Gltickel of Hameln
The Memoirs of Gliickel of Hameln. Translated with Intro- duction and Notes by Marvin Lowenthal. (Harper. 12s. 6d.)
Dtrama the later years of the seventeenth century the thirst for glory raged in the feminine breast ; and ladies, who had nothing better to do with their spare time, began to load posterity with memoirs, biographies and heroical novels. In France and England societies existed for the purpose of in- flaming literary ambition. There was that astonishing con- course at the Hotel Rambouillet, imitated at Cardigan by the Matchless Orinda and her friends, and there was the re- doubtable Duchess of Newcastle who wrote at all hours, even ringing for her secretaries in the middle of the night. Glilekel of Hameln also wrote at night—but for a very different reason : " In my groat grief and for my heart's ease I begin this book in the year of Creation 5451 [1690-91]. . . . I began writing it, dear children, upon the death of your good father, in the hope of distracting my soul from the burdens laid upon it, and the bitter thought that we have lost our good shepherd. In this way I have managed to live through many wakeful nights, and springing from my bed shortened the sleepless hours."
She is writing the story of her life so that her children may know something of their family, and she begs her readers to put a good face on her folly in doing so. Her apologies are unnecessary, for on every• page of her work she shows herself a born writer. Her memoirs with their quiet domestic in- teriors, their orderly pageant of births, marriages and deaths, and their flashes of shrewd humour suddenly illuminating a little scene of common life, have the quality of the Dutch painting of her period.
Gliickel came of a persecuted community of German Jews living in Hamburg, small merchants, their lives well grounded on the rock of money, family and religion. They all trusted in the Lord, and the Lord spoke through the clink of gold Reichsthalers. " As for my father," she writes, " no man bad greater trust in God, and if it had not been for the gout, he would have further increased his fortune." And when the first question put to a man in the next world is whether he was " faithful in his business," to make as much money before enter- ing the Kingdom of Heaven is plainly then his duty.- Gliickel's husband, though as faithful in this respect as every other member of his race, was at the same time the perfect pattern of a pious Jew," and his piety was not always very well-timed. " If he were praying in his room and someone came to fetch him forth where something could be bought up cheap, neither I nor any servant in my whole house would have the heart to go to him -and speak of it" Sometimes he missed bargains in this way; and then Glfickel tells us that in human weakness she " could no longer contain herself." Chayim was of finer mould than his practical bourgeois wife, but there was a true affection between them and his tender- ness for her is shown in many passages of the memoirs. Thus, in the amusing account of her first sea-voyage, she writes :
" We entered our little room where we found two benches which served for lying down. My husband now said to me, Gliiekelehen
stretch, yourself nicely on a bench, and I wffi cover you warm and snug. Take good care not to stir, only lie still and the sea will not disturb you.' I had never crossed the Dolled, but my husband had time and again, and he knew what to do. I did as he told mo and lay quite still:- The weather was bad, the winds were contrary, and the ship tossed so that everyone on board turned deathly sick and—padon,,the expression—puked." . . _ Her memoirs are delightful because of their complete free- dom from affectation,_whether 'literary or sentimental. Not " trying to Write," and with apparently no interest ,in litera- ture; she has left us a book that is not only a truer Mirror of her tine, but something that is in every way more readable thaa the baroque -literary • monument§ of those high-born ladies who wrote for glory.
..-Prixtre HENDERSON.
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