III
AN AUTOGRAPH ALBUM
Anastasius Grün · Friedrich Halm · Grillparzer · Wagner · Lenau’s sister · Military autographs · King Ludwig of Bavaria · Schiller’s daughter · Liebig · Schücking · Mädler · Körner · Anderssen · Meyerbeer · Rückert · Hebbel · Gregorovius · Lamartine · Victor Hugo · Manzoni · Dickens
I will still linger over that album. There sounds forth from the book, as it were, a whole chime of tones from the past; a whole procession of spirits—right illustrious spirits among them—goes by. Ah, that is the fine thing about youth, that it operates with as many hopes as old age does with memories; to it the joyous “will be” beckons from every quarter—to age the gloomy “has been” shows itself at all points.
So let us turn the leaves. Here is a letter from Anastasius Grün[4] to Elvira, in its envelope. The poet writes:
Esteemed young Lady:
Your letter addressed to my dear wife bespeaks so unaffected a frame of mind, so noble an aspiration, and at the same time so tender and womanly a disposition, that it would in any case come very hard for me to decline the request addressed—properly speaking, to me—in so earnest a tone, even were it one less easy of fulfillment. Busied as I am at this moment, I must to-day limit myself to these few lines, that I may not again, as I lately did by inadvertency, miss a date set by you. I hope the opposite leaf [it is not in the album] may meet with a friendly reception from you.
With deep respect, esteemed young lady, your most humble servant
A. Auersperg
Graz, March 26, 1861.
Now a few more pages:
Es liebt Vortreffliches sich zu verstecken
That which is choicest loves to lie concealed,
And many a woman’s heart even to this day
Still hides within it an America
Which could by a Columbus be revealed.
Friedrich Halm
Vienna, July 17, 1861.
Der Dichter liegt seit lang begraben
The poet has lain buried long;
The man is living, for even now
The memory of thy sweet gifts of song
Doth me again with my lost youth endow.
Franz Grillparzer[5]
Vienna, April 8, 1861.
Dem österreichischen Mädchen
Richard Wagner
Vienna, May 14, 1861.
A dry flower, and with it the inscription:
From my unfortunate brother’s grave.
Th. Schurz, sister of Lenau.
I can still remember the acquisition of this leaf of the album. Aunt Lotti, Elvira, and I had one afternoon gone on a pilgrimage to the hamlet where rest the ashes of Nikolaus Lenau,[6] for whose melancholy poems Elvira cherished an enthusiasm. On this occasion we visited the poet’s sister, who was living in a little country-house not far from the graveyard. Frau Schurz told us much about the unhappy man’s last years, spent in incurable insanity, and showed us many relics, silhouettes of himself and of Sophie Löwenthal, the woman whom he had loved so passionately with a love not unreturned but unaccepted; and she herself took us to the graveyard to pick there the twig that I have now before my eyes.
Is it accident, or did Elvira know that Nikolaus Niembsch once meant to tear himself away from Sophie Löwenthal and to marry another who was also one of the great and famous figures of the time? At all events, on the following page of the album stands the following autograph:
Ich will, das Wort ist mächtig
“I will,” the word is mighty;
When spoken staunch and still,
It tears the stars from heaven,
The single word “I will!”
Karoline Sabatier-Ungher
Karlsbad, May, 1861
Yet it seems she did not speak it ernst und still enough, the beautiful singer, when it came to holding fast the greatly loved and already affianced Niembsch von Strehlenau; for he let her go and returned to Sophie.
Now comes a very strongly military leaf. It bears the signatures Schwarzenberg, Benedek, FML., Fürstenberg, G. d. C., v. Wrangel, Field Marshal.[7] Alongside Wrangel’s name somebody (the insertion is not in Elvira’s hand) has inscribed the following brief dialogue reproducing the famous general’s wooing. It is well known that in spite of all his victories he never succeeded in conquering the dative and the accusative, and when he wanted to apply to the father of his intended for her hand the conversation in all probability developed itself thus:
“Will you call me your son-in-law?”
“I’m sorry, but I have none.”
“Beg pardon—I meant to say, may I call you my father-in-law?”
“Oh, you are married? I did not know that.”[8]
There is furthermore inserted upon that military album-leaf a document which, as the knot that fastens it informs us, was given to my cousin by her “dear godfather Huyn.” It is a large folio page of official paper, with the following not uninteresting contents:
K. K. Landesgeneralkommando in
Verona. II. Sektion Nr. 1064
No. 24
To his Excellency, Royal and Imperial
Chamberlain, Colonel, and Sub-Chief of
Quartermaster General’s Staff, &c., &c.,
Johann Count Huyn
The nature of the remodeling required for the defective embrasures in the Molinary and Hlavaty works must be determined by commission.
