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History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 5
T >> Thomas Carlyle >> History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 5 Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
If, with natural indignation, he shut his door, and refuse to come
to the Tabagie, they knock in a panel of his door; and force him
out with crackers, fire-works, rockets and malodorous projectiles.
Once the poor blockhead, becoming human for a moment, went clean
away; to Halle where his Brother was, or to some safer place:
but the due inveiglements, sublime apologies, increase of titles,
salaries, were used; and the indispensable Phosphorescent
Blockhead, and President of the Academy of Pedler's-French, was
got back. Drink remained always as his consolation; drink, and the
deathless Volumes he was writing and printing. Sublime returns
came to him;--Kaiser's Portrait set in diamonds, on one occasion,
--for his Presentation-Copies in high quarters: immortal fame, is
it not his clear portion; still more clearly abundance of good
wine. Friedrich Wilhelm did not let him want for Titles;--raised
him at last to the Peerage; drawing out the Diploma and Armorial
Blazonry, in a truly Friedrich-Wilhelm manner, with his own hand.
The Gundlings, in virtue of the transcendent intellect and merits
of this Founder Gundling, are, and are hereby declared to be, of
Baronial dignity to the last scion of them; and in "all
RITTER-RENNEN (Tournaments), Battles, Fights, Camp-pitchings,
Sealings, Siguetings, shall and may use the above-said Shield of
Arms,"--if it can be of any advantage to them. A Prussian Majesty
who gives us 150 pounds yearly, with board and lodging and the run
of his cellar, and honors such as these, is not to be lightly
sneezed away, though of queer humors now and then. The highest
Personages, as we said, more than once made gifts to Gundling;
miniatures set in diamonds; purses of a hundred ducats:
even Gundling, it was thought, might throw in a word, mad or
otherwise, which would bear fruit. It was said of him, he never
spoke to harm anybody with his Majesty. The poor blown-up
blockhead was radically not ill-natured,--at least, if you let his
"phosphorescences" alone.
But the grandest explosious, in Tobacco-Parliament, were
producible, when you got Two literary fools; and, as if with
Leyden-jars, positive and negative, brought their vanities to bear
on one another. This sometimes happened, when Tobacbo-Parliament
was in luck. Friedrich Wilhelm had a variety of Merry-Andrew Raths
of the Gundling sort, though none ever came up to Gundling, or
approached him, in worth as a Merry-Andrew.
Herr Fassmann, who wrote Books, by Patronage or for the Leipzig
Booksellers, and wandered about the world as a star or comet of
some magnitude, is not much known to my readers:--but he is too
well known to me, for certain dark Books of his which I have had
to read. [ Life of Friedrich Wilhelm,
occasionally cited here; Life of August the Strong;
&c.] A very dim Literary Figure; undeniable,
indecipherable Human Fact, of those days; now fallen quite extinct
and obsolete; his garniture, equipment, environment all very dark
to us. Probably a too restless, imponderous creature, too much of
the Gundling type; structure of him GASEOUS, not solid; Perhaps a
little of the coxcomb naturally; much of the sycophant on
compulsion,--being sorely jammed into corners, and without
elbow-room at all, in this world. Has, for the rest, a
recognizable talent for "Magazine writing,"--for Newspaper
editing, had that rich mine, "California of the Spiritually
Vagabond," been opened in those days. Poor extinct Fassmann, one
discovers at last a vein of weak geniality in him; here and there,
real human sense and eyesight, under those strange conditions;
and his poor Books, rotted now to inanity, have left a small
seed-pearl or two, to the earnest reader. Alas, if he WAS to
become "spiritually vagabond" ("spiritually" and otherwise),
might it not perhaps be wholesome to him that the California
was NOT discovered?--
Fassmann was by no means such a fool as Gundling; but, he was much
of a fool too. He had come to Berlin, about this time, [1726, as
he himself says (supra p. 8).] in hopes of patronage from the King
or somebody; might say to himself, "Surely I am a better man than
Gundling, if the Berlin Court has eyesight." By the King, on some
wise General's recommending it, he was, as a preliminary,
introduced to the Tabagie at least. Here is the celebrated
Gundling; there is the celebrated Fassmann. Positive Leyden-jar,
with negative close by: in each of these two men lodges a
full-charged fiery electric virtue of self-conceit; destructive
each of the other;--could a conductor be discovered.
Conductors are discoverable, conductors are not wanting; and many
are the explosions between these mutually-destructive human
varieties;--welcomed with hilarious, rather vacant, huge
horse-laughter, in this Tobacco-Parliament and Synod of
the Houyhnhnms.
