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The Essays of "George Eliot", Complete.
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From the Note-Book of an Eccentric,
and Other Essays,
by George Eliot.
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George Forster.
George Forster.
Westminster Review (October 1856)
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George Eliot writes about someone not so well known now as he was in her time, but does evidently not expect to be read over a century and a half later.
"We do not know a more touchingly tragical history than that of George Forster, who closed in so lonely and wretched a manner that life which, as a boy, he began so dazzlingly; leaping, when yet in his teens, into startling fame, and winning the lively interest of all Europe as the companion of Cook, and the recounter of his second expedition to those blessed isles of the Southern Sea. Other lives have been more violently checkered, or rent by abrupter incidents; but the web of none has been so altogether spun with the threads of straitened penury and grinding distress. ... "
Having grasped the reader's attention, she doesn't say what did happen, expecting her readers knew all of details thereof, but digresses, with a German style sentence to begin with.
" ... It is is curious to observe the course of lives: there are some whose very accidental adventures are pitched into such wondrous tune with their owners’ tempers, that fancy might stray to the thought of a moulding destiny designing their career from womb to death,—lives the turns and meetings of which strike so into their tendencies, that they foster them, whether for weal or woe, as it were out of necessity, and beyond any aid or power of repression of their own. ... "
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George Eliot explains away why some are brilliant achievers.
" ... Doubtless, when closely viewed, the mystery proves to be only that such souls, endowed with lively quickness, seize on everything akin to their promptings, while dullards stumble blindly on their way, and mysterious destiny resolves itself into a goodly dose of enterprise. ..."
More poetically,
" ... There are other lives which offer analogies more worthy of consideration: the lives of the children of their age, showing its sum total in their thoughts and doings as the blood and type of family come out in its offspring; the chance adventurers, who are transformed and diverted to their own purposes and feelings, as deluges turn to flooded lakes or rivers, according to the nature of the country that takes them in. ... "
And now George Eliot returns to the subject, but not in a vertical swoop, that wouldn't be her! She's not only spiralling around, but determined to match her long sentences to those of German literature, even though English won't lend itself to the split verb changing meanings as one turns the page before a sentence ends!
" ... Such men exist at all times; for times are the work of men, and in the summary of the man we learn to know mankind. George Forster was one of these. All his thoughts and doings are the utterings of that strange eighteenth century; as a boy turned into a mighty traveller suiting his age’s spirit of inquiry, he remains his whole life long an eager, restless wanderer, an Ishmaelite on the face of his century, ever seeking and peering on to a brighter future; his temper is marked by that simple and undoubting trust in new perfections and coming certainties, with a credulous leaning to all novel and hidden truths, prevalent in his age, when man awoke to belief after centuries of slumber; his heart is honest and generous, his spirit eager, and freed from all he considers prejudice,—allowing itself to soar into regions, the subtle air of which is too rare to live in; a sufferer by his father’s unbridled humors, in married life not slightly tried, and if not wholly wrecked then, saved only by a lifeboat of most thorough eighteenth-century build; renowned as a sailor round the world, and as the man who had brought to Europe knowledge of friendly savages, and who could, from personal acquaintance, describe new realms of nature and mankind to the sickened age yearning for fancied archetypes of man and the world;—all these characteristics give a special zest to poor George Forster’s life. ... "
And another spiral, before a small clue as to the subject.
" ... In short, we see mirrored in his history the whole painful lot and social shackling of a man of science of those days in Germany, and how a thinking and feeling mind became drifted athwart them into perilous rapids and breakneck eddies; we see a man gifted with the highest abilities and soundest learning, strong in spirit and heart, moreover privileged with a hold on the tastes of the public from the very nature of his fame,—we see this man, in spite of his advantages, doomed to toil his whole life long beneath a weight of trammels, unable to find the hand that might drag him out of the choking mud-sloughs of rotten petty courts, until at last he topples over the mighty chasm of the French Revolution. ... "
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" ... To the English public he is wholly unknown,—to that of his own country, by a freak of destiny, he was until lately only notorious; for while straitened circumstances deprived his fine intellect of that repose, as necessary to its nurture as light and space are to a tree to enable it to put forth perfect fruit, the peculiarities of his political adventures exposed him to an ill wind which blasted his memory. Almost all Forster’s writings partake of a fragmentary nature and hasty slightness of design, which were imparted to them of a necessity from the enforced circumstances of their production. They are mostly essays, contributed regularly to journals, or prefaces to translations of travels, undertaken at the bidding of publishers; but as soon as we look at them, we perceive a fund of learning, lively feeling, and suggestive thought set forth in wording so full of natural charm, that we at once guess a mind of no common power to be at work here. Twice only in the course of his hard-working life did he get respite enough to be able to undertake a connected production,—the first time, when, hardly past his boyhood, he wrote that account of his voyage with Cook, which at once made his name known all over the world; the second time, just before the close of his career, when he began, but did not finish, his journey through Brabant and England. The two volumes he accomplished are his most perfect literary work, and show what would have been the fulness of Forster. Here is a mass of thoughtful observation and rich suggestion. The whole tone and scope of his writing were wholly different from the abstractness and vagueness from which no German thinker of his day was free; it had the life of reality about it, and his truthful feeling and keen eye made him so lively an expounder of nature, that his method and style were the chosen model of Humboldt, as Forster’s example was his first incentive to scientific exploration."
And now another clue -
"The youth he had spent in his country had accustomed his mind to the ways of public life, and imparted to it habits of practical thought, which impregnated his whole being, and distinguished him for readiness of bearing amidst the dim haziness of his countrymen. His turn of mind found in the study of natural science the only nurture which the arid social system of Germany left for it; but as soon as the great French Revolution loosened the stoniness in which he had been bound, the promptings of his nature made him strike at once into the genial soil of politics. In truth, the quickenings of his mind were those that stamp the citizen; he was public-spirited in the true sense of the word; and bred in self-governing England, accustomed to public enterprise and rule, he stood before his countrymen, in the delicately organized manifoldness of his constitution, in the sparkle of his renown, and in charm of writing, like a prophet whose words, passing their understanding, were coarsely maligned. Therefore people’s minds turned away from Forster until, when after near half a century the growth of enlightenment stirred up feelings of independence, men found that in him they had possessed one whose sound and patriotic aspirations had been altogether calumniated, and who combined the qualities of a noble intellect with the virtues of the citizen."
Before George Eliot would actually condescend to return to the subject, but not before another spiral -
"It is the interesting history of this man that Heinrich König recounts in a book undertaken under the inspiration of times in many respects akin to those of his hero, and written with a most intimate knowledge of the scenery of the story’s plot. For many years he has studied every detail, however petty, of German history of the end of the last century; and before he entertained any thought of this book, he had already written a novel on the Revolution of Mayence, which is a wonderfully accurate picture of the times, and the close researches for which had made him intimately acquainted with many parts of Forster’s life."
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"George Forster was born on the 26th November, 1754, at the poor village of Nassenhuben, near Danzig, where his father, whose Christian names were John Reinhold, was the Calvinistic minister. He had been driven to this calling by his father, who had been highly displeased on learning that his son, while a student at Halle, had taken the liberty to desert the law for medicine and the natural sciences, in which he had made considerable progress. It thus happened that he was, as it were, turned off cramped from the very starting-post, and all through life’s race he limped. Though ever an honest Protestant, science was more his love than theology, and the straits of his position chafed his temper to that irascibility which afterwards so marred his good and sterling parts. His son, who amidst all his trials never laid aside a most dutiful bearing towards him, strikes off the following sketch of him once in a letter to Jacobi:—
"“My father is, in every respect, a useful man for the sciences,—possessed of solid learning, choice reading, and book-lore, besides being a good naturalist, antiquary, and also theologian, although the last study does not occupy him any more, nor can it interest him scientifically, as I think. His warmth, hot temper, and eager battling for his ideas, have done him immeasurable harm, as it is also his misfortune that he does not know, and never will know, mankind,—always suspicious and credulous exactly there where he should not be so.”"
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And finally, as George Eliot designs to delve into the subject, it get not only really interesting, but mind-boggling. But not before she pours it all in a deluge of a paragraph longer than a page, which perhaps isn't as German as a sentence of that length - which would be difficult in English; English being, according to German scholars, "a crazy mixture of French and German ".
