chapter 22

, and must probably consign to the realms of imagination the lady-mother, Susanna Ramsay, also. That Grimmelshausen was really brought in contact, possibly as a page, with the commandant of Hanau, seems likely. He knows a good deal of him. But of his later career he is quite ignorant; he even repeats as true the malignant calumny circulated by the Jesuits of Vienna to the effect that Ramsay had gone mad with rage at the loss of Hanau (bk. v., chap. 8). As a matter of fact, the poor man died partly of his wounds and partly of a broken heart. The only other historic personage in the story who can be identified with certainty is Daniel St. Andre, a Hessian soldier of fortune (bk. iii., chap. 15) of Dutch descent, and commanding at Lippstadt for the "Crown of Sweden."

For what reason Grimmelshausen wrote the "Continuatio," a dull medley of allegories, visions, and stories of knavery, brightened only by the "Robinsonade" at the end, it is hard to say; probably at the urgent request of his publisher, when the striking success of the original work became assured. It appeared at Moepelgard (Monteliard) in the very same year, viz. 1669, as the first known edition, or more probably editions, of the first five books, and is sometimes quoted as a sixth book. Two years later there were issued three more "Continuations," even more unworthy of their author, and laying stress chiefly on the least estimable side of the hero's character--the roguery by which he paid his way on his journey back from France. The worthlessness of these sequels is the more remarkable when we consider the excellence of the other books which make up what may be called the Simplicissimus-cycle. These are "Trutzsimplex," "Springinsfeld," the two parts of the "Enchanted Bird's-nest," and the "Everlasting Almanack." They are all deserving of attention.

The first, which is also known as the "Life of the Adventuress 'Courage,'" appeared immediately after "Simplicissimus," with which it is connected by the fact that the heroine is none other than the light-minded lady of the Spa at Griesbach, the alleged mother of Simplicissimus's bastard son; she is also at one time the wife or companion of "Springinsfeld" or "Jump i' th' Field," Simplicissimus's old servant. Her history, which is narrated with extraordinary vivacity, covers nearly the whole period of the war, and is interwoven with the remaining books of the cycle in a sufficiently ingenious manner. A secretary out of employ is driven by the cold into the warm guest-room of an inn in a provincial town. Here he finds a huge old man armed with a cudgel "that with one blow could have administered extreme unction to any man." This is Simplicissimus, with the famous club that had so terrified the resin-gatherers of the Black Forest ("Simplicissimus," bk. v., chap. 17). Either the episode of the Desert Island is left out of account altogether--possibly not yet invented--or he has not yet started on his final journey. The latter is unlikely, for the date is indicated as 1669 or 1670. To these two enters an old wooden-legged fiddler who turns out to be Simplicissimus's faithful knave, "Jump i' th' Field." Of the former hero the secretary had read; of the latter he himself had written; for meeting, as a poor wandering scholar, with a gang of gipsies in the Schwarzwald, he had been engaged by their queen, an aged but still handsome woman, to write her history, on the promise of a pretty wife and good pay. He is cheated of both, and the gipsies disappear with their queen, who is in fact the famous "Courage" or "Kurrasche."

The daughter of unknown parents, this heroine was living in a small Bohemian town with an old nurse when the Imperialists, under Bucquoy, conquered the country in 1620. She was then thirteen years old, and thus fifteen years senior to Simplicissimus. The nurse, to protect her chastity, disguises her as a boy, and in this garb she becomes page to a young Rittmeister, to whom, her secret having been all but discovered in a scuffle, she reveals her sex and becomes his mistress. The name Courage is, for amusing but quite unmentionable reasons, given to her in consequence of this episode. To her first lover she is actually married on his death-bed, and now begins her career nominally as an honourable widow, but in reality as an accomplished courtesan. She still follows the army, for which she has an invincible love, and being, of course, "frozen" or invulnerable, takes part in various fights, in one of which she captures a major, who, when she in turn is taken prisoner, revenges himself on her in the vilest fashion. He is preparing to hand her over, according to custom ("Simplicissimus," bk. ii., chap. 26), "to the horseboys," when she is rescued by a young Danish nobleman, who proposes to make her his wife. The terrible story is told with an exactness of detail, which plainly can only be the work of the witness of similar scenes, and it is to be feared represents only too faithfully the truth as to the treatment of women in the war. It is remarkable, however, that few officers of high rank on either side are accused of wanton offences against public morals. Holk and Koenigsmark are the only two who are charged with publicly keeping their mistresses; and they were the two most brutal commanders of their time. As a rule superior officers took their wives with them ("Simplicissimus," bk. ii., chap. 25) even to the field of battle, and if such ladies fell into the enemy's hands, as did many after Noerdlingen, they were treated with all possible respect.

