THE GERMAN MEISTERSINGERS—HANS SACHS.
We once chanced to meet with a rare old German book which contains an accurate history of the foundation of the Meistersingers, a body which exercised so important an influence upon the literary history, not only of Germany, but of the whole European Continent, that the circumstances connected with its origin can not prove uninteresting to our readers.
The burghers of the provincial towns in Germany had gradually formed themselves into guilds or corporations, the members of which, when the business of the day was discussed, would amuse themselves by reading some of the ancient traditions of their own country, as related in the old Nordic poems. This stock of literature was soon exhausted, and the worthy burghers began to try their hands at original composition. From these rude snatches of song sprung to life the fire of poetic genius, and at Mentz was first established that celebrated guild, branches of which soon after extended themselves to most of the provincial towns. The fame of these social meetings soon became widely spread. It reached the ears of the emperor, Otho I., and, about the middle of the ninth century, the guild received a royal summons to attend at Pavia, then the emperor's residence. The history of this famous meeting remained for upward of six hundred years upon record among the archives of Mentz, but is supposed to have been taken away, among other plunder, about the period of the Smalkaldic war. From other sources of information we can, however, gratify the curiosity of the antiquarian, by giving the names of the twelve original members of this guild:
| Walter, Lord of Vogelweid, | |
| Wolfgang Eschenbach, Knight, | |
| Conrad Mesmer, Knight, | |
| Franenlob of Mentz, Mergliny of Ment, | } Theologian, |
| Klingsher, | |
| Starke Papp, | |
| Bartholomew Regenboger, a blacksmith, | |
| The Chancellor, a fisherman, | |
| Conrad of Wurtzburg, | |
| Stall Seniors, | |
| The Roman of Zgwickau. | |
These gentlemen, having attended the royal summons in due form, were subjected to a severe public examination before the court by the wisest men of their times, and were pronounced masters of their art; enthusiastic encomiums were lavished upon them by the delighted audience, and they departed, having received from the emperor's hands a crown of pure gold, to be presented annually to him who should be selected by the voice of his fellows as laureate for the year.
Admission to these guilds became, in process of time, the highest literary distinction; it was eagerly sought for by numberless aspirants, but the ordeal through which the candidate had to pass became so difficult that very few were found qualified for the honor. The compositions of the candidates were measured with a degree of critical accuracy of which candidates for literary fame in these days can form but little idea. The ordeal must have been more damping to the fire of young genius than the most slashing article ever penned by the most caustic reviewer. Every composition had of necessity to belong to a certain class; each class was distinguished by a limited amount of rhymes and syllables, and the candidate had to count each stanza, as he read it, upon his fingers. The redundancy or the deficiency of a single syllable was fatal to his claims, and was visited in addition by a pecuniary fine, which went to the support of the corporation.
Of that branch of this learned body which held its meetings at Nuremberg, Hans Sachs became, in due time, a distinguished member. His origin was obscure—the son of a tailor, and a shoemaker by trade. The occupations of his early life afforded but little scope for the cultivation of those refined pursuits which afterward made him remarkable. The years of his boyhood were spent in the industrious pursuit of his lowly calling; but when he had arrived at the age of eighteen, a famous minstrel, Numenbach by name, chancing to pass his dwelling, the young cobbler was attracted by his dulcet strains, and followed him. Numenbach gave him gratuitous instruction in his tuneful art, and Hans Sachs forthwith entered upon the course of probationary wandering, which was an essential qualification for his degree. The principal towns of Germany by turns received the itinerant minstrel, who supported himself by the alternate manufacture of verses and of shoes. After a protracted pilgrimage of several years, he returned to Nuremberg, his native city, where, having taken unto himself a wife, he spent the remainder of his existence; not unprofitably, indeed, as his voluminous works still extant can testify. We had once the pleasure of seeing an edition of them in the library at Nuremberg, containing two hundred and twelve pieces of poetry, one hundred and sixteen sacred allegories, and one hundred and ninety-seven dramas—a fertility of production truly wonderful, and almost incredible, if we reflect that the author had to support a numerous family by the exercise of his lowly trade.
The writings of this humble artisan proved an era, however, in the literary history of Germany. To him may be ascribed the honor of being the founder of her school of tragedy as well as comedy; and the illustrious Goethe has, upon more than one occasion, in his works, expressed how deeply he is indebted to this poet of the people for the outline of his immortal tragedy of "Faust." Indeed, if we recollect aright, there are in his works several pieces which he states are after the manner of Hans Sachs.
The Lord of Vogelweid, whose name we find occupying so conspicuous a position in the roll of the original Meistersingers, made rather a curious will—a circumstance which we find charmingly narrated in the following exquisite ballad:
"WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID."
