CHAPTER XIII LILI SCHÖNEMANN

1775

To the year 1775 belongs the third critical period of Goethe's last years in Frankfort. The autumn of 1771 following his return from Strassburg had been the first of these periods, and was signalised by Götz von Berlichingen, the product of his contrition for Friederike and of the inspiration of Shakespeare. In the summer and autumn of 1772 came the Wetzlar episode, which found expression in Werther; and in the opening weeks of 1775 begins the third period of crisis, the issue of which was to be his final leave-taking of Frankfort.

On an evening near the close of 1774 or at the beginning of 1775, a friend introduced Goethe to a house in Frankfort which during the next nine months was to be the centre of his thoughts and emotions. There was a crowd of guests, but Goethe's attention became fixed on a girl seated at a piano, and playing, as he informs us, with grace and facility. The house was that of Frau Schönemann, the widow of a rich banker, and the girl who had excited Goethe's interest was her only daughter, Anna Elisabeth, known by the pet name of Lili—the name by which she is designated in Goethe's own references to her. The musician having risen, Goethe exchanged a few polite compliments with her, and when he took his leave for the evening, the mother expressed the wish that he would soon repeat his visit, the daughter at the same time indicating that his presence would not be disagreeable to her.

The houses of the Goethes and the Schönemanns were only some hundred paces apart, but there had hitherto been no intercourse between the two families, and the reason for this isolation is a significant fact in the relations between Goethe and Lili that were to follow. The Schönemanns moved in a social circle which was rigidly closed to the burgher element in the city, and, when Frau Schönemann gave Goethe the entrée to her house, it was because he was an exceptional member of the class to which he belonged. In making the acquaintance of the Schönemanns, therefore, he had already to a certain degree compromised himself.[197] In his own account of his relations to Lili he does not disguise the fact that her mother and the friends of the family hardly concealed their feeling that the Goethes were not of their order. In seeking further intercourse with the Schönemanns he was thus putting himself in a delicate position, and the fact that he deliberately chose to do so is proof that his first sight of Lili must have touched his inflammable heart.

During the month of January Goethe became a frequent visitor at the Schönemanns, and there began those relations with Lili which, according to his own later testimony, were to give a new direction to his life, as being the immediate cause of his leaving Frankfort and settling in Weimar. If we are to accept his own averment two years before his death, Lili was the first whom he had really loved, all his other affairs of the heart being "inclinations of no importance."[198] So he spoke in the retrospect under the influence of an immediate emotion, but his own contemporary testimony proves that his love for Lili was at least not unmingled bliss. Make what reserves we may for the artificial working up of sentiment which was the fashion of the time, that testimony presents us with the picture of a lover who has not only to contend with obstacles which circumstances put in his way, but with the haunting conviction that his passion was leading him astray and that its gratification involved the surrender of his deepest self. As in the case of others of his love passages, his relations with Lili evoked a series of literary productions of which they are the inspiration and the commentary, and which exhibit new developments of his genius. We have lyrics addressed to her which, though differently inspired from those addressed to Friederike, take their place with the choicest he has written; we have plays more or less directly bearing on the situation in which he found himself; and, finally, we have his letters to various correspondents in which every phase of his passion is recorded at the moment.

In Lili Schönemann Goethe had a different object from any of his previous loves. Käthchen Schönkopf, Friederike, Lotte Buff had all been socially his inferiors, and he could play "the conquering lord" with them. Lili, on the other hand, was his superior socially—a fact of which her relatives and friends seem to have made him fully conscious. Moreover, though he was in his twenty-sixth year, and she only in her sixteenth, her personal character and her upbringing had given her a maturity beyond that of any of his previous loves. She was clever and accomplished, and already, as a desirable partie, she had a considerable experience of masculine arts. As she is represented in her portraits, the firm poise of her head and her clear-cut features suggest the dignity, decision, and self-control of which her subsequent life was to give proof.[199]

The first two lyrics he addressed to Lili reveal all the difference between his relations to her and to Friederike. Those addressed to Friederike breathe the confidence of returned affection unalloyed by any disturbing reserves; in the case of his effusions to Lili there is always a cloud in his heaven which seems to menace a possible storm. In the first of these two lyrics, Neue Liebe, neues Leben ("New Love, New Life"), there is even a suggestion of regret to find that he is entangled in a new passion. What is noteworthy in connection with all his poems inspired by Lili, however, is that they are completely free from the sentimentality of those he had written under the influence of the ladies of Darmstadt. Though differing in tone from the lyrics addressed to Friederike, they have all their directness, simplicity, and economy of expression. In his Autobiography he tells us that there could be no doubt that Lili ruled him, and in Neue Liebe, neues Leben, he acknowledges the spell she has laid upon him with a highly-wrought art without previous example in German literature.

