes her. He had taken the step of marriage in face of the earnest dissuasion of his uncle Otto, in the last months of his residence in Posen. But previous to this, late in the autumn of 1801, he had paid another visit to Königsberg, meeting on his return journey his friend Hippel; and together they saw Elbing and Dantzic. To this latter visit we owe the story of _Der Artushof_ ("Arthur's Hall"), published in 1817. Hippel, be it remarked, was disagreeably struck by the change in his friend: Hoffmann gave himself up to an unhealthy degree, to wild and extravagant gaiety, and disclosed a liking for what was low and lewd.

In Plock Hoffmann spent two years. This was a quiet, stagnant place, where, according to his own account, he "was buried alive," and "walked in a morass covered with low thorny shrubs which lacerated his feet;" he "thought of Yorick and the imprisoned starling;" and he should have given way to despair had not the bitter experiences which he was made to drain to the lees been sweetened by the affection of his dear good wife, who gave him strength for the present and encouraged him to hope for the future. Owing to the external circumstances in the midst of which he was fixed, he again turned his attention seriously to music and painting, and also to authorship. He wrote short essays, composed masses, vespers, and sonatas, and translated Italian canzonets, &c. _ Scherz, List, und Rache_, a _Singspiel_ of Goethe's, he had already set to music in Posen. During these two years he led a more strictly domestic life, and spent more of his time out of the hours of official duty in his own house, than he ever did afterwards. Here also, as almost everywhere throughout his life he was zealous and industrious in discharging the duties of his position. At length, just as he was beginning to settle down and feel contented with his lot in Plock, his friends in Berlin succeeded in securing his removal (1804) to a better and more congenial sphere of activity in Warsaw. After once more visiting Königsberg in February, 1804, and then spending several days with Hippel on his estate at Leistenau (province Marienwerder, East Prussia), he eventually proceeded to his new post in Poland in the spring of that same year.

One illustrative and very characteristic anecdote of this period deserves mention. In a letter to Hippel, dated "Plock, 3rd October, 1803," Hoffmann writes, "My uncle in Berlin will never do much more to recommend me, for he has become 'a grave man,' as Mercutio says in Shakespeare;7 he died on the night of 24-25th September of inflammation of the lungs." But in his diary of October 1 he writes, in allusion to the same sad event, "My tears did not flow, nor did fear and grief draw from me any loud lamentations; but the image of the man whom I loved and honoured is constantly before my eyes; it never leaves me. The whole day through my mind has been in a tumult; my nerves are so excited that the least little noise makes me start." Thus he could jest in the midst of pain; and it is a type of the man's character.

Warsaw, in notable contrast to other places in the Polish provinces, possessed many things calculated to excite and engage the attention of an active mind, of a mind so eager for knowledge and so keenly alive to all that was especially interesting and extraordinary as was Hoffmann's. The new scene of his labours cannot be better described than in the words of Hitzig and of Hoffmann himself. The former says the city had

"Streets of magnificent breadth, consisting of palaces in the finest Italian style and of wooden huts which threaten every moment to tumble together about the ears of their indwellers; in these edifices Asiatic sumptuousness most closely mingled with Greenland filth; a populace incessantly on the stir, forming, as in a procession of maskers, the most startling contrasts--long-bearded Jews, and monks clad in the garb of every order, closely veiled nuns of the strictest rules and unapproachable reserve, and troops of young Polesses dressed in the gayest-coloured silk mantles conversing to each other across the spacious squares, venerable old Polish gentlemen with moustaches, caftan, _pass_ (girdle), sabre, and yellow or red boots, the coming generation in the most matchless of Parisian fashions, Turks and Greeks, Russians, Italians, and Frenchmen in a constantly varying crowd; besides this an almost inconceivably tolerant police, who never interfered to prevent any popular enjoyment, so that the streets and squares were always swarming with 'punch-and-judy' shows, dancing- bears, camels, and apes, whilst the occupants of the most elegant equipage equally with the common porter stopped to stare at them open- mouthed; further, a theatre conducted in the national language, a thoroughly good French troupe, an Italian opera, German comedians, who were at least ready to undertake almost anything, 'routs' of a quite original but extremely attractive kind, and resorts of pilgrims in the immediate vicinity of the town--was there not something for an eye like Hoffmann's to see and for a hand like Hoffmann's to sketch?"8

