George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 2 (of 3)

Coming back from the Burg we met a detachment of soldiers, with their band playing, followed by a stream of listening people; and then we reached the market-place, just at the point where stands "The Beautiful Fountain" – an exquisite bit of florid Gothic which has been restored in perfect conformity with the original. Right before us stood the Frauen-Kirche, with its fine and unusual façade, the chief beauty being a central chapel used as the choir, and added by Adam Krafft. It is something of the shape of a mitre, and forms a beautiful gradation of ascent towards the summit of façade. We heard the organ and were tempted to enter, for this is the one Catholic Church in Nürnberg. The delicious sound of the organ and voices drew us farther and farther in among the standing people, and we stayed there I don't know how long, till the music ceased. How the music warmed one's heart! I loved the good people about me, even to the soldier who stood with his back to us, giving us a full view of his close-cropped head, with its pale yellowish hair standing up in bristles on the crown, as if his hat had acted like a forcing-pot. Then there was a little baby in a close-fitting cap on its little round head, looking round with bright black eyes as it sucked its bit of bread. Such a funny little complete face – rich brown complexion and miniature Roman nose. And then its mother lifted it up that it might see the rose-decked altar, where the priests were standing. How music, that stirs all one's devout emotions, blends everything into harmony – makes one feel part of one whole which one loves all alike, losing the sense of a separate self. Nothing could be more wretched as art than the painted St. Veronica opposite me, holding out the sad face on her miraculous handkerchief. Yet it touched me deeply; and the thought of the Man of Sorrows seemed a very close thing – not a faint hearsay.

We saw Albert Dürer's statue by Rauch, and Albert Dürer's house – a striking bit of old building, rich dark-brown, with a truncated gable and two wooden galleries running along the gable end. My best wishes and thanks to the artists who keep it in repair and use it for their meetings. The vistas from the bridges across the muddy Pegnitz, which runs through the town, are all quaint and picturesque; and it was here that we saw some of the shabbiest-looking houses – almost the only houses that carried any suggestion of poverty, and even here it was doubtful. The town has an air of cleanliness and well-being, and one longs to call one of those balconied apartments one's own home, with their flower-pots, clean glass, clean curtains, and transparencies turning their white backs to the street. It is pleasant to think there is such a place in the world where many people pass peaceful lives.

On arriving at Munich, after much rambling, we found an advertisement of "Zwei elegant möblirte Zimmer," No. 15 Luitpold Strasse; and to our immense satisfaction found something that looked like cleanliness and comfort. The bargain was soon made – twenty florins per month. So here we came last Tuesday, the 13th April. We have been taking sips of the Glyptothek and the two Pinacotheks in the morning, not having settled to work yet. Last night we went to the opera – Fra Diavolo – at the Hof-Theatre. The theatre ugly, the singing bad. Still, the orchestra was good, and the charming music made itself felt in spite of German throats. On Sunday, the 11th, we went to the Pinacothek, straight into the glorious Rubens Saal. Delighted afresh in the picture of "Samson and Delilah," both for the painting and character of the figures. Delilah, a magnificent blonde, seated in a chair, with a transparent white garment slightly covering her body, and a rich red piece of drapery round her legs, leans forward, with one hand resting on her thigh, the other, holding the cunning shears, resting on the chair – a posture which shows to perfection the full, round, living arms. She turns her head aside to look with sly triumph at Samson – a tawny giant, his legs caught in the red drapery, shorn of his long locks, furious with the consciousness that the Philistines are upon him, and that this time he cannot shake them off. Above the group of malicious faces and grappling arms a hand holds a flaming torch. Behind Delilah, and grasping her arm, leans forward an old woman, with hard features full of exultation.

This picture, comparatively small in size, hangs beside the "Last Judgment," and in the corresponding space, on the other side of the same picture, hangs the sublime "Crucifixion." Jesus alone, hanging dead on the Cross, darkness over the whole earth. One can desire nothing in this picture – the grand, sweet calm of the dead face, calm and satisfied amidst all the traces of anguish, the real, livid flesh, the thorough mastery with which the whole form is rendered, and the isolation of the supreme sufferer, make a picture that haunts one like a remembrance of a friend's death-bed.

