Introduction
It is a curious fact that of that class of literature to which
Munchausen belongs, that namely of Voyages Imaginaires, the three
great types should have all been created in England. Utopia, Robinson
Crusoe, and Gulliver, illustrating respectively the philosophical, the
edifying, and the satirical type of fictitious travel, were all
written in England, and at the end of the eighteenth century a fourth
type, the fantastically mendacious, was evolved in this country. Of
this type Munchausen was the modern original, and remains the
classical example. The adaptability of such a species of composition
to local and topical uses might well be considered prejudicial to its
chances of obtaining a permanent place in literature. Yet Munchausen
has undoubtedly achieved such a place. The Baron's notoriety is
universal, his character proverbial, and his name as familiar as that
of Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, or Robinson Crusoe, mariner, of York.
Condemned by the learned, like some other masterpieces, as worthless,
Munchausen's travels have obtained such a world-wide fame, that the
story of their origin possesses a general and historic interest apart
from whatever of obscurity or of curiosity it may have to recommend
it.
The work first appeared in London in the course of the year 1785. No
copy of the first edition appears to be accessible; it seems, however,
to have been issued some time in the autumn, and in the Critical
Review for December 1785 there is the following notice: "Baron
Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in
Russia. Small 8vo, IS. (Smith). This is a satirical production
calculated to throw ridicule on the bold assertions of some
parliamentary declaimers. If rant may be best foiled at its own
weapons, the author's design is not ill-founded; for the marvellous
has never been carried to a more whimsical and ludicrous extent." The
reviewer had probably read the work through from one paper cover to
the other. It was in fact too short to bore the most blasé of his
kind, consisting of but forty-nine small octavo pages. The second
edition, which is in the British Museum, bears the following title;
"Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns
in Russia; humbly dedicated and recommended to country gentlemen, and
if they please to be repeated as their own after a hunt, at horse
races, in watering places, and other such polite assemblies; round the
bottle and fireside. Smith. Printed at Oxford. 1786." The fact that
this little pamphlet again consists of but forty-nine small octavo
pages, combined with the similarity of title (as far as that of the
first edition is given in the Critical Review), publisher, and
price, affords a strong presumption that it was identical with the
first edition. This edition contains only chapters ii., iii., iv., v.,
and vi. (pp. 10-44) of the present reprint. These chapters are the
best in the book and their substantial if peculiar merit can hardly be
denied, but the pamphlet appears to have met with little success, and
early in 1786 Smith seems to have sold the property to another
bookseller, Kearsley. Kearsley had it enlarged, but not, we are
expressly informed, in the preface to the seventh edition, by the hand
of the original author (who happened to be in Cornwall at the time).
He also had it illustrated and brought it out in the same year in book
form at the enhanced price of two shillings, under the title:
"Gulliver Reviv'd: The Singular Travels, Campaigns, Voyages and
Sporting Adventures of Baron Munnikhouson commonly pronounced
Munchausen; as he relates them over a bottle when surrounded by his
friends. A new edition considerably enlarged with views from the
Baron's drawings. London. 1786." A well-informed Critical Reviewer
would have amended the title thus: "Lucian reviv'd: or Gulliver Beat
with his own Bow."
Four editions now succeeded each other with rapidity and without
modification. A German translation appeared in 1786 with the imprint
London: it was, however, in reality printed by Dieterich at Göttingen.
It was a free rendering of the fifth edition, the preface being a
clumsy combination of that prefixed to the original edition with that
which Kearsley had added to the third.
