Scheffauer "The Symbol of Niagara"(1922)

THE SYMBOL OF NIAGARA. (Thoughts after reading recent books upon America.)

 Thus we must leave America in the flight of appearances and apparitions, the pageantry and phenomena of our time—as in some swift-careering train we leave a mountain-range through whose tunnels and valleys we have just been whirled. We have bathed in flashes of sunlight, let the bright, dishevelled landscapes pour themselves into our souls; we have been plunged into cold shadows and sombre wildernesses. Released into the outer distances, we see the contours more clearly, and perhaps even the glow of dawn or sunset upon the peaks.

Or if the image of a mountain-range be too impersonal, let us leave America as we would leave a new Colossus, bestriding the New World from east to west This Colossus, as we have observed, has feet of gold and iron, but as yet only a head of clay, cloudy, steaming, amorphous, not yet moulded into a clear face. Portentously uprears this Titan in whose hands, Prometheus-like, the fire of freedom once burned.

But this Titan, or—since it is fit to use the feminine for America, the Land above all other lands, of the Woman — this Titaness, whose bronze symbol stands with extinguished torch on her star-shaped prison-pedestal at the entrance to New York harbour, can no longer bring liberty or enlightenment to others. She has, in fact, denied them to herself and to her children, and out of her house of refuge she has made a prison-house. The native and alien manipulators and hucksters of her destiny have tied her down with a thousand cords. Nevertheless still upright stands this Colossa, immense and formidable in mass and outline. But she is blind—or blinded. No veil of mysticism, racial, religious, dynastic or historical, encompasses her—as once the figure of the Russian Cyclops, toppled from his feet of clay. This giantess is of earth and metal. Her flesh is the flesh of machines, her breath elemental energy, her heart a furnace— but not an altar-fire. The law of her being, not of her becoming, is Production — the production of things. Her existence is use, her creed is pragmatism. She has become a monument not so much to man's aspiration towards freedom as to his mechanical genius, or ingenuity. She towers above the horizons of the world, a majestic statue, a vast organism, but as yet without a soul.

Having by injudicious and emotional intervention brought about the collapse of Europe, by the thrust of a brutal fist agitated by an alien will, she is herself once more betrayed—and shackled for a generation or more to the Gibraltar of English imperialism. Thus the great Mother of Use, the Prophetess of the Thing, herself became the Thing, the Tool, the Used One, and exemplified on a stupendous scale the subjection of matter to mind.

But all figures, even the mixed, and all symbols, even the | most patent, are false and feeble as a measure or a frame into which to press the incommensurable; and America is as incommensurable as life itself. Her glory and her meanness, her joy and the terror that arises from her, her shame and her insolence, her ignorance, her desperate fevers, her laughter of machines, the sibilance of her newspaper-hydras, her crass indifference and her impregnable assurance that makes hope itself seem like discouragement, are all accentuated and intensified by the torrential superabundance of this life that lashes her on, through the defiles of instinct and temperament to some far-off goal.

Measured by the values of vitality, she stands first, magnificent though mongrel, among the young nations of the world —America, Germany and Russia —as opposed, and by the same laws of vitality inimicably opposed, to the old, those whose biological course is running to a close, whose orbit of life and power is now a declining spiral.

But I am driven once more to take refuge in a metaphor, a symbol—one I once used to express America in a youth ful and volcanic novel of epic dimensions, which still awaits the corrective hand—the symbol of Niagara. For America is Niagara —is full and overflowing life. He who would essay with naked eyes to outstare the lightning, or with naked hands to clothe the necks of the apocalyptic chargers, might make bold to hover and brood above the onset of these passionate, imperious waters, smooth and relentless as polished obsidian, yet fringed at the awful mouth with oracular foam, as they go rolling like an oceanic cataclysm into this tremendous and eternal vat. Let him hurl his questions into this chaos: "To what end?  Wherefore and Whither?"

Perhaps, if he have the prophetic ear he will receive an answer :

"America is Action, and Action too, is an End in Itself!"

Herman George Scheffauer.

“The Symbol of Niagara (Thoughts after reading recent books upon America.)”, in: The Freeman, Vol. 6. No. 144.(December 13, 1922), p.319-320. [Scheffauer Bibliography No. 360]

Results Saalfeld-Rudolstadt – Saale-Holzland-Kreis – Saale-Orla-Kreis - The Federal Returning Officer

The results for my area:





Results Saalfeld-Rudolstadt – Saale-Holzland-Kreis – Saale-Orla-Kreis - The Federal Returning Officer:



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Radio presenter, novelist, musician and actress... welcome to the court of Clemency Burton-Hill | London Evening Standard

love this quote:

“New York is an easy commute,” she insists. “For me it was like getting on the Northern line.” 

Radio presenter, novelist, musician and actress... welcome to the court of Clemency Burton-Hill | London Evening Standard: "“New York is an easy commute,” she insists. “For me it was like getting on the Northern line.” "



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Zürich: L'etoile / Online Musik Magazin

Zürich: L'etoile / Online Musik Magazin:



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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/23/london-ecb-euro-clearing-brexit-european-central-bank

OZ magazine, London | Historical & Cultural Collections | University of Wollongong

OZ magazine, London | Historical & Cultural Collections | University of Wollongong:

OZ magazine was published in London between 1967 and 1973 under the general editorship of Richard Neville and later also Jim Anderson and Felix Dennis. Martin Sharp was initially responsible for art and graphic design. Copies of OZ can be viewed and downloaded for research purposes from this site. OZ magazine is reproduced by permission of Richard Neville.

Please be advised: This collection has been made available due to its historical and research importance. It contains explicit language and images that reflect attitudes of the era in which the material was originally published, and that some viewers may find confronting.

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Ernst Haeckel: Die Welträtsel | ZEIT ONLINE

Ernst Haeckel: Die Welträtsel | ZEIT ONLINE:



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John Lennon talks to a hippie who had been camping out on his lawn

Video is at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6exx_AmWk0

https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2?ec=-5.0&soc=0.46

Is Bultmann a Heideggerian theologian? | Scottish Journal of Theology | Cambridge Core

Is Bultmann a Heideggerian theologian? | Scottish Journal of Theology | Cambridge Core: div class='title'Is Bultmann a Heideggerian theologian?/div - Volume 70 Issue 1 - David W. Congdon

I noticed that Ireland (EU) is omitted from the figures relating to the population of British citizens in the EU, thus when we read:

6.1. It is estimated that around 1 million UK nationals are long-term

residents of other EU countries, including around 300,000 in Spain. France and Germany also host large numbers of British citizens.

and then look at the following chart

Population of British citizens resident in the EU, 2011(sic)

Only a footnote to this chart reveals that it "Excludes Republic of Ireland and Luxembourg" but why should it exclude Ireland as the data is available?

