The Blue Flower - Candia McWilliam

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and was not at Weissenfels on this occasion, but at his Uncle Wilhelm’s, in Lucklum in the Duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenbuttel. The boy had outgrown his tutor, who had to sit up late into the night reading mathematics and physiology in order to catch up with him. ‘But this is not wonderful, after all,’ the uncle wrote. ‘Tutors are a poor-spirited class of men, and all this Herrnhuterei is nothing but hymn-singing and housework, quite unsuitable for a von Hardenberg. Send Fritz, for a time at least, to live in my household. He is fifteen or sixteen, I don’t know which, and must learn to understand wine, which he can’t do at Weissenfels, where the grapes are only fit to make brandy and vinegar, and to find out what grown men talk about when they are in decent company.’ The Freiherr was, as always, infuriated by his brother’s remarks and still more by their tone. Wilhelm was ten years older than himself, and appeared to have been sent into the world primarily to irritate him. He was a person of great distinction – ‘in his own eyes’ the Freiherr added – Governor of the Saxon division of the German Order of Knighthood (Lucklum branch). Round his neck, on very many occasions, he wore the flashy Maltese cross of the order, which was also embroidered, in plush and braid, on his greatcoat. The Hardenberg children knew him as the ‘Big Cross’, and His Mightiness. He had never married, and was graciously hospitable not only to his fellow landowners but to musicians, politicians, and philosophers – those who should be seen round the table of a great man, to offer their opinions and to agree with his own.

      After a stay of only a few months, Fritz was returned to his father at Weissenfels, taking with him a letter from his uncle.

      Lucklum, October 1787

      I am glad that Fritz has recovered himself and got back on to the straight path, from which I certainly shall never try to remove him again. My way of life here is pitched too high for his young head. He was much too spoiled, and saw too many strange new people, and it could not be helped if a great many things were said at my table which were not helpful or salutary for him to know …

      The Freiherr wrote to his brother to thank him for his hospitality, and to regret that he could not thank him more. The white waistcoat, breeches and broad-cloth coat which had been made for Fritz by his uncle’s tailor, apparently because those he had brought with him were not considered smart enough for the dinner-table, would now be sent to the Moravian Brethren for distribution to charity. There would be no occasion for him to wear them in Weissenfels, where they lived simply.

      ‘Best of Fritzes, you were lucky,’ said fourteen-year-old Erasmus.

      ‘I am not sure about that,’ said Fritz. ‘Luck has its rules, if you can understand them, and then it is scarcely luck.’

      ‘Yes, but every evening at dinner, to sit there while these important people amused themselves by giving you too much to drink, to have your glass filled up again and again with fine wines, I don’t know what … What did they talk about?’

      ‘Nature-philosophy, galvanism, animal magnetism and freemasonry,’ said Fritz.

      ‘I don’t believe it. You drink wine to forget things like that. And then at night, when the pretty women come creaking on tiptoe up the stairs to find the young innocent, and tap at your door, TRIUMPH!’

      ‘There were no women,’ Fritz told him. ‘I think perhaps my uncle did not invite any.’

      ‘No women!’ cried Erasmus. ‘Who then did the washing?’

       7

       The Freiherr and the French Revolution

      WERE things worse at Weissenfels when a letter from the Big Cross arrived, or when the Mother’s elder brother, Captain August von Böltzig, happened to come to the house? Von Böltzig had fought in the same battalion as the Freiherr in the Seven Years’ War, but had come to totally different conclusions. The King of Prussia, whom he admired without reservations, had supported total freedom in religious belief, and the Prussian army was notably fearless and morally upright. Must one then not conclude –

      ‘I can see what you have in mind to say next,’ said the Freiherr, his voice still just kept in check. ‘You mean that you accept my reasoning,’ said von Böltzig. ‘You admit that there is no connection, or none that can be demonstrated, between religion and right conduct?’

      ‘I accept that you, August von Böltzig, are a very great fool.’ The Freifrau felt trapped between the two of them, like a powder of thinly-ground meal between the millstones. One of her night fears (she was a poor sleeper) was that her brother and the Uncle Wilhelm might arrive, unannounced, at the same time. What would she be able to do or say, to get decently rid of one of them? Large though the house was, she always found guests a difficulty. The bell rang, you heard the servants crossing the hall, everything was on top of you before you could pray for guidance.

      In 1790, by which time the young Fritz had matriculated at the University of Jena, the forces of history itself seemed to take a hand against Auguste. But here her narrowness of mind was an advantage, in that she saw them as no more and no less important than the worn bed-linen, or her brother’s godlessness. Like the damp river-breeze, which made the bones ache, the disturbances in France seemed to her no more than a device to infuriate her husband.

      Breakfast at Weissenfels was taken in a frugal style. On the dining room stove, at six o’clock in the morning, there were ranks of earthenware coffee-pots, the coffee being partly made, for economy’s sake, out of burnt carrot powder. On the table stood large thick cups and saucers and a mountain of white rolls. The family, still in their nightclothes, appeared in ones and twos and, like sleepwalkers, helped themselves from the capacious earthenware pots. Some of the coffee they drank, some they sucked in through pieces broken off from the white rolls. Anyone who had finished turned his or her cup upsidedown on the saucer, calling out decisively, ‘Satt!’

      As the boys grew older, Auguste did not like them to linger in the dining room. ‘What are you speaking of, young men?’ Erasmus and Karl stood warming themselves, close to the stove. ‘You know that your father does not like …’

      ‘He will be quite happy with the Girondins,’ said Karl.

      ‘But Karl, these people may perhaps have new ideas. He does not like new ideas.’

      In the January of 1793, Fritz arrived from Jena in the middle of the breakfast, in a blue cloth coat with immense brass buttons, patched across the shoulder-blades, and a round hat. ‘I will change my clothes, and come and sit with you.’

      ‘Have you brought a newspaper?’ Erasmus asked. Fritz looked at his mother, and hesitated. ‘I think so.’ The Freiherr, on this occasion, was sitting in his place at the head of the table. He said, ‘I think you must know whether you have brought a newspaper or not.’ Fritz handed him a copy, many times folded, of the Jenaer Allgemeine Zeitung. The paper was still cold from the freezing journey, in Fritz’s outside pocket, from Jena.

      The Freiherr unfolded it and uncreased it, took out his spectacles and in front of his silent family bent his attention on the closely printed front page. At first he said, ‘I don’t understand what I am reading.’

      ‘The convention have served a writ of accusation on Louis,’ said Fritz courageously.

      ‘Yes, I read those words, but they were altogether beyond me. They are going to bring a civil action against the legitimate king of France?’

      ‘Yes, they accuse him of treason.’

      ‘They have gone mad.’

      The Freiherr sat for a moment, in monumental stillness, among the coffee-cups. Then he said, ‘I shall not touch another newspaper until the French nation returns to its senses again.’

      He left the room. ‘Satt! Satt! Satt!’ shouted Erasmus, drumming on his saucer. ‘The revolution is the ultimate event, no interpretation is possible, what is certain is that a republic is

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