The Last Leaf / Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America and Europe

by James Kendall Hosmer

"Find out the sprech-stunden of these men," said Bancroft to his secretary, and presently a slip was put into my hand containing the hours at which I could be conveniently received. Following the direction, I was one day admitted to the library of von Ranke, a plain apartment walled by books from floor to ceiling, with a desk well-worn by days and nights of work. As I awaited his entrance the facts of his career were vivid in my mind. He was a man of seventy-five and had been a scholar almost from his cradle. He was known to me particularly through his history of the popes, which was and perhaps is still the judicial authority with regard to the line of pontiffs, but that was only one book among many. He belonged to a class of which Germany has been prolific, whose consciences assault them if they let their pens lie idle, and who have no recourse in self-defence but building about themselves a barricade of books. After researches in various fields, von Ranke now was undertaking a history of the world, with no thought apparently of a probable touch from the dart of death in the near future; and he did indeed live until nearly ninety and long produced a volume a year.

He entered presently from an inner room, rather a short, well-rounded figure with a face marked by a clear eye and much vivacity. He conversed well in English and was curious about American education and offered, rather ludicrously, I remember, to exchange the publications of the University of Berlin with those of the little fresh-water college in which I was at that time a young teacher. Could the scholar be aiming a sly sarcastic hit at the bareness of our educational outposts in the West? But no, his frank look and voice showed that he was unaware of the real conditions. The talk was not long, there was a hearty expression of regard for Mr. Bancroft who was fully accepted by the German learned world as one of their Gelehrten, trained as he had been in youth in their schools, and in that day our best-known historian. I bowed myself out respectfully from the presence of the little man and sincerely hope that the merit of his great history is in no way abated because I took a half-hour of his time.

I met Lepsius, the great Egyptian scholar, one afternoon in his garden, a hale, straight man of sixty with abundant grey hair surmounting a fine forehead, with blue eyes full of penetration behind his spectacles. I had little knowledge of the subject he had studied so profoundly and almost laughed outright when his pretty daughter asked me if I had read her father's translation of the Book of the Dead. Of von Ranke's themes I thought I knew something and was more at ease with him, as with Mommsen whom I met about the same time.

Theodor Mommsen, more than any other, forty years ago, was the leading historian of Germany. He began his career as a student of law, in the antiquities of which he became thoroughly versed. In particular Justinian and the Roman authorities, among whom he stands as chief, were the objects of Mommsen's research. From jurisprudence he passed to the study of general history, and of the most interesting period of Rome he absorbed into his mind all the lore that has survived. This he digested and set forth in a monumental work, which, translated into English, has been, in the English-speaking world of scholars at least, as familiar as household words. At a still later time he was an active striver in the political agitations of his day.

I sent in my card to Mommsen with some trepidation and was at once admitted. I found him sitting at leisure among his books and Bancroft's introduction brought to pass for me a genial welcome. He was a man not large in frame with dark eyes, and black hair streaked with grey. No doubt but that like German scholars in general he could talk English, but he stuck to German and I was rather glad he did so; I could take him in better as he discoursed fluently in his mother-tongue. Mommsen was a man of sharp corners who often in his political career brought grief to adversaries who tried to handle him without gloves. I was fortunate in catching him in a softer mood and witnessed an amiability with which he was not usually credited. His little daughters were in the room, pretty children with whom the father played with evident pride and joy, interrupting the conversation to caress the curly pates, and trotting them on his knee. He put keen questions to me as regards America, showing that while busy with Caesar and the on-goings of the ancient forum he had been wide awake also to modern happenings. He expressed much regard for Bancroft and praised Grant for selecting as minister to Germany a personality so agreeable to European scholars. He told me of the jubilee of Bancroft which was about to be celebrated with marked honours. Fifty years before Bancroft had "made his doctor" at Göttingen, one of the earliest Americans to achieve that distinction, and the German universities meant to show emphatically their recognition of his merit. The celebration afterwards took place, not interrupted by the warlike uproar in which the land was about to be involved. A proud honour indeed for the American minister. It was a noteworthy occasion to talk thus familiarly with one of the most illustrious scholars of the time, and I recall fondly the pleasant details of the picture.

