Villa Eden: The Country-House on the Rhine

He found Sonnenkamp in the seed-room, hurriedly smoking a cigar: he laid it down, and went back to the audience-room.

Weidmann informed Sonnenkamp of the conclusion they had come to, and the remarks of Professor Einsiedel. Sonnenkamp nodded assent. "Before I resume," he said, taking one of the pieces of wood with a smile, "I must beg indulgence for a habit which I am sorry to say I cannot drop. I am in the habit, when I am alone, busy in thought – and I shall address you as if I were alone – as I remarked, I am accustomed either to smoke or to whittle, oftentimes both together. I can compose myself better if my accustomed practice is now indulged in."

He seated himself, took one of the bits of wood, and, cutting a deep notch around it, began, —

"I beg that any one of you will interrupt me with questions if involuntarily I leave any thing obscure or unexplained. Now then: I am the only son of the richest man in Warsaw. If I tell you of my youth, it is not because I wish to throw the responsibility of my acts upon circumstances or upon fate. My father had the largest business in wood and grain. When I was six years old, he removed to a large German town, for in clearing a forest my older brother had been killed by a falling tree; My mother died soon after, and lies buried with him in the village near by. I was often told that I should have a step-mother; but it was not so. My father – I speak as openly of him as of myself – was one of the most popular of men, but felt no affection for any person or thing on earth. He gave both hands to every one who approached him, and was extremely complaisant, kind, cordial, and expressive; but, as soon as a man had turned his back; he spoke slightingly of him. He was a hypocrite from choice, even where there was no necessity of being so. He was so even towards the beggar. This, however, I did not perceive until at a later period. At my father's table there were present state officials, artists, and learned men: they liked good eating, and, in order to get it, were obliged to set off our table with their decorations and titles. We gave great parties, and had no social visiting. There were grand banquets in the house, and there sat down at them men decorated with stars, and women with bare shoulders: at the dessert I was brought in, passed from lap to lap, carressed and flattered, and fed with ices and confectionery. I was dressed handsomely, and in some old lumber-room there must be a portrait, – I would give a great deal to come across it again, – painted life-size, and with crisped locks, by the first court-painter, and afterwards sold with the rest of our household stuff. We had no relatives. I had a private tutor; for my father did not want to send me to a public school. I grew up the idol of my father, and he always kissed me warmly when I was carried to him by his order. My tutor indulged me in every thing, and taught me to regard myself alone as the central point of all, and never to pay any regard to my dear fellow human beings. This helped me more than he could imagine. The capital thing is to blunt the conscience, as it is termed: all men do it, but some more superficially than others. The world is nothing but a collection of egoisms hanging loosely together. When I was sixteen years old, I had already fallen into the hands of usurers; for I was the heir of a million, and that was a larger sum then than seven times as much to-day. My father's solicitor settled with them, and, as soon as that was done, I ran up new bills, delighted that my credit was so good. In short, I was a fast youth, and I continued to be so. I have already said, I believe, that I had no love, no respect even, for my father, who was – the truth must be told – one of the most exquisite hypocrites that ever wore the white cravat of respectability. My father was a very honest hypocrite. Others dissemble, and whitewash it over with a coating of ideality, persuading themselves that there is something real and actual in other things than money and pleasure. My father was also a philosopher, and used to say, My son, the world belongs to him who has strength or cunning enough to conquer it; and whoever takes a sentimental view has the pleasure of taking it, and nothing more."

Sonnenkamp scraped energetically at the bit of wood which he held in his hand, and for a moment nothing was heard but the scratching of the knife rounding off the end.

"This being said," he resumed, "I can continue with calmness. At seventeen years of age, I was a spendthrift, inducted into all kinds of respectable iniquities. I was a jolly comrade, a good-for-nothing fellow; but I was respectable, rich, and therefore very popular; for nature and destiny had been terribly lavish in securing this result. My father regularly paid my gambling debts and other debts also. He went with me to the ballet, and often handed me his more powerful opera glass, that I might get a better view of the sylph-like Cortini, who was no stranger to me, as he very well knew. Yes, we were a jovial set. My father gave me only one counsel, and that was, Don't confine yourself to one. Every Sunday I must dissemble, and say I was going to church; but my father knew well enough, and took a secret satisfaction in the knowledge, that I went elsewhere. Our carriage stood every other Sunday at the church where the most pious and celebrated preacher held forth; and on the alternate Sunday we did not drive, but walked, for then our coachmen also went, and our horses, too, had a Sunday. Our very servants must appear pious. My father was Protestant, and I was Catholic out of regard to my mother. I leave it for others to decide in which confession hypocrisy is cultivated the more successfully.

