Studies in Mediæval Life and Literature

by Edward T. McLaughlin

THE MEMOIRS OF AN OLD GERMAN GALLANT.

Any one who has read Freytag's excellent studies of German social life will recall a curious illustration in his first volume of the lawless violence of thirteenth-century knighthood, in the imprisonment of Ulrich von Liechtenstein by his liegeman Pilgerin. The account not only proves the author's point, but it goes on to suggest a good deal besides. For the victim's unsophisticated and plaintive manner under his misfortune, the fashion in which he relates what he suffered, his allusions to his own life and character, and most of all to the consolations of his love, are all stimulating to one's curiosity about the writer. When we go to the mediæval shelves of a German library we find this curiosity satisfied in a long poem by the unfortunate Ulrich, and immediately we are in that chivalric age which wins most of its romantic lustre from its devotion to womanhood.

If our guesses at a truth beneath the stories of widowed ladies rescued from bandits of the forest and recreant knights, or of lovely ladies rescued from worse than death by the capture of castles through the prowess of generous champions—stories which every one knows and incredulously likes—send us to a study of the times when they were composed, we find that the age, when stripped of romantic embellishments, in its actual life felt a sentiment for women unequalled by earlier times. We wonder what caused it. Can it have been the increase in the culture of the Virgin, that beautiful and beneficent phase of mediæval religion? In its larger development, this appears rather the parallel expression of some common influence, these adorations of the divine and human conceptions of woman seeming to be mutually impulsive, and drawn alike from some undetermined tendency of social and spiritual refinement. Or was it the Crusades? For a German essayist has suggested that we may count this increase of sentimentalism among their many influences upon western Europe; the beauty of the women and the more luxurious habits of the East, its more effeminate emotionalism, finding impressionable subjects in the hearts of those stranger knights lying, wakeful for home, beneath southern stars. Perhaps the conjecture is equally reasonable that the influence came from French poets who, as they travelled with the early Christian armies, caught such suggestions from snatches of oriental poetry. Yet it seems more natural to regard the growth of knightly sentiment toward ladies as the more delicate manifestation of a spontaneous increase of social personality, which was stimulated by that general motion in mind and heart which we observe in the progress of chivalric and crusadal life, and based, as we must not forget, upon that Teutonic character, whose ancient deference to woman is recorded by Tacitus side by side with his account of knighting youthful soldiers with spear and shield.

But, to waive the question of its origin, we find its main expression in the old society, in that protracted and conventional wooing which, we should remember, was not usually directed toward marriage. As gentlemen grew hyperbolical and fantastic in their professions of regard and devotion, feminine coquettishness and love of admiration naturally became fastidious and exacting. Ladies grew arbitrary and capricious, and began to demand substantial proofs of their lovers' concern for them. It became a trait of elegant culture for a lady to pose as inexorable, while still retaining her control over the wooer; while he, complaisant to the sentimental fashion, sighed in a cheerful melancholy, obeyed, adored, and waited. The mistress set tasks, often no trifles, which the loyal subject must perform—hard feats of arms, long and perilous journeys, abnegations of pride or comfort. When these were accomplished, he sometimes returned to receive a new test, involving a continued delay of his reward. These mediæval ladies were as pitiless as the mystic spiritual dictatress of Browning's Numpholeptos, to their devotees:

"Seeking love
At end of toil, and finding calm above
Their passion, the old statuesque regard."

In the fourteenth century something of this romantic tyranny survived. We find Chaucer, for instance, in one of his early poems, mentioning in praise of his heroine that she did not impose dangerous expeditions to distant countries, or extravagant exploits upon her lover:

"And saye, 'Sir, be now ryght ware
That I may of you here seyn
Worshippe, or that ye come agayn.'"

Extended probations, courtships long enough to satisfy Ruskin, were an established convention. Wolfram von Eschenbach, in the seventh book of Parzival, represents Obie as indignantly telling her royal lover, who has asked her to marry him after what seems to him a reasonable love-making, that if he had spent his days for five years, in hard service, under full armor, with distinction, and she had then said "Yes" to his desire, she would be yielding too soon.

Jane Austen, in the novel to which Trollope gave the palm of English fiction before Henry Esmond, has expressed in Mr. Collins's address to Elizabeth exactly the notion of the significance in a rejection, held by well-bred gentlemen six centuries earlier:

"'I am not now to learn,' replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave of the hand, 'that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favor; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second or even a third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.'"

But these exercises, as was suggested, were not usually directed toward the altar. A characteristic of the age is the relation, less or more sentimental, between a married knight and a lady not his wife; a relation rather expected of the former, and countenanced in the latter. This peculiar dual system of domestic and knightly love may be ascribed to various influences, such as the prosaic influence of early and dowered marriages, subject to parental arrangement, or the feudal life which for considerable periods kept gentlemen away from their own homes in residence in the larger castles, or the idleness of such a society, or again the popularity of love-lyrics and romance-recitals, which would tend to sentimentalize their audience. At any rate, it came to be a fashionable idea that the highest love was independent of marriage, and the most poetically inclined,—the troubadours and the minnesingers—were famous for their impassioned and submissive service of married ladies. It is from these poets' accounts of their own love-trials that we learn most about this phase of mediævalism, and in their contented sufferings we see once more that the joy of all romantic love is in the lover.

Although there is danger of generalizing too widely from literary indications, we may believe that chivalric society was appreciably marked by formal amatory disciplines. Was it all for nothing these ceremonial disciplines? Can it be that these Don Quixote prototypes, who trifled away their frivolous days in lady-worship so trivial, did anything to help the Prince to take Cinderella from the ashes? The ashes, then the fairy coach; first the drudge, then the sentimental plaything, then at last the friend. In those days, as perhaps always, the lover objectified himself in his love, to the extent of finding in her his own ideal feminine. The very fact that this self, which he probably called into conscious life only as he created it in another, represented the most refined side of his thought, as is shown in the old poets' recurrent epithets of "constant, chaste, good," etc., made the devotion a refining and dignifying experience, especially for the days when men and women had less in common than they have now. These lady-services, where the lover often was denied intimacy for a considerable time, kept up the illusion which the devotee himself may have half felt was sentimental and artificial. We may reply to little Peterkin that some good did come of it at last, even for the more commonplace of these servants of abstract womanhood. Even if the "visionary gleam" left no permanent illumination, the men were better for seeing it brightening through their darkness now and then. At its best, lady-loving gave the mediæval knights consideration for women and a measure of gentleness. If it only stimulated some to fight hard, they would have fought anyway, and the motive was a shade less brutal than a directly selfish one.