At Heidelberg the February before I had had an interview with Schenkel, then the leading theologian of that university. Him I found in his Studir-Zimmer without fire on a cold day. He seemed to scorn the use of the Kachelofen, the great porcelain stove, and was wrapped from head to foot in a heavy woollen robe which enveloped him and was prolonged about his head into a kind of cowl. He presented a figure closely like the portraits of some old reformers heavily mantled in a garb approaching the monkish Tracht which they had forsaken. It seemed out of character for Schenkel, for he was an avowed liberal and particularly far away from old standards, but the sharp winter drove a champion of heterodoxy into this outer conformity with the old. In the case of the Berlin Gelehrten, however, the mediaeval dress was quite discarded. I chanced to see them in the spring with their windows wide open to the perfume of gardens and songs of nightingales, and in the case of Mommsen, my picture of his environment has traits of geniality, for he sat in light summer attire, his face aglow with fatherly impulses as he played in the soft air with his children.

One of the most interesting men whom I met in Berlin was Hermann Grimm, then just rising among the characters of mark, but best known at that time as the son of the famous Wilhelm Grimm and the nephew of Jakob Grimm,—the "Brothers Grimm," whose names through their connection with the fairy tales are stamped in the memories not only of men and women, but of children throughout the civilised world. The "Brothers Grimm," it must be remembered, were scholars of the profoundest. The Teutonic folk-lore engaged them not simply or mainly as a source of amusement, but as a subject proper for deep investigation. They painfully gathered in out-of-the-way nooks from the lips of old grandames in chimney corners and wandering singers in obscure villages, the survivals of the primitive superstitions of the people. These they subjected to scientific study as illustrating the evolution of society, a deep persistent search with results elaborately systematised, of which the delightful tales so widely circulated are only a by-product. Aside from their service in the field of folk-lore they grappled with many another mighty task. The vast dictionary, in which German words are not only set down in their present meaning but followed throughout every stage of their etymology with their relations to their congeners in other tongues indefatigably traced out, is a marvel of erudition. Theirs also was the great Deutsche Grammatik, a philosophical setting forth of the German tongue in its connection with its far-spreading Aryan affinities. The "Brothers Grimm" were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they are not divided. Jakob was never married. Wilhelm was married, the child of the union being the distinguished man with whom it was my fortune to talk.

They worked together affectionately until far into old age, and I have described their graves in the Matthai Kirchhof where they lie side by side.

I found Hermann Grimm in the study which had been the workshop through long years of his father and uncle. He was a handsome man in his vigorous years and had married the daughter of Bettine von Arnim, the Bettine of Goethe. It is not strictly right to class him as a historian. He was poet, playwright, critic, and novelist, perhaps mainly these, but soon after, in his position as a professor in the university, he was to produce his well-known Vorlesungen über Göthe, a work which though mainly critical, at the present time is a biography of conspicuous merit, which envisages the events of a famous epoch. I may, therefore, properly include him here, though the wide range of his activities makes it difficult to place him accurately. It paved the way for our interview that I knew Ralph Waldo Emerson, of whom he was, in Germany, the special admirer and student. He had just translated Emerson into German and sat at the feet of the Concord sage, infused by his inspiration. Hermann Grimm had never seen Emerson, and listened eagerly to such details as I could give him of his personality. He dwelt with enthusiasm upon passages in poems and essays by which he had been especially kindled, and hung upon my account of the voice and refined outward traits of the teacher whom he so reverenced. I afterwards procured a fine photograph of Hermann Grimm which I sent to Emerson. A kind letter from him, which I still treasure, let me know that I had put Emerson deeply in my debt; up to that time he had never seen a portrait of his German disciple, though the two men had been in affectionate correspondence. At a later time they met and cemented a friendship which was very dear to both. Hermann Grimm showed me with pride the relics of his father and uncle; the rows of well-thumbed volumes; the wellscored Heften over which their hands had moved; their inkstands and pens; the rough arm-chairs and tables where they had sat. I think a trace from the smoke of their pipes and midnight lamp still adhered to the ceiling, and possibly cobwebs still hung in the corners of the bookcases which had been there from an ancient day.

Quaint portraits of the "Brothers Grimm" at work in their caps and rough dressing-gowns were at hand, but Hermann Grimm had rather the appearance of a well-groomed man of the world. His coat was fashionable, his abundant hair and flowing beard were carefully trimmed. He was not a recluse, though faithful to his heredity and devoted mainly to scholarly research. He was at ease in the clubs and also at Court and enjoyed the give and take of a social hour with friends.