Odd Bits of History Part 5

Servants invariably receive part of their wages in flax. Spinning accordingly is about the most important work to be accomplished in a household. And as it lends itself capitally to sociability and mirth, the Wendish maidens take to it with peculiar zest. The date for beginning these gatherings throughout Lusatia is the 11th of October, St. Burkhard's Day in the Wendish calendar. On that day the young unmarried women tell themselves off into _psazas_, that is, spinning companies, consisting of twelve at the outside, all of them girls of unblemished character. Among no race on earth is purity more valued and insisted upon--in both s.e.xes--than among these poor forest Wends. Wherever corruption has crept in, it is wholly due to the evil seductions of Germans, who have taken advantage of the helplessness of Wendish girls when away on service. In a Wendish village, to have made a _faux pas_ deprives a young fellow and girl alike of their character for life. The girl must not sit with the other girls in church when the young are catechised; she must not walk up to the altar on high festivals; she must not join in the singing; and the spinning companies will not have her. In olden time she was not even allowed to dance. Young men going notoriously astray used to be punished in their own way.

Some time before the eventful eleventh, the _psazas_ a.s.semble to decide in whose house the spinning gatherings are to be held. In that house they meet throughout the winter, spinning industriously with wheel or with spindle from seven to ten, and requiting the housewife for her hospitality with welcome a.s.sistance in various kinds of domestic work. On the first evening the company quite expect to be treated to a good supper of roast goose. How all the spinners, with the resident family, and those young fellows who, of course, will from time to time pay the la.s.ses a visit--either in disguise or in their own proper garb--manage to meet, and work, and lark, and dance, where they do, it is rather a problem to solve.

For many of the rooms are not large. They are plain, of course, in their equipment, like all Wendish rooms (in which paint is allowed only on chairs, all the other woodwork being subject to the scrubbing-brush), but strikingly peculiar. Almost in one corner--but far enough away from the wall to leave s.p.a.ce for a little, cosy nook behind--stands the monster tile stove, very adequately heated with peat or wood, and showing, tolerably high up, a little open fireplace, in which burns a bright little wood fire, rather to give light and look cheerful, than to diffuse warmth.

That is the vestal hearth of the Wendish house, without which there would be no home. In another corner stands the solid, large deal table, with painted chairs all round. The walls are all wainscoted with deal boards; and round the whole room runs a narrow bench, similar to the _murka_, a seat far more tempting, which encircles the stove. Nearly all the household implements in use are neatly ranged about the walls, or else placed on the floor--the _boberzge_, a peculiar plate rack; the _polca_, to hold pots and spoons; and the _standa_, for water. There are baskets, cans, tubs disposed about, and a towel hung up for show. This room grows tolerably lively when the spinning company a.s.semble, telling their tales, playing their games, gossiping and chatting, but mostly singing. "Shall we have any new songs?" is the first question invariably asked when the _psaza_ const.i.tutes itself. And if there is a new girl come into the village, the inquiry at once pa.s.ses round, "Does she know any new songs?"

Indeed, the _psazas_ serve as the princ.i.p.al singing cla.s.ses for the young women in the village. They are kept up throughout the year as special choirs and sub-choirs, so to speak, singing together on all sacred and mundane occasions where singing is required. Whenever "the boys" look in, there is great fun. Sometimes one will dress up as a "bear," in a "skin"

made up of buckwheat straw; or else he will march in as a "stork," which causes even greater amus.e.m.e.nt. Once at least in the season the funny man of the set makes his appearance transformed into what, by a very wild flight of imagination, may be taken for a pantomime horseman, with a horse made up of four big sieves, hung over with a white sheet. Before calling in a real, formal way, the boys are always careful to ask for leave, which means that they will bring _piwo_ and _palenza_ (beer and spirits), the girls revenging themselves by providing cake and coffee; and then the entertainment will wind up with a merry dance. One very amusing occasion is the _dopalowak_, or _dolamowak_, that is, the last spinning evening before Christmas, when the boys sit in judgment upon the girls, and, should they find one or other to be guilty of idleness, condemn her to have her flax burnt or else her spindle broken, which penalties are, of course, in every case commuted into a fine. This sort of thing goes on till Ash Wednesday, when the "Spinte" is formally executed by stabbing, an office which gives fresh scope to the facetiousness and agility of the funny man. The night before is the social evening _par excellence_. It is called _corny wecor_, "the black evening," because girls and boys alike amuse themselves with blackening their faces like chimney-sweeps, and with the very same material. The boys are allowed to take off the girls' caps and let down their hair--the one occasion on which it is permitted to hang loose. And there is rare merrymaking throughout the night. Indeed, all Shrovetide is kept with becoming spirit, perhaps more boisterously than among any other folk, and in true excitable Slav style. The boys go about a-"zampering," and collecting contributions; the girls bring out their little savings; and then the young people dance their fill, keeping it up throughout Lent. Indeed, they dance pretty well all the year round--

"Njemski rady rejwam, Serski hisce radsjo;"

which may be rendered thus:

"The German way I love to dance, But the Wendish dance I dote on."

To witness the _serska reja_--the only truly national dance preserved among the Wends--at its best, you should see it danced on some festive occasion, when the blood is up, out in the open air, on the gra.s.s plot, where stands the sacred lime tree. There is plenty of room there. The very sight of the green--say of the young birches planted around for decoration at Whitsuntide or Midsummer--seems to fire the susceptible spirits. The dancers throw themselves into the performance with a degree of vigour and energy of which we Teutons have no notion. The _serska reja_ is a pantomimic dance. Each couple has its own turn of leading. The cavalier places his partner in front of him, facing her, and while the band keeps playing, and the company singing one of those peculiarly stirring Wendish dance tunes, he sets about adjuring her to grant him his desire, and dance with him. She stands stock still, her arms hanging down flop by her side.

