A hundred years ago wedding festivities lasted for many days after the wedding, and the bride and bridegroom did not go till they were over. When the celebrated and much married Caroline Schlegel married her first husband, George Böhmer, in 1784, the ceremony took place at her own home in Göttingen, where her father was a well-known professor. "It would be unnatural if a young wife did not begin with an account of her wedding day," she says in one of her letters. "Mine was delightful enough. Böhmer breakfasted with me, and the morning hours passed gaily, and yet with quietness. There was no trepidation—only an intercourse of souls. My brother came. We were together till four, and when he left us he gave us his blessing with tears.... Lotte and Friederike wove the bridal wreath.... Then I had a talk with my father and dressed myself.... Meanwhile those dear Meiners sent me a note, with which were some garters they had embroidered themselves. Several of my friends wrote to me, and last of all I got a silhouette, painted on glass, of Lotte and Friederike weaving my bridal wreath. When I was dressed I was a pretty bride. The room was charmingly decorated by my mother. Soon after four o'clock Böhmer arrived, and the guests, thirty-eight in number. Thank Heaven, there were no old uncles and aunts, so the company was of a more bearable type than is usual on such occasions. I stood there surrounded by my girl friends, and my most vivid thought was of what my condition would be if I did not love the man before me. My father, who was still far from well, led me to the clergyman, and I saw myself for life at Böhmer's side and yet did not tremble. During the ceremony I did not cry. But after it was over and Böhmer took me in his arms with every expression of the deepest love, while parents, brothers, sisters, and friends greeted me with kind wishes as never a bride was greeted before, my brother being quite overwhelmed—then my heart melted and overflowed out of sheer happiness."
A week later Caroline and her husband are still at Göttingen, and still celebrating their marriage. At one house, under pretence of the heat, the bride was led into the garden, and beheld there an illuminated motto: "Happy the man who has a virtuous wife: his life will be doubly long." Another friend arrayed her son as Hymen, and taught him to strew flowers in Caroline's path, leading her thus to an arbour where there was a throne of moss and flowers, with high steps ascending to it, a canopy and a triumphal arch. Concealed behind a bush were musicians, who sang an appropriate song, while the bride and bridegroom mounted the throne and sank in each other's arms before a crowd of sympathising and tearful spectators.
This took place more than a hundred and twenty years ago, but I have in my possession what I can only describe as the "literature" of a marriage celebrated three years ago between a North and a South German, both belonging to commercial families of old standing; and it supplies me, if I needed it, with documentary evidence that Germans enjoy now what they enjoyed then. The marriage took place in winter and from a flat, so that the bride's friends could not build grottoes or hide musicians behind a bush; but for weeks before both sides of the family must have been busy composing the poems sung at the wedding feast, the music that accompanied them, and the elaborate humorous verses containing allusions to the past history of the bride and bridegroom. To begin with, there is a dainty book of picture postcards, the first one giving portraits of a very handsome and dignified bridegroom with his dainty bride. Then there is a view of Dresden where the bridegroom was born, another of the Rhenish town in which he found his bride, and one of Berlin where she used to stay with a married sister and deal "baskets" right and left to would-be admirers. In Germany, when a girl refuses a man she is said to give him a "basket," and a favourite old figure in the cotillon used to put one in a girl's hands and then present two men to her. She danced with the one she liked best, and the rejected man had to dance round after them with the basket.
Besides the book of postcards, each guest at this wedding was presented with printed copies of the Tafel-Lieder composed by members of the family. One of these has eight verses and each verse has eight lines. It relates little events in the life of the bridegroom from babyhood onwards. You learn that he was a clever child, that he lived at home with his mother instead of going abroad to learn his work, that when he was young he ardently desired to go on the stage, that he is a fine gymnast and musician, but that he needs a wife because he is a dreamy person capable of putting on odd boots. Another Tafel-Lied describes the courtship step by step, and even the assistance given by the poet's wife to bring the romance to its present happy conclusion.
"At last Frau Sophie stirred in the affair,
Her eyes had pierced to his heart's desire,
With fine diplomacy she coaxed Miss Clare
To own her maiden heart was set on fire.
On all the words and sighs there follow deeds:
He comes, he woos her, and at last succeeds."
The songs are not all sentiment. They are jocular, and contain puns and play upon names. Three out of the five end with an invitation to everyone to raise their glasses with a Hoch to the married pair. This is done over and over again at German weddings, and as all the guests want to clink glasses with the bride and bridegroom, there is a good deal of movement as well as noise. Besides the Tafel-Lieder, each of which made a separate booklet with its own dedication and illustration, every guest received an elaborate book of samples: samples of the various straws used that summer for ladies' hats. The bridegroom's family had manufactured hats for many generations; they were wealthy, highly considered people, and extremely proud of their position in their own industry. I am sure that when an Englishman in the same trade and of the same standing gets married, the last thing that would be mentioned at his wedding would be hats. It would be considered in the highest degree indecorous. But the German is still guileless enough to be satisfied with his station in life when it is sufficiently honourable and prosperous, and for this wedding two little nieces had prepared this card of samples and composed a rhyme for each different colour—
"Wie ist doch der Onkel hoch beglückt
Das Tantchen heute der 'Brautkranz' schmückt"
went with "myrtle green."
"Liebe Gäste, mit Genuss,
Wollet alle Euch erheben—
Hoch das Brautpaar—
Es soll leben!"
went with the "champagne" straw at the end; and one accompanying the "silver" straw contained an allusion to the "silver" wedding twenty-five years hence, when the bride's golden hair would be silver-grey.