The fifth edition (which is, with the exception of trifling
differences on the title-page, identical with the third, fourth, and
sixth) is also that which has been followed in the present reprint
down to the conclusion of chapter twenty, where it ends with the words
"the great quadrangle." The supplement treating of Munchausen's
extraordinary flight on the back of an eagle over France to Gibraltar,
South and North America, the Polar Regions, and back to England is
derived from the seventh edition of 1793, which has a new sub-title:—
"Gulliver reviv'd, or the Vice of Lying properly exposed." The preface
to this enlarged edition also informs the reader that the last four
editions had met with extraordinary success, and that the
supplementary chapters, all, that is, with the exception of chapters
ii., iii., iv., v., and vi., which are ascribed to Baron Munchausen
himself, were the production of another pen, written, however, in the
Baron's manner. To the same ingenious person the public was indebted
for the engravings with which the book was embellished. The seventh
was the last edition by which the classic text of Munchausen was
seriously modified. Even before this important consummation had been
arrived at, a sequel, which was within a fraction as long as the
original work (it occupies pp. 163-299 of this volume), had appeared
under the title, "A Sequel to the Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
. . . Humbly dedicated to Mr. Bruce the Abyssinian traveller, as the
Baron conceives that it may be some service to him, previous to his
making another journey into Abyssinia. But if this advice does not
delight Mr. Bruce, the Baron is willing to fight him on any terms he
pleases." This work was issued separately. London, 1792, 8vo.
Such is the history of the book during the first eight or constructive
years of its existence, beyond which it is necessary to trace it,
until at least we have touched upon the long-vexed question of its
authorship.
Munchausen's travels have in fact been ascribed to as many different
hands as those of Odysseus. But (as in most other respects) it differs
from the more ancient fabulous narrative in that its authorship has
been the subject of but little controversy. Many people have
entertained erroneous notions as to its authorship, which they have
circulated with complete assurance; but they have not felt it
incumbent upon them to support their own views or to combat those of
other people. It has, moreover, been frequently stated with equal
confidence and inaccuracy that the authorship has never been settled.
An early and persistent version of the genesis of the travels was that
they took their origin from the rivalry in fabulous tales of three
accomplished students at Göttingen University, Bürger, Kästner, and
Lichtenberg; another ran that Gottfried August Bürger, the German poet
and author of "Lenore," had at a later stage of his career met Baron
Munchausen in Pyrmont and taken down the stories from his own lips.
Percy in his anecdotes attributes the Travels to a certain Mr. M.
(Munchausen also began with an M.) who was imprisoned at Paris during
the Reign of Terror. Southey in his "Omniana" conjectured, from the
coincidences between two of the tales and two in a Portuguese
periodical published in 1730, that the English fictions must have been
derived from the Portuguese. William West the bookseller and numerous
followers have stated that Munchausen owed its first origin to Bruce's
Travels, and was written for the purpose of burlesquing that unfairly
treated work. Pierer boldly stated that it was a successful anonymous
satire upon the English government of the day, while Meusel with equal
temerity affirmed in his "Lexikon" that the book was a translation of
the "well-known Munchausen lies" executed from a (non-existent) German
original by Rudolph Erich Raspe. A writer in the Gentleman's
Magazine for 1856 calls the book the joint production of Bürger and
Raspe.
Of all the conjectures, of which these are but a selection, the most
accurate from a German point of view is that the book was the work of
Bürger, who was the first to dress the Travels in a German garb, and
was for a long time almost universally credited with the sole
proprietorship. Bürger himself appears neither to have claimed nor
disclaimed the distinction. There is, however, no doubt whatever that
the book first appeared in English in 1785, and that Bürger's German
version did not see the light until 1786. The first German edition
(though in reality printed at Göttingen) bore the imprint London, and
was stated to be derived from an English source; but this was,
reasonably enough, held to be merely a measure of precaution in case
the actual Baron Munchausen (who was a well-known personage in
Göttingen) should be stupid enough to feel aggrieved at being made the
butt of a gross caricature. In this way the discrepancy of dates
mentioned above might easily have been obscured, and Bürger might
still have been credited with a work which has proved a better
protection against oblivion than "Lenore," had it not been for the
officious sensitiveness of his self-appointed biographer, Karl von
Reinhard. Reinhard, in an answer to an attack made upon his hero for
bringing out Munchausen as a pot-boiler in German and English
simultaneously, definitely stated in the Berlin Gesellschafters of
November 1824, that the real author of the original work was that
disreputable genius, Rudolph Erich Raspe, and that the German work was
merely a free translation made by Bürger from the fifth edition of the
English work. Bürger, he stated, was well aware of, but was too
high-minded to disclose the real authorship.
