Tutti Frutti. By the Author of ” The Tour of a German Prince.” Complete in one volume. New-York : Harper And Brothers. 1834. 12mo. pp. 226.
This is an outlandish book, with an outlandish title: the book German, the title Italian: Herman, Prince von Puckler Muskau, the author’s name: and Tutti Frutti the name of his work. Tutti Frulti, (all fruits,) is the cognomen of an Italian ice, composed of, or rather flavored with, various fruits; and as the book before us is a medley of divers matters and things, the title is not inappropriate, though strange to English ears. There is another Italian ice, known by the name of Arlechino, or Harlequin, from its many-colored coat: a name withal appropriate to some part of our author’s book, which is occasionally rather too trivial for a man of his years, he being long since on the shady side of forty.
In this sultry season, when the dog-star rages, any thing that comes to us with the name of an ice-cream is very refreshing. Consequently, into this ice-cream we propose to dip, with spoon critical. But, first, a word concerning the author.
The Prince von Puckler Muskau was born in Silesia, on the 30th of October, 1785. In 1800 he entered the University of Leipsic, where he remained nearly three years, engaged principally in the study of law. On leaving the University, he entered the service of the king of Saxony, as a Garde-du-corps ; and after distinguishing himself in various ways, he retired, with the grade of captain of cavalry, and became a traveller. On the death of his father, he came into possession of a large fortune, and retired to his ancient castle and paternal acres at Muskau. In 1813 he again took up arms; distinguished himself in the Netherlands, and was present at the taking of Cassel, under General Geismar.
“About this time,” says the translator of his book, ” he was engaged in a novel description of duel. A French colonel of hussars, celebrated for his daring bravery, rode out considerably in advance of the lines, and challenged any officer in the army of his opponents to single combat. Prince Puckler accepted the challenge, and the contest took place in the centre between the two armies :, intense anxiety was pictured on the countenances of the spectators; it seemed as if the glory of their respective countries depended upon the issue. A death-like silence reigned throughout, which was only occasionally interrupted by the loud cheers of the deeply-interested soldiery, as their favorite champion gained a temporary advantage, or suffered a momentary defeat. At length the guardian angel of Germany triumphed,, the brave Frenchman fell!”
At the close of the war, he again retired to private life, and became once more a traveller. A few years later three very important events happened to him. He ascended in a balloon with the aeronaut Reichhard ; married the Countess Pappenheim; and was created a Prince. He has since visited England and France, giving to the world the ” Tour of a German Prince” as the fruit of his travel. He is now improving his estates at Muskau, where we leave him, and turn to his book.
This book is divided into several chapters, as follows : The Wanderer’s Return ; A Visit to the establishment of the Herrnhuters ; The Album of an Active Mind ; Extracts from My Note-Book ; Scenes and Sketches of a Tour in the Riesengebirge; The Modern Alcibiades; A Dialogue between Doctor Alcibiades and the Arabian Emyr Abdoulach ; and finally a Letter from Berlin.
The subjects treated of under these several heads are too diversified to admit of analysis. They are grave and gay; lively and severe ; important and trivial. We have marked several passages for extracts, and from these select the following, which form portions of a chapter in The Album of an Active Mind, and were suggested by a ‘Vision of the Past and Future,’ wherein the author was transported into the gray shades of antiquity, and beheld, as if passing in review, the funeral honors and processions, which had been numbered with the thousand forgotten pageants, in ‘ the dark backward and abysm of time :
” Who can fathom the depths of futurity ? who can tell the precise point where life terminates and where death commences ? The dark side of nature is closed to our view, and the sunny side, man’s terrestrial existence, is not less an enigma.
” From whence arises the inexpressible horror which is felt in the presence of the dead ? whence the fear of their re-appearance ? whence the dread of nocturnal darkness ? whence the icy shuddering before those who once had life, and now appear before us divested of the veil of mortality which covered them ?
” The elastic spirits of youth surmount the influences of fear, in the zenith of my manhood and youthful courage, I ordered the trap-door which conducted to the family-vault of my ancestors to be unlocked, and I entered alone at midnight.
” Three coffins had been previously opened at my request. When I found myself in the charnel-house of centuries, I experienced an indescribable sensation, it was not fear, nor grief, nor pity, nor horror, at the hideous forms before me, but it seemed almost as if the very springs of life were frozen within me, as if I was myself a corpse.