Herz, mein Herz, was soll das geben? Was bedränget dich so sehr? Welch ein fremdes neues Leben! Ich erkenne dich nicht mehr. Weg ist alles, was du liebtest, Weg, warum du dich betrübtest, Weg dein Fleiss und deine Ruh'— Ach, wie kamst du nur dazu! Fesselt dich die Jugendblüte, Diese liebliche Gestalt, Dieser Blick voll Treu' und Güte Mit unendlicher Gewalt? Will ich rasch mich ihr entziehen, Mich ermannen, ihr entfliehen, Führet mich im Augenblick Ach, mein Weg zu ihr zurück. Und an diesem Zauberfädchen, Das sich nicht zerreissen lässt, Hält das liebe, lose Mädchen Mich so wider Willen fest; Muss in ihrem Zauberkreise Leben nun auf ihre Weise. Die Veränd'rung, ach, wie gross! Liebe! Liebe, lass mich los! Say, heart of me, what this importeth; What distresseth thee so sore? New and strange all life and living; Thee I recognise no more. Gone is everything thou loved'st; All for which thyself thou troubled'st; Gone thy toil, and gone thy peace; Ah! how cam'st thou in such case? Fetters thee that youthful freshness? Fetters thee that lovely mien? That glance so full of truth and goodness, With an adamantine chain? Vain the hardy wish to tear me From those meshes that ensnare me; For the moment I would flee, Straight my path leads back to thee. By these slender threads enchanted, Which to rend no power avails, That dear wanton maiden holds me Thus relentless in her spells. Thus within her charméd round Must I live as one spellbound; Heart! what mighty change in thee; Love, O love, ah, set me free!

In the second lyric, An Belinden, he pictures in the same tone of half regret the case in which he finds himself, and the picture has an eloquent commentary in his letters of the time. He who had lately spent his peaceful evenings in the solitude of his own chamber dreaming of her image had through her been irresistibly drawn into an alien and uncongenial world. Is he the same being who now sits at the card-table amid the glaring lights of a fashionable drawing-room in the presence of hateful faces? For her, however, he will gladly endure what he loathes with his whole soul.

Reizender ist mir des Frühlings Blüte Nun nicht auf der Flur; Wo du, Engel, bist, ist Lieb' and Güte, Wo du bist, Natur. Now the blooms of springtide on the meadow Touch no more my heart; Where thou, angel, art, is truth and goodness; Nature, where thou art.

So he sang in tones befitting the true lover, but, as it happens, we have a prose commentary from his own hand which gives perhaps a truer picture of his real state of mind. Towards the end of January, when he was already deep in his passion for Lili, he received a letter which opened a new channel for his emotions. The letter came from an anonymous lady who, as she explained, had been so profoundly moved by the tale of Werther that she could not resist the impulse to express her gratitude to its author. The fair unknown, as he was subsequently to discover, was no less distinguished a person than an Imperial Countess—the Countess Stolberg, sister of two equally fervid youths, of whom we shall presently hear in connection with Goethe. It was quite in keeping with the spirit of the time that two persons of different sexes, who had never seen each other, should proceed mutually to unbosom themselves with a freedom of self-revelation which an age, habituated to greater reticence, finds it difficult to understand; and there began a correspondence between Goethe and his adorer in which we have the astonishing spectacle of her becoming the confidant of all his emotions with regard to another woman, while he is using the language of passion towards herself.[200] Here is the opening sentence of his first letter to her, and it strikes the note of all that was to follow: "My dear, I will give you no name, for what are the names—Friend, Sister, Beloved, Bride, Wife, or any word that is a complex of all these, compared with the direct feeling—with the—— I cannot write further. Your letter has taken possession of me at a wonderful time."[201]