Of which take this acme; and then end. Fassmann, a fellow not
without sarcasm and sharpness, as you may still see, has one
evening provoked Gundling to the transcendent pitch,--till words
are weak, and only action will answer. Gundling, driven to the
exploding point, suddenly seizes his Dutch smoking-pan, of
peat-charcoal ashes and red-hot sand; and dashes it in the face of
Fassmann; who is of course dreadfully astonished thereby, and has
got his very eyebrows burnt, not to speak of other injuries.
Stand to him, Fassmann! Fassmann stands to him tightly, being the
better man as well as the more satirical; grasps Gundling by the
collar, wrenches him about, lays him at last over his knee,
sitting-part uppermost; slaps said sitting-part (poor sitting-part
that had broken the ice of Wusterhausen) with the hot pan,--nay
some say, strips it and slaps. Amid the inextinguishable
horse-laughter (sincere but vacant) of the Houyhnhnm Olympus.
After which, his Majesty, as epilogue to such play, suggests, That
feats of that nature are unseemly among gentlemen; that when
gentlemen have a quarrel, there is another way of settling it.
Fassmann thereupon challenges Gundling; Gundling accepts; time and
place are settled, pistols the weapon. At the appointed time and
place Gundling stands, accordingly, pistol in hand; but at sight
of Fassmann, throws his pistol away; will not shoot any man, nor
have any man shoot him. Fassmann sternly advances; shoots his
pistol (powder merely) into Gundling's sublime goat's-hair wig:
wig blazes into flame; Gundling falls shrieking, a dead man, to
the earth; and they quench and revive him with a bucket of water.
Was there ever seen such horse-play? Roaring laughter, huge, rude,
and somewhat vacant, as that of the Norse gods over their ale at
Yule time;--as if the face of the Sphinx were to wrinkle itself in
laughter; or the fabulous Houyhnhnms themselves were there to mock
in their peculiar fashion.
His Majesty at length gave Gundling a wine-cask, duly figured;
"painted black with a white cross," which was to stand in his room
as MEMENTO-MORI, and be his coffin. It stood for ten years;
Gundling often sitting to write in it; a good screen against
draughts. And the poor monster was actually buried in this cask;
[Died 11th April, 1731, age 58: description of the Burial "at
Bornstadt near Potsdam," in Forster, i. 276.] Fassmann pronouncing
some funeral oration,--and the orthodox clergy uttering, from the
distance, only a mute groan. "The Herr Baron von Gundling was a
man of many dignities, of much Book-learning; a man of great
memory," admits Fassmann, "but of no judgment," insinuates he,--
LOOKING FOR the Judgment (EXPECTANS JUDICIUM)," says Fassmann,
with a pleasant wit. Fassmann succeeded to all the emoluments and
honors; but did not hold them; preferred to run away before long:
and after him came one and the other, whom the reader is not to be
troubled with here. Enough if the patient reader have seen, a
little, into that background of Friedrich Wilhelm's existence;
and, for the didactic part, have caught up his real views or
instincts upon Spiritual Phosphorescence, or Stupidity grown
Vocal, which are much sounder than most of us suspect.
These were the sports of the Tobacco-Parliament; and it was always
meant primarily for sport, for recreation: but there is no doubt
it had a serious function as well. "Business matters," adds
Beneckendorf, who had means of knowing, [Benekendorf,
Karakterzuge, i. 137-149; vi. 37.] "were often a
subject of colloquy in the TABAKS-COLLEGIUM. Not that they were
there finished off, decided upon, or meant to be so. But Friedrich
Wilhelm often purposely brought up such things in conversation
there, that he might learn the different opinions of his generals
and chief men, without their observing it,"--and so might profit
by the Collective Wisdom, in short.
Chapter VIII.
SECKENDORF'S RETORT TO HER MAJESTY.
The Treaty of Wusterhausen was not yet known to Queen Sophie, to
her Father George, or to any external creature: but that open
flinching, and gradual withdrawal, from the Treaty of Hanover was
too well known; and boded no good to her pet project. Female
sighs, male obduracies, and other domestic phenomena, are to be
imagined in consequence. "A grand Britannic Majesty indeed;
very lofty Father to us, Madam, ever since he came to be King of
England: Stalking along there, with his nose in the air;
not deigning the least notice of us, except as of a thing that may
be got to fight for him! And he does not sign the Double-Marriage
Treaty, Madam; only talks of signing it,--as if we were a starved
coach-horse, to be quickened along by a wisp of hay put upon the
coach-pole close ahead of us always!"--"JARNI-BLEU!" snuffles
Seckendorf with a virtuous zeal, or looks it; and things are not
pleasant at the royal dinner-table.
Excellenz Seckendorf, we find at this time, "often has his Majesty
to dinner:" and such dinners; fitting one's tastes in all points,
--no expense regarded (which indeed is the Kaiser's, if we knew
it)! And in return, Excellenz is frequently at dinner with his
Majesty; where the conversation; if it turn on England, which
often happens, is more and more an offence to Queen Sophie.