"Vogelweid, the Minnesinger,
When he left this world of ours,
Laid his body in the cloister,
Under Wurtzburg's minster towers.
"And he gave the monks his treasure,
Gave them all with this bequest—
They should feed the birds at noontide,
Daily, on his place of rest.
"Saying, 'From these wandering minstrels
I have learned the art of song;
Let me now repay the lessons
They have taught so well and long.
"Thus the bard of lore departed,
And, fulfilling his desire,
On his tomb the birds were feasted,
By the children of the choir.
"Day by day, o'er tower and turret,
In foul weather and in fair—
Day by day, in vaster numbers,
Flocked the poets of the air.
"On the tree whose heavy branches
Overshadowed all the place—
On the pavement; on the tomb-stone,
On the poet's sculptured face:
"There they sang their merry carols,
Sang their lauds on every side;
And the name their voices uttered,
Was the name of Vogelweid.
"'Till at length the portly abbot
Murmured, 'Why this waste of food,
Be it changed to loaves henceforward.
For our fasting brotherhood.'
"Then in vain o'er tower and turret,
From the walls and woodland nests.
When the minster bell rang noontide,
Gathered the unwelcome guests.
"Then in vain, with cries discordant,
Clamorous round the gothic spire.
Screamed the feathered Minnesingers
For the children of the choir.
"Time has long effaced the inscription
On the cloister's funeral stones;
And tradition only tells us
Where repose the poet's bones.
"But around the vast cathedral,
By sweet echoes multiplied,
Still the birds repeat the legend,
And the name of Vogelweid."
Education.—The striving of modern fashionable education is to make the character impressive; while the result of good education, though not the aim, would be to make it expressive.
There is a tendency in modern education to cover the fingers with rings, and at the same time to cut the sinews at the wrist.
The worst education, which teaches self denial, is better than the best which teaches every thing else, and not that.—Tales and Essays by John Sterling.
[From Household Words.]
GHOST STORIES—AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF MADLLE CLAIRON.
The occurrence related in the letter which we are about to quote, is a remarkable instance of those apparently supernatural visitations which it has been found so difficult (if not impossible) to explain and account for. It does not appear to have been known to Scott, Brewster, or any other English writer who has collected and endeavored to expound those ghostly phenomena.
Clairon was the greatest tragedian that ever appeared on the French stage; holding on it a supremacy similar to that of Siddons on our own. She was a woman of powerful intellect, and had the merit of affecting a complete revolution in the French school of tragic acting; substituted an easy, varied and natural delivery for the stilted and monotonous declamation which had till then prevailed, and being the first to consult classic taste and propriety of costume. Her mind was cultivated by habits of intimacy with the most distinguished men of her day; and she was one of the most brilliant ornaments of those literary circles which the contemporary memoir writers describe in such glowing colors. In an age of corruption, unparalleled in modern times, Mademoiselle Clairon was not proof against the temptations to which her position exposed her. But a lofty spirit, and some religious principles, which she retained amidst a generation of infidels and scoffers, saved her from degrading vices, and enabled her to spend an old age protracted beyond the usual period of human life, in respectability and honor.
She died in 1803, at the age of eighty. She was nearly seventy when the following letter was written. It was addressed to M. Henri Meister, a man of some eminence among the literati of that period; the associate of Diderot, Grimm, D'Holbach, M. and Madame Necker, &c., and the collaborateur of Grimm in his famous "Correspondence." This gentleman was Clairon's "literary executor;" having been intrusted with her memoirs, written by herself, and published after her death.
With this preface we give Mademoiselle Clairon's narrative, written in her old age, of an occurrence which had taken place half a century before.
"In 1743, my youth, and my success on the stage, had drawn round me a good many admirers. M. de S——, the son of a merchant in Brittany, about thirty years old, handsome, and possessed of considerable talent, was one of those who were most strongly attached to me. His conversation and manners were those of a man of education and good society, and the reserve and timidity which distinguished his attention made a favorable impression on me. After a green-room acquaintance of some time I permitted him to visit me at my house, but a better knowledge of his situation and character was not to his advantage. Ashamed of being only a bourgeois, he was squandering his fortune at Paris under an assumed title. His temper was severe and gloomy: he knew mankind too well, he said, not to despise and avoid them. He wished to see no one but me, and desired from me, in return, a similar sacrifice of the world. I saw, from this time, the necessity, for his own sake as well as mine, of destroying his hopes by reducing our intercourse to terms of less intimacy. My behavior brought upon him a violent illness, during which I showed him every mark of friendly interest, but firmly refused to deviate from the course I had adopted. My steadiness only deepened his wound; and unhappily, at this time, a treacherous relative, to whom he had intrusted the management of his affairs, took advantage of his helpless condition by robbing him, and leaving him so destitute that he was obliged to accept the little money I had, for his subsistence, and the attendance which his condition required. You must feel, my dear friend, the importance of never revealing this secret. I respect his memory, and I would not expose him to the insulting pity of the world. Preserve, then, the religious silence which after many years I now break for the first time.
