DICKENS AND GERMANY IN 1873 Karl Hillebrand complained, in one of his letters from that the English as a whole had remarkably little interest i affairs and practically no understanding of them; and this w peculiar, he thought, when one realized that a German d occupied the throne of England for a century and a half, an discovered the tireless curiosity with which the English follo affairs.1 Dickens certainly cannot be excepted from this latter generalization. His acquaintance with Germany had been small, and though his interest in the men and affairs of the country was sympathetic, it was not deep and lasting. His school education had been elementary, and in his later fairly wide private study he learned little of Germany. He spoke French well, but could not always write it without mistakes; and that, with a little Italian, was his sole knowledge of foreign languages. Benignus says: Die Schule brachte ihm weder einen Sinn fur die Klassiker bei, obwohl er Latein lernen musste, noch die Kenntnis der modernen Sprachen, um die Erzeugnisse der ausserenglischen Schriftsteller, soweit sie nicht in landlaufiger Ubersetzung vorhanden waren, zu verstehen, oder auch nur seine Aufmerksamkeit darauf zu lenken.2 That he realized the importance of a knowledge of German is shown by a letter of his dated 22 November 1852. Referring to his eldest son, who wished to enter commerce, he writes: ’We have arranged, therefore, that he shall leave Eton at Christmas and go to Germany, to become well acquainted with that language, now most essential in such a walk of life as he will probably tread.’3 He frequently expressed his sorrow at his own complete ignorance of German; in 1841, for example, to Dr Heinrich Kiinzel (the letter is quoted in full below), and again in 1842, when Freiligrath, an admirer of Dickens from a very early time, sent him a copy of his poems through Longfellow, who was a personal friend of both. Longfellow wrote to Freiligrath: ‘He thanks you most kindlily for your poems-which, alas! he cannot read-and will send you in a few days a copy of his American Notes’.4 In 1846, travelling in the Rhineland, he noticed a great number of people reading his books and, according to Forster, ’remarked… how great his own vexation was, not to be able himself to speak a word of German .5 1 K. Hillebrand, Zeiten, Volker und Menschen, Berlin, 1876, III, the second letter, p. 8. 2 S. Benignus, Studien iiber die Anfdnge von Dickens, Diss., Strassburg, 1895, p. 33. 3 Letters of Charles Dickens, published by his sister-in-law and his eldest daughter, London, 1893, 3rd ed., p. 278. 4 S. Longfellow, Life of H. W. Longfellow, London, 1886, I, p. 421. 5 J. Forster, Life of Charles Dickens, London, 1928, edition annotated by J. W. T. Ley, p. 390. He had practically no acquaintance with German literature; there are occasionally small references in his books and letters, or in Forster’s ‘Life’, to the Faust legend, for example,l and to the story of Baron Trenck,2 but there is nothing of any substance. Sara Coleridge’s sug- gestion to Aubrey de Vere that ‘The Old Curiosity Shop is a good deal borrowed from Wilhelm Meister’, and that the figure of Little Nell was probably suggested by Mignon, is not accepted by Forster, who writes: ’Expressing no opinion on the comparison, I may state it was within my knowledge that the book referred to was not then known by Dickens.’3 That he may have read it later, in English translation, is shown by an inspection of his library list,4 which is otherwise rather disappointing. At first the list of books on German subjects appears interesting, but a large majority of them are presentation copies, and are consequently of little significance. Among these presentation volumes are Fliigel’s English-German dictionary (1856); Goethe’s works, translated by John Oxenford (1867-including the Wilhelm Meister referred to above); a translation by W. Ross of Lessing’s Laocoon; two different copies of the adventures of Till Eulenspiegel, and a translation of Schiller’s early dramas and romances, from H. G. Bohn. There are a few books without manuscript dedication, but which were also probably presentations: these include German Novelists; Tates from Ancient and Modern Authors, translated with critical and biographical notes