Hagedorn, with all his love of mystery and occasional exaggeration, was certainly a good friend to me. He often gave me good advice, and was more of a father to me than a mere friend. He was a man of the world; and he forgot that I never meant to be a man of the world, and therefore his advice was not always what I wanted. He was also a great friend of my cousin who was married to a Prince of Dessau, and they had agreed among themselves that I should go to the Oriental Academy at Vienna, learn Oriental languages, and then enter the diplomatic service. As there were no children from the Prince’s marriage, I was to be adopted by him, and, as if the princely fortune was not enough to tempt me, I was told that even a wife had been chosen for me, and that I should have a new name and title, after being adopted by the Prince. To other young men this might have seemed irresistible. I at once said no. It seemed to interfere with my freedom, with my studies, with my ideal of a career in life; in fact, though everything was presented to me by my cousin as on a silver tray, I shook my head and remained true to my first love, Sanskrit and all the rest. Hagedorn could not understand this; he thought a brilliant life preferable to the quiet life of a professor. Not so I. He little knew where true happiness was to be found, and he was often in a very melancholy mood. He did not live long, but I shall never forget how much I owed him. When I went to Paris, he allowed me to live in his rooms. They were, it is true, au cinquième, but they were in the best quarter of Paris, in the Rue Royale St. Honoré, opposite the Madeleine, and very prettily furnished. This kept me from living in dusty lodgings in the Quartier Latin, and the five flights of stairs may have strengthened my lungs. I well remember what it was when at the foot of the staircase I saw that I had forgotten my handkerchief and had to toil up again. But in those days one did not know what it meant to be tired. Whether my friends grumbled, I cannot tell, but I myself pitied some of them who were old and gouty when they arrived at my door out of breath.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] His own spelling of his name.
CHAPTER IV
UNIVERSITY
In order to enable me to go to the University, my mother and sister moved to Leipzig and kept house for me during all the time I was there—that is, for two years and a half. In spite of the res angusta domi, I enjoyed my student-life thoroughly, while my home was made very agreeable by my mother and sister. My mother was full of resource, and she was wise enough not to interfere with my freedom. My sister, who was about two years older than myself, was most kind-hearted and devoted both to me and to our mother. There was nothing selfish in her, and we three lived together in perfect love, peace, and harmony. My sister enjoyed what little there was of society, whereas I kept sternly aloof from it. She was much admired, and soon became engaged to a young doctor, Dr. A. Krug, the son of the famous professor of philosophy at Leipzig, whose works, particularly his Dictionary of Philosophy, hold a distinguished place in the history of German philosophy. He was a thorough patriot, and so public spirited that he thought it right to leave a considerable sum of money to the University, without making sufficient provision for his children. However, the young married couple lived happily at Chemnitz, and my sister was proud in the possession of her children. It was the sudden death of several of these children that broke her heart and ruined her health; she died very young. Standing by the grave of her children, she said to me shortly before her death, “Half of me is dead already, and lies buried there; the other half will soon follow.”
Of society, in the ordinary sense of the word, I saw hardly anything. I am afraid I was rather a bear, and declined even to invest in evening dress. I joined a student club which formed part of the Burschenschaft, but which in order to escape prosecution adopted the title of Gemeinschaft. I went there in the evening to drink beer and smoke, and I made some delightful acquaintances and friendships. What fine characters were there, often behind a very rough exterior! My dearest friend was Prowe, of Thorn in East Prussia—so honest, so true, so straightforward, so over-conscientious in the smallest things. He was a classical scholar, and later on entered the Prussian educational service. As a master at the principal school at Thorn his time was fully occupied, and of course he was cut off there from the enlivening influences of literary society. Still he kept up his interest in higher questions, and published some extremely valuable books on Copernicus, a native of Thorn, for which he received the thanks of astronomers and historians, and flattering testimonials from learned societies. We met but seldom later in life, and my own life in England was so busy and full that even our correspondence was not regular. But I met him once more at Ems with a charming wife, and decidedly happy in his own sphere of activity. These early friendships form the distant landscape of life on which we like to dwell when the present ceases to absorb all our thoughts. Our memory dwells on them as a golden horizon, and there remains a constant yearning which makes us feel the incompleteness of this life. After all, the number of our true friends is small; and yet how few even of that small number remain with us for life. There are other faces and other names that rise from beyond the clouds which more and more divide us from our early years.
There were some wild spirits among us who fretted at the narrow-minded policy which went by the name of the Metternich system. Repression was the panacea which Metternich recommended to all the governments of Germany, large and small. No doubt the system of keeping things quiet secured to Germany and to Europe at large a thirty years’ peace, but it could not prevent the accumulation of inflammable material which, after several threatenings, burst forth at last in the conflagration of 1848. Among my friends I remember several who were ready for the wildest schemes in order to have Germany united, respected abroad, and under constitutional government at home. Splendid fellows they were, but they either ended their days within the walls of a prison, or had to throw up everything and migrate to America. What has become of them? Some have risen to the surface in America, others have yielded to the inevitable and become peaceful citizens at home; nay, I am grieved to say, have even accepted service under Government to spy on their former friends and fellow-dreamers. But not a few saw the whole of their life wrecked either in prison or in poverty, though they had done no wrong, and in many cases were the finest characters it has been my good fortune to know. They were before their time, the fruit was not ripe as it was in 1871, but Germany certainly lost some of her best sons in those miserable years; and if my father escaped this political persecution, it was probably due to the influence of the reigning Duke and the Duchess, a Princess of Prussia, who knew that he was not a dangerous man, and not likely to blow up the German Diet.
I myself got a taste of prison life for the offence of wearing the ribbon of a club which the police regarded with disfavour. I cannot say that either the disgrace or the discomfort of my two days’ durance vile weighed much with me, as my friends were allowed free access to me, and came and drank beer and smoked cigars in my cell—of course at my expense—but what I dreaded was the loss of my stipendium or scholarship, which alone enabled me to continue my studies at Leipzig, and which, as a rule, was forfeited for political offences. On my release from prison I went to the Rector of the University and explained to him the circumstances of the case—how I had been arrested simply for membership of a suspected club. I assured him that I was innocent of any political propaganda, and that the loss of my stipendium would entail my leaving the University. Much to my relief, the old gentleman replied: “I have heard nothing about this; and if I do, how am I to know that it refers to you, there are many Müllers in the University?” Fortunately the distinctive prefix Max had not yet been added to my name.
I must confess that I and my boon companions were sometimes guilty of practices which in more modern days, and certainly at Oxford or Cambridge, would be far more likely to bring the culprits into collision with the authorities than mere membership of societies in which comparatively harmless political talk was indulged in.