In his second letter to her, while she was still unknown to him, written about three weeks later (February 13th), he depicts the condition in which we are to imagine him at the time it was penned. It will be seen that it is a prose rendering of the lines An Belinden, to which reference has just been made. "If, my dear one, you can picture to yourself a Goethe who, in a laced coat, and otherwise clad from head to foot with finery in tolerable keeping, in the idle glare of sconces and lustres, amid a motley throng of people, is held a prisoner at a card-table by a pair of beautiful eyes; who in alternating distraction is driven from company to concert and from concert to ball, and with all the interest of frivolity pays his court to a pretty blonde, you have the present carnival-Goethe.... But there is another Goethe—one in grey beaver coat with brown silk necktie and boots—who already divines the approach of spring in the caressing February breezes, to whom his dear wide world will again be shortly opened up, who, ever living his own life, striving and working, according to the measure of his powers, seeks to express now the innocent feelings of youth in little poems, and the strong spice of life in various dramas; now the images of his friends, of his neighbourhood and his beloved household goods, with chalk upon grey paper; never asking the question how much of what he has done will endure, because in toiling he is always ascending a step higher, because he will spring after no ideal, but, in play or strenuous effort, will let his feelings spontaneously develop into capacities."[202]

The plays to which Goethe refers in this letter form part of his intellectual and emotional history during the period of his relations to Lili. In themselves these plays have little merit, and, had they come from the hand of some minor poet, they would deservedly have passed into oblivion, but as part of his biography they call for some notice. The first of them, Erwin und Elmire, is a sufficiently trivial vaudeville, and appears to have been begun in the autumn of 1773.[203] He must have retouched it in January—February (1775), however, as it contains distinct suggestions of his experiences with the Schönemann family. As he himself tells us in his Autobiography, the piece was suggested by Goldsmith's ballad, Edwin and Angelina, and both the choice and handling of the subject illustrate his remark in the foregoing letter regarding the fugitive nature of the various things which he threw off at this time.[204] There are four characters,—Olimpia and her daughter Elmire, Bernardo, a friend of the family, and Erwin, Elmire's lover. Elmire plays the part of capricious coquette with such effect that she drives her despairing lover to hide himself from the world and to retreat to a hermitage which he constructs for himself in the neighbouring wilds. Elmire now realises her hard-heartedness, and exhibits such symptoms of distress as to waken the concern of her mother and Bernardo. Bernardo, however, is in Erwin's secret, and contrives to bring the two lovers together and to effect a happy reconciliation, to the satisfaction of all parties—the mother included. The play was dedicated to Lili in the following lines:—

Den kleinen Strauss, den ich dir binde, Pflückt' ich aus diesem Herzen hier; Nimm ihn gefällig auf, Belinde! Der kleine Strauss, er ist von mir. This posy that I bind for thee I cull'd it from my very heart; This little posy, 'tis from me; Take it, Belinda, in good part.

There was a sufficient reason for Goethe's praying Lili to take the piece "in good part." In the cruel coquette Elmire Lili could not but see a portrait of herself, and there are expressions in the play which she could not but regard as home-thrusts. "To be entertained, to be amused," says Erwin to Bernardo, "that is all they (the maidens) desire. They value a man who spends an odious evening with them at cards as highly as the man who gives his body and soul for them." In another remark of Erwin's there is a reference to Goethe's own relations to Lili and her family which she could not misunderstand. "I loved her with an enduring love. To that love I gave my whole heart. But because I am poor, I was scorned. And yet I hoped through my diligence to make as suitable a provision for her as any of the beplastered wind-bags." Trivial as the play is, it was acted in Frankfort during Goethe's absence,[205] and at a later date he considered it worth his while to recast it in another form.

Erwin und Elmire was followed by another play, more remarkable from its contents, but by general agreement of as little importance from a literary point of view. This was Stella, significantly designated in its original form as A Play for Lovers. Unlike Erwin und Elmire, it was wholly the production of this period—the end of February and the beginning of March being the probable date of its composition. Though written at the height of his passion for Lili, however, it contains fewer direct references to his experiences of the moment than Erwin und Elmire. Any interest that attaches to Stella lies in the fact of its being a lively presentment of a phase of Goethe's own experience and of the world of factitious sentiment which made that experience possible. No other of Goethe's youthful productions, indeed, better illustrates the literary emotionalism of the time when it was written, and some notion of its character and scope is desirable in view of all his relations to Lili.

