Читать книгу Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 6. Young Germany - Георг Брандес - Страница 16

It is in the first volumes of the Letters from Paris that Börne reaches his high-water mark as an author. He was not capable of writing books, not even of writing essays and dissertations; for his explosions of emotion or thought there was no form so suitable as that of a letter. And these are real letters, not newspaper-articles, nor even newspaper correspondence, but letters written to a friend, without thought of publication until that friend took the initiative, and asked Börne's permission to make an experimental selection of passages which might be of interest to the general public.

The friend in question was Frau Jeannette Wohl, a lady who plays an important part in Börne's life, though perhaps not so important a part as he plays in hers. For upwards of twenty years, from 1816, when he made her acquaintance, till his death in 1837, he gave her his entire confidence, and rarely took any step without consulting her; and to her, during the same period, his career as an author, his health, his circumstances generally, were of more importance than all else.

When they saw each other for the first time, he was thirty and she thirty-three. She had been married to a rich man, with whom she had lived unhappily. After nursing him through a long illness, she got a divorce from him, refusing to accept any share of his fortune or to retain his name. When Börne and she lived in the same town, he read aloud to her everything that he wrote; when they were separated, she would at one time urge him to work, eager that he should win fame and independence; at another, fearing that he was too diligent, and that his health, at all times precarious, might suffer, she would beg him not to be too conscientious in the fulfilment of his engagements to the publishers, but to allow himself sufficient leisure and recreation.

Jealous of his honour, she underwent long periods of anxiety and irritation when it seemed to her that he was neglecting his duty to the public. Börne had taken payment in advance from the subscribers to Die Wage for the second volume of that periodical, and then, after bringing out only five numbers, made a lengthy pause, partly because he was tired of the work, and partly because, being in pecuniary difficulties, he was anxious to find more remunerative employment. Her letters, which he always looked for with almost feverish eagerness, at this time keep Die Wage before his eyes by every device which the ingenuity and perseverance of an anxious woman can suggest. She entreats and threatens, she scolds and teases, she sends him four long pages with nothing upon them except Die Wage, Die Wage.

But she is often quite as anxious to distract and amuse him, to prevent him from over-exerting himself and to keep up his spirits. When he is taken seriously ill at a distance from her, she grieves that she is not able to look after him, has once actually made up her mind to hazard her reputation by going to him; she knows very well that if she does, people will no longer believe that what unites them is only friendship.

It was in reality a feeling midway between friendship and love, for which no name exists. After Jeannette's death there was found among her papers an ordinary Gesindebüchlein der freien Stadt Frankfurt,[1] on the cover of which Börne had written his name, with the usual particulars. On its first page stands:

Took service when?	With whom?	For how long	In what capacity?	Left service when?
15. Jan. 1818	Frau Wohl.	For ever.	As friend.	On the day of his death.

There could be no more laconic expression of a voluntary lifelong devotion. And the last words were literally fulfilled, for it was on Jeannette's face that the dying man's last look rested, and to her that he spoke his last words: "You have given me much happiness."

Jeannette Wohl's portrait, which Börne declared to be a good one, shows us a woman with a longish face, regular, pleasing features, a high forehead, an expressive, beautifully formed mouth, and bright, kindly eyes; the firm chin indicates energy. Her voice is said to have been remarkably sweet. Hers was not a particularly original, and still less was it a productive mind; she was one of those women who can merge their own individuality in that of the man to whom they are devoted. To Börne, the author, her natural feminine capacity for inspiring a man with confidence in himself was invaluable; she was as much offended by any disparaging remark he made on the subject of his own ability or deserts, as if it had been made by another. She was comfort and consolation to him in human form. In her he had a being on whom he could place absolute reliance, to whom he could confide everything without the slightest fear of ever being misunderstood, far less betrayed, and to whom he could address all his literary efforts. She was to him an epitome of the ideal public for whom he wrote.

In one of his confidential letters he writes that his feeling for Jeannette is described in the following passage from La Nouvelle Heloïse: "C'est cette union touchante d'une sensibilité si vive et d'une inaltérable douceur; c'est cette pitié si tendre à tous les maux d'autrui; c'est cet esprit juste et ce goût exquis qui tirent leur pureté de celle de l'âme; ce sont, en un mot, les charmes des sentiments, bien plus que ceux de la personne, que j'adore en vous." And we learn, from a letter of Jeannette's written in 1833, after this friendship had lasted seventeen years, that the attraction he exercised was at least equal to that which he experienced. She describes as a sort of idée fixe, or chronic ailment, the excitement that takes possession of her about the time when the mail may be expected. The day she writes, she had been obliged to give up her usual occupations and lie on the sofa, and when at last the letter arrives, she weeps for joy.

She looks after his money matters, calculates the payments due to him, draws his police pension for him; at one time, when he has a great longing to travel in Italy, but cannot do it for want of means, she takes a lottery ticket, in the hope of winning the necessary sum, and when she is disappointed in this, wishes to sell her piano, but finds she cannot raise the required amount in this way either.[2] And all this without the incentive of love, in the narrower sense of the word. Her friends believed her to be capable of doing even more for him. At the time that it first occurred to her that Börne ought to publish his letters to her, she expressed to a cousin the naïve doubt if it were possible to publish letters before the death of the person to whom they were addressed, to which the cousin replied that she had not the least doubt that Jeannette was quite ready to let herself be buried if it would do any good to Dr. Börne.

