James Freeman Clarke's estimate of Margaret Fuller and her influence (Memoirs, I, 97) supplies interesting, though not specific confirmation of the point of view here suggested.
8
In his Aristeia der Mutter. Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, Bd. 29, ss. 231-238, Goethe acknowledged Bettina's faithfulness and complete credibility for these details. Cf. also Reinhold Steig, Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, Stuttgart, 1894, s. 379.
9
Translator's Preface to Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe.
10
According to the investigations of R. Steig, Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano (1894), Bettina was born in the year 1788. Internal evidence is at hand to support this view. Bettina herself stated (Briefwechsel, 538) that she was sixteen when her enthusiasm for Goethe first manifested itself as an elemental force. From another passage we learn that this was three years before her first meeting with the poet in 1807, "in the heyday between childhood and maidenhood." The "Child" of the first letters of the Correspondence was, accordingly, just nineteen. German authorities have accepted 1788 as Bettina's birth-year, but English publications, including the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) still cling to 1785, the old date. Herman Grimm's account of Bettina's interests at threescore (Briefwechsel, XIX, f.) reveals the same preoccupation with Goethe, Shakespeare, and Beethoven. She died in the year 1859.
11
A mountain range between the Neckar and Main rivers.
12
The reference is to the Elective Affinities of Goethe, in which Edward, the husband of Charlotte, is obsessed with a passion for the latter's foster-daughter, Ottilie, which results in the death of the two lovers.
13
Ottilie in Elective Affinities.
14
From Spaziergaenge eines Wiener Poeten. Translator: Sarah T. Barrows.
15
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
16
Translator: Kate Freiligrath Kroeker. (From A Century of German Lyrics.)
17
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
18
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
19
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
20
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
21
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
22
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
23
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
24
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
25
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
26
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
27
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
28
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
29
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
30
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
31
Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.
32