"Now the question came up what was I to do? I had no fancy for sitting at the accountant's desk, and wanted to be a soldier; but I was not of noble rank, and was not willing to be received at the Jockey Club simply on sufferance. I dropped off from my youthful companions, and from that time played the gentleman. I went to Paris. I enjoyed a superfluity of the pleasures furnished by the world. Most people plume themselves upon their virtue, and their virtue is nothing more than a feebleness of constitution; they make a virtue of necessity. When I had sowed enough wild oats, my father sent for me. I lived at home, and the specimens I saw before me of what was termed virtue were nothing but cowardice, and fear of not being respected. To be virtuous is a bore; to appear virtuous is amusing and profitable at the same time. Every thing that can be done without detection is allowable: the main thing is to belong to society. I often went from the most brilliant assemblies into the wretchedest dens; and the lowest vice seemed to me the most worthy of respect. I was a roué, and remained so. We were proud of being a rollicking and reckless crew. It had a sort of poetic tinge. Let one be a poet like Byron, be a genius, an exception to the ordinary crowd, and what in lower conditions would be crime is then regarded as a gallant feat. I saw that the whole world was vice under a mask, and I think there is no vice; the name is given, poison is written on the phial, so that the bulk of mankind may not drink out of it. I was made acquainted, whether accidentally or designedly I do not know, with a beautiful girl, fresh as a rose. It was time that I, at one and twenty, should settle down as a married man. All congratulated me on having sowed my wild oats, as it is termed, and that I was now to become a respectable husband and the head of a family. My betrothed was an enthusiastic child, and I don't understand it to this day, how she could make light of my past as she did, probably under the direction of her mother. Why I married the child I do not know. As I was going to church, and returning from it, as I was making the wedding trip, in which every thing was very modest and proper, it seemed to be somebody else, and not myself, who was the actor. We returned, and – but I will spin out the story no further than to say, that I discovered an earlier attachment of the sweet child. The only thing that vexed me was to be laughed at. I left her, and while the arrangements were being made for a separation, she died, and with her an unborn life. I was again free, free! That means that I was in Paris. I wanted to enjoy life: to drain the cup to the very dregs. Dissipation, dissipation, was my sole end: I yearned for distracting pleasure – I wanted to exhaust life, and every morning it was new born. My soul was a void, a void everywhere. I despised life, and yet did not fling it from me. What has life to offer? Reputation or riches – the former I could not strive after, the latter was open to me. My father wanted to hold me within a narrow range. I operated on the Exchange. I gained considerable sums, and lost them again, but still had enough left to keep afloat by means of gambling. I was at Marseilles, among a jolly set, when I heard of my father's death. The largest part of my inheritance was seized upon by my creditors, and, because I wanted to have no recollections of home, I wrote to the attorney to sell off every thing. A malicious saying went the rounds after his death. We had had no idea how well he was known; now it was said, 'There was one good thing about him, and that is, he was better than his son.'

"The Germans say that God and the Devil are wrestling with one another for the dominion of the world. I have hitherto only heard of these two mighty potencies, they have never yet presented themselves before me; but I was convinced that there were two things engaged in a strong tussle, and these were Work and Ennui. Men benumb themselves in work, in pleasure, in the foolery of morality, as it is termed. All is vanity, the wise king has said; but it ought to be said, All is stale, tedious, flat, a long-drawn yawn, that ends only in the death-rattle. I have run over the whole sandy desert of ennui, and there is no remedy there but opium, hashish, gambling, and adventure. I took lessons of a juggler, and acquired great skill, for which I stood in high repute among my companions; I had the most splendid apparatus. I lived in Italy at a later period, out of pure wantonness, as a juggler by profession. I was in Paris at the time of Louis Philippe; there's nothing merrier than these frequent émeutes: they are the people's games of chance."