Thus far Hitzig. Hoffmann writes on May 14, 1804:--

"Yesterday ... I resolved to enjoy myself; I threw away my deeds and sat down to the piano to compose a sonata, but soon found myself in the situation of Hogarth's _Musicien enragé_ (Wrathful Musician). Immediately underneath my window there arose certain differences between three women selling meal, two wheelbarrow-men, and one sailor; each of the parties pleaded its cause with a good deal of violent demonstration before the tribunal of the hunchback, who stands with a stall under the door-way below. Whilst this was going on the bells of the parish church, of the Bennonites, and of the Dominican church (all close to me) began to clang; in the churchyard of the last named (right opposite to me) the hopeful catechumens were hammering away on two old kettle-drums, with which all the dogs of the neighbourhood, spurred by the strong powers of instinct, joined with a chorus of barkings and howlings--at that moment too Wambach and his musical band of Janissaries trotted gaily past to the merry strains of their own music--meeting them out of [another] street came a herd of swine. A tremendous friction in the middle of the street--seven swine were ridden over! Terrific squealing!--Oh!--oh! a _tutti_ invented for the torture of the damned! Here I threw aside my pen and paper, pulled on my top-boots, and ran away out of the wild mad tumult through the Cracow suburb--through the 'new world'--down the hill. A sacred Grove received me in its shade; I was in Lazienki.9 Ay, truly, the pleasant palace swims upon the mirror-like lake like a virgin swan. Zephyrs come wafted through the blossoming trees loaded with voluptuous delight. How pleasant to stroll through the thickly foliaged walks! That is the place for an amiable Epicurean to live in. What! why this man with the white nose galloping10 along here through the dark-leaved trees must be the 'Commendatore' in _Don Juan_. Ah! John Sobieski! _Pink fecit-- male fecit_. Oh! what a state of things! He is riding over writhing prostrate slaves, who are stretching up their withered arms to the rearing horse--an ugly sight! What! is it possible? Great Sobieski--as a Roman with _wonçi_11 has girt a Polish sabre about his waist, and it is made--of wood--ridiculous!... You ask me, my dear friend, how I like Warsaw. A motley world! too noisy--too wild--too harum-scarum-- everything topsy-turvey! Where can I find time to write, to sketch, to compose music? The king ought to give up Lasienki to me; _there_ one could live nicely, if you like!"12

The first few months of his residence in this "new world," as it appeared to immigrants from the "old land" of Prussia, Hoffmann spent in familiarising himself with the novelty and strangeness of the place, in wondering at and admiring the motley scenes which daily met his view; and doubtless his acute perceptive faculties gleaned a valuable harvest of notes for use on future occasions, both for his pencil and his pen. About the end of June he formed the acquaintance of J. E. Hitzig, who came down to Warsaw with the rank of _assessor_ in the administrative college in which Hoffmann held that of councillor. The crust of formal courtesy and commonplaces was broken through by Hitzig's pithy answer, to a question asking his opinion about some newly-arrived colleague, that he was "a man in buckram." The borrowed words of Falstaff banished Hoffmann's reserve, and caused his sombre face to light up with joy and his tongue to pour out a brilliant gush of talk. This new-made friend, who had previously (1800, 1801) lived in Warsaw, where he began his career, introduced Hoffmann into a pleasant and intellectual set of men, amongst whom was Zacharias Werner, author of _Söhne des Thales_, _Das Kreuz an der Ostsee_,13 &c. Hitzig had spent the interval from 1801 in Berlin, where he had kept fully abreast of the newest productions in literature and art, whilst Hoffmann had been living, partly a rude and riotous life, and partly a solitary and monkish one, at Posen and Plock. Hence the one had plenty to communicate and the other great eagerness to listen, especially as the little he had begun to hear roused anew his slumbering better feelings, and whetted with a keen edge his native desire for self-improvement through art and literature.