"At length he recovered his property, but never his health; and thinking I was doing him a service by keeping him at a distance from me, I constantly refused to receive either his letters or his visits.
"Two years and a half elapsed between this period and that of his death. He sent to beg me to see him once more in his last moments, but I thought it necessary not to comply with his wish. He died, having with him only his domestics, and an old lady, his sole companion for a long time. He lodged at that time on the Rempart, near the Chaussée d'Antin; I resided in the Rue de Bussy, near the Abbaye St. Germain. My mother lived with me; and that night we had a little party to supper. We were very gay, and I was singing a lively air, when the clock struck eleven, and the sound was succeeded by a long and piercing cry of unearthly horror. The company looked aghast; I fainted, and remained for a quarter of an hour totally insensible. We then began to reason about the nature of so frightful a sound, and it was agreed to set a watch in the street in case it were repeated.
"It was repeated very often. All our servants, my friends, my neighbors, even the police, heard the same cry, always at the same hour, always proceeding from under my windows, and appearing to come from the empty air. I could not doubt that it was meant entirely for me. I rarely supped abroad; but the nights I did so, nothing was heard; and several times, when I came home, and was asking my mother and servants if they had heard any thing, it suddenly burst forth, as if in the midst of us. One night, the President de B——, at whose house I had supped, desired to see me safe home. While he was bidding me 'good night' at my door, the cry broke out seemingly from something between him and me. He, like all Paris, was aware of the story; but he was so horrified, that his servants lifted him into his carriage more dead than alive.
"Another time, I asked my comrade Rosely to accompany me to the Rue St. Honoré to choose some stuffs, and then to pay a visit to Mademoiselle de St. P——, who lived near the Porte Saint-Denis. My ghost story (as it was called) was the subject of our whole conversation. This intelligent young man was struck by my adventure, though he did not believe there was any thing supernatural in it. He pressed me to evoke the phantom, promising to believe if it answered my call. With weak audacity I complied, and suddenly the cry was heard three times with fearful loudness and rapidity. When we arrived at our friend's door both of us were found senseless in the carriage.
"After this scene, I remained for some months without hearing any thing. I thought it was all over; but I was mistaken.
"All the public performances had been transferred to Versailles on account of the marriage of the Dauphin. We were to pass three days there, but sufficient lodgings were not provided for us. Madame Grandval had no apartment; and I offered to share with her the room with two beds which had been assigned to me in the avenue of St. Cloud. I gave her one of the beds and took the other. While my maid was undressing to lie down beside me, I said to her, 'We are at the world's end here, and it is dreadful weather; the cry would be somewhat puzzled to get at us.' In a moment it rang through the room. Madame Grandval ran in her night-dress from top to bottom of the house, in which nobody closed an eye for the rest of the night. This, however, was the last time the cry was heard.
"Seven or eight days afterward, while I was chatting with my usual evening circle, the sound of the clock striking eleven was followed by the report of a gun fired at one of the windows. We all heard the noise, we all saw the fire, yet the window was undamaged. We concluded that some one sought my life, and that it was necessary to take precautions again another attempt. The Intendant des Menus Plaisirs, who was present, flew to the house of his friend, M. de Marville, the Lieutenant of Police. The houses opposite mine were instantly searched, and for several days were guarded from top to bottom. My house was closely examined; the street was filled with spies in all possible disguises. But, notwithstanding all this vigilance, the same explosion was heard and seen for three whole months always at the same hour, and at the same window-pane, without any one being able to discover from whence it proceeded. This fact stands recorded in the registers of the police.
"Nothing was heard for some days; but having been invited by Mademoiselle Dumesnil[2] to join a little evening party at her house near the Barrière blanche, I got into a hackney-coach at eleven o'clock with my maid. It was clear moonlight as we passed along the Boulevards, which were then beginning to be studded with houses. While we were looking at the half-finished buildings, my maid said, 'Was it not in this neighborhood that M. de S—— died?' 'From what I have heard,' I answered, 'I think it should be there'—pointing with my finger to a house before us. From that house came the same gun-shot that I had heard before. It seemed to traverse our carriage, and the coachman set off at full speed, thinking we were attacked by robbers. We arrived at Mademoiselle Dumesnil's in a state of the utmost terror; a feeling I did not get rid of for a long time."
