History of Friedrich II of Prussia Volume V Part 6

But the grandest explosions, in Tobacco-Parliament, were producible, when you got Two literary fools; and, as if with Leyden-jars, positive and negative, brought their vanities to bear on one another. This sometimes happened, when Tobacco-Parliament was in luck. Friedrich Wilhelm had a variety of Merry-Andrew Raths of the Gundling sort, though none ever came up to Gundling, or approached him, in worth as a Merry-Andrew.

Herr Fa.s.smann, who wrote Books, by Patronage or for the Leipzig Booksellers, and wandered about the world as a star or comet of some magnitude, is not much known to my readers:--but he is too well known to me, for certain dark Books of his which I have had to read. [_Life of Friedrich Wilhelm,_ occasionally cited here; _Life of August the Strong; _ &c.] A very dim Literary Figure; undeniable, indecipherable Human Fact, of those days; now fallen quite extinct and obsolete; his garniture, equipment, environment all very dark to us. Probably a too restless, imponderous creature, too much of the Gundling type; structure of him GASEOUS, not solid; Perhaps a little of the c.o.xcomb naturally; much of the sycophant on compulsion,--being sorely jammed into corners, and without elbow-room at all, in this world. Has, for the rest, a recognizable talent for "Magazine writing,"--for Newspaper editing, had that rich mine, "California of the Spiritually Vagabond," been opened in those days. Poor extinct Fa.s.smann, one discovers at last a vein of weak geniality in him; here and there, real human sense and eyesight, under those strange conditions; and his poor Books, rotted now to inanity, have left a small seed-pearl or two, to the earnest reader. Alas, if he WAS to become "spiritually vagabond" ("spiritually" and otherwise), might it not perhaps be wholesome to him that the California was NOT discovered?--

Fa.s.smann was by no means such a fool as Gundling; but, he was much of a fool too. He had come to Berlin, about this time, [1726, as he himself says (supra p. 8).] in hopes of patronage from the King or somebody; might say to himself, "Surely I am a better man than Gundling, if the Berlin Court has eyesight." By the King, on some wise General's recommending it, he was, as a preliminary, introduced to the Tabagie at least. Here is the celebrated Gundling; there is the celebrated Fa.s.smann. Positive Leyden-jar, with negative close by: in each of these two men lodges a full-charged fiery electric virtue of self-conceit; destructive each of the other;--could a conductor be discovered.

Conductors are discoverable, conductors are not wanting; and many are the explosions between these mutually-destructive human varieties;--welcomed with hilarious, rather vacant, huge horse-laughter, in this Tobacco-Parliament and Synod of the Houyhnhnms.

Of which take this acme; and then end. Fa.s.smann, a fellow not without sarcasm and sharpness, as you may still see, has one evening provoked Gundling to the transcendent pitch,--till words are weak, and only action will answer. Gundling, driven to the exploding point, suddenly seizes his Dutch smoking-pan, of peat-charcoal ashes and red-hot sand; and dashes it in the face of Fa.s.smann; who is of course dreadfully astonished thereby, and has got his very eyebrows burnt, not to speak of other injuries. Stand to him, Fa.s.smann! Fa.s.smann stands to him tightly, being the better man as well as the more satirical; grasps Gundling by the collar, wrenches him about, lays him at last over his knee, sitting-part uppermost; slaps said sitting-part (poor sitting-part that had broken the ice of Wusterhausen) with the hot pan,--nay some say, strips it and slaps. Amid the inextinguishable horse-laughter (sincere but vacant) of the Houyhnhnm Olympus.

After which, his Majesty, as epilogue to such play, suggests, That feats of that nature are unseemly among gentlemen; that when gentlemen have a quarrel, there is another way of settling it. Fa.s.smann thereupon challenges Gundling; Gundling accepts; time and place are settled, pistols the weapon. At the appointed time and place Gundling stands, accordingly, pistol in hand; but at sight of Fa.s.smann, throws his pistol away; will not shoot any man, nor have any man shoot him. Fa.s.smann sternly advances; shoots his pistol (powder merely) into Gundling's sublime goat's-hair wig: wig blazes into flame; Gundling falls shrieking, a dead man, to the earth; and they quench and revive him with a bucket of water. Was there ever seen such horse-play? Roaring laughter, huge, rude, and somewhat vacant, as that of the Norse G.o.ds over their ale at Yule time;--as if the face of the Sphinx were to wrinkle itself in laughter; or the fabulous Houyhnhnms themselves were there to mock in their peculiar fas.h.i.+on.

