Authors: Penelope Fitzgerald
Friederike’s Daybook, July 1796
Sophgen has been trying to keep up her diary, but she must not torment herself any longer to write in it. Let me be the recorder.
We are doing well enough here in our little rooms. Sophie’s dinner I prepare myself, rather than sending out to the Rose, in order not to give offence to our landlady. But the Jena air does not suit me, and perhaps it suits no-one, since all the professors and literati seem to have some complaint against each other. Weather very hot. They are beginning to go away on their little outings and vacations. The streets where they live are empty.
Hardenberg’s friend Friedrich Schlegel (I think he is not yet a professor) visited us yesterday evening. He too is on the point of some journey or other. I received him by myself. Sophie had gone out with Frau Winkler, to see a military parade. God knows I myself have seen my bellyful of them. But as soon as the
pain goes away a little, my beloved little sister is ready to find everything amusing. She is then almost herself.
Well, Friedrich Schlegel. He is a philosopher and a historian. I was not at all put off by his melancholy gaze. He said to me, ‘Frau Leutnant, your sister, Fraulein von Kuhn, tries to make her mind work in the same way that Hardenberg’s does, as one might try to teach a half-tame bird to sing like a human being. She won’t succeed, and the ideas she had before, such as they were, are now in disarray and she hardly knows what to put in their place.’
I asked him, ‘Have you ever met my sister, Herr Schlegel?’
He replied, ‘Not as yet, but I believe she is an instance of a certain easily-recognisable type.’
I said, ‘She is my sister.’
Later, Sophie returned in the care of Frau Winkler, who said, with a certain disappointment: ‘I expected the young lady to faint, but she did not.’
Although Fritz now had his first official appointment as an Assistant Saline Inspector, and was allowed only short periods of leave, the Rockenthiens left Sophie’s treatment entirely in his hands.
‘No other system is so reliable as Brown’s,’ Fritz told Karoline Just, not for the first time. ‘To some extent Brownismus is based on Locke’s ideas of the nervous system.’
‘We have to believe in someone,’ said Karoline. ‘Another one, I mean, besides ourselves, or life would be a poor thing.’
‘I was talking of the exact sciences, Justen.’
Fritz had made a very early start from Tennstedt. There was some delay, however, when he reached Jena, in getting hold of Stark, who was at a professional conference in Dresden. But he was told that it would be possible to see the Professor’s Deputy Assistant, Jacob Dietmahler.
‘Ah, it’s you, what good fortune,’ cried Fritz. ‘I sometimes think that at every turning point in my life -‘
‘My life, too, has had its turning-points,’ said Dietmahler quietly.
Fritz was overwhelmed. ‘Love has made me a monster.’
‘Don’t concern yourself, Hardenberg. I am happy to have obtained this appointment as a Deputy Assistant, and I have resigned myself to the long walk ahead of me.’
‘I am truly sorry if -‘
‘We won’t waste time on that. Why have you come here?’
‘Dietmahler, Dr Ebhard will have written the Professor a letter of explanation. My Sophie is in pain.’
‘In severe pain, I imagine. I can’t, of course, offer any opinion until Professor Stark returns, but Ebhard
mentions her complexion, which provides us with an important indication -‘
‘It is like a rose.’
‘This letter says, yellowish.’
But Sophie wanted to go out. She had the remorseless perseverance of the truly pleasure-loving. There had been so little to do in Gruningen. What was more, she had never been serenaded. Here, at least, Dietmahler was able to be of immediate practical assistance. There were plenty of medical students left in Jena, penniless, and working through the vacation in the hope of getting their qualifications a little earlier, or of joining a regiment as a half-qualified bone-setter or wound-doctor. Could they play and sing? Naturally they could. How else can the needy pass their spare time, except with music? Outside the lodgings, in the warm dusk which filled the Schaufelgasse, they began with little airs, little popular songs, then a trio. When the Mandelsloh came down the three flights of stairs, with her purse in her hand, and asked them, ‘For whom do you play?’ they replied, ‘For Philosophy.’