"We can fancy the quarrelsome divine plagued by his boorish parishioners in the midst of his study of Buffon, and flying into whims of wrongs under the friction of such daily worries. The living was not a fat one, while his family—for he early married a cousin—was the contrary of meagre; seven children required feeding, and the means to do so were not ready at hand. Under these circumstances the elder Forster, with his hankering for the sciences and his discontent with his parish, jumped at an offer made to him by the Russian Government to inspect and report on the new colonies founded on the banks of the Volga. Taking his son George, then eleven years old, with him, he spent the summer of 1765 in performing the journey and returning to St. Petersburg; in the autumn he handed in his report, the matter of which is said to have been so good as to have given the Empress suggestions for her great code of laws. His blustering temper, however, which often proved his worst enemy, closed his promising career in Russia; and he spent the winter in St. Petersburg, urging obstinate claims for recompense and imperturbably refusing to accept the offers made. During this time his wants drove him to the shifts of a translator, in which he called his boy to his aid, who was following the course of lessons at the high-school, and who thus early was broken in to his life-long drudgery of an overworked literary hack. At last the priest-sage gave vent to his anger with the Russian Government, and left St. Petersburg with the satisfaction of having at least had his will, if not the very sum of money, and none other than that which he had made his mind up to have. But if St. Petersburg and the Russias were well behind him and his son, it was not very clear what land lay ahead. The good Christians of Nassenhuben had provided themselves, during their high-priest’s gaddings about on the Volga, with some ghostly vice-regent, who seems to have been unwilling to give up his realm on his lord’s advent; and so John Reinhold, who perhaps rather liked the chance, conscious of his real acquirements and sphere of action, took the sudden resolve to seek his fortune in England, and, without even visiting his wife or family, sailed thither with his son. They sturdily fought off the dreariness of the voyage, lengthened by storms, with the study of English; and soon after their arrival, the father’s solid scientific knowledge having gained him the good-will of many distinguished men in London, he was appointed teacher of natural history at an educational institution for dissenting clergymen, at Warrington in Lancashire. George was apprenticed to a Russian merchant named Lewin; but the sedentary application of this life so pulled the youth down, that when, on his mother and sisters’ arrival, he escorted them to Warrington, his father became alarmed at his favorite child’s looks, and kept him by him. George was thus brought back to the study of the natural sciences under his father’s immediate influence; and as the latter soon embroiled himself, as usual, with his superiors, while the wants of his large family caused him to feel sorely pinched in his resources, the son had to put himself into the family traces, and help sturdily to keep the household van going. We find him, therefore, not only combining the parts of scholar and teacher, learning botany and zoology from his restless father, and teaching French and German in a neighboring school to those who ought to have been his playfellows, but the poor youth’s strength was still further strained by continual translations of foreign books of travels into English. ... "
But George Eliot has to get enigmatic now, leaving a reader to flounder for her meaning.
" ... From this time of his life a story remains which is told by all his biographers, as foreshadowing in its small burden the haphazards which so often befell him, and the temper with which he took them. The pygmy professor’s road to his lecture-chair lay past a pastry-cook’s savory stall of sweet cakes, and the tale of this temptation ended as temptations will end when brought to bear on lively flesh and blood; the savor tingled through his veins, till, wholly rapt by its witchery, he swallowed as many cakes as he could cram. The cook, however, like a crafty worldly cook, only considered his pies’ sweetness as the means of barter; and before their taste was off poor George’s lips, the horror of dunnery and dismay of debt cut short his relish. Shame made him skulk along back ways; but the sharp cook’s twinkling eyes would flash on him still, until his little heart burst forth its bitter distress in a fervent prayer, when, lo! on crossing the next fence on his hiding by-path, his eye caught sight of a guinea embedded in a horse’s tread, and, having run to pay his debts, he bought with the remainder a gilt thimble for his sister. Painful troubles and dribbling windfalls of luck are indeed the tissue of his whole life; but if a lowness of spirit did come over him for a season in his gloomy times, one sunny ray was ever enough to lighten his heart and make it beat high and bold."
Pygmy professor, cakes, gold?
Again, George Eliot condescends to return to Foster's life.
"Under all these circumstances, and with the peculiar keen temper of Dr. John Reinhold Forster, it will be easily believed that he clutched at the sudden offer to accompany Cook as naturalist on his expedition. He only bargained to be allowed to take with him his son, then seventeen years of age; and so hurried was their departure that only nine days intervened between decision on the journey and embarkation. The history of this voyage is known to most persons. At that time all Europe eagerly watched its result; for since the discovery of America, no geographical riddles had so whetted its curiosity as those of the great Southern Sea. The fashionable idyllic sentimentalism of those times, so fostered by the hothouse breathings of B. de St. Pierre and Rousseau, was fascinated by the gentle savages and peaceful virgin isles of whose reality Cook’s first voyage had given the certainty; and all the smirking skirmishers of enlightenment were on the eager look-out for new and startling confirmation of their yearning dreams. How the many and large views of nature such a journey brought with it must have impressed the quick mind of young Forster, already so given to a wandering, shifting life, can be easily conceived. The driest man could not have met with such a chance at such an age of his life without learning from it somewhat which lasted for the remainder of it. George Forster bore away with him that largeness of views on nature and man which so nobly marked his thoughts in all stages of his life; he got his mind enriched with a tender, yet a large and manly sense of nature’s beauty, whose healthy freshness contrasted as vividly with the mawkish feeling of those times as a peasant girl’s ruddy cheek with a painted face; but he also bore away from these three roving years a hankering after travel which never left him, and to which, under the weight of trouble, he was too apt to give himself up, as the drinker grasps at his dram, while the seeds of lasting illness were laid in his body by an attack of scurvy."
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And now, finally, a reader unfamiliar with the subject of the article begins to comprehend the eulogistic opening paragraph.
"The enjoyment of these pleasures was somewhat marred by painful embarrassments arising from fresh outbursts of his father’s wild temper, which chafed at the discipline of a man-of-war, entailing on the commander the necessity of severe measures to repress his mutinous freaks. The youth himself was, however, a favorite with Cook; and the language in which he speaks of him in a biographical sketch, written many years later, shows how thoroughly he knew the worth of that daring seaman’s character. But when, on the return of the expedition, the Doctor, with headstrong stubbornness, ran foul of the Admiralty itself, George was dragged into the quarrel, or from filial love rushed into it to a degree which had a lasting influence. It seems that the elder Forster had not fully understood the meaning of his engagement with the Government, according to which no account of the voyage was to be published before the official one: the Admiralty, therefore, stopped the publication of a work he was preparing; and in consequence of the fiery naturalist’s persistence in contesting its right to do so, it proceeded to an act which seems harsh, and might have maddened many a quieter man so laden with troubles, who saw his hopes of gain vanish, and nothing before him but poverty, debts, and a starving family,—it despoiled him of any share in the proposed Government publication. The blow was a desperate one. Yet even now the old man could not curb his temper ever so little, or matters would still have come to run more smoothly: George himself says as much in a letter of later date, although at all times he held his father to have been unjustly and most cruelly treated. As no mention of his own name had been made in the engagement with Government, he balked the Admiralty’s precautions (probably at his father’s desire) by writing himself an account of the voyage,—a proceeding which at the time exposed him to much abuse, and poisoned the quarrel beyond remedy. In this work the journey and the countries visited are described with simple truth, and a color which shows how thoroughly his soul had become impregnated with the sunny warmth of the tropics. The artlessness of the account has a charm which carries the reader away, and is sufficient proof that, although the father looked over the scientific description of animals and flowers, the bulk of the work is entirely George’s own. The success of the book was great; the author’s name became at once well known, and the poor family garrets in Percy Street were enlivened by the hail of many a foreigner, anxious to see the lucky travellers who had, beyond doubt, beheld and been in the happy South Sea Isles. It was on the occasion of such a pilgrimage that George was first brought together with a young German physician, whose name was Sömmering. He had come over to England to attend its medical schools; and that attraction which had drawn him unto his renowned countrymen grew quickly into the tightest bonds of friendship with the younger of them, fastened by kinship in studies, and probably also by ties of masonic brotherhood, which then, and for many years after, largely took hold of their minds in that alchemistic form under which it so mightily swayed the thought of Europe of that century."