But such an eccentric social idea, especially when the poetic exhilaration of its earlier hours has passed by, was sure to bring out extravagant sentimentalists, whose romantic sensibility with no check from practical judgment, ran wild steeplechases of nonsense. Such, for example, was the Provençal poet, Peter Vidal, one of the most famous troubadours, who carried his romantic infatuations so far that he became crack-brained. The name of one of his ladies was Lupa, Mistress Wolf; and if he had contented himself with assuming a wolfish device for his coat-of-arms, as he did, and having himself called Mr. Wolf, he would have done nothing very peculiar, for that age. But it occurred to him that it would be a graceful symbol to wear a wolf's skin, and after he had procured one which quite covered him, he got down on all-fours, and trotted through the street; and all went charmingly until one day, while he was exhibiting himself in this fashion about his lady's estate, a pack of dogs was deceived by the metaphor, and the allegorical lover was badly bitten before rescue arrived.

But the most detailed example of mediæval gallantry is that presented in the work already mentioned, the autobiography of the thirteenth-century minnesinger, Ulrich von Liechtenstein. The poem is a prolix narrative of his amatory religion, extending through some sixteen thousand lines, and containing a large number of lyrics composed in the wooing of two ladies to whom he consecrated his literary and romantic life. We utterly tire of the commonplaces in which he praises them. We reflect that not a single specific incident is ever introduced to illustrate the inner character of either; the descriptions have no color, except in the heartlessness of the first beloved, whose virtue and humor alike Ulrich apparently misses. Yet this presumably undesigned caricature of the more poetic twelfth-century chivalric love gives important suggestions of the times, and Ulrich himself is a knight and a poet worth knowing.

The impression that his romance makes upon a modern reader is something like that of a beetle hovering above a lily. He played zany to the gentlemen of an early generation who had amused their leisurely lives by courtly lady-service; as he emulated their feats of sentimental gallantry, he stumbled and fell. The odd thing is that after each fall he called for his tables: "Meet it is I set it down." Undoubtedly many marvelled and admired, as they looked on: others marvelled and laughed. Perhaps he mistook the laughter for applause. It may be that the sound was lost in the applause of his own simple-minded complacency. But yet, though this gallant was born to a foolish horoscope, his life gained a good fortune denied multitudes who lived sensibly,—he saw the stars of his destiny, and he loved them. Their combination caused a silly career, yet individually they were admirable,—simplicity of nature, theoretical reverence for womanhood, patient love, regard for stately old usages. If defective eyesight makes a man fancy a burdock a rosebush, and if he tends and cherishes the absurd idealization,—at least, the man has a sentiment for roses.

The earliest fact which Ulrich has confided to us, is that in his childhood he used to ride about on sticks, in imitation of the knights, and while in that simple age he noticed that the poetry which people read, and the conversation of wise men which he overheard, kept declaring that no one could become a worthy man without serving unwaveringly good ladies, and that "no one was right happy unless he loved as dearly as his own life some one whose virtue made her fitly called a woman." Whereupon, he thought in his simplicity that since pure sweet women so ennoble men's lives, he, whatever happened, would always serve ladies. In such thoughts he grew up until his twelfth year, when he began a four or five years' term as page to a lady who was good, chaste, and gentle, complete in virtues, beautiful, and of high rank. She was destined to give Ulrich much trouble, and the lover's sweet solicitude began at once, as he started in his teens. For his constant attention found nothing in her but what was good and charming, and he feared—this boy of thirteen—that she might not care for him. His ups and downs of fortune are reported for us in the popular mediæval form (used for example by Map, and one as late as by Villon), of a dialogue between his heart and his body. Heart is hopeful, but Body has the better wit. Yet even if she is too high-born to notice him, he will always serve her late and early, and in the interim between his childish page-waiting, and the bold knighthood to be his when he grows up, he gathers pretty summer flowers, and carries them to her. When she took them in her white hand, he was happy.

As the time came near for him to leave her household, the youth grew emotional: when at table water was poured over those lovely white hands, he transformed her finger-glass into a tumbler. A German dry-as-dust has laughed at Ulrich for this.

But the tender little Teutonic blossom could unfold its youth no longer in the sunshine of its lady-desire. The stern father appeared, and transferred the lover, his "grief showing well the power of love," to the service of an Austrian Margrave. "My body departed, but my heart remained"; and Ulrich pauses for a moment to point out the strangeness of the paradox. "Whenever I rode or walked, my heart never left her; it saw her at all times, night and day."

His new master was a knightly gentleman, professedly a lady-servant, and the lessons that Ulrich had caught as a child from the conversation in his father's hall were reinforced by this Margrave Henry. He was taught the best style of riding, the refinements of address to ladies, and poetical composition, and assured that whoever would live worthily must be a lady's true subject. "It adorns a youth—sweet speech to women.... To succeed well with them, have sweet words with true deeds."

After four years of such instruction, his father's death called him home to inherit his property, and he spent the three years that followed by tourneying in the noviciate of knighthood. At Vienna, in 1222, during the great festival in celebration of the marriage of Leopold's daughter, where five thousand knights were present, and tourneying and other entertainments of chivalry were mingled with much dancing, Ulrich made one of the two hundred and fifty squires who received their spurs. But the occasion was otherwise memorable to him, for here he saw his lady again. She recognized him, and told one of his friends of her pleasure at seeing become a knight one who had been her page when a little fellow. The mere simple foolish thought that she would perhaps have him for her own knight, as he tells us, was sweet and good, and put him in high spirits. Indeed this was all the contentment which the blushing young knight desired:

"Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?"