by T. Roscoe (1826), and a translation of Freytag’s Bilder aus der Deutschen Vergangenheit in four volumes. There were also in his library copies of the German editions of nine of his earliest works-Die Pickwickier, 1837-8; Londoner Skizzen, 1838; Oliver Twist, 1838-9; Leben und Schicksale der Familie Nickelby, 1838-40; Master Humphreys Wanduhr, 1840-1; Barnaby Rudge, 1841; Leben und Abenteuer Martin Chuzzlewits, 1843-4; Der Weihnachtsabend, 1844; Die Geschichte Englands fir Jung und Alt, 1852 (Bd. I). From the fact that Dickens bought so few, if any, of these books himself, we may conclude that his interest in German history and literature was very small. The complete list is not altogether negligible, but it is doubtful whether he paid much attention to the presentation copies which predominate. The success of the Pickwick Papers attracted the attention of German publishers, and by 1838, thanks to various good translations, Dickens was 1 Forster, p. 658; Letters, p. 555; David Copperfield, chap. II, etc. 2 Letters, p. 573, and in The Holly Tree (Christmas Stories). 3 Forster, p. 723, footnote. 4 J. H. Stonehouse, Catalogue of the Library of Charles Dickens, from Gadshill, London, 1935. 241E. N. GTUMMER 16M. L. R. XXXIII 242 Dickens and Germany already popular in Germany. In that year Dr Kiinzel of wrote to him and asked for a short autobiography for inclu Brockhaus Konversationslexikon. He replied from Doughty S the letter, since well known, explaining that he was born at P ‘an English seaport town, principally remarkable for mud, sailors’; giving full facts of his life, adding: ‘if it be any con the German ladies to know that I have two children, pray te and mentioning his travels in England, Scotland and France eyes open’. ’Heaven send that some kind wind may ere long to Germany!’l Soon after this he reviewed Thomas Hoo Rhine (1839) for the Examiner,2 and this may have given him plan for a visit to Germany. But the kind wind was only to blow once in his life. In Nov a first attempt to see something of the country failed; he wa back through Switzerland from a visit to Italy, and wrote from Paris on 28 November: ’I got to Strasburgh on Mon intending to go down the Rhine. But the weather being fogg season quite over, they could not insure our getting on, fo beyond Mayence; or our not being detained by unpropitiou so he returned to England through Paris, and it was not unt summer of 1846, when he set out for Switzerland via Ostend Coblenz and Mannheim, that he saw anything of Germany; was to be his only visit. Forster gives an interesting account … the beauty of the weather showed them the Rhine at its best. At M had come aboard their boat a German, who soon after accosted Mrs. Di in excellent English: ‘Your countryman Mr. Dickens is travelling this w our papers say. Do you know him, or have you passed him anywhere?’ ensuing, it turned out, by one of the odd chances my friend thought h singled out for, that he had with him a letter of introduction to the b gentleman; who then spoke to him of the popularity of his books in Germ the many persons he had seen reading them in the steamboats as h Dickens remarking at this how great his own vexation was not to be ab speak a word of German, ‘Oh dear! that needn’t trouble you’ rejoine ‘for even in so small a town as ours, where we are mostly primitive pe few travellers, I could make a party of at least forty people who un speak English as well as I do, and of at least as many more who could m you in the original.’ His town was Worms, which Dickens afterwards sa old place, though greatly shrunken and decayed in respect of its popu a picturesque old cathedral standing on the bank of the Rhine, and so churches shut up, and so hemmed in and overgrown with vineyards th as if they were turning into leaves and grapes.’3 The whole journey from London to Bale only took eight though he says elsewhere that his valet Roche, who came fro The Dickensian, November 1912, pp. 297-8. 2 The article unfortunately cannot be traced; there is indeed some doubt th published. See Forster, pp. 132, 137-8. 