Friederike’s Daybook
And now it seems that the great man is actually going to call, that Goethe will actually be among us. We didn’t hear this from Hardenberg, but once again from Erasmus, who after all, has not gone to Zillbach, but
has a room at the moment at a student’s beer-house, where he says he is sleeping on straw. That is emphatically his business, rather than mine. He tells me, also, that it’s well known that Goethe cannot endure the wearing of spectacles, and has said, ‘What do I gain from a man into whose eyes I cannot look while I am speaking, and the mirror of whose soul is veiled by glasses that dazzle me? A feeling of disharmony comes over me when a stranger approaches me with spectacles on his nose.’ I myself used never to wear glasses, but now I do, for fine sewing and for reading, and since we came to Jena I have worn them nearly all the time. On occasion, though, one must ignore great men’s fancies.
July 7, morning.
First we tidy our sitting room. With furnishings so poor, there is not much that can be done: they are intended for University assistant-teachers, who are grateful for anything. The medicine bottles, the poultices, the syringes, beloved of Frau Winkler, go into the bedroom; the sewing, the newspapers, under the day-bed. On a day like this, dull and windy, the windows must stay shut, but they do not fit properly. There is a draught, we know that already, but I go closer and confirm it, it is like a skewer. The great man of letters will risk pneumonia, and that must always be held against us.
Sophgen forgets that she is in pain, even that she is ill, in discussing the draught. The secret, says Frau Winkler, is to open the windows now, very wide, just for a time. If the air inside the room is the same temperature as the air outside, no draught can be felt. - But (I tell her) the room will be hellishly uncomfortable. - No matter, cries Sophgen, we’ll shut everything tight when he approaches the house, and she collects what is left of her strength and before I can stop her throws the windows wide. Then she begins to cough. ‘You should have left that to me. Now your cough pierces me like the nails on the cross. The draught couldn’t have done it better.’ - And Sophie laughs.
Goethe is coming up the Schaufelgasse. All to the window! He advances in a blue frock coat, and over that a summer dust-coat, a noble garment which almost touches the ground, and does touch the ankles of his splendid boots. He seems to have no servant with him: a private call.
I take off my spectacles and go down, Sophie too, she won’t be left behind. She draws herself up, as though she felt no fear. Goethe introduces himself, and taking our hands quite frankly, asks us whether his servant can be accommodated in the kitchen: he
did
bring a man with him after all, but it seems that this man always walks a certain number of paces behind him, imitating, out of respect, his actions and
gestures. Surely it would be of much more use if he went in front, and made sure they were going to the right house.
Upstairs, Goethe takes the hardest chair, saying, with much charm, that poets thrive on discomfort. However, in another moment he is pacing up and down the little room.
There is no bell, but I have arranged with Frau Winkler to stamp on one of the loose boards, so that she will know when to bring refreshments. Goethe handily cuts the cake himself, and opens the bottle. He suggests sending down a glass of wine to the servant, which I agree to, although I can’t see that he has done much to earn it. Meanwhile he talks a little about health and illness. Some maladies, he says, are nothing but stagnation, which a glass or two of mineral water would remove, but we must never let them linger: we must go straight to the attack, as in all things.
He must see that the case is quite otherwise with our poor little patient. It was clear that he wanted to draw her out. Unfortunately, he does not, as yet, know Hardenberg’s poetry, indeed I suppose not much of it, so far, has appeared in print. Sophie, for whom the visit was perhaps too great an honour, could think of nothing to say. At last she ventured that Jena was a larger town than Gruningen. Goethe bowed slightly
and replied that Weimar, also, was a larger town than Gruningen.
Sophie did not mention Hardenberg’s story
The Blue Flower
. And Goethe, at least, made no reference to the draught.
Erasmus, who had found out exactly when the visit was to be, was waiting, or rather hovering, at the corner of the street.
‘Excellency! Please, a word! I am Hardenberg’s younger brother - that is, one of his younger brothers. I am a student of forestry - that is, not here …’
‘I did not think it would be here,’ said Goethe. ‘There is no school of forestry in the University of Jena.’
‘I have been studying at Hubertusberg. That is, I have just left Hubertusberg. May I walk a short distance with you?’
Goethe smiled, and said that there was no law against it.
‘You have been calling on Fraulein Sophie von Kuhn,’ perserved Erasmus, ‘and her elder sister, Frau Leutnant Mandelsloh.’