April 12 (Monday).– After reading Anna Mary Howitt's book on Munich and Overbeck on Greek art, we turned out into the delicious sunshine to walk in the Theresien Wiese, and have our first look at the colossal "Bavaria," the greatest work of Schwanthaler. Delightful it was to get away from the houses into this breezy meadow, where we heard the larks singing above us. The sun was still too high in the west for us to look with comfort at the statue, except right in front of it, where it eclipsed the sun; and this front view is the only satisfactory one. The outline made by the head and arm on a side view is almost painfully ugly. But in front, looking up to the beautiful, calm face, the impression it produces is sublime. I have never seen anything, even in ancient sculpture, of a more awful beauty than this dark, colossal head, looking out from a background of pure, pale-blue sky. We mounted the platform to have a view of her back, and then walking forward, looked to our right hand and saw the snow-covered Alps! Sight more to me than all the art in Munich, though I love the art nevertheless. The great, wide-stretching earth and the all-embracing sky – the birthright of us all – are what I care most to look at. And I feel intensely the new beauty of the sky here. The blue is so exquisitely clear, and the wide streets give one such a broad canopy of sky. I felt more inspirited by our walk to the Theresien Platz than by any pleasure we have had in Munich.

April 16.– On Wednesday we walked to the Theresien Wiese to look at the "Bavaria" by sunset, but a shower came on and drove us to take refuge in a pretty house built near the Ruhmeshalle, whereby we were gainers, for we saw a charming family group: a mother with her three children – the eldest a boy with his book, the second a three-year-old maiden, the third a sweet baby-girl of a year and a half; two dogs, one a mixture of the setter and pointer, the other a turn-spit; and a relation or servant ironing. The baby cried at the sight of G. in beard and spectacles, but kept her eyes turning towards him from her mother's lap, every now and then seeming to have overcome her fears, and then bursting out crying anew. At last she got down and lifted the table-cloth to peep at his legs, as if to see the monster's nether parts.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 17th April, 1858.

We have been just to take a sip at the two Pinacotheks and at the Glyptothek. At present the Rubens Saal is what I most long to return to. Rubens gives me more pleasure than any other painter, whether that is right or wrong. To be sure, I have not seen so many pictures, and pictures of so high a rank, by any other great master. I feel sure that when I have seen as much of Raphael I shall like him better; but at present Rubens, more than any one else, makes me feel that painting is a great art, and that he was a great artist. His are such real, breathing men and women, moved by passions, not mincing and grimacing, and posing in mere aping of passion! What a grand, glowing, forceful thing life looks in his pictures – the men such grand-bearded, grappling beings, fit to do the work of the world; the women such real mothers. We stayed at Nürnberg only twenty-four hours, and I felt sad to leave it so soon. A pity the place became Protestant, so that there is only one Catholic church where one can go in and out as one would. We turned into the famous St. Sebald's for a minute, where a Protestant clergyman was reading in a cold, formal way under the grand Gothic arches. Then we went to the Catholic church, the Frauen-Kirche, where the organ and voices were giving forth a glorious mass; and we stood with a feeling of brotherhood among the standing congregation till the last note of the organ had died out.

Journal, 1858.

April 23.– Not being well enough to write, we determined to spend our morning at the Glyptothek and Pinacothek. A glorious morning – all sunshine and blue sky. We went to the Glyptothek first, and delighted ourselves anew with the "Sleeping Faun," the "Satyr and Bacchus," and the "Laughing Faun" (Fauno colla Macchia). Looked at the two young satyrs reposing with the pipe in their hands – one of them charming in the boyish, good-humored beauty of the face, but both wanting finish in the limbs, which look almost as if they could be produced by a turning-machine. But the conception of this often-repeated figure is charming: it would make a garden seem more peaceful in the sunshine. Looked at the old Silenus too, which is excellent. I delight in these figures, full of droll animation, flinging some nature, in its broad freedom, in the eyes of small-mouthed, mincing narrowness.

We went into the modern Saal also, glancing on our way at the Cornelius frescoes, which seem to me stiff and hideous. An Adonis, by Thorwaldsen, is very beautiful.