The cavalier capers about, shouts, strikes his hands against his thighs, kneels, touches his heart--with the more dramatic force the better. At length the lady gives way, and in token of consent raises her hand.

Briskly do the two spin round now for the s.p.a.ce of eight bars, after which for eight more they perform something like a cross between a _cha.s.sez croisez_ and a jig, and so on for a little while, after which the whole company join in the same performance. As a finish the cavalier "stands"

the band and his partner some liquor, and a merry round dance concludes his turn of leading, to the accompaniment of a tune and song, _roncka_, selected by himself.

Lent is a season more particularly consecrated to song. Every Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and on some other days, the girls of the various _psazas_ a.s.semble under the village lime tree, the seat around which is scrupulously reserved for them, to sing, amid the rapt attention of the whole village, some of their delightful sacred songs peculiar to the season. This singing reaches its climax on Easter night, when young fellows and girls march round the village in company, warbling in front of every door, in return for which they receive some refreshment. For a brief time only do they suspend their music to fetch "Easter water" from the brook, which must be done in perfect silence, and accordingly sets every mischief-maker at work, teasing and splas.h.i.+ng, and playing all sorts of practical jokes, in order to extract a word of protest from the water-fetching maidens. As the clock strikes midnight the young women form in procession and march out to the fields, and all round the cultivated area, singing Easter hymns till sunrise. It produces a peculiarly striking effect to hear all this solemn singing--maybe, the same tunes ringing across from an adjoining parish, as if echoed back by the woods--and to see those tall forms solemnly moving about in the early gloaming, like ancient priestesses of the G.o.ddess Ostara. While the girls are singing, the bell-ringers repair to the belfry (which in many villages stands beside the church) to greet the Easter sun with the traditional "Dreischlag," the "three-stroke," intended to indicate the Trinity.

Lent sees the Wends perform another curious rite, of peculiar antiquarian interest. The fourth Sunday in Lent is by established custom set apart for the ceremony of "driving out Death"--in the shape of a straw figure decked out with the last bridal veil used, which the bride is expected to give up for the purpose. This poor figure is stoned to destruction to the cry of _Lec h.o.r.e, lec h.o.r.e_, which may be borrowed from the Lutheran name for the Sunday in question, _Laetare_. In some places the puppet is seated in a bower of pine boughs, and so carried about amid much infantine merriment, to be ultimately burnt or drowned. The interesting feature of this rite is, that it does not really represent the Teuton "expulsion of winter" so much as the much older ceremony of piously visiting the site on which in Pagan times bodies used to be burnt after death. It is a heathen All Saints' Day.

I have no s.p.a.ce here to refer to anything like all the curious Wendish observances which ought to be of interest to folk-lorists: the lively _kokot_, or harvest home, so called because under the last sheaf it was usual to conceal a c.o.c.k, _kokota lapac_ with legs and wings bound, which fell to the lot of the reaper who found it; the _lobetanz_; the _kermusa_, or _kirmess_, great and small, the merry children's feast on May Day; the joyful observance of Whit Sunday and Midsummer; the peculiar children's games, and so on. It is all so racy and peculiar, all so merry and yet so modest in the expenditure made upon it, it all shows the Wends so much to advantage as a contented, happy, cheerful people--perhaps a little thoughtless, but in any case making the best of things under all circ.u.mstances, and glad to show off their Slav finery, and throw themselves into whatever enjoyment Providence has vouchsafed, with a zest and spirit which is not to be excelled, and which I for one should be sorry to see replaced by the more decorous, perhaps, but far less picturesque hilarity of the prosy Prussians. If only the Wends did not consume such unconscionable quant.i.ties of bad liquor! And if in their cups they did not fall a-quarrelling quite so fiercely! It is all very well to say, as they do in one of their proverbs, with truthful pithiness, that "there is not a drop of spirit on which do not hang nine devils." But their practice accords ill with this proverbial wisdom. The public-house is to them the centre of social life. Every new-comer is formally introduced and made to shake hands with the landlord. They have a good deal of tavern etiquette which is rigidly adhered to, and the object of which in all cases is, like George the Fourth's "whitewash," to squeeze an additional gla.s.s of liquor into the day's allowance. Thus every guest is ent.i.tled to a help from the landlord's jug, but in return, from every gla.s.s served is the landlord ent.i.tled to the first sip. Thus again, after a night's carousal, the guests always expect to be treated by the host to a free liquor round, which is styled the _Swaty Jan_--that is, the Saint John--meaning "the Evangelist," whose name is taken in vain because he is said to have drunk out of a poisoned cup without hurt. All the invocation in the world of the Saint will not, however, it is to be feared, make the wretched _palenza_ of the Wends--raw potato fusel--innocuous. It is true, their throats will stand a good deal. By way of experiment, I once gave an old woman a gla.s.s of raw spirit as it issued from the still, indicating about 82 per cent. of alcohol. She made a face certainly, but it did not hurt her; and she would without much coaxing have taken another gla.s.s.

