Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands - Vol. 2

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  He also showed us an unfinished picture of the Temptation of Christ. Upon a clear aerial mountain top, Satan, a thunder-scarred, unearthly figure, kneeling, points earnestly to the distant view of the kingdoms of this world. There is a furtive and peculiar expression of eager anxiety betrayed in his face, as if the bitterness of his own blasted eternity could find a momentary consolation in this success. It is the expression of a general, who has staked all his fortune on one die. Of the figure of Jesus I could not judge, in its unfinished state. Whether the artist will solve the problem of uniting energy with sweetness, the Godhead with the manhood, remains to be seen.

  The paintings of Jesus are generally unsatisfactory; but Schoefier has approached nearer towards expressing my idea than any artist I have yet seen.

  The knowing ones are much divided about Schoeffer. Some say he is no painter. Nothing seems to me so utterly without rule or compass as this world of art Divided into little cliques, each with his shibboleth, artists excommunicate each other as heartily as theologians, and a neophyte who should attempt to make up a judgment by their help would be obliged to shift opinions with every circle.

  I therefore look with my own eyes, for if not the best that might be, they are the best that God has given me.

  Schoeffer is certainly a poet of a high order. His ideas are beautiful and religious, and his power of expression quite equal to that of many old masters, who had nothing very particular to express.

  I should think his chief danger lay in falling into mannerism, and too often repeating the same idea. He has a theory of coloring which is in danger of running out into coldness and poverty of effect. His idea seems to be, that in the representation of spiritual subjects the artist should avoid the sensualism of color, and give only the most chaste and severe tone. Hence he makes much use of white, pale blue, and cloudy grays, avoiding the gorgeousness of the old masters. But it seems probable that in the celestial regions there is more, rather than less, of brilliant coloring than on earth. What can be more brilliant than the rainbow, yet what more perfectly free from earthly grossness? Nevertheless, in looking at the pictures of Schoeffer there is such a serene and spiritual charm spread over them, that one is little inclined to wish them other than they are. No artist that I have ever seen, not even Raphael, has more power of glorifying the human face by an exalted and unearthly expression. His head of Joan of Arc, at Versailles, is a remarkable example. It is a commentary on that scripture—“And they beheld his face, as it were the face of an angel.”

  Schoeffer is fully possessed with the idea of which I have spoken, of raising Protestant art above the wearisome imitations of Romanism. The object is noble and important. I feel that he must succeed.

  His best award is in the judgments of the unsophisticated heart. A painter who does not burn incense to his palette and worship his brushes, who reverences ideas above mechanism, will have all manner of evil spoken against him by artists, but the human heart will always accept him.

  LETTER XLIV.

  BERLIN, August 10.

  MY DEAR:—

  Here we are in Berlin—a beautiful city. These places that kings build, have of course, more general uniformity and consistency of style than those that grow up by chance. The prevalence of the Greek style of architecture, the regularity and breadth of the streets, the fine trees, especially in the Unter den Linden, on which are our rooms, struck me more than any thing I have seen since Paris. Why Paris charms me so much more than other cities of similar recommendations, I cannot say, any more than a man can tell why he is fascinated by a lady love no fairer to his reason than a thousand others. Perhaps it is the reflected charm of the people I knew there, that makes it seem so sunny.

  This afternoon we took a guide, and went first through the royal palace. The new chapel, which is being built by the present prince, is circular in form, with a dome one hundred and thirty feet high. The space between the doors is occupied by three circular recesses, with figures of prophets and apostles in fresco. Over one door is the Nativity,—over the other, the Resurrection,—also in fresco. On the walls around were pictures somewhat miscellaneous, I thought; for example, John Huss, St. Cecilia, Melanchthon, Luther, several women, saints, apostles, and evangelists. These paintings are all by the first German artists. The floor is a splendid mosaic, and the top of the dome is richly adorned with frescoes.