Next part, already heartbreaking -
"The proceeds of the book were, unfortunately, small in money; starvation daily haunted the wretched dwelling, barely staved off: by petty gifts from a friend, or some German princeling, coaxed into dribbling forth scanty alms by a present of South Sea rarities; the sale of the latter also came to an absolute standstill, and the Admiralty was deaf to the roar of claims, till at last hard-hearted creditors came down on the forlorn family, and bore away its mainstay and pillar, and dreary King’s Bench shut on the chafing Doctor. It was indeed a bleak and starving future which George had then to look upon,—his father imprisoned and no prospect of relief, his mother sick and his sisters weak and helpless, while he himself was racked by continued ill-health maiming the sinews of his good-will to work. He soon had to yield to the conviction that in England there was no chance of obtaining aid; so, with the one thought of straining his utmost nerve for his parents, he turned himself to his native country, from which sundry cheers of fellow-feeling had at times gladdened the wretchedness of Percy Street. Making up, therefore, a bale of dried plants and other specimens of natural history, in the hope some continental museums might buy them, he, whose name was then trumpeted forth as the foremost of explorers, embarked at Harwich, to cross to Holland as an anxious pedler and seeker of alms. Nothing can be more touching than to read in his letters to his parents his grief at their sorrows, and his unflinching trust in Providence:—
"“I am well and fresh” (he writes to his father), “resigned, and full of trust that God will not forsake us ; he has often proved his exceeding goodness, and will deliver us out of our present evil chances and hardships, which have weighed us down for these last years. I submit to all trials with the firm trust that they are meant for our best, and believe that, while I leave everything to the ordaining of the most perfect Being, I act neither unrighteously nor forwardly if I beseech him daily for the peace and earthly welfare of us all; for also here on earth we can reach to a certain pitch of happiness, and why, then, should we not pray for it?”"
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"Though he was received by the learned men of Holland with the most flattering kindness, and every sort of civil attention was paid him, he soon saw that he could have no hopes of bettering his family by any help from that country. ... "
"George hastened to Germany, reproaching himself with the slightest delay. At Düsseldorf, then renowned for its galleries of art, he was, however, waylaid by Jacobi, who, with enthusiastic kindness, as soon as he heard of the famed traveller’s arrival, wrote him before daybreak a pressing invitation to spend a whole day with him. Forster was fascinated by the society he was introduced to, and that spell in Jacobi’s bearing which had ravished Goethe with delight. One of the lords of the German commonwealth of letters, the bosom friend of Goethe and of its chief leaders, whom he loved to gather around him at his country-seat at Pempelfort, he enthralled the loving temper of young Forster by the welling forth of his speech, which he would let flow in the full stream of enthusiasm. Forster found himself transferred, as it were by a wizard’s wand, into the very midst of the choicest spirits of Germany, while the charm of Jacobi’s kindly hospitality soothed his aching heart like balm. The latest poems of Goethe; snatches from “Woldemar,” which Jacobi was then writing; freshly received letters from the stars of literature,—were the treats which, during four days, were thrust on Forster, spiced by the touching kindness of his host and his sisters; he tore himself from Düsseldorf, enraptured with his new friends. “Such people as these we shall not meet again on our whole journey,” was his exclamation to Alexander von Humboldt, when, twelve years later, on their trip to England, they turned out of their way to visit Jacobi.
"Cassel was the goal of his immediate expectations. He had hopes that the new Landgrave, Frederick II., who partook of the fashionable taste for dallying with enlightenment, provided it could be done cheaply, might be tempted to gain a man of his father’s fame for his new high-school. This sovereign, who, during his father’s lifetime, had forsaken his Protestant faith and ancestral views in politics, had, since his accession to his states, calmed the lively fears of the old servants of his house by steadily settling down into all the good old family ways. Although remaining a Catholic himself, he swore, as a true son of Hesse, to the maintenance of Protestantism in his country; and, quitting forthwith the Austrian Court, with which while heir apparent he had been unmindful enough of his blood to flirt, he left off all newfangled whims, to the delight of his gray-haired ministers, ruling as his father had ruled before him, to the comfort of himself and the fattening of his exchequer, which he shrewdly enriched by selling twenty-two thousand true Hessians to England for £7,000,000. If the sum seemed large, it also appears that the Landgrave had many calls for it. But George soon saw his hopes vanish afresh; the whole of the funds allotted for the mental enlightenment of such Hessians as were not gaining it in another way in America, had been sunk in a parcel of rubbishy marbles, which were their owner’s joy and pride. A sum that might have freed the starving traveller from King’s Bench, and have allowed him and his family to live at Cassel, could not possibly be made forthcoming; but, in its stead, his Highness deigned to admit George to a gracious audience in his statue gallery, and insisted on his delaying his filial researches till after the next sitting of his Academy of Antiquities, at which he accordingly held a discourse; and at last the Landgrave not only accepted a copy of the father’s books, but even strained his poverty to the disbursing of a gift of fifty louis, besides thrusting on the unwilling son the appointment of professor of natural history at the University of Cassel, with the dazzling salary of seventy pounds. It is touching to read how anxiously Forster debated with his conscience, whether he would be justified in accepting anything for himself as long as he had not achieved that relief for his parents which he had set out to seek; and when at last he did accept, it was with the express understanding that he should be allowed certain months of absence, wherein he might bring his endeavors to a satisfactory result. At Göttingen he made acquaintances which afterwards ripened into friendship,—especially that of Heyne; and he wrote a letter to his father—who he evidently feared might misinterpret his proceedings—in which he tried to enliven his gloom by the friendly greetings of the leading members of that University; but such kindly wishes were all he reaped, both here and at Berlin, with the exception of a pittance of one hundred louis from the Prince of Dessau, bestowed in a warm-hearted manner, and coupled with the promise to use his influence in England with the Admiralty, to obtain some recompense, which, however, proved vain. Such painful disappointments did not allow Forster to begin his stay at Cassel, in the spring of 1779, with a light heart; and his correspondence reveals his writhing efforts to burst his father’s prison bars, when, in the forlorn midnight of this gloom, a hidden hand all of a sudden thrust comfort and freedom on the wretched family. The masonic lodges of Germany, at the call of the Duke of Brunswick, their grand-master, paid the father’s debts, while the chair of natural history at Halle was to provide for his maintenance. True, however, to his self-willed temper, he nearly marred his own luck; for he could not for a long while be brought to give up the character of a victim, and insisted on his just claims, spurning what he deemed a dishonorable compromise, till the earnest entreaties of his family and the smarting reminiscences of imprisonment at last softened his resolve. ... Sömmering, the brother of his heart,—he to whom in the heyday of betrothal he wrote, “Love itself yields to the bond of soul which links me to thee,”—obtained the professorship of anatomy at Cassel, by dint of sundry diplomatic wiles which his eager friend suggested to him; for the Landgrave had snatched up the crotchet, that only Frenchmen knew the science, and it wanted no little knack to master his whims. ... Nor was the society of Cassel wanting in interest; besides many men of more or less distinction who were attached to its high-school, it counted the illustrious historian, Johannes von Müller, amongst its residents, between whom and Forster an intimacy sprang up; so that, had it not been for other discomforts, he might have contentedly endured the petty worries of Court attendance; for the Landgrave regarded his University, with its staff, as his toys, and Forster found, on promotion to the inspectorship of a most threadbare cabinet of natural history, that he shared with the statue gallery the honor of being his Highness’s chief entertainer. But the want of money, the canker of his life, soon made its gnawings felt. The pittance of his salary, and the loss by shipwreck of all his little property on its way from England, had made it impossible for the famished youth to start his establishment, however frugally, without a loan the cost of which shackled him like a galley-chain. ... “Fy! fy! I can’t get a book to look at here, unless I buy it,” he writes to Jacobi. “Cassel is a perfect wilderness, as regards new books, for the annual sum allotted for procuring such for the Prince’s library does not amount to £60.” ... "
"Freemasonry, in the garb of Illumination and Rosicrucian-ism, at that time had largely laid hold of the mind of Germany. ... "
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" ... He was offered the professorship of natural history at Wilna in Poland, and accepted it, not merely on his own hasty promptings, but by the counsel of such wary friends as Lichtenberg and Heyne. The conditions were, in fact, such as might have tempted many a literary man: besides a fair salary, a sum was settled for correspondence and the purchase of specimens of natural history, while the flattering language of the Primate Poniatowsky’s letter was backed by subscriptions which freed him from his liabilities at Cassel, and provided for his travelling outlay. Thus, at a moment when the atmosphere of Cassel choked his manly vigor, luck seemed to shower on him the very windfall befitting his wants; and with the good cheer with which he had formerly run to buy his sister a thimble with the chance sovereign that saved him from his boyish scrapes, he now leapt forward to snatch the happiness which seemed to be beckoning him.
"Happiness this time appeared to him in the guise of a young girl of twenty. During his visits to Göttingen he had learnt to know Theresa Heyne ..."
