Charbonneau

by Win Blevins

  One evening, after an intimate dinner with the royal family, two young ladies, nieces of the king, undertook some musical entertainment with voice and pianoforte. Baptiste had never heard a pianoforte before, and it made Mrs. Welch’s clavichord sound puny. The songs were by Mozart, and he found them pretty, with sweet and mobile lines, charming. He burned with an idea.

  The next afternoon he persuaded the nieces to play for him again. He astonished them by following along on the mouth organ, reading from the sheet music only a little awkwardly. Then he fumbled through one of the songs on the piano, but the keys felt clumsy under his fingers. The girls were delighted. They rehearsed all afternoon and presented Baptiste in his musical debut that evening to the king and to Paul. The king applauded loudly, though Baptiste suspected that he was more amused than musically gratified. Then Baptiste gave them a raucous rendition of “Voyageur’s Song,” and the king seemed a good deal less gratified. But the next day Paul arranged for his lessons with the Kapellmeister.

  Through the spring and summer, though, the royal family had not brought him out. He met with them only en famille. He prepared for his entrance to the University that autumn. In October he took lodgings there, Paul went home to Karlsruhe for a while, and Baptiste emerged from his cloister.

  NOVEMBER, 1824: Karlheinz took him to one of the Sunday-afternoon gatherings for which Sophie Hoffman was noted—an ensemble of the witty, the dashing, the literary, an ensemble at once suitably fashionable and riskily Bohemian. It was at gatherings like Madame Hoffman’s weekly affair that the young of provincial Stuttgart cultivated and affected the attitudes of the cosmopolitan centers.

  A pop version of Romanticism was coursing through Europe like a fever. After the defeat and exile of Napoleon in 1815, the old power structure reasserted itself: Kings returned to their thrones. Metternich consolidated power for the Hapsburgs, commerce thrived, the bourgeoisie grew, the press and rebellious youth were curtailed. But radical ideas survived, even as they had under the old order. Young men and women of fashion, esthetes, and intellectuals fastened on Romantic heroes—Faust, cosmically arrogant and damned; Werther, swamped in youthful sorrow; Manfred, tragic, passionate, noble, proud in his moral isolation. They admired Goethe, Beethoven, Napoleon, and, above all, Lord Byron, himself the apparent ideal Byronic hero. They spoke out for freedom from oppression, rebellion against the old order, libertinism, atheism.

  The young women circulating through Madame Hoffman’s spacious rooms that afternoon said little but looked much. They pined, they looked wistful, they looked melancholy, they looked consumptive. These effects they achieved with some care: They avoided the sun to get the pallor, they sucked lead pencils, they drank vinegar. The lucky ones with dark hair made it lustrous with belladonna, and circled dark eyes with bistre. Any one of them might have been Ophelia, gravitating from pining sorrow toward madness, weeping from unquenchable anguish beside their favorite symbol, the weeping willow.

  The more ambitious of the men adopted the attitudes of creatures of the damned. They dressed like dandies—trousers skintight, frock coats snugly tailored to show form, hair in shoulder-length curls, page boys, or even frizzed. They had sallow skin, burning eyes, brooding and surly glances. Every man of them seemed tortured by a noble anguish that only he could know.

  Baptiste was struck, just after he came in, by a young fellow dressed entirely in black, with very fair skin and jet black hair. He sported a crimson vest beneath his black frock coat, and looked like a stage version of the devil, or of Don Juan. Karlheinz was steering Baptiste in his direction, murmuring about introducing him to their hostess. Baptiste was astonished that their hostess proved to be the young Don Juan.

  “Sophie Hoffman,” he made out from Karlheinz in his confusion, and he bent toward her hand. “Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau,” Karlheinz went on, “le sauvage naïf.”

  She gestured that he was to shake her hand rather than kiss it. He muttered “Madame Hoffman,” entirely flustered and certain that he seemed a fool. She looked at him for too long a moment. She was pale, with gleaming black eyes that seemed unnaturally large in that pale face, with high cheekbones, a finely shaped nose, hair cut shorter than the men’s.

  “I’m pleased to meet you. Karlheinz has spoken of you often. Perhaps we can talk later.” Baptiste, not knowing what to say, bowed. He felt it to be more a dismissal than an invitation.