” My grandfather, who had died at the age of eighty-six, was the first object I examined ; his snowy locks had become, through the influence of the leaden mantle which enveloped him, of a blond color, his head was not lying in the usual position upon the pillow, but was turned towards me, and his eyeless sockets were staring as if in reproof for violating the sanctuary of the dead; but I consoled myself by remembering, that if my beloved parent was living, he would not frown upon me ; his character was too mild, and his mind too candid and enlarged. “I now passed on to another receptacle of the dead ; it contained a skeleton wrapped in a cloth embroidered with gold ; this had been a brave and powerful warrior, who commanded in the thirty years’ war, and was governor of the margravate of Lusatia; a superb portrait of him now hangs in the ancestral hall of my castle, as he appeared at the head of his cuirassiers, under Pappenheim, charging the flying Swedes, Ah ! how long is the laterna magica extinguished, which once illumined that beautiful painting ; one of the remaining fragments of it is now before me.
“The third coffin contained a lady, who, during her life, was called the beautiful Ursula ; the small skull had assumed a disagreeable dark brown color, the whole body was enveloped in a long wrapper of flame-colored silk, in a wonderful state of preservation. I wished to raise her up, but at the first movement she crumbled into dust, and myriads of millepedes crawled through my fingers and the broken joints of the mouldering skeleton.
” I meditated for some time over the long range of coffins, absorbed in deep contemplation, then fell upon my knees and prayed, until the ice which had frozen over my breast dissolved into consoling tears, and whatever I had felt of horror, superstition, or fear, vanished before my God, leaving only a deep feeling of pious resignation; I kissed, without experiencing the slightest repugnance, the cold forehead of my venerable parent, and severed from his head a lock of his hair as a memento of my visit; and if he had at that moment arose in his coffin and taken my hand, it would not have caused the slightest shudder of terror in my bosom.”
We must not omit that part of his Vision, which extends a century or two into futurity. After bespeaking for himself no other funeral decorations than a white sheet for his mouldering form, ‘ in the same manner as heaven wraps the departing year in a mantle of fleecy snow,’ and no honors but the tear of heart-felt sorrow, and a wreath of roses for his inanimate brow, from the trembling hand of affection, he touches the utilitarian aera upon which we have entered, in the annexed glance into the onward distance:
“A hundred years have elapsed since the termination of my mortal existence. “Where now is love and the fond ties of domestic affection ? The age of industry is in its zenith, with its machinery and its wealth, whose potent influence is paramount to every other, and which, during my life, had already begun to burst forth like the first crimson streaks of dawn.
” Where is the unsophisticated rustic ? Where is the classical scholar and the romantic poet of my varied and ever changing age ? All have vanished, and man is now alone governed by the consideration of what is useful.
“The wand of the magician again passed over me, and I beheld those grounds, to the beautifying of which I had dedicated the principal portion of my life. Merciful heavens! what do I see ? The river, which was formerly a bright crystal stream meandering through my park, has been made, for the purposes of commerce, navigable ; timber yards, bleaching grounds, and cloth manufactories have usurped the place of my dark groves and blooming meadows. But what do I behold? My beautiful castle! Do not my eyes deceive me? Oh, no! it has become an establishment for cotton spinners ! Maddened with indignation, I vociferated loudly for the proprietor. I was answered, that he lived in that small cottage surrounded by an orchard and vegetable garden. Is that all, exclaimed I, that remains to my descendants of what I once called mine? ‘Most certainly,’ was the reply, ‘it has been divided among hundreds, and has now become the property of the Trades-Unionists? You are surely not insane enough to expect, that so large a possession should continue to belong to one person in this land of liberty and equality ?’
” I turned from the speaker with sickening disgust, and penetrated by a magnetic glance the interior of the cottage, where I beheld, forsaken by all, in a corner of one of the rooms, the master of the house expiring; I then heard the sons saying to each other, ‘ Our father is undoubtedly dead, let his body be carried out of the house.’
“My beloved reader will naturally demand where is the grave, where is the cemetery in which to inter the corpse ? Why, truly it was conveyed to a place where it-could be still useful, into the fields, for manure!”
The reader who may have perused the ‘ Travels of a German Prince,’ will remember the many happy conceits, the well-turned periods, and the fine descriptions, with which it abounds. At intervals, they are rare, it must be admitted, there are similar features in Tutti Frutti. The annexed paragraph partakes of the better vein :
” I continued my route for some time absorbed in contemplation, and wove one web of speculation after another, until I was suddenly aroused from my reverie by the loud gabbling of a flock of geese. Upon looking up, I perceived two large gray ganders arrayed against each other in mortal combat. I pictured them to my imagination as two knightly princes, who, armed in a panoply of gray feathers, were disputing their individual rights ; while the ladies, arrayed in a circle, like the high dames in a balcony, encouraged their champions with their gentle feminine gabble, and with their long necks extended towards heaven, invoked the god of war to crown with victory the warrior they most loved. I could not help admiring the devoted courage of these feathered combatants, who returned again and again to the charge, so unlike the princes of our own species, who leave their contests and dissensions to be decided by the geese, their subjects ; and these are so obliging as to fight till death for interests not their own. I, however, as a higher power, humanely interfered to terminate the deadly strife, and resolved at a future time to pen the record of their bravery with their own feathers.”