" ... George, on his part, with his susceptibility and generous feeling, was strongly drawn to the lively girl; and although the kindly old father, with his wary forethought, would not allow himself to be edged into express sanction of the marriage, as long as Forster’s worldly means were so doubtful, the eager girl soon dragged his good-will into a tacit understanding that the wedding should come off as soon as Polish pledges proved trustworthy; and he started for his new home with the consciousness of being betrothed. ... He passed through Vienna on his way ... The Emperor Joseph received him in his closet, with his well-known friendliness, and on dismissing him, after much talk, foretold him laughingly that he would not long stay in the wilderness of Poland; while invitations from the mighty Kaunitz, and choice meetings at the house of the celebrated Countess Theresa Thum, whose pride and joy it was to gather together the picked spirits of Vienna, showed in what esteem the traveller was held by all."
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"At Grodno he found himself in the very heart of the life and Court of Poland. The first free diet which had met since many years, was then holding its sittings there; and the mean huts and filthy lanes of the so-called city were thronged by the motley crush of Polish aristocracy, from the King and magnificent magnates with their dazzling followings, down to the equally haughty peasant nobles swaggering about with their big swords (the badge of their rank), while they floundered through the mammoth sloughs of mire in huge boots lined with dirty straw, in their proud disdain of the effeminacy of stockings and linen. Amongst the higher classes, however, he found many persons possessed of much elegant culture, which was, moreover, set off by a lordly hospitality, in which they vied with each other to show how highly they valued the gain of so noteworthy a man to their country. The King’s sister, commonly called Madame de Cracovie, because her deceased husband, Marshal Branicki, had been Castellan of Cracow, received him with the most marked kindliness, and presented him herself to her brother, whom he often saw in the familiarity of her evening meetings. That worn-out lover of the great Catherine, by whose bounty he had been pensioned with the royalty of Poland, had a mind whose dainty and over-refined taste delighted in the society of literary men, and Forster experienced the courtesy of his bearing, while the assurances of good-will which he gathered from the King and Primate for himself and the University encouraged his hopes for the future. ... "
"That worn-out lover of the great Catherine"? Is George Eliot quoting from sources, or merely fact everyone - at the time - was aware of, just didn't usually mention in print?
"The first acquaintance with Wilna did not discourage him. It was true that “the cabinet of natural history proved not only a child in its cradle, but not even a fine child, while the library was most meagre;” but then he had the assurance that their wants were acknowledged, and would be made good. The University, as most of the schools in Poland, had been founded by the Jesuits, in consequence of whose suppression the whole system of education was being remodelled. His lodging was in the old palace of the Order, and, though wretchedly bleak and bare, he comforted himself by comparing it with those of his fellow-teachers, and by the readiness with which such changes as he asked for were granted. Many of the Jesuits remained attached to the high-school as laymen; and although he arrived by no means well disposed towards them,—having been fully warned by the great Jesuit-croaker, Nicolai, against their wiles,—his first letters speak the praise of their unselfish behavior, so that he even utters his conviction that the Jesuits of Wilna, at least, do not deserve the suspicion under which their brethren generally labor. The difficulties of his position showed themselves immediately on entering upon his duties, when he had to deliver his lectures in Latin; for though a master in German style, and able to write English and French with wonderful correctness, Latin composition was a labor which cost him “an everlasting time;” while the unwonted tongue hampered his speech, which was at all times highly embarrassed in the professor’s chair, although its flow in conversation was astounding. ... As all such bits of economy were, however, altogether insufficient to mend the hole made in his income, he restlessly sought means of repairing it, and at last decided on perfecting himself in the study of medicine. There was a great want of physicians in the country, and the skill of such as there were was eagerly sought and richly paid by noble Poles, who seemed to have pinned their faith in health on the multitude of doctors; for we are told that as soon as anything like ailing was felt, the sick man called all the leeches together he could lay hold of, when he himself would preside, and adjudge their debate. With feverish looking forward to spring and happiness, he thus fretted through the dreariness of his first Polish winter in utter loneliness and daily worry; for, as time wore on, he saw that none of the pledges made to him were kept, while painful rheumatisms and weakened eyesight, brought on by climate, racked his poor body, until, at the very moment of his start on his longed-for journey, a putrid fever laid him for several weeks on a sick-bed, and threatened to cut short his life in its bloom. Convalescence, like all other things, is helped by a stout heart; thus, as soon as the crisis was surmounted, his eagerness quickened his recovery, so that he reached Göttingen in August, 1785; and, having been married in the beginning of the following month, he hastened back with his wife to his bleak banishment.
"Henceforth Forster’s household was the sanctuary wherein alone, during the remaining two years of his stay in Poland, he found refuge from endless teasing and annoyance. If fancy rather than thorough love had made Theresa become his wife, acquaintance with her husband at all events at first confirmed and increased her good opinion of him. Forster always maintained in his daily bearing so chaste a delicacy that his widow declares never to have seen him guilty of an unseemly outburst; and this overwrought unwillingness to ruffle her peace of mind was such, that he never brought himself to unfold his many straits to her, until this very silence produced the misunderstanding which it had been meant to avoid. Thus, while in his generous fear lest she should not be fully aware of the lot she was encountering, he had always dwelt much on the privations awaiting her in Poland, this nice feeling had kept him from alluding to the pet home he had prepared; so that the young woman was quite rapt with joy to find so snug a dwelling on her arrival at Wilna. It was, in truth, not more than they wanted; for beyond it they found no comfort. If Cassel was loathsome, yet how grand was it when compared with the Polish University, which had not even one bookseller. Intercourse with the world was slow and difficult; he could not often even hear of new books, much less get a sight of them; so that his letters to Lichtenberg piteously beg for the crumbs which might be swept from the fulness of his literary table. The want of all congenial society was the bitterest hardship to him; for the revels of the Lithuanian nobles had no charms, and his Jesuit fellows, on closer knowledge, had come out in their true light. Having failed in their stealthy stalking for the father and mother’s souls, they hoped to net that of George’s first-born child; but their wiles were roughly torn by a gruff sally, “that, as baptism must be, it should be done according to Calvinism,” and henceforth their friendship was at an end. The turmoils of the State and the ill-will discovered to be borne to the University by the Primate, who even applied its funds to the one of Cracow, abashed his trust in promised improvements which would have enabled him to make himself practically useful; yet every time that in a fit of anguish he eagerly jumped at a chance of escape from this forlorn banishment, he was quickly dragged back by the feeling of its impossibility. By agreement he had bound himself to serve for eight years, in consideration of the payments whereby he had been freed from his Cassel debts; and no literary labor in his present wilderness, obliged as he was to buy at great expense every book he might require, could ever enable him to pay off this loan. ... "
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"He even produced, besides sundry translations, two little works which deserve notice, to the writing of which he devoted himself so assiduously, that long before daybreak he sat at his desk, and his health began to suffer from the strain. The one was a dissertation on “The Human Race,” intended as an answer to an essay by Kant on the same subject, in which mistaken statements had been made about the South Sea Islanders. The dogmatic boldness with which the metaphysician laid down the law in matters of science displeased Forster, who in general had little liking for speculative philosophy, and even called Kant, in a private letter, “the archsophist and arch-scholastic of the age.” In this dissertation, which is written with great moderation, he maintained the existence of distinct races of men, though he did not deny their belonging to one kind. The other work was a “Life of Cook,” already alluded to, the dedication of which Was graciously acknowledged by the Emperor Joseph—a fact rendered highly remarkable by the broad freedom of thought running through the whole book, which contains, as in a summary, the political faith which guided Forster’s future conduct. It has often been noticed, that there is not a single passage in any of the French writers of the eighteenth century, which shows any foreknowledge of the revolution which was coming over their country, although many travellers (amongst them Goldsmith) foretold it; but there is no man whose prophecies can vie in clearness with those of Forster. As early as 1782, he exclaimed in a letter to his father, “Europe seems to be on the point of a fearful overthrow;” and in a remarkable fragment amongst his writings, the precise date of which is not known, the following striking words occur:—
"“We stand at the close of the century; this universal longing for change in our present forms, for relief from our many defects, the searching hither and thither, this revolt of reason against political pressure, this supremacy of understanding over feeling, these educational institutions for the rearing of sensible machines, these convulsive clutchings of faith at miraculous powers beyond the realm of understanding, this struggle between enlightenment and religion, this universal leavening,—herald a new teacher and a new doctrine.”
