Simplicissimus

by Johann Grimmelshausen

  What I needed was either a sworn enemy or a good friend: an enemy to take my mind off these foolish thoughts of love or a friend to advise me and persuade me to forget this nonsense. Unfortunately all I had was my money, which dazzled me, my blind desires, which led me astray because I gave them free rein, and my recklessness, which ruined me and brought disaster. Fool that I was, I should have seen that the clothes we were both wearing were an omen that no good could come of the affair. Since I had just lost Herzbruder and the girl her parents, the first time we saw each other we were both dressed in mourning; what joy could come from the love between us? However, I was as blind and irrational as young Cupid and determined to make a fool of myself and, since it was the only way I could satisfy my animal lusts, I decided to marry her. ‘You’re only a farmer’s son’, I told myself, ‘and you’ll never own a castle as long as you live. This corner of the country is a fine place and compared with other areas has managed to remain flourishing and prosperous throughout these dreadful wars. Moreover, you’ve enough money to buy the best farm in the district. You’re going to marry this honest country girl and acquire a peaceful estate among the country folk. Where could you find a livelier residence than close to the spa, where the departures and arrivals mean you see a new world every six weeks and can visualise how the earth changes from one age to the next.’

  These were a few of the thousand thoughts that went through my mind until I finally asked the object of my desires to marry me and got her, not without difficulty, to say yes.

  Chapter 8

  Simplicius enters on his second marriage, meets his Da and finds out who his parents were

  I was in seventh heaven and made splendid preparations for my wedding. I not only bought up the farm where my bride had been born, but started a fine new building there, as if I intended to keep court rather than house. Even before the ceremony had taken place I had bought over thirty head of cattle, because that was the number that could be fed on the farm all year round. In short, everything was of the best, even the expensive furnishings my folly persuaded me to get. However, I was soon laughing on the other side of my face. I thought I was sailing for the Virgin Isles and found myself entering the harbour of Mangalore, at which I realised, far too late, the reason why my bride was so unwilling to take me. What made it hardest of all to bear was that I could not complain about it to anyone without making myself a laughing-stock. I could see that there was a certain justice about it, but that did not make me any more willing to put up with it, nor to mend my ways. Since I had been deceived, I decided to deceive the deceiver and went grazing wherever I could find pasture, the result being that I spent more time in good company at the spa than at home. I left my household duties to take care of themselves and for her part my wife was just as slovenly. I had an ox slaughtered for home use and she salted it in several baskets; when she was to prepare a sucking-pig for me she tried to pluck it like a fowl; she roasted crayfish on a griddle and trout on the spit. From these few examples you can easily tell how she looked after me in general. She was fond of a bottle of wine, too, and enjoyed having company to share it, all of which was a portent of disaster to come.

  Once I was walking with some of the fashionable crowd down the valley to attend a gathering at the lower baths when we met an old peasant leading a goat, which he was taking to sell. I felt I had seen him somewhere before, so I asked him where he was coming from with his goat. He doffed his cap and said, ‘I really can’t tell ye, yer honour sir.’

  ‘You haven’t stolen it?’ I said.

  ‘Nay’, replied the peasant, ‘I’m bringing it from the wee town down the valley, but I can’t tell yer honour its name in case the goat hears.’

  This made the rest of my companions laugh, since the name of the town farther down the river meant ‘Goat-town’. I went pale, which they all presumed was because I was annoyed or embarrassed at the neat way the peasant had sidestepped my question, but it was something quite different I had on my mind. The large wart coming out of the middle of his forehead, like a unicorn’s horn, made me quite sure it was my Da from the Spessart. However, I decided to play the mind-reader a little before I made myself known to him and gave him the pleasure of seeing what a splendid son he had, as he could tell from my fine clothes. ‘You come from the Spessart, don’t you?’ I said to him.

  ‘Aye, sir’, the peasant replied, at which I said, ‘Weren’t your house and farm plundered and burnt down by troopers about eighteen years ago?’

  ‘Yes, God help me, so they were’, answered the peasant, ‘but it wasn’t so long ago.’

  ‘And didn’t you have two children’, I went on, ‘a grown-up daughter and a young boy who looked after your sheep?’

  ‘The girl was my child, yer honour sir’, my Da replied, ‘but not the boy, though I was bringing him up as my own son.’

  That made it clear to me that I wasn’t the son of this crude bumpkin. On the one hand I was pleased to hear it, on the other I was dismayed because it meant I was probably a bastard or foundling, so I asked my Da where he had found the boy and what reason he had to bring him up as his own. ‘Alas’, he said, ‘twas a strange business with him. The war gave him to me and the war took him away again.’

  At this point I began to be afraid he might say something about my birth which would reflect dishonourably on me, so I turned the conversation back to the goat, asking him if he had sold it to the innkeeper’s wife for cooking, which I would have found odd as the spa visitors were not in the habit of eating old goat’s flesh. ‘Oh no, yer honour’, he replied, ‘the innkeeper’s wife has enough goats of her own and wouldn’t pay for one. It’s for that countess what’s taking the waters. Doctor Knowall has prescribed some herbs for her, but the goat has to eat them first, then he takes the milk and makes a medicine out of it that the countess has to drink to get well again. People say the countess has nae innards and if this goat can help her it’ll be more than yon doctor and his farm-assister can do atween ’em.’