This article has already grown so long that of the many interesting customs connected with the burial of the dead and the honouring of their memory I can only refer to one very peculiar and picturesque rite. Having taken the dying man out of his bed, and placed him (for economy) on straw (which is afterwards burnt) to die, put him in his coffin, with whatever he is supposed to love best, to make him comfortable--and in addition a few bugs, to clear the house of them--the mourners carry him out of the house, taking care to b.u.mp him on the high threshold, and in due course the coffin is rested for part of the funeral service in front of the parsonage or the church. In providing for the comfort of the dead the survivors show themselves remarkably thoughtful. No male Wend is buried without his pipe, no married female without her bridal dress. Children are given toys, and eggs, and apples. Money used to be put into the coffin, but people found that it got stolen. So now the practice is restricted to the very few Jews who are to be found among the Wends and who, it is thought, cannot possibly be happy without money; and, with a degree of consideration which to some people will appear excessive, some stones are added, in order that they may have them "to throw at the Saviour." In front of the church or parsonage the coffin is once more opened, and the mourners, all clad in white--which is the Wendish colour for mourning--are invited to have a last look at the body. Then follows the _Dobra noc_, a quaint and strictly racial ceremony. The nearest relative of the dead, a young person, putting a dense white veil over his or her head and body, is placed at the back of the coffin, and from that place in brief words answers on behalf of the dead such questions as affection may prompt near friends and relatives to put. That done, the whole company join in the melodious _Dobra noc_--wis.h.i.+ng the dead one last "Good-night." After that, the lid is once more screwed down and the coffin is lowered into the grave.

There are few things more picturesque, I ought to say, than a funeral procession in the Spreewald, made up of boats gliding noiselessly along one of those dark forest ca.n.a.ls, having the coffin hung with white, and all the mourners dressed in the same colour, the women wearing the regulation white handkerchief across their mouths. The gloom around is not the half-night of Styx; but the thought of Charon and his boat instinctively occurs to one. The whole seems rather like a melancholy vision, or dream, than a reality.

Hard pressed as I am for s.p.a.ce, I must find some to say, at any rate, just a few words about Wendish marriage customs. For its gaiety, and noise, and lavish hospitality, and protracted merriment, its finery and its curious ways, the Wendish wedding has become proverbial throughout Germany. Were I to detail all its quaint little touches, all its peculiar observances, each one pregnant with peculiar mystic meaning, all its humours and all its fun, I should have to give it an article by itself. It is a curious mixture of ancient and modern superst.i.tion and Christianity, diplomacy and warfare. The bride is still ostensibly carried off by force. Only a short time ago the bridegroom and his men were required to wear swords in token of warfare and conquest. But all the formal negotiation is done by diplomacy--very cautiously, very carefully, as if one were feeling his way. First comes an old woman, the _schotta_, to clear the ground. After that the _druzba_, the best man, appears on the scene--to inquire about pigs, or buckwheat, or millet, or whatever it may be, and incidentally also about the lovely Hilzicka, whom his friend Janko is rather thinking of paying his addresses to--the fact being all the while that long since Janko and Hilzicka have, on the sly, arranged between themselves that they are to be man and wife. But observe that in Wendland girls may propose as well as men; and that the bridegroom, like the bride, wears his "little wreath of rue"--_if he be an honest man_, in token of his virtue. The girl and her parents visit the suitor's house quite unexpectedly. And there and then only does the young lady openly decide. If she sits down in the house, that means "Yes." And forthwith preparations are busily set on foot. Custom requires that the bride should give up dancing and gaiety and all that, leave off wearing red, and st.i.tch away at her _trousseau_, while her parents kill the fatted calf. Starve themselves as they will at other times, at a wedding they must be liberal like _parvenus_. Towards this hospitality, it is true, their friends and neighbours contribute, sending b.u.t.ter and milk, and the like, just before the wedding, as well as making presents of money and other articles to the young people at the feast itself. But we have not yet got to that by a long way. The young man, too, has his preparations to make. He has to send out the _braska_, the "bidder," in his gay dress, to deliver invitations. How people would stare in this country, were they to see a _braska_ making his rounds, with a wreath on his hat, one or two coloured handkerchiefs dangling showily from different parts of his coat, besides any quant.i.ty of gay ribbons and tinsel, and a herald's staff covered with diminutive bunting! Then there are the banns to be published, and on the Sunday of the second time of asking, the bride and bridegroom alike are expected to attend the Holy Communion, and afterwards to go through a regular examination--in Bible, in Catechism, in reading--at the hands of the parson. By preference the latter makes them read aloud the seventh chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. At the wedding itself, the ceremonial is so complicated that the _braska_, the master of ceremonies, has to be specially trained for his duties. There is a little farce first at the bride's house. The family pretend to know nothing of what is coming; their doors and windows are all closely barred, and the _braska_ is made to knock a long time before the door is cautiously opened, with a gruff greeting which bids him go away and not trouble peaceable folk. His demand for "a little shelter"

is only granted after much further parleying and incredulous inquiry about the respectability of the intruding persons. When the bride is asked for, an old woman is produced in her stead, next a little girl, then one or two wrong persons more, till at last the true bride is brought forth in all the splendour of a costume to which it is scarcely possible to do justice in writing. As much cloth as will make up four ordinary gowns is folded into one huge skirt. On the bride's neck hangs all conceivable finery of pearls, and ribbons, and necklaces, and strings of silver coins--as much, in fact, as the neck will carry. There is any amount of starched frilling and collar above the shoulders; a close-fitting, blue silk bodice below; and a high cap, something like a conjuror's--the _borta_, or bride's cap--upon her head. Even her stockings are not of the ordinary make, but knitted particularly large so as to have to be laid in folds. The wedding party, driving off to church, preceded by at least six outriders, make as big a clatter as pistol-firing, singing, shouting, thumping with sticks, and discordant trumpeting will produce. On the road, and in church, a number of little observances are prescribed. At the feast the bride, like the bridegroom, has her male attendants, _swats_, whose duty it is, above all things, to dance with her, should she want a partner. For this is the last day of her dancing for life, except on Shrove Tuesdays, and, in some Prussian parishes, by express order of the Government, on the Emperor's birthday and the anniversary of Sedan. The bridegroom, on the other hand, must not dance at the wedding, though he may afterwards. Like the bride, he has his own _slonka_--his "old lady," that is--to serve him as guide, philosopher and friend. Hospitality flows in unstinted streams. Sometimes as many as two hundred persons sit down to the meals, and keep it up, eating, drinking and dancing, for three days at least, sometimes for a whole week at a stretch. It would be a gross breach of etiquette to leave anything of the large portions served out on the table. Whatever cannot be eaten must be carried home. Hence those waterproof pockets of phenomenal size which, in olden days, Wendish parsons used to wear under their long coat-tails, and into which, at gentlemen's houses, they used to deposit a goodly store of sundry meats, poultry, pudding and _meringues_, to be finally christened--surrept.i.tiously, of course--with rather incongruous affusions of gravy or soup, administered by the mischievous young gentlemen of "the House," for the benefit of Frau Pastorin and her children at home. Sunday and Tuesday are favourite days for a wedding.

