Thackerayana: Notes and Anecdotes

by Unknown

CHAPTER V.

Continental Ramble—A Stolen Trip to Paris—Residence at Weimar—Contributions to Albums—Burlesque State—German Sketches and Studies—The Weimar Theatre—Goethe—Souvenirs of the Saxon city—'Journal kept during a visit to Germany.'

We cannot take leave of Thackeray's college days without referring to the first trip he made to Paris during a vacation, on his own responsibility, and, indeed, without consulting his pastors and masters on the subject. This little episode occurred when he was nineteen years old; and, excepting for considerable remorse at the subterfuge by which he had got away, he seems to have enjoyed himself very much.

1828

Coachee, 1830

1828

A dowager

A German court chaplain

A postilion

Apollo surrounded by his tuneful band. (Sketched in a music-book.)

Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cigno.
(Album oddities. Weimar, 1830)

Weimar, 1830

A Royal banquet

A Weimar sketch

Schiller's plays. Weimar, 1830

Soon afterwards Thackeray seems to have repaired to Weimar, in Saxony, where, as he describes it, he lived with a score of young English lads, 'for study, or sport, or society.' Mr. G. H. Lewes, in his 'Life of Goethe,' tells us that Weimar albums still display with pride the caricatures which the young artist sketched at that period. 'My delight in those days,' says Mr. Thackeray, 'was to make caricatures for children'—a habit, we may add, which he never forgot. Years afterwards, in the fulness of his fame, revisiting Weimar, he found, to his great delight, that these were yet remembered, and some even preserved still; but he was much more proud to be told, as a lad, that the great Goethe himself had looked at some of them. In a letter to his friend Mr. Lewes, inserted by the latter in the work referred to, Thackeray has given a pleasing picture of this period of his life, and of the circle in which he found himself.

Church militant

Triumphal march of the British forces

Opera at Weimar

Readers familiar with the 'Rose and the Ring,' Thackeray's popular Christmas book, will recognise in the sketch on [page 93] the artist's fondness for playing with royalty—especially with pantomimic royalty. The Weimar court was full of old ceremony, and yet most pleasant and homely withal. Thackeray and his friends were invited in turns to dinners, balls, and assemblies there. Such young men as had a right appeared in uniforms, diplomatic and military. Some invented gorgeous clothing: the old Hof Marschall, M. de Spiegel, who had two of the most lovely daughters ever looked on, being in nowise difficult as to the admission of these young Englanders. On winter nights they used to charter sedan chairs, in which they were carried through the snow to these court entertainments. Here young Thackeray had the good luck to purchase Schiller's sword, which formed a part of his court costume, and which hung in his study till the day of his death, to put him (as he said) in mind of days of youth the most kindly and delightful.

Shakspeare at Weimar

Operatic reminiscences at Weimar

Here, too, he had the advantage of the society of his friend and fellow-student at Cambridge, Mr. W. G. Lettsom, later Her Majesty's Chargé-d'Affaires at Uruguay, but who was at the period referred to attached to the suite of the English Minister at Weimar. To the kindness of this gentleman he was indebted in a considerable degree for the introductions he obtained to the best families in the town. Thackeray was always fond of referring to this period of his life.

A German fencing bout

The spirited sketch of a German Fencing Bout given on the preceding page, was probably drawn on the spot during the progress of the combat. The collegians enable us to construct a realistic picture of the student of a generation ago.

German student of the period. (Weimar, 1830)

The object of the combatants being to inflict a prick or scratch in some conspicuous part of the face, the rest of the person is carefully padded and protected. In our days the loose cap with its pointed peak has disappeared before its gay muffin-shaped substitute; but the traditional pride in a scarred face is still observable. Even at the present day we find the youths of German University towns rejoicing in a seam down the nose, or swaggering in the conscious dignity of a slashed cheek, as outward and visible evidence of the warlike soul within.

Goethe. A sketch from the Fraser portrait

Goethe
(Sketched at Weimar, 1830)

Devrient, who appeared some years since at the St. James's Theatre in German versions of Shakspeare, was performing at Weimar at that period, in 'Shylock,' 'Hamlet,' 'Falstaff,' and the 'Robbers;' and the beautiful Madame Schröder was appearing in 'Fidelio.'

The young English students at Weimar spent their evenings in frequenting the performances at the theatres, or attending the levées of the Court ladies.

After an interval of nearly a quarter of a century, Thackeray passed a couple of days in the well-remembered place, where he was fortunate enough to find still some of the friends of his youth. With his daughters he was received by Madame de Goethe with the kindness of old days; the little party once again drank tea in that famous cottage in the park which had been a favourite resort of the illustrious poet.

A souvenir

Album sketches

During his residence at Weimar in 1831 Thackeray saw and shared a great deal of pleasant life; and although the world of the little German capital was one in miniature, the experience he gained in it was turned to good account in after years. It was at this visit he had the happiness of meeting the great Goethe, who had then withdrawn from society: he would, nevertheless, receive strangers with marked cordiality; and the tea-table of his daughter-in-law was always spread for the entertainment of these favoured young sojourners.