The drama opens in a posting-house, where two travellers, Madame Sommer (Cäcilie) and her daughter Lucie, have alighted. The object of their journey is to place Lucie as a companion with a lady living on an estate in the neighbourhood. From the conversation of the mother and daughter we learn that Cäcilie had been deserted by her husband, and was now in such reduced circumstances as to necessitate her daughter's finding some employment. On inquiring of the postmistress they gain some information regarding the lady they are in search of. She also had been deserted by one who was her reputed husband, and since then had spent her days in mournful solitude and good works. Fatigued by her journey, Cäcilie retires to rest, and Lucie, carefully instructed not to reveal the position of herself and her mother, sets out to interview the strange lady. During her absence there arrives at the posting-house a gentleman in military dress, who presently falls into a tearful soliloquy, from which we learn that he is no other than Fernando, the husband of Cäcilie, and that the strange lady is Stella, whom he had also deserted and with whom he now proposes to renew his former relations. Lucie returns delighted with her visit to Stella, and there ensues a bantering conversation between the father and daughter, both, of course, equally ignorant of their relation to each other. So ends the first Act; with the second begin the embarrassments of the difficult situation. Cäcilie and Lucie repair to Stella, and, after an effusive exchange of memories between the two deserted ones, Stella invites both mother and daughter to make their home with her. Unfortunately Stella brings forth the portrait of her former lover, in whom to her horror Cäcilie recognises her husband, and Lucie to her surprise recognises the officer at the posting-house—a fact which she makes known to Stella. In an ecstasy of excited expectation Stella dispatches a servant with the order to fetch the long-lost one, and Cäcilie, retiring to the garden, communicates to Lucie the discovery of her father. In the rapidly succeeding Scenes that follow the three chief persons experience alternations of agony and bliss which find facile expression in many sighs, tears, and embraces. Fernando and Stella, lost in the present and oblivious of the past, melt in their new-found bliss, but are interrupted in their raptures by the announcement that Cäcilie and Lucie are preparing to take their departure. At Stella's request Fernando finds Cäcilie, whom he at first does not recognise. Mutual recognition follows, however, when Fernando vows that he will never again leave her, and proposes that he and she and Lucie should make off at once. Meanwhile, Stella is pouring forth her bliss over the grave which, like one of the Darmstadt ladies, she has had dug for herself in her garden. Here she is joined by Fernando, whose altered mood fills her with a vague dread which is converted into horror when, on the entrance of Cäcilie and Lucie, Fernando acknowledges them as his wife and daughter. After paroxysms of emotion all the parties separate, and Stella prepares to take her flight after a vain attempt to cut Fernando's portrait out of its frame. She is interrupted in her intention of flight by the appearance of Fernando, and there follows a dialogue in which we are to look for the drift of the play. Cäcilie insists on departing and leaving the two lovers to their happiness. "I feel," she says, "that my love for thee is not selfish, is not the passion of a lover, which would give up all to possess its longed-for object ... it is the feeling of a wife, who out of love itself can give up love." Fernando, however, passionately declares that he will never abandon her, and Cäcilie makes a happy suggestion that will solve all difficulties. Was it not recorded of a German Count that he brought home a maiden from the Holy Land and that she and his wife happily shared his affections between them? And such is the solution which commends itself to all parties. Fernando impartially embraces both ladies, and Cäcilie's concluding remark is: "We are thine!"[206]

Such is the play which, in a bad English translation that did not mitigate its absurdities, provoked the wit of the Anti-Jacobin.[207] In Fernando, the central figure of the play, we are, of course, to recognise Goethe himself,[208] and in no other of his dramas has he presented a less attractive character. Weislingen, Clavigo, and Werther have all their redeeming qualities, but Fernando is an emotional egotist incapable of any worthy motive, and it is the most serious blemish in the play, even in view of the factitious world in which it moves, that he is made the adored idol of two such different women as Cäcilie and Stella. The situation, as Goethe himself tells us, was suggested by the relations of Swift to Stella and Vanessa, but he did not need to go so far afield for a motive. In the world around him he was familiar both with the creed and the practice which the conclusion of the play approves. As we have seen, it was openly held by enlightened and moral persons that marriage, as being a mere contract, was incompatible with a true union of souls, and that such a union was only to be found in irresponsible relations. In the case of his friend Fritz Jacobi, whose character and talents had all his admiration, he had a practical illustration of the creed; for Jacobi had a wife and also a friend (his step-aunt Johanna Fahlmer) in whom he found a more responsive recipient of his emotions. But it is rather in Goethe's own character and experience that we are to look for the origin of Stella; it is in truth an analytic presentment of what he had himself known and felt. As we have seen, one object was incapable of engrossing all his affections; while he was paying court to Lili, his wandering desires went out to the fair correspondent who had evinced such interest in his troubles and aspirations. It would seem that he required two types of woman such as he has depicted in Stella to satisfy at once his mind and heart: a Cäcilie who inspired him with respect as well as affection, and a Stella whose self-abandonment left his passions their free course.