Thursday is rigorously avoided. For two days the company feast at the bride's house. Taking her to bed on the first night is a peculiar ceremony. The young girls crowd around her in a close circle, and refuse to let her go. The young lads do the same by the bridegroom. When, at last, the two force an exit, they are formally received into similar circles of married men and women severally. The bride is bereft of her _borta_, and receives a _cjepc_, a married woman's cap, in its place.

After some more hocuspocus, the two are accompanied severally by the _braska_ and the bride's _slonka_ into the bridal chamber, the bride protesting all the time that she is "not yet her bridegroom's wife." The _braska_ serves as valet to the bridegroom, the _slonka_ undresses the bride. Then the _braska_ formally blesses the marriage-bed, and out walk the two attendants to leave the young folk by themselves. Next morning the bride appears as "wife," looking very demure, in a married woman's garb.

On that day the presents are given, amid many jokes--especially when it comes to a cradle, or a baby's bath--from the _braska_ and the _zwada_--the latter a sort of clown specially retained to amuse the bride, who is expected to be terribly sad throughout. The sadder she is at the wedding, the merrier, it is said, will she be in married life. There is any amount of rather rough fun. On the third day, the company adjourn to the house of the bridegroom's parents, where, according to an ancient custom, the bride ought to go at once into the cowhouse, and upset a can of water, "for luck." After that she is made to sit down to a meal, her husband standing by, and waiting upon her. That accomplished, she should carry a portion of meat to the poorest person in the village. A week later, the young couple visit the bride's parents, and have a "young wedding" _en famille_.

I have said enough, I hope, to shew what an interestingly childlike, happily disposed, curious and contented race those few surviving Wends are. And they are so peaceful and loyal. Russian and Bohemian Pan-slavists have tried all their blandishments upon them, to rouse them up to an anti-German agitation. In 1866 the Czar, besides dispensing decorations, sent 63 cwts. of inflammatory literature among them. It was all to no purpose. Surely these quiet, harmless folk, fathers as they are of the North German race, might have been spared that uncalled-for nagging and worrying which has often been pointed against them from Berlin for purely political purposes! In the day of their power they were more tolerant of Germanism. They fought side by side with the Franks, fought even under Frankish chieftains. Germany owes them a debt, and should at least, as it may be hoped that she now will, let them die in peace. Death no doubt is bound to come. It cannot be averted. But it is a death which one may well view with regret. For with the Wends will die a faithfully preserved specimen of very ancient Slav life, quite unique in its way, as interesting a piece of history, archaeology and folk-lore as ever was met with on the face of the globe.

VI.--VOLTAIRE AND KING STANISLAS.[9]

One can scarcely help wondering that among all the books written about Voltaire and his varied experiences, there should be practically not one which treats of that brief but eventful period during which, in company with the "_sublime Emilie_," the great writer found himself the guest of hospitable King Stanislas--"le philosophe-roi chez le roi-philosophe." To Voltaire himself that was one of the most memorable episodes in his long and changeful life. It left on his mind memories which lasted till death.

He showed this when, in 1757, looking about him for a peaceful haven of rest, he fixed his eyes once more, as if instinctively, upon Luneville as a place in which to spend the evening of his days. Stanislas would have been only too thankful to receive him. Old and feeble, rapidly growing blind and helpless, and reduced by ill-health and the desertion of his Court to the poor resource of playing _tric-trac_--backgammon--in his lonely afternoons, with such uncourtly _bourgeois_ as his messengers could pick up in the town, the _faineant_ Duke would have hailed Voltaire's presence, as he himself says, as a G.o.dsend. However, the _philosophe_ was once more out of favour with Louis XV. Accordingly, the permission was withheld, and the royal father-in-law found himself denied the small solace which surely he might have looked for at the hand of his daughter's husband.

The biographical neglect of Voltaire's stay in Lorraine appears all the more surprising since in Lorraine, almost alone of Voltaire's favourite haunts, are there visible memorials left of his sojourn. Nowhere else is anything preserved that could recall Voltaire. In Lorraine dragoons and _piou-pious_ now tramp where in his day courtiers sauntered, and nursemaids lounge where the first wits of the century made the air ring with their _bon-mots_. Still, the stone buildings, at any rate, of Luneville and Commercy have been allowed to stand, and French destructiveness has spared some of the flower-beds that delighted Voltaire. In that pretty "Bosquet" of Luneville you may walk where Voltaire trod, where he rallied Madame de Boufflers on her "Magdalen's tears," where Saint Lambert made sly appointments with Madame du Chatelet--and with not a few other ladies as well. In the Palace you may step into the upper room where Voltaire lived and wrote, and fought out his battles with the bigot Alliot. You may walk into "le pet.i.t appartement de la reine," on the ground-floor, which Stanislas good-naturedly gave up to Madame du Chatelet for her confinement--and her death. There it was that those impa.s.sioned scenes occurred of which every biographer of Voltaire speaks, and there that the Marchioness's ring was found to tell the mortifying tale of her unfaithfulness to her most devoted lover. You may walk through that side-door through which, dazed with grief, the stupefied philosopher stumbled; and sit on the low stone-step--one of a short flight facing the town--on which he dropped in helpless despair, "knocking his head against the pavement." In that hideously rococo church, tawdrily gay with gew-gaw ornament, you may stand by the black marble slab, still bare of any inscription, below which rest, rudely disturbed by the rough mobs-men of the first Revolution, the decayed bones of the _sublime_ but faithless _Emilie_.