[Mademoiselle Clairon gives some further details similar to the above, and adds that the noises finally ceased in about two years and a half. After this, intending to change her residence, she put up a bill on the house she was leaving; and many people made the pretext of looking at the apartments an excuse for gratifying their curiosity to see, in her every-day guise, the great tragedian of the Théâtre Français.]
"One day I was told that an old lady desired to see my rooms. Having always had a great respect for the aged, I went down to receive her. An unaccountable emotion seized me on seeing her, and I perceived that she was moved in a similar manner. I begged her to sit down, and we were both silent for some time. At length she spoke, and, after some preparation, came to the subject of her visit.
"'I was, mademoiselle, the best friend of M. de S——, and the only friend whom he would see during the last year of his life. We spoke of you incessantly; I urging him to forget you,—he protesting that he would love you beyond the tomb. Your eyes which are full of tears allow me to ask you why you made him so wretched; and how, with such a mind and such feelings as yours, you could refuse him the consolation of once more seeing and speaking to you?'
"'We can not,' I answered, 'command our sentiments. M. de S—— had merit and estimable qualities; but his gloomy, bitter, and overbearing temper made me equally afraid of his company, his friendship, and his love. To make him happy, I must have renounced all intercourse with society, and even the exercise of my talents. I was poor and proud; I desire, and hope I shall ever desire, to owe nothing to any one but myself. My friendship for him prompted me to use every endeavor to lead him to more just and reasonable sentiments: failing in this, and persuaded that his obstinacy proceeded less from the excess of his passion than from the violence of his character, I took the firm resolution to separate from him entirely. I refused to see him in his last moments, because the sight would have rent my heart; because I feared to appear too barbarous if I remained inflexible, and to make myself wretched if I yielded. Such, madame, are the motives of my conduct—motives for which, I think, no one can blame me.'
"'It would indeed,' said the lady, 'be unjust to condemn you. My poor friend himself in his reasonable moments acknowledged all that he owed you. But his passion and his malady overcame him, and your refusal to see him hastened his last moments. He was counting the minutes, when at half-past ten, his servant came to tell him that decidedly you would not come. After a moment's silence, he took me by the hand with a frightful expression of despair. Barbarous woman! he cried; but she will gain nothing by her cruelty. As I have followed her in life, I shall follow her in death! I endeavored to calm him; he was dead.'
"I need scarcely tell you, my dear friend, what effect these last words had upon me. Their analogy to all my apparitions filled me with terror, but time and reflection calmed my feelings. The consideration that I was neither the better nor the worse for all that had happened to me, has led me to ascribe it all to chance. I do not, indeed, know what chance is; but it can not be denied that the something which goes by that name has a great influence on all that passes in the world.
"Such is my story; do with it what you will. If you intend to make it public, I beg you to suppress the initial letter of the name, and the name of the province."
This last injunction was not, as we see, strictly complied with; but, at the distance of half a century, the suppression of a name was probably of little consequence.
There is no reason to doubt the entire truth of Mademoiselle Clairon's narrative. The incidents which she relates made such a deep and enduring impression on her mind, that it remained uneffaced during the whole course of her brilliant career, and, almost at the close of a long life spent in the bustle and business of the world, inspired her with solemn and religious thoughts. Those incidents can scarcely be ascribed to delusions of her imagination; for she had a strong and cultivated mind, not likely to be influenced by superstitious credulity; and besides, the mysterious sounds were heard by others as well as herself, and had become the subject of general conversation in Paris. The suspicion of a trick or conspiracy never seems to have occurred to her, though such a supposition is the only way in which the circumstances can be explained; and we are convinced that this explanation, though not quite satisfactory in every particular, is the real one. Several portentous occurrences, equally or more marvelous, have thus been accounted for.
Our readers remember the history of the Commissioners of the Roundhead Parliament for the sequestration of the royal domains, who were terrified to death, and at last fairly driven out of the Palace of Woodstock, by a series of diabolical sounds and sights, which were long afterward discovered to be the work of one of their own servants, Joe Tomkins by name, a loyalist in the disguise of a puritan. The famous "Cocklane Ghost," which kept the town in agitation for months, and baffled the penetration of multitudes of the divines, philosophers, and literati of the day, was a young girl of some eleven or twelve years old, whose mysterious knockings were produced by such simple means, that their remaining so long undetected is the most marvelous part of the story. This child was the agent of a conspiracy formed by her father, with some confederates, to ruin the reputation of a gentleman by means of pretended revelations from the dead. For this conspiracy these persons were tried, and the father, the most guilty party, underwent the punishment of the pillory.
