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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/3267.txt b/3267.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b4dd249 --- /dev/null +++ b/3267.txt @@ -0,0 +1,697 @@ +Project Gutenberg Old Love Stories Retold by Richard Le Gallienne +This is a story of Heinrich Heine and his Mathilda. +At present we have only this one chapter/story of this book. + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.07.00*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared by Mike Pullen, +globaltraveler5565@yahoo.com. + + + + + +This is a story of Heinrich Heine and his Mathilda. +At present we have only this one chapter/story of this book. +This is one chapter of the more complete book by Richard +Le Gallienne which contains additional true love tales about other +famous people.} + + + + + +Heine and Mathilde + +by Richard Le Gallienne + + + + +The love story of Heine and his Mathilde is another of those stories +which fix a type of loving. It is the love of a man of the most +brilliant genius, the most relentless, mocking intellect, for a +simple, pretty woman, who could no more understand him than a cow can +understand a comet. Many men of genius have loved just such women, +and the world, of course, has wondered. How is it that men of genius +prefer some little Mathilde, when the presidents of so many women's +clubs are theirs for the asking? Perhaps the problem is not so +difficult as, at first sight, it may seem. After all, a man of +genius is much like other men. He is no more anxious than any other +man to marry an encyclopedia, or a university degree. And, more than +most men, he is fitted to realize the mysterious importance and +satisfaction of simple beauty--though it may go quite unaccompanied +by "intellectual" conversation--and the value of simple +woman-goodness, the woman-goodness that orders a household so +skillfully that your home is a work of art, the woman-goodness that +glories in that "simple" thing we call motherhood, the woman-goodness +that is almost happy when you are ill because it will be so wonderful +to nurse you. Superior persons often smile at these Mathildes of the +great. They have smiled no little at Mathilde Crescence Mirat; but +he who was perhaps the greatest mocker that ever lived knew better +than to laugh at Mathilde. The abysses of his brain no one can, or +even dare, explore--but, listen as we will at the door of that +infernal pit of laughter, we shall hear no laugh against his faithful +little Mathilde. It is not at Mathilde he laughs, but at the +precious little blue-stocking, who freshened the last months of his +life with a final infatuation--that still unidentified "Camille +Selden" whom he playfully called "la Mouche." + +"La Mouche," naturally, had a very poor opinion of Madame Heine, and +you need not be a cynic to enjoy this passage with which she opens her +famous remembrances of "The Last Days of Heinrich Heine": + +"When I first saw Heinrich Heine he lived on the fifth floor of a +house situated on the Avenue Matignon, not far from the Rond-Point of +the Champs-Elysees. His windows, overlooking the avenue, opened on a +narrow balcony, covered in hot weather with a striped linen awning, +such as appears in front of small cafes. The apartments consisted of +three or four rooms--the dining-room and two rooms used by the master +and the mistress of the house. A very low couch, behind a screen +encased in wall-paper, several chairs, and opposite the door a +walnut-wood secretary, formed the entire furniture of the invalid's +chamber. I nearly forgot to mention two framed engravings, dated +from the early years of Louis Philippe's reign--the 'Reapers' and the +'Fisherman,' after Leopold Robert. So far the arrangements of the +rooms evidenced no trace of a woman's presence, which showed itself +in the adjoining chamber by a display of imitation lace, lined with +transparent yellow muslin, and a corner-cupboard covered with brown +velvet, and more especially by a full-length portrait, placed in a +good light, of Mme. Heine, with dress and hair as worn in her +youth--a low-necked black bodice, and bands of hair plastered down +her cheeks--a style in the fashion of about 1840. + +"She by no means realized my ideal Mme. Heine. I had fancied her +refined, elegant, languishing, with a pale, earnest face, animated by +large, perfidious, velvety eyes. I saw, instead, a homely, dark, +stout lady, with a high colour and a jovial countenance, a person of +whom you would say she required plenty of exercise in the open air. +What a painful contrast between the robust woman and the pale, dying +man, who, with one foot already in the grave, summoned sufficient +energy to earn not only enough for the daily bread, but money besides +to purchase beautiful dresses. The melancholy jests, which obliging +biographers constantly represent as flashes of wit from a husband too +much in love not to be profuse, never deluded anybody who visited +that home. It is absurd to transform Mme. Heine into an idyllic +character, whilst the poet himself never dreamed of representing her +in that guise. Why poetize at the expense of truth?