3 Forster, p. 390. E. N. GUMMER was not too well at ease in Germany because of great difficult language, Dickens himself seems to have been pleased wit there are affectionate references in some of his works after 18 castles and Rhine wine and inns of the Rhineland; an amu example, in The Holly Tree, one of the Christmas stories; stou Rhineland inns, who will stay all night ‘clinking glasses, about the river that flows, and the grape that grows, and Rhi beguiles, and Rhine woman that smiles and hi drink drink my ho drink drink my brother, and all the rest of it’. At least three of Dickens’ children made visits to Germ them, as was mentioned above, was his eldest son, Ch junior, who stayed for nearly two years. The boy wished merchant, and arrangements were made through Baron T nearly thirty years a close friend of Dickens-for him to education at Leipzig.l Dickens took great interest in his son and frequently refers to them in his letters: for example, in ‘Charley is still at Leipzig… he has been in the Hartz mou walking tour, and has written a journal thereof, which he in portions. It has cost about as much in postage as would a pair of ponies.’ And in September: ’Charley was heard of ago. He says his professor “is very short-sighted, alw spectacles, always drinking weak beer, always smokin always at work”. The last qualification seems to appear to most astonishing one.‘2 Another son, Frank, also visited 1860, and a daughter, Kate, was at Wiesbaden in 1864.3 Ch junior later published a few German plays arranged for tr English: for example, Goethe’s Egmont and Schiller’s Neff Various letters also give us some idea of Dickens’ opinion Two in particular are valuable. The first was written to an translator of his works, Dr Johann August Diezmann, 10 March 1840: My dear Sir I will not attempt to tell you how much gratified I have been by the receipt of your first English letter: nor can I describe to you with what delight and gratification I learn that I am held in such high esteem by your great countrymen, whose favourable appreciation is flattering indeed. To you, who have undertaken the laborious (and often, I fear, very irksome) task 1 Forster, p. 570, footnote. 2 Letters, pp. 294, 300. 3 Letters, pp. 496, 576. 4 With deference, I suggest this is the right Diezmann; if so, the initials are not S. A., as in the edition of the letters, and not U., as suggested by Suzannet in The Dickensian, 1931-2, xXVIII, pp. 60-2. For J. A. Diezmann see Kelchner in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, v, p. 222, and Briimmer, Deutsches Dichterlexikon, 1886-7, I, p. 142. 16-2 243 244 Dickens and Germany of clothing me in the German garb, I owe a long arrear of thanks. I wish you would come to England, and afford me an opportunity of slightly reducing the account. It is with great regret that I have to inform you, in reply to the request contained in your pleasant communication, that my publishers have already made such arrange- ments, and are in possession of such stipulations relative to the proof-sheets of my new works, that I have no power to send them out of England. If I had, I need not tell you what pleasure it would afford me to promote your views.1 The second, paradoxically only available in German translation, is dated from Broadstairs, 13 September 1841. Heinrich Kiinzel had again written to Dickens, this time to ask his support for a weekly magazine, which was to be called Britannia, and would contain translations from English and articles on English literature, with Kiinzel and Freiligrath as editors.2 Dickens replied: Glauben Sie mir, mein verehrter Herr, ich kann ohne jede Schmeichelei sagen, dass nachst der Gunst und guten Meinung meiner eigenen Landsleute ich die Achtung des deutschen Volkes uber alle Massen hochschatze. Ich verehre und bewundere es mehr, als ich ausdriicken kann. Ich weiss, dass es mit seinen grossen geistigen Fahigkeiten und der H6he seiner Kultur das auserwahlte Volk der Erde ist, und niemals war ich stolzer und gliicklicher, als da ich zum erstenmal horte, dass meine Werke vor seinen Augen Gnade gefunden’ hatten. Nichts, was englische Literatur mit Deutschland verbindet, kann mir gleichgultig sein. Das Ziel Ihrer neuen Zeitschrift ist mein Ziel und das jeden Englanders, der Interesse und Freude empfindet an dem Fortschritt der menschlichen Geister. Gott fordere ihn und Sie. Ich wiinschte bei Gott, deutsch sprechen zu konnen, und ware es noch so schlecht; k6nnte ich