Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8Hubbard, Elbert
Philosophy
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8
Hubbard, Elbert
Philosophers
For a year the lad was left at school with a clergyman at Wimbledon, in
England. The strict religious discipline to which he was there subjected
seemed to have had much to do with forming in him a fierce hatred of
English orthodoxy; but he learned the language and became familiar with
the great names in English literature. The King Arthur stories pleased
him, and he always took a peculiar satisfaction in the fact that the
name Arthur was the same in English, German and French. He was a
prenatal cosmopolitan.
Boarding-schools are a great scheme for getting the children out of the
way--it throws the responsibility upon some one else. When nine years of
age, Arthur was placed in a French boarding-school, remaining for two
years. There he learned to speak French so fluently that when he
returned to Hamburg and tried to talk to his mother in German, his
broken speech threw that excellent woman into fits of laughter.
When the mature man of affairs takes a young girl to wife, he expects to
mold her to his nature, but he reckons without his host. Heinrich
Schopenhauer's opposition to his wife's wishes was not strong enough to
crush her--it simply developed in her a deal of wilful, dogged strength.
One winter day in Eighteen Hundred Four the body of Heinrich
Schopenhauer was found in the canal at Hamburg.
Arthur was then sixteen years of age--old for his years, traveled,
clever--strong in body and robust in health.
In wandering with his parents, he had met Goethe, Wieland, Madame De
Stael, Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, and many other distinguished
people, for his mother was a famous lion-hunter, and wherever they went,
the great ones were tracked to their lairs. But however much Madame
Schopenhauer indulged in hero-worship, she had no expectations or
ambitions for her son. She apprenticed him as a clerk and did her utmost
to immerse him in commerce. What she desired was freedom for herself,
and the popular plan to gain freedom is to enslave others. Madame
Schopenhauer moved to Weimar and opened there a sort of literary salon.
She wrote verses, novels, essays, and her home became the center of a
certain artistic group. The fortune her husband had left was equal to
about forty thousand dollars, one-third of which was to go to Arthur
when he was twenty-one. The mother had the handling of it all until that
time, and as the funds were well invested, her income was equal to about
two thousand dollars a year.
A handsome widow, under forty, with no encumbrances to speak of, and a
fair income, is very fortunately situated. Indeed, a great writer has
recently written an essay showing that widows, discreetly bereaved, are
the happiest creatures on earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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