Taking Reinhard's solemn asseveration in conjunction with the
ascertained facts of Raspe's career, his undoubted acquaintance with
the Baron Munchausen of real life and the first appearance of the work
in 1785, when Raspe was certainly in England, there seems to be little
difficulty in accepting his authorship as a positive fact. There is no
difficulty whatever, in crediting Raspe with a sufficient mastery of
English idiom to have written the book without assistance, for as
early as January 1780 (since which date Raspe had resided
uninterruptedly in this country) Walpole wrote to his friend Mason
that "Raspe writes English much above ill and speaks it as readily as
French," and shortly afterwards he remarked that he wrote English
"surprisingly well." In the next year, 1781, Raspe's absolute command
of the two languages encouraged him to publish two moderately good
prose-translations, one of Lessing's "Nathan the Wise," and the other
of Zachariae's Mock-heroic, "Tabby in Elysium." The erratic character
of the punctuation may be said, with perfect impartiality, to be the
only distinguishing feature of the style of the original edition of
"Munchausen."
Curious as is this long history of literary misappropriation, the
chequered career of the rightful author, Rudolph Erich Raspe, offers a
chapter in biography which has quite as many points of singularity.
Born in Hanover in 1737, Raspe studied at the Universities of
Göttingen and Leipsic. He is stated also to have rendered some
assistance to a young nobleman in sowing his wild oats, a sequel to
his university course which may possibly help to explain his
subsequent aberrations. The connection cannot have lasted long, as in
1762, having already obtained reputation as a student of natural
history and antiquities, he obtained a post as one of the clerks in
the University Library at Hanover.
No later than the following year contributions written in elegant
Latin are to be found attached to his name in the Leipsic Nova Acta
Eruditorum. In 1764 he alluded gracefully to the connection between
Hanover and England in a piece upon the birthday of Queen Charlotte,
and having been promoted secretary of the University Library at
Göttingen, the young savant commenced a translation of Leibniz's
philosophical works which was issued in Latin and French after the
original MSS. in the Royal Library at Hanover, with a preface by
Raspe's old college friend Kästner (Göttingen, 1765). At once a
courtier, an antiquary, and a philosopher, Raspe next sought to
display his vocation for polite letters, by publishing an ambitious
allegorical poem of the age of chivalry, entitled "Hermin and
Gunilde," which was not only exceedingly well reviewed, but received
the honour of a parody entitled "Harlequin and Columbine." He also
wrote translations of several of the poems of Ossian, and a
disquisition upon their genuineness; and then with better inspiration
he wrote a considerable treatise on "Percy's Reliques of Ancient
Poetry," with metrical translations, being thus the first to call the
attention of Germany to these admirable poems, which were afterwards
so successfully ransacked by Bürger, Herder, and other early German
romanticists.
In 1767 Raspe was again advanced by being appointed Professor at the
Collegium Carolinum in Cassel, and keeper of the landgrave of Hesse's
rich and curious collection of antique gems and medals. He was shortly
afterwards appointed Librarian in the same city, and in 1771 he
married. He continued writing on natural history, mineralogy, and
archæology, and in 1769 a paper in the 59th volume of the
Philosophical Transactions, on the bones and teeth of elephants and
other animals found in North America and various boreal regions of the
world, procured his election as an honorary member of the Royal
Society of London. His conclusion in this paper that large elephants
or mammoths must have previously existed in boreal regions has, of
course, been abundantly justified by later investigations. When it is
added that Raspe during this part of his life also wrote papers on
lithography and upon musical instruments, and translated Algarotti's
Treatise on "Architecture, Painting, and Opera Music," enough will
have been said to make manifest his very remarkable and somewhat
prolix versatility. In 1773 he made a tour in Westphalia in quest of
MSS., and on his return, by way of completing his education, he turned
journalist, and commenced a periodical called the Cassel Spectator,
with Mauvillon as his co-editor. In 1775 he was travelling in Italy on
a commission to collect articles of vertu for the landgrave, and it
was apparently soon after his return that he began appropriating to
his own use valuable coins abstracted from the cabinets entrusted to
his care. He had no difficulty in finding a market for the antiques
which he wished to dispose of, and which, it has been charitably
suggested, he had every intention of replacing whenever opportunity
should serve. His consequent procedure was, it is true, scarcely that
of a hardened criminal. Having obtained the permission of the
landgrave to visit Berlin, he sent the keys of his cabinet back to the
authorities at Cassel—and disappeared. His thefts, to the amount of
two thousand rixdollars, were promptly discovered, and advertisements
were issued for the arrest of the Councillor Raspe, described without
suspicion of flattery as a long-faced man, with small eyes, crooked
nose, red hair under a stumpy periwig, and a jerky gait. The
necessities that prompted him to commit a felony are possibly
indicated by the addition that he usually appeared in a scarlet dress
embroidered with gold, but sometimes in black, blue, or grey clothes.