Sonnenkamp stopped, and now, boring with his knife very delicately, he said, —

"Do you look at me in astonishment, because I impart wisdom? Well, that is also insipid like every thing else: honor, gold, music, friendship, glory, all is emptiness. The men of virtue, the men of honor, are all like those augurs who could not look into each other's faces without laughing at the idle tale which they impose upon the world. The gods of to-day, in the church as well as in the world, say, we know that you are only hypocrites; but that you must play the hypocrite is an evidence of our authority. And the so-called delight in nature, in mountain and valley, in water and forest, sunlight and moonlight and starry brightness – what does it all amount to? a mere cheat, a curtain to hide the grave you are to lie in. What is a man to do in the world? Do you know that millions have lived before him, and have looked at the stars? Is he to be proud of playing the same old tune over and over again, like the man with his hurdy-gurdy, grinding out the same melody to-day and to-morrow that he did yesterday? You see I had learned my Byron by heart. The misfortune was, that I was neither a poet nor a highly interesting pirate. I was disgusted with the world and with myself. I did not want to kill myself. I wanted to live, and to despise every thing. I had madly, as if in mockery of myself, lost every thing at play; and now came the merriest thing of all. It was a cold, wet night; but it suited me well, as I went through the streets, completely plucked as I was. Whew! How lustily the wind blew! it was cooling. Here was I traversing the ant-hill of the great city; my money I had gambled away, and my love had been unfaithful. A nice, prudent little fellow there was, who proved to me over a bottle of canary, that I possessed a capital which I didn't understand how to put at interest; that I was a born diplomatist. I knew the decoy-duck at the first whistle. I was to be a diplomatist, and so I sported that character. New horses, new servants, a new love, and a large new house, were now mine. I was an attaché; in good German, I was a spy. I cover the word with no nice little moral cloak. The life was a merry one. This time the discovery had been made: now dissembling had a definite end. The praise which the ambassador lavished upon me I deserved more than he was aware. Did you ever hear of being insured against the insurance company? I brought the ambassador most important information; but I had an after appointment with the minister of police, and gave him secret notice of the ambassador's machinations. The ambassador gave me false information; but we could extract from this what his real intention was."

A smile passed over the countenances of the hearers, and Sonnenkamp continued, —

"A day came when I must flee. I had the choice of five passports with five different names under which to travel. I wanted, first of all, concealment; and one is best concealed among so called honest people. I came to Nice, where I was a gardener. All my senses were paralyzed. I seemed to myself a corpse, and as if I with my thoughts were only the companion of this corpse. Here I and the gardener became one again; the odor of the moist earth was the first thing that, for a long time, had given me any pleasure, no, that made me feel I was alive. Chemistry can imitate every thing; but the fragrance that rises out of the fresh earth no perfume ever possessed. Herr Dournay surprised me on the first hour of his arrival, just as I was digging in the fresh mould. It gave me strength. The masquerade pleased me; I had good sleep, a good appetite. The gardener's daughter wanted to marry me. I had again a reason for flight. I had laid away a good sum of money; now I dug it up. I began a new life of pleasure at Naples. I confess I was proud of assuming all sorts of transformations: I was entirely afloat, in good health and good spirits. I had a good circulation, and social talent: the world was mine. I had friends wherever I went: how long were they my friends? Perhaps only so long as I stuck fast to my money. That was a matter of indifference to me. I desired no loyalty, for I gave none. I was always thankful to my parents for one thing; they had given me an indestructible constitution. I had a body of steel, a heart of marble, and unshakable nerves; I knew no sickness and no pity. I have experienced many provocations to pity" —

He paused. It was the only time during his whole speech that he smiled; and a peculiar smack of satisfaction proceeded from him.