And this makes the chart wholly misleading as Ireland has some 287,600 British citizens, and is second in size only to Spain. Why is Ireland excluded like this? Fact is there are more British citizens in Ireland than in France and Germany combined.

The United Nations estimates “1.22 million British people live in the European Union” their figure is from (2015) this White Paper figure is from 2011!

Country of residence	Total	Under 15 years	15 to 29 years	30 to 49 years	50 to 64 years	65 years and over
All EU members	1,138,965	121,886	127,364	392,853	291,773	205,078
Spain	296,220	15,765	22,055	70,835	91,495	96,070
Ireland	287,600	30,820	49,241	123,797	55,517	28,225
France	169,945	18,617	16,745	45,999	54,628	33,956
Germany	80,290	6,640	9,000	29,510	26,060	9,090

 

‘The author of Granby' on a Grand Tour: Thomas Henry Lister in Weimar in 1826

‘The author of Granby' on a Grand Tour: Thomas Henry Lister (1800-1842) in Weimar in 1826 and his unpublished correspondence with Ottilie von Goethe.

Thomas Henry Lister's first novel Granby^[1] was published in 1826, with its faithful portrayal of so called English ‘high life', it is essentially a love story of, at first, a mis-matched pair, which is woven upon a backdrop of an obscure inheritance claim, and which ends in the recognition of Granby’s recovered nobility and his eventual legitimate claim.  It was widely celebrated and enthusiastically received, according to Thomas Carlyle, writing a few years later, Lister's ‘fashionable' or ‘silver-fork' novel had provided a vivid literary depiction of a "state of society" that was previously unknown, and thus contributed to a defining moment in English literature:

"His tale of Granby opened to the general view that state of society to which the highest alone could aspire. The smoothness, the glozing^[2], and the polish of his characters- the novelty of his scenes, and their construction on exclusive principles-were felt at once. Reality became the order of the day."

Walter Scott on reading Granby approved of it, he found it "well-written, but overlaboured", and placed Lister's novel as part of the fashionable literary genre "…one of the class that aspire to describe the actual current of society, whose colours are so evanescent that it is difficult to fix them on the canvas." Scott found it "overlaboured" in the sense that  he thought there was "too much attempt to put the reader exactly up to the thoughts and sentiments of the parties." A fascinating remark from an author who had created the historical novel and what appears to be his apparent distaste for vivid contemporaneity^[3], he added that to depict this ‘actual state of society' was a task better undertaken by women writers (he explicitly named the works of  Maria Edgeworth, Susan Ferrier[4] and Jane Austen). He thought they were much better at "portraits of real society" ^[5]. Lister too thought the same and expounded on this in a letter to Ottilie von Goethe (October 16, 1826). There had been a very enthusiastic review in the Edinburgh Review, by Sydney Smith, who clearly had difficulty putting the novel down, and he even compared it in parts to Scott.  It would appear that the novel was actually published late 1825, as a review had already appeared in the December edition of The Literary gazette^[6], and, probably buoyed with its success and remuneration from one of the leading publishing oligarchs, Henry Colburn^[7], who no doubt wanted more from him, went on a Grand Tour in 1826 together with his travelling companion, Thomas Atherton Powys, 3rd Baron Lilford^[8] (1801-1861). Although Lister had indeed "attained considerable literary celebrity" after Granby, as the Gentlemen's Magazine wrote in his obituary from 1842; the ‘canon' hereafter has since declared Lister to have been only a ‘minor novelist', and a ‘second-rate writer', and subsequently a full biography has never been written of him.

In the most authoritative entry in the revised Oxford Dictionary of National Biography^[9] written by Professor Donald Dawes, the details of what he actually did following his initial schooling at Westminster and then going up to Trinity College, Cambridge, which he left before getting his degree sometime in 1821 are almost completely unknown. One would like to think that his only mention in the Creevey papers with what sounds like a fairly regular seat in an unnamed literary salon^[10] in 1823, was the period when he was busily gathering up material for the faithful delineation of all of the characters in his novel. There is no mention in the ODNB of Lister's tour of Germany, Austria and Italy^[11] that lasted for well over a year during the years 1826/27. His tour of Germany where he stayed in Weimar, Jena, Leipzig, Dresden and Munich- or any further details of any of the people he came into contact with has thus not yet been documented. In Granby, the character Lady Harriet Duncan, a high blue, who in the form of a Roman a clef, is supposedly modelled in part on the poet and novelist Lady Charlotte Lamb^[12]( the former requited lover of Lord Byron, who had had an affair with him in 1812, the "furious Sappho" as he called her); is at one point in an impressive erratic display of literary learning with references to works by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Amalie von Imhof, and Adelbert von Chamisso, amongst others, says to the clearly overwhelmed dandaical figure Trebeck: 

"Well, and do you know German? You must learn it if you do not; and read Goëthe in the original."

Although Lady Harriet Duncan is presumed to have been Lady Charlotte Lamb, another literary figure that Lister knew well was Lady Jane Davy, wife of the Chemist Sir Humphrey Davy, President of the Royal Society, who had met Goethe in 1824 and was unquestionably fluent in German^[13]. She was also Walter Scott's „affectionate Scotch Cousin & faithful friend", and had accompanied him on his Tour of the Hebrides, and wrote to Scott about her stay in Weimar and meeting with Goethe:

"The parts of Germany I visited were new to me; & I saw both some fine Towns & exquisitely romantic scenery.  Dresden & its Gallery, Prague & its Palaces, were well worth the trouble I took to visit them.  The days, three, I spent with Goethe at Weimar, were such as to make even a less interesting Tour worth peculiar recollection.  At 76 the Author of Faust is full of vigour of conversation, & courtesy of manner; & if it seems uncivil to talk of age to poetic ears, I may soften the harsh subject, by assuring you beauty both of person & countenance, nay of features remain in this Northern Apollo, to a degree coming near to that immortality of youth, you Sons of the Lyre, should all possess for our gratification.  He selected yourself & Lord Byron as his most favourite Authors;…. "^[14]

