Translations from the German · Thomas Carlyle
ELEVENTH LETTER-BOX.
_Spring; Investiture; and Childbirth._ I have just risen from a singular dream; but the foregoing Box makes it natural. I dreamed that all was verdant, all full of odours; and I was looking up at a steeple-ball glittering in the sun, from my station in the window of a little white garden-house, my eyelids full of flower-pollen, my shoulders full of thin cherry-blossoms, and my ears full of humming from the neighbouring bee-hives. Then, methought, advancing slowly through the beds, came the Hukelum Parson, and stept into the garden-house, and solemnly said to me: "Honoured Sir, my wife has just brought me a little boy; and I make bold to solicit _your Honour_ to do the holy office for the same, when it shall be received into the bosom of the church." I naturally started up, and there was--Parson Fixlein standing bodily at my bedside, and requesting me to be godfather: for Thiennette had given him a son last night about one o'clock. The confinement had been as light and happy as could be conceived; for this reason, that the father had, some months before, been careful to provide one of those _Klappersteins_, as we call them, which are found in the aerie of the eagle, and therewith to alleviate the travail: for this stone performs, in its way, all the service which the bonnet of that old Minorite monk in Naples, of whom Gorani informs us, could accomplish for people in such circumstances, who put it on....
But to proceed! Every spring--and especially in such a spring--I imitate on foot our birds of passage; and travel off the hypochondriacal sediment of winter: but I do not think I should have seen even the steeple-ball of Hukelum, which is to be set up one of these days, to say nothing of the Parson's family, had not I happened to be visiting the Flachsenfingen Superintendent and Consistorialrath. From him I got acquainted with Fixlein's history (every Candidatus must deliver an account of his life to the Consistorium), and with his still madder petition for a steeple-ball. I observed, with pleasure, how gaily the cob was diving and swashing about in his duck-pool and milk-bath of life; and forthwith determined on a journey to his shore. It is singular, that is to say, manlike, that when we have for years kept prizing and describing some original person or original book, yet the moment we see such, they anger us: we would have them fit us and delight us in all points, as if any originality could do this but our own. It was Saturday the third of May, when I, with the Superintendent, the _Senior Capituli_, and some temporal Raths, mounted and rolled off, and in two carriages were driven to the Parson's door. The matter was, he was not yet--_invested_, and tomorrow this was to be done. I little thought, while we whirled by the white espalier of the Castle-garden, that there I was to write another book.
I still see the Parson, in his peruke-minever and head-case, come springing to the coach-door and lead us out; so smiling--so courteous--so vain of the disloaded freight, and so attentive to it. He looked as if in the journey of life he had never once put on the _travelling-gauze_ of Sorrow: Thiennette again seemed never to have thrown hers back. How neat was everything in the house, how dainty, decorated and polished! And yet so quiet, without the cursed alarm-ringing of servants' bells, and without the bass-drum tumult of stair-pedaling. Whilst the gentlemen, my road-companions, were sitting in state in the upper room, I flitted, as my way is, like a smell, over the whole house, and my path led me through the sitting-room over the kitchen, and at last into the churchyard beside the house. Good Saturday! I will paint thy hours as I may, with the black asphaltos of ink, on the tablets of other souls! In the sitting-room, I lifted from the desk a volume gilt on the back and edges, and bearing this title: "_Holy Sayings, by Fixlein. First Collection._" And as I looked to see where it had been printed, the Holy Collection turned out to be in writing. I handled the quills, and dipped into the negro-black of the ink, and I found that all was right and good: with your fluttering gentlemen of letters, who hold only a department of the foreign, and none of the home affairs, nothing (except some other things about them) can be worse than their ink and pens. I also found a little copperplate, to which I shall in due time return.
In the kitchen, a place not more essential for the writing of an English novel, than for the acting of a German one, I could plant myself beside Thiennette, and help her to blow the fire, and look at once into her face and her burning coals. Though she was in wedlock, a state in which white roses on the cheeks are changed for red ones, and young women are similar to a similitude given in my Note;[57]--and although the blazing wood threw a false rouge over her, I guessed how pale she must have been; and my sympathy in her paleness rose still higher at the thought of the burden which Fate had now not so much taken from her, as laid in her arms and nearer to her heart. In truth, a man must never have reflected on the Creation-moment, when the Universe first rose from the bosom of an Eternity, if he does not view with philosophic reverence a woman, whose thread of life a secret all-wondrous Hand is spinning to a second thread, and who veils within her the transition from Nothingness to Existence, from Eternity to Time;--but still less can a man have any heart of flesh, if his soul, in presence of a woman, who, to an unknown unseen being, is sacrificing more than we will sacrifice when it is seen and known, namely, her nights, her joys, often her life, does not bow lower, and with deeper emotion, than in presence of a whole nun-orchestra on their Sahara-desert;--and worse than either is the man for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable.