He was seized when he had got no farther than Klausthal, in the Hartz
mountains, but he lost no time in escaping from the clutches of the
police, and made his way to England. He never again set foot on the
continent.
He was already an excellent English scholar, so that when he reached
London it was not unnatural that he should look to authorship for
support. Without loss of time, he published in London in 1776 a volume
on some German Volcanoes and their productions; in 1777 he translated
the then highly esteemed mineralogical travels of Ferber in Italy and
Hungary. In 1780 we have an interesting account of him from Horace
Walpole, who wrote to his friend, the Rev. William Mason: "There is a
Dutch sçavant come over who is author of several pieces so learned
that I do not even know their titles: but he has made a discovery in
my way which you may be sure I believe, for it proves what I expected
and hinted in my 'Anecdotes of Painting,' that the use of oil colours
was known long before Van Eyck." Raspe, he went on to say, had
discovered a MS. of Theophilus, a German monk in the fourth century,
who gave receipts for preparing the colours, and had thereby convicted
Vasari of error. "Raspe is poor, and I shall try and get subscriptions
to enable him to print his work, which is sensible, clear, and
unpretending." Three months later it was, "Poor Raspe is arrested by
his tailor. I have sent him a little money, and he hopes to recover
his liberty, but I question whether he will be able to struggle on
here." His "Essay on the Origin of Oil Painting" was actually
published through Walpole's good service in April 1781. He seems to
have had plans of going to America and of excavating antiquities in
Egypt, where he might have done good service, but the bad name that he
had earned dogged him to London. The Royal Society struck him off its
rolls, and in revenge he is said to have threatened to publish a
travesty of their transactions. He was doubtless often hard put to it
for a living, but the variety of his attainments served him in good
stead. He possessed or gained some reputation as a mining expert, and
making his way down into Cornwall, he seems for some years subsequent
to 1782 to have been assay-master and storekeeper of some mines at
Dolcoath. While still at Dolcoath, it is very probable that he put
together the little pamphlet which appeared in London at the close of
1785, with the title "Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous
Travels and Campaigns in Russia," and having given his jeu d'esprit
to the world, and possibly earned a few guineas by it, it is not
likely that he gave much further thought to the matter. In the course
of 1785 or 1786, he entered upon a task of much greater magnitude and
immediate importance, namely, a descriptive catalogue of the
Collection of Pastes and Impressions from Ancient and Modern Gems,
formed by James Tassie, the eminent connoisseur. Tassie engaged Raspe
in 1785 to take charge of his cabinets, and to commence describing
their contents: he can hardly have been ignorant of his employé's
delinquencies in the past, but he probably estimated that mere casts
of gems would not offer sufficient temptation to a man of Raspe's
eclectic tastes to make the experiment a dangerous one. Early in 1786,
Raspe produced a brief but well-executed conspectus of the arrangement
and classification of the collection, and this was followed in 1791 by
"A Descriptive Catalogue," in which over fifteen thousand casts of
ancient and modern engraved gems, cameos, and intaglios from the most
renowned cabinets in Europe were enumerated and described in French
and English. The two quarto volumes are a monument of patient and
highly skilled industry, and they still fetch high prices. The
elaborate introduction prefixed to the work was dated from Edinburgh,
April 16, 1790.
