The Youth of Goethe | Page 9

himself is careful to tell us,
Prussia and its interests were nothing to him. It was to the pain he felt
when his hero was defamed by the supporters of Austria that he traced
that contempt of public opinion which he notes as a characteristic of the
greater part of his manhood, yet we may doubt if any external event
was needed to develop in him this special turn of mind. As his whole

manner of thinking proves, it was neither in his character nor his genius
to make a popular appeal like a Burns or a Schiller.[12] In his old age
Goethe said of himself that he was conscious of an innate feeling of
aristocracy which made him regard himself as the peer of princes; and
we need no further explanation of his contempt of public opinion. Yet
if the worship of heroes has the moulding influence which Carlyle
ascribed to it, in Goethe's youthful admiration of Frederick this
influence could not be wanting. To the end Frederick appeared to him
one of those "demonic" personalities, who from time to time cross the
world's stage, and whose action is as incalculable as the phenomena of
the natural world. "When such an one passes to his rest, how gladly
would we be silent," were his memorable words when the news of
Frederick's death reached him during his Italian travels, and the remark
proves how deeply and permanently Frederick's career had impressed
him.
[Footnote 12: His remark to Eckermann (1828) is well known: "Meine
Sachen können nicht populär werden; wer daran denkt und dafür strebt,
ist in einem Irrthum."]
More easily realised is the direct influence on Goethe's youthful
development of another event of his boyhood. As a result of the Seven
Years' War, 7,000 French troops took possession of Frankfort in the
beginning of 1759, and occupied it for more than three years. In the
ways of a foreign soldiery at free quarters the Frankforters saw a
strange contrast to their own decorous habits of life, but the French
occupation was brought more directly home to the Goethe household.
To the disgust and indignation of the father, to whom as a worshipper
of Frederick the French were objects of detestation, their chief officer,
Count Thoranc, quartered in his own house. Goethe has told in detail
the history of this invasion of the quiet household--the never-failing
courtesy and considerateness of Thoranc, the abiding ill-humour of the
father, the reconciling offices of the mother, exercised in vain to effect
a mutual understanding between her husband and his unwelcome guest.
As for Goethe himself, devoted to Frederick though he was, the
presence of the French introduced him to a new world into which he
entered with boyish delight. With the insatiable curiosity which was his

characteristic throughout life, he threw himself into the pleasures and
avocations of the novel society. Thoranc was a connoisseur in art, and
gave frequent commissions to the artists of the town; and Goethe,
already interested in art through his father's collections, found his
opportunity in these tastes of Thoranc, who was struck by the boy's
precocity and even took hints from his suggestions.
A theatre set up by the French was another source of pleasure and
stimulus. The sight of the pieces that were acted prompted him to
compose pieces of his own and led him to the study of the French
classical drama. In the coulisses, to which he was admitted by special
favour, he observed the ways of actors--an experience which supplied
the materials for the portraiture of the actor's life in Wilhelm Meister. A
remark which he makes in connection with the French theatre is a
significant commentary on his respective relations to his father and
mother, and indicates the atmosphere of evasion which permanently
pervaded the household. It was against the will of his father, but with
the connivance of his mother, that he paid his visits to the theatre and
cultivated the society of the actors, and it was only by the consideration
that his son's knowledge of French was thus improved that the practical
father was reconciled to the delinquency. The direct results of his
intercourse with the French soldiery on Goethe's development were at
once abiding and of high importance. It extended his knowledge of men
and the world, and, more specifically, it gave him that interest in
French culture and that insight into the French mind which he
possessed in a degree beyond any of his contemporaries.
But the most notable experience of these early years under his father's
roof still remains to be mentioned. When he was in his fourteenth year,
Goethe fell in love--the first of the many similar experiences which
were to form the successive crises of his future life. There can be little
doubt that in his narrative