Ulrich did not wake from his to do anything so practical as to speak face to face with her, but gaily rode off to a summer of adventure in twelve tournaments, wherein he invariably fared well, thanks to his devotion.

German sentiment has always shown a butterfly's sensibility to winter and rough weather, and with the last of autumn, Ulrich's spirit grows heavy. He longs to see his lady, he knows that now he would speak to her. There are no tourneys to distract him, and in care of heart he rose, lay down, sat, and walked. As it chanced, a cousin of his knew this only lovely one, and the taxing office of a lover's confidante fell heavily upon her, and remained for some years. After beating about the bush with her for a while, he confessed the truth, only to receive point-blank advice to give up so hopeless an aspiration. Never! on the contrary she must help him in his perseverance by visiting the lady and presenting her with a copy of the verses which Ulrich has been composing for her as a confession of his love. His cousin consented, but her mission resulted in a scornful rejection of the suit, softened by compliments upon the poem. He was advised to abandon his quest, for the lady seriously objected to his mouth. "Nothing but grim death can drive me from her; I will serve her all my life," he exclaimed. But he felt that the criticism upon his mouth was a fair one, and he determined to pay attention to it.

Poor Ulrich, with so much sentiment, yet with such physical deficiencies; with such correct perception of the use of lips, yet having such uninviting ones of his own. In one of his songs he tells us:

When a lady on her lover
Looks and smiles, and for a kiss
Shapes her lips, he can discover
Never joy so great; his bliss
Transcends measure:
O'er all pleasures is his pleasure.

But until he was quite in his twenties, his experience of this blessedness must have been of those

"By hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others";

for Ulrich confesses to the deformity of what he calls three lips; that is, a bad hare-lip.

But this protagonist of mediæval Quixotism has energy and nerve, as well as sentiment. In spite of his cousin's dissuasions (this plain-minded lady tells him to take the body God has given him, instead of arrogantly improving upon his creation), Ulrich rides off to find the best surgeon in the country, and submit to an operation. But the doctor decides that the time of year is unsuitable; he must wait until winter is past, keep his three lips until May.

At last spring comes and Ulrich returns to the doctor. Upon the way he meets a page of his lady's, to whom he confides the purpose of his journey, and whose presence he secures as a witness. Early one Monday morning the surgeon received his patient, laid out his instruments before him, and produced several straps. At sight of the latter, martial dignity recoiled, and Ulrich refused to allow himself to be bound. It was to no purpose that he was told of the danger involved in even a twitch; he said with spirit that he came of his own will, and if anything happened amiss he alone would be to blame. Whereupon he sat calmly upon a bench, and without a tremor allowed the surgeon to "cut his mouth above his teeth and farther up. He cut like a master, I endured like a man."

Ulrich describes the discomfort which he experienced during the healing of the wound, in details which give an unpleasant notion of the methods of mediæval surgery. As he was able to eat and drink scarcely anything, he wasted in flesh, and his only comfort was the thought of her for whom he had suffered. During the confinement, he composed another dancing song in her honor, which, after his recovery he entrusted to his cousin, who forwarded it with a letter of her own. Presently an answer came. The lady is to spend the next Monday night near by, in the course of a journey, and she will be very happy to see her friend's relative, and learn from himself how things are. Time changes the significance of letters, among other things. This lady-like note, which gave such a heart-leap to Ulrich's sentimental hope, interests scholars to-day as being the earliest prose letter in German.

On Tuesday morning, when Ulrich appeared at the chapel where the lady's chaplain was singing mass before her, she bowed without speaking. After the service she rode off, and Ulrich had found no chance to meet her. His cousin, however, told him that everything was favorable, and that the lady would allow him to ride with her that day. So he galloped off in gay spirits, and soon overtook the cavalcade. But alas for his self-possession; when he reaches her his head drops and he cannot find a single word. Another knight was riding with her. Ulrich's heart makes a speech to his body, reproaching it for cowardice; "If you go on without speaking to her now, she will never be good to you again." So he rides up to her and gets a sweet glance, but still he cannot speak. Heart nudges Body and whispers: "Speak now, speak now, speak now!" All through the day Body tries, he tries over and over, but he cannot. Alas, as a poet of his own day said:

"Mit gedanken wirt erworben niemer wîbes kint:
. . . . . . . . .
Des enkan sî wizzen niht."[5]

When they reach their lodging-place for the night, he wishes to assist the only one in dismounting, but she is not sufficiently flattered by his attentions to accept them; she says that he is sick and useless, and not strong enough to help her down. The attending gentlemen laugh merrily at that, and the ever sweet, constant, good, and so forth, as she slides from her horse, catches hold of Ulrich's hair, without any one's noticing it (however that can have been done), and pulls a lock out by the roots. "Take this for being afraid," she whispers; "I have been deceived by other accounts of you." Reproaching himself, and wishing God to take his life, he stood gawkily where she left him, absorbed in remorse for his awkwardness, until a knight admonished him to step aside and allow the ladies to go by to their rooms. Whereupon he rode off to his inn, and swore that he was ill.

As he tossed restlessly through the night, he talked with himself as usual, lamenting his birth, and assuring himself that should he live a thousand years he could never again be happy. "Not to speak one word to her! My worthlessness has lost my lady." But in the morning he rode up to her on the street. No silence this time: "Thy grace, gracious lady! Graciously be gracious to me. Thou art my joy's abiding place, the festival of my joys." Like many shy people, Ulrich talked fluently enough when he was once started, and he was only in the midst of his protestations when the lady interrupted him. "Hush, you are too young; ride on before me. Talking may hurt you, it never can help you. It would be amiss for others to hear what you are saying. Leave me in peace; you grow troublesome." Then she beckoned to another knight, and directed that she should never again be attended by less than two gentlemen.