Then to the Pinacothek, where we looked at Albert Dürer's portrait again, and many other pictures, among which I admired a group by Jordaens: "A satyr eating, while a peasant shows him that he can blow hot and cold at the same time;" the old grandmother nursing the child, the father with the key in his hand, with which he has been amusing baby, looking curiously at the satyr, the handsome wife, still more eager in her curiosity, the quiet cow, the little boy, the dog and cat – all are charmingly conceived.

April 24.– As we were reading this afternoon Herr Oldenbourg came in, invited us to go to his house on Tuesday, and chatted pleasantly for an hour. He talked of Kaulbach, whom he has known very intimately, being the publisher of the "Reineke Fuchs." The picture of the "Hunnen Schlacht" was the first of Kaulbach's on a great scale. It created a sensation, and the critics began to call it a "Weltgeschichtliches Bild." Since then Kaulbach has been seduced into the complex, wearisome, symbolical style, which makes the frescoes at Berlin enormous puzzles.

When we had just returned from our drive in the Englische Garten, Bodenstedt pleasantly surprised us by presenting himself. He is a charming man, and promises to be a delightful acquaintance for us in this strange town. He chatted pleasantly with us for half an hour, telling us that he is writing a work, in five volumes, on the "Contemporaries of Shakspeare," and indicating the nature of his treatment of the Shakspearian drama – which is historical and analytical. Presently he proposed that we should adjourn to his house and have tea with him; and so we turned out all together in the bright moonlight, and enjoyed his pleasant chat until ten o'clock. His wife was not at home, but we were admitted to see the three sleeping children – one a baby about a year and a half old, a lovely waxen thing. He gave the same account of Kaulbach as we had heard from Oldenbourg; spoke of Genelli as superior in genius, though he has not the fortune to be recognized; recited some of Hermann Lingg's poetry, and spoke enthusiastically of its merits. There was not a word of detraction about any one – nothing to jar on one's impression of him as a refined, noble-hearted man.

April 27.– This has been a red-letter day. In the morning Professor Wagner took us over his "Petrifacten Sammlung," giving us interesting explanations; and before we left him we were joined by Professor Martius, an animated, clever man, who talked admirably, and invited us to his house. Then we went to Kaulbach's studio, talked with him, and saw with especial interest the picture he is preparing as a present to the New Museum. In the evening, after walking in the Theresien Wiese, we went to Herr Oldenbourg's, and met Liebig the chemist, Geibel and Heyse the poets, and Carrière, the author of a work on the Reformation. Liebig is charming, with well-cut features, a low, quiet voice, and gentle manners. It was touching to see his hands, the nails black from the roots, the skin all grimed.

Heyse is like a painter's poet, ideally beautiful; rather brilliant in his talk, and altogether pleasing. Geibel is a man of rather coarse texture, with a voice like a kettledrum, and a steady determination to deliver his opinions on every subject that turned up. But there was a good deal of ability in his remarks.

April 30.– After calling on Frau Oldenbourg, and then at Professor Bodenstedt's, where we played with his charming children for ten minutes, we went to the theatre to hear Prince Radziwill's music to the "Faust." I admired especially the earlier part, the Easter morning song of the spirits, the Beggar's song, and other things, until after the scene in Auerbach's cellar, which is set with much humor and fancy. But the scene between Faust and Marguerite is bad – "Meine Ruh ist hin" quite pitiable, and the "König im Thule" not good. Gretchen's second song, in which she implores help of the Schmerzensreiche, touched me a good deal.

May 1.– In the afternoon Bodenstedt called, and we agreed to spend the evening at his house – a delightful evening. Professor Löher, author of "Die Deutschen in America," and another much younger Gelehrter, whose name I did not seize, were there.

May 2.– Still rainy and cold. We went to the Pinacothek, and looked at the old pictures in the first and second Saal. There are some very bad and some fine ones by Albert Dürer: of the latter, a full length figure of the Apostle Paul, with the head of Mark beside him, in a listening attitude, is the one that most remains with me. There is a very striking "Adoration of the Magi," by Johannes van Eyck, with much merit in the coloring, perspective, and figures. Also, "Christ carrying his Cross," by Albert Dürer, is striking. "A woman raised from the dead by the imposition of the Cross" is a very elaborate composition, by Böhms, in which the faces are of first-rate excellence.