Barring his rather unnecessary grief over the threatened production of a travestied _Semiramis_, there were for Voltaire no happier two years than those which saw him, with one or two interruptions, King Stanislas' guest.

And to Stanislas, eager as he was to attach the great writer to his bright little court, there could have been no more welcome rigour than that which, at his daughter's instance, drove the leading spirit of the age into temporary exile. Voltaire had paid his court a little too openly to the powerful favourite. After that _cavagnole_ scandal at Fontainebleau, neither he nor Madame du Chatelet stood for the time in the best of odours at Court. Therefore, it probably required little persuasion on the part of the two royal princesses, prompted by their revengeful mother, to prevail upon Louis XV. in that one little square-rod of hallowed ground, over which the power of the mighty Circe did not extend, their nursery, to decree the banishment of the poet. Madame de Pompadour might have reversed the judgment had she been given the chance; but she was not given it, and, after all, Voltaire's exile did not make much difference to her. So the philosopher and Emilie were allowed to pursue their cold winter's journey, amid sundry break-downs and accidents, and prolonged involuntary star-gazing in a frosty night, to that pretty little oasis in ugly Champagne--a Lorrain _enclave_--in which stood the du Chatelets' castle.

Stanislas did not allow the brilliant couple to remain long in their uncongenial retirement. He was anxious not to be forestalled by Prussian Frederick, who made wry faces enough on finding the preference over himself and his famous Sans-souci given to the _prince bourgeois_ and his _tabagie de Luneville_. Stanislas' great ambition was, to make his Court a favoured seat of learning and letters. In his own, rather too complimentary opinion, he was himself something of a _litterateur_.

Voltaire laughed pretty freely--behind the king's back--at his uncouth and incorrect prose and at those long and limping verses _de onze a quatorze pieds_, which the world has long since forgotten, as well it might. There are some well-put thoughts to be found in the king's _Reflexions sur divers sujets de morale_--for instance: "l'esprit est bien peu de chose quand ce n'est que de l'esprit," to say nothing of his oft-quoted motto: "malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem." But, at best his writings, however carefully revised by Solignac--his answer to Rousseau, and his _Oeuvres d'un Philosophe Bienfaisant_--are but ephemeral trash.

Really, Stanislas could not even speak or write French correctly. But though he was nothing of a writer, and not much more of a wit, he knew thoroughly how to appreciate talent and genius in others. And in a man occupying nominally royal rank, placed at the head of a brilliant Court, having a civil list corresponding in value to at least 6,000,000 francs in the present day, and a pension list of perfectly amazing length in his bestowal, such appreciation must mean something.

To understand the life of the little world into which, in 1748, Voltaire entered, we ought to remember what at that time Lorraine and its Court were. Stanislas had not been put upon his ephemeral throne without a definite object. To lodge the French king's penniless father-in-law, who no doubt had to be maintained somewhere, in the Palace of Luneville, instead of that of Meudon or of Blois, and to allow him to amuse himself with playing at being king, was one thing. But very much more was required of him. In 1737 France had, after toying for several centuries, with greedy eyes and hungry tongue, with the precious morsel of Lorraine, at length firmly and finally closed her jaws upon it. It was a bitter fate for the duchy, in which France was detested; and the hards.h.i.+p was felt by every one of its sons from the powerful "grands chevaux" down to the humblest peasant. Of what French government meant, the Lorrains had had more than one taste. They were sipping at the bitter cup at that very time; they were having it raised daily to their lips, while that ablest of French administrators, De la Galaiziere--a veritable French Bismarck, hard-headed, hard-hearted, inexorably firm, and pitilessly exacting--was loading them with _corvees_, with _vingtiemes_, with the burden of conscription for the French army, plaguing them with high-handed judgments and oppressive penalties, all of which ran directly counter to the const.i.tution which the nominal sovereign, Stanislas, had sworn to observe.

It was Galaiziere who was king, not Stanislas, the ornamental figure-head; and under his stern rule all Lorraine cried out.

Even courtly Saint Lambert, who, as a moneyless member of the _pet.i.te n.o.blesse_, with his mouth wide open for French favours, represented in truth the least popular element in Lorrain Society, felt impelled by his Muse to record his protest in verse:

J'ai vu le magistrat qui regit la province L'esclave de la Cour, et l'ennemi du prince, Commander _la corvee_ a de tristes cantons, Ou Ceres et la faim commandoient les moissons.

On avoit consume les grains de l'autre annee; Et je crois voir encore la veuve infortunee, Le debile orphelin, le vieillard epuise, Se trainer, en pleurant, au travail impose.

Si quelques malheureux, languissants, hors d'haleine, Cherchent un gazon frais, le bord de la fontaine, Un piqueur inhumain les ramene aux travaux, Ou leur vend a prix d'or un moment de repos.

But there was no help for it. Kind-hearted Stanislas was caused many a wretched hour by the incongruity of his position, which led his "subjects"

to appeal to him against the oppression of "his chancellor," as he patronizingly called him who was in truth his master. He had begged Louis to appoint a more humane and merciful man, but his prayer had proved of no avail.