"Yielding to his heart’s ever warm interest in his fellow-beings’ weal, he had been steadily growing in his age’s political thought, so that it was ever engrossing the better part of his mind; and while, therefore, it is not wonderful that in 1787 he should have arrived at writing as he then did, it is most wonderful that the head of the Holy Roman Empire should have nodded approbation to such words as these:—
"“Human infallibility is disappearing before the dawn of knowledge. Tolerance and freedom of conscience proclaim the victory of reason, and make the way for freedom of the press and free search into all those relations which, under the name of truth, are of value to man. Lastly, luxury and industry are giving new worth to life; the arts are attaining the height of perfection and simplicity; observation and experience are enlarging and combining all knowledge, and all political powers are tending to an equality; in short, it is, or is about to be, the season of flowering.”"
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"Early one morning in the month of June, 1787, Forster was disturbed at his desk by the entry of a Russian naval officer, who, presenting him with a letter from the ambassador, Stackelberg, made the startling announcement that he had full power to settle all terms, if he would agree to accompany a voyage of discovery in the Southern Ocean. What a leap for Forster from dreariest banishment into the very Eden of dreams! The open-handedness of the Russian Government removed all difficulties about the repayment of his loans, and an ample salary was assigned to him, as also a pension for his wife in the event of his death; while his delight with luck was raised in the highest pitch by the promised companionship of Sömmering, whom the Empress immediately appointed physician to the expedition, on Forster’s recommendation; and as soon as ever he had brought his affairs to a close, he hastened away, traversing with six post-horses the space between Poland and Göttingen, which he reached on the 16th September. His hopes were fated to meet with a sad dash: the outbreak of the Turkish war caused the voyage to be laid aside for the present; and as Forster would not accept an appointment at St. Petersburg just after his escape from Polish winters, he was turned adrift on the world with a year’s salary, but free from debt, so that, though pleasant visions had come to nought, he yet blessed the wondrous luck which alone had been able to snatch him from Poland and set him down in the heart of Europe. ... "
"While Forster was thus anxiously looking around him for some opening suitable to his wants, his attention was drawn to the electoral city of Mayence, where his old friend Johannes von Müller had just vacated the librarianship, on promotion to be the Elector’s private secretary, while the prospect of the society of Sömmering, who had for several years taught anatomy there, was a most powerful attraction. By the counsel of friends he went thither, that his presence might draw attention to him; and, having been presented to the Elector by Müller, his appointment was decided on with a speed unwonted for the lazy sluggishness of spiritual courts. The salary was small; but then there was the advantage of a central position, which the portly Elector, with sly shrewdness, pointed out to him when, throwing open the casement of his closet, he showed him the view over the Rhine and its rich banks, asked him to compare it with Poland, and went on to reckon the cheapness of provisions,—backing the whole with promise of regular payment.
"It is as well shortly to describe the soil into which Forster was now transplanted; for it was owing to its nature that his life took the turn it did. The ancient German Empire was dying the death of corruption, and the very death-slumbers of its elders were being broken in upon by forward heirs; foremost among whom was Prussia, who, like a nightmare, bestrode and pinched them, even at the point of death. ... The time-honored See of Mayence, with whose spiritual electorate was coupled the arch-chancellorship of the empire, as it had ever been one of the chief pleasure-haunts of the lustiness of Rhenish prelacy, so was it in its decay the hotbed of corruption. The predecessors of the reigning Elector had, like the Emperor Joseph, partaken of the reforming fashion of his time, and had foolishly thought that the worn-out body might be quickened again into youth. The Elector—simple, good-natured man, the chief feature of whose temper was kindly trustful feeling, and a fondness for plain burgher-like life—forsook the wonted pomp of a high prince of the empire, to follow the bent of his homely likings. Instead of having courtly feasts, he not only mingled in the holiday gambols of the citizens, but he forfeited the indulgence of his courtiers, who with shrugs would have winked at these whims of a sovereign, by his harmful meddling in the olden habits of the State. Saints were curtailed of their dues, monkish trickery was checked; and when, in 1773, the Jesuits were suppressed by the Pope, Eusmerich Joseph seemed like a man who felt a load off his chest, and launched forth into plans for setting up sound schools in his lands. The Jesuit party was, however, not crushed, though beaten; and on the Elector’s suspicious death in the following year, before he had time to carry out all his plans, they carried by a push the election of Canon Erthal as his successor. Shrewd, ambitious, and thoroughly worldly, he had graduated in the schools of courtly diplomacy, where he had acquired that varnish whereby poor wits can for a time pass themselves off as minds of superior stuff. As the party had worked the strong Catholic feeling of the population, the new Elector began his reign with a mighty show of piety and devotion that edified the mob, but which were laid aside for more congenial pastimes, as soon as their need was less apparent; the banqueting halls of the archiepiscopal pleasure palaces rang with the revelry of feasts, the spice of whose cheer was set off by ribald wit."
George Eliot gives descriptions of the various corruptions prevailing, and proceeds to the caste system, which was in line with mist of Europe.
" ... The throng was choicely noble; for the utmost that was given to a burgher in Mayence was the gift of a clerkship. The nobility was, however, far from being all on an equality within itself, and the highest class, whose string of ancestors enabled them to stand the tests required for canonries, looked down as haughtily on their lower fellows as those again on the mob of burghers at large; while besides, and above all hereditary rank, there was the consecration of holy orders, whereby, first, only even the highest-born nobility became entitled to share fully the fatness of the State. Gluttony, wassailing, and a greedy craving for rich prebends, were the main qualities of these servants of the Church; and it was well when, in the revelry of their drinking-bouts over flagons of old Rhenish, which in summer time they loved to hold in the pleasure-grounds of their lordly abbeys scattered along the stately river’s banks, their wanton humor would be content with such harmless freaks as wagering whether this or that lady’s calves could be encircled by the ribbons of their gold canon’s crosses."
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"Yet were there some men amongst them who, athwart all this overcoat of fashionable dross, were not without stuff ... Forster found here Stadion, who, from a gay and enterprising canon, became one of the leading ministers of Austria; while the master of modern statesmen, Prince Metternich, took his first lesson in cunning in this high school of human worthlessness. High above these in nobleness of nature, as in the splendor of his birth, but so hampered by the contradictions between his position and his likings, that he never mastered their difficulties, and thus through life had an awkward hesitation in his public conduct which looked almost like wilful trimming, was Dalberg, Bishop of Erfurt, coadjutor and expected successor of the Elector; but who afterwards, under Napoleon, became Duke of Frankfort, and died as Bishop of Ratisbon. His love of letters was great; and so zealously had he devoted his fine intelligence to study, especially of metaphysics, that his works ranked him amongst his country’s leading writers, while his position and prospects caused him to be looked to, by such men as Schiller, as the coming Lorenzo de’ Medici of Germany. Everything without the circle of nobility was held to be mob; and at most a sort of half recognition was now and then extended as a favor to the professors, though never so far as to admit them with their wives to the houses of the aristocracy. ... in Mayence itself there were a few citizens whose Rhenish light-mindedness had been unwittingly rapt by the political freethinking of the professors. These latter were, indeed, a body by themselves, whose opinions, probably whetted by daily grinding against the world around, were so wholly at variance with its whole creed, that in their compactness they looked like a set of pioneers thrust forward into the enemy’s country in advance of the coming revolution. This circle was the only one which offered Forster any chance of society. The old Jesuit party, which had already declaimed often against the Protestant Johannes von Müller, looked with no friendly eyes on the new librarian; and such was the bigoted feeling fomented against everything that came from him, that his bare proposal to sell the duplicate copies of books was met by the cry that desecration was threatening the work of the fathers, every single book gathered by whom deserved being treasured as a relique. In truth, as far as public enterprise was concerned, there was nothing gained by change from Poland; for the Elector and his Court, like a host of locusts, ate up the wealth of the land in their lavish luxury, while the jealous ill-will of the Jesuit swarms stifled every undertaking which smacked of enlightenment or free thought. Mayence, therefore, had no resources beyond the society of a few friends, foremost amongst whom was Sömmering, and its position in the heart of Germany. The neighborhood of Düsseldorf reawakened the intimacy with Jacobi, which had slacked in distant Poland, while the literary activity of Heyne spurred Forster to share it by becoming a regular contributor to the “Göttingen Advertiser,” and the kindly old man’s fatherly love filled that gap in his heart which had been made by his wilful sire’s estrangement. ... "
"The family-ghost, poverty, showed itself in the household as soon as its tent had been pitched on the banks of the Rhine. Although he had been urged by the Elector to give lessons in natural history, the best of reasons stayed his doing so—for no pupils were to be found; and his duties as librarian were easy, since the fifteen thousand works which formed the boasted fifty thousand volumes of the library, were stowed away in a lumber-room beyond reach or use. ... The family-ghost, poverty, showed itself in the household as soon as its tent had been pitched on the banks of the Rhine. Although he had been urged by the Elector to give lessons in natural history, the best of reasons stayed his doing so—for no pupils were to be found; and his duties as librarian were easy, since the fifteen thousand works which formed the boasted fifty thousand volumes of the library, were stowed away in a lumber-room beyond reach or use. A private pupil—a certain Mr. Thomas Brand—was the only pecuniary advantage brought by the journey, beyond a crowd of vivid impressions; for he had seen the two chief events on which the attention of Europe was fastened. In England he had attended Warren Hastings’s trial, where he had heard and beheld all the oratory and the genius of the country; while in Paris he had looked on the pageantry of its strange liberty, in the enthusiastic preparations for the great feast of the Champs de Mars. The result he gave to the world in his “Views of the Rhine and Brabant;” a work which, written in the gloomiest period of his life, is a masterpiece of racy writing, both as regards clearness of wording as well as the ease with which an array of deep thought is marshalled. “I tell you I hold your ‘Views’ to be one of the best books in our language,” is the opinion pronounced by Lichtenberg."