They often travelled together, and sometimes, it would seem, lived together; but the nature of their relation to each other never altered. It is probable that at one time, in the first stage of their friendship, Börne tried to persuade Jeannette to marry him, but her fear lest the relation existing between them might lose its charm by being turned into an ordinary, everyday marriage, a fear which Börne himself afterwards shared, proved an insurmountable obstacle. Considering that they were both free to dispose of themselves as they would, it seems hardly possible that their relation could have remained what it was for all these years without the existence of some slight, it might be almost unconscious, physical antipathy on her side, or on both sides. An outward hindrance to their union undoubtedly existed in the difference of their creeds. Börne belonged to the Christian, Jeannette to the Jewish confession; her orthodox mother was strongly opposed to her becoming a Christian, and in those days great difficulties were placed in the way of mixed marriages. But this was not the main difficulty. Jeannette herself writes that to marry Börne would require "more courage and more self-confidence" than she possesses. And in this instance we see the man whom we knew in his youth as the passionate lover, and who all his life long suffered from a jealous disposition, quickly rise to the height of pure devotion; he constantly urges Jeannette, for her own sake, to marry a man worthy of her, and make a happy home.

In 1821, in answer to the words just quoted, Börne writes: "I swear to you by Almighty God that, ardent and often expressed as my desire to make you mine may have been, it has always been more of your happiness than of my own that I have thought. My love for you makes me happy; what more could marriage give me, since it could not increase that love? Though I did not confess it to you, I always dreaded that marriage might drag down our beautiful friendship to the level of everyday, sordid reality. But I thought, what I still think, that you would gain something by it, and this would indirectly have increased my happiness. So there is nothing to prevent you from marrying another man; you and I should lose nothing by that."

Strange to say, the truth of this last, audacious assertion was put to the proof. At a somewhat advanced age, Jeannette actually fell in love with and married a man much younger than herself. It was their mutual admiration for Börne that brought the couple together, and in Jeannette's answer to the letter in which Straus asks her to marry him there is a long reference to Börne, so enlightening in its simple eloquence that it cannot be dispensed with in this estimate of his character as a man and as an author. She writes:

"The Doctor has no one in the world but me; I am to him friend, sister, all that these words convey of kindliness, friendliness, sympathy. Can you grudge this to him, to whom life has given nothing else, and who has reconciled himself to his fate … is even contented with it. … Ican think of no other possibility than that the Doctor should be free to come to us when, where, and for as long as he chooses; for altogether, if he wishes. I can't say you, my heart is too full; canst thou think anything else possible? If so, then all is different from what I thought. I!—we!—dream of deserting a man like the Doctor—why, he would be a ruined, a lost man! I would rather give up everything, rather die, than have that upon my conscience; I could not do it, even if I would. … I am trembling all over, and as pale as death from writing even these few words on the subject. For nothing agitates me so deeply as the very thought of such treason, of such infidelity to such fidelity. As long as I live, till I draw my last breath, I shall feel for Börne the love of a daughter for her father, of a sister for her brother, of a friend for a friend. If you do not understand, cannot grasp the situation, do not know me well enough—then all is over, all is night. I can write no more. But no more is necessary. I am thankful this is over."[3]

Events proved that Straus thoroughly entered into Jeannette's feelings, indeed shared them. He, too, became a faithful friend to Börne. For five months in the summer of 1833 Börne lived with them in Switzerland. They then removed, for his sake, to Paris; where they all lived together from the end of 1833 till his death, spending the summers at Auteuil. The one person who permitted himself to make disparaging comment on this arrangement was Heine, in that unfortunate passage in his book, Ludwig Börne, which led to the duel in which he was wounded by Straus. Heine afterwards, of his own free will, expunged the passage. But in anger and grief at the harm done to his reputation by this work on Börne, he was heard to call Jeannette the baleful woman who, on his triumphal progress as Germany's chosen poet, crossed his path, prophesying evil, and caused him to start back and drop his laurel wreath in the dirt.[4]

It is certain that Jeannette never forgave Heine his unpardonable molestation; yet no one could have been less of a Megæra. What Börne once wrote to her, joking, as he often did, on the subject of her faulty orthography, was almost true, namely, that in the letter he had received that day there were more faults than she had herself, for there was one.

In her opinions we can follow the different steps of Börne's political development. After the Revolution of July she, too, is a radical democrat. In the expressive words of her biographer, Schnapper-Arndt: "She most frequently thinks with Börne, at times in opposition to him, never without him. But she does seem to be perfectly independent in her passionate sympathy with the revolt of the Polish nation, a feeling so strong that it leads her to heap reproaches on Börne for being capable at such a moment of writing about the Italian opera in Paris. The Polish scythemen, the liberty of Poland—nothing else is worthy to be mentioned along with this. It seems to her that every one must help; she gives her own most cherished possessions to the cause; and nothing can exceed her shame when Germany shows itself indifferent to it, nothing her joy when she can send Börne proofs of the fact that a storm of sympathy and enthusiasm is sweeping over the country."