‘Ah, she is the elder sister, is she? A woman of strength, I had not quite made out the relationship.’ Since Erasmus, coughing, trotting by his side, could manage nothing more at the moment Goethe went on, ‘I think I know what you wanted to ask me. You wonder whether Fraulein von
Kuhn, when she is restored to health, will be a true source of happiness to your brother. Probably you feel that there is not an equality of understanding between them. But rest assured, it is not her understanding that we love in a young girl. We love her beauty, her innocence, her trust in us, her airs and graces, her God knows what - but we don’t love her for her understanding - nor, I am sure, does Hardenberg. He will be happy, at least for a certain number of years, with what she can offer him, and then he may have the incomparable blessing of children, while his poetry -‘
Erasmus desperately caught the arm of the great man in mid-speech, spinning him round like flotsam in the tide. ‘But that is not what I wanted to ask you!’
Goethe stopped and looked down at him. (The servant, twenty yards behind, stopped also, and stared into a barber’s shop.)
‘I was mistaken, then. You are not concerned about your brother’s happiness?’
‘Not about his!’ cried Erasmus. ‘About hers, about Sophie’s, about hers!’
W
HEN
Professor Stark returned to Jena he made an examination, and said that an operation was necessary. He would insert tubes, to carry away the poison. There was no other way to drain the gracious Fraulein’s tumour. Authorisation was needed from her stepfather in Gruningen. This arrived within twenty-four hours.
‘It would be a pity if we were to miss the fireworks for the Elector’s birthday,’ said Sophie. This was her only objection.
‘My stepfather and my mother leave all the details to me,’ the Mandelsloh told young Dietmahler, one of whose more awkward duties was to deal with the patients’ relatives. ‘I shall have to send for my sister’s betrothed. He has gone back to Tennstedt. But you, of course, know him well.’
‘No, not well, but I have known him for what seems a long time,’ said Dietmahler. ‘I think his brother Erasmus is in Jena.’
‘No, he left yesterday, I advised it. Staying here was
helping neither him nor us. But Hardenberg, of course - Now, tell me the day and the hour when the Professor intends to operate. Write them down. Naturally I shan’t forget them, but write them down here in my Daybook.’
But Professor Stark did not manage things in that way. It was his practice to give as little notice as possible, an hour at most, of an operation. This was to spare the patient’s nerves. Prevented, too, was the arrival of relatives long before they were wanted. Dietmahler, of course, had known this, but was not at liberty to say so. Now he had to go round once again to the Schaufelgasse with an explanation.
‘The room reserved for the purpose must be kept ready at all times,’ he went on doggedly. ‘And there must be a good supply of old, clean sheets and old, clean undergarments of the finest linen.’
‘Ready at all times, when we don’t know when it will be wanted!’ said the Mandelsloh. ‘We have two rooms here, and only two. This is the sitting room, and my sister is asleep at the moment in the bedroom. You may leave the inspection to me.’
Dietmahler hesitated. ‘And the other things?’
‘Do you think we travelled here with piles of old, clean, cast-off undergarments of the finest linen? Wouldn’t we do better to go back to Gruningen to fetch them?’
‘No, the patient must not travel.’
‘You mean that your Professor doesn’t want to.’
‘That is not what I said. How large is the bedroom?’
‘The same size as this. One can scarcely move. Tell him he must bring no-one with him, except yourself.’
‘Certainly, I can promise that. And your landlady. Would she be ready to be of use?’
‘Only too ready.’
‘Frau Leutnant, I don’t wish us to be antagonists. Could we not look at things another way? I can assure you of the Professor’s deepest sympathy and interest. Indeed, he has told me he intends to do the bandaging himself.’
She shook his hand, but it was no more than a truce.
Frau Winkler had discussed the expected visit of Professor Stark with all her neighbours within a certain radius, ‘in order that there should be no misunderstanding, when screams and cries are heard. They might imagine some dispute …’
‘A lodger, perhaps, strangling a landlady,’ agreed the Mandelsloh. Frau Winkler, who by now obeyed her slavishly, had been able (since the Great Wash for the year was over) to borrow a quantity of clean old sheets. Strictly speaking, there was no such thing as worn-out sheets in Saxony, but some were thirty or forty years older than others. Holding the material against the broad summer sunshine, she demonstrated how delicately threadbare they were.