  While he was telling us all this, I thought of a way of speaking to the peasant again and offered to pay one thaler more for the goat than the doctor or countess had offered. The prospect of the smallest profit soon makes people change their minds, and he immediately agreed, but only on condition that he could tell the countess first that I had offered him one thaler more than she had. If she was willing to pay the extra, she would get her goat, if not, he would let me have it. Either way, he would come to see me that evening to tell how things stood.

  So off went my Da on his way, and we on ours. However, the gathering had lost its attraction for me, so I slipped away from my companions and went back to find my Da. He still had the goat because the others refused to pay that much for it, which I found surprising in such rich people. It certainly didn’t make me want to imitate them, so I took him to the farm I had recently bought and paid him for the goat. Then I got him half tipsy and asked him where the boy we had been talking about had come from. ‘Well you see, sir’, he said, ‘Mansfeld’s campaigns brought him to me and the Battle of Nördlingen took him way again.’

  ‘That must be an interesting story’, I said, and asked him to tell it to me to help pass the time, which he did:

  ‘When Christian of Brunswick was defeated at Höchst while trying to join up with Count Mansfeld, his forces, not knowing where they should retreat to, were dispersed all over the countryside. Many came to the Spessart, since they were looking for wooded country where they could hide. But they often escaped death down on the plain only to find it up in our hills, and since both sides were quite happy to continue plundering and killing each other on our lands, we country folk joined in too. Much of the time it was too dangerous to stay at home with our hoes and ploughs, and it was rare for a farmer to go off into the woods without his musket. During these turbulent times I was once in a wild part of the forest not far from my farm when I heard some shots close by and immediately after came across a beautiful young noblewoman on a splendid horse. At first I took her
for a man from the way she rode, but when I saw her raise her hands and eyes to heaven and heard her call on God in French and in a pitiful voice, I lowered my musket, which I was about to fire at her, and uncocked it, since both her cries and her gestures told me it was a woman in distress. I went up to her, and when she saw me she said, “If you are a true Christian, I beg you for the love of God and remembering the Day of Judgment, when we must all account for our deeds and misdeeds, to take me to some honest women who with God’s assistance will help me bring the child I am carrying into the world.” This earnest exhortation, together with the sweetness of the woman’s tones and her beauty and grace, which shone through despite her distress, aroused my compassion and I led her horse by the bridle through thorn and thicket to the densest part of the woods, where I had found refuge for my wife, child, servants and cattle. And it was there, not thirty minutes later, that she gave birth to the boy we have been talking about.’

  With that my Da concluded his story and went back to his wine, of which I had put out a liberal amount. When he had emptied his glass, I asked, ‘And what happened to the woman afterwards?’

  ‘Once she had been delivered of the child’, he said, ‘she begged me to be its godfather and to see it was baptised as quickly as possible. She told me her name and her husband’s, so they could be recorded in the register, then opened up her satchel, in which she had many valuables, and gave me, my wife and child, the maid and another woman more than enough to reward us for our pains. But while she was doing this, and telling us about her husband, she suddenly died, first of all commending the child to our care.

  Because of all the unrest, which meant people did not stay in their homes, we had great difficulty finding a pastor to bury the mother and baptise the child. Once that had been done, however, the burgomaster told me to look after the boy until he was grown up and keep the woman’s property to cover our costs, apart from some rosaries, precious stones and jewelry, which I should keep for the child. My wife fed the lad on goat’s milk and we were happy to have him and thought of marrying him to our daughter when he grew up. However, after the battle of Nördlingen I lost both, the girl and the boy, together with everything we owned.’

  ‘You have told me a fascinating story’, I said to my Da, ‘but you’ve forgotten the best bit. You have not said what the woman, or her husband or the child were called.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you would want to know, sir’, he replied. ‘The lady was called Susanna Ramsi and her husband Captain Sternfels von Fuchshaim, and since my name is Melchior, I had the lad christened Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim. That is what was recorded in the register.’

  And that was how I learnt, though much too late, both my parents now being dead, that I was the son of the hermit and Governor Ramsay’s sister. All I could learn of my uncle Ramsay was that the people of Hanau had driven him out, together with his Swedish garrison, at which he was so furious that he went quite mad.

  I drowned my godfather in wine and had his wife sent for the next day. When I revealed who I was they refused to believe me until I showed them a black hairy birthmark I had on my chest.

  Chapter 9

  How he suffered the pains of childbirth and how he became a widower once more

  Not long afterwards I rode down to the Spessart with my godfather in order to obtain a certificate attesting my descent and legitimacy which, with my godfather’s testimony, I easily obtained from the registrar of births. I also went to visit the pastor who had been in Hanau and looked after me. He gave me a written statement as to where my father had died and that I had been with him until his death and then for a while under the name of Simplicius with Colonel Ramsay, the governor of Hanau. In fact I had a lawyer draw up a document based on the statements of eye-witnesses recounting my whole story for, as I told myself, you never know when you might need it. In all the journey cost me four hundred thalers because on our way home we were caught and robbed by a party of troopers. My Da or, rather, my godfather and I only just escaped with our lives and arrived back on foot, stripped of everything we had.

