The good old pastor has a love amounting to adoration for his garden, every inch of which he has worked over and beautified, till it seems to be the expression of all the poetry and romance which the outward conditions of his frugal, rigid life repress. Full of nooks and arbors, comfortable low chairs and benches, where the blue forget-me-nots look as if they bloom indeed for happy lovers; trees whose great drooping branches close around retreats which can only be designed for tender tête-à-têtes; irregular little paths, wandering up and down and about, always ending in something delightful, always beckoning, inviting, smiling, amid flowers and foliage so fresh and luxuriant, you feel that every petal and leaf is known and loved by the white-haired old man. His favorite seat is at the end of a narrow, winding way at the foot of a magnificent elm. There he sits and looks, over the brook that sings to his sweet roses and pansies, upon broad meadow-lands and fields of grain extending to the Suabian hills, with their wealth of beauty and meaning and tradition. He sleeps and rests and thinks there after dinner, he tells us, and perhaps that is all; but I believe, when the old man is gone, a volume of manuscript poems will be discovered hidden away among his sermons and Greek tomes,—a volume of love poems, sonnets, dreamings of all that his life crowds out into his garden, and that only in his garden he has been able to express,—all the unspoken sweetness, all the unsung songs.
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FRANCISKA VON HOHENHEIM.
Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus is a personage whom we know, it must be confessed, more through the medium of Robert Browning than through our own historical researches; and we were therefore filled with wonder to learn that, in addition to the modest cognomen above, de Hohenheim also belonged to his name. This same Hohenheim we have recently visited. Paracelsus never lived there, to be sure, and was born far away in Switzerland. Browning puts him in Würzburg, in Alsatia, in Constantinople; and a solid German authority declares he lived in Esslingen, where his laboratory is still exhibited, and in proof mentions that in this neighborhood was, not many years ago, a Weingärtner whose name was Bombastes von Hohenheim, a descendant of Paracelsus. However, he lived nowhere, everywhere, and anywhere, I presume, as best suited such a conjurer, alchemist, philosopher, and adventurer, and went wandering about from land to land, remaining in one place so long as the people would have faith in his learning, his incantations and magic arts; but what concerns us now is simply that he was connected with the Hohenheim family, who, in the old days, occupied the estate which still bears its name.
To Hohenheim is a pleasant walk or drive, as you please, from Stuttgart. A castle, adjacent buildings, lawns, and fruit-trees are what there is to see at the first glance,—at the second, many practical things in the museum connected with the Agricultural College, which is what Hohenheim at present is; models, and collections of stones and birds and beasts, bones and skeletons, and other uncanny objects, pretty woods, grain, seeds, etc. Students from the ends of the earth come here, and from all ranks,—sons of rich peasants and also young men of family. An Hungarian count is here at present, and youths from Wallachia, Russia, Sweden, America, Australia, Spain, Italy, and Greece,—China too, for all I know to the contrary,—with of course many Germans, learning practical and theoretical farming. We sat under the pear-trees which were showering white blossoms around us, ate our supper to fortify us for our homeward walk, watched the sheep come home and the students walking in from the fields with their oxen-carts. They wore blue blouses and high boots, and cracked their long whips with a jaunty air, more like Plunket in “Martha” than veritable farmers. From the balcony opening from the largest salon we looked upon pretty woods, and the whole chain of the Suabian Alb, with Lichtenstein, Achalm, and other points of interest to be studied through a telescope.
This is, then, what Hohenheim now is,—a place where you go and look about a little, walk through large empty halls and long corridors affording glimpses of the simple quarters of the students, see a pleasant landscape, and, in short, enjoy an hour of unquestionably temperate pleasure. What it was as the seat of the Hohenheim family, which is mentioned as early as the year 1100, we do not know; but under Duke Carl Eugen of Würtemberg, in the last century, it was a sort of Versailles, if all accounts be true: magnificent parks and gardens, Roman ruins near Gothic towers and chapels, Egyptian pyramids and Swiss châlets, catacombs, artificial waterfalls, baths, hothouses, grottos with Corinthian pillars, a Flora temple with lovely arabesques on its silver walls, and the palace itself, rising proud and stately at the end of the park, furnished with every luxury, and filled with rare vases and pictures. Four colossal statues stand now in one of the halls, arrayed in garments which, in that freer time, they certainly could not boast. The raiment is of cloth, dipped, stiffened so that it resembles marble, unless you examine it too closely. No doubt it is more agreeable that those huge figures are somewhat clothed upon, but it does seem too absurd to think of ordering a new coat for “Apollo” when his old one gets shabby. Making minute investigations, we discovered he had already had several, wearing the last one outside of the others, as if to protect himself from the inclemency of the weather.
All the old magnificence was lavished by Herzog Carl upon Franciska von Hohenheim,—his “Franzel,” as he called her in the soft Suabisch,—whose most romantic story is, par excellence, the thing of interest here, and the Suabians must love it, they tell it so very often.
From many narratives I gather the life-story of a woman who, in spite of the stain upon her name, is deeply revered in Würtemberg for her strong, sweet influence upon its wild duke, for her wisdom and gentleness, and the good that through her came upon the realm.
She was a daughter of the Freiherr von Bernardin, a noble of ancient family and limited income. Franciska lived far removed from the gayety of courts, of which she and her sisters in their castle near Aalen rarely heard. When she was scarcely sixteen her father gave her hand to a Freiherr von Leutrum, a fussy, stuffy old man, who wrapped himself in furs even in summer, and was so conspicuously ugly the boys in the street would mock at him when he stood at his window. His great head, on a broad, humped back, scarcely reached the sill.
In addition, a small intellect, hot temper, and suspicious nature made him yet more of a monster; but Franciska was poor, and it appears it was considered then, as it would be now, a good match, as Von Leutrum was of an old family and rich. Whether the historians paint him blacker than he deserves in order to make Franciska white in contrast, is not easy to say. It certainly has that effect occasionally, however. Beauty, then, married the Beast. In 1770 Herzog Carl Eugen came to Pforzheim, where the nobles of the neighborhood, among them Baron von Leutrum, with his young wife, assembled to form his court.