  As he retreated, he took her in. Tall—very tall for a woman—slender, with a small high bosom covered by her man’s shirt, of aristocratic but careless bearing, smoking a Turkish cigarette in a long black holder.

  “‘Friendship is love without his wings,’” the tall, husky, blonde fellow was saying to her.

  “Will you ever tire of Byron?” she remarked off-handedly. Baptiste immediately felt the blonde fellow a fool, and was jealous.

  Karlheinz was watching Baptiste watching Madame Hoffman. “Are you enthralled by Sophie, then? You might do worse,” he mused. “She has a taste for the exotic.”

  NOVEMBER 13, 1824: Baptiste, beginning to be comfortable with German after nearly a year, determined to keep his journal in that language. He was making frequent entries in the diary: The long days at school were lonely since he had quit going to classes almost completely. He turned his diary into full little essays when he could; he even toyed with the idea of perhaps turning his diary into a book—An American Indian Sojourns With Royalty, or some such. Thus his tone:

  “Le sauvage naïf met today with Madame Sophie Hoffman, divorcee and social luminary among the literati. She is a striking woman, not only in her considerable beauty but as well in her demeanour: She comports herself in dress, in manners, in conversation, in all behavior as a man. About her the people of her circle know but little, yet speculate much. Reputedly, she is the natural daughter of an Italian count and a Norwegian gentlewoman, but this story may be held in the suspension of doubt. Several years ago she came to Stuttgart to live with her husband, a painter, with whom she is said to have had a torrid romance at the seashore at Genoa. She tired of him before long and caring nothing for conventions, left him to set up house nearby. Attracted to herself are the principal young intellectuals and artists of Stuttgart, who invade her salons each Sunday afternoon. She has also friends among men of arts and letters over all of Europe, including Henri Beyle, known as Stendhal, a French novelist of some note. Report is that she takes from among all these acquaintances a variety of lovers—painters, writers, Bohemians, aristocrats. Apparently she lets that be known, but will not say it is so. Such, presumably, is the concession that even so independent and autonomous a woman must make to convention and public opinion. Madame Hoffman seems most worthy to figure as a character in these pages and in the life of le sauvage naïf, who confesses that he might like to number himself among the variety of her lovers.”

  NOVEMBER 20: “The afternoon again at Madame Hoffman’s. I am ashamed to say that our hero today made an arse of himself. In the sophisticated company at the salon he was acutely struck with his own lack of sophistication—with his mere nineteen years (though nearly twenty), with his accent, with his halting German, and with his ignorance of the books and pieces of music which everyone else was talking about. As a result, though he dearly wanted to make an impression on Madame Hoffman, he spent the hours clinging to a bookcase and looking nauseated. At my own apartments I then consumed time contemplating my visage in the mirror; I was cheered by the thought that in dress, bearing, and features I seem equal of most and the superior of some.

  “Karlheinz, noticing his sauvage’s sickly withdrawal, suggested that I render some of the Indian songs which so pleased Prince Paul and King William. One hesitates to play on the mouth organ some primitive piece of music—in front of women who play Mozart and Beethoven and men who invent their own pieces. Yet Karlheinz may be right, and I may try it.”

  NOVEMBER 23: “Dinner with the prince at his apartment in the castle this evening. He is, as always, pleasant, benevolent, and removed. Though he provides
everything I need or want, I could scarcely call him a friend. Tonight when he gave me a letter of credit for three months’ allowance, I found myself oddly irritable. No matter.”

  NOVEMBER 27: “Madame Hoffman is away, so Karlheinz, Hamlet, and le sauvage naïf passed the afternoon chez Herr Weiskopf, a banker who collects paintings and plays somewhat at the violoncello. I believe that Hamlet made eyebrows raise in the company, which was musical but more proper and demure than the other circle. The Kapellmeister himself rendered a new composition at the pianoforte. Hearing a professor of music comment softly that the Kapellmeister is a musical fuddy-duddy fifty years behind the times, I offered a piece that is hundreds of years behind the times, a song of the Sioux Indians. That prospect aroused great curiosity, and so came about the amusing and ironic spectacle of our sauvage naïf singing a Sioux morning prayer. Despite the fact that I could not remember many of the Sioux words, I believe it was quite well received. I imagine that they view it as a curiosity, and not as music, as indeed I suspect they view le sauvage naïf as a curiosity, not a person. But we shall make them discover their mistake. I met a handsome blond woman, a Madame Strasbourg, who seemed interested.”