His Majesty at length gave Gundling a wine-cask, duly figured; "painted black with a white cross," which was to stand in his room as MEMENTO-MORI, and be his coffin. It stood for ten years; Gundling often sitting to write in it; a good screen against draughts. And the poor monster was actually buried in this cask; [Died 11th April, 1731, age 58: description of the Burial "at Bornstadt near Potsdam," in Forster, i. 276.] Fa.s.smann p.r.o.nouncing some funeral oration,--and the orthodox clergy uttering, from the distance, only a mute groan. "The Herr Baron von Gundling was a man of many dignities, of much Book-learning; a man of great memory," admits Fa.s.smann, "but of no judgment," insinuates he,--"LOOKING FOR the Judgment (EXPECTANS JUDICIUM)," says Fa.s.smann, with a pleasant wit. Fa.s.smann succeeded to all the emoluments and honors; but did not hold them; preferred to run away before long: and after him came one and the other, whom the reader is not to be troubled with here.

Enough if the patient reader have seen, a little, into that background of Friedrich Wilhelm's existence; and, for the didactic part, have caught up his real views or instincts upon Spiritual Phosph.o.r.escence, or Stupidity grown Vocal, which are much sounder than most of us suspect.

These were the sports of the Tobacco-Parliament; and it was always meant primarily for sport, for recreation: but there is no doubt it had a serious function as well. "Business matters," adds Beneckendorf, who had means of knowing, [Benekendorf, _Karakterzuge,_ i. 137-149; vi. 37.]

"were often a subject of colloquy in the TABAKS-COLLEGIUM. Not that they were there finished off, decided upon, or meant to be so. But Friedrich Wilhelm often purposely brought up such things in conversation there, that he might learn the different opinions of his generals and chief men, without their observing it,"--and so might profit by the Collective Wisdom, in short.

Chapter VIII. -- SECKENDORF'S RETORT TO HER MAJESTY.

The Treaty of Wusterhausen was not yet known to Queen Sophie, to her Father George, or to any external creature: but that open flinching, and gradual withdrawal, from the Treaty of Hanover was too well known; and boded no good to her pet project. Female sighs, male obduracies, and other domestic phenomena, are to be imagined in consequence. "A grand Britannic Majesty indeed; very lofty Father to us, Madam, ever since he came to be King of England: Stalking along there, with his nose in the air; not deigning the least notice of us, except as of a thing that may be got to fight for him! And he does not sign the Double-Marriage Treaty, Madam; only talks of signing it,--as if we were a starved coach-horse, to be quickened along by a wisp of hay put upon the coach-pole close ahead of us always!"--"JARNI-BLEU!" snuffles Seckendorf with a virtuous zeal, or looks it; and things are not pleasant at the royal dinner-table.

Excellenz Seckendorf, we find at this time, "often has his Majesty to dinner:" and such dinners; fitting one's tastes in all points,--no expense regarded (which indeed is the Kaiser's, if we knew it)! And in return, Excellenz is frequently at dinner with his Majesty; where the conversation; if it turn on England, which often happens, is more and more an offence to Queen Sophie. Seckendorf studies to be polite, reserved before the Queen's Majesty at her own table; yet sometimes he lisps out, in his vile snuffling tone, half-insinuations, remarks on our Royal Kindred, which are irritating in the extreme. Queen Sophie, the politest of women, did once, says Pollnitz, on some excessive pressure of that lisping snuffling unendurability, lose her royal patience and flame out. With human frankness, and uncommonly kindled eyes, she signified to Seckendorf, That none who was not himself a kind of scoundrel could entertain such thoughts of Kings and gentlemen! Which hard saying kindled the stiff-backed rheumatic soul of Seckendorf (Excellenz had withal a temper in him, far down in the deeps); who answered: "Your Majesty, that is what no one else thinks of me. That is a name I have never permitted any one to give me with impunity." And verily, he kept his threat in that latter point, says Pollnitz. [ii.

