Tischbein was very useful in warding off the profane throng—fanning away the flies. Let us hope he was actuated solely by zeal in Goethe’s interest, not by the desire to swagger as a monopolist.
Clear it is, though, that he scented fine opportunities in Goethe’s relation to him. Suppose he could rope his illustrious friend in as a collaborator! He had begun a series of paintings on the theme of primaeval man. Goethe was much impressed by these. Tischbein suggested a great poem on the theme of primaeval man—a volume of engravings after Tischbein, with running poetic commentary by Goethe. `Indeed, the frontispiece for such a joint work,’ writes Goethe in one of his letters, `is already designed.’ Pushful Tischbein! But Goethe, though he was the most courteous of men, was not of the stuff of which collaborators are made. `During our walks together’—and can you not see those two together, pacing up and down the groves of the Villa Pamphili, or around the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter?—little Tischbein gesticulating and peering up into Goethe’s face, and Goethe with his hands clasped behind him, ever nodding in a non-committal manner—`he has talked with me in the hope of gaining me over to his views, and getting me to enter upon the plan.’ Goethe admits in another letter that `the idea is beautiful; only,’ he adds, `the artist and the poet must be many years together, in order to carry out and execute such a work’; and one conceives that he felt a certain lack of beauty in the idea of being with Tischbein for many years.
`Did I not fear to enter upon any new tasks at present, I might perhaps be tempted.’ This I take to be but the repetition of a formula often used in the course of those walks. In no letter later than November is the scheme mentioned. Tischbein had evidently ceased to press it. Anon he fell back on a scheme less glorious but likelier to bear fruit.
`Latterly,’ writes Goethe, `I have observed Tischbein regarding me; and now’—note the demure pride!—`it appears that he has long cherished the idea of painting my portrait.’ Earnest sightseer though he was, and hard at work on various MSS. in the intervals of sightseeing, it is evident that to sit for his portrait was a new task which he did not `fear to enter upon at present.’ Nor need we be surprised. It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, e~ver is loth to sit for his portrait. A man may be old, he may be ugly, he may be burdened with grave responsibilities to the nation, and that nation be at a crisis of its history; but none of these considerations, nor all of them together, will deter him from sitting for his portrait. Depend on him to arrive at the studio punctually, to surrender himself and sit as still as a mouse, trying to look his best in whatever posture the painter shall have selected as characteristic, and talking (if he have leave to talk) with a touching humility and with a keen sense of his privilege in being allowed to pick up a few ideas about art. To a dentist or a hairdresser he surrenders himself without enthusiasm, even with resentment. But in the atmosphere of a studio there is something that entrances him. Perhaps it is the smell of turpentine that goes to his head. Or more likely it is the idea of immortality.
Goethe was one of the handsomest men of his day, and (remember) vain, and now in the prime of life; so that he was specially susceptible to the notion of being immortalised. `The design is already settled, and the canvas stretched’; and I have no doubt that in the original German these words ring like the opening of a ballad. `The anchor’s up and the sail is spread,’ as I (and you, belike) recited in childhood. The ship in that poem foundered, if I remember rightly; so that the analogy to Goethe’s words is all the more striking.
It is in this same letter that the poet mentions those three great points which I have already laid before you: the fallen obelisk for him to sit on, the white mantle to drape him, and the ruined temples for him to look at. `It will form a beautiful piece, but,’ he sadly calculates, `it will be rather too big for our northern habitations.’
Courage! There will be plenty of room for it in the Baptistery of San Lorenzo.
Meanwhile, the work progressed. A brief visit to Naples and Sicily was part of Goethe’s well-pondered campaign, and he was to set forth from Rome (taking Tischbein with him) immediately after the close of the Carnival—but not a moment before. Needless to say, he had no idea of flinging himself into the Carnival, after the fashion of lesser and lighter tourists. But the Carnival was a great phenomenon to be studied. All-embracing Goethe, remember, was nearly as keen on science as on art. He had ever been patient in poring over plants botanically, and fishes ichthyologically, and minerals mineralogically. And now, day by day, he studied the Carnival from a strictly carnivalogical standpoint, taking notes on which he founded later a classic treatise.
His presence was not needed in the studio during these days, for the life-sized portrait `begins already to stand out from the canvas,’ and Tischbein was now painting the folds of the mantle, which were swathed around a clay figure. `He is working away diligently, for the work must, he says, be brought to a certain point before we start for Naples.’ Besides the mantle, Tischbein was doing the Campagna. I remember that some years ago an acquaintance of mine, a painter who was neither successful nor talented, but always buoyant, told me he was starting for Italy next day. `I am going,’ he said, `to paint the Campagna. The Campagna WANTS painting.’ Tischbein was evidently giving it a good dose of what it wanted. `It takes no little time,’ writes Goethe to Frau von Stein, `merely to cover so large a field of canvas with colours.
Ash Wednesday ushered itself in, and ushered the Carnival out. The curtain falls, rising a few days later on the Bay of Naples. Re-enter Goethe and Tischbein. Bright blue back-cloth. Incidental music of barcaroles, etc. For a while, all goes splendidly well. Sane Quixote and aesthetic Sancho visit the churches, the museums; visit Pompeii; visit our Ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, that accomplished man.
Vesuvius is visited too; thrice by Goethe, but (here, for the first time, we feel a vague uneasiness) only once by Tischbein. To Goethe, as you may well imagine, Vesuvius was strongly attractive. At his every ascent he was very brave, going as near as possible to the crater, which he approached very much as he had approached the Carnival, not with any wish to fling himself into it, but as a resolute scientific inquirer. Tischbein, on the other hand, merely disliked and feared Vesuvius. He said it had no aesthetic value, and at his one ascent did not accompany Goethe to the crater’s edge. He seems to have regarded Goethe’s bravery as rashness. Here, you see, is a rift, ever so slight, but of evil omen; what seismologists call `a fault.’
Goethe was unconscious of its warning. Throughout his sojourn in Naples he seems to have thought that Tischbein in Naples was the same as Tischbein in Rome. Of some persons it is true that change of sky works no change of soul. Oddly enough, Goethe reckoned himself among the changeable. In one of his letters he calls himself `quite an altered man,’ and asserts that he is given over to `a sort of intoxicated self-forgetfulness’—a condition to which his letters testify not at all. In a later bulletin he is nearer the mark: `Were I not impelled by the German spirit, and desire to learn and do rather than to enjoy, I should tarry a little longer in this school of a light-hearted and happy life, and try to profit by it still more.’ A truly priceless passage, this, with a solemnity transcending logic—as who should say, `Were I not so thoroughly German, I should be thoroughly German.’ Tischbein was of less stern stuff, and it is clear that Naples fostered in him a lightness which Rome had repressed.
Goethe says that he himself puzzled the people in Neapolitan society: `Tischbein pleases them far better. This evening he hastily painted some heads of the size of life, and about these they disported themselves as strangely as the New Zealanders at the sight of a ship of war.’ One feels that but for Goethe’s presence Tischbein would have cut New Zealand capers too. A week later he did an utterly astounding thing. He told Goethe that he would not be accompanying him to Sicily.