This laborious task completed, Raspe lost no time in applying himself
with renewed energy to mineralogical work. It was announced in the
Scots Magazine for October 1791 that he had discovered in the
extreme north of Scotland, where he had been invited to search for
minerals, copper, lead, iron, manganese, and other valuable products
of a similar character. From Sutherland he brought specimens of the
finest clay, and reported a fine vein of heavy spar and "every symptom
of coal." But in Caithness lay the loadstone which had brought Raspe
to Scotland. This was no other than Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, a
benevolent gentleman of an ingenious and inquiring disposition, who
was anxious to exploit the supposed mineral wealth of his barren
Scottish possessions. With him Raspe took up his abode for a
considerable time at his spray-beaten castle on the Pentland Firth,
and there is a tradition, among members of the family, of Sir John's
unfailing appreciation of the wide intelligence and facetious humour
of Raspe's conversation. Sinclair had some years previously discovered
a small vein of yellow mundick on the moor of Skinnet, four miles from
Thurso. The Cornish miners he consulted told him that the mundick was
itself of no value, but a good sign of the proximity of other valuable
minerals. Mundick, said they, was a good horseman, and always rode on
a good load. He now employed Raspe to examine the ground, not
designing to mine it himself, but to let it out to other capitalists
in return for a royalty, should the investigation justify his hopes.
The necessary funds were put at Raspe's disposal, and masses of
bright, heavy material were brought to Thurso Castle as a foretaste of
what was coming. But when the time came for the fruition of this
golden promise, Raspe disappeared, and subsequent inquiries revealed
the deplorable fact that these opulent ores had been carefully
imported by the mining expert from Cornwall, and planted in the places
where they were found. Sir Walter Scott must have had the incident
(though not Raspe) in his mind when he created the Dousterswivel of
his "Antiquary." As for Raspe, he betook himself to a remote part of
the United Kingdom, and had commenced some mining operations in
country Donegal, when he was carried off by scarlet fever at Muckross
in 1794. Such in brief outline was the career of Rudolph Erich Raspe,
scholar, swindler, and undoubted creator of Baron Munchausen.
The merit of Munchausen, as the adult reader will readily perceive,
does not reside in its literary style, for Raspe is no exception to
the rule that a man never has a style worthy of the name in a language
that he did not prattle in. But it is equally obvious that the real
and original Munchausen, as Raspe conceived and doubtless intended at
one time to develop him, was a delightful personage whom it would be
the height of absurdity to designate a mere liar. Unfortunately the
task was taken out of his hand and a good character spoiled, like many
another, by mere sequel-mongers. Raspe was an impudent scoundrel, and
fortunately so; his impudence relieves us of any difficulty in
resolving the question,—to whom (if any one) did he owe the original
conception of the character whose fame is now so universal.
When Raspe was resident in Göttingen he obtained, in all probability
through Gerlach Adolph von Munchausen, the great patron of arts and
letters and of Göttingen University, an introduction to Hieronynimus
Karl Friedrich von Munchausen, at whose hospitable mansion at
Bodenwerder he became an occasional visitor. Hieronynimus, who was
born at Bodenwerder on May 11, 1720, was a cadet of what was known as
the black line of the house of Rinteln Bodenwerder, and in his youth
served as a page in the service of Prince Anton Ulrich of Brunswick.
When quite a stripling he obtained a cornetcy in the "Brunswick
Regiment" in the Russian service, and on November 27, 1740, he was
created a lieutenant by letters patent of the Empress Anna, and served
two arduous campaigns against the Turks during the following years. In
1750 he was promoted to be a captain of cuirassiers by the Empress
Elizabeth, and about 1760 he retired from the Russian service to live
upon his patrimonial estate at Bodenwerder in the congenial society of
his wife and his paragon among huntsmen, Rösemeyer, for whose
particular benefit he maintained a fine pack of hounds. He kept open
house, and loved to divert his guests with stories, not in the
braggart vein of Dugald Dalgetty, but so embellished with palpably
extravagant lies as to crack with a humour that was all their own. The
manner has been appropriated by Artemus Ward and Mark Twain, but it
was invented by Munchausen. Now the stories mainly relate to sporting
adventures, and it has been asserted by one contemporary of the baron
that Munchausen contracted the habit of drawing such a long-bow as a
measure of self-defence against his invaluable but loquacious
henchman, the worthy Rösemeyer. But it is more probable, as is hinted
in the first preface, that Munchausen, being a shrewd man, found the
practice a sovereign specific against bores and all other kinds of
serious or irrelevant people, while it naturally endeared him to the
friends of whom he had no small number.