es, so wiirde ich in sechs Monaten Ihr Mitarbeiter sein.3 German politics, however, were apparently not included in this otherwise comprehensive testimonial. This Dickens demonstrated on the occasion of the imprisonment in Prussia, for political reasons, of Gottfried Kinkel-Professor at Bonn University, poet, playwright and distinguished scholar. Dickens had been leading agitation for his release, and on 4 December 1850 he wrote from the office of Household Words: ’We had been following up the blow in Kinkel’s favour, and I was growing sanguine in the hope of getting him out (having enlisted strong and active sympathy in his behalf) when the news came of his escape. Since then we have heard nothing of him. I rather incline to the belief that the damnable powers that be connived at his escape, but know nothing….’4 In the following year the article Whole Hogs, in the issue of Household Words dated 23 August, even includes Germany in a list of countries where ‘there are tyrants and oppressors… watchful to find freedom weak that they may strike, and backed by great armies’. 1 Letters, p. 34. 2 W. Buchner, F. Freiligrath: Ein Dichterleben in Briefen, Lahr, 1882, 2 vols., I, p. 387; and see Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, 1876, Nr. 82. 3 Tigliche Rundschau, 26 February 1915; and in F. Schweizer, Die Auslinder in den Romanen von Dickens, Diss., Giessen, 1920, p. 18. Only a Probenummer of Britannia was. ever published; the promoters, publishers of Pforzheim, lost courage. 4 Letters, pp. 224-5. E. N. GITMMER Apart from this his relations with Germany appear to hav but always friendly. His connexions with Kiinzel, Diezmann, Freiligrath have already been mentioned; and he knew a fe By 1843 he was writing the first of a long series of friendl Baron Tauchnitz, who had founded the great series of edition and American authors in 1841. Tauchnitz later communicated some information about this friendship to Forster, who mentions it in the Life: “’ All Mr. Dickens’ works”, M. Tauchnitz writes to me, “have been published under agreement by me. My intercourse with him lasted nearly 27 years. The first of his letters dates in October 1843 and his last at the close of March 1870. Our long relations were not only never troubled by the least disagreement, but were the occasion of most hearty personal feeling; and I shall never lose the sense of his kind and friendly nature.” 1 Professor Lehmann-Haupt tells how arrangements were made for his father, Dr Emil Lehmann, to produce the German translation of Edwin Drood as each number was published in England. Dr Lehmann’s younger brother, Friedrich Lehmann, had married a daughter of the Chambers family of Edinburgh, and was an intimate friend of Dickens; the arrange- ment for the translation was made through him.2 Another interesting acquaintance was that with Emil Devrient, whom Dickens met on his first visit to England in 1852. In a letter to Knight, dated 29 June 1852, Dickens writes: I dined with Charles Kemble, yesterday, to meet Emil Devrient, the German actor. He said (Devrient is my antecedent) that Ophelia spoke the snatches of ballads in their German version of Hamlet, because they didn’t know the airs. Tom Taylor said that you had published the airs in your Shakespeare. I said that if it were so, I knew you would be happy to place them at the German’s service. If you have got them and will send them to me, I will write to Devrient (who knows no English) a French explanation and reminder of the circumstance, and will tell him that you responded like a man….3 There are very few references to Germany in his works. Like the Germans on the Dover packet (in the Uncommercial Traveller), the Germans in his books are ‘few and shadowy’. The first (possible) German to appear is in chapter 15 of the Pickwick Papers, at Mrs Leo Hunter’s party at Eatanswill: Count Smorltork, who, it has been suggested, is a caricature of Prince Piickler-Muskau. The Count was a ‘famous foreigner-gathering materials for his great work on England’. He ha been in England ‘long-ver long time-fortnight-more’, and was stay another week. All his material was already collected in a ‘lar book at home-full of notes-music, picture, science, potry, poltic; all 1 Forster, p. 807, footnote. 3 Letters, p. 269. 