But there are also expressions of hatred and exasperation which we feel belong to another class of society. We actually find the watchman giving frivolous advice to a beautiful young lady who has been married to an old reprobate, telling her how she may best revenge herself upon him. At times his thoughts and reveries take a higher flight. He is leaning on an old cannon, which stands on the rampart, shining and dumb. Once its wheels rolled over dead and living on the field of victory; once it gave the signal for the dread onslaught, for beside the touch-hole there is an N. surmounted by the imperial crown. Now its voice is only heard when some wretched prisoner has escaped from his dungeon, or on the occasion of his Majesty's birthday, or when a princess is born. "Patience!" cries the watchman to the cannon; "it may be that ere long thou wilt once more pour thy balls upon the enemy; but keep silent in the meantime, old veteran, or they will spike thee as they are gagging us." Here the mask is completely thrown off.
After Dingelstedt had left Hesse-Cassel, he published Nachtwächters Weltgang ("The Night-Watch man's World Patrol"), in which the poet is no longer the unsophisticated night-watchman—but the cultivated revolutionary. He falls foul of bad kings, of the governments of Hesse-Cassel, Prussia, and Hanover, and of false German patriotism: "What, gentlemen, is a German patriot?—A man who serves the Lord on Sunday and the king on week-days. What are the objects of his desire?—Office, a title, and a ribbon for himself, bread for his lawful offspring, and legitimate sovereigns for his country.—Away with you, German patriot! The temple is no place for you! You are a Judas, whose treacherous kiss has been the death of liberty!"
A few months later Dingelstedt was a Privy Councillor and Councillor of Legation—held office, had a title, wore a ribbon. Naturally no one believed in any genuine conversion, and it is not surprising that his conduct was severely, and in some quarters spitefully, judged. The numerous documents relating to his character and life which have been published of late years (especially Julius Rodenberg's articles in the Deutsche Rundschau of 1889-90) throw a more favourable light upon his action than that in which his contemporaries saw it. There was a want of fine feeling about it, it was unseemly, but it was not base. There was nothing wrong in the actual fact of his accepting the post of reader to a cultivated and amiable sovereign, the fault lay in his having so shortly beforehand proclaimed all sorts of democratic and radical principles which he was not prepared to stand by.
He had the true artist's temperament, and yet was distinctly practical; he was pleasure-loving and ambitious, unable to bear permanently the humiliation of being poor and consequently ignored; he was above all else impressed, strongly impressed, by the belief that in following the path he had entered upon he was pursuing a métier de dupe. What did he gain by refusing, because of his principles, to accept good appointments and influential positions! What did the world gain by clever men on principle leaving titles, money, office, orders, and posts of honour to the stupid men! Was this the best way to improve matters? His great desire was to play the sovereign in some domain of art, to solve great scenic problems, to direct great theatres, to be the favoured of beautiful women. Was he at all likely to attain it as the exiled schoolmaster, the correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung? Who would permanently hold in esteem the poor, independent journalist? who would not, in course of time, esteem the influential courtier? Of course there would be an outcry when he accepted the call—if only he had not written that wretched poem to Herwegh!—but what was needed was cool courage, ironical impenetrability, smiling indifference, and the calm superiority which allows one's opponents to bawl till they are tired; and these gifts he possessed.
He became, as every one knows, not only a courtier, but in course of time manager of one court theatre after another—Stuttgart, Munich, Weimar—ending his career as the influential director of the Burgtheater in Vienna.
Heine, who was not strict, but witty, wrote the incomparable poem "Verhofrätherei," which begins:
"Verschlechtert sich nicht dein Herz und dein Stil,
So magst du treiben jedwedes Spiel,
Mein Freund, ich werde dich nie verkennen,
Und soll ich dich auch Herr Hofrath nennen,"[12]
It expresses a mournful understanding of Dingelstedt's conduct, and bitter contempt for the public to whom both he and Dingelstedt addressed themselves.
Any one who desires to get a distinct and correct idea of Dingelstedt's intellectual personality should compare the clever, graphic account of his life, entitled Münchener Bilderbuch, with his own cyclus of poems entitled Ein Roman. These poems show us far more of his inmost nature than the verses of his early youth. But he had early experienced the mingled feeling of attraction to the great world and contempt for it. In the poem "Krähwinkel," he wrote of fashionable society:
"Sie lügen, sie krakehlen, sie hassen sich bis auf's Blut,
Zum Morden oder Stehlen fehlt ihnen nur der Muth.
Sie möchten gern und wagen's nicht, das heisst denn Recht und Pflicht;
Die denken können, sagen's nicht. Die Meisten denken nicht."[13]