Still, there was something which Stanislas could do. Affable, genial, kind, free-handed to a fault, the stranger puppet-king--the originally distrusted "Polonais"--might, in spite of all harsh government administered in his name, by tact and liberality gain the personal affections of his nominal subjects, and so in the character of a Lorrain Prince discharge better than any one else that odious task of un-Lorraining the Lorrains. All things considered, he earned his civil list.

French writers have very needlessly contended over the motives which led Father Menoux, of all men, the King's Jesuit confessor, to urge Stanislas to invite the great _philosophe_ to his Court. Although repeatedly a.s.sailed on the score of its inherent improbability, Voltaire's own version is doubtless the most plausible. One of the leading characteristics of the Lorrain Court, as Voltaire knew it, was the sharp division prevailing between French and Lorrains, Jesuits and _philosophes_. By all his antecedents--by his rigidly Romanist education, by the principles carefully instilled into him, first by his parents, later by his wife--Stanislas was predisposed to take sides staunchly with the Jesuits. A more devout Catholic was not to be found. The king made all his household attend ma.s.s, appointed a special almoner for his _gardes-du-corps_, and directed the kitchen-folk to select a monastery for the scene of their daily devotions. In respect of offerings, the Church bled him freely, and found him a willing victim. More especially during the lifetime of his wife, that homely, very religious Catherine Opalinska whose _bourgeois_ manners gave such great offence to the courtiers of Versailles, the Jesuit faction had it all their own way.

But when Voltaire came to the Court, Catherine had been nearly a year in her grave. King Stanislas' immediate _entourage_, it is true, was still wholly Jesuit--the French governor, Galaiziere; the King's _intendant_, Alliot; his father-confessor, Menoux; his useful secretary, de Solignac; Bathincourt, Thiange, and Madame de Grafigny's "Panpan," De Vaux. But otherwise a decided change had come over the scene. The lady head of the Court now was the peculiarly attractive Marquise de Boufflers, a declared _philosophe_, and, in virtue of her birth, the powerful leader of the Lorrain faction. She was a Beauvau, the daughter of that lovely Princesse de Craon who had ruled the heart of the late Duke Leopold. Her husband (who had not stood seriously in the way of her _amours_) was dead; and she was therefore quite free to give herself up to her _liaison_ with Stanislas, who had formally installed her in some of the best apartments in the palace, in a suite adjoining his own, and handed over to her the management of the Court. She must have been a remarkably fascinating woman. We find Voltaire, in his courtly way, writing of her:

Vos yeux sont beaux, mais votre ame est plus belle, Vous etes simple et naturelle, Et sans pretendre a rien, vous triomphez de tous.

Si vous eussiez vecu du temps de Gabrielle, Je ne sais ce qu'on eut dit de vous, Mais l'on n'aurait point parle d'elle.

She is described as possessing a fine girlish figure, a peculiarly clear and delicate complexion, exceptionally beautiful hair, and neat hands (which made de Tressan enamoured of her "_comme un fou_") and, moreover, a charming lightness and grace of movement and manner--endowments of nature which scarcely needed a fine discriminating taste and more than average intellectual powers to render effective. She sang, played, painted pastel, and possessed an inexhaustible fund of tact and self-command. Whenever she happened to be absent from the Court, de Tressan writes to Devaux, "Je me meurs, je peris d'ennui. On ne joue point, la societe est decousue." Her nickname at Court was "La Dame de Volupte," which, as is shown by the following lines, composed by herself for her epitaph, she accepted good-humouredly:--

Ci git, dans une paix profonde, Cette Dame de Volupte, Qui, pour plus grande surete, Fit son paradis dans ce monde.

To the priests her relations with Stanislas const.i.tuted a serious stumbling-block, and many a lecture had the king to listen to from his confessor, Menoux. He accepted it submissively, and even performed the penances which on the score of Madame de Boufflers the Jesuit decreed. But discard her he would not, on any consideration. Just as little, on the other hand, would he discard the Jesuit, however good-humouredly he might listen to Madame de Boufflers' rather violent abuse of him.

Menoux was now trembling for his authority. Madame de Boufflers'

influence appeared to him to be growing too formidable. They were curious relations which subsisted between Voltaire and the priest. With de Tressan and other Academicians Menoux was at open and embittered feud. Voltaire was more of a statesman. To their faces the two opponents invariably professed the sincerest friends.h.i.+p and the warmest admiration. Even many years after we find Voltaire, when writing to Menoux, declaring to him his unaltered love and attachment, while at the same time paying the Abbe delicate compliments on the score of his _esprit_: "Je voudrais que vous m'aima.s.siez, car je vous aime." Behind their backs they called each other names. Menoux was by no means a mere hierophantic prig or sacerdotal oaf.

Voltaire calls him "le plus intrigant et le plus hardi pretre que j'ai jamais connu," and adds that he had "milked" Stanislas to the extent of a full million. D'Almbert describes him as the type of a Court divine--"habitue au meilleur monde," without any "rigidite claustrale"--"homme d'infiniment d'esprit, fin, delicat, intelligent, subtile, ayant heureus.e.m.e.nt cultive les lettres et en conservant les graces et la fraicheur sans la moindre trace de pedanterie." Between him and Boufflers there was continual warfare--above-ground and below-ground, by open hostilities and by schemes and intrigues. It was with a view to checkmating Boufflers, so Voltaire relates, that Menoux first suggested an invitation to Voltaire and Madame du Chatelet to come to the Court. Madame du Chatelet was to become the favourite's rival. To this theory French writers object that, as du Chatelet was some years older than Boufflers, not nearly as good-looking, certainly not _devote_, and another man's property already, the scheme was absurd. In the result Menoux certainly showed himself to have made a mistake; but that was owing to a circ.u.mstance which neither he nor any one else could have foreseen.