" ... Huber appeared, on the occasion of these embarrassments, as the beam that propped the tumbling homestead; for while his simpering feeling had a charm for Theresa under the circumstances of her situation, he not only actually helped Forster in the toils of translation, but, from his many connections with leading publishers and literary journals, was enabled to be in many ways of real service to him. It was, therefore, in that state of inner strife which is brought about by want of happiness, that during her husband’s absence the wife was, as it were, thrust to rest herself in Huber, who naturally redoubled his nursing care, sanctioned, as it was, by Forster’s knowledge thereof; while, on the other hand, Theresa’s undisturbed attention fastened itself more and more on his devotion until it came out to her sight in striking relief against the dim canvas of household disappointment. Thus Forster returned from England after failure in his hopes, while the irresistible temptations of books and charts had largely added to the heavy outlay of his journey, to find that he had lost the greatest blessing of his life,—the peace of a loving home. ... Forster shrouded the barrenness of his home from every one, fighting, with a brave heart, the throng of his painful disappointments and the ever-growing load of poverty and debt. ... "
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"The household was not the only thing which had changed: time had borne Mayence itself along with it. The great world-drama in France was progressing in its mighty working; and all Europe was watching it, some with hearty sympathy, others with hatred and fear. The Elector and his pampered courtiers, too rotten at heart to be quickened into a manly outburst of hate, kept shooting from over their cups a shower of wit-bolts at King Mob. Soon a throng of noble exiles began to crowd the neighborhood of the Rhine, who loved rather to eat goodly messes in other men’s homes than to try to save their own; and great was the soul’s delight of the Electoral Court that chance should allow them to fawn in daily intimacy on so high and illustrious a brood. The town and country were literally overrun by boastful runaways, in pandering to whose whims it was felt to be an honor to squander the exchequer; and the general ill-will at these newcomers, which was powerfully fomented in the first instance by the dearness of food, was heightened into exasperation by the swaggering effrontery of their behavior. While every branch of the administration was neglected and its hardworking servants were being starved, every fund and resource of the country was drained to its uttermost farthing that the Electoral Court might not be stinted in its pomp. The Prince de Condé was splendidly lodged, with his mistress, the Princesse de Monaco, in the Episcopal Palace of Worms, which belonged to the Elector; and on Comte d’Artois’ visit to Mayence, his private household was defrayed by the impoverished principality at a daily cost of £200. Wherever money could be found, it was laid hold of by the clutches of the pilfering Court; and thus about a million of florins, which belonged to the University, out of the sale of church lands, were swallowed up in gormandizing and riot. ... Meanwhile the tide of German politics was rising, and rapidly bearing away the little princes who were unguardedly disporting themselves in its heavy swell. There was a mighty plotting of statecraft going on between Austria and Prussia; and the Elector of Mayence was puffed up and full of importance, for he had been admitted to look on in that innermost closet where the secretest designs were being concocted by wily heads, too glad to buy with a little flattery a cat’s-paw willing to pick for them the burning brands out of the fire. As he found his old ministers too awkward to handle such nice devices, he procured from Vienna Baron Albini as a master in statesmanship, and bestowing on him the title of Grand Chancellor, with a salary befitting his high dignity, he trustfully had himself launched, under his steering, upon the sea of political machination. The first fruits of such superior guidance was the glorious honor of holding Liège at a cost of three millions of florins, as a conqueror, with the Mayence army, as soon as the two heads of the empire decided that German troops should quash the revolutionary movement in that bishopric. This army was of a piece with the whole fabric of the State; for while it barely counted three thousand ill-appointed and worse-fed soldiers, its army list counted no less than twelve noble and richly paid generals. But when the coronation of the new Emperor Francis had come off at Frankfort, which the Elector, of course, attended with the pomp and state befitting his high rank, then it was that the flock of princely brains there assembled and laboring in the birth-throes of subtlest State thought, accepted the invitation to the hospitable retreat of Mayence as best suited to their deep councillings; and its sovereign gloated with delight at seeing himself the pivot around which the princes of Europe moved. Never had anything been beheld like the endless changes of dazzling revelry which followed on each other during the stay of princes and statesmen, so that it was a wonder at what time they snatched bare minutes for those cunning designs which it was whispered were being woven in a poor hut, away from din and distraction, on the shrouded islet of Weissanau. At last the high-born wiseacres were delivered, and the printing-presses of the Court published the Duke of Brunswick’s famous manifesto. “These are the men whose measures one is told to approve of,” Forster exclaimed. “That man is happy who has found a nook whence he can quietly look on the mad turmoil.”
"The French Revolution could not otherwise than powerfully interest one who was so alive to the welfare and doings of his fellow-beings. His letters to Heyne show how closely he watched its course, and that, keenly aware of its blemishes, he yet ever felt such sympathy for its struggles that he would become quite enraged at the fashion of overlooking its world-meaning in the flippant judgments currently passed upon it after flurried glances at some of its wild incidents. ... "
" ... Heyne, whose thoroughly humane feeling was being constantly shocked by the wanton temper of German aristocracy, but whose character partook of a certain painful caution, kept hovering about his outspoken son-in-law with timid hints and prudent counsels. ... Already, while Forster was writing his “Views,” Heyne had given vent to his fears as to how he would treat the political and religious considerations which would be suggested by the events of the countries he described, and Forster had felt so discouraged by his exceeding timidity, that he had given himself much trouble to explain away the meaning of his warnings. Soon after this, however, he was thrown into a mightier fit of alarm, on hearing that his son-in-law was translating a work of Brissot’s, of which he had written a review for the “Göttingen Advertiser,” in language which had attracted such attention that the name of its author had been repeatedly asked. In the trouble of his mind he posted off a letter of earnest warning as to the consequences likely to ensue from so rash an undertaking, when Forster answered as follows:—
"“I am not translating Brissot, and never thought of doing so. There is as much aristocratizing going on in my house as there is spoken on the other side; and as for myself, I certainly belong as little to the enragés of the one party as of the other. It is this very fairness which is hateful to all the fools and rogues who have espoused a party…. How should I tumble on the thought of wishing to preach an overthrow which I myself do not desire, but rather hold to be so great a mishap for Germany, that I make every effort to ward it off, and on this account chiefly blame all the lying reviewers, who only embitter the public by their partiality, inasmuch as they give themselves the appearance as if it must needs trust them on their word…. I can remain silent, but I cannot write against my insight and conviction.”"