Seckendorf studies to be polite, reserved before the Queen's
Majesty at her own table; yet sometimes he lisps out, in his vile
snuffling tone, half-insinuations, remarks on our Royal Kindred,
which are irritating in the extreme. Queen Sophie, the politest of
women, did once, says Pollnitz, on some excessive pressure of that
lisping snuffling unendurability, lose her royal patience and
flame out. With human frankness, and uncommonly kindled eyes, she
signified to Seckendorf, That none who was not himself a kind of
scoundrel could entertain such thoughts of Kings and gentlemen!
Which hard saying kindled the stiff-backed rheumatic soul of
Seckendorf (Excellenz had withal a temper in him, far down in the
deeps); who answered: "Your Majesty, that is what no one else
thinks of me. That is a name I have never permitted any one to
give me with impunity." And verily, he kept his threat in that
latter point, says Pollnitz. [ii. 244.]
At this stage, it is becoming, in the nature of things, unlikely
that the projected Double-Marriage, or any union with England, can
ever realize itself for Queen Sophie and her House. The Kaiser has
decreed that it never shall. Here is the King already irritated,
grown indisposed to it; here is the Kaiser's Seckendorf, with
preternatural Apparatus, come to maintain him in that humor.
To Queen Sophie herself, who saw only the outside of Seckendorf
and his Apparatus, the matter doubtless seemed big with
difficulties; but to us, who see the interior, the difficulties
are plainly hopeless. Unless the Kaiser's mind change, unless many
fixed things change, the Double-Marriage is impossible.
One thing only is a sorrow; and this proved an immeasurable one:
That they did not, that Queen Sophie did not, in such case,
frankly give it up: Double-Marriage is not a law of Nature; it is
only a project at Hanover that has gone off again. There will be a
life for our Crown-Prince, and Princess, without a marriage with
England!-It is greatly wise to recognize the impossible, the
unreasonably difficult, when it presents itself: but who of men is
there, much more who of women that can always do it?
Queen Sophie Dorothee will have this Double-Marriage, and it shall
be possible. Pour Lady, she was very obstinate; and her Husband
was very arbitrary. A rough bear of a Husband, yet by no means an
unloving one; a Husband who might have been managed. She evidently
made a great mistake in deciding not to obey this man; as she had
once vowed. By perfect prompt obedience she might have had a very
tolerable life with the rugged Orson fallen to her lot; who was a
very honest-hearted creature. She might have done a pretty stroke
of female work, withal, in taming her Orson; might have led him by
the muzzle far enough in a private way,--by obedience.
But by disobedience, by rebellion open or secret? Friedrich
Wilhelm was a Husband; Friedrich Wilhelm was a King; and the most
imperative man then breathing. Disobedience to Friedrich Wilhelm
was a thing which, in the Prussian State, still more in the Berlin
Schloss and vital heart of said State, the laws of Heaven and of
Earth had not permitted, for any man's or any woman's sake, to be.
The wide overarching sky looks down on no more inflexible
Sovereign Man than him in the red-collared blue coat and white
leggings, with the bamboo in his hand. A peaceable, capacious, not
ill-given Sovereign Man, if you will let him have his way. But to
bar his way; to tweak the nose of his sovereign royalty, and
ignominiously force him into another way: that is an enterprise no
man or devil, or body of men or devils, need attempt.
Seckendorf and Grumkow, in Tobacco-Parliament, understand it
better. That attempt is impossible, once for all. The first step
in such attempt will require to be assassination of Friedrich
Wilhelm; for you may depend on it, royal Sophie, so long as he is
alive, the feat cannot be done. O royal Sophie, O pretty Feekin,
what a business you are making of it!
The year 1726 was throughout a troublous one to Queen Sophie.
Seckendorf's advent; King George's manifestoing; alarm of imminent
universal War, nay sputters of it actually beginning (Gibraltar
invested by the Spaniards, ready for besieging, it is said):
nor was this all. Sophie's poor Mother, worn to a tragic Megaera,
locked so long in the Castle of Ahlden, has taken up wild plans of
outbreak, of escape by means of secretaries, moneys in the Bank of
Amsterdam, and I know not what; with all which Sophie,
corresponding in double and triple mystery, has her own terrors
and sorrows, trying to keep it down. And now, in the depth of the
year, the poor old Mother suddenly dies. [13th November, 1726:
Memoirs of Sophia Dorothea, Consort of George I. italic> (i. 386),--where alao some of her concluding Letters
("edited" as if by the Nightmares) can be read, but next to no
sense made of them.] Burnt out in this manner, she collapses into
ashes and long rest; closing so her nameless tragedy of thirty
years' continuance:--what a Bluebeard-chamber in the mind of
Sophie! Nay there rise quarrels about the Heritage of the
Deceased, which will prove another sorrow.
END OF BOOK V
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