A swell

A buck

In October 1830, we find Thackeray writing from Weimar to a bookseller in Charterhouse Square, for a liberal supply of the Bath post paper on which he wrote his verses and drew his countless sketches. On certain sheets of this paper, after his memorable interview with Goethe, we find the young artist trying to trace from recollection the features of the remarkable face which had deeply impressed his fancy (see [p. 100]). There are portraits in pen and ink, and others washed with colour to imitate more closely the complexion of the study he was endeavouring to work out. The letter to which we here refer contains an order of an extensive character, for the current literature, which throws some light on his tastes at this period:—'Fraser's Town and Country Magazine for August, September, October, and November. The four last numbers of the Examiner and Literary Gazette, The Comic Annual, The Keepsake, and any others of the best annuals, and Bombastes Furioso, with Geo. Cruikshank's illustrations. The parcel to be directed to Dr. Frohrib, Industrie Comptoir, Weimar.'

Among the ingenuous confessions of Fitz-Boodle in 'Fraser,' we are admitted to three romantic episodes, all of them being directed as warnings to over-fervent young men—'Miss Löwe' (Oct. 1842), 'Dorothea' (Jan. 1843), 'Ottilia' (Feb. 1843): none of these tender records of his early German experiences are reprinted with Thackeray's 'Miscellanies.' We learn incidentally in 'Ottilia' the delightful fee accorded to gallant drivers on the occasion of sledging parties, which formed a leading amusement of a Saxon winter. A large company of a score or more sledges was formed. Away they went to some pleasure-house previously fixed upon as a rendezvous, where a ball and supper were ready prepared, and where each cavalier, as his partner descended, has the 'delicious privilege of saluting her.'

Thackeray has turned the observations he made during his residence in the Saxon city to famous satirical account in the construction of his typical Court of Pumpernickel, situated on the Pump rivulet. We meet the most effective sarcastic sketches of the mimic court in various parts of his writings, great and small. It was in these sister Duchies that Pitt Crawley served as an attaché to the British representative. It was while dining at the table of Tapeworm, the Secretary of our Legation there, that the author declares he first learnt the sad particulars of the career of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, née Rebecca Sharp. It was here, too, in the theatre that he describes first meeting with Amelia, then Mrs. Osborne, attended by her brother Jos. Sedley, with her son George, and his guardian, faithful Major Dobbin; when the little party were sojourning, as favoured visitors, in the famous dominions (stretching nearly ten miles) of his Transparency Victor Aurelius XVIII. The reader will remember being presented, in one of the later chapters of 'Vanity Fair,' with a humorous burlesque of the entire Grand Ducal Court—its belongings, society, administration, foreign legations, politics, fêtes, and what not; with a detailed description of the noble bridge thrown across the Pump by his renowned Transparency Victor Aurelius XIV., whose effigy rises above the erection; his foot calmly resting on the neck of a prostrate Turk, and surrounded by water-nymphs and emblems of victory, peace, and plenty. The prince is smiling blandly, and directing with his outstretched truncheon the attention of the passer to the Aurelian Platz, where this great-souled hero had commenced a palace that would have been the wonder of the age, if the funds for its completion had not been exhausted. A previous introduction to the splendours of Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel had been afforded the readers of 'Fraser,' where we are informed that it contained a population of two thousand inhabitants, and a palace (Monblaïsir, the rival of Versailles) which would accommodate about six times that number. The Principality furnished a contingent of three and a half men to the Germanic Confederation; only three of whom returned from the field of Waterloo. This army corps was commanded by a General (Excellency), two major-generals, and sixty-four officers of lower grades; all noble, all knights of the order of Kartoffel, and almost all chamberlains to his Highness the Grand Duke. A band of eighty performers led the troops to battle in time of war; executed selections daily, in more peaceful intervals, for the admiration of the neighbourhood; and at night did duty on the stage.

There was supposed to be a chamber of representatives, who were not remembered to have ever sat, home and foreign ministers, residents from neighbouring courts, law-presidents, town councils, &c., and all the usual great government functionaries. The Court had its chamberlains and marshals; the Grand Duchess her noble ladies-in-waiting, and beauteous maids of honour. Besides the sentries at the palace, there were three or four men on duty, dressed as hussars; but the historian could not discover that they ever rode on horseback.

A German peasant maiden

The Prime Minister had lodgings in a second floor, and the other great officers were similarly accommodated: their titles were, however, a distinction in themselves—Otho Sigismond Freyherr von Schlippenschlopps, for instance, Knight Grand Cross of the Ducal Order of the Two Necked Swan of Pumpernickel, of the Porc-et-Sifflet of Kalbsbraten, Commander of the George and Blue Boar of Dummerland, Excellency and High Chancellor of the United Duchies, is described as enjoying, with his private income and the revenues of his offices, a total of nearly three hundred pounds per annum, and, in consequence of this handsome provision, being able to display such splendour as few officers of the Grand Ducal Crown could afford.

Sleighing

These high-sounding titles were not confined to the military and diplomatic bodies: the memorable town pump had been designed by Herr Oberhof und bau Inspektor von Speck; whose wife was honourably referred to as 'The Grand-ducal Pumpernickelian-court-architectress, and Upper-palace-and-building-inspectress, Von Speck.'

The preceding sketch of sleighing, which has all the life and spirit of a drawing executed whilst the recollection of its subject is still fresh, was evidently made at the period of Thackeray's residence at Weimar. He has left various pen-and-ink dottings of the quaint houses in this town, which correspond with the little buildings in the landscape on [p. 101].

Among the volumes originally in Thackeray's possession was a book, privately printed, containing portions of the diaries of Mrs. Colonel St. George, written during her sojourn among the German courts, 1799 and 1800. As the margins of the book are pencilled with slight but graphic etchings illustrative of the matter, we insert a few extracts while treating of Thackeray's early experience of Weimar, as harmonising with this part of our subject. It may be premised that the actual sketches belong to a considerably later date.