Otherwise the scheme cannot be p.r.o.nounced bad. To literary-minded Stanislas, at his time of life, the intellectual graces of du Chatelet might well balance the greater personal attractions of Boufflers. Besides, Menoux did not look for an actual ally so much as for a rival to the favourite. Even to lessen her absolute authority would be quite enough for his purpose. He travelled all the way to Cirey to sound the two, and, finding them willing, pressed their invitation upon Stanislas.

Stanislas was, as Menoux had foreseen, only too eager to accept the suggestion. He had had more than one taste of the pleasures of playing the Maecenas. Montesquieu had been at his Court, working there at his _Esprit des Lois_, and Madame de Grafigny, Helvetius, Henault, Maupertuis; and the shy and retiring, but gifted Devaux was a fixture. However, Stanislas wanted more. The only disappointment to Menoux was that he found the invitation planned by himself actually issued by his rival, Madame de Boufflers. It was, of course, accepted; and the beginning of 1748 saw Voltaire and Madame du Chatelet safely arrived at Commercy.

The Lorrain Court, always bright and gay, was at that time perhaps at its very brightest. Stanislas, being permitted to play at being king, and given ample pecuniary resources for doing so, played the game in good earnest, with a due appreciation of showy externals, and with a singularly happy grace. He had at his command an apparatus which any real king might have envied. Here was Commercy, raised by Durand for the rich and tasteful Prince de Vaudemont, the friend of our William III. and of the elder Pretender, a blaze of magnificence, with gardens around it, and sheets of water, and cascades, which cast Versailles into the shade. His princ.i.p.al residence, however, one of the masterpieces designed by Boffrand, was the Palace of Luneville. On seeing it Louis XV., surprised at its grandeur, exclaimed, "Mais, mon pere, vous etes mieux loge que moi." That was the

salon magnifique, Moitie Turc et moitie Chinois, Ou le gout moderne et l'antique, Sans se nuire, ont uni leurs lois,

of which Voltaire writes--very incongruous, but decidedly splendid and comfortable. Stanislas had added the delightful "Bosquet," laid out for him by Gervais--overloading it, it is true, with kiosks and pavilions, renaissance architecture and renaissance statuary, a hermitage, and eventually with de Tressan's "Chartreuse." Like all persons of "taste" in his day, Stanislas loved gimcrackery; he had utilized Francois Richard's inventive genius for embellis.h.i.+ng his princ.i.p.al residence with a unique contrivance, admired by all Europe--an artificial rock with clockwork machinery setting about eighty figures in motion. You may see a picture of it still in the Nancy Museum. It must have been very ingenious and very ugly. First, there was a miller's wife opening her cas.e.m.e.nt-window to answer some supposed caller; then two cronies appear on the scene, engaging in a morning chat. A shepherd playing on his _musette_ leads his flock, tinkling with bells, across the rock. Two wethers engage in a real contest; a clockwork dog jumps up, barking, and separates them. There was a forge, with hammers beating and sparks flying. An insatiable tippler knocks at the closed door of the tavern, and is answered by the hostess with a pailful of water emptied upon his head from a window above. In the distance a pious hermit is seen telling his beads. And in the background is discovered, standing on a balcony, to crown the whole, the Queen, Catherine Opalinska, complacently looking down upon the scene, while two sentries pace solemnly up and down, occasionally presenting arms. Such were the toys of royalty in those days. Besides these two palaces Stanislas had others--Chanteheux, well in view from Luneville, built in the Polish style: "rien de plus superbe, rien de plus irregulier"; Einville, flat and level, disparaged by the duc de Luynes, but nevertheless grand, and possessing a "salon" famed for its magnificence throughout Europe; and lastly the historic Malgrange, close to Nancy, the "Sans souci" of Henri le Bon, in which Catherine of Bourbon had met the Roman doctors of divinity, despatched to convert her, in learned disputation, and sent them away discomfited, to the no little annoyance of her brother, Henri IV. Beyond this, Here was at work beautifying Nancy in the Louis-Quinze style, with statuary and bal.u.s.trades, gorgeous gateways, and magnificent arches; and he was building that handsome palace, which now serves as the Commanding General's quarters, in which, in 1814, when the Emperor of Austria, the last real Lorrain Duke's grandson, was lodged there, was hatched the Absolutist conspiracy of the "Holy Alliance."