He told his stories with imperturbable sang froid, in a dry manner,
and with perfect naturalness and simplicity. He spoke as a man of the
world, without circumlocution; his adventures were numerous and
perhaps singular, but only such as might have been expected to happen
to a man of so much experience. A smile never traversed his face as he
related the least credible of his tales, which the less intimate of
his acquaintance began in time to think he meant to be taken
seriously. In short, so strangely entertaining were both manner and
matter of his narratives, that "Munchausen's Stories" became a by-word
among a host of appreciative acquaintance. Among these was Raspe, who
years afterwards, when he was starving in London, bethought himself of
the incomparable baron. He half remembered some of his sporting
stories, and supplemented these by gleanings from his own commonplace
book. The result is a curious medley, which testifies clearly to
learning and wit, and also to the turning over of musty old books of
facetiæ written in execrable Latin.
The story of the Baron's horse being cut in two by the descending
portcullis of a besieged town, and the horseman's innocence of the
fact until, upon reaching a fountain in the midst of the city, the
insatiate thirst of the animal betrayed his deficiency in hind
quarters, was probably derived by Raspe from the Facetiæ
Bebelianæ of Heinrich Bebel, first published at Strassburgh in
1508.
There it is given as follows: "De Insigni Mendacio. Faber
clavicularius quem superius fabrum mendaciorum dixi, narravit se
tempore belli, credens suos se subsecuturos equitando ad cujusdam
oppidi portas penetrasse: et cum ad portas venisset cataractam
turre demissam, equum suum post ephippium discidisse,
dimidiatumque reliquisse, atque se media parte equi ad forum usque
oppidi equitasse, et caedem non modicam peregisse. Sed cum
retrocedere vellet multitudine hostium obrutus, tum demum equum
cecidisse seque captum fuisse."
The drinking at the fountain was probably an embellishment of
Raspe's own. Many of Bebel's jests were repeated in J. P. Lange's
Deliciœ Academicœ (Heilbronn, 1665), a section of which was
expressly devoted to "Mendacia Ridicula"; but the yarn itself is
probably much older than either. Similarly, the quaint legend of
the thawing of the horn was told by Castiglione in his
Cortegiano, first published in 1528. This is how Castiglione
tells it: A merchant of Lucca had travelled to Poland in order to
buy furs; but as there was at that time a war with Muscovy, from
which country the furs were procured, the Lucchese merchant was
directed to the confines of the two countries. On reaching the
Borysthenes, which divided Poland and Muscovy, he found that the
Muscovite traders remained on their own side of the river from
distrust, on account of the state of hostilities. The Muscovites,
desirous of being heard across the river announced the prices of
their furs in a loud voice; but the cold was so intense that their
words were frozen in the air before they could reach the opposite
side. Hereupon the Poles lighted a fire in the middle of the
river, which was frozen into a solid mass; and in the course of an
hour the words which had been frozen up were melted, and fell
gently upon the further bank, although the Muscovite traders had
already gone away. The prices demanded were, however, so high that
the Lucchese merchant returned without making any purchase. A
similar idea is utilised by Rabelais in Pantagruel, and by
Steele in one of his Tatlers. The story of the cherry tree
growing out of the stag's head, again, is given in Lange's book,
and the fact that all three tales are of great antiquity is proved
by the appearance of counterparts to them in Lady Guest's edition
of the Mabinogion. A great number of nugœ canorœ of a
perfectly similar type are narrated in the sixteenth century
"Travels of the Finkenritter" attributed to Lorenz von Lauterbach.
To humorous waifs of this description, without fixed origin or
birthplace, did Raspe give a classical setting amongst embroidered
versions of the baron's sporting jokes. The unscrupulous manner in
which he affixed Munchausen's own name to the completed jeu d'esprit
is, ethically speaking, the least pardonable of his crimes; for when
Raspe's little book was first transformed and enlarged, and then
translated into German, the genial old baron found himself the victim
of an unmerciful caricature, and without a rag of concealment. It is
consequently not surprising to hear that he became soured and reticent
before his death at Bodenwerder in 1797.