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"His literary labors at this period brought his latterly somewhat forgotten name with fresh vividness to the memory of the general public. Besides his “Views,” which he wrote in such sunny moments as he could snatch, he translated the Sanscrit drama, “Sacontala,” from Sir W. Jones’s English version. This glowing flower, picked from the tropical garden of Indian poetry, excited such intense interest in Germany, that Goethe, in an epigram, styled it the embodiment of all beauty. ... In vain he would recur to his proposed work on the “Botany of the South Sea,” for which, when last in England, he had launched into the outlay of having the drawings colored by skilled artists: there was no one who would pay for the work. “I could find a publisher in Germany, but none who would pay me. Fruitlessly do I look about me for a Mæcenas amongst our magnates and princes, who would pay with a couple of hundred louis for being paraded in a dedication as the protector of the work, and becoming immortal in the world of science.” Soon after these sad bewailings, in a letter written late in 1791, it was the mockery of his lot, that just when they were too late, two chances were thrown to him, which a little earlier might have proved the cables of his rescue from shipwreck. Prospects of enlarged activity were opened to him in Mayence by the sudden decision of the Elector to assign the Jesuit church to the library, while on the death of the Professor of Natural History, his salary was added to Forster’s pay. On the other hand, a man of the highest standing and name, unexpectedly put himself in friendly communication with him. Amongst his literary jobs, he had received from the well-known Berlin publisher, Voss, the commission to write an account of the events of 1790, with an especial view to the part played in them by the Prussian statesman, Herzberg, between whom and Pitt he wished a parallel to be drawn. Herzberg, the old minister of Frederick the Great, and at that moment pretty much out of favor at the Court of his successor, felt himself too much interested in this work not to wish that an account bearing the name of such an author and publisher should be trustworthy. He wrote Forster a letter, marked by honorable esteem, in which, after sending him some printed documents, he offered, if the manuscript were communicated to him, to look through it, and see that its statements were historically true, “as the King had positively forbidden him to make known a collection of State Papers he had prepared, and which would have thrown much light on these events.” Forster thankfully accepted the offer; and Herzberg expressed himself highly satisfied with his exposition of his ministry. Before this business had, however, gone thus far, Mayence had been occupied by the French, and Forster had embarked in the new state-vessel, as he thought, beyond possibility of an honorable return. Herzberg wrote him, through Voss, a letter in which he expressed his hope that Forster would continue a well-intentioned Prussian, and accompanied it not only with a batch of books having reference to the history of the said times, but also with the silver medal of the Berlin Academy (of which Forster was a member and Herzberg curator), and sent him a considerable sum of money. It is plain that the statesman, who knew of Forster’s embarrassed circumstances, thought that he might by these means save a man, whose worth and abilities he had learnt to know, from following a path which he believed would lead to his destruction. ... "
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" ... Custine had suddenly passed the Rhine at Spiers, and was in full march on Mayence, having thoroughly beaten the Electoral troops under Colonel Winkelmann, an officer of such excellent sentiments that the bare words of freedom and the rights of man were enough to send him into a fit of raving. It was as if a pack of wild beasts had been suddenly let loose on a tea-party; the whole nobility of Mayence thought of nothing but to snatch up as much of their wealth as they could carry, and betake themselves with it beyond the Rhine. It was an endless bustle and trooping by day and night across the bridge and through the town gates: laden skiffs covered the river, and the roads were blocked with every sort of cart and wagon; while runaways on foot and horse hurried along in selfish haste to their hiding-places, thoughtless of all but their own safety. It is said that two hundred thousand florins were spent in means of transport out of the town in these few days. The Elector scurried into the town, to take a glimpse at it, but left it again secretly, after dark, on the day of his arrival, in well-closed chariots, with his mistress and his jewels, having first seen that his arms were well erased from his carriage-panels, after which he bethought himself of duly naming Chancellor Albini as Regent. The treasures of the churches were also packed up and got safely out of the town; and then the High Chancellor called the burghers (in truth, the only inhabitants who remained) to a meeting, at which he urged them not to lose courage, but, abiding by the town, to defend it to the last, and, addressing them as his brethren, read a proclamation, forbidding flight and removal of goods, on pain of severest punishment. The fraternal title, we are told, so dumfoundered the burgher brains, that a rough journeyman unwittingly gave vent to his astonishment by a thundering rap of his big fist on the table, accompanied by a monstrous oath; when, just as brotherly affection was about to make them all strike into that stream of bravery let loose by the Chancellor, an ill-timed meddler dashed this flow of mind by the shout that their most gracious brother, the Chancellor, in his heavily laden chariot, had just safely passed the gates. His Excellency General von Gymnich, Master-General of the Ordnance, swore loudly he would defend the town to his last shirt; and truly endless was the clatter and the bustle of warlike preparations during the next few days. ... Now and then a bit of news would come how Custine had advanced another march; and once the sight of a cloud of dust sent such a thrill of fear through the town, that the garrison nearly crushed itself to atoms in scampering across the bridge on the Rhine; until, on the 19th of October, the French arrived bodily under the walls of Mayence, and summoned the town to surrender; when General von Gymnich gathered his splendidly clad brother generals about him, amongst them the Elector’s relative, Count Hatzfeldt, to consider in council whether they should desert or defend the town. To desert was the decision they quickly came to; so, having bargained that each officer should be allowed to take away a horse out of the Elector’s stable, while he himself received six famous cream-colored steeds, his Excellency-in-Chief rode over to the opposite bank with the proud bearing of one who had worthily taken care of his master’s dearest interests; and, having received each officer’s pledge to restore his animal to its owner, he hastened to present himself, his horses, and his report, at Erfurt, whither his sovereign had retired.
"It was no wish to abet French conquest which made Forster remain in Mayence. His post was there; the world without was all strange to him, and offered him no home which he could make for in these troubles; and while his duty and his interests both told him to stay, his generous mind was, moreover, deeply shocked at the selfishness of the higher classes, and of every one connected with the Government. The very last act of the Elector was to pilfer and bear away with him the saving fund of widows and orphans, so that Forster could well exclaim, “The last quivering of despotism is one more piece of unrighteousness, which calls to Heaven for vengeance.” He determined, therefore, to abide events,—a resolve in which he was strengthened at the time by Theresa’s good cheer and encouragement. ... from being his fellow-professors’ champion for their dues and rights, he came to have to do with the equitable allotment of the demands of the French Commissariat, until step by step he was drawn into being the heart and soul of the new administration, and, on the appointment of a provisional government, allowed himself to be named one of its nine members. ... "
"This step was final; it tore almost all his ties of friendship; and even Sömmering was so overcome with fear and horror, that, turning away from one who loved him so dearly, he henceforth would have no further knowledge of him. Traitor and low designer were the names showered upon him; and the Duke of Brunswick’s remark, on hearing of Forster’s doings, was astonishment that one who had so many means of earning a livelihood should have sought a rebel’s calling! Yet if Forster proved wrong in his political belief, he shared his mistake with many keen thinkers; for even the shrewd Johannes von Müller, initiated as he was into all the springs and workings of German statecraft, gave it as his opinion, on a hasty visit to Mayence for matters of private business (where he was beset by hundreds of doubtful burghers seeking to steady their minds by the wisdom of so deep an oracle), that under the circumstances they would do best to rally round the republican Government. In the midst of the bustle of convening the assembly which was to decide whether Mayence would become independent or not, affairs without the walls grew dark and threatening."
" ... It was in the turmoil of such troubled times, when every day the look-out became more and more threatening, that he determined Theresa should no longer encounter the risks of his lot. She had been entirely deprived of society by the universal emigration (Huber, as Saxon agent, had been forced to leave the town), and hardships which would formerly have excited her romantic temper, now only tended to depress it; so it was decided that Thomas Brand, the English pupil, should take her to Strasburg, where she was to reside with good Jacobin friends of her husband. Thus was the knot of Forster’s marriage noiselessly untied, although it is certain that neither husband nor wife was fully aware that they were then unloosening it so completely forever. Much deep and earnest thought had Forster held within himself as to what it was his honest duty to do for his wife’s happiness; that secret about Huber weighed upon him, in spite of his philosophy; yet, seeing himself and the ship of his household becoming more and more engulfed in an eddy, he wished to see his wife at least landed beyond its reach; and thus this severing was, in truth, a renunciation on his part. Huber soon after vowed that as long as he lived Theresa should never suffer want, and, forsaking his diplomatic calling,—advancement in which was barred by his well-known friendship for the Jacobins,—he went to Switzerland, whither she had gone from Strasburg with her children. Strange to say, a happier and a better understanding between all three was the immediate result of this unwonted settlement. ... "
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" ... he was made to travel through the country districts, as Government Commissioner, to watch the elections of deputies for the Constituent Assembly of Mayence,—an office which brought him into collision with the nobles on their estates. The Union was voted at once, when Forster, with two other citizens, was sent to bear to the Convention the decree which he himself had drawn up. So little did he foresee, in the eagerness of that hour, how events were upon the point of turning, that he expected to be back before the end of three weeks, and even neglected to take any care for his books and papers. On the 30th of March he was admitted to the bar of the Convention, where he was received with the enthusiastic cheers of that France to which he was sent as the spokesman of its new brethren, although one short week was sufficient to prove how unstable and tottering was the Union he heralded.