The Court itself was modelled entirely on the pattern of the superior Olympus of Versailles. "On ne croyait pas avoir change de lieu quand on pa.s.sait de Versailles a Luneville," says Voltaire. There was splendour, display, lavishness, gilding everywhere--only in Lorraine there was an absolute absence of etiquette and restraint--"ce qui completait le charme." At Luneville the etiquette was of the slightest. From the other palaces it was wholly banished--"me voici dans un beau palais, avec la plus grande liberte (et pourtant chez un roi)--a la Cour sans etre courtisan." "C'est un homme charmant que le roi Stanislas," Voltaire goes on, in another letter. And not without cause. For Stanislas had placed himself and all his household at the great writer's service. The king entertained a perfect army of Court dignitaries, who had scarcely anything to do for their salaries. He had his _gardes-du-corps_, resplendent in scarlet and silver, his _cadets-gentilhommes_, who were practically pages, half of them Lorrains, the remainder Poles, his regular pages, two of whom must always stand by him, when playing at _tric-trac_, never moving a muscle all the while. He had his pet dwarf "Bebe," decked out in military dress, with a diminutive toy-coach and two goats to carry him about, and a page in yellow and black always to wait upon him. This dwarf the king would for a joke occasionally have baked up in a pie. Upon the pie being opened Bebe would jump out, sword in hand, greatly frightening the ladies and performing on the dinner-table a sort of war-dance, which was his great accomplishment. Then he had his _musique_, headed by Anet, the particular friend of Lulli, and with Baptiste, another friend of Lulli, for "premier violon." The Lorrain court had always been noted for its concerts, its theatricals and its _sauteries_--that was at the time the fas.h.i.+onable name for b.a.l.l.s. Adrienne Lecouvreur, Mademoiselle Clairon, Fleury, had all come out first on the Lorrain stage. Luneville it was which invented the "Cotillon," which has become so popular all over the continent. Luneville also was the birthplace of the aristocratic and graceful "Chapelet." And king Stanislas' orchestra enjoyed a European reputation. "Do you pay your musicians better than I do?" asked Louis Quinze of his father-in-law with a touch of jealousy. "No, my brother; but I pay them for what they do, you pay them for what they know." There was wit and fas.h.i.+on in abundance, and a galaxy of beauty--the royal-born Princesse de Roche-sur-Yon, the Princesse de Lutzelburg, the fascinating Princesse de Talmonde, Stanislas' cousin, who subdued the heart of our young Pretender, the Countess of Leiningen, the Princesse de Craon, Madame de Mirepoix, Madame de Chimay, and others. But what of all things Stanislas prided himself upon most were his table and his kitchen. He was, as I have said, fond of gimcracks and he was a great eater, though he often concentrated all his eating upon one Gargantuan meal. The dinner-hour never came round fast enough for him, which made Galaiziere say, "If you go on like that, Sire, we shall shortly have you dining the day before." His particular delight were quaint culinary refinements, "imitations" and "surprises," which were only to be achieved with the help of so accomplished a master as his supreme _chef de cuisine_ (there were five other _chefs_ besides) Gilliers, the author of that unsurpa.s.sed cookery-book, _Le cannameliste francais_. Every dining-table at Court was a mechanical work of art. Touch a spring, when the cloth was removed, and there would start up a magnificent _surtout_--there were some measuring five feet by three--a silversmith's _chef d'oeuvre_, covered with rocks, and castles, and trees, and statuary, a swan spouting water at a beautiful Leda, and the like. And between these ornaments was set out a rich array of dessert, likewise so shaped as to represent every variety of figures, like Dresden China. One year, when all the fruit failed--I believe it was while Voltaire was in Lorraine, in 1749, which was a year of unparalleled distress--Gilliers kept the Court supplied with a continual succession of imitation fruit, which did service for real plums and peaches. Stanislas had introduced such "bizarreries septentrionales" as raw _choucroute_ and unsavoury messes of meat and fruit, and imitation _plongeon_ (great northern diver), produced by plucking a goose alive, beating it to death with rods, and preparing it in a peculiar way. A turkey treated in the same manner found itself transformed into a sham capercailzie. But the _chefs d'oeuvre_ were Gilliers' "surprises," prepared after much thought, to which Stanislas contributed his share. Voltaire makes out that "bread and wine"--which he did not always get--would have been amply sufficient for his modest wants; but what we hear of the Lorrain Court shows him to have been by no means indifferent to the products of Gillier's inimitable _cuisine_. We read of Voltaire's eyes glistening with delight when, after the removal of the cloth, what looked like a ham was brought upon the table, and a truffled tongue. The ham turned out to be a confectionery made up of strawberry preserve and whipped cream, _pane_ with macaroons; the tongue something of the same sort, truffled with chocolate. I must not forget the coffee, to which Voltaire, like most great writers, was devoted. Swift declared that he could not write unless he had "his coffee twice a week." Voltaire consumed from six to eight cups at a sitting--which is nothing compared with the performance of Delille, who, to keep off the megrim, swallowed twenty. Stanislas employed a special _chef du cafe_, La Veuve Christian, who was responsible for its quality.

Then, there was the wine, Stanislas' special hobby. Of course, he had all the Lorrain _crus_. The best of these, that grown on the famous Cote de Malzeville, close to Nancy, he had made sure of by bespeaking the entire produce in advance for his lifetime, at twelve francs the "measure." His peculiar pride, however, was his Tokay. Every year his predecessor, Francis, become Emperor of Germany, sent him a large cask, escorted all the way by a guard of Austrian grenadiers. As soon as ever that cask arrived, Stanislas set personally to work. What with drugs, and syrups, and sugar, and other wine, he manufactured out of one cask about ten, which he drew off into bottles specially made for the purpose. Some he kept for his own use at dessert. The larger portion he distributed among his friends, who every one of them becomingly declared upon their oath that better Tokay they had never tasted.

But there were better things to entertain the Lorrain Court. There were fetes; there were theatricals--at some of which Voltaire and du Chatelet performed in person, Voltaire as the "a.s.sesseur" in _L'Etourderie_, du Chatelet as "Isse"; there was brilliant conversation, music, everything that money could buy and good company produce. And Voltaire was the feted of all. "Voltaire etait dieu a la Cour de Stanislas," says Capefigue. He could do as he liked--sleep, wake, work, mix with the company, stroll about alone--without any restraint; the king and all were at his beck, all eager for his every word, taking everything from him in the best part, appreciating, admiring, wors.h.i.+pping. His plays were put upon the stage. He was allowed to drill the actors at his pleasure. In this way, _Le Glorieux_ was produced with great pomp; also _Nanine_, _Brutus_, _Merope_, and _Zare_, the last-named, for a novelty, by a troupe of children.

Whatever he wrote, he could make sure that he would have an attentive audience of ill.u.s.trious personages to hear him read out.