‘Put them away, speak no more about them, bring me the weekly bill and some coffee,’ said the Mandelsloh.
Sophie was out - out for a drive through the cornfields with the wife of the pastor whose sermons they attended on Sundays. They had started early, to avoid the sun, and had driven through roads shadowed with poplars.
‘Thank you, Frau Pastor, you have been so very kind, you are so kind, you will be so kind I am sure as to excuse me for being tired so quickly.’
‘I may perhaps be allowed to call for Fraulein Sophie next week?’ said the pastor’s wife, but the Mandelsloh intervened politely, saying that unfortunately they could not be sure of their arrangements.
‘I wish George was here,’ said Sophie.
‘George!’
‘I don’t know why, we were not speaking of him, but I wish he was here.’
Hardenberg so far knew nothing about the operation. Possibly he did not even know that they were still in Jena. He himself, the Mandelsloh believed, was inspecting the Salines at Durrenberg. But the Professor’s instructions, which, in spite of her critical attitude, she took in a spirit of military obedience, were still, ‘I will give you an hour’s notice. That is best. Afterwards you may summon anyone you wish.’
It was Dietmahler, again, who brought this last message, and Dietmahler who appeared, bringing with him a hospital servant, on the morning of the 11th of July.
‘The operation will take place at eleven o’clock. I will explain what has to be done.’ The double bed was dragged to the middle of the room and made up with the ancient sheets, the front room sofa was piled with bandages, lint and sponges which the hospital servant had brought with him. Sophie seemed not to be disturbed.
Frau Winkler announced that a man was at the door. He was a messenger, with a note to say that the Professor found that he must postpone the operation until two in the afternoon.
‘Just to remind us that he is a great man,’ said the Mandelsloh.
‘Frau Leutnant, that is unjust,’ said Dietmahler.
He sent the hospital servant to an eating house, and walked the streets of Jena until a quarter to two. When he returned, Sophie was wearing an old wrapper, frail and yellowish, almost the same tone as her skin. She appeared smaller, perhaps shrunken. The Mandelsloh thought, ‘What am I doing with what was entrusted to me?’
Two carriages, closed in spite of the high summer’s day, turned into the Schaufelgasse. They drew up, the doors opened. ‘There are four of you,’ said the Mandelsloh, turning in bitter reproach on Dietmahler. ‘You gave me your word …’
‘Three of them are pupils,’ said Dietmahler miserably. ‘They are learning how these things are done.’
‘I, too, am learning how these things are done,’ said the Mandelsloh.
From the bottom of the stairs someone could be heard dismissing, or at least restraining, Frau Winkler. The Professor and his students made their appearance, correctly dressed in black. The students’ frock-coats were absurdly too large. Doubtless they had been borrowed. The Professor bowed to the ladies. Sophie smiled faintly.
‘We will administer the cordial.’
It was a mixture of wine and laudanum, to Dr Brown’s prescription, which Sophie drank down without protest. Then to the bedroom, where all must skirt awkwardly round the bed in its unaccustomed place. The students, to be out of the way, stood with their backs to the wall, darting sharp looks, like young crows, each taking out the pen and inkwell from behind his lapel.
Sophie was helped onto the pile of borrowed mattresses. Then the Professor asked her, in tones of grave politeness - suitable, in fact, to a child on its dignity - whether she would like to cover her face with a piece of fine muslin. ‘In that way you will be able to see something of what I do, but not too clearly … There now, you cannot see me now, can you?’
‘I can see something glittering,’ she said. Perhaps it was a game, after all. The students wrote a line in their notebooks.
Following the medical etiquette of Jena, the Professor motioned Dietmahler to his side, and asked him,
‘Esteemed colleague, am I to make the incision? Is that what you advise?’
‘Yes, Herr Professor, I advise it.’
‘You would make two incisions, or one only?’
‘Two, Herr Professor.’
‘So?’
‘So.’
Frau Winkler, waiting below on the bottom stair, had been able to hear nothing, but now her patience was rewarded.