I cruised about, so long as the moon-crescent glimmered in the sky, over the churchyard; and softened my fantasies, which are at any rate too prone to paint with the brown of crumbling mummies, not only by the red of twilight, but also by reflecting how easily our eyes and our hearts can become reconciled even to the ruins of Death; a reflection which the Schoolmaster, whistling as he arranged the charnel-house for the morrow, and the Parson's maid singing, as she reaped away the grass from the graves, readily enough suggested to me. And why should not this habituation to all forms of Fate in the other world, also, be a gift reserved for us in our nature by the bounty of our great Preserver?--I perused the grave-stones; and I think even now that Superstition[58] is right in connecting with the reading of such things a loss of _memory_; at all events, one does _forget_ a thousand things belonging to this world.... [58] This Christian superstition is not only a Rabbinical, but also a Roman one. _Cicero de Senectute_.
The Investiture on Sunday (whose Gospel, of the good shepherd, suited well with the ceremony) I must dispatch in few words; because nothing truly sublime can bear to be treated of in many. However, I shall impart the most memorable circumstances, when I say that there was--drinking (in the Parsonage),--music-making (in the Choir),--reading (of the Presentation by the Senior, and of the Ratification-rescript by the lay Rath),--and preaching, by the Consistorialrath, who took the soul-curer by the hand, and presented, made over and guaranteed him to the congregation, and them to him. Fixlein felt that he was departing as a high-priest from the church, which he had entered as a country parson; and all day he had not once the heart to ban. When a man is treated with solemnity, he looks upon himself as a higher nature, and goes through his solemn feasts devoutly. This indenturing, this monastic profession, our Head-Rabbis and Lodge-masters (our Superintendents) have usually a taste for putting off till once the pastor has been some years ministering among the people, to whom they hereby present him; as the early Christians frequently postponed their consecration and investiture to Christianity, their baptism namely, till the day when they died: nay, I do not even think this clerical Investiture would lose much of its usefulness, if it and the declaring-vacant of the office were reserved for the same day; the rather as this usefulness consists entirely in two items; what the Superintendent and his Raths can eat, and what they can pocket.
Not till towards evening did the Parson and I get acquainted. The Investiture officials, and elevation pulley-men, had, throughout the whole evening, been very violently--breathing. I mean thus: as these gentlemen could not but be aware, by the most ancient theories and the latest experiments, that air was nothing else than a sort of rarefied and exploded water, it became easy for them to infer that, conversely, water was nothing else than a denser sort of air. Wine-drinking, therefore, is nothing else but the breathing of an air pressed together into proper spissitude, and sprinkled over with a few perfumes. Now, in our days, by clerical persons too much (fluid) breath can never be inhaled through the mouth; seeing the dignity of their station excludes them from that breathing through the _smaller_ pores, which Abernethy so highly recommends under the name of _air-bath_: and can the Gullet in their case be aught else than door-neighbour to the Windpipe, the _consonant_ and fellow-shoot of the Windpipe?--I am running astray: I meant to signify, that I this evening had adopted the same opinion; only that I used this air or ether, not like the rest for loud laughter, but for the more quiet contemplation of life in general.
I even shot forth at my gossip certain speeches, which betrayed devoutness: these he at first took for jests, being aware that I was from Court, and of quality. But the concave mirror of the wine-mist at length suspended the images of my soul, enlarged and embodied like spiritual shapes, in the air before me.--Life shaded itself off to my eyes like a hasty summer night, which we little fire-flies shoot across with transient gleam;--I said to him that man must turn himself like the leaves of the great mallow, at the different day-seasons of his life, now to the rising sun, now to the setting, now to the night, towards the Earth and its graves;--I said, the omnipotence of Goodness was driving us and the centuries of the world towards the gates of the City of God, as, according to Euler, the resistance of the _Ether_ leads the circling Earth towards the Sun, &c. &c.
On the strength of these entremets, he considered me the first theologian of his age; and had he been obliged to go to war, would previously have taken my advice on the matter, as belligerent powers were wont of old from the theologians of the Reformation. I hide not from myself, however, that what preachers call vanity of the world, is something altogether different from what philosophy so calls. When I, moreover, signified to him that I was not ashamed to be an Author; but had a turn for working up this and the other biography; and that I had got a sight of his _Life_ in the hands of the Superintendent; and might be in case to prepare a printed one therefrom, if so were he would assist me with here and there a tint of flesh-colour,--then was my silk, which, alas! not only isolates one from electric fire, but also from a kindlier sort of it, the only grate which rose between his arms and me; for, like the most part of poor country parsons, it was not in his power to forget the rank of any man, or to vivify his own on a higher one. He said: "He would acknowledge it with veneration, if I should mention him in print; but he was much afraid his life was too common and too poor for a biography." Nevertheless, he opened me the drawer of his Letter-boxes; and said, perhaps, he had hereby been paving the way for me.