A more recent story is that of the "Stockwell Ghost," which forms the subject of a volume published in 1772, and is shortly told by Mr. Hone in the first volume of his "Every Day Book." Mrs. Golding, an elderly lady residing at Stockwell, in Surrey, had her house disturbed by portents, which not only terrified her and her family, but spread alarm through the vicinity. Strange noises were heard proceeding from empty parts of the house, and heavy articles of furniture, glass, and earthenware, were thrown down and broken in pieces before the eyes of the family and neighbors. Mrs. Golding, driven by terror from her own dwelling, took refuge, first in one neighboring house, and then in another, and thither the prodigies followed her. It was observed that her maid-servant, Ann Robinson, was always present when these things took place, either in Mrs. Golding's own house, or in those of the neighbors. This girl, who had lived only about a week with her mistress, became the subject of mistrust and was dismissed, after which the disturbances entirely ceased. But the matter rested on mere suspicion. "Scarcely any one," says Mr. Hone, "who lived at that time listened patiently to the presumption, or without attributing the whole to witchcraft." At length Mr. Hone himself obtained a solution of the mystery from a gentleman who had become acquainted with Ann Robinson many years after the affair happened, and to whom she had confessed that she alone had produced all these supernatural horrors, by fixing wires or horse-hairs to different articles, according as they were heavy or light, and thus throwing them down, with other devices equally simple, which the terror and confusion of the spectators prevented them from detecting. The girl began these tricks to forward some love affair, and continued them for amusement when she saw the effect they produced.
Remembering these cases, we can have little doubt that Mademoiselle Clairon's maid was the author of the noises which threw her mistress and her friends into such consternation. Her own house was generally the place where these things happened; and on the most remarkable occasions where they happened elsewhere, is expressly mentioned that the maid was present. At St. Cloud it was to the maid, who was her bed-fellow, that Clairon was congratulating herself on being out of the way of the cry, when it suddenly was heard in the very room. She had her maid in the carriage with her on the Boulevards, and it was immediately after the girl had asked her a question about the death of M. de S—— that the gun-shot was heard, which seemed to traverse the carriage. Had the maid a confederate—perhaps her fellow-servant on the box—to whom she might have given the signal? When Mademoiselle Clairon went a-shopping to the Rue St. Honoré, she probably had her maid with her, either in or outside the carriage; and, indeed, in every instance the noises took place when the maid would most probably have been present, or close at hand. In regard to the unearthly cry, she might easily have produced it herself without any great skill in ventriloquism, or the art of imitating sounds; a supposition which is rendered the more probable, as its realization was rendered the more easy, by the fact of no words having been uttered—merely a wild cry. Most of the common itinerant ventriloquists on our public race-courses can utter speeches for an imaginary person without any perceptible motion of the lips; the utterance of a mere sound in this way would be infinitely less difficult.
The noises resembling the report of fire-arms (very likely to have been unconsciously, and in perfect good faith, exaggerated by the terror of the hearers) may have been produced by a confederate fellow-servant, or a lover. It is to be observed, that the first time this seeming report was heard, the houses opposite were guarded by the police, and spies were placed in the street, but Mademoiselle Clairon's own house was merely "examined." It is evident that these precautions, however effectual against a plot conducted from without, could have no effect whatever against tricks played within her house by one or more of her own servants.
As to the maid-servant's motives for engaging in this series of deceptions, many may have existed and been sufficiently strong; the lightest, which we shall state last, would probably be the strongest. She may have been in communication with M. de S——'s relations for some hidden purpose which never was effected. How far this circumstance may be connected with the date of the first portent, the very night of the young man's death, or whether that coincidence was simply accidental, is matter for conjecture. The old lady, his relative, who afterward visited Clairon, and told her a tale calculated to fill her with superstitious dread, may herself have been the maid-servant's employer for some similar purpose; or (which is at least equally probable) the tale may have had nothing whatever to do with the sound, and may have been perfectly true. But all experience in such cases assures us that the love of mischief, or the love of power, and the desire of being important, would be sufficient motives to the maid for such a deception. The more frightened Clairon was, the more necessary and valuable her maid became to her, naturally. A thousand instances of long continued deception on the part of young women, begun in mere folly, and continued for the reasons just mentioned, though continued at an immense cost of trouble, resolution, and self-denial in all other respects, are familiar to most readers of strange transactions, medical and otherwise. There seem to be strong grounds for the conclusion that the maid was the principal, if not the sole agent in this otherwise supernatural part of this remarkable story.