How modest this Garden-house really is; how far removed from any thing like one's preconceptions of it! It is true that the position is one which many a rich townsman in England would be glad of, as the site for a handsome villa: a pretty orchard and garden on a gentle slope; in front, a good carriage road, running beside a fine meadow encircled by the stately trees of the park. But the house, a half-pay captain with us would consider a miserable cottage; yet it sufficed for the court-favorite and minister. Here the Duke was constantly with him; sitting up, till deep in the night, in earnest discussion, often sleeping on the sofa instead of going home. Here both Duke and Duchess would come and dine with him, in the most simple, unpretending way, the whole banquet in one instance consisting, as we learn from a casual phrase in the Stein correspondence, of a beer-soup and a little cold meat.' There is something very pleasant in noticing these traits of the simplicity which was then practised. The Duke's own hut the Borkenhaus has already been described (page 326). The hut, for it was nothing else, in which Goethe lived in the Ilmenau mountains, and the more than bourgeois simplicity of the Garden House, make one aware of one thing among others, namely, that if he sacrificed his genius to a court, it assuredly was not for loaves and fishes, not for luxury, or material splendor of any kind. Indeed, such things had no temptation for his simple tastes. Rich in money,' he writes to his beloved, 'I shall never become; but, therefore, all the richer in Confidence, Good Name and Influence over the minds of men.' It was his love of Nature which made him so indifferent to luxury. That love gave him simplicity and hardihood. In many things he was unlike his nation notably in his voluntary exposure to two bright, wholesome things, which to his contemporaries were little less than bugbears—I mean, fresh air and cold water. The nation which consented to live in the atmosphere of iron stoves, tobacco, and bad breath, and which deemed a pint of water all that man could desire for his ablutions, must have been greatly perplexed at seeing Goethe indulge in fresh air and cold water as if they were vices. Two anecdotes will bring this contrast into relief. So great was the German reluctance to even a necessary exposure to the inclemencies of open air exercise, that historians inform us a great proportion, especially among the learned classes, employed a miserable substitute for exercise in the shape of a machine, by means of which they comfortably took their dose of movement without leaving their rooms.'* And Jacobs, in his Personalien, records a fact which, while explaining how the abovenamed absurdity could have gained ground, paints a sad picture of the life of German youth in those days. Describing his boyish days at Gotha, he says: 'Our winter pleasures were confined to a not very spacious courtyard, exchanged in summer for a little garden within the walls, which my father hired. We took no walks. Only once a year, when the harvest was ripe, our parents took us out to spend an evening in the fields. So little had Goethe of this prejudice against fresh air, that when he began the rebuilding of his Gartenhaus, instead of sleeping at an hotel or at the house of a friend, he lived there through all the building period, and we find him writing. 'At last I have a window once more, and can make a fire.' On the 3d of May he writes, 'Good morning: here * Biedermann: Deutschland's Politische Materielle und Sociale Zustände, i. p. 343. + Quoted by Mrs. Austin: Germany from 1760 to 1814, p. 85. is asparagus. How were you yesterday? Philip baked me a cake; and thereupon, wrapped up in my blue cloak, · I laid myself on a dry corner of the terrace and slept amid thunder, lightning and rain, so gloriously that my bed was afterwards quite disagreeable.' On the 19th he writes,Thanks for the breakfast. I send you something in return. Last night I slept on the terrace, wrapped in my blue cloak, awoke three times, at 12, 2 and 4, and each time there was a new splendor in the heavens.' There are other traces of this tendency to bivouac, but these will suffice. He bathed not only in the morning sunlight, but also when the moonlight shimmered on the Ilm. Always in the free air seeking vigor "Tauche mich in die Sonne früh Bad' ab im Monde des Tages Müh." The Duke shared this love of bathing, which December's cold could not arrest. It was here Goethe learned to swim by the aid of 'corks' (which so often served him as an illustration), and no inclemency of the weather could keep him out of the water. The fascination of water luring into its treacherous depths, is wonderfully expressed by him in that ballad, which every one knows, and almost every one tries to translate. I have tried my hand in this version: THE FISHERMAN. The water rushed, the water swelled : A fisherman sat by, And gazed upon his dancing float With tranquil-dreaming eye. And as he sits, and as he looks, A maid, all bright with water-drops, She sang to him, she spake to him: My fish why dost thou snare Into the killing air? Couldst see how happy fishes live Under the stream so clear, 'Bathe not the lovely sun and moon And with wave-breathing faces rise So beautiful and blue? Lures not thine image, mirrored in The fresh eternal dew?' The water rushed, the water swelled, A thrill went through his yearning heart She spake to him, she sang to him : Resistless was her strain ; Half drew him in, half lured him in ; He ne'er was seen again. There is an anecdote which must find a place here. One night, while the moon was calmly shining on our poetical bather, a peasant, returning home, was in the act of climbing over the bars of the floating bridge; Goethe espied him, and moved by that spirit of devilry which so often startled Weimar, he gave utterance to wild sepulchral tones, raised himself half out of water, ducked under, and reappeared howling, to the horror of the aghast peasant, who, hearing such sounds issue from a figure with long floating hair, fled as if a legion of devils were at hand. To this day there remains an ineradicable belief in the existence of the water-sprite who howls among the waters of the Ilm. CHAPTER VI. PRIVATE THEATRICALS. 'LET my present life,' writes Goethe to Lavater, January, 1777, continue as long as it will, at any rate I have heartily enjoyed a genuine experience of the variegated throng and press of the world- Sorrow, Hope, Love, Work, Wants, Adventure, Ennui, Impatience, Folly, Joy, the Expected and the Unknown, the Superficial and the Profound just as the dice threw with fêtes, dances, sledgings adorned in silk and spangles a marvellous ménage! And withal, dear brother, God be praised, in myself and in my real aims in life, I am quite happy.' 6 'Goethe plays indeed a high game at Weimar,' writes Merck, but lives at Court after his own fashion. The Duke is an excellent man, let them say what they will, and in Goethe's company will become still more so. What you hear is Court scandal and lies. It is true the intimacy between master and servant is very great, but what harm is there in that? would be thought quite right. Were Goethe a nobleman it of everything, and all are contented with him, because he serves many and injures no one. Who can withstand the disinterestedness of this man?' He had begun to make his presence felt in the serious department of affairs; not only in educating the Duke who had chosen him as his friend, but also in practical |