The main point, however, was, he hoped that his _Errata_, his _Exercitationes_, and his _Letters on the Robber-Castle_, if I should previously send forth a Life of the Author, might be better received; and that it would be much the same as if I accompanied them with a Preface. In short, when on Monday the other dignitaries with their nimbus of splendour had dissipated, I alone, like a precipitate, abode with him; and am still abiding, that is, from the fifth of May (the Public should take the Almanac of 1794, and keep it open beside them) to the fifteenth: today is Thursday, tomorrow is the sixteenth and Friday, when comes the Spinat-Kirmes, or Spinage-Wake, as they call it, and the uplifting of the steeple-ball, which I just purposed to await before I went. Now, however, I do not go so soon; for on Sunday I have to assist at the baptismal ceremony, as baptismal agent for my little future godson. Whoever pays attention to me, and keeps the Almanac open, may readily guess why the christening is put off till Sunday: for it is that memorable Cantata-Sunday, which once, for its mad narcotic hemlock-virtues, was of importance in our History; but is now so only for the fair betrothment, which after two years we mean to celebrate with a baptism.
Truly it is not in my power--for want of colours and presses--to paint or print upon my paper the soft balmy flower-garland of a fortnight which has here wound itself about my sickly life; but with a single day I shall attempt it. Man, I know well, cannot prognosticate either his joys or his sorrows, still less repeat them, either in living or writing. The black hour of coffee has gold in its mouth for us and honey; here, in the morning coolness, we are all gathered; we maintain popular conversation, that so the parsoness and the gardeneress may be able to take share in it. The morning-service in the church, where often the whole people[59] are sitting and singing, divides us. While the bell is sounding, I march with my writing-gear into the singing Castle-garden; and seat myself in the fresh acacia-grove, at the dewy two-legged table. Fixlein's Letter-boxes I keep by me in my pocket; and I have only to look and abstract from his what can be of use in my own.--Strange enough! so easily do we forget a thing in describing it, I really did not recollect for a moment that I am now sitting at the very grove-table, of which I speak, and writing all this.-- [59] For according to the Jurists, fifteen persons make a people.
My gossip in the mean time is also labouring for the world. His study is a sort of sacristy, and his printing-press a pulpit, wherefrom he preaches to all men; for an Author is the Town-chaplain of the Universe. A man, who is making a Book, will scarcely hang himself; all rich Lords'-sons, therefore, should labour for the press; for, in that case, when you awake too early in bed, you have always a _plan_, an aim, and therefore a cause before you why you should get out of it. Better off too is the author who collects rather than invents,--for the latter with its eating fire calcines the heart: I praise the Antiquary, the Heraldist, Notemaker, Compiler; I esteem the _Title-perch_ (a fish called _Perca-Diagramma_, because of the letters on its scales), and the _Printer_ (a chafer, called _Scarabaeus Typographus_, which eats letters in the bark of fir),--neither of them needs any greater or fairer arena in the world than a piece of rag-paper, or any other laying-apparatus than a pointed pencil, wherewith to lay his four-and-twenty letter-eggs.--In regard to the _catalogue raisonne_, which my gossip is now drawing up of German _Errata_, I have several times suggested to him, "that it were good if he extended his researches in one respect, and revised the rule, by which it has been computed, that _e. g._ for a hundredweight of pica black-letter, four hundred and fifty semicolons, three hundred periods, &c. are required; and to recount, and see whether in Political writings and Dedications the fifty notes of admiration for a hundredweight of pica black-letter were not far too small an allowance, and if so, what the real quantity was?"
Several days he wrote nothing; but wrapped himself in the slough of his parson's-cloak; and so in his canonicals, beside the Schoolmaster, put the few A-b-c shooters, which were not, like forest-shooters, absent on furlough by reason of the spring,--through their platoon firing in the Hornbook. He never did more than his duty, but also never less. It brought a soft benignant warmth over his heart, to think that he, who had once ducked under a School-inspectorship, was now one himself. About ten o'clock, we meet from our different museums, and examine the village, especially the Biographical furniture and holy places, which I chance that morning to have had under my pen or pantagraph; because I look at them with more interest _after_ my description than _before_ it. Next comes dinner.-- After the concluding grace, which is too long, we both of us set to entering the charitable subsidies, and religious donations, which our parishioners have remitted to the sinking or rather rising fund of the church-box for the purchase of the new steeple-globe, into two ledgers: the one of these, with the names of the subscribers, or (in case they have subscribed for their children) with their children's names also, is to be inurned in a leaden capsule, and preserved in the steeple-ball; the other will remain below among the parish Registers. You cannot fancy what contributions the ambition of getting into the Ball brings us in; I declare, several peasants who had given and well once already, contributed again when they had baptisms: must not little Hans be in the Ball too?