It was in the book of lady-service that no repulse was a discouragement. "This morning," says the heroine in Bret Harte's parody of Jane Eyre, "this morning he flung his boot at me! Now I know he loves me." Ulrich rode off, thinking that he had met with good success in telling her a part of his love, before the interruption.

Another summer passed in tourneying, and during another winter he tried to amuse himself by making poetry for his lady. This time he sent her a more pretentious tribute, his first "Büchlein," a poem of some four hundred lines. Like most of its kind, it is formal, sentimentally prolix, and supplicatory, yet not without a certain pleasant interest. He begs her from the wealth of her loveliness to grant him some trifling favor which she never can miss:

What is worse the bloomy heath,
If a few flowers for the sake
Of a garland some one break?

He wishes it were himself that the messenger is about to deliver to her:

Little book, I fain would be,
When thou comest, changed to thee.
When her fair white hand receives
Thine assemblement of leaves,
And her glances, shyly playing,
Thee so happy are surveying.
And her red mouth comes close by,
I would steal a kiss, or die.

But the unsatisfactory manuscripts were returned at once. The lady told the bearer that she recognized the merit of the poetry, but she would have nothing to do with it. Like many poets of those days when monks and ladies constituted the educated classes, like his predecessor, the great master of high mediæval romance, Ulrich could neither read nor write, and for such delicate personal affairs as correspondence with his lady he depended upon his confidential clerk. This confidant of his passion was absent when the "Büchlein" came back, but the eager eyes of the poet looked through the pages over which they had evidently wandered before he dismissed his labors to their fate, repeating the lines from memory as he looked over the characters which should interpret his loving patience to the lady who would not let him speak it to her; and as he looked, he detected an addition to what he had sent, an appendix of ten lines. The slighted letter found a home in his bosom, and for ten days he awaited his secretary's return. His happy hopes—those ten days were so cheerful. But when the little response was at last interpreted, away with hopes and cheerfulness. To make plainness trebly plain, his cruel correspondent had copied out three times the sentiment: "Whoever desires what he should not, has refused himself."

Summer again, and the lover has diversion in the sports of chivalry. Any one interested in the details of mediæval tournaments will find in Ulrich's narrative a valuable and lively record of the tourney held at Friesach in 1224. His sense for material splendor is well shown by his full accounts of the costuming and tent equipments. The trustworthiness of the minor points may be questioned when we recall that the Frauendienst was composed more than thirty years later, but as a sketch of thirteenth-century chivalry, no doubt it is accurate. The heralds running hither and thither, and shouting as they arranged for the contests, with their cries to "good gallant knights to risk honor, goods, and life for true women"; the squires crowding the ways, loud noise of drums, flute-playing, blowing of horns, great trumpeting,—we have the old picture, made vivid in English by Chaucer in the Knight's Tale, and by Tennyson.

Ulrich rode in disguise, prompted by the sentimentalist's self-consciousness, always delighted in attracting attention and making himself talked of. According to his own account, he did good hearty tourneying, breaking ten spears with one antagonist, seven with another, five with a third, six with a fourth, in a single day. The meeting continued for ten days, and Ulrich grows prolix in his particulars, though he is modest enough about his own exploits, pronouncing himself neither the best nor the worst of the participants. The accidents of jousting, through which many were left at Friesach with broken limbs and other injuries, and the misfortunes which compelled others to have recourse to the Jews for loans, did not disturb the musical contestant. At the end he rode cheerfully off to his cousin with another song for the same inattentive ear. She promised to report, as she sent it, that no one in the great tourney had excelled him.

This lyric is the poem by which modern German students of their old literature have been best pleased, and we shall hardly dissent from Scherer's commendation. For it is both a typical minnesong, in its treatment of nature and love, and also fortunate in its union of sentiment, force, finish, and a ring of personal meaning. Omitting two of its stanzas, it goes as follows:

Now the little birds are singing
In the wood their darling lay;
In the meadow flowers are springing,
Confident in sunny May.
So my heart's bright spirits seem
Flowers her goodness doth embolden;
For in her my life grows golden,
As the poor man's in his dream.

Ah, her sweetness! Free from turning
Is her true and constant heart;
Till possession banish yearning,
Let my dear hope not depart.
Only this her grace I'll pray:
Wake me from my tears, and after
Sighs let comfort come and laughter;
Let my joy not slip away.

Blissful May, the whole world's anguish
Finds in thee its single weal;
Yet the pain whereof I languish,
Thou, nor all the world, canst heal.
What least joy may ye impart,
She so dear and good denied me?
In her comforts ever hide me,
All my life her loving heart.

But elegant and tender as in the original these verses are, their object returned a slighting answer, and added that the messenger must not be sent again. People would come to have suspicions. Ulrich made another set of verses, and went off to another joust. There one of his fingers was seriously wounded, and in his anxiety to save it he offered a surgeon a thousand pounds for a cure. The treatment was unsuccessful, and, after showing a good deal of temper, he went to a new surgeon, on the way beguiling himself of his pain by composing another poem upon the old theme. But a shock was at hand; a friend divulged to him his closely kept secret. "This lady [still unnamed to us] is the May-time of your heart." What though this friend believed that the lady cared for him? "My head sank down, my heart sighed, my mouth was dumb," in terror lest it might be through his fault that the object of his devotion had been discovered. For secrecy was the first of a chivalric lover's virtues, even about the object of his passion. Yet the pain was not without compensation, inasmuch as this gentleman, who declared that he had already kept the secret for two years and a half, volunteered to make another appeal. So off to the home of the inexorable went anew the story of unflinching devotion, the loss of a finger in a tournament for her glory not unmentioned. Ulrich's cause was pleaded with fervor, and in winning style. The lover was praised and prayed for. The song he had sent was even sung, instead of being formally delivered. A faithful and versatile legate was this proxy wooer, but it was all to no purpose. The lady declared that she would grow old in entire ignorance of any love but her husband's. She warned the messenger that Ulrich would find himself in trouble if he should persist in annoying her with such sentimental folly; she would not receive such attentions from the highest-born—not even from a king.