244.]

At this stage, it is becoming, in the nature of things, unlikely that the projected Double-Marriage, or any union with England, can ever realize itself for Queen Sophie and her House. The Kaiser has decreed that it never shall. Here is the King already irritated, grown indisposed to it; here is the Kaiser's Seckendorf, with preternatural Apparatus, come to maintain him in that humor. To Queen Sophie herself, who saw only the outside of Seckendorf and his Apparatus, the matter doubtless seemed big with difficulties; but to us, who see the interior, the difficulties are plainly hopeless. Unless the Kaiser's mind change, unless many fixed things change, the Double-Marriage is impossible.

One thing only is a sorrow; and this proved an immeasurable one: That they did not, that Queen Sophie did not, in such case, frankly give it up: Double-Marriage is not a law of Nature; it is only a project at Hanover that has gone off again. There will be a life for our Crown-Prince, and Princess, without a marriage with England!-It is greatly wise to recognize the impossible, the unreasonably difficult, when it presents itself: but who of men is there, much more who of women that can always do it?

Queen Sophie Dorothee will have this Double-Marriage, and it shall be possible. Pour Lady, she was very obstinate; and her Husband was very arbitrary. A rough bear of a Husband, yet by no means an unloving one; a Husband who might have been managed. She evidently made a great mistake in deciding not to obey this man; as she had once vowed. By perfect prompt obedience she might have had a very tolerable life with the rugged Orson fallen to her lot; who was a very honest-hearted creature.

She might have done a pretty stroke of female work, withal, in taming her Orson; might have led him by the muzzle far enough in a private way,--by obedience.

But by disobedience, by rebellion open or secret? Friedrich Wilhelm was a Husband; Friedrich Wilhelm was a King; and the most imperative man then breathing. Disobedience to Friedrich Wilhelm was a thing which, in the Prussian State, still more in the Berlin Schloss and vital heart of said State, the laws of Heaven and of Earth had not permitted, for any man's or any woman's sake, to be. The wide overarching sky looks down on no more inflexible Sovereign Man than him in the red-collared blue coat and white leggings, with the bamboo in his hand. A peaceable, capacious, not ill-given Sovereign Man, if you will let him have his way. But to bar his way; to tweak the nose of his sovereign royalty, and ignominiously force him into another way: that is an enterprise no man or devil, or body of men or devils, need attempt. Seckendorf and Grumkow, in Tobacco-Parliament, understand it better. That attempt is impossible, once for all. The first step in such attempt will require to be a.s.sa.s.sination of Friedrich Wilhelm; for you may depend on it, royal Sophie, so long as he is alive, the feat cannot be done. O royal Sophie, O pretty Feekin, what a business you are making of it!

The year 1726 was throughout a troublous one to Queen Sophie.

Seckendorf's advent; King George's manifestoing; alarm of imminent universal War, nay sputters of it actually beginning (Gibraltar invested by the Spaniards, ready for besieging, it is said): nor was this all.

Sophie's poor Mother, worn to a tragic Megaera, locked so long in the Castle of Ahlden, has taken up wild plans of outbreak, of escape by means of secretaries, moneys in the Bank of Amsterdam, and I know not what; with all which Sophie, corresponding in double and triple mystery, has her own terrors and sorrows, trying to keep it down. And now, in the depth of the year, the poor old Mother suddenly dies. [13th November, 1726: _Memoirs of Sophia Dorothea, Consort of George I._ (i.

386),--where also some of her concluding Letters ("edited" as if by the Nightmares) can be read, but next to no sense made of them.] Burnt out in this manner, she collapses into ashes and long rest; closing so her nameless tragedy of thirty years' continuance:--what a Bluebeard-chamber in the mind of Sophie! Nay there rise quarrels about the Heritage of the Deceased, which will prove another sorrow.

END OF BOOK V