"The allied armies had crossed the Rhine the day before Forster’s departure, and since then had advanced upon the town, so as to invest it completely. Under such circumstances, return was for the present out of the question; so to shift for himself as he best could in the heaving surf of Paris, on the pittance of eighteen assignat livres a day, was all the look-out left to him, and he tried to make it as cheery a one as good-will would allow. A large world suited Forster’s temper; the many shiftings of his early life had given him habits of largeness, and there was in the nature of Paris and its world-movement abundance to fasten and powerfully interest the peculiar tastes of his mind. Moreover, he came thither with a lively trust and belief in the great Revolution, which the excitement of partisanship had worked up into passionate liking; and yet the first impression of what he saw, when he began to sift and order the crush of sight which thronged on him, was disappointment, which, in spite of himself, stole with clammy chill over his boiling enthusiasm. He saw the ugly underworkings of parties and of party-chiefs, and his gossamer visions threatened absolutely to fade away at the strong glare of Paris light. “The only thing still wanting, after all I have suffered of late, is to have the conviction forced on me, that I have offered up my best strength to a monster, and have worked with honest zeal for a cause with which no one else will work honestly, and which is a cloak for the maddest passions.” Forster’s political faith, and keen glance into the workings of men and times, were, however, far too steady to be shaken or blinded by any sudden gust. He had become enamored of the Revolution for herself; and through the throng of low suitors who had jostled and dragged her along into the filth of their debaucheries, his eye, disregarding the harlotry of foisted fashion, dwelt ever lovingly on the beauty with which she had been born. Thus, while goaded to despair by the excesses and horrors of the violent party, he yet proclaimed himself a Jacobin, because he saw in extreme measures the State’s only safeguard against a return of old abuses. “I do not deny that the men of the Mountain often show themselves from a disadvantageous and impolitic side; but they seem withal to be freer from prejudice than the others, and, beyond doubt, they have more power and decision.” Thus Forster remained true to his convictions,—for with him they were the clear light of belief, which no chance storm could lastingly trouble, for he knew that, in the heaven of his world, certain seasons must have passing storms, and that the big darkness was but the shadow which must come along with the mighty lightning that would clear the firmament. ... "
" ... Affairs in Mayence grew daily worse; for not only were a hundred ducats put upon his outlawed head, about which he could afford to joke from his Paris garret, but what was infinitely more alarming, a thorough rain of shells and cannon-balls had been hurled upon the town, great part of which, and especially of his own neighborhood, had been burned; while, even if his house escaped destruction, there was small chance that he would be able to recover his papers, which he had so thoughtlessly forgotten to stow away. Without his papers he was like a palsied man pilfered of his crutches; for his hopes of active employment in the service of France did not wear a promising look. All France was then bustling about Paris and the office haunts of the ministers; and unless a man had big shoulders, and a strong will to make others afraid of him, there was small likelihood for his luck in picking up anything. Lebrun, Minister of Foreign Affairs, had indeed received him in a friendly manner, and he had the justest claims on the State for whose benefit he had risked and lost his all; yet, if such hopes were worth aught, their value was as yet to come, and so far not even in sight."
"He thought of studying Eastern languages, and of going to India for some years.
"“If I could only scrape together £400 or £500, and were it only £300, I would learn Persian and Arabic, and go overland to India to gather new experience, and besides make my fortune as a physician in a few years. Wholly new objects, foreign sights, movement, occupation, discomfort, and even danger,—all this together, with the consciousness that I am busy in the enjoyment and pursuit of such human work as suits my powers, knowledge, and taste, must infallibly prove healing balm to my wounded feelings. I might stay away from four to six years, or still longer, and then return not yet too old to enjoy the end of my days in my children’s arms; while, finding them happy, I should bring back to you a friend thankful for the fulfilment of your motherly duties.”"
"At times Lebrun threw out a sign which buoyed up his hope, and made him look nearer home than India for a beam whereon to float from drowning; until at last, in October, he really was named a French envoy, and was sent to Cambrai to negotiate an exchange of prisoners with the allied generals. On the very day of his appointment, the Angel of Blood had passed close by him with his sword. Lux, one of his two fellow-deputies from Mayence, and who had been the comrade of all his Paris penury, had been arrested that morning to be dragged before the revolutionary tribunal. The poor youth, crazed with admiration of Charlotte Corday’s heroism, had loudly said that he would hold it as his highest honor to be doomed to share her death, and wrote an apotheosis of her, in which he proposed that a statue should be erected to her as greater than Brutus. ... "
" ... Theresa was staying at Neufchâtel, which, being under Prussian supremacy, was forbidden ground to the outlaw. Yet for her to come over into France was even more dangerous than for Forster to break the decree of the Convention, which forbade any one to cross the boundaries without the Government’s express permission. The first petty police-officer might cheaply show his zeal by laying hold of her as a skulking emigrant; while Huber, as an enemy’s subject, could never be admitted.
"About the middle of October, being at last relieved from his diplomatic functions, Forster moved heaven and earth in Paris to be able to obtain his wishes. It was resolved that Theresa should come with Huber to Travers, a poor village in the Jura, a few miles from the French frontier, whither Forster was to cross from Pontarlier. He obtained a loan of one thousand livres from an old Mayence friend. He reckoned on his official character to overcome any difficulties on the frontier, while he hoped to shield himself against the penalty of death which was attached to the transport of coin out of the country, by bringing back a paper in Huber’s possession, which, written by Clermont Tonnerre, contained matters of high importance about General Luckner’s supposed treason, and which, if subjected to inquiry, Forster would pretend to have been bought with the money he had, in truth, carried to his children. At last the arrangements were ready, and early in November he left Paris for Pontarlier. The chief of the frontier post proved a friendly man, who willingly agreed to help him as far as he could; so, riding across the snowy ridges of the Jura, he reached unobserved the appointed hamlet on a November morning. ... "
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"“But a few lines from my bed of pain, that my darlings be not without tidings. ... You will understand that I can do no work. I can only save myself. I cannot continue this scrawl,—therefore, only be without anxiety. I beg of you, dear Huber, take care that our Theresa does not create herself any fancies. It is true that I am very and painfully ill; but once more—there is no danger. Your letters, my dear child, which I have all received, have been a dear gift to me in my illness; be sure to continue writing assiduously! We have everywhere been victorious like lions; the Frankfort call has been full of augury. I am curious to learn how public spirit will express itself on the other side of the Rhine, now that the truth of the news is undoubted. Is it not true, my children—a few words are better than nothing? I have no more strength to write. Farewell! Guard yourselves against illness,—kiss my darlings.”"
" ... at five o’clock in the afternoon of the 12th January, 1794, the brave soul breathed its last."
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" ... So forsaken was the end of one who had begun life so dazzlingly. Hardly a word was spoken about his death; and if so, then was it mostly a curse, for pity was barely dared to be whispered. Sömmering, peevish and fretting at the chattels he had lost during the Mayence outbreak, started back from the very name of Forster as from the Evil One. Lichtenberg timidly bewailed that his married state imposed caution, so that all he could afford to do for his friend’s memory was to think freely of him. Jacobi’s delicate nature did not mingle in the low choir of hooters, but still he stood silently aloof; and, most shocking of all, the old father at Halle, in the mad frenzy of hoary age, belched forth a yell of outrage against his George, to have seen whom swing on the gallows he declared would have been the closing pleasure of his life. One man alone dared to weep openly for him, and tenderly he wept over his loss,—kindly old Heyne, who, in the fulness of his honest heart, cast aside all his caution and regard for consequences, to let its sorrow pour itself forth.
"“Since yesterday’s news, which has altogether confounded me” (he wrote to Huber on the 31st of January), “I cannot collect my thoughts. I cannot console myself for the loss of my Forster. Truly was he my Forster. I loved him beyond expression; so many feelings were mingled in him. His worth—ah! he will never be replaced for the world. The knowledge that was gathered in him will not soon again be found in one man. The noblest nature—the noblest heart; and for me ever the object of sorrow, of pity. I always thought of him with emotion; he deserved to be happy more than thousand others, and yet was never so,—was so deeply unhappy! It is as yet impossible for me to think that I am never to see him again! I shall never be able to forget him; always will he float before my eyes,—thou noblest, best man! What would I give for one hour which I might have conversed with him! Rest in peace, my dear, my cherished Forster!”
"The man who had borne the name of Germany all over the world, whose writings were amongst the masterpieces of its language, whose feelings were so true and whose thought so national, that he first coined a thorough German word for public spirit (gemeingeist),—that man’s memory was tracked and hunted down as of the vilest traitor; so that, nearly forty years after his death, his wife did not dare to publish his letters without prefixing an apology. Four months after Forster’s death Theresa and Huber were married, and the remainder of their lives was at least happy and contented."
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September 28, 2021 - September 28, 2021.
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