Then he continued: —

"A strange trait of sentimentalism stuck fast to me, however. It was at Naples, on a wonderfully beautiful evening, we were sailing in a miscellaneous and merry party on the sea, and I was the merriest of the whole. We disembarked. Who can tell what transpires in a human being? At this time, there, under the bright Italian sky, in the midst of laughing, singing, jesting men and women, the thought darted through my mind: What hast thou in the wide world? Nothing. Yet there is one thing: yonder in Poland thy mother's grave. And out of laughing, wanton Italy, I travelled without halt through the different countries, saw nothing, journeying on and on towards dreary, dirty Poland. I came to the village that I had not seen since my sixteenth year. And such is man – no, such am I! I did not want to undergo the pain of seeing my mother's grave. I looked over the burial-ground hedge; but I did not go inside, and travelled back again without having seen the grave. Such am I, so good or so bad; I believe they are one and the same thing. I travelled through Greece and Egypt, and was in Algiers. I have led a life of utterly unbridled excess, and have done every thing to undermine my vital power, but have failed to accomplish it. I have an iron, indestructible constitution. I was in England, the land of respectability. It may be that I have a special eye to see them; but I saw everywhere nothing but masks, hypocrisy, conventionalism. I took ship for America. You will laugh when I tell you that I meant to join the Mormons, and yet such is the fact. These people have the courage and honesty to ordain polygamy by law, while in the rest of the world it exists under a lying disguise. But I was not suited to that community. I soon returned to New York, and there I found the high-school and the Olympus of gamblers. The fast livers of Paris and London are bunglers compared with the Yankees. It was the fashion to declaim against the Southern chivalry; but I have found among them truly heroic natures, of the stuff out of which conquering Rome was built up. Only he who has been in America knows what the being that calls himself man is in reality. Every thing there is reckless, untramelled. They only dissemble in the matter of religion, that's respectable."

Eric and Weidmann looked at each other. Weidmann had given expression to the same thought a few days before at Mattenheim, but in a wholly different connection.

Sonnenkamp went on.

"My five passes were still good. I went here under the name of Count Gronau: the Americans are fond of intercourse with noblemen. After a wild night, I shot a man who had insulted me on the public street. I fled, and lived for a time among the horse-thieves of Arkansas. It was a droll life, a life of craft and adventure that nowhere else has its like. Man becomes there a lurking beast of prey, and my body underwent the most monstrous experiences. I left this partnership, and became a sailor on a whaling-ship. I had shot lions and leopards in Algiers, and now I was hunting the king of the ocean. The whole world is here only to be captured and subdued. I have been through all sorts of experience. I soon gained dexterity enough to reach the position of boat-steerer, and I was appointed to this. There was one thing more; to hunt men, the merriest of all. This was adventure worth engaging in, this man-hunting: here was a new excitement, a novel attraction. We sailed for Madagascar through many perils. We caught men and bought men; boldness and cunning were called into activity, and the business pleased me. Great risk, great profits. In Louisiana, where the great sugar plantations have each three, four, and five thousand slaves, and in Charleston, South Carolina, are the chief slave-markets; for the most part, boys are carried there, and no elderly men. You will consider it contemptible; but it does appear to me a triumph of human freedom and power for one man to steal and sell another. No animal can so seize and serve his kind, always supposing, though by no means granting the fact, that negroes are men. Yes, I have been a slave-trader: they called me the sea-eagle. That bird has the sharpest scent, he flies off, and cannot be caught. It was a bold and beautiful pastime. I have even stolen the chief who was selling me his subjects. These talking black beasts are equal to their so-called fellow-men in one respect, perhaps, – I say perhaps, – they can play the hypocrite like white men. No beast can dissemble, and, if dissembling can give a title to human rights, then the blacks deserve that title. After the first burst of rage, the chief was very tractable; but one day I was pursued, with my cargo on board, by an English ship, and had to pitch the whole human dust-heap into the sea. This gave food to the sharks. Look here, this is the finger which the chief tried to bite off: you know how he has made his appearance in these days. From that time I left off going to sea, and carried on the business through others; finally I gave it up altogether. I had enough, I had large plantations, and the child of the boat-steerer, who had died in the whale-fishery, had been brought up by me, and I married her. Such a being, only half-awake, prattling like a child in every thought, or, rather, with no thought at all, was pleasing to me. I had at that time no idea that there were women with great, heroic, world-conquering souls."