As this is scarcely less the age of balloons, than of canals and railroads, the subjoined graphic picture of an atrial voyage of our author, at Berlin, may prove interesting:
“As we gently and slowly ascended, I had sufficient time to salute and receive in return the farewell salutations of my friends below. No imagination can paint any thing more beautiful than the magnificent scene now disclosed to our enraptured senses. The multitudes of human beings, the houses, the squares and streets, the highest towers gradually diminishing; while the deafening tumult became a gentle murmur, and finally melted into a death-like silence. The earth which we had recently left lay extended in miniature relief beneath us ; the majestic linden-trees appeared like green furrows; the river Spree like silver thread; and the gigantic poplars of the Postdam Allee, which is several leagues in length, threw their shade over the immense plain.
” We had probably ascended by this time some thousand feet, and lay softly floating in the air, when a new and more superb spectacle burst upon our delighted view. As far as the eye could compass the horizon, masses of threatening clouds were chasing each other to the immeasurable heights above; and, unlike the level appearance which they wear when seen from the earth, their entire altitude was visible in profile, expanded into the most monstrous dimensions, chains of snowwhite mountains, wrought into phantastic forms, seemed as if they were tumbling headlong upon us.
” One colossal mass pressed upon another, encompassing us on every side, till we began to ascend more rapidly, and soared high above them, where they now lay beneath us, rolling over each other like the billows of the sea when agitated by the violence of the storm, obscuring the earth entirely from our view. At intervals the fathomless abyss was occasionally illumined by the beams of the sun, and resembled for a moment the burning crater of a volcano ; then new volumes rushed forward and closed up the chasm; all was strife and tumult. Here we beheld them piled on each other white as the drifted snow, there in fearful heaps of a dark watery black ; at one instant rearing towers upon towers, in the next creating a gulf at the sight of which the brain became giddy, dashing eternally onward, onward, in wild confusion. I never before witnessed any thing comparable to this scene, even from the summit of the highest mountains; besides, from them the continuing chain is generally a great obstruction to the view, which, after all, is only partial; but here there was nothing to prevent the eye from ranging over the boundless expanse.
” The feeling of absolute solitude is rarely experienced upon the earth ; but in these regions, separated from all human associations, the soul might almost fancy it had passed the confines of the grave. Nature was entirely noiseless, even the wind was silent; therefore, receiving no opposition, we gently floated along, and the lonely stillness was only interrupted by the progress of the car and its colossal ball, which, self-propelled, seemed like the roc-bird fluttering in the blue ether.
Enraptured with the novel scene, I stood up, in order to enjoy more completely the superb prospect, when Mr. Reichhard, with great sang-froid, told me I must be seated, for that, owing to the great haste with which it had been constructed, the car was merely glued, and might therefore easily come asunder, unless we were careful. It may readily be supposed, that, after receiving this intimation, I remained perfectly quiet. We now commenced descending, and were several times obliged to throw out some of the ballast in order to rise again. In the mean time we dipped insensibly into the sea of clouds which enveloped us like a thick veil, and through which the sun appeared like the moon in Ossian. This illumination produced a singular effect, and continued for some time till the clouds separated, and we remained swimming about beneath the once more clear azure heavens.
” Shortly after we beheld, to our great astonishment, a species of ” fata morgana” seated upon an immense mountain of clouds, the colossal picture of the balloon and ourselves surrounded by myriads of variegated rainbow tints. A full half-hour the spectral-reflected picture hovered constantly by our side. Each slender thread of the net-work appeared distended to the size of a ship’s cable, and we ourselves like two tremendous giants enthroned on the clouds.”
The voyageurs descended upon the top of a tall pine, in a wood near Berlin. The Prince, having lost, in his elevation, the capacity of measuring distance, mistook the tree for a shrub, and was only prevented from taking a trifling leap of an hundred feet, by the animated remonstrance of his more experienced companion.
The connoisseur of paintings, in the Vicar of Wakefield, assures his friend and protege, that it is always safe in pronouncing on the merits of a picture, to say ” that it would have been better, if the artist had taken more pains with it.” We feel ourselves perfectly safe in passing the same judgment upon the book before us. Nevertheless, with all its defects, the reader will find it in many instances amusing and instructive.
From: The Knickerbocker or New-York Monthly Magazine. Vol. IV, September 1834.