--especially when +truth brings more honour to the poet's memory." + +One is sorry that Heine has not risen again to enjoy this. One can +easily picture his reading it and, turning tenderly to his "Treasure," +his "Heart's Joy," with that everlasting boy's look on his face, +saying: "Never mind, Damschen. We know, don't we? They think they +know, but we know." And with what a terrible snarl he would say, "My +ideal Mme. Heine!" + +"My ideal Mme. Heine!" No doubt "la Mouche" thought she might have +been that, had all the circumstances been different, had Heine not +already been married for years and had he not been a dying man. We +may be quite sure what Heine would have thought of the matter, and +quite sure what she was to him. Mathilde, we know, was unhappy about +the visits of the smart young lady who talked Shakespeare and the +musical glasses so glibly, and who held her husband's hand as he lay +on his mattress-grave, and wore a general air of providing him with +that intellectual companionship which was so painfully lacking in his +home. Yet we who know the whole story, and know her husband far +better than she, know how little she really had to fear from the +visits of "Camille Selden." To Heine "la Mouche" was merely a +brilliant flower, with the dew of youth upon her. His gloomy room +lit up as she entered, and smelled sweet of her young womanhood hours +after she had gone. But "the ideal Mme. Heine"? No! Heine had +found his real Mme. Heine, the woman who had been faithful to him for +years, had faced poverty and calamity with him, and had nursed him +with laughing patience, day in and day out, for years. Heine had good +reason for knowing how "the ideal Mme. Heine" would have treated him +under such circumstances; for little bas-bleue "Mouche" had only to +have a bad cold to stay away from the bedside of her hero, though she +knew how he was counting the minutes to her coming, in the nervous, +hysterical fashion of the invalid. One of his bitterest letters +reproaches her with having kept him waiting in this way: + +"Tear my sides, my chest, my face, with red-hot pincers, flay me alive, +shoot, stone me, rather than keep me waiting. + +"With all imaginable torture, cruelly break my limbs, but do not keep +me waiting, for of all torments disappointed expectation is the most +painful. I expected thee all yesterday afternoon until six o'clock, +but thou didst not come, thou witch, and I grew almost mad. +Impatience encircled me like the folds of a viper, and I bounded on +my couch at every ring, but oh! mortal anguish, it did not bring thee. +"Thou didst fail to come; I fret, I fume, and Satanas whispered +mockingly in my ear--'The charming lotus-flower makes fun of thee, +thou old fool!'" + +"Camille Selden" made the mistake of her life when she imagined that +Heine loved her, and did not love that somewhat stout and +High-coloured Mme. Heine who had such bad taste in lace and literature. + +Mathilde, as we know, was far from being Heine's first love. She was +more important--his last. Heine himself tells us that from his +boyhood he had been dangerously susceptible to women. He had tried +many cures for the disease, but finally came to the conclusion that +"woman is the best antidote to woman", though--"to be sure, this is +driving out Satan with Beelzebub." There had been many loves in +Heine's life before, one day in the Quarrier Latin, somewhere in the +year 1835, he had met saucy, laughing Mathilde Crescence Mirat. +There had been "red Sefchen," the executioner's daughter, whose red +hair as she wound it round her throat fascinated Heine with its grim +suggestion of blood. There had been his cousin Amalie, whose +marriage to another is said to have been the secret spring of sorrow +by which Heine's laughter was fed. And there had been others, whose +names--imaginary, maybe, in that they were doubtless the imaginary +names of real women--are familiar to all readers of Heines poetry: +Seraphine, Angelique, Diane, Hortense, Clarisse, Emma, and so on. + +But she is loved best who is loved last; and when, after those months +of delirious dissipation in Paris, which all too soon were to be so +exorbitantly paid for by years of suffering, Heine met Mathilde, +there is no doubt at all that Heine met his wife. His reminiscent +fancy might sentimentalize about his lost Amalie, but no one can read +his letters, not so much to, as about, Mathilde without realizing +that he came as near to loving her as a man of his temperament can +come near to loving any one. + +Though, to begin with, they were not married in the conventional +sense, but "kept house" together in the fashion of the Quarter, +there seems no question that Heine was faithful to Mathilde--to whom +in his letters to his friends he always referred as his "wife"--and +that their relation, in everything but name, was a true marriage. +Just before he met Mathilde, Heine had written to his friend and +publisher, Campe, that he was at last sick to death of the poor +pleasures which had held him too long. "I believe," he writes, +"that my soul is at last purified of all its dross; henceforth my +verses will be the more beautiful, my books the more harmonious. +At all events, I know this--that at the present moment everything +impure and vulgar fills me with positive disgust." + +It was at this moment, disgusted with those common illusions +miscalled pleasure, that Heine met Mathilde, and was attracted by +what one might call the fresh elementalism of her nature. That his +love began with that fine intoxication of wonder and passion without +which no love can endure, this letter to his friend August Lewald +will show: "How can I apologize for not writing to you? And you are +kind enough to offer me the good excuse that your letter must have +been lost. No, I will confess the whole truth. I duly received +it--but at a time when I was up to my neck in a love affair that I +have not yet got out of. Since