  NOVEMBER 30: “A note from Amalie Strasbourg invites me to join her party at the opera on Saturday. The Prince urges me to accept; she is the wife of an army officer presently in Prussia, and a lady of independent means. I should have accepted anyway.”

  DECEMBER 3: “Le sauvage naïf did appear at the opera—a music-drama about a girl who kills herself for lost love, entirely too melodramatic—in the Strasbourg box. The company was Madame, her brother, and his wife, neither of sufficient interest to enliven these pages. Our hero, thinking to make an impression, even a minor sensation, wore memorabilia of Paul’s—a totemistic headband with two feathers, a pipe decorated with a chiefs sacred signs, and my own hoop necklace. The combination was dubious medicine, but abutting my frock coat and lace shirt, they made excellent stage sense. The effect through the house was as I had hoped. At Madame Strasbourg’s home after the opera, we fell into a discussion of Indian names, and I ended by giving each of them an appropriate name. For Madame I chose Mourning Dove, which seemed to delight her. I thought Wounded Bird more apt: she is thin and wan, which gives an impression of height, with yellow hair piled high on her head and a reed-like neck. She creates an air of frailty, both by her appearance and by clinging always to some gentlemen’s elbow. Le sauvage naïf finds her interesting, or at least moderately challenging: and he will abandon modesty for a moment to say that she finds him fascinating.”

  DECEMBER 4: “Called late this afternoon on Amalie Strasbourg with flowers, stayed to dinner, and after dinner succeeded in all his hopes and designs. The very idea that she was in bed with him seemed to throw Amalie into a swoon, and what she did in bed was mostly to swoon. Both before and after the fact, the lady much protested helplessly, ‘I cannot, I cannot,’ but she did and she will. Her enthusiastic protestations had equal fervor.”

  DECEMBER 9: “Ever when I am abroad in society, my necklace is the center of curiosity and comment. People gaze at it, ask about its totem meaning, and sometimes even finger it as though it had power transmittable by touch. Karlheinz because of it has sometimes introduced me by yet another familiar name, Sternenstein, or Star-stone. In our incognito carousals I now adopt that name; it even gives the illusion that I am German, denied by my skin, my accent, and the necklace itself; strangers are much surprised by the name. I give no one the true answer as to why I always wear the necklace and its star-stone publicly: The stone makes visible what is ever in my heart.”

  DECEMBER 23: “Amalie’s husband is home on leave for the holidays; she claims to be simply eager to see me, but what she seems is unconsciously eager to flaunt her affair before her husband, which I find embarrassing and distasteful. In addition, her clinging is becoming cloying. As I am returned to the Prince’s apartment for the time and obliged with a busy holiday season here, I think it better to let the affair drop. It was only a passing dalliance, pleasant enough, in the life of le sauvage naïf.”

  JANUARY 1, 1825: “Sternenstein left the grand celebration at the castle yesterday evening before midnight, in a minor transgression against my host in this country, to attend Madame Hoffman’s assembly. She, dressed in black coat and trousers, as is apparently her custom, looked most striking with her pale skin and jet hair. I feigned indifference to her for an hour before admitting—to myself only—that I am as entranced with her as before. She engaged in a substantial discussion of a painter whom I know nothing of. Once again I was thinking that I behaved like an awkward, retreating boy: but whether or no, I am invited to tea on Thursday. She says she has a friend who is most eager to meet me. Our hero’s single resolution for the New Year is to cultivate Madame Sophie Hoffman, and amorously.”

  Just as Baptiste was chiding himself for sitting there frozen, and wondering whether hot coffee might loosen his arthritic tongue, Sophie launched in.

  “Johannes”—that was the portly professor of music in the leather chair—“is interested in Indian music,” she said. “I understand that you play. Will you?”