Scott had described her character minutely ‘warts and all', and their own relationship in his later published Journal, he spoke of her there, despite her minor character flaws, as unquestionably "a leader of literary fashion" and remarked on her "distinguished place in the literary society of the Metropolis" besides her husband acknowledging that she was not of a scientific bent.^[15] It was remarkable that Lister procured from Lady Davy a letter of introduction in May 1826, that was addressed to Goethe's daughter-in-law, Ottilie von Goethe, which, although clearly it would not have been the first port of call for Lister and Baron Lilford on their journey, but it is only in Weimar that both of them appear on the map as it were. Lady Davy had written to Ottilie in an impressive German:

„Mr Lister wünscht | sehr natürlich und innig, den grossen Dichter, & den gelehrten Riesen Deutschlands zu kennen. Ich bitte sie, ihn und seinen Gefährten Lord Lilford zu empfangen mit der herzlichen Gnade sie haben gewöhnlich gegen die Englische gebraucht."^[16]

[Mr Lister most naturally and earnestly, wishes to be acquainted with the great poet and the learned giants of Germany. I would ask you to receive him and his fellow traveller Lord Lilford with the heartfelt grace that you have always shown to the English.]   

What actually transpired when they were in Weimar in 1826 from June 27^th-29^th[17] has up to now only been noted on the very margins of Goethe scholarship, even the major biographies of Ottilie fail to mention Lister or their subsequent correspondence, and there has never been an account of the people they actually went on to meet in Weimar and Jena. The existence of Lady Davy’s introductory letter and fifteen of Lister's letters to Ottilie von Goethe, held at the Goethe-Schiller-Archive^,[18] which span the period 1826 -1834[36] throws some considerable light on this visit and essential facts concerning the Grand Tour that was undertaken,  the correspondence documents their subsequent friendship, and provides us with further details of that intimate network of Anglo-German literary relations in Weimar, the so called ‘English colony’^[19], throughout the 1820s and 1830s ―Lister, like Carlyle and Thackeray would also contribute to the Weimarer journal Chaos (1829-1832) and, indeed, the very opening letter from Ottilie under the pseudonym Henry Daventry is a humorous parody of the fashionable world with comparisons between Weimar and London and Brighton.^[20]  Some of Lady Davy's correspondence with Ottilie, and the actual letter of recommendation that Lister must have presented Ottilie still survive in Weimar^[21]. Lister's letters most importantly extend our scanty biographical knowledge of him, a writer, who has been somewhat unfairly neglected as an English novelist, besides his novels Granby (1826), Herbert Lacy (1827) and Arlington (1832)^[22] and his play Epicharis that was performed with great success at Drury Lane theatre in London in 1829, that we discover were all promptly sent to Weimar, Lister was also a regular contributor to the Edinburgh Review and the Foreign Quarterly Review both journals that Goethe was familiar with and it was in the February 1826 edition of the Edinburgh Review that had published an article on Lister's Granby from Sydney Smith. When he arrived there they had not yet read it. Lister abandoned the novel in 1832; became an historian, sitting on a number of governmental commissions, and lastly as England's first appointed Registrar General, ultimately responsible for the 1841 population census.^[23]

The correspondence with Ottilie has remained unpublished, despite one of the great figures of German studies in Britain, Leonard Willoughby, urging as early as 1914 that the wider correspondence of Englishmen in Weimar with Ottilie von Goethe ought to be published as a project within the purview? of the English Goethe Society^[24]. [The GSA also contains an entry by Lister and Lilford in the Stammbuch^[25] or album, belonging to Ottilie's sister, Ulrike von Pogwisch (1798-1875); from Lister on the 29th June and strangely one from Baron Lilford from the previous day^[26].There is also a letter from Lilford to Ottilie.]

It must have been of particular importance for him to visit Weimar, as we know that he presented to Ottilie- from an apparent arsenal of letters- an introductory letter from, Lady Jane Davy^[1], the wife of the Chemist Sir Humphrey Davy, who had previously met Goethe and Ottilie in September 1824.^[2] It is clear from the introduction that she wrote that she intended Lister, to apologise on her behalf for her ‘long silence' with Ottilie in matters of correspondence. "Ich lasse doch der Beredsamkeit meiner jungere & berühmten Landesmanns, mein langes stillschweigen zu entschuldigen, nicht ohne hoffnung in der Gutherzigkeit meiner Richterinnen."[I will allow the eloquence of my younger & famous countryman to apologise for my long silence, hoping for the kind-heartedness of my judge]^[3]  Her silence would have been a period of some six months as she thanks Ottilie for her letter from November last (i.e. November 1825) and reveals that the promised books from Goethe that she had spoken of, she had not yet received and asks her when they had been dispatched to England and who was supposed to have brought them:

„Ihr Brief in November war mir ein grosser vergnügen; und das Geschenk das sie hatten mir gesprochen von dein Herrn Goethe, hat von dieser Seit, meine sehnsucht immer erregt. Dieser bücher sind nocht noch bei mir; & ich darf ihnen bitten mir zu wann sie waren nach England gesandt & wer hat sie mir zu bringen unternommen? „^[4]

We presume that Lady Davy had also spoken to Lister about this matter if she had entrusted him with delivering any form of apology to Ottilie for her not replying since. In this remarkably well written German letter, illustrating a further aspect of Lady Davy's unquestionable linguistic talents, in what is perhaps an example of typically feminine banter to Ottilie, that after the success of Lister's first novel in England, which had been "extraordinarily fashionable",  she was impressed with him that after the reception of Granby "Es ist ausserordentlich nach der mode gewesen; und es scheint mir, dass seinen Kopf hat wunderlich ausgehalten gegen dem schmeichelden Weihrauch."[ [Granby] is extraordinarily fashionable; and it appears to me that his head has magnificently resisted all the adulatory incense]^[5]. Although Lister only made a brief three-day visit to Weimar, he continued an interesting correspondence with Ottilie and came to regard her as a friend, which was also confirmed by his wife Lady Theresa writing to Ottilie. Writing to her in 1830 he had said "I have ever felt that I might regard you as a friend who would take a kind and lively interest in whatever might be most conducive to my happiness."^[6] His correspondence with her is further proof of Ottilie's widely acknowledged role as "his Britannic Majesty's Consul in Weimar" in Weimar, the phrase stems from Thackeray^[7], and her close connections (liasons, translation collaborations, affairs, etc.) with any number of English literary figures such as Chevalier J. H. Laurence, Charles James Lever, Des Voueux and William Makepiece Thackeray etc. Given her role in the Haus Goethe, her proximity to Goethe and her caring for him in his remaining years, they provide us with interesting material including Lister's writing to her on topical dramatical and political matters in England, that she must have mediated to him^[8]. Further, Ottilie's interest in all things Irish has been acknowledged, Lister's writings in the Edinburgh Review on Irish literature, and his work on the government commission represent a possible avenue of mediation. Ottilie had given Lister's Granby to Goethe for him to read when it arrived in Weimar (see later).

