The Autobiography of Goethe. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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no matter how it came about, as a memorial of the most ancient times. Besides, they also were men, active and obliging, and even to the tenacity with which they clung to their peculiar customs, one could not refuse one's respect. The girls, moreover, were pretty, and were far from displeased when a Christian lad, meeting them on the sabbath in the Fischerfeld, showed himself kindly and attentive. I was consequently extremely curious to become acquainted with their ceremonies. I did not desist until I had frequently visited their school, had assisted at a circumcision and a wedding, and had formed a notion of the Feast of the Tabernacles. Everywhere I was well received, pleasantly entertained, and invited to come again; for they were persons of influence by whom I had been either introduced or recommended.
Public Burning of a Book.
Thus, as a young resident in a large city, I was thrown about from one object to another, and horrible scenes were not wanting in the midst of the municipal quiet and security. Sometimes a more or less remote fire aroused us from our domestic peace, sometimes the discovery of a great crime, with its investigation and punishment, set the whole city in an uproar for many weeks. We were forced to be witnesses of different executions; and it is worth remembering, that I was also once present at the burning of a book. The publication was a French comic romance, which indeed spared the state, but not religion and manners. There was really something dreadful in seeing punishment inflicted on a lifeless thing. The packages burst asunder in the fire, and were raked apart by an oven-fork, to be brought in closer contact with the flames. It was not long before the kindled sheets were wafted about in the air, and the crowd caught at them with eagerness. Nor could we rest until we had hunted up a copy, while not a few managed likewise to procure the forbidden pleasure. Nay, if it had been done to give the author publicity, he could not himself have made a more effectual provision.
But there were also more peaceable inducements which took me about in every part of the city. My father had early accustomed me to manage for him his little affairs of business. He charged me particularly to stir up the labourers whom he set to work, as they commonly kept him waiting longer than was proper; because he wished everything done accurately, and was used in the end to lower the price for a prompt payment. In this way, I gained access to all the workshops; and as it was natural to me to enter into the condition of others, to feel every species of human existence, and sympathize in it with pleasure, these commissions were to me the occasion of many most delightful hours, and I learned to know every one's method of proceeding, and what joy and sorrow, what advantages and hardships, were incident to the indispensable conditions of this or that mode of life. I was thus brought nearer to that active class which connects the lower and upper classes. For, if on the one side stand those who are employed in the simple and rude products, and on the other those who desire to enjoy something that has been already worked up; the manufacturer, with his skill and hand, is the mediator through whom the other two receive something from each other; each is enabled to gratify his wishes in his own way. The household economy of many crafts, which took its form and colour from the occupation, was likewise an object of my quiet attention; and thus was developed and strengthened in me the feeling of the equality, if not of all men, yet of all human conditions, – the mere fact of existence seeming to me the main point, and all the rest indifferent and accidental.
As my father did not readily allow himself an expense which would be at once consumed in a momentary enjoyment – as I can scarcely call to mind that we ever took a walk together, and spent anything in a place of amusement, – he was, on the other hand, not niggardly in procuring such things as had a good external appearance in addition to inward value. No one could desire peace more than he, although he had not felt the smallest inconvenience during the last days of the war. With this feeling, he had promised my mother a gold snuffbox, set with diamonds, which she was to receive as soon as peace should be publicly declared. In the expectation of the happy event, they had laboured now for some years on this present. The box, which was tolerably large, had been executed in Hanau, for my father was on good terms with the gold-workers there, as well as with the heads of the silk establishments. Many designs were made for it; the cover was adorned by a basket of flowers, over which hovered a dove with the olive-branch. A vacant space was left for the jewels, which were to be set partly in the dove and partly on the spot where the box is usually opened. The jeweller to whom the execution and the requisite stones were entrusted was named Lautensak, and was a brisk, skilful man, who like many artists, seldom did what was necessary, but usually works of caprice, which gave him pleasure. The jewels were very soon set, in the shape in which they were to be put upon the box, on some black wax, and looked very well; but they would not come off to be transferred to the gold. In the outset, my father let the matter rest; but as the hope of peace became livelier, and finally when the stipulations – particularly the elevation of the Archduke Joseph to the Roman throne – seemed more precisely known, he grew more and more impatient, and I had to go several times a week, nay, at last, almost daily, to visit the tardy artist. By means of my unremitted teazing and exhortation, the work went on, though slowly enough; for as it was of that kind which can be taken in hand or laid aside at will, there was always something by which it was thrust out of the way, and put aside.
Lautensak's Bouquet.
The chief cause of this conduct, however, was a task which the artist had undertaken on his own account. Everybody knew that the Emperor Francis cherished a strong liking for jewels, and especially for coloured stones. Lautensak had expended a considerable sum, and as it afterwards turned out larger than his means, on such gems, out of which he had begun to shape a nosegay, in which every stone was to be tastefully disposed, according to its shape and colour, and the whole form a work of art worthy to stand in the treasure-vaults of an emperor. He had, in his desultory way, laboured for many years upon it, and now hastened – because after the hoped-for peace the arrival of the Emperor, for the coronation of his son, was expected in Frankfort – to complete it and finally to put it together. My desire to become acquainted with such things he used very dexterously in order to distract me as a bearer of threats, and to lead me away from my intention. He strove to impart a knowledge of these stones to me, and made me attentive to their properties and value, so in that in the end I knew his whole bouquet by heart, and quite as well as he could have demonstrated its virtues to a customer. It is even now before me, and I have since seen more costly, but not more graceful specimens of show and magnificence in this sort. He possessed, moreover, a pretty collection of engravings, and other works of art, with which he liked to amuse himself; and I passed many hours with him, not without profit. Finally, when the Congress of Hubertsburg was finally fixed, he did for my sake more than was due; and the dove and flowers actually reached my mother's hands on the festival in celebration of the peace.
I then received also many similar commissions to urge on painters with respect to pictures which had been ordered. My father had confirmed himself in the notion – and few men were free from it – that a picture painted on wood was greatly to be preferred to one that was merely put on canvas. It was therefore his great care to possess good oak boards, of every shape, because he well knew that just on this important point the more careless artists trusted to the joiners. The oldest planks were hunted up, the joiners were obliged to go accurately to work with gluing, painting, and arranging, and they were then kept for years in an upper room, where they could be sufficiently dried. A precious board of this kind was intrusted to the painter Junker, who was to represent on it an ornamental flower-pot, with the most important flowers drawn after nature in his artistic and elegant manner. It was just about the spring-time, and I did not fail to take him several times a week the most beautiful flowers that fell in my way, which he immediately put in, and by degrees composed the whole out of these elements with the utmost care and fidelity. On one occasion I had caught a mouse, which I took to him, and which he desired to copy as a very pretty animal; nay, really represented it, as accurately as possible, gnawing an ear of corn at the foot of the flower-pot. Many such inoffensive natural objects, such as butterflies and chafers, were brought in and represented, so that finally, as far as imitation and execution were concerned, a highly valuable picture was put together.
Hence I was not a little astonished when the good man formally declared one day, when the work was just about to be delivered, that the picture no longer pleased him, – since, while it had turned out quite well in its details, it was not well composed as a whole, because it had been produced in this gradual manner; and he had perpetrated a blunder in the outset, in