  He apologized for not having his mouth organ and for being inept at the pianoforte. (Damn! She must have heard about my demonstration at Herr Weiskopfs.) Johannes lent him his churchwarden.

  “The Sioux begins his songs by offering his respects to the gods,” Baptiste started, the pipe in his hand. He mimed blowing smoke upward, downward, and to all four sides. “He honors the sky, the earth, the west, where the thunder-beings live, the north where lives the white giant, the east whence comes the morning star, the south whence comes the spring.” Johannes looked fascinated. “He takes his time about all this. It does not do to hurry the sacred powers.

  “He holds up his medicine bag as he sings. It holds some object—a bear claw, a jay’s feather, a black stone—that has been revealed to him in a dream as his private, sacred emblem and protector. The song is holy as well, and it is his personal song. Songs often come in dreams, and are handed down from father to son. A man who does not dream a song or inherit one, must buy a song from a man who has one. Songs are sacred personal property. An elementary notion of copyright, sanctified.

  “This is a song that a holy Sioux heard the sun sing at daybreak one day:

  With visible face I am appearing.

  In a sacred manner I appear.

  For the greening earth a pleasantness I make.

  The center of the nation’s hoop I have made pleasant.

  With visible face, behold me!

  The four-leggeds and two-leggeds, I have made them to walk.

  The wings of the air, I have made them to fly.

  With visible face I appear.

  My day, I have made it holy.

  He sang it in the Sioux tongue, knowing that he was getting half of it wrong. He sang with his eyes closed, trying to bring back some of the rapt intensity of the old medicine man who chanted it.

  He was damned uncomfortable, but Sophie and Johannes were eager for more. He gave them two of his favorites and tried to quit. Then he gave them three or four more that he knew well, plus a couple that he might be misremembering. Johannes had taken out a notepad and pencil and asked if Baptiste would play them on the piano; he wanted to transcribe one or two. So Baptiste picked them out with one finger—he had some idea of the pitch equivalents from his mouth organ.

  In the middle of the “Corn Song,” Karlheinz came in with a stranger, Hamlet trailing. “So you have him,” the fellow said at large when the song ended. Sophie presented him as Jacques Balmat, professor of philosophy. He was a tall man with a red face, strong bony features, and a strange air of energy about him. He was Baptiste’s idea of what a revolutionary would look like.

  “You are more than fashionably late, gentlemen,” Sophie chided them.

  “I delayed Jacques because of a most engaging barmaid,” Karlheinz grinned.

  The maid served more coffee and cakes. “I am curious what
you see as the central differences between white and Indian cultures,” Jacques started.

  “Jacques, must you be so blunt?” asked Sophie.

  He ignored her. “Some philosophers have the idea that man left alone in his natural state, untouched by civilization, has an innate nobility. The traditional idea is that the savage grovels in benightedness.”

  “I have been exposed to Monsieur Rousseau,” Baptiste said uneasily.

  “Jacques,” interjected Karlheinz, “must you philosophers always play chess with ideas? If you want to play chess, then, let’s play. Sophie, have the board brought.” He gave Hamlet a small cake.

  “Baptiste,” Sophie said quietly, “how much did you live with your Indian people?”

  His own tribe he scarcely knew, he answered. He had lived until his sixth year among the Mandans and Minatarees, and five summers among various tribes—Sioux, Osage, Ankara, Iowa, Kansas, Pawnee. And how long among the whites? He’d gone to school in St. Louis for twelve years, he said, and then had come to Europe. He was twenty years old.

  “You are a white man, then, with red skin,” inserted Jacques. “Your mind is white.” Jacques seemed to be very sure and definite about everything. It made Baptiste uncomfortable.

  “The first six years can be formative,” Sophie said.

  She led him into talking about Indian music and white music and the difference between them. Baptiste explained that all Indian music is sacred. It is all, in effect, prayer. The Osage “Corn Song” he had sung for them, for instance; it is a tribute to the force—the god, if you like—that makes things grow, and was intended to produce the effect of a healthy and abundant crop.

  A mid the earth, renewed in verdure,

  A mid the rising smoke, my grandfather’s footprints

  I see, as from place to place I wander,

  The rising smoke I see as I wander,