In the following year, 1805, one of the Prussian administrative officials, an enthusiast in music, conceived the idea of establishing a club or society for the purpose of amusement and mutual instruction in his favourite art, and for the purpose also of training singers of both sexes. Hoffmann's interest was enlisted in the scheme; and things proceeded at an energetic rate, the first concert being successful beyond expectation. With this encouragement the society was induced to go to work on a larger and more pretentious scale. The Miniszeki Palace, injured by fire, was bought for the seat of the new academy; and then Hoffmann threw himself into the plans of the society with all his soul, working indefatigably in preparing architectural designs, and later in decorating the halls and corridors. During all the mild days of the spring of 1806 he was never to be met with at home. If not in the government office, he was invariably to be found perched up on a high scaffolding in the new musical Ressource, painter's jacket on and surrounded by a crowd of colour-pots, amongst which was sure to be a bottle of Hungarian or Italian wine; there he painted and thence he conversed with his friends below. If, on occasion, parties requiring the services of Councillor Hoffmann came to look for him at the new Ressource, whither they had been directed from his own house, they were greatly surprised to see him drop nimbly to the floor from before an elaborate wall-painting of ancient Egyptian gods, mixed up with caricature figures and animal-like fragments of modems (his friends with tails, wings, etc.), hastily wash his hands, trot along in front of them to his place of business, and in a brief space of time turn out some complicated legal instrument with which it would defy the sharpest critic to find anything amiss.

So absorbed was he in this work, and in that of directing at the evening performances and composing music for them, that he hardly knew anything of the dark thunder-cloud of war that was gathering in the West until the news of the fateful battle of Jena came; but upon these music enthusiasts in Warsaw even this intelligence made no perceptible impression. Their concerts and practisings and meetings went on uninterruptedly just as before, until one fine day the advanced guard of the Russian army rode into the streets of the former Polish capital. Soon after the Russian general had taken up his quarters in Praga, close to Warsaw, there appeared on the other side of the town the pioneers of the great army of Napoleon. The Prussians and Russians withdrew from the town. Milhaud arrived with the main body of Murat's forces; in Napoleon's name the Prussian Government was dissolved, and its officials were superseded by native Poles. Hence Hoffmann was left without employment. He and his colleagues divided the contents of the treasury between them to prevent its falling into the hands of the French; this secured them from want for the present. Careless about the future, and revelling in the luxury of untrammelled freedom, Hoffmann was now perfectly happy. The excitement was like rich wine to his brilliant fancy; he never had enough of it. He spent all the livelong day in running about seeing and hearing the many remarkable things to be both seen and heard. And the little, restless, energetic man was like quicksilver; he was everywhere. He specially loved to frequent the theatres, where, before the curtain rose, conversations might be heard carried on in ten or a dozen living tongues at once. Pushing his way through the motley throng, he penetrated to every part of the house, busy gathering all sorts of rich observations, and storing up a most varied assortment of experiences; and nothing escaped his falcon eye or remained unnoticed by his keen perception. Many and exquisite were the humorous anecdotes he picked up, the gestures he copied, the tricks and eccentricities he caught, the extraordinary characters he understood and fathomed at a glance; and these experiences he afterwards retailed to his friends, to their unbounded delight.

But amid all the tumult of the French occupation of the city, the evenings at the Musical Ressource still went on the same as ever. Hoffmann indeed, in order to escape the burdens of billeting as well as from motives of economy, took up his residence in one of the attics of the Ressource, where, though somewhat straitened for accommodation (for he had his wife, a niece aged about twelve, and a little baby daughter with him), he was as happy and contented as he well could be. He had the rich library of the Ressource at command, and his own piano stood in one of its rooms; and "that was all he wanted to make him forget the French and the future." Early in 1807, he took advantage of a favourable opportunity and sent his wife and the two children to her friends in Posen; Hitzig also, and his family, and most other friends, left Warsaw in March of that year: thus Hoffmann was left almost alone. Soon afterwards he was attacked by a grave nervous disorder, but successfully nursed through it by the one or two friends who still remained in the city. On recovering, he wished to go to Vienna, with the view of beginning an artistic career, and was only prevented from carrying out his design by want of money to defray the expenses of the journey. He was in great distress, and even began to despond, until finally in the summer he contrived to get to Posen, and thence to Berlin, where he arrived some time in July.