But to return to "Courage." Her Danish lover is about to marry her when he too dies, and after this disappointment she sinks lower and lower in the social scale, forming temporary connections successively with a captain, a lieutenant, a corporal and finally with a musqueteer, who is no other than our old friend "Jump i' th' Field," for whose name she gives us a very complete and quite untranslatable reason. With him she journeys, as a Marketenderin or female sutler, to Italy, following the army of Colalto and Gallas, and there, with his assistance, she plays a variety of tricks, always knavish and often highly diverting. Grown rich, the vivandiere dismisses poor "Jump i' th' Field" with a handsome present, and again resumes her trade of a superior courtesan in the town from which she journeys to the Spa, where she found and beguiled Simplicissimus. Her luck now turns; owing to a scandalous adventure under a pear-tree--the story is a mere copy of a well-known one in the "Hundred New Novels"--she is expelled from the town with the loss of all her money and almost of her life--so severe in the matter of public morals were the laws, in the midst of the general welter of wickedness then prevailing. Her beauty lost, she becomes a petty trader in wine and tobacco, and finally marries a gipsy chief; in which position we find her and leave her.

This story ended, the secretary and his friends in the inn are joined by Simplicissimus's old foster-father and mother--the "Dad" and "Mammy" of our romance--and also by young Simplicissimus, Courage's alleged son. She has avenged herself on her faithless lover, as she tells us in her own history, by laying at his door the child of her maid. It is for this reason that she entitles her narrative "Trutzsimplex," or "Spite Simplex." Her revenge, however, for reasons plainly hinted at, miscarries; the child is her lover's after all. The merry company of six then divert themselves during the short winter afternoon with a profitable exhibition of Simplicissimus's tricks in the market-place, and the night is pleasantly spent in listening to Springinsfeld's account of his own life and adventures.

The son of a Greek woman and an Albanian juggler, he follows in early boyhood his father's trade. Carried away from the port of Ragusa by an accident, he is landed in the Spanish Netherlands, and there serves under Spinola, then with that general's army in the Rhine Palatinate, and then in Pappenheim's cavalry. He is present at Breitenfeld and Luetzen, and while temporarily out of the service falls in with "Courage" as above narrated. On leaving her, he sets up as an innkeeper, and prospers, but is ruined through his own incorrigible knavery. Serving against the Turks, he is wounded, and takes to fiddling to support himself, marrying also a hurdy-gurdy girl of loose character. In the course of their vagabond life there occurs the incident which leads to the most ingenious and attractive of all the romances of the cycle.

Sitting by a stream, they see in the water the shadow of a tree with a lump on one of the branches: on the tree itself there is no such lump. It is a bird's-nest, invisible itself, which makes its possessor invisible also. The wife seizes it and at once disappears, with all their money in her pocket. She does not, however, abandon her husband altogether, but when he goes into the neighbouring town of Munich she slips a handful of money into his pocket. He finds that this is a part of the proceeds of an impudent robbery just committed in the house of a merchant, and will have none of it, but is compelled to be witness of numerous amusing and mischievous pranks played by his wife of which he alone knows the secret. He goes to the wars again and loses a leg, after which he begs his way back to Munich and finds his wife dead. She has befooled a young baker's man into believing her to be the fairy Melusina, and after a sanguinary chance-medley in the baker's chamber, whither she is pursued for thefts committed for his sake, is slain by a young halberdier of the watch sent to arrest her. Her body is burned as that of a witch, and her slayer disappears bodily. His story thus ended, Springinsfeld is taken home by Simplicissimus to his farm, where he dies in the odour of sanctity.

Here begins the first part of the history of the "Enchanted Bird's-nest." The young halberdier is an honest lad, who uses his powers for good only, and his experiences are of exceeding interest as giving a picture of the manners of the time viewed in their most intimate particularities by an invisible witness. We have matrimonial infelicities circumstantially described, as likewise the efforts of an impoverished family of nobles to keep up appearances in their tumble-down old castle. The halberdier prevents hideous and unspeakable crime, captures burglars who are effecting their purpose by a device similar to that of the "hand of glory," wreaks vengeance upon loose-living pastors and rescues the intended victims of footpads. The adventures follow one upon another in quick succession, but are ended by a somewhat unnecessary fit of remorse, during which the halberdier tears up the nest. It is, however, found, and the portion which contains its magic properties kept, by a passer-by. This First Part ends with a fresh appearance of Simplicissimus, who is in deep grief over the rejection by a neighbouring nobleman of his application for a post for his son, whom the invisible halberdier has seen and helped out of trouble in the convent where he was studying. This scene is so utterly unconnected with the course of the narrative that it is conjectured to refer to some real family misfortune of Grimmelshausen, of which he is anxious to give an explanation to the public.