However, despite the April review of Granby in the Edinburgh Review on his arrival both Ottilie and Goethe were not familiar with the novel, and Lister arranged to have it sent to Weimar very quickly. Writing to her shortly after he left Weimar  from Dresden (July 5^th 1826) he announced:  

"I hope at length to be enabled to fulfill my promise & present you with a copy of my book. I tried without success to obtain it at Leipisic, & was there told that I might possibly find it here at the Arnoldische Buchhandlung in the Alt.markt. Here however I am again disappointed but they have engaged to get it for me from England & to forward it to you, which they think they can do so in the course of a month- I have made them give me a duplicate receipt which I send enclosed to you, that they may have no pretence for failing in their engagement. If they do not send it to you I hope you will have the kindness to write to tell me, & I will take care that a copy shall be forwarded to you by some means or other."^[9]

It appears that when Granby arrived in Weimar Ottilie read it and then quickly gave the copy he sent to Goethe to read.  From the outset impressed with her English conversation, he desired her very much as a female critic, without doubt she was one of the most outstanding European ‘high blue's' or woman of letters or literary fashion, and he continually pressed her for her own (as well as Goethe's) literary criticisms of his novels and his play. The correspondence shows that he persisted tenaciously(nagged)with this request, Ottilie had at first written to him threatening not to do so, Lister replied from Munich in October 1826:"Your letter intimates that you mean to withold them; but this is a threat which I trust you will not fully execute."^[10] When she first met him, as a well-known passionate and acknowledged admirer of Byron's works like her father-in-law^[11], she found his views on Byron, as Lister himself characterised it to her, as "heretical", and his subsequent detailed criticism of Byron- which is one of the more fascinating aspects of the correspondence between them- is documented in two letters to her, clearly provided a fascinating material and basis for them to argue about^[12]He found Byron... The correspondence also reveals aspects that must have made it of considerable topical interest in the Haus Goethes - in his letter to Ottilie from (London Oct. 20 1829) he contrasted the reception of his own play Epicharis in London with Byron's Marino Faliero. A few days later in Weimar the publisher Murray visited Weimar and told Goethe he had Byron's letter with his dedication to Goethe that Byron had originally prefaced Marino Faliero, Lister's review in the Edinburgh Review from April 1830 of Delavigne's Marino Faliero. Similarly the fact that Lister included glowing panegyrics of Goethe in his letters to Ottilie, or his comparison of Goethe's Mephistopheles with Byron's Lucifer, we are sure that she informed and shared the content with him as well. A further direct and topical connection to Goethe would have been Lister's critical article in the Edinburgh Review from March 1831 on the poet John Edmund Reade's (1800-1870) "Cain the Wanderer. A vision of Heaven, Darkness and other Poems (1829)"^[13] Reade had sent Goethe his work and Goethe had replied to Reade.

It is clear that Ottilie valued Lister as a friend, and the fact that she sent him copies, before enlisting him as a contributor to the multi-lingual Weimarer periodical Chaos:

"I wish I knew which of the contributions are by [torn-yoursel]f or M. de Göethe- Perhaps you can tell me. You are very good to send me a copy in spite of the regulation that only they who write for it are privileged to secure one. But you tell me that if I had been less dilatory in answering your last letter you would have preferred to accept me as a contributor, by which I assure you I should have been much flattered and would have very gladly offered my mite."

This was a clear indication of his importance to her, and his ultimately belonging to that exclusive group, the "Chaotic Menge"^[14] as Samuel Naylor(1809-1865) a friend of Henry Crabb Robinson (also a friend of Thackeray's in Cambridge)- who fell in love with her when he visited Weimar and actually proposed to Ottilie^[15]- she requested that all her letters to him be burnt^[16], once described all of those "imps" who had contributed to the periodical. 

We know that on Friday June 29^th armed with letters of introduction from Ottilie both of them travelled from Weimar to Jena (about 12 miles/20 kilometres) to visit Karl Ludwig von Knebel (30.11.1744 - 23.2.1834), the translator of Lucretius, and Joanna Schopenhauer (1766-1838), the celebrated salon dame, writer, novelist and mother of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who had originally presented his doctoral dissertation at the university of Jena in 1813.  On the 28^th June Ottilie wrote some remarkable words-almost a kind of laddish weather forecast- to her girlfriend Adele Schopenhauer- and we presume this was what accompanied the letter of introduction to her mother:

" Lady Davy empfahl mir beide Herren sehr angelegentlich, doch kannte sie nur den Letztern, doch an Lord Lilford hat die Natur seine Weltsitte und ich weiss nicht was alles für ernst und neckende Gracien, so viel Sendschreiben und Empfehlungsbriefe an die sämtliche Frauenwelt mitgeben, ohne dass es den Männern gelingen konnte sie deshalb zu tadeln, dass es [144] ihm wohl überall wohl gehen wird….[….] Lord Lilford, der freundlichste Sommertag, reich an Blumen und Früchten und Sonnenschein[the friendliest Sommer day, rich in flowers, fruit and sunshine ], und Mr. Lister, ein Herbstmorgen, der zuweilen den Täuschenden Schein des Frühlings anzunehmen strebt[an Autumnal morning that at times strives to acquire the deceptive appearance of Spring ], bringen Dir diese Worte. Man wird von der Jugend des Letzteren manchmal verlockt zu glauben, als sei Mai, doch kömmt man näher, so sind, was lebensfrohe Blüthen schienen, nur die röthlichen Blätter des Herbstes, und alles, was Rosen und Sonnenblümen war, sind in der Nähe betrachtet nur Astern.[Of the youth of [Lister], sometimes one is tempted to believe [of Mr Lister] as if it is May, and yet if one gets a little closer, the living joy of blossom appears to be only the red leaves of Autumn, and everything that was roses and sunflowers, looked at up close, are really only Asters. [The name Aster comes from the Greek ἀστήρ (astér),meaning “star”, referring to the flower head(wiki)] , or, star-wort (Cucullia asteris) Astern-Braunmoench, or Astern-Moench; any of various plants having star-shaped flowers or flower heads?] "^[17]