Nauseous as Stella must appear to the modern reader, it found wide acceptance at the period it was written, though its moral was generally condemned. Herder was enthusiastic in its praise, and on its publication at the end of January, 1776, it passed through four editions in a single week. In 1805, with its altered dénouement, in which the hero shoots himself, it was performed with applause in Berlin, and was afterwards frequently produced. Goethe himself continued to retain a singular affection for the most sickly sentimental of all his literary offspring, and he subsequently sent a copy of his work to Lili, accompanied by some lines which were worthy of a better gift.[209]

Im holden Thal, auf schneebedeckten Höhen War stets dein Bild mir nah! Ich sah's um mich in lichten Wolken wehen; Im Herzen war mir's da. Empfinde hier, wie mit allmächt'gem Triebe Ein Herz das andre zieht, Und dass vergebens Liebe Vor Liebe flieht. In the dear vale, on heights the snow had covered, Still was thine image near; I saw it round me in the bright clouds hover; My heart beheld it there. Here learn to feel with what resistless power One heart the other ties; That vain it is when lover From lover flies.

Still another piece belongs to the first months of Goethe's relations to Lili—Claudine von Villa Bella, which appears to have been written intermittently in April and May. Like Erwin und Elmire it is in operatic form—the prose dialogue being diversified with outbursts of song. Entirely trivial as a work of art, it calls for passing notice only on account of certain characteristics which distinguish it as a product of the period when it was written. The intention of the play, Goethe wrote at a later time, was to exhibit "noble sentiments in association with adventurous actions," and the conduct of his hero and heroine is certainly unconventional, if their feelings are exalted. Claudine is the only daughter of a fond and widowed father, and her dreamy emotionalism would have made her a welcome member of the Darmstadt circle of ladies. She is in love with Pedro, but Pedro is not the hero of the piece. That place is assigned to his eldest brother Crugantino, a scapegrace, with a noble heart, who, finding the ordinary bonds of society too confined for him, has taken to highway robbery. "Your burgher life," he says—and we know that he is here uttering Goethe's own sentiments—"your burgher life is to me intolerable. There, whether I give myself to work or enjoyment, slavery is my lot. Is it not a better choice for one of decent merit to plunge into the world? Pardon me! I don't give a ready ear to the opinion of other people, but pardon me if I let you know mine. I will grant you that if once one takes to a roving life, no goal and no restraints exist for him; for our heart—ah! it is infinite in its desires so long as its strength remains to it." Crugantino, who with his band is housed at a wretched inn in the neighbourhood, catches sight of Claudine, is bewitched by her beauty, and resolves to gain possession of her. On a beautiful moonlight night, attended by only one companion, he makes his adventurous attempt. Of the charivari that follows it is only necessary to say that Pedro is wounded in a hand-to-hand encounter by his unknown brother Crugantino, and is conveyed to the inn where the band have their quarters. And now comes the turn of Claudine to show her disregard of conventionalities. In agonies for her wounded lover, she dons male attire, and in the middle of the night sets out for the inn where he is lying. She encounters Crugantino at the door, and their dialogue is overheard by the wounded Pedro who rushes forth to rescue her. A duel ensues between Pedro and Crugantino; the watch appears, and all parties are conveyed to the village prison. Here they are found by the distracted father and his friend Sebastian, and a general explanation follows—Pedro being made secure of Claudine, and Crugantino showing himself a repentant sinner. With this fantastic production, which, beginning in an atmosphere of pure sentiment, ends in broad farce, Goethe was even in middle life so satisfied that he recast it in verse, and made other alterations which in the opinion of most critics did not improve the original.[210]

The triviality of these successive performances, so void of the mind and heart displayed in the fragmentary Prometheus and Der Ewige Jude, have their commentary in his continued relations to Lili Schönemann. They even raise the question whether his passion for her were really so consuming as in his old age he declared it to have been. They at least speak a very different language from that of the simple lyrics in which he expressed his love for Friederike Brion. Yet when we turn to his correspondence, written on the inspiration of the moment, we find all the indications of a genuinely distracted lover.