  At home everything was going from bad to worse. As soon as my wife heard that her husband was a nobleman, she not only played the grande dame but completely neglected the housekeeping, which I suffered in silence, since she was pregnant. I also had some bad luck with my cattle and most of them died, including the best of them.

  All this I could have put up with, but by Christ! it never rains but it pours. At the same time as my wife had her baby, her maid also gave birth and while the latter’s child resembled me, my wife’s was the spitting image of the servant. Moreover that very same night the lady I had jilted at the spa had a baby left on my doorstep with a letter saying I was the father. Having thus become the father of three children at once, I felt that any moment more were likely to creep out of every corner, which caused me not a few grey hairs. But that is what happens if you lead such a godless, dissolute life as I did and give way to your animal lusts.

  But it was no use complaining. I had to have them christened and pay the hefty fine imposed by the authorities. The fact that at that point the region was under Swedish rule and I had served in the emperor’s army only served to increase the amount I was made to fork out, all of which turned out to be merely the prelude to my complete ruination. Although I was despondent at all these disasters, my good wife took them lightly, teasing me day and night about the fine son that had been laid at my door and about the huge fine I had to pay. If, however, she had known what had happened between her maid and me she would have tormented me even worse. Fortunately the whore was obliging enough to allow herself to be persuaded (by as much money as I would have had to pay in fines on her account) to put the blame on one of the dandies who had visited me now and then the previous year and had been at my wedding, but with whom she had actually had no other dealings. I still had to get her to leave, however. My wife suspected I knew about her relationship with the servant, but I could not do anything about it, being unwilling to point out that I could not be in her bed and the maid’s at the same time. And all the while I was irked by the idea of not only having to bring up a servant’s bastard while I could not make my own offspring my heirs but having to hold my tongue and just be glad no one else knew about it into the bargain.

  I spent the days tormenting myself with these thoughts while my wife did not let an hour pass without enjoying a glass or more of wine. Since our marriage she had grown so attached to the bottle that it was seldom far from her lips and she was always pretty inebriated by the time she went to bed. Her drunkenness quickly sucked the life out of her child and so inflamed her own innards that soon after they dropped out and made me a widower for the second time, at which I almost died laughing.

  Chapter 10

  What some country folk said about the enchanted Mummelsee

  Thus I found myself free once more, but my purse rather empty and my household overburdened with servants and cattle. I took Melchior, my godfather, as my real father, his wife as my mother and the bastard Simplicius, who had been left on my doorstep, as my son and heir. I handed over the house and farm to the two old people, together with all my money, apart from a few gold pieces and jewels, which I kept back for dire emergencies. My experiences with women had left me with such a disgust for their company that I resolved never to marry again. The old couple, whose knowledge of farming was unsurpassed, immediately remodelled my household, getting rid of those servants and beasts that served no useful purpose and taking on others that would bring a profit. My old Da and Ma told me not to worry, promising that if I left them to run things they would make sure there was always a good horse in the stable and enough money over to allow me to take a drink with any honest man. It very quickly became clear to me what kind of people I had put in charge of my estate. My godfather went out with the labourers to cultivate the fields and haggled worse than any Jew over cattle, wood and resin. My godmother concentrated on breeding cattle and was better at making – and keeping – money f
rom the dairy than ten women like my late wife. In a short time my farm had all the necessary equipment, animals and poultry and was soon recognised as the best in the whole area. I, however, spent my time going for walks and philosophising since, seeing as my godmother made more out of the bees with wax and honey than my wife had from cattle, pigs and all the rest combined, I could rest assured that nothing would be overlooked.

  One day my walks took me to the spa, though more to get a drink of fresh water than to revert to my old habit of associating with the fashionable crowd there. My godparents’ thrift was beginning to rub off on me, and they advised me it was not worth spending time with people who wasted their own and their parents’ property. Nevertheless, I ended up joining a group (of respectable citizens, not the spendthrift dandies) because they were talking about something unusual, namely the Mummelsee, a supposedly bottomless lake on one of the highest mountains in the neighbourhood. They had sent for various old country folk to tell them what they had heard about this mysterious lake and I enjoyed listening to what they had to say, though I assumed it was all fabrication since it sounded as spurious as some of Pliny’s tales.

  One said that if you tied up an odd number of anything – peas, pebbles or whatever you like – in a handkerchief and dipped it in you would find an even number when you took it out, and vice versa. Another claimed, and most of them quoted examples to confirm it, that if you threw one or more stones in, a terrible storm would immediately get up with torrential rain, hail and high winds, no matter how clear the sky had previously been. From that they got onto all sorts of bizarre things that had happened there and all the fantastic spirits such as brownies and water sprites, that had been seen and had even talked to people. One told us that when some men were herding their animals by the lake a brown bull had emerged from it and joined the other cattle but a little mannikin had appeared and tried to drive it back under the water. The bull, however, had refused to comply until the mannikin wished all the ills of mankind on it if it did not return, at which they both disappeared into the lake.