As chairman of this commission is appointed Lieutenant Field Marshal Baron Stwrtnik, Director of Field Artillery of the 2d Army; and as members of it Your Excellency, Lieutenant Colonel von Swiatkiewicz of the General Staff, and Major Khünel of the 7th Regiment of Artillery.
The time and place for the meeting of the commission are to be fixed by its chairman.
Radetzky
Verona, October 27, 1856
No. 34
Received at the Royal and Imperial
Quartermaster General’s Staff Division
of the 2d Army
Verona, October 29, 1856
Benedek, FML.
Despite remodeled cannon, despite the installation of the k. k. Generalquartiermeisterstabsabteilung der 2. Armee in Verona, three years later this same Verona was to be Austrian no longer, and what befell this same Benedek ten years later on Bohemian battlefields we know. Confidence in the necessity and utility of remodeling cannon—just now it is howitzers—remains unshaken in military circles.
Elvira and I, of course, felt the due reverential respect for these signatures of generals, and for the complicated technical expressions and complicated arrangements which meant our country’s fame and safety.
The following page too filled us with respect—the loyal deference which is paid to the wearers of crowns. Be it known that Elvira, when she was writing to all the European poets she could think of (I believe she was one of the first specimens of that species which has since then so greatly increased, the youthful autograph hyena), had among the rest sent a letter in verse to King Ludwig I of Bavaria, asking him for a line. By return mail came the answer, which is fastened into the album with pink ribbon:
Ihr, welche Worte wünscht von meinen Händen
To her who wishes from my hand a word,
The poetess, although unknown to me,
Right gladly now these lines I will accord;
Inhabitants of the same land are we.[9]
Though we each other’s living voice ne’er heard,
Poet in poet must a cousin see.
To those who to the spheres have learned to soar
The earth gives satisfaction nevermore.
Ludwig
Next follows a leaf with a relic of a genuine king of Poetryland. It is a bit of lilac silk accompanied with the following statement from Schiller’s daughter:
Greifenstein ob Bonnland, June 20, 1861
Here, my dear young lassie, in accordance with your own wish, comes something that once belonged to Schiller—lilac was his favorite color, and this is a bit of silk from his last waistcoat. May it be a sweet remembrance for you! Your Schiller memorial of November 10, 1859,[10] in the form of a poem, unfortunately did not come to hand; perhaps you will send me another copy, and will also mention to me the receipt of this piece of lilac, that I may be set at ease by knowing that it is in your hands—by seeing your wishes fulfilled.
I always rejoice with all my heart at knowing that Schiller’s spirit finds a home in young hearts; remain attached to him through all stages of life, my dear young lady, and kindly accept this little memento from me.
Respectfully and sincerely yours
Emilie von Gleichen-Russwurm
born von Schiller
Elvira was as enthusiastic for science as for poetry, so it is only natural that in her treasury of handwritings she wanted to see represented also him who was at that time the most celebrated of chemists. He gladdened her with the following letter:
Your lines of July 8 fill me equally with esteem for the writer and with joy, for they show me a young lady making earnest efforts to enrich her mind with the incomparable treasures of science; and it causes me the more pleasure that my writings are among those which have attracted your interest and attention. I only wish that my writings may find many such readers of your sex. Accept the assurance of high esteem with which I sign myself
Justus Liebig
Munich, July 13, 1861
From Levin Schücking Elvira received three lines dated from Rome:
The Lord give thee a time of stillness, warm air, and a quiet heart.
The next leaf bears inscriptions from three Vienna authors:
Wenn du dem toten Buchstaben trauest
If you trust in the lifeless letter,
Then, dear girl, most wrong are you.
In the eye is the sole true language,
In the heart the key thereto.
Dr. I. F. Castelli
Um zweierlei bin ich bemüht
Two things have been worth effort in my eyes—
God often sends them both in my life’s span:
That he who knows me not my song should prize,
And he who knows me should esteem the man.
Joseph Weilen
Sei Dichterin in der Welt der Poesie
Be poetess in the world of poesy,
But never poetess in life’s practice be.
’Tis fine when thy rich mind the world bewitches,
Yet finer when thy heart a heart enriches.
Leopold Feldmann
Now a bit of starry sky, sent by the world-renowned director of the observatory at Dorpat:
Feb. 15.
True orbit of the
double star
S Virginis,
calculated by J. H. Mädler.
Principal star
1836
April 11.
Dorpat, in January 1862
All that is great, and all
that is beautiful, is truly great and
beautiful only by being felt
in perceptive hearts.