During the month of March we are to believe that he underwent all the pangs of a passionate wooer. Surrounded by numerous admirers, Lili was difficult of access, and apparently took some pleasure in reminding him that he was only one among others.[211] "Oh! if I did not compose dramas," he wrote on the 6th to his confidant the Countess, "I should be shipwrecked." A few days of unalloyed bliss he did enjoy, and the length at which he records them in his Autobiography shows that they remained a vivid memory with him. In the course of the month Lili spent some time with an uncle at Offenbach on the Main, and, joining her there, Goethe found her all that his heart could wish. "Take the girl to your heart; it will be good for you both," he wrote out of his bliss to his other female confidant, Johanna Fahlmer.[212]

On their return to Frankfort, however, his former griefs were renewed, and a new distraction was added to them. "I am delighted that you are so enamoured of my Stella," he writes to Fritz Jacobi on March 21st, immediately after his return; "my heart and mind are now turned in such entirely different directions that my own flesh and blood is almost indifferent to me. I can tell you nothing, for what is there that can be said? I will not even think either of to-morrow or of the day after to-morrow."[213] The truth is that, as he tells us in his Autobiography, he was now in an embarrassing position. His relations to Lili had become such that a decisive step was necessary in the interests of both. During the last fortnight of March his mood was certainly not that of a happy lover. To break with Lili was a step which circumstances as well as his own attachment to her made a dire alternative. On the other hand, from the bond of marriage, as we know, he shrank with every instinct of his nature. Only a few weeks before, doubtless with his own possible fate in front of him, he had put these words in the mouth of Fernando in his Stella: "I would be a fool to allow myself to be shackled. That state [marriage] smothers all my powers; that state robs me of all my spirits, cramps my whole being. I must forth into the free world."[214] Goethe did eventually take the decision of Fernando, but not just yet. On March 25th he wrote to Herder: "It seems as if the twisted threads on which my fate hangs, and which I have so long shaken to and fro in oscillating rotation, would at last unite."[215] On the 29th, Klopstock, who had come on a few days' visit to Frankfort, found him in "strange agitation." As so often happened in Goethe's life, it was an accident that determined his wavering purpose. In the beginning of April there came to Frankfort a Mademoiselle Delf, an old friend of the Schönemann family, whom Goethe made acquainted with his father and mother. A person of strenuous character, she took it upon her to bring matters to a point between the two households. With the consent of Lili's mother, she brought Lili one evening to the Goethe house. "Take each other by the hand," she said in commanding tones; and the two lovers obeyed and embraced. "It was a remarkable decree of the powers that rule us," is the characteristic reflection of the aged Goethe, "that in the course of my singular career I should also experience the feelings of one betrothed."

Goethe's feelings as a betrothed were from the first of a mingled nature. No sooner had he given his pledge than all the complications which must result from his union with Lili stared him in the face. Even after the betrothal the relations between the two families did not become more cordial. Not only were they divided by difference of social standing; a deeper ground of mutual antagonism lay in their religion. The Schönemanns belonged to the Reformed persuasion, the Protestantism of the higher classes, while the Goethes were Lutheran, as were the majority of the class to which they belonged; and between the two denominations there was bitter and permanent estrangement.[216] And there was still another stumbling-block in the way of a probable happy union. Goethe was not earning an independent income, and, in the event of his marriage, he and his bride would have to take up their quarters under his parental roof. But, accustomed to the gay pleasures of a fashionable circle, how would Lili accommodate herself to the homely ways and surroundings of the Goethe household? Moreover, we have it from Goethe himself that Lili was distasteful equally to his father and mother—the former sarcastically speaking of her as "Die Stadtdame." Such, he realised, was the future before him as the husband of Lili; and he had no sooner bound himself to her than he was reduced to distraction by conflicting desires. In some words he wrote to Herder within a fortnight after his betrothal we have a glimpse of his state of mind. "A short time ago," he wrote, "I was under the delusion that I was approaching the haven of domestic bliss and a sure footing in the realities of earthly joy and sorrow, but I am again in unhappy wise cast forth on the wide sea."[217] He was already, in fact, contemplating the desirability of bursting his bond; and an opportunity came to assist him in his resolve.