Sonnenkamp spoke these last words in a very loud tone. After a short pause, he continued, —

"I was living in quiet retirement when the insane party of the North arose, whose object was to abolish slavery. And when my own countrymen entered into the front ranks as the magnanimous friends of man, I came forward in the newspapers and acknowledged myself a German, in order to say that all were not like these shriekers about humanity. I showed that it was madness to desire to free the slave. Humane men wanted to render benevolent aid; but the wretchedness of the world is not cured by benevolence, nor the poverty, nor the crime. The works of mercy, all seven together, do not help the world, they are all quack-remedies: the only real benevolence to the lower orders of men is slavery. They want to be nothing else than what they are: the best thing is for them to be taken care of by their masters – for the blacks certainly, and no less so, perhaps, for the whites. Herr Weidmann knows that his nephew has been my bitterest enemy. I was in the Southern States, and there I and my compeers were nobles. We are the privileged class. There are privileged races, and privileged persons among those races. The barons of the Southern States seemed to me the only honest men I had become acquainted with; everywhere else there was hypocrisy. I was displeased, indeed, that they wanted to get for their cause the cover of religion; but it was a rich joke that the ministers of religion volunteered their aid in this attempt.

"But I soon learned to have less regard even for this Southern chivalry. They are hypocrites, too; for they hold slaves, and yet despise him who imports the slaves. This is a remnant of the old hypocrisy of setting up a standard of virtue. Why deny the natural, open, pitiless mastership? Why not openly acknowledge that which they acknowledge in secret? Because the English worshippers of rank place slave-traders in the category of pirates? Even the freemen of the South are themselves the slaves of a vulgar notion. Now it came over me. When I had a son, a longing was awakened within me which I could not appease. I know not whether I have already told you, that, in my early days, the thought often occurred to me, had I been a noble, had I with my courage and my ability entered the military service, I should have become a steady man like the rest; I might have been for a time dissipated; but then I should have managed my estate, and been the founder of an honorable line. The fundamental cause of my adventurous, restless life always seemed to me to be the fact that I was a commoner, having every claim to a privileged station, and yet always thrust into the back-ground. I know that it is an inconsistency; I despise the world, and I strive after honor. This proceeds from a youthful impression of what was meant by the nobility. The only guaranty for the world's smile is rank and genius; without one of these you do not escape from mediocrity and sufferance. I pictured to my wife what a grand life was led at some little court in Germany, and it became a fixed idea in her mind. One can tear out the heart more easily than root out from it a thought. I see the struggle coming in the New World: courage and strength are on our side. There will be a slaughter unparalleled; but we shall be victorious. The Southern States want independence, and this is the only, the highest thing. I have labored in Europe for our cause. We lived in England, in Italy, in Switzerland. I thought, for a time, of becoming what is called a free, sober citizen of Switzerland. But I hated Switzerland: it suffers the foreigner to be free, so long as he is a foreigner; if he becomes a citizen of the State, he can no longer be a free man, but must take part in all their petty concerns. He who is not earning money, and who will not be pious – one can do both at the same time without much trouble – he who doesn't want to live frugally, will not do for Switzerland. No court, no nobility, no barracks there! – nothing but church, school, and hospital, things that are of no account to me. I didn't want to remain in Switzerland, with inaccessible heights before my eyes; it's oppressive, and for that reason, here on the Rhine it's cozy and homelike. Germany is and will be the only land for free men. Here one pays his tax, and is let alone. No one has any claim, and in his position the nobleman is liable to no interference. I returned to Germany, because I wished to acquire for myself and for my son a brilliant position in society. The regard of one's neighbors, one's fellow-men, is a fine luxury, perhaps the very finest: this, I wanted to have too. I wanted to give my son what only the German perfectly knows, dutiful service; and with this view there was perpetually ringing in my ears one melody – the only sentimentalism I can reproach myself with – a villa on the Rhine. This was the dream of my childhood, this, of my mature life, and this has been my ruin. When I looked the whole world over, and asked myself where life could be passed most happily, then I had to confess, as I said before, that it is the highest pinnacle of enjoyment to be a rich baron of some small German state. Here one may have a life fraught with enjoyment without any claim of duty, and receive all honor in a limited circle, and enjoyment besides. I have become familiar with all the different strata of existence. I have caroused and scuffled with the red-skins, and more than once have been in danger of adorning some Indian with my scalp, and I wanted now to make trial of the red-collars and their chief. I did not want to leave the world without knowing what court life was. I cherished still one idyllic dream – something of the German romance hangs by me yet – and, not without reason, I called my house Villa Eden. Here it was my purpose to live in enjoyment with my plants, and like my plants; but I have been dragged again into the world, more by the thought of my children than any thing else. Enough; you are well aware that I wanted to be ennobled. Let it be. I have now come to the end. But" —