October nothing has been of any +account with me that was not directly connected with this. I have +neglected everything, I see nobody, and give a sigh whenever I think +of my friends.... So I have often sighed to think that you must +misunderstand my silence, yet I could not fairly set myself down to +write. And that is all I can tell you today; for my cheeks are in +such a flame, and my brain reels so with the scent of flowers, that I +am in no condition to talk sensibly to you. + +"Did you ever read King Solomon's Song? Just read it, and you will +there find all I could say today." + +So wrote Heine at the beginning of his love. When that love had +been living for eight years, he was still writing in no less +lover-like a fashion. "My wife," says he to his brother Max in a +letter dated April 12, 1843, "is a good child--natural, gay, +capricious, as only French women can be, and she never allows me for +one moment to sink into those melancholy reveries for which I have +so strong a disposition." + +When Heine wrote this letter, Mathilde had been his "legal" wife for +something like a year and a half. Heine had resorted to the +formalizing of their union under the pressure of one of those +circumstances which compel a man to think more of a woman than of an +idea. He was going to fight a duel with one of his and her cowardly +German traducers, and that there should be no doubt of her position +in the event of his death, he duly married her. Writing to his +friend Lewald once more, on the 13th of October, 1841, he says: "You +will have learned that, a few days before the duel, to make +Mathilde's position secure, I felt it right to turn my free marriage +into a lawful one. This conjugal duel, which will never cease till +the death of one or the other of us, is far more perilous than any +brief meeting with a Solomon Straus of Jew Lane, Frankfort." + +His friend Campe had been previously advised of "my marriage with the +lovely and honest creature who has lived by my side for years as +Mathilde Heine; was always respected and looked upon as my wife, and +was defiled by foul names only by some scandal-loving Germans of the +Frankfort clique." + +Heine's duel resulted in nothing more serious than a flesh-wound on +the hip. But alas! the wild months of dissipation before he had met +Mathilde were before long to be paid for by that long, excruciating +suffering which is one of the most heroic spectacles in the history +of literature. It is the paradox of the mocker that he often +displays the virtues and sentiments which he mocks, much more +manfully than the professional sentimentalist. Courage and laughter +are old friends, and Heine's laughter--his later laughter, at +least--was perhaps mostly courage. If for no other reason, one would +hope for a hereafter--so that Charles II and Heine may have met and +compared notes upon dying. Heine was indeed an "unconscionable long +time a-dying," but then he died with such brilliant patience, with +such good humour, and, in the meanwhile, contrived to write such +haunting poetry, such saturnine criticism. + +And, all the time, during those ten years of dying, his faithful +"Treasure" was by his side. The people who "understood" him better, +who read his books and delighted in his genius, somehow or other +seemed to forget the lonely Prometheus on the mattress-rock at No. +3 Avenue Matignon. It was 1854 when Heine was painfully removed +there. It was so long ago as the May of 1848 that he had walked out +for the last time. His difficult steps had taken him to the Louvre, +and, broken in body and nerves--but never in spirit--he had burst +into tears before the Venus of Milo. It was a characteristic +pilgrimage--though it was only a "Mouche" who could have taken Heine +seriously when he said that he loved only statues and dead women. +There was obviously a deep strain of the macabre and the bizarre in +Heine's nature; but it must never be forgotten that he loved his +Mathilde as well. + +That Heine was under no illusion about Mathilde, his letters show. +He would laugh at her on occasion, and even be a little bitter; but +if we are not to laugh at those we love, whom are we to laugh at? +So, at all events, thought Heine. Superior people might wonder that +a man with Heine's "intellect," et cetera, could put up, day after +day, with a little bourgeoise like Mathilde. But Heine might +easily have retorted: "Where anywhere in the world are you going to +find me a woman who is my equal, who is my true mate? You will +bring me cultivated governesses, or titled ladies who preside over +salons, or anemic little literary women with their imitative verse +or their amateurish political dreams. No, thank you. I am a man. +I am a sick, sad man. I need a kind, beautiful woman to love and +take care of me. She must be beautiful, remember, as well as kind-- +and she must be not merely a nurse, hut a woman I can love. If she +shouldn't understand my writings, what does it matter? We don't +marry a wife for that. I am not looking for some little patronizing +blue-stocking--who, in her heart, thinks herself a better writer +than myself--but for a simple woman of the elements, no more learned +than a rose, and as meaningless, if you will, as the rising moon." + +Just such a woman Heine found in his Mathilde, and it is to be +remembered that for years before the illness which left him, so to +speak, at her mercy, he had loved and been faithful to her. There +are letters which seem to show that Mathilde had the defects of those +qualities of buxom light-heartedness, of