Book 10. At Reinsberg. 1736-1740 - __ Of Monsieur Jordan And The Literary Set

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_ BOOK X. AT REINSBERG. 1736-1740

(Chapter I cont.)
OF MONSIEUR JORDAN AND THE LITERARY SET

There is, of course, a Chaplain in the Establishment: a Reverend "M. Deschamps;" who preaches to them all,--in French no doubt. Friedrich never hears Deschamps: Friedrich is always over at Ruppin on Sundays; and there "himself reads a sermon to the Garrison," as part of the day's duties. Reads finely, in a melodious feeling manner, says Formey, who can judge: "even in his old days, he would incidentally," when some Emeritus Parson, like Formey, chanced to be with him, "roll out choice passages from Bossuet, from Massillon," in a voice and with a look, which would have been perfection in the pulpit, thinks Formey. [Souvenirs d'un Citoyen (2de edition, Paris, 1797), i. 37.]

M. Jordan, though he was called "LECTEUR (Reader)," did not read to him, I can perceive; but took charge of the Books; busied himself honestly to be useful in all manner of literary or quasi-literary ways. He was, as his name indicates, from the French-refugee department; a recent acquisition, much valued at Reinsberg. As he makes a figure afterwards, we had better mark him a little.

Jordan's parents were wealthy religious persons, in trade at Berlin; this Jordan (Charles Etienne, age now thirty-six) was their eldest son. It seems they had destined him from birth, consulting their own pious feelings merely, to be a Preacher of the Gospel; the other sons, all of them reckoned clever too, were brought up to secular employments. And preach he, this poor Charles Etienne, accordingly did; what best Gospel he had; in an honest manner, all say,--though never with other than a kind of reluctance on the part of Nature, forced out of her course. He had wedded, been clergyman in two successive country places; when his wife died, leaving him one little daughter, and a heart much overset by that event. Friends, wealthy Brothers probably, had pushed him out into the free air, in these circumstances: "Take a Tour; Holland, England; feel the winds blowing, see the sun shining, as in times past: it will do you good!"

Jordan, in the course of his Tour, came to composure on several points. He found that, by frugality, by wise management of some peculium already his, his little Daughter and he might have quietness at Berlin, and the necessary food and raiment;--and, on the whole, that he would altogether cease preaching, and settle down there, among his Books, in a frugal manner. Which he did;--and was living so, when the Prince, searching for that kind of person, got tidings of him. And here he is at Reinsberg; bustling about, in a brisk, modestly frank and cheerful manner: well liked by everybody; by his Master very well and ever better, who grew into real regard, esteem and even friendship for him, and has much Correspondence, of a freer kind than is common to him, with little Jordan, so long as they lived together. Jordan's death, ten years hence, was probably the one considerable pain he had ever given his neighbors, in this the ultimate section of his life.

I find him described, at Reinsberg, as a small nimble figure, of Southern-French aspect; black, uncommonly bright eyes; and a general aspect of adroitness, modesty, sense, sincerity; good prognostics, which on acquaintance with the man were pleasantly fulfilled.

For the sake of these considerations, I fished out, from the Old-Book Catalogues and sea of forgetfulness, some of the poor Books he wrote; especially a Voyage Litteraire, [Histoire d'un Voyage Litteraire fait, en MDCCXXXIII., en France, en Angleterre et en Hollande (2de edition, a La Haye, 1736).] Journal of that first Sanitary Excursion or Tour he took, to get the clouds blown from his mind. A LITERARY VOYAGE which awakens a kind of tragic feeling; being itself dead, and treating of matters which are all gone dead. So many immortal writers, Dutch chiefly, whom Jordan is enabled to report as having effloresced, or being soon to effloresce, in such and such forms, of Books important to be learned: leafy, blossomy Forest of Literature, waving glorious in the then sunlight to Jordan;--and it lies all now, to Jordan and us, not withered only, but abolished; compressed into a film of indiscriminate PEAT. Consider what that peat is made of, O celebrated or uncelebrated reader, and take a moral from Jordan's Book! Other merit, except indeed clearness and commendable brevity, the Voyage Litteraire or other little Books of Jordan's have not now. A few of his Letters to Friedrich, which exist, are the only writings with the least life left in them, and this an accidental life, not momentous to him or us. Dryasdust informs me, "Abbe Jordan, alone of the Crown-Prince's cavaliers, sleeps in the Town of Reinsberg, not in the Schloss:" and if I ask, Why?--there is no answer. Probably his poor little Daughterkin was beside him there?--

We have to say of Friedrich's Associates, that generally they were of intelligent type, each of them master of something or other, and capable of rational discourse upon that at least. Integrity, loyalty of character, was indispensable; good humor, wit if it could be had, were much in request. There was no man of shining distinction there; but they were the best that could be had, and that is saying all. Friedrich cannot be said, either as Prince or as King, to have been superlatively successful in his choice of associates. With one single exception, to be noticed shortly, there is not one of them whom we should now remember except for Friedrich's sake;--uniformly they are men whom it is now a weariness to hear of, except in a cursory manner. One man of shining parts he had, and one only; no man ever of really high and great mind. The latter sort are not so easy to get; rarely producible on the soil of this Earth! Nor is it certain how Friedrich might have managed with one of this sort, or he with Friedrich;--though Friedrich unquestionably would have tried, had the chance offered. For he loved intellect as few men on the throne, or off it, ever did; and the little he could gather of it round him often seems to me a fact tragical rather than otherwise.