In the evening we went to the opera and saw the "Nord Stern."

May 10.– Since Wednesday I have had a wretched cold and cough, and been otherwise ill, but I have had several pleasures nevertheless. On Friday, Bodenstedt called with Baron Schack to take us to Genelli's, the artist of whose powers Bodenstedt had spoken to us with enthusiastic admiration. The result to us was nothing but disappointment; the sketches he showed us seemed to us quite destitute of any striking merit. On Sunday we dined with Liebig, and spent the evening at Bodenstedt's, where we met Professor Bluntschli, the jurist, a very intelligent and agreeable man, and Melchior Meyr, a maker of novels and tragedies, otherwise an ineffectual personage.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 10th May, 1858.

Our life here is very agreeable – full of pleasant novelty, although we take things quietly and observe our working hours just as if we were at Richmond. People are so kind to us that we feel already quite at home, sip baierisch Bier with great tolerance, and talk bad German with more and more aplomb. The place, you know, swarms with professors of all sorts – all gründlich, of course, and one or two of them great. There is no one we are more charmed with than Liebig. Mr. Lewes had no letter to him – we merely met him at an evening party; yet he has been particularly kind to us, and seems to have taken a benevolent liking to me. We dined with him and his family yesterday, and saw how men of European celebrity may put up with greasy cooking in private life. He lives in very good German style, however; has a handsome suite of apartments, and makes a greater figure than most of the professors. His manners are charming – easy, graceful, benignant, and all the more conspicuous because he is so quiet and low spoken among the loud talkers here. He looks best in his laboratory, with his velvet cap on, holding little phials in his hand, and talking of Kreatine and Kreatinine in the same easy way that well-bred ladies talk scandal. He is one of the professors who has been called here by the present king – Max – who seems to be a really sensible man among kings; gets up at five o'clock in the morning to study, and every Saturday evening has a gathering of the first men in science and literature, that he may benefit by their opinions on important subjects. At this Tafel-rund every man is required to say honestly what he thinks; every one may contradict every one else; and if the king suspects any one of a polite insincerity, the too polished man is invited no more. Liebig, the three poets – Geibel, Heyse, and Bodenstedt – and Professor Löher, a writer of considerable mark, are always at the Tafel-rund as an understood part of their functions; the rest are invited according to the king's direction. Bodenstedt is one of our best friends here – enormously instructed, after the fashion of Germans, but not at all stupid with it.

We were at the Siebolds' last night to meet a party of celebrities, and, what was better, to see the prettiest little picture of married life – the great comparative anatomist (Siebold) seated at the piano in his spectacles playing the difficult accompaniments to Schubert's songs, while his little round-faced wife sang them with much taste and feeling. They are not young. Siebold is gray, and probably more than fifty; his wife perhaps nearly forty; and it is all the prettier to see their admiration of each other. She said to Mr. Lewes, when he was speaking of her husband, "Ja, er ist ein netter Mann, nicht wahr?"2

We take the art in very small draughts at present – the German hours being difficult to adjust to our occupations. We are obliged to dine at one! and of course when we are well enough must work till then. Two hours afterwards all the great public exhibitions are closed, except the churches. I cannot admire much of the modern German art. It is for the most part elaborate lifelessness. Kaulbach's great compositions are huge charades; and I have seen nothing of his equal to his own "Reineke Fuchs." It is an unspeakable relief, after staring at one of his pictures – the "Destruction of Jerusalem," for example, which is a regular child's puzzle of symbolism – to sweep it all out of one's mind – which is very easily done, for nothing grasps you in it – and call up in your imagination a little Gerard Dow that you have seen hanging in a corner of one of the cabinets. We have been to his atelier, and he has given us a proof of his "Irrenhaus,"3 a strange sketch, which he made years ago – very terrible and powerful. He is certainly a man of great faculty, but is, I imagine, carried out of his true path by the ambition to produce "Weltgeschichtliche Bilder," which the German critics may go into raptures about. His "Battle of the Huns," which is the most impressive of all his great pictures, was the first of the series. He painted it simply under the inspiration of the grand myth about the spirits of the dead warriors rising and carrying on the battle in the air. Straightway the German critics began to smoke furiously that vile tobacco which they call æsthetik, declared it a "Weltgeschichtliches Bild," and ever since Kaulbach has been concocting these pictures in which, instead of taking a single moment of reality and trusting to the infinite symbolism that belongs to all nature, he attempts to give you at one view a succession of events – each represented by some group which may mean "Whichever you please, my little dear."