eternal sunshine, which had +kept a fickle Heine so faithful. Sometimes, one gathers, she as +little realized the tragedy of Heine's suffering as she understood +his writings. As such a woman must, she often left Heine very lonely; +and seemed to feel more for her cat, or her parrot "Cocotte," than +her immortal, dying husband. + +"Oh, what a night we have had!" Heine exclaimed one day to his +friend Meissner. "I have not been able to close an eye. We have had +an accident in our house; the cat fell from the mantelpiece and +scratched her right ear; it even bled a little. That gave us great +sorrow. My good Mathilde remained up and applied cold poultices to +the cat all night long. For me she never remains awake." + +And another time, he said, even more bitterly, to another friend: "I +felt rather anxious yesterday. My wife had finished her toilet as +early as two o'clock and had gone to take a drive. She promised to +be back at four o'clock. It struck half-past five and she had not +got back yet. The clock struck eight and my anxiety increased. Had +she, perhaps, got tired of her sick husband and eloped with a cunning +seducer? In my painful doubt I sent the sick-nurse to her chamber to +see whether 'Cocotte' the parrot was still there. Yes, 'Cocotte' was +still there. That set me at ease again, and I began to breathe more +freely. Without 'Cocotte' the dear woman would never go away." + +A great man like Heine must necessarily have such moods about a +little woman like Mathilde; but the important fact remains that for +some twenty years Heine was Mathilde's faithful husband, and that the +commonplace, pretty, ignorant, pleasure-loving, bourgeoise Mathilde +was good and faithful to a crippled, incomprehensible mate. Perhaps, +after all, the wonder in this marriage is even more on the side of +Mathilde than of Heine. Think what such a woman must have had to +forego, to suffer, to "put up with," with such a man--a man, remember, +whose real significance must have been Chinese to her. Surely, all +of us who truly love love by faith, and the love of Heine for +Mathilde, and of Mathilde for Heine, alike is only to be explained by +that mysterious explanation--faith. + +That Heine understood his love for Mathilde, so far as any man of +genius can understand his love, and was satisfied with it so far as +any man of genius can be with any love, we may be quite sure. His +many letters about her, and to her, prove it. All the elemental +simplicities of her nature--the very bourgeoise traits which made his +friends wonder--alike interested him, and drew him closer toward her. +When she weaves a rug for his friend Lewald, how seriously he takes +it! He could laugh at all things in heaven and earth, but when +Mathilde weaves a rug for his friend he takes life seriously. + +How "domestic" Heine could be is witnessed by a letter of his--to +Mathilde from Hamburg in 1823--in regard to her buying a hat for his +sister and another for his niece--giving careful directions as to +style and price. Mathilde and he had then been each other's for over +eight years, but none the less--nay, let us say all the more--he +ended his letter: "Adieu! I think only of thee, and I love thee like +the madman that I am." + +Perhaps the truest proof of Heine's love for Mathilde is the way in +which, in his will, he flattered his despicable cousin, Carl Heine, +for her sake, so that she might not suffer any loss of his +inheritance. There is no doubt that Heine knew the worth of his +Mathilde. If so terrible a critic of human nature was satisfied to +love and live with her for so many years, we may be sure that +Mathilde was a remarkable woman. She didn't indeed talk poetry and +philosophy, like little "Mouche," but then the women who do that +are legion; and Mathilde was one of those rarer women who are just +women, and love they know not why. + +In saying this, we mustn't forget that "Camille Selden" said it was +ridiculous to sentimentalize about Mme. Heine. Yet, at the same time, +we must remember Heine's point of view. When "Camille Selden" first +sought his acquaintance, he had been living with Mathilde for some +twenty years. Men of genius--and even ordinary men are not apt to +live with women they do not love for twenty years; and that Heine did +perhaps the one wise thing of his life in marrying his Mathilde there +can be very little doubt. + +To a man such as Heine a woman is not so much a personality as a +beautiful embodiment of the elements: "Earth, air, fire and water met +together in a rose."' If she is beautiful, he will waive +"intellectual sympathy"; if she is good, he will not mind her +forgetting the titles of his books. When she becomes a mother, he +--being a man of genius--understands that she is a more wonderful +being than he can ever hope to be. + +Much has been said about the unhappy marriages of great writers. The +true reason too often has been that they have married literary +amateurs instead of women and wives. Heine was wiser. No one would, +of course, pretend that Mathilde was his mate. But, then, what woman +could have been? Certainly not that little literary prig he called +his "Mouche." + + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Old Love Stories Retold by +Richard Le Gallienne. +At present we have only this one chapter/story of this book. + diff --git a/3267.zip b/3267.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..18afb7c --- /dev/null +++ b/3267.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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