2 The Dickensian, 1929, p. 159. 245 246 Dickens and Germany tings’. Piickler-Muskau had toured much of Europe, including England and Ireland, in the twenties, and had published long accounts of what he had seen: accounts that were not always free from absurdities, and which Thomas Hood even accused of showing ‘petty jealousy’. Dickens’ third novel, Nicholas Nickleby, contains, as an inserted short story, The Baron of Grogzwig (chapter 6)-the longest reference to Germany in Dickens’ works. The Baron von Koeldwethout, of Grogzwig in Germany, at first passes his life mainly in drinking quantities of Rhine wine, smoking his pipe, and hunting boars or bears, helped by his twenty- four retainers. Later he marries a daughter of the house of Swillenhausen, and in a few years is father of a large family. After some time, driven to despair by lack of money, he is about to kill himself, but, disgusted by the dismal Genius of Despair and Suicide, he changes his mind and settles down to a happier existence. Then in Dombey and Son there is Cousin Feenix, who has lived for a considerable time at Baden-Baden; and Bleak House, besides another very slight reference (in chapter 19) to the spas of Germany, has Mr Skimpole, who is able to sing the refrains of German drinking songs ‘by the score’. The essay A Christmas Tree (‘That pretty German toy’) in Reprinted Pieces has a paragraph on German ghosts and German castles, and one of the three parties of travellers on the St Bernard pass, described in Little Dorrit (chapter 37), is of four Germans: ‘a plethoric, hungry and silent German tutor in spectacles, on a tour with three young men, his pupils, all plethoric, hungry and silent, and all in spectacles’. Lastly there is a reference in Our Mutual Friend (Bk 3, chapter 7) to the wooden toys from Germany so common then on the market; Wegg is compared to one of these in his ‘hard-grained face… and his stiff knotty figure’. Various articles in Household Words which touch on German subjects were not written by Dickens; the ‘Bendigo Buster’ essay, for example (28 December 1850), which discusses education in Prussia, was written by Henry Morley, and only slightly remodelled by Dickens later. These meagre references show how little Dickens occupied himself, in his actual production, with Germany. But he had had evidence of his fame in that country during his brief visit in 1846, and the letters of Diezmann and Kiinzel had made him conscious, even before that year, of his wide popularity there. Arrangements had been made, very early in his career, for the publication of his books in Germany, and the first mention he makes of this is in a letter to Cattermole, dated 13 January 1840. He asks for the illustrations to Master Humphrey’s Clock, and says: ‘My new periodical work appears-or I should rather say the first E. N. GUMMER number does-on Saturday 28th March; and as it has t America and Germany, and must therefore be considerabl it is now in hand.. .’–and Diezmann’s letter (quoted above him of Germany’s sympathy only two months later. Once his popularity in Germany he did not forget it; the knowle part of the Continent enjoyed his works had given him gr and supported him in many of his future activities. D fortunate first visit to America in 1842, writing of his strugg the American copyright of his books, he says: ‘Some of t [i.e. those who had produced pirated editions of his books credit to themselves (grant us patience!) for having made by publishing my books in newspapers; as if there were n Scotland, no Germany, no place but America in the whole Here the evidence for Dickens’ knowledge of German lif comes to an end. It is too meagre for any particular theory of to be founded upon it, and the utmost one can say is that respect for the strong intellectual life of the country, lik counted some of them among his friends, and was delight popularity there. Unlike his contemporaries Carlyle, Thackeray and Bulw Dickens took little interest in the affairs of Germany; his that country was, nevertheless, considerably greater tha reasons for this and the details and effects of his popularit to summarize in a future publication. E. N. GUMMER. OXFORD. 247 1 Letters, p. 31. 2 Forster, p. 220.

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