With the outer Berlin social world, acting and reacting, Friedrich has his connections, which obscurely emerge on us now and then. Literary Eminences, who are generally of Theological vesture; any follower of Philosophy, especially if he be of refined manners withal, or known in fashionable life, is sure to attract him; and gains ample recognition at Reinsberg or on Town-visits. But the Berlin Theological or Literary world at that time, still more the Berlin Social, like a sunk extinct object, continues very dim in those old records; and to say truth, what features we have of it do not invite to miraculous efforts for farther acquaintance. Venerable Beausobre, with his History of the Manicheans, [Histoire critique de Manichee et du Manicheisme: wrote also Remarques &c. sur le Nouveau Testament, which were once famous; Histoire de la Reformation; &c. &c. He is Beausobre SENIOR; there were two Sons (one of them born in second wedlock, after Papa was 70), who were likewise given to writing.--See Formey, Souvenirs d'un Citoyen since, in Toland and the Republican Queen's time, as a light of the world. He is now fourscore, grown white as snow; very serene, polite, with a smack of French noblesse in him, perhaps a smack of affectation traceable too. The Crown-Prince, on one of his Berlin visits, wished to see this Beausobre; got a meeting appointed, in somebody's rooms "in the French College," and waited for the venerable man. Venerable man entered, loftily serene as a martyr Preacher of the Word, something of an ancient Seigneur de Beausobre in him, too; for the rest, soft as sunset, and really with fine radiances, in a somewhat twisted state, in that good old mind of his. "What have you been reading lately, M. de Beausobre?" said the Prince, to begin conversation. "Ah, Monseigneur, I have just risen from reading the sublimest piece of writing that exists."--"And what?" "The exordium of St. John's Gospel: In the Beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God, and the Word was--" Which somewhat took the Prince by surprise, as Formey reports; though he rallied straightway, and got good conversation out of the old gentleman. To whom, we perceive, he writes once or twice, [OEuvres de Frederic, 121-126. Dates are all of 1737; the last of Beausobre's years.]--a copy of his own verses to correct, on one occasion,--and is very respectful and considerate.

Formey tells us of another French sage, personally known to the Prince since Boyhood; for he used to be about the Palace, doing something. This is one La Croze; Professor of, I think, "Philosophy" in the French College: sublime Monster of Erudition, at that time; forgotten now, I fear, by everybody. Swag-bellied, short of wind; liable to rages, to utterances of a coarse nature; a decidedly ugly, monstrous and rather stupid kind of man. Knew twenty languages, in a coarse inexact way. Attempted deep kinds of discourse, in the lecture-room and elsewhere; but usually broke off into endless welters of anecdote, not always of cleanly nature; and after every two or three words, a desperate sigh, not for sorrow, but on account of flabbiness and fat. Formey gives a portraiture of him; not worth copying farther. The same Formey, standing one day somewhere on the streets of Berlin, was himself, he cannot doubt, SEEN by the Crown-Prince in passing; "who asked M. Jordan, who that was," and got answer:--is not that a comfortable fact? Nothing farther came of it;--respectable Ex-Parson Formey, though ever ready with his pen, being indeed of very vapid nature, not wanted at Reinsberg, as we can guess.

There is M. Achard, too, another Preacher, supreme of his sort, in the then Berlin circles; to whom or from whom a Letter or two exist. Letters worthless, if it were not for one dim indication: That, on inquiry, the Crown-Prince had been consulting this supreme Achard on the difficulties of Orthodoxy; [OEuvres de Frederic, xvi. pp. 112-117: date, March-June, 1736.] and had given him texts, or a text, to preach from. Supreme Achard did not abolish the difficulties for his inquiring Prince,--who complains respectfully that "his faith is weak," and leaves us dark as to particulars. This Achard passage is almost the only hint we have of what might have been an important chapter: Friedrich's Religious History at Reinsberg. The expression "weak faith" I take to be meant not in mockery, but in ingenuous regret and solicitude; much painful fermentation, probably, on the religious question in those Reinsberg years! But the old "GNADENWAHL" business, the Free-Grace controversy, had taught him to be cautious as to what he uttered on those points. The fermentation, therefore, had to go on under cover; what the result of it was, is notorious enough; though the steps of the process are not in any point known.

Enough now of such details. Outwardly or inwardly, there is no History, or almost none, to be had of this Reinsberg Period; the extensive records of it consisting, as usual, mainly of chaotic nugatory matter, opaque to the mind of readers. There is copious correspondence of the Crown-Prince, with at least dates to it for most part: but this, which should be the main resource, proves likewise a poor one; the Crown-Prince's Letters, now or afterwards, being almost never of a deep or intimate quality; and seldom turning on events or facts at all, and then not always on facts interesting, on facts clearly apprehensible to us in that extinct element.

The Thing, we know always, IS there; but vision of the Thing is only to be had faintly, intermittently. Dim inane twilight, with here and there a transient SPARK falling somewhither in it;--you do at last, by desperate persistence, get to discern outlines, features:--"The Thing cannot always have been No-thing," you reflect! Outlines, features:--and perhaps, after all, those are mostly what the reader wants on this occasion. _

Read next: Book 10. At Reinsberg. 1736-1740: Chapter 2. Of Voltaire And The Literary Correspondences

Read previous: Book 10. At Reinsberg. 1736-1740: Chapter 1. Mansion Of Reinsberg

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