The new owner of the enchanted nest is the merchant whom Springinsfeld's wife had robbed at Munich, and the "Second Part" is occupied with the story of his wicked misuse of his powers. His actions are the very opposite of the halberdier's, though the contrast is not so pointed as to become inartistic. He makes use of his supernatural facilities to seduce his own servant, to perpetrate a peculiarly filthy act of revenge upon his faithless wife, and finally to accomplish the crowning deception of his whole career. He makes his way into the family of a respectable Portuguese Jew, in the first instance with a view to robbery; but becoming enamoured of the beautiful daughter of the house, he employs his invisibility to practise a most blasphemous piece of knavery. He succeeds in making the unfortunate parents believe that the maiden is destined to be the mother of the future Messiah by the prophet Elias. The latter part he of course plays himself, and enjoys the society of his victim till at length a child is born, which turns out, to the general horror, to be a girl. The motive is not new and the story is a sordid one; but it is most artistically recounted, and an intimate knowledge of Jewish manners and ideas is displayed. The narrative is also diversified by an element found in none of the other romances of the cycle--acute and farsighted political discourses and reasonings on European affairs as likely to be affected by the war then impending with France, which ended with the treaty of Nimwegen in 1678.

Rendered desperate by his sins, though now deeply enamoured of the unfortunate Jewess Esther, the merchant is on the verge of surrendering himself to the power of "black magicians" of the worst and most diabolical kind when he escapes by betaking himself to the wars. Possessing besides his invisibility the power of rendering himself invulnerable, he is nevertheless wounded by a "consecrated" bullet, and finally makes his way home in poverty and misery accompanied by a pious monk. The nest is thrown into the Rhine and disappears for ever, and the merchant prepares to spend the remainder of his life in prayer and penitence.

The connection of the fifth work, the "Everlasting Almanack," with Simplicissimus is nominal only. It appeared in 1670, and is a perfect specimen of what may be called the best class of chapbooks of that day. It is the Whitaker's Almanack of the period. Each day has its special saints given: there are rules of good husbandry and weather prognostics; recipes for the house, the kitchen, and the farmyard; together with matters adapted for the higher class of readers, such as brief scientific notices, fragments of historical interest, narratives of marvellous occurrences, and, of course, in the spirit of the time, a mass of particulars as to astrology and the casting of horoscopes. Ingenious as it all is, and not without interest from the sociological point of view the book reminds us of Simplicissimus only by its connection with that side of his character which we would willingly forget, but for which Grimmelshausen seems to have cherished an unreasoning admiration, and on which he insisted more and more in his successive works--namely his qualities as a quack and mountebank.

As already pointed out, the interest of the central romance of "Simplicissimus" is less literary than historic, whereas German critics in their estimate of its value have considered the first aspect only, and their opinions are consequently little worth recording. Gervinus for example, looking at the book from a purely artistic point of view, finds it wanting. Other critics have followed him blindly and with a considerable amount of underlying ignorance to boot. The accurate Dahlmann, for example, though he reckons the romance among his "historical sources," speaks of it as published at Moepelgard in 1669 in six "volumes." Plainly he had never seen a copy, but had heard of the six books (five and the "Continuation") and mistook them for volumes. Tittmann, one of the latest editors of the work, sums up its chief merits when he says: "Simplicissimus and the Simplician writings are almost our only substitute, and that a poor one, for the contemporary memoirs in which our western neighbours are so rich."

The bibliography of the book is for our purpose not important. For a year or two editions seem to have succeeded each other with such rapidity that it is difficult to distinguish between them; but the only additional value which those printed later than 1670 possess is the questionable one of including the three worthless little sequels above referred to. Of modern editions the best, perhaps, is that of Tittmann (Leipzig, 1877), which has been principally used for this translation. The annotations, however, leave much to be desired; many difficulties are left unexplained, and there are some positive mistakes, of which a single instance may suffice. In book v.,