Torn by conflicting motives, Goethe felt at last that he must shake himself free for a while from the circumstances that caused him so much perplexity; and in the middle of May he started with the Counts Stolberg for Strasburg—all three, by the way, dressed in Werther’s style. From Strasburg he visited his sister at Emmendingen, who urged him to break off an engagement that seemed to her wholly unsuitable. He then travelled to Zürich, where he was cordially welcomed by Lavater; and afterwards he went southwards, thinking that he might perhaps go on to Italy. But, now that he was far away from Lili, she became dearer to him than ever. On her seventeenth birthday he was at the Pass of St. Gotthard, and, as he kissed the golden heart she had given him, he was seized by so ardent a longing to be with her again that he immediately turned back and began his homeward journey.
On his return all the old difficulties presented themselves, and in the end, to the relief of Lili’s mother and Goethe’s parents, and not much apparently to the regret of the lovers themselves, the engagement was allowed to lapse. His relation to Lili had not moved him as he had been moved by his relation to Frederika and Lotte; nor did it become a source of inspiration in his later work. But to his love for her we owe two exquisite lyrics, “Neue Liebe, Neues Leben” (“New Love, New Life”), and “An Belinden” (“To Belinda”), and the finely humorous poem, “Lili’s Park.”
The time had now almost come when Frankfort, on which Goethe had shed so much lustre, was to lose him, and he was to surround himself with an entirely new set of conditions. Towards the end of 1774 he was presented at Frankfort to the Hereditary Prince of Weimar, who was then seventeen years of age, and to his younger brother, Prince Constantine. The meeting gave the Hereditary Prince so much pleasure that Goethe had to visit him at Mainz—a visit made memorable by the fact that during Goethe’s absence from Frankfort, Fräulein von Klettenberg, for whom he had all his old affection and reverence, died. In the autumn of 1775 the Hereditary Prince became Duke of Weimar; and shortly afterwards, on his way to Stuttgart, where he was to be married, he begged that when he returned with his bride Goethe would visit them at Weimar. Goethe gladly accepted the invitation, and in October, when the young Duke and Duchess came to Frankfort, it was arranged that within a few days he should follow them.
Geheimerath Kalb, the official with whom he was to travel, had been left behind at Stuttgart, and his coming was so long delayed that Goethe finally became impatient, gave up the idea of visiting Weimar, and set off for Italy. At Heidelberg he was aroused during the night by a messenger, who arrived with a letter announcing that Kalb was awaiting him at Frankfort. He hurried back, and on November 7, 1775, entered Weimar. He thought he was merely about to pay a short visit to a friendly prince; in reality he had come to a new home, and had formed relations which were to alter the whole complexion of his life.
CHAPTER V.
WEIMAR, pleasantly situated in the valley of the Ilm, is now known by name to all the world, thanks mainly to Goethe’s association with it. At the time when he arrived there, it was an obscure little place, about which most people even in Germany had only the vaguest information. It was still a walled town, but had few picturesque or otherwise interesting buildings. The old Schloss had been burned down in 1774, and the Court was established in a temporary residence which was not well adapted for the purpose.
Goethe was received with enthusiasm by the young Duke, and all sorts of entertainments were got up for his benefit. These entertainments gave rise to much gossip, and soon it was whispered in many places in Germany that Goethe was leading a shamefully dissolute life at Weimar, and exercising on the Duke a most deplorable influence. By and by Klopstock, hearing a rumour of what was supposed to be going on, took it upon himself to write to his fellow poet a letter of reproof and expostulation. Goethe had the highest respect for Klopstock, and, when he had passed through Frankfort, had taken occasion to show him due honour. But now it was necessary to prove that there were limits beyond which even the author of “The Messiah,” in his intercourse with younger men, had no right to pass. Accordingly Klopstock received a cool little letter in which it was indirectly and delicately intimated that he had interfered in matters which did not concern him, and about which he was inadequately instructed.
The worst that could be said about the lively proceedings that went on at Weimar after Goethe’s arrival was that they took up a great deal of time, and wasted much good energy. As for the notion that the Duke was in any way misled by Goethe, nothing could be further from the truth. The Duke had in his blood the fiery impulses of many a wild ancestor, and even now it was Goethe’s aim to restrain rather than to stimulate his passion for pleasure and excitement. Goethe knew him too well to think of troubling him with formal advice, but none the less he sought to suggest to the young prince that as a ruler he had obligations which honour required him to take seriously. Afterwards Goethe kept this object steadily before himself, and the result was that, notwithstanding occasional outbreaks of irregular passion, the Duke became one of the best of the minor German sovereigns, for, of all men, Goethe had the strongest hold over his imagination and feelings.
At first Goethe found some difficulty in arriving at a satisfactory relation with the young Duchess. For a time she also was disposed to think that he led her husband astray. She was, however, too frank and sincere not to see things in the end as they really were. She became Goethe’s true friend; and he often had opportunities of showing how worthy he was of her confidence by acting as a mediator for the removal of domestic misunderstandings. With the Duchess Dowager Amalia he never had the slightest trouble. Although the mother of a reigning prince, she was only thirty-six years of age at the time of Goethe’s arrival in Weimar. She was a woman of masculine intelligence, and during her son’s minority had discharged firmly and discreetly her duties as regent. Handsome, amiable, endowed with delicate tact, and taking a sincere interest in art and literature, she could not but attract Goethe; and he in his turn at once gained her good opinion. She saw clearly how wisely he was likely to guide the Duke, and was most eager that he should, if possible, be persuaded to settle in Weimar.
Among the residents of the little capital a high place was by universal consent conceded to Wieland, who had accepted, in 1772, an invitation sent to him by the Duchess Amalia, to come to Weimar as the tutor of her sons. Wieland was now forty-two years of age, and one of the most prominent writers in Germany. He had been grievously offended by the “Farce” written at his expense, but Goethe had by letter made some amends for the injury done to him, which, after all, was not very serious; and Wieland had magnanimously let the matter slip from his mind. Now, when he met Goethe, he thought he had never seen any one who was more to his liking. He wrote to a friend that he was “as full of Goethe as a dewdrop of the morning sun.” And the two poets continued to be on pleasant terms with one another. When Wieland wrote “Oberon,” incomparably the finest of his poems, he was enchanted by Goethe’s warm appreciation of its merits. It was natural for Goethe to praise lavishly anything that pleased him. There was no room in his generous spirit for even a touch of petty jealousy.