In Berlin, however, his prospects did not improve. He failed to find employment for his talents: nobody could be got to purchase his sketches or sit to him for a portrait; an attempt to interest Iffland, the actor and dramatist, in him failed; and no publisher could be found for his musical productions. Everything he was willing to do came to nothing. Then came other misfortunes. His ready-money, consisting of six _Louis d'or_, was stolen from him; news reached him of the death of his dearly-loved daughter Cecily when two years old, and of the illness of his wife. He was on the point of despair, when it suddenly occurred to him to advertise for the post of musical director in a theatre. This had the desired effect of eventually securing him the post he wished, in the theatre at Bamberg which was conducted under the auspices of Count von Soden; but the engagement was not to commence until October, 1808. The intervening months were months of hard struggle for Hoffmann; he says he was almost in the extremities of want, and should have lacked the bare necessaries of life had he not succeeded in disposing of some minor productions in music and painting for a couple of _Louis d'or_ received in advance. In the summer of 1808, he at last fetched his wife from Posen, and then repaired to Bamberg (1st September).

To these years in Warsaw and Berlin belong three operas and other minor musical pieces (including music for Werner's tragedy _Das Kreuz an der Ostsee_), several productions of his pencil and brush, but no literary works. Here at the end of what may be termed the first act in E. T. W. Hoffmann's chequered life we may pause a moment And the pause we may turn to account by quoting a description of his personal appearance and some peculiarities of habit.

"Hoffmann was very short of stature, of yellowish complexion; and he had dark, almost black hair, growing down low upon his forehead, gray eyes which had nothing remarkable about them when they were at rest, but which assumed an uncommonly humorous and cunning expression when he blinked them, as he often did. His nose was thin and of the Roman type, and his mouth tightly closed.

"Notwithstanding his agility, his body seemed to be capable of endurance, for in contrast with his size his breast was high and his shoulders broad.

"During the earlier part of his life his dress was sufficiently elegant, without falling into foppery. The only thing he set great and special store by was his whiskers, which he carefully cut so as to form a point against the corners of his mouth....

"What particularly struck the eye in his exterior was his extraordinary vivacity of movement, which rose to the highest pitch when he began to narrate anything. His manners at receiving and parting from people-- repeated quick short bendings of the neck without moving the head--had a good deal that appeared to partake of the nature of caricature, and might very readily have been taken for irony had not the impression made by his singular gestures on such occasions been softened by his cordial warmth of manner.

"He spoke with incredible quickness and in a somewhat hoarse voice, so that he was always very difficult to understand, especially during the last years of his life, when he had lost some of his front teeth. When relating he always spoke in quite short sentences; but when the conversation turned upon art matters and he got enthusiastic--against which, however, he seemed to guard himself--he employed long and finely rounded periods. If he were reading any of his own compositions aloud-- whether literary or official--he hurried over the unimportant parts at such a rate that his listeners had hard work to follow him; but those places which are called 'strong touches' in a picture he emphasised with almost comic pathos; he screwed up his mouth as he read, and looked round to see if his listeners caught the points, so that he often upset both his own and their equilibrium. Owing to this habit he was conscious that he did not read well, and was always uncommonly pleased if anybody else would relieve him of the task; this, however, was a ticklish thing to do, especially in the case of MSS. copy, for every word read falsely or every hesitating glance upon a word to make sure what it was went like a knife to his heart, and this effect he could not conceal. As a singer he was a fine powerful tenor."14