The news saddened, but did not cast down. "What if she refuses me?" cried Ulrich; "that shall not disturb me. If she hates me to-day, I will serve her so that later she shall like me. Were I to give up for a cold greeting, could a little word drive me away from my high hope, I should have no sound mind or manly mood. Whatever the true, sweet one does to me, for that I must be grateful." But now another summer was over, and he diverted himself by a pilgrimage to Rome. After Easter he returned, on his way composing this sweetly conceived and rather pretty lyric:

Ah, see, the touch of spring
Hath graced the wood with green;
And see, o'er the wide plain
Sweet flowers on every spray.
The birds in rapture sing;
Such joy was never seen:
Departed all their pain,
Comfort has come with May.

May comforts all that lives,
Except me, love-sick man;
Love-stricken is my heart,
This drives all joys away.
When life some pleasure gives,
In tears my heart will scan
My face, and tell its smart;
How then can pleasure stay?

Vowed constantly to woo
High love am I; that good
While I pursue, I see
No promise of success.
Pure lady, constant, true,
The crown of womanhood,
Think graciously of me,
Through thy high worthiness.

The knight passed his summer in Steierland under arms, and after pleasant experiences he sent his messenger again, only to have his suit repelled with the same coldness and decision as before. The report was even more discouraging, for the lady, who had been told of his losing a finger in her service, had now learned that he still had it; nor was she moved by the assurance that it was almost useless. The desire to keep the wounded member had led him to large expense of money and time, but he cared for it no longer. He set about the composition of another long elegy, which explains how his heart loves her, and weeps for her favor, as a poor and orphaned child weeps after comfort; so ardently he loves her, that he gladly sacrifices anything, and as a pledge of his constant fidelity, he sends her one of his fingers, lost in that service for which it was born.

After the poem was ready, he directed a goldsmith to make a fine case, in which he enclosed it. But he put in something more; he had the convalescent finger amputated, and sent it to the chiding critic as a proof that he had not lied in saying that he had lost it for her. Yet even this failed to please so unsympathetic a mistress. She said she wondered how any one could be so foolish as to cut off his finger: he would have been able to serve ladies better by keeping it. However, she would retain the token of his consideration, but a thousand years of his service would be lost on her. Ulrich was jubilant, for he was confident that with this memento, she would always think of him.[6]

Now a large idea visits this sanguine gentleman. Gone to Rome on a pilgrimage, that is what he will pretend; he rigs himself out with a wallet and staff which he obtains from a priest, and trudges off. But something more novel and magnificent is haunting his ingenious mind. It is to Venice that he goes—cautiously, so as not to be observed. Upon his arrival, he takes lodgings in an out-of-the-way inn, so that no one may hear of him. There he spends the winter, making a liberal expenditure for costumes for himself and a retinue. He dresses himself as Queen Venus, in complete feminine attire, even to the long braids of hair which figure so prominently in the descriptions of the ladies of that age.

When spring came, he sent a courier over the route that he intended to take on his journey homeward, with a circular-letter that contained a list of thirty places at which Lady Venus would appear, and joust with all contestants. A ring which makes beautiful and keeps true love, was offered to whoever might break a spear against her. If she should cast a knight down, he should become a loyal knight to women everywhere; if he were to overthrow her, she would give him her horse. But to no one would she show her face or hand.

Thirty days later he started on his disguised errantry. His retinue consisted of a marshal, a cook, a banner-bearer, two trumpeters, three boys to take charge of three sumpters, three squires for the three war-steeds, four finely dressed squires, each holding three spears, two maids—good-looking, he tells us,—and two fiddlers.

Who raised my spirits, fiddling loud
A marching tune, which made me proud.

Behind these he rode himself, dressed, like the entire cavalcade, entirely in white,—cape, hood, shirt, coat reaching to his feet, embroidered silk gloves, and those hair-braids hanging to his waist. "In my love-longing heart, I rejoiced thus to serve my lady."

The narrative of this "Venus-journey" is prolonged, detailed, and tedious, and only two or three episodes need be mentioned. At Treviso, a crowd of women are gathered about his lodging, when he comes out on his way to early mass, and he takes comfort in thinking how well-dressed he is. In the church, a countess suggests kissing him, conformably to the kiss of peace custom; the attraction is stronger than the desire for disguise, and he lifts his veil. She sees that Lady Venus is a man, but she kisses him nevertheless. "That raised my spirits," Ulrich confides to us, "for a lady's kiss is delightful"; and he goes on to say that "every one who ever kissed a lady's mouth knows that nothing is so sweet as the kiss of a noble lady. A high-born true woman who has a red mouth and a fair body, whenever she kisses a man he can judge of a lady's kiss, and of it he is ever glad. A lady's kiss is still better than good, and it fills a heart with joy." No wonder that many ladies collected at his inn, to bid so sentimental a knight God-speed. From their prayers he assures us that he gained good fortune, "for God cannot slight ladies' petitions," an imputation of gallantry to God, for which we find curious mediæval parallels.

Wherever the knight goes, numerous contestants are awaiting him, in this idle age when no one had anything to do. Some of these, also, assume disguises, one as a monk, another in female costume, his shield and spear æsthetic with flowers. But the travelling combatant is always the winner. At one point during the journey he steals off for a couple of days to a place which he has never mentioned previously: namely, to his home. The love-stricken lady-servant speaks with the most unaffected simplicity of the joy with which he rode away to see his wife:

"Who was just as dear to me as she could be.... The good woman received me just as a lady should receive her very dear husband. I had made her happy by my visit. My arrival had taken away her sadness. She was glad to see me, and I was glad to see her; with kisses the good woman received me. The true woman was glad to see me, and joyously I took my ease and pleasure there two days."

This appears tautological, but it also seems sincere.