These words of Ottilie to her close girlfriend Adele, she wrote to her that Lady Jane Davy, had, we presume introductory letters recommended to her both of the men "sehr angelegentlich"[earnestly recommended], although she only knew Lister. Ottilie wasn't sure about Lilford. But mention was made of Lister's novel:

"….Mr. Lister ist nach Lady Davys Brief der Verfasser eines Romans “Granby”, der großen Beifall in England gefunden, und sie wundert sich sogar, daβ sein Kopf dem Weihrauch hat wiederstehen können; mir ist immer als fänge sein Herz leise einen Klagegesang mit, der wohl die Lob=Hymnen mag übertönt haben.― Sie gehen nach Italien und werden Sterling sehen; endlich Menschen, wo man diesen Wunsch hegen kann.“

The remark of Lady Davy that Ottilie repeats to Adele, “und sie wundert sich sogar, daβ sein Kopf dem Weihrauch hat wiederstehen können" [ and she is surprised that his head could resist all of the incense] is not exactly correct omitting the two adjectives, Lady Davy had said „und es scheint mir, dass seinen Kopf hat wunderlich ausgehalten gegen dem schmeichelden Weihrauch."[and it appears to me that his head has magnificently resisted all of the adulatory incense ] illustrates the tremendous reception that Granby had gotten in England, helped on by Colburn's notorious so called ‘puffing engine' the concerted actions of his extremely well funded ‘Publicity Department' she was surprised that all the success from the publication of this novel, "hadn't gone to his head " and that he had remained somewhat indifferent towards it. Ottilie's own observations about Lister are rather strange too, "it is as if his heart had softly caught a light dirge (or lament), and that the hymns of praise may have very well drowned themselves out". This indicates that the topic of his novel had certainly arisen in conversation and yet he was rather nonplussed about it?  She was unsure about him; his attitude was as if it was feigned, she expected from him a little more but he was only prepared to give her so much, it's as if he recoiled from her natural gestures of warmth and openness. How else is one to understand the sentiment of at first seeing ‘sunshine' and yet closer up, what she saw as a kind of fabricated or deliberately hoisted coldness? Perhaps Lister was embarrassed at Ottilie's natural warmth and in Weimar he had expected a stricter code or sense of decorum; perhaps, and this might be a strong reason, he was a little taken aback by her facial injury from her accident which must have been very apparent when they first met. Ottilie had had a riding accident and had been dragged by a horse on the 28th April 1826 that had left her with a serious wound to the nose, it was broken and her lips had to be stitched up.  Lister would have seen her disfigurement when he met her, indeed, she had written to Adele Schopenhauer in the same letter announcing Lister and Lilford in Jena:

"Die Wunde auf der Nase ist noch nicht zu, und es sind ein paar ziemlich grosse Knochensplitter herausgegangen…. "^[18][The wound to the nose hasn't yet healed up; and quite a few large splinters of bone have come out]

Conversation with such a suffering person is sometimes difficult for an interlocutor, particularly if the person is heavily bandaged, it must be said that even Goethe avoided her at first “weil er sich von der Gemütsbewegungen beim Anblick ihrer Wunden fürchtete.”^[19] although he had written to Charles Sterling the day after Lister and Lilford had left Weimar for Jena and had spoken of  Ottilie's “fortdauender Besserung [continual improvement ]”^[20] this, some 8 weeks after the accident.  Lady Jane Davy wrote to Ottilie (April 17th 1827) after Des Voueux had visited her with all the news from Weimar and presents to her from Goethe, about how thankful she was that Ottilie had shown such hospitality to her "countrymen", and their "ehrenvolle Aufnahme!" and left it in her hands to thank her Father-in-law" In ihrer Händen lasse es ich meine Dankbarkeit ausgedrückten ihrem Herrn Schwiegevater." She was moved to have heard about her "fall", and remarks on how brave and generous she was to have carried out such a reception of the "strangers" and admired her for doing so whilst she was clearly suffering:

„Es thut mir leid, ihrer stürze zu hören, aber auch bewundre ich mich, dass sie so großmütig und, <unweiblich?> waren, die fremden in diesem so leidenden Zustande zu empfangen^[21]."

 A few months later, back in England, Lister also raised the subject of her health as it was then:

"I shall hope to be assured that M.de Goethe & yourself are now enjoying better health than when I had the pleasure of seeing you- Pray present my best complts to M. de Goethe & to all those of your circle whom I had the honour of knowing"^[22]

 

Many of Lister's characters in his novel Granby, as he described them knew how to "cloack" or artfully disguise their emotions, Carlyle in his description of Granby speaks of "the glozing" and the polished nature of the delineation of his characters; the idea of distinguishing between the "inward" and "outer sentiment" was always present, sometimes not only apparent to the characters themselves but to Lister in his own narrative, and it is not surprising that Lister wanted Ottilie to read his novel and set about immediately to facilitate that as soon as he arrived in Leipzig. The novel was his calling card, and he was convinced that it would tell Ottilie and Goethe more about him than he could have possibly revealed to them about his person in their brief encounter, or, for that matter what she would have obtained from Lady Davy's introductory letter to her that had nevertheless "earnestly recommended him" in Weimar and had told of the great success his novel had had in England.