In the second week of May there came to Frankfort three youths whose rank and personal character created a flutter in the Goethe household. Two of them were the brothers of the Countess Stolberg,[218] with whom Goethe had been carrying on his platonic correspondence during the previous months, and were on their way to a tour in Switzerland. All were enthusiastic adherents of the Sturm und Drang movement, and Goethe had long been the object of their distant adoration. They were not disappointed in their idol, and the first meeting, according to both Stolbergs, sufficed to establish a general union of hearts. "Goethe," wrote the elder, "is a delightful fellow. The fulness of fervid sensibility streams out of his every word and feature."[219] During the few days they spent in Frankfort the three scions of nobility were frequent guests in the Goethe house, and their talk must have been enlivening if we may judge from the specimen of it recorded by Goethe himself. The conversation had turned on the ill-deeds of tyrants, a favourite theme with the youth of the time, and, heated with wine, the three youths expressed a vehement desire for the blood of all such. The Herr Rath smiled and shook his head, but his helpmate hastily ran to the wine-cellar and produced a bottle of her best, exclaiming, "Here is the true tyrant's blood. Feast on it, but let no murderous thoughts go forth from my house."

In the company of these choice spirits Goethe decided to leave Frankfort for a time, and with the set resolve, if possible, to efface all thoughts of Lili. Characteristically he did not take a formal leave of her, a proceeding which was naturally resented both by herself and her relatives. The quartette started on May 14th, and from the first they made it appear that they meant to travel as four geniuses who set at naught all accepted conventions.[220] Before departing they all procured Werther costume—blue coat, yellow waistcoat and hose and round grey hat; and in this array they disported themselves throughout their travels. Darmstadt was their first halting-place, and at the Court there they conducted themselves with some regard to decorum. Outside its precincts, however, they gave full rein to their eccentricities, and so scandalised the Darmstadters by publicly bathing in a pond in the neighbourhood that they found it advisable to beat a hasty retreat from the town. In Darmstadt Goethe had met his old mentor, Merck, who with his usual caustic frankness told him that he was making a fool of himself in keeping company with such madcaps.[221] At Mannheim, their next stage, the whole party signalised themselves by smashing the wine-glasses from which they had drunk to the ladylove of the younger Stolberg. The presence of distinguished personages at Carlsruhe, their next stage, kept their vivacity within bounds so long as they remained there. Just at this moment the young Duke of Weimar had come to Carlsruhe to betroth himself to the Princess Luise of Hesse-Darmstadt, and from both Goethe received a cordial invitation to visit them at Weimar. Another distinguished person then in the town was Klopstock, who received Goethe with such undisguised kindness that he was induced to read aloud to him the latest scenes of a work of which we shall hear presently.[222] At Carlsruhe Goethe parted company from his fellow-travellers with the intention of visiting his sister at Emmendingen. On May 22nd he was at Strassburg, where he spent several days, renewing old acquaintances, especially with his former monitor, Salzmann, but, for reasons we can appreciate, did not present himself at Sesenheim.

From Strassburg he proceeded to Emmendingen, where he spent the first week of June with his sister, whom he had not seen since her marriage with Schlosser. For various reasons he had looked forward to their meeting with painful feelings. He knew that she had been unhappy in her marriage, and must expect to find her naturally depressed temper soured by her conjugal experience. Their main theme of conversation was his betrothal to Lili, and it was with a vehemence born of her own bitter experience that Cornelia urged him to break off a connection which the relations of all immediately concerned too surely foreboded must end in disaster. The warning of Cornelia, we might have expected, should have been welcome as confirming his own struggling attempts to break loose from his bonds, but, if his later memories did not betray him, it only laid a heavier load on his heart. His real state of mind at the time we have in a letter to Johanna Fahlmer, written while he was still with his sister. "I feel," he wrote, "that the chief aim of my journey has failed, and when I return it will be worse for the Bear[223] than before. I know well that I am a fool, but for that very reason I am I."[224] The parting of the brother and sister—and the parting was to be for ever[225]—must have been with heavy misgivings for both. To her brother alone had Cornelia been bound by any tender tie; he alone of her family had understood and sympathised with her singular temperament, and her greatest happiness had been derived from following his career of brilliant promise and achievement. It must, therefore, have been with dark forebodings that she saw before him the possibility of a union which in her eyes must be fatal alike to his peace of mind and the development of his genius. On his side, also, Goethe must have parted from his sister with the sad conviction that the gloom that lay upon her life could never be lifted. She had been the one never-failing confidant equally of the troubles of his heart and of his intellectual ambitions, and it was from her that in his present distraction he had naturally sought sympathy and counsel. It is with the tenderest touch that in his reminiscent record of this their last meeting he depicts her "problematical" nature, and pays his tribute to all that she had been to him.[226]