But a wound was in store for his sensibility. One day he had gone to a retired place for a bath, and his attendant had gone to bring a suit. While thus left quite alone and unprotected, a lady sent by her servant a suit of female garments, a piece of tapestry, a coat, a girdle, a fine buckle, a garland, a ring with a ruby red as a lady's sweet mouth, and a letter. To receive such a gift from a lady not one's love was treason. He bade the page take the things away, but he would not; nay, he presently returned with two others, carrying fresh beautiful roses, which they strewed all about Ulrich in the bath, while he raged and fumed to think of the insult offered to his unprotected condition. To think of receiving a gift from any but his own lady! And, of all gifts, a ring!

The next present that came was received very differently. After all these years of neglect, the mistress of his life sent Ulrich an affectionate message, and a ring which her white hand had worn for ten years, as a token that she took part in the honors which he was gaining, and rejoiced in his worthiness. Possibly the knight's name was gaining currency as genuinely valorous. But fancy his ecstasy! "This little ring shall ever lift up my heart. Well for me that I was born, and that I found a lady so true, sweet, blissful, lady of all my joys, brightness of my heart's joys," and so forth. He was informed that many knights were waiting to contest with him at Vienna. "What harm can happen to me, since my lady is gracious? If for every knight there were three, I could master them all."

Outside of amorous and knightly themes, Ulrich's mind is not active, but he occasionally shows a philosophical observation on social topics, as in the present context, where he comments on female vanity in dress:

"Woman's nature, young and old, likes many clothes. Even if she does not wear them all, she is pleased to have them, so that she can say, 'an if I liked, I could be better dressed than other people.' Good clothes are becoming to beautiful women, and my foolish masculine opinion is that a man should take pleasure in dressing them well, since he should hold his wife as his own body."

Certainly Ulrich took pleasure in dressing himself well.

The Venus-journey ended, and Ulrich counted up the results. Two hundred and seventy-one of his spears had been broken, and he had broken three hundred and seven; he had brought honor upon his lady by his loyalty and valor; and had shown her constant devotion, even though he had momentarily fallen in love with a bewitching woman at one of his stopping-places, and taken advantage of his disguise to kiss various fair ones at mass. Is it possible that the anonymous heroine heard of such trivial infidelities? At any rate, the next visit of the messenger brought a bitter dismissal, with cruel charges of inconstancy. She would always hate him, and never hold him dear; she was angry with herself for giving him a ring; she bade him return it at once. Alas, poor Ulrich! Never had he entertained a false thought; if he had ever been guilty of one, he would in no wise have survived it. "I sat weeping like a child; from weeping I was almost blind. I wrung my hands pitilessly; in my distress my limbs cracked as one snaps dry wood." Well may the poet declare that exhibition of grief no child's play. As the lover and his bosom friend sat weeping together, Ulrich's brother-in-law admonished him that such behavior disgraced the name of knight; moreover, there was no reason for melancholy now, when the champion ought to be happy in the fine reputation just made. "If women hear how you are behaving, they will always hate you for this weak mood." Ulrich tried to tell about his grief for the lady whom he had served so long, but the strain was too great: "The blood in truth burst out from my mouth and my nose, so that I was all blood." It was perhaps natural for his friend to thank God that "before his death he had been permitted to see one man who truly loves." Yet he bade him be courageous. "Nothing helps so much with ladies as good courage. Melancholy doesn't succeed with them at all. Joyousness always has served well with women."

Water is stable compared with Ulrich's temperament. Close upon the anguish of this renewed rejection he goes home for a ten-days' visit with his wife,—"my dear wife, who could not be dearer to me even though I had another woman for the lady of my life." Within eight lines this mercurial poet speaks of his comfort with his wife, and of the suffering of his love-languishing heart.

Another message from his dream brought a renewed expression of coldness. She felt kindly to him, but she never would grant favor to any one. But another song and messenger secure at last the promise of an interview. Yet notice the conditions. Evidently this lady was a humorist, to whom her former page was amusing when her less complaisant mood did not find him tiresome. And perhaps she thought that he could not accept her terms. She says she will see him if he will come the next Sunday morning before breakfast, dressed in poor clothes, and in company with a squad of lepers who have a camp near her castle. But even then he is to indulge in no hope of her love. The distance is so great that he thinks he will be unable to cover it in time; but he is told that he must, for "women are very strange; they wish men constantly to carry out their desires, and to any one who fails to do so they are not well disposed." On Saturday he rode thirty-six miles, lost two horses by the forced journey, very likely over rough country, and was wearied by the exertion of so hard an effort. But he succeeded, and as soon as they reach the neighborhood of the castle, he and his two companions put on poor clothes—the shabbiest they could procure,—and with leper cups and long knives for their safety among such outcasts of society, they go to the spot where thirty lepers are huddled together. Mediæval charity and religion are illustrated by this incident; the miserable beggars explain that a lady of the castle is ill, and therefore they often receive food and money in recompense for their prayers for her recovery. Beating his clapper like one of them, he goes toward the castle gate, and meets an envoy maid who bids him beware of failing to obey every command literally, and adds that her mistress will not see him yet awhile. That personal vanity which always marked him had submitted to stains of herbs to disguise his face, as well as to miserable and ragged dress, and off he went, in the servitude of love, and sat among the lepers, ate and drank among them—nay, even went about begging for scraps, which, however, he threw under a bush. The foul odors and the filthiness of the wretches about him made the day almost insufferable, but at last night came, and he hid himself in a field of grain, getting well stung by insects and drenched in a cold storm. But he told himself that "whoever has in his troubles sweet anticipation, he can endure them." In the morning he went to the castle again, and was encouraged to believe that he would be received that evening. So he returned and ate with the beggars; then he escaped to a wood, and with true old German nature-sentiment, he sat down where the sun fell through the trees and listened to the birds—many were singing—and forgot the cold.