In fact he was probably the most successful living English novelist[23] that she or Goethe would meet in the late 1820s; Thackeray's literary fame occurs much later.  It is fair to say that the love story in Granby between the main character Henry Granby and Caroline Jermyn, is characterized from the outset by dissimilitude and feigned deception, or what we would nowadays call ‘playing hard to get'; so too in his later novel Herbert Stacy in the love story between Herbert Stacy and Agnes Morton, is stealthily and expertly spun out, indeed the Nabakov-like cunning in what is to all extents and purposes a ‘normal' friendly letter to Agnes, the object of his desire, is dramatically pounced upon and exposed by the mother to be actually perfidious and scheming and as a result she breaks off any future contact between the two of them. The subterfuge and deliberate strategy of Herbert to make himself increasingly attractive to Agnes is a masterly psychological description, as are the skilfully constructed letters, including that of the old Generals. Ottilie, who flirted constantly and with many Englishmen, could clearly see that there was more to Lister than met her eye, but it would seem that she could not get as close to him as she wished. As Irene Hardach-Pinke has written:

"Ottilie wusste, wie schnell sie sich verliebte. Sie brauchte sich nur mit einem jungen Engländer allein in einem Raum aufzuhalten, mit ihm über Literatur zu reden oder gemeinsam einen Text zu übersetzen, und schon war es um sie geschehen. Die Kraft der Worte und Bilder, die betörende englische Sprache, und wenn dann noch Lord Byron ins Spiel kam, glaubte sie wieder einmal, der großen Leidenschaft zu begegnen, nach der sie sich so sehr sehnte."^[24]

They certainly talked about Byron, as she found him ‚heretical'. Did he resemble a Byronic hero? Well if the only existing portrait of him is anything to go by, yes.

---

^[1]  Lady Jane Davy [née Kerr](1780-1855), the wife of the Chemist Sir Humphrey Davy, and the centre of a literary circle/salon in Edinburgh, "She accompanied [Walter] Scott on his tour of the Western Isles in 1810."; "a vivacious correspondence with Scott and Sydney Smith among others"; It was said that she was the model of Corinne from Frau de Staël her friend. She had visited Goethe in 1824 (See Goethe's Tagebuch entry in: Thierfelder, Goethe und seine ausländischen Besucher: (1932), S.58;  John Hennig, Goethe's Europakunde: Goethes kenntnise des nicht deutschspraechigen Europas (Rodopi, 1987,  p.84) Clearly Ottilie had had a good relationship with Lady Davy, on Sir Humphrey Davy's death in Geneva, after abruptly leaving Rome in 1829, Soret had written a lengthy descriptive passage: "Sollte Frau von Goethe an Lady Davy schreiben wollen, so wird sie den Brief am besten nach Genf richten…."Zehn Jahre bei Goethe: Erinnerungen an Weimars klassische Zeit, 1822-1832(Georg Olms Verlag, 1929), S. 316. See Sophie Forgan, ‘Davy , Jane, Lady Davy (1780-1855)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7315, accessed 31 Jan 2015] It is possible that the following letter held at the GSA is in fact this same introductory letter: (Signatur GSA 40/III,1,4 Brief(e)von Davy, Jane an Goethe, Ottilie von geb. von Pogwisch

1824-1827, oD, 4 Stück, 8 Blatt ), (Signatur GSA 40/XXI,3,5 Brief(e) von Goethe, Ottilie von geb. von Pogwisch an Davy (Lady)

oD, 1 Stück, 1 Blatt )(Konzept (Signatur GSA 28/275 Brief(e) von Davy, Jane, geb. Kerr, verw. Apreece an Goethe, Johann Wolfgang oD, 1 Stück, 2 Blatt)

^[2]  Whereas afterwards the authors Charles James Lever (1806-1872) visit to Weimar in 1829 or William Thackeray (1811-1863) in Weimar in 1830/31, Thackeray's extended visit has been well documented See S. S. Prawer, Breeches and Metaphysics: Thackeray's German Discourse (Oxford, 1997) and some of his correspondence with Ottilie von Goethe has actually been published. In Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair (1847) scenes from Weimar life are depicted in a number of chapters. It is well known that chapters LXII & LXIII and the description of German life in „Pumpernickel" was his humorous depiction of Weimar life in his novel "Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero"(1847) See John K. Mathison, "The German Sections of Vanity Fair", in: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 18, December 1963, pp.233-246, and George J. Worth, "More on the German Sections of Vanity Fair", in: NCF, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Mar., 1965), pp. 402-404; "Thackeray's Lehrlingszeit im Weimar", in: Neuphilologische Monatsschrift, IX, (1939), pp.111-114.

^[3]  GSA 40/III,1,4 Brief(e)von Davy, Jane an Goethe, Ottilie von geb. von Pogwisch 1824-1827, oD, 4 Stück, 8 Blatt.(Briefe Nr. 2 May 15. 1826, 26 Park Street [i.e. Grovesnor Square])

^[4]  Ibid.

^[5]  Ibid.

^[6]  GSA Weimar, 40/X, 2, 15, Br. Nr.8 v.30.10.1830.

^[7]  See Gordon N. Ray, Thackeray the Uses of Adversity 1811-1846. (London: OUP, 1955),p.142.

^[8]  For example Ottilie an Goethe [19 Juni 1825], op. cit., Bd. 28, S.142-43., directing him what to read, etc.

^[9]  GSA Weimar, 40/X, 2, 15, Br. Nr.2 Dresden July 5^th 1826 [stamp Dresden 7 June]

^[10]  GSA Weimar, 40/X, 2, 15, Br. Nr.14

^[11]  Ottilie's fascination for Byron; See also Caroline Franklin The Female Romantics: Nineteenth-Century Women Novelists and Byronism (New York and Oxford: Routledge, 2013) and review by Anna Camilleri, in: The Byron Journal, Vol. 42, Number 1, 2014, pp. 71-73

^[12]  In these two letters we also hear some of the sentiments which were to accompany the publication of ‘The poetical works of Lord Byron: with copious illustrative notes, and a memoir of his life". This memoir, we think published after his death, was written by Lister.

^[13]  Art. V. - 1. Cain the Wanderer, and other Poems. 8vo. London: 1830. 2. The Revolt of the Angels, and the Fall from Paradise. An Epic Drama. By Edmund Reade, Esq., Author of Cain the Wanderer. 8 vo. London: 1830, Edinburgh Review, vol. 53, 1831,pp.105-119 "Reade's Poems" (Vol. 53 (March 1831).)

^[14]  GSA Weimar, 40/XII, 1,2, Br.Nr.41a, Oktober 1844(?)

^[15]  According to Ruth Rathmeyer„der wohl unbedeutendste aller englischen Studenten, die Weimars Plaster betreten haben"Ottilie von Goethe. Eine Biographie (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag) S.169.