It had been Goethe's original intention to end his travels with the visit to his sister, but, as their main object was as far off as ever, he decided to rejoin his late companions and to accompany them to Switzerland. By way of Schaffhausen they proceeded to Zurich, where Goethe's first act was to seek Lavater. Their talk during his stay in Zurich mainly turned on Lavater's great work on Physiognomy, to which Goethe had continuously contributed by help and counsel, though from the first he was sceptical of its scientific value. Their intercourse was as cordial as it had been in the previous year, and Lavater was subjugated more than ever by the personality of Goethe. "Who can think more differently than Goethe and I," he wrote to Wieland, who was still suspicious of his youthful adversary, "and yet we are devoted to each other.... You will be astonished at the man who unites the fury of the lion with the gentleness of the lamb. I have seen no one at once firmer in purpose and more easily led.... Goethe is the most lovable, most affable, most charming of fellows."[227]

In Zurich happened what Merck had foreseen. Goethe had grown tired of his over-exuberant fellow-travellers, whose ways, moreover, did not commend them to the sensitive Lavater. Goethe himself indeed was capable of wild enough pranks, but behind his wild humours lay ever the "serious striving" which was the regulative force of his nature, and which Lavater had recognised from the beginning of their intercourse. A lucky accident gave Goethe the opportunity of escaping from his late comrades without an open breach. In Zurich he found a friend whom he had looked forward to meeting there. This was a native of Frankfort, Passavant by name, who was settled in Switzerland as a Reformed pastor. Passavant was a man of intelligence and attractive character, and when he proposed that they should make a tour together through the smaller Swiss Cantons, Goethe jumped at the suggestion.

From Goethe's own narrative of his tour with Passavant we are to infer that the distracting image of Lili was never absent from his mind, and that all the glories of the scenery through which they passed were only its background seen through the haze of his wandering imaginations. And the testimony of the prose narrative in his Autobiography is confirmed by the successive lyrics, prompted by the intrusive image of Lili, which fell from him by the way. In the following lines, composed on the Lake of Zurich on the first morning of their journey, he clothes in poetical form the confession he had made to Johanna Fahlmer from Emmendingen:—

Und frische Nahrung, neues Blut Saug' ich aus freier Welt; Wie ist Natur so hold und gut, Die mich am Busen hält! Die Welle wieget unsern Kahn Im Rudertakt hinauf, Und Berge, wolkig himmelan, Begegnen unserm Lauf. Aug', mein Aug', was sinkst du nieder? Goldne Träume, kommt ihr wieder? Weg, du Traum! so Gold du bist; Hier auch Lieb' und Leben ist. Auf der Welle blinken Tausend schwebende Sterne; Weiche Nebel trinken Rings die türmende Ferne; Morgenwind umflügelt Die beschattete Bucht, Und im See bespiegelt Sich die reifende Frucht. Fresh cheer and quickened blood I suck From this wide world and free; How dear is Nature and how good! A mother unto me! Rocked by the wavelets speeds our skiff To the oar's measured beat; Cloudclapt, the heaven-aspiring hills Appear our course to meet. Why sink my eyelids as I gaze? Ye golden dreams of other days, Come ye again? Though ne'er so dear, Begone! Are life and love not here? The o'erhanging stars are twinkling In myriads on the mere; In floating mists enfolded The far heights disappear. The morning breeze is coursing Round the deep-shadowed cove; And in its depths are imaged The ripening fruits above.

Looking down on the same lake from its southern ridge, he writes these lines, the concentrated expression of distracted emotions:—

Wenn ich, liebe Lili, dich nicht liebte, Welche Wonne gäb' mir dieser Blick! Und doch, wenn ich, Lili, dich nicht liebte, Fänd' ich hier und fänd' ich dort mein Glück? If I, loved Lili, loved thee not, In this prospect, ah! what bliss; Yet, Lili, if I loved thee not, Where should I find my happiness?

In the cloister of the church at Einsiedeln he saw a beautiful gold crown, and his first thought was how it would become the brows of Lili. On the night of June 21st the two travellers reached the hospice in the pass of St. Gothard—the term of their journey. Next morning they saw the path that led down to Italy, and, according to Goethe's account, Passavant vehemently urged that they should make the descent together. For a few moments he was undecided, but the memories of Lili conquered. Drawing forth a golden heart, her gift, which he wore round his neck, he kissed it, and his resolution was taken. Hastily turning from the tempting path, he began his homeward descent, his companion reluctantly following him.[228]

On July 22nd, after a leisurely journey homewards, he was again in Frankfort, and in a state of mind as undecided as ever regarding his future course. Fortunately or unfortunately for himself and the world, circumstances independent of his own will were to decide between the alternatives that lay before him.