Toward evening he secured another interview with the maid, and received directions for the night. He and his companion hid in the ditch before the castle, skulking from the observation of the patrol, until well after dark; then when the signal light appeared at a certain window he went beneath it, and found a rope made of clothes hanging down. In this he fastened himself, and hands above began to raise him, but when he was half way up they could raise him no farther, and he was let down to the ground. This happened three times; and yet, guileless Ulrich, you had no glimmering that perhaps it was a joke? The companion was lighter than his lord, and it occurred to the two that they had better change places. So they did, and the substitute was lifted into the window by the waiting ladies above, and then Ulrich himself arrived there. He was given a coat (an accident below had compelled him to leave his on the ground), and, blissful moment, he was ushered into the presence of the woman whom he had so long served without even a glimpse. It was a brilliant social scene which broke upon those enamoured eyes, indeed too brilliant and too social to correspond with a lover's sentiment for "dual solitude." His soul's desire, richly dressed, sat upon a couch, surrounded by a bevy of ladies. Her husband, it is true, was not present, but with an absence of tact (as it must have seemed to Ulrich) she fell to talking about him and her complete happiness in his love. Their mutual confidence is so strong that he is quite willing to have her receive any visitors whom she pleases, and she added that her true mind served him better than any safeguard which he could put upon her. Awkward as such a line of conversation made it, Ulrich began to tell the story of his heart, and entreats her to respond to his devotion. She assured him that she had no thought of ever loving him; she had consented to this interview only to assure him of her kindly feeling, and satisfy him from her own lips that he must cherish no romantic hope. If he continued to ask her to love him, he should lose her favor. "I was horrified," he declares, "and started up at the threat."

At this point in the interview he withdraws to talk to his cousin, who was with other ladies in an adjoining apartment, and who advised him to return and plead again. But an abrupt dismissal sends him into a moody reflection, which culminates in a desperate resolve. Now or never; he sends her word of his determination, and then rushes in and tells her that if she will not say she loves him, he will kill himself then and there. The lady sees that such a suicide would be compromising, and tries to persuade him that perhaps she may some time. Ah, no such coyness; she must confess her love to-night. Finally, as a last resource, she thinks of employing the usual right of a courted woman—putting her lover to a test of his devotion. He has already given her so many that a trifling, a merely formal one will serve now. Let him just get into the clothes-rope again and be lowered part way down, and pulled back; then she will say she loves him. A glimmer of suspicion flits over his mind, but she gives him her hand as a pledge, and he gets into the rope. Now he is hanging outside the window, still holding the dear hand, and such sweet things as she whispers, as she leans out—no knight was ever so dear to her; now comes his contentment, all his troubles are past now! She even coddles his chin with her disengaged hand, and bids him kiss her. Kiss her! In his joy he lets go the hand he was holding, to throw both arms about her neck, when suddenly he is dropped to the ground so swiftly "that he ran great peril of his life."[7]

In the rooms above a score of voices ringing with laughter, on the ground a too credulous child of Mars and Venus, cursing his day. Ulrich spies a deep pool and is about to drown himself, when his companion arrives with a little present sent by the lady. She promises—(the gentleman afterward confesses that this is a falsehood of his own to preserve Ulrich from despair)—that if he will return in three weeks, she will assure him of her real affection. But now it is near day, and they must hasten off; providentially there is a tournament awaiting them, which will distract his attention. But he sends his friend back to have a talk with the lady, who is in a rather humorous mood, and says that Ulrich made so much noise when he fell that one of the guard thought it was the Devil. But though she laughs, she evidently has had enough of such fun, for she tells the messenger that if his lord wishes her favor he must make the journey over-sea. Ulrich agrees to go, but he is warned against the almost hopeless dangers of that most formidable of pilgrimages; he is reminded that no one ever took such a perilous journey except for God, and that he would surely sacrifice his soul, if he lost his life thus for a woman.

But one grows tired of the story, which runs on with ups and downs, over the long thirteen years through which Ulrich served this lady. Toward the end of the period he was plainly growing impatient. He wrote more lyrics, which suggest here and there that devotion without love in return is foolish, and that he is contemplating a change. Finally he conceived himself treated shamefully (we are not told what the discourtesy was which he could not idealize), and he made a final break with his old worship. But now the time passed wearily, and he felt that he must still have a lady to serve. "How joyfully once the days went by; alas, no longer have I any service to render. How happy ladies' service makes one." But the knight has learned the lesson of his trials, and this time he arranges for a judicious passion. He runs over all his female acquaintance, to see which of them he had best select. Finally he fixes upon one who, of course, is beautiful and good, and wholly free from change; who has finished manners and gentle ways, chastity and force of character, and to her he offers his service, which she accepts.

From this point in Ulrich's memoirs we have an increasing number of lyrics; he likes them all, but complains that one or two were not appreciated by the public, though whoever was clever enough to understand his poetry, he tells us, did appreciate it. Perhaps we are not clever enough to understand it all; but some of the songs, as he himself says, "are good for dancing and very cheerful; the martial ones were gladly sung when in the jousts fire sprung from helmets," and more than one of his poems is a contribution to the graceful though minor work of the later minnesingers. For example:

Summer-hued,
Is the wood,
Heath and field; debonair
Now is seen
White, brown, green,
Blue, red, yellow, everywhere.
Everything
You see spring
Joyously, in full delight;
He whose pains
Dear love deigns
With her favor to requite—
Ah, happy wight.

Whosoe'er
Knows love's care,
Free from care well may be;
Year by year
Brightness clear
Of the May shall he see.
Blithe and gay
All the play
Of glad love shall he fulfil;
Joyous living
Is in the giving
Of high love to whom she will,
Rich in joys still.

He's a churl
Whom a girl
Lovingly shall embrace,
Who'll not cry
"Blest am I"—
Let none such show his face.
This will cure you
(I assure you)
Of all sorrows, all alarms;
What alloy
In his joy
On whom white and pretty arms
Bestow their charms?