  Still, though beautiful, the chapel seemed to me deficient in unity of effect. One admires the details too much to appreciate it as a whole. We passed through the palace rooms. Its paintings are far inferior to those of Windsor. The finest royal paintings have gone to adorn the walls of the Museum. There was one magnificent Vandyke, into which he has introduced a large dog—some relief from his eternal horses. There was David's picture of Bonaparte crossing the Alps, of which Mrs. P. has the engraving, and you can tell her that it is much more impressive than the painting. Opposite to this picture hangs Blucher, looking about as amiable as one might suppose a captain of a regiment of mastiffs. Our guide, pointing to the portrait of Napoleon, with evident pride, said, “Blucher brought that from Paris. He said Napoleon had carried so many pictures from other countries to Paris, that now he should be carried away himself.”

  There were portraits of Queen Louisa, very beautiful; of Queen Victoria, a present; one of the Empress of Russia; also a statue of the latter. The ball room contained a statue of Victory, by Ranch, a beautiful female figure, the model of which, we were told, is his own daughter. He had the grace to allow her some clothing, which was fatherly, for an artist. The palace rooms were very magnificent. The walls were covered with a damask of silk and gold, into which was inwrought the Prussian eagle. In the crowning room was an immense quantity of plate, in solid gold and silver. The guide seemed not a little proud of our king, princes, and palace. Men will attach themselves to power and splendor as naturally as moss will grow on a rock. There is, perhaps, a foundation for this in human nature— witness the Israelites of old, who could not rest till they obtained a king. The Guide told us there were nine hundred rooms in the palace, but that he should only take us through the best. We were duly sensible of the mercy.

  Then we drove to Charlottenburg to see the Mausoleum. I know not when I have been more deeply affected than there; and yet, not so much by the sweet, lifelike statue of the queen as by that of the king, her husband, executed by the same hand. Such an expression of long-desired rest, after suffering and toil, is shed over the face!—so sweet, so heavenly! There, where he has prayed year after year,—hoping, yearning, longing,—there, at last, he rests, life's long anguish over! My heart melted as I looked at these two, so long divided,—he so long a mourner, she so long mourned,—now calmly resting side by side in a sleep so tranquil.

  We went through the palace. We saw the present king's writing desk and table in his study, just as he left them. His writing establishment is about as plain as yours. Men who really mean to do any thing do not use fancy tools. His bed room, also, is in a style of severe simplicity. There were several engravings fastened against the wall; and in the anteroom a bust and medallion of the Empress Eugenie—a thing which I should not exactly have expected in a born king's palace; but beauty is sacred, and kings cannot call it parvenu. Then we went into the queen's bed room, finished in green, and then through the rooms of Queen Louisa. Those marks of her presence, which you saw during the old king's lifetime, are now removed: we saw no traces of her dresses, gloves, or books. In one room, draped in white muslin over pink, we were informed the Empress of Russia was born.

  In going out to Charlottenburg, we rode through the Thiergarten, the Tuileries of Berlin. In one of the most quiet and sequestered spots is the monument erected by the people of Berlin to their old king. The pedestal is Carrara marble, sculptured with beautiful scenes called garden pleasures—children in all manner of out-door sports, and parents fondly looking on. It is graceful, and peculiarly appropriate to those grounds where parents and children are constantly congregating. The whole is surmounted by
a statue of the king, in white marble—the finest representation of him I have ever seen. Thoughtful, yet benign, the old king seems like a good father keeping a grave and affectionate watch over the pleasures of his children in their garden frolics. There was something about these moss-grown gardens that seemed so rural and pastoral, that I at once preferred them to all I had seen in Europe. Choice flowers are planted in knots, here and there, in sheltered nooks, as if they had grown by accident; and an air of sweet, natural wildness is left amid the most careful cultivation. The people seemed to be enjoying themselves less demonstratively and with less vivacity than in France, but with a calm inwardness. Each nation has its own way of being happy, and the style of life in each bears a certain relation of appropriateness to character. The trim, gay, dressy, animated air of the Tuileries suits admirably with the mobile, sprightly vivacity of society there. Both, in their way, are beautiful; but this seems less formal, and more according to nature.