After this book-keeping by double-entry, my gossip took to engraving on copper. He had been so happy as to elicit the discovery, that from a certain stroke resembling an inverted Latin S, the capital letters of our German Chancery-hand, beautiful and intertwisted as you see them stand in Law-deeds and Letters-of-nobility, may every one of them be composed and spun out. "Before you can count sixty," said he to me, "I take my fundamental-stroke and make you any letter out of it." I merely inverted this fundamental-stroke, that is, gave him a German S, and counted sixty till he had it done. This line of beauty, when once it has been twisted and flourished into all the capitals, he purposes by copperplates which he is himself engraving, to make more common for the use of Chanceries; and I may take upon me to give the Russian, the Prussian, and a few other smaller Courts, hopes of proof impressions from his hand: to under-secretaries they are indispensable. Now comes evening; and it is time for us both, here forking about with our fruit-hooks on the literary Tree of Knowledge, at the risk of our necks, to clamber down again into the meadow-flowers and pasturages of rural joy. We wait, however, till the busy Thiennette, whom we are now to receive into our communion, has no more walks to take but the one between us. Then slowly we stept along (the sick lady was weak) through the office-houses; that is to say, through stalls and their population, and past a horrid lake of ducks, and past a little milk-pond of carps, to both of which colonies, I and the rest, like princes, gave bread, seeing we had it in view on the Sunday after the christening, to--take them for bread ourselves.
The sky is still growing kindlier and redder, the swallows and the blossom-trees louder, the house-shadows broader, and men more happy. The clustering blossoms of the acacia-grove hang down over our cold collation; and the ham is not stuck (which always vexes me) with flowers, but beshaded with them from a distance.... And now the deeper evening and the nightingale conspire to soften me; and I soften in my turn the mild beings round me; especially the pale Thiennette, to whom, or to whose heart, after the apoplectic crushings of a downpressed youth, the most violent pulses of joy are heavier than the movements of pensive sadness. And thus beautifully runs our pure transparent life along, under the blooming curtains of May; and in our modest pleasures we look with timidity neither behind us nor before; as people who are lifting treasure gaze not round at the road they came, or the road they are going. So pass our days. Today, however, it was different: by this time, usually, the evening meal is over; and the Shock has got the osseous preparation of our supper between his jaws; but tonight I am still sitting here alone in the garden, writing the Eleventh Letter-Box, and peeping out every instant over the meadows, to see if my gossip is not coming.
For he is gone to town, to bring a whole magazine of spiceries: his coat-pockets are wide. Nay, it is certain enough that oftentimes he brings home with him, simply in his coat-pocket, considerable flesh-tithes from his Guardian, at whose house he alights; though truly intercourse with the polished world and city, and the refinement of manners thence arising,--for he calls on the bookseller, on school-colleagues, and several respectable shopkeepers,--does, much more than flesh-fetching, form the object of these journeys to the city. This morning he appointed me regent head of the house, and delivered me the _fasces_ and _curule chair_. I sat the whole day beside the young pale mother; and could not but think, simply because the husband had left me there as his representative, that I liked the fair soul better. She had to take dark colours, and paint out for me the winter landscape and ice region of her sorrow-wasted youth; but often, contrary to my intention, by some simple elegiac word, I made her still eye wet; for the too full heart, which had been crushed with other than sentimental woes, overflowed at the smallest pressure. A hundred times in the recital I was on the point of saying: "O yes, it was with winter that your life began, and the course of it has resembled winter!"--Windless, cloudless day! Three more words about thee, the world will still not take amiss from me!
I advanced nearer and nearer to the heart-central-fire of the women; and at last they mildly broke forth in censure of the Parson; the best wives will complain of their husbands to a stranger, without in the smallest liking them the less on that account. The mother and the wife, during dinner, accused him of buying lots at every book-auction; and, in truth, in such places, he does strive and bid not so much for good or for bad books--or old ones--or new ones--or such as he likes to read--or any sort of favourite books--but simply for books. The mother blamed especially his squandering so much on copperplates; yet some hours after, when the Schultheis, or Mayor, who wrote a beautiful hand, came in to subscribe for the steeple-ball, she pointed out to him how finely her son could engrave, and said that it was well worth while to spend a groschen or two on such capitals as these. They then handed me,--for when once women are in the way of a full open-hearted effusion, they like (only you must not turn the stop-cock of inquiry) to pour out the whole,--a ring-case, in which he kept a Chamberlain's key that he had found, and asked me if I knew who had lost it. Who could know such a thing, when there are almost more Chamberlains than picklocks among us?--
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.