^[16]  "before you have read it burn this", we read in a letter of Ottilie's to Samuel Naylor (1809-1865), Ottilie demanded that his letters be returned. On Naylor's correspondence see Vivian (2008/9), S.56f, and Vivian (2010), S. 98f.

^[17]  Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft, Bd.28, (Weimar: 1913) Ottilie an Adele Schopenhauer (Weimar, den 28. Juni 1825), S.143.

^[18]  Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft, Bd.28, 1913, 79.

^[19]  Irene Hardach-Pinke, Ottilies Geheimnis(2008), Verrückt nach jungen Engländern, S.152.

^[20]  On Friday 30th June 1826 Goethe wrote a letter to Ottilie's Irish admirer, Charles Sterling, about Ottilie's accident: „die schon acht Wochen leidet, aber bey fortdauender Besserung einer baldigen Genesung entgegen sieht….[….]"(Goethes Leben von Tag zu Tag, Bd. VII 1821-1827, S.633.)

^[21]  Refers to her riding accident where she broke her nose and the reception of Lister and Lilford in Weimar some weeks later, and the introductory letter to Ottilie that she had given Lister.

^[22]  GSA Weimar, 40/X, 2, 15, Br. Nr.3 (Armitage Park July 9th 1827)

[23] Henry Crabb Robinson, John Lawrence?

^[24]  Ottilie herself, according to ….. used a strategy of talking about her admirers to other men; this is mentioned in Lister's Arlington (1832), and pursued by Miss Julia Saville to make Lord Arlington more interested in her, who although ‘flirting' remained faithful to his Alice Mortimer, and disappointed Lady Crawford who had expected  "a fascination, an enchainment, a difficulty of tearing himself away"(p.163). Lady Crawford intended to invite Arlington again , but this time with other young men present in the circle: "for men ever admire women more when they know that they are admired by others; and she thought that if he could not be lured, he might be stimulated into suitorship by the spirit of emulation" Arlington, I, xxiii, p.164: Such a stratagem evokes Cressida's advice, "Men desire the thing ungained more than it is" and it is therefore no surprise that Lister uses wishes to play before the reader the image of the conversation between Angelo and Isabella from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure[ Scene iv. A room in Angelo's house]: as a title quote for the next chapter a quote from Isabella to set the next scene  "[Nay]-Call us ten times frail,/ For we are soft as our complexions are,/ And credulous to soft prints." Chap. XXIV, p.164.

---

^[1]  John Manners (1721-1770)‚ Marquis of Granby‚ served in Cumberland's army against the Young Pretender. He became the commander in chief of the British contingent in Germany during the Seven Years' War (from 1759); commander in chief of the forces‚ 1766.

^[2]  Gloze, glozing "specious or deceptive talk or action"; "To give a deceptively attractive appearance to" "to colour, gild, gloss (over), sugarcoat, varnish, veneer, whitewash." To paper over, to put a good face on. [C13: from Old French glosser to comment]?

^[3]  Richard Cronin argues that "In its insistent contemporaneity and in its concentration on the ephemeral, silver-fork fiction is a reaction against the historical novel, and in particular the novel as practiced by Scott. And yet the fashionable novel cannot quite free itself from Scott's influence. The novelists retain, but in a new form, the historical sense that Scott had made central to fiction. They became the historians of the contemporary"(Cronin, op. cit.p. 39)

[4] Susan Edmonstone Ferrier (1782-1854), novelist; she visited Sir Walter Scott, 1811, 1829, and 1831; and published three novels ‘Marriage,’1818, ‘The inheritance,’1824, and ‘Destiny,’1831. (cf. CDNB, p.429; )

^[5]  "Reading at intervals a novel called Granby; one of that very difficult class which aspires to describe the actual current of society, whose colours are so evanescent that it is difficult to fix them on the canvas. It is well written, but over-laboured- too much attempt to put the reader exactly up to the thoughts and sentiments of the parties. The women do this better: Edgeworth, Ferrier, Austen have all had their portraits of real society, far superior to anything man, vain man, has produced of the like nature."The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, vol. 1, p.164.[see below] (vgl. Vastly differing same quote in, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott. By J. G. Lockhart, Esq. His son-in-law and literary executor. In Four Volumes.(Paris, Baudry's European Library, 1838)Vol. 4, p.37.

 See Frauengestalten Weimar-Jena um 1800, (2009), S.175. Lister himself shared this belief in a letter to Ottilie. In his entry in his Journal, for April 22nd 1828, Scott wrote that "We went to Lady Davy's in the evening , where there was a fashionable party." The following day he dined there again and remarked on "several other fashionable folks". The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford. Ed. by David Douglas ([Edinburgh, 1890]CUP, 2013), vol. 2, p.165

^[6]  And the Gazette was already being quoted in Advertisements & Notices under "Interesting Works' just published by Henry Colburn "2. GRANBY, a Novel. In 3 vols. Post 8vo. Price 27s."One of the pleasantest novels we have had occasion to commend for a very long time"-Literary Gazette."in:. The Examiner (London, England), Sunday, December 18, 1825; Issue 932. ; „The work announced under the name of Granby, is, we hear, descriptive of scenes in high life; and, like its predecessors, Tremaine and Matilda, written by a Gentleman of rank." In the column ‘THE MIRROR OF FASHION'in: The Morning Chronicle (London, England), Monday, November 28, 1825; Issue 17538, p.1

^[7]  See John Sutherland, Henry Colburn Publisher, in: Publishing history, 19, 1986, pp.59-; perhaps Lister's celebrity is attributable to Colburn's astonishing ‘Puffing techniques' and his ‘Publicity Department' or ‘puffing engine'. Caryle spoke of "huge subterranean, puffing bellows"(Carylyle, Selected Wrritings (1971), p.66.) employed by mechanically aided ‘Literature' in his article originally published in the Edinburgh Review, Sign of the Times (1829)  

^[8]  Thomas Atherton Powys, 3rd Baron Lilford (1801-1861), had only recently inherited his title from Thomas Powys, 2^nd Baron Lilford, on 04. 07. 1825.

^[9]  Donald Hawes, ‘Lister, Thomas Henry (1800-1842)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2012 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16768, accessed 18 Oct 2014]

^[10]  He would have course frequented Lady Davy‘s literary salon in Edinburgh.