  As we were riding home, our guide, who was a full feathered monarchist, told us, with some satisfaction, the number of palaces in Prussia. Suddenly, to my astonishment, “Young America” struck into the conversation in the person of little G.

  “We do things more economically in America. Our president don't have sixty palaces; he has to be satisfied with one White House.”

  The guide entered into an animated defence of king and country. These palaces—did not the king keep them for the people? did he not bear all the expense of caring for them, that they might furnish public pleasure grounds and exhibition rooms? Had we not seen the people walking about in them, and enjoying themselves?

  This was all true enough, and we assented. The guide continued, Did not the king take the public money to make beautiful museums for the people, where they could study the fine arts?—and did our government do any such thing?

  I thought of our surplus revenue, and laid my hand on my mouth. But yet there is a progress of democratic principle indicated by this very understanding that the king is to hold things for the benefit of the people. Times are altered since Louis XIV. was instructed by his tutor, as he looked out on a crowd of people, “These are all yours;” and since he said, “L'elot, c'est moi“

  Our guide seemed to feel bound, however, to exhaust himself in comparison of our defects with their excellences.

  “Some Prussians went over to America to live,” he said, “and had to come back again; they could not live there.”

  “Why not?” said I.

  “O, they said there was nothing done there but working and going to church!”

  “That's a fact,” said W., with considerable earnestness.

  “Yes,” said our guide; “they said we have but one life to live, and we want to have some comfort in it.”

  It is a curious fact, that just in proportion as a country is free and self-governed it has fewer public amusements. America and Scotland have the fewest of any, and Italy the most. Nevertheless, I am far from thinking that this is either necessary or desirable: the subject of providing innocent public amusements for the masses is one that we ought seriously to consider. In Berlin, and in all other German cities, there are gardens and public grounds in which there are daily concerts of a high order, and various attractions, to which people can gain admittance for a very trifling sum. These refine the feelings, and cultivate the taste; they would be particularly useful in America in counteracting that tendency to a sordid materialism, which is one of our great national dangers.

  We went over the Berlin Museum. In general style Greek—but Greek vitalized by the infusion of the German mind. In its general arrangements one of the most gorgeous and impressive combinations of art which I have seen. Here are the great frescoes of Kaulbach, Cornelius, and other German artists, who have so grafted Grecian ideas into the German stock that the growth has the foliage and coloring of a new plant. One set of frescoes, representing the climate and scenery of Greece, had on me a peculiar and magical effect. Alas! there never has been the Greece that we conceive; we see it under the soft, purple veil of distance, like an Alpine valley embraced by cloudy mountains; but there was the same coarse dust and debris of ordinary life there as with us. The true Arcadia lies beyond the grave. The collection of pictures is rich in historic curiosities—valuable as marking the progress of art. One Claude Lorraine here was a matchless specimen—a perfect victory over all the difficulties of green landscape painting.

  LETTER XLV.

  WITTENBERG.

  MY DEAR:—

  I am here in the station house at Wittenberg. I have been seeing and hearing to-day for you, and now sit down to put on paper the results of my morning. “What make you from Wittenberg?” Wittenberg! name of the dreamy past; dimly associated with Hamlet, Denmark, the moonlight terrace, and the Baltic Sea, by one line of Shakspeare; but made more living by those who have thought, loved, and died here; nay, by those who cannot die, and whose life has been life to all coming ages.

  How naturally, on reaching a place long heard of and pondered, do we look round for something uncommon, quaint, and striking! Nothing of the kind was here; only the dead flat of this most level scenery, with its dreary prairie-like sameness. Certainly it was not this scenery that stirred up a soul in Luther, and made him nail up his theses on the Wittenberg church door.