J. H. Mädler
Once more a letter from Schiller’s daughter:
Greifenstein ob Bonnland, November 27, 1861
Here, honored young lady, is a page of Theodor Körner’s manuscript, which I have been endeavoring to get for you and which I succeeded in obtaining for you day before yesterday. A goodly ornament for your album, and I hasten to dispatch it to you, to afford you this pleasure while it is still November. I would gladly have sent it to you on the tenth,[11] but on that dear and sacred day it was not yet in my hands.
Begging that you too, as hitherto, will hold me in a friendly remembrance which shall bring us warmly together on every Schiller Day, I am with the deepest regard
Yours sincerely
Emilie von Gleichen-Russwurm
born von Schiller
Beside it, with the note “Original manuscript of Theodor Körner. Unpublished poem!” a much-yellowed sheet of coarse deckle-edged paper on which stand several stanzas with deletions and corrections:
Begeist’rung fasset mich mit heil’gem Glühn
A holy ardor seizes me and fills me
As the soft harmony of thy accent thrills me;
A ravishment that all my soul entrances
Is in thy glances.
Upon thy breast would I, the world forgetting,
My happy fortunes with the gods’ be setting.
The goal of all my eagerness, love-drunken,
In thee is sunken.
Love brings Leander to a sweet undoing;
It plunges [illegible[12]] into ruin.
The fairest lot that heart has ever treasured
To me is measured.
With the hot turmoil of love’s rapturous madness
Life’s sun ascends for me in cloudless gladness;
The Horae’s endless light, the radiant morn,
To me was born.
For boldly in thy glances I might sun me;
Thy image pours all ecstasies upon me;
Grandest and most divine of women, thee,
Thee I might see.
Enamored youth! The poem did not receive its final polish nor its last stanzas, and was left unprinted; apparently it did not seem to him good enough to print. It was just dashed off in an hour of intoxicating happiness. He saw life ascending as a cloudless sun, in the radiance of youth, in the light of the Horae—and how soon an enemy’s bullet was to destroy this life! Can it be calculated how much of the beautiful and valuable that stupid bullet shot away from posterity?
I turn more pages. There follows, from A. Anderssen, the great chess-player, a twenty-two-move game of chess; from G. Meyerbeer, the beginning of the overture to the tragedy Struensee.
Then once more a verse with an illustrious signature:
Reines Herz gibt reinen Sinn
Clean heart gives the man clean sight;
In the pure eye clear and bright
Mirrored lies the world.
Clouded heart gives clouded eye,
World and life and destiny
All in darkness curled.
Friedrich Rückert
And another great poet writes for the album,
Und musst du denn, trotz Kraft und Mut
If, spite of strength and courage good,
The thorns your skin will tear,
See to it only that your blood
Does not the rose besmear.
Friedrich Hebbel
A historian too has his say:
Priests place themselves between men and the Deity only as shadows: as when the eye takes to its help a smoked glass, to see the sun through this dull medium.
Ferdinand Gregorovius
Rome, February, 1865
Two French letters:
Mademoiselle, vous êtes la poésie même, la poésie vivante et aimante.
A. de Lamartine
Il y a dans votre lettre, Mademoiselle, toute une âme charmante et c’est avec bonheur que je dépose à vos pieds le nom que vous demandez pour votre Album.
Victor Hugo
Waterloo, 14 juillet 1861
From the author of I Promessi Sposi:
[13]E troppo ricompenso per dei poveri lavori la simpatia d’un animo gentile e elevato come quello che si manifesta nella lettera ch’ Ella m’ha fatto l’onore di scrivermi. In un tale animo è cosa naturale che abbia luogo anche l’indulgenza; e se, in questo caso, essa eccede, è una ragione di più per eccitare in me una viva riconoscenza. Del rimanente, l’eccesso dei buoni sentimenti è un inconveniente dei meno pericolosi in questo mondo. Dio mantenga e ricompensi le nobili inclinazioni di cui le ha fatto dono.
Voglia gradire la rispettosa espressione della mia riconoscenza e l’attestato dell’ alta stima con cui ho l’onore di rassegnarmele.
Umilmo, devotmo servitore
Alessandro Manzoni
Under the date “Gads Hill Place Higham by Rochester Kent, Monday twenty-seventh January 1862,” and on mourning paper, Charles Dickens sent the transcript of some lines from “David Copperfield.”
The book further contains all sorts of dried plants picked at famous places, pictures, bits of flags, even a scrap “from the shirt worn with his wedding suit by Louis I of Anjou,” a little stone from “the ruins of the palace of Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus,” another from “Torquato Tasso’s prison door”—a whole panorama of historical shadow-pictures. All, all, who are gathered on these pages, are dead—all but the one who inserted the word “Past.” And this word is the real leitmotif of the whole book: Past, past—and so I close it with a sigh.