And again:

Sweet, in whom all things behooving,
Virtue, brightness, beauty, meet,
Little troubles thee this loving,
Thou art safe above it, sweet.
My love-trials couldst thou feel
From thy dainty lips should steal
Sighs like mine, as deep and real.

Sir, what is love? Prithee, answer;
Is it maid or is it man?
And explain, too, if you can, sir,
How it looks; though I began
Long ago, I ask in vain;
Everything you know explain,
That I may avoid its pain.

Sweet, love is so strong and mighty
That all countries own her sway;
Who can speak her power rightly?
Yet I'll tell thee what I may.
She is good and she is bad;
Makes us happy, makes us sad;
Such moods love always had.

Sir, can love from care beguile us
And our sorrowing distress?
With fair living reconcile us,
Gaiety and worthiness?
If her power hath controlled
Everything as I've just told,
Sure her grace is manifold.

Sweet, of love there's more to tell thee;
Service she with rapture pays;
With her joys and honors dwell; we
Learn from her dear virtue's ways.
Mirth of heart and bliss of eye
Whom she loves shall satisfy;
Nor will she higher good deny.

Sir, I fain would win her wages,
Her approval I would seek;
Yet distress my mind presages;
Ah, for that I am too weak.
Pain I never can sustain.
How may I her favors gain?
Sir, the way you must explain.

Sweet, I love thee; be not cruel;
Thou to love again must try.
Make a unit of our dual,
That we both become an "I."
Be thou mine and I'll be thine.
"Sir, not so; the hope resign.
Be your own, and I'll be mine."

The latter part of this prolix autobiography is occupied by a detailed account of a long tourneying trip, which he contrived as a parallel to his Venus-journey, this time under the disguise of King Arthur. But the narration of that ends at last, and Ulrich becomes reflective upon the seasons and his lady. "Whoever sorrows at winter, and is made glad by summer, lives like the bird which rejoices in sunny May. How distressing is bad weather! Yet whatever the weather, her goodness gives me joy which storms cannot disturb." Presently he tells us his feelings about the life around him, for the social critics of mediævalism felt the inequalities of fortune and happiness quite as strongly as do the social critics of to-day. Some time earlier Ulrich, in criticising a number of knights whom he met, showed a noteworthily refined feeling for generous qualities, and resistance against hardness and selfish aims. In spite of this love-singer's belief in cheerfulness ("no one does well to be sad except about sins," he wrote), the roughness of the age troubled him, as it had troubled earlier and greater authors of his nation. "Instead of being good, the rich work one another harm; the only profession is that of plundering, the service of ladies is forsaken. The young men are spendthrifts, and with pillaging consume their youth." Indeed, the golden hour of chivalry had struck when Ulrich wrote, in his later life, just past the middle of the thirteenth century. But this sentimental absurdity, whose fanciful devotion and melodramatic moonings we find so preposterous, kept a strain of the higher manhood. He was good-hearted; he believed in the refined side of life, so far as he knew it; in a rough time and place he loved gentleness; though born with a large streak of the fool, he had also a pleasant element of the simple-minded gentleman; and as he grew old amid fading ideals, over which he had hung with effeminately romantic faith, the brutal and joyless hardness of men perplexed and saddened him. Yet his simplicity was his trouble's best physician; nature, the beauty and goodness of true womanhood, his sense of inner virtue as opposed to worldly estimates, and his poetry—in these he found comfort.

"Whatever people have done, I have been happy and sung of my love."

After Ulrich has told the story of his worldly and sentimental career, he stops to think over the cause to which that career has been consecrated. Has he made a mistake? Never! "When beauty and goodness unite in woman, she is admirable; one whose goodness is clothed with a noble spirit wears the best of garments. Even though a woman has little beauty, if she has the raiment of goodness, men yet call her fair. Be sure that no clothes better become a lady than goodness—it is better than beauty, though that is excellent. By goodness a poor woman will become truly a lady, and this the rich cannot be without it; nay, shapely and noble though she may be, without this she is still no womanly woman." ...

"Whoever loves the sight of pretty women," he goes on, "and will not notice their goodness but only their bright charm, is like one who gathers pretty flowers for their bright beauty's sake, and twines them into a garland; then, finding that they are not fragrant, he is sorry that he gathered them. But whoever understands plants, lets those grow which have no sweet odor, and breaks off fragrant flowers."

For over thirty years he has served ladies, and he knows no truth so certain as this, that nothing equals the mutual happiness of a true woman and a loving man.

Yet sentiment can play only a minor part in life, after all. There are four main objects of exertion, and upon these, as he ends his book, the poet stops to reflect: The grace of God, honor, ease, and wealth. Some strive for one, some for another, while others aim ineffectively at all, win none, and hate themselves.

And what has this old German gallant to say of himself? In all these revelations of his life, we catch no suggestions of selfishness or meanness, but while fancying himself enacting high chivalric drama, he has been wearing cap, and bells, and motley, lance in his left hand, a bauble in his right. Then, too, he has been so self-satisfied with his rôle. Well, the play is finished now, and Ulrich is sitting in the green-room, thinking. His coat is flung aside, with one last jingle the bells fall to the floor, he has dropped his bauble, and as he bows his head and in his musing runs his fingers through his hair, the coxcomb falls too. It is here in the green-room that he speaks his epilogue:

"Of this last class am I; I have lived my life trying not to give up the three for any one. I desired and even hoped that I might obtain all the four. This hope has still deceived me, and I am made a fool by it. One day I will serve Him who has given me soul, life, thought, whatever I have; the next as a man I will strive for honor; then for wealth; on the fourth day I am for ease. Thus inconstant, I have passed my entire life."

Nothing accomplished—nothing even steadily aimed at. Nothing? With characteristic buoyancy the gray-haired poet puts aside this sombre mood of dissatisfaction with his fifty odd years. For in one point, at least, he has been true. In this book, written only because his lady commanded, he has spoken very many sweet words for worthy women, and throughout his life he has been faithful to his love. "And I do believe that the very true sweet God, through his very high goodness, will think on my fidelity to her, and my constant service."

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