^[11]  Regarding his Italian tour from November 1826 until June 1827 there is a short mention of him in a work by Marguerite Gardiner (aka Countess of Blessington) The Idler in Italy as he was in Pisa: "Mr. Lister, the author of "Granby," has come here for a few days. He is a very gentlemanly, well-informed young man, of peculiarly mild manners, and with a good taste for the fine arts. We went to Leghorn yesterday: a large party, consisting of the Duchesse de Guiche, Mr. Lister, Mr. Wilkie[the painter Sir David Wilkie], and our own family. A portion of our party went on board Admiral Codrington's ship which was in the harbour; and returned much gratified by the inspection of it."The Idler in Italy, Vol. II, 18, pp.497-8.

^[12]  See "Lady Caroline Lamb (nee Ponsonby) (1785-1828"in: Romanticism. An Anthology. Second Edition. Edited by Duncan Wu (Blackwell: Oxford and Massachusetts, 1998), pp.648-658; also Romantic Women Poets: An Anthology. Edited by Duncan Wu (Blackwell, 1997),pp.479-88; Appropriating Byron: Lady Caroline Lamb's A New Canto", in The Wordsworth Circle,  26 (1995), 140-6; Paul Douglass, "What Lord Byron Learned from Lady Caroline Lamb"(2005) pdf online San Jose State University, Department of English and Comparative Literature ; "Evil genius? Whore? Procuress? Crazy Jane?" ; and his Lady Caroline Lamb: A Biography by Paul Douglass (2004) See also Clara Tuite, "Tainted Love and Romantic Literary Celebrity", in:  ELH, Vol. 74, No.1, Spring 2007, pp. 59-88; Leigh Wetherall Dickson (Northumbria University), "The Construction of a Reputation for Madness: The Case Study of Lady Caroline Lamb", pdf online in: Working With English: Medieval and Modern Language, Literature and Drama 2 (2005-2006): 27-46;

^[13]  Her correspondence with Ottilie von Goethe is written in an impressive German; although she loved Germany, mentioning her predilection for Italy, she even quotes Goethe in German: "aber meine Wunsche und meine Verlangen sind immer nach Italien gerichtet, „das Land wo die Citrone" &c"( GSA 40/III,1,4 Brief(e)von Davy, Jane an Goethe, Ottilie von geb. von Pogwisch 1824-1827, oD, 4 Stück, 8 Blatt.) Briefe Nr. 2 May 15. 1826.

^[14]  Lady Jane Davy (nee Kerr, olim Apreece)  to Walter Scott, Rome Palazzo Valdambrini, March 31^st 1825. [held at the National Library of Scotland] published online; http://www.davy-letters.org.uk/?s=(List of Letters Humphry Davy and his Circle. This website has been funded by the British Academy, the Wellcome Trust, the British Society for the History of Science, and the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry. It is the first stage in the publication of the first ever edition of the Collected Letters of Humphry Davy and his Circle, edited by a team of Davy scholars.)

^[15]  See The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford. Ed. by David Douglas ([Edinburgh, 1890]CUP, 2013), vol. 1, p.107 (February 7, 1826)

^[16]  

^[17]  In the Jahrbuch der Sammlung Kippenberg, Bd. 3,1974, S.98, they have mistakenly ‘1825'. See here about J.P. Parry, S. 96.

^[18]  GSA Weimar, 40/X, 2, 15 Brief (e) von Lister, Thomas Henry an Goethe, Ottilie von geb. von Pogwisch 1826-1834, oD, 15 Stück, 30 Blatt, 1 Couvert.

^[19]  Hennig, Goethes Europkunde, S.84

^[20]  It went through a total of 70 editions and appeared between September 1829 until February 1832.

^[21]  GSA Weimar, 40/III,1,4 Brief(e)von Davy, Jane an Goethe, Ottilie von geb. von Pogwisch

1824-1827, oD, 4 Stück, 8 Blatt.

^[22]  Reviewed in the Edinburgh Review; October 1, 1832, p. 146-156 ‘Mr. Lister's Arlington' (EBSCOhost American periodicals!)

^[23]  Surprisingly, a biography of Lister has never been undertaken. The Harcourt papers in the Bodleian Library contain correspondence with his wife and her family, 1830, 1834 MS. Harcourt 632, fols. 5-28.; and in the Victoria and Albert Museum Library the correspondence with his publisher Colburn is present. The Macvey Napier letters in the British Library (Add. MSS 34614-34622) surely contain much more than the two letters to Napier that were published in the selected correspondence (1879)?

^[24]  According to L. Willoughby, the German Anglist Heinrich Mutschmann (1884-1955), University College Nottingham, had obtained from the English Goethe Society the ‚Auftrag‘, to edit the unpublished correspondence between Ottilie von Goethe and „her English friends", it was hindered due to the outbreak of the First World War, so that this ‘Vorhaben‘ 100 years later amounts to a research desiderate  (Forschungsdesideraten). See Willoughby, L. A.: Samuel Naylor and ‘Reynard the Fox'. A Study in Anglo-German literary Relations. London [et al.] 1914, p. 3. I have drawn attention to this research desiderat in my article on the English editor of Chaos, James Patrick Parry, Vivian (2009), p.56/57.

^[25]  Signatur GSA 40/N 38 Stammbuch von Ulrike von Pogwisch 1820 - 1831, 88 Blatt [Bl. 41 29.06.1826, 1 Blatt Lister, Thomas Henry Weimar (Ausstellungsort) Incipit: Lady, must the trouble lay ... ; and one from Lilford, [Bl 42 28.06.1826, 1 Blatt Lilford (?) Weimar (Ausstellungsort) Incipit: Lady I thank You! You act good ...] Ulrike has responded in French to both entries;

^[26]  It would have amused both Ottilie and Ulrike to know later that in his novel Granby the celebrated character of Trebeck, had declined to write "something clever and original" for Lady Harriet Duncan's album, after she had tried to find a particular inscription that she had noted down after visiting the burial ground of Pe're la Chaise in Paris: "I have not yet discovered any genius for extempore effusions" says Trebeck and promised her instead "I shall be happy to leave you an impromptu in my will, if you will not object to that mode of receiving it? To which she replied: "Oh, I shall like it ten times better; there will be something so new in a posthumous impromptu."(Granby, vol. 1, p.147)