I must tell you something else which interested me greatly, as the first example of the kind that has come under my observation. Among the awful mysterious names, hitherto known only as marginal references whom we have learned to clothe with ordinary flesh and blood, is Professor Martius (Spix and Martius), now an old man, and rich after the manner of being rich in Germany. He has a very sweet wife – one of those women who remain pretty and graceful in old age – and a family of three daughters and one son, all more than grown up. I learned that she is Catholic, that her daughters are Catholic, and her husband and son Protestant – the children having been so brought up according to the German law in cases of mixed marriage. I can't tell you how interesting it was to me to hear her tell of her experience in bringing up her son conscientiously as a Protestant, and then to hear her and her daughters speak of the exemplary priests who had shown them such tender fatherly care when they were in trouble. They are the most harmonious, affectionate family we have seen; and one delights in such a triumph of human goodness over the formal logic of theorists.

Journal, 1858.

May 13.– Geibel came and brought me the two volumes of his poems, and stayed chatting for an hour. We spent the evening quietly at home.

May 14.– After writing, we went for an hour to the Pinacothek, and looked at some of the Flemish pictures. In the afternoon we called at Liebig's, and he went a long walk with us – the long chain of snowy mountains in the hazy distance. After supper I read Geibel's "Junius Lieder."

May 15.– Read the 18th chapter of "Adam Bede" to G. He was much pleased with it. Then we walked in the Englische Garten, and heard the band, and saw the Germans drinking their beer. The park was lovely.

May 16.– We were to have gone to Grosshesselohe with the Siebolds, and went to Frühstück with them at 12, as a preliminary. Bodenstedt was there to accompany us. But heavy rain came on, and we spent the time till 5 o'clock in talking, hearing music, and listening to Bodenstedt's "Epic on the destruction of Novgorod." About seven, Liebig came to us and asked us to spend the evening at his house. We went and found Voelderndorff, Bischoff and his wife, and Carrière and Frau.

May 20.– As I had a feeble head this morning, we gave up the time to seeing pictures, and went to the Neue Pinacothek. A "Lady with Fruit, followed by three Children," pleased us more than ever. It is by Wichmann. The two interiors of Westminster Abbey by Ainmueller admirable. Unable to admire Rothmann's Greek Landscapes, which have a room to themselves. Ditto Kaulbach's "Zerstörung von Jerusalem."

We went for the first time to see the collection of porcelain paintings, and had really a rich treat. Many of them are admirable copies of great pictures. The sweet "Madonna and Child," in Raphael's early manner; a "Holy Family," also in the early manner, with a Madonna the exact type of the St. Catherine; and a "Holy Family" in the later manner, something like the Madonna Delia Sedia, are all admirably copied. So are two of Andrea del Sarto's – full of tenderness and calm piety.

May 23.– Through the cold wind and white dust we went to the Jesuits' Church to hear the music. It is a fine church in the Renaissance style, the vista terminating with the great altar very fine, with all the crowd of human beings covering the floor. Numbers of men!

In the evening we went to Bodenstedt's, and saw his wife for the first time – a delicate creature who sang us some charming Bavarian Volkslieder. On Monday we spent the evening at Löher's – Baumgarten, ein junger Historiker, Oldenbourg, and the Bodenstedts meeting us.

Delicious Mai-trank, made by putting the fresh Waldmeister– a cruciferous plant with a small white flower, something like Lady's Bedstraw – into mild wine, together with sugar, and occasionally other things.

May 26.– This evening I have read aloud "Adam Bede," chapter xx. We have begun Ludwig's "Zwischen Himmel und Erde."

May 27.– We called on the Siebolds to-day, then walked in the Theresien Wiese, and saw the mountains gloriously. Spent the evening at Prof. Martius's, where Frau Erdl played Beethoven's Andante and the Moonlight Sonata admirably.