  “But, at any rate, let us go to Wittenberg,” said I; “get a guide, a carriage, cannot you?” as I walked to one window of the station house and another, and looked out to see something wonderful. Nothing was in sight, however; and after the usual sputter of gutturals which precedes any arrangement in this country, we were mounted in a high, awkward carriage, and rode to the town. Two ancient round tower and a wall first met my eye; then a drawbridge, arched passage, and portcullis. Under this passage we passed, and at our right hand was the church, where once was laid the worn form that had stood so many whirlwinds—where, in short, Luther was buried. But this we did not then know; so we drove by, and went to a hotel. Talked English and got German; talked French with no better success. At last, between W., G., and the dictionary, managed to make it understood that we wanted a guide to the Luther relics. A guide was after a time forthcoming, in the person of a little woman who spoke no English, whom, guide book in hand, we followed.

  The church is ancient, and, externally, impressive enough; inside it is wide, cold, whitewashed, prosaic; whoever gets up feeling does it against wind and tide, so far as appearances are concerned. We advance to the spot in the floor where our guide raises a trap door, and shows us underneath the plate inscribed with the name of Luther, and by it the plate recording the resting-place of his well-beloved Philip Melanchthon; then to the grave of the Elector of Saxony, and John the Steadfast; on one side a full length of Luther, by Lucas Cranach; on the other, one of Melanchthon, by the same hand. Well, we have seen; this is all; “He is not here, he is risen.” “Is this all?” “All,” says our guide, and we go out. I look curiously at the old door where Luther nailed up his theses; but even this is not the identical door; that was destroyed by the French. Still, under that arched doorway he stood, hammer and nails in hand; he held up his paper, he fitted it straight; rap, rap,—there, one nail—another—it is up, and he stands looking at it. These very stones were over that head that are now over mine, this very ground beneath his feet. As I turned away I gave an earnest look at the old church. Grass is growing on its buttresses; it has a desolate look, though strong and well kept. The party pass on, and I make haste to overtake them.

  Down we go, doing penance over the round paving stones; and our next halt is momentary. In the market-place, before the town house, (a huge, three-gabled building, like a beast of three horns,) stands Luther's bronze monument; apple women and pear women, onion and beet women, are thickly congregated around, selling as best they may. There stands Luther, looking benignantly, holding and pointing to the open Bible; the women, meanwhile, thinking we want fruit, hold up their wares and talk German. But our conductress has a regular guide's trot, inexorable as fate; so o
n we go.

  Wittenberg is now a mean little town; all looks poor and low; yet it seems like a place that has seen better days. Houses, now used as paltry shops, have, some of them, carved oaken doors, with antic freaks of architecture, which seem to signify that their former owners were able to make a figure in the world. In fact, the houses seem a sort of phantasmagoria of decayed gentlefolk, in the faded, tarnished, old-fashioned finery of the past. Our guide halts her trot suddenly before a house, which she announces as that of Louis Cranach; then on she goes. Louis is dead, and Magdalen, his wife, also; so there is no one there to welcome us; on we go also. Once Louis was a man of more consequence.

  Now we come to Luther's house—a part of the old convent. Wide yawns the stone doorway of the court; a grinning masque grotesquely looks down from its centre, and odd carvings from the sides. A colony of swallows have established their nests among the queer old carvings and gnome-like faces, and are twittering in and out, superintending their domestic arrangements. We enter a court surrounded with buildings; then ascend, through a strange doorway, a winding staircase, passing small, lozenge-shaped window. Up these stairs he oft trod, in all the moods of that manifold and wonderful nature—gay, joyous, jocose, fervent, defiant, imploring; and up these stairs have trod wondering visitors, thronging from all parts of the world, to see the man of the age. Up these stairs come Philip Melanchthon, Lucas Cranach, and their wives, to see how fares Luther after some short journey, or some new movement. Now, all past, all solitary; the stairs dirty, the windows dim.