Strangers had already begun to come down to the place in the hope of
getting a glimpse of the eccentric nobleman, and foolish stories were
told of his thundering out his lies with apoplectic visage, his eyes
starting out of his head, and perspiration beading his forehead. The
fountain of his reminiscences was in reality quite dried up, and it
must be admitted that this excellent old man had only too good reason
to consider himself an injured person.
In this way, then, came to be written the first delightful chapters of
Baron Munchausen's "Narrative of his Travels and Campaigns in Russia."
It was not primarily intended as a satire, nor was it specially
designed to take of the extravagant flights of contemporary
travellers. It was rather a literary frivolity, thrown off at one
effort by a tatterdemalion genius in sore need of a few guineas.
The remainder of the book is a melancholy example of the fallacy of
enlargements and of sequels. Neither Raspe nor the baron can be
seriously held responsible for a single word of it. It must have been
written by a bookseller's hack, whom it is now quite impossible to
identify, but who was evidently of native origin; and the book is a
characteristically English product, full of personal and political
satire, with just a twang of edification. The first continuation
(chapters one and seven, to twenty, inclusive), which was supplied
with the third edition, is merely a modern rechauffé, with "up to
date" allusions, of Lucian's Vera Historia. Prototypes of the
majority of the stories may either be found in Lucian or in the twenty
volumes of Voyages Imaginaires, published at Paris in 1787. In case,
however, any reader should be sceptical as to the accuracy of this
statement he will have no very great difficulty in supposing, as Dr.
Johnson supposed of Ossian, that anybody could write a great amount of
such stuff if he would only consent to abandon his mind to the task.
With the supplementary chapters commence topical allusions to the
recently issued memoirs of Baron de Tott, an enterprising Frenchman
who had served the Great Turk against the Russians in the Crimea (an
English translation of his book had appeared in 1785). The satire upon
this gallant soldier's veracity appears to be quite undeserved, though
one can hardly read portions of his adventures without being forcibly
reminded of the Baron's laconic style. It is needless to add that the
amazing account of De Tott's origin is grossly libellous. The amount
of public interest excited by the æronautical exploits of Montgolfier
and Blanchard was also playfully satirised. Their first imitator in
England, Vincenzo Lunardi, had made a successful ascent from
Moorfields as recently as 1784, while in the following year Blanchard
crossed the channel in a balloon and earned the sobriquet Don Quixote
de la Manche. His grotesque appropriation of the motto "Sic itur ad
astra" made him, at least, a fit object for Munchausen's gibes. In
the Baron's visit to Gibraltar we have evidence that the anonymous
writer, in common with the rest of the reading public, had been
studying John Drinkwater's "History of the Siege of Gibraltar"
(completed in 1783), which had with extreme rapidity established its
reputation as a military classic. Similarly, in the Polar adventures,
the "Voyage towards the North Pole," 1774, of Constantine John Phipps,
afterwards Lord Mulgrave, is gently ridiculed, and so also some
incidents from Patrick Brydone's "Tour through Sicily and Malta"
(1773), are, for no obvious reason, contemptuously dragged in. The
exploitation of absurd and libellous chap-book lives of Pope Clement
XIV., the famous Ganganelli, can only be described as a low bid for
vulgar applause. A French translation of Baron Friedrich von Trenck's
celebrated Memoirs appeared at Metz in 1787, and it would certainly
seem that in overlooking them the compiler of Munchausen was guilty of
a grave omission. He may, however, have regarded Trenck's adventures
less as material for ridicule than as a series of hâbleries which
threatened to rival his own.
The Seventh Edition, published in 1793, with the supplement (pp. 142-161),
was, with the abominable proclivity to edification which marked
the publisher of the period (that of "Goody Two-Shoes" and "Sandford
and Merton"), styled "Gulliver Reviv'd: or the Vice of Lying Properly
Exposed." The previous year had witnessed the first appearance of the
sequel, of which the full title has already been given, "with twenty
capital copperplates, including the baron's portrait." The merit of
Munchausen as a mouthpiece for ridiculing traveller's tall-talk, or
indeed anything that shocked the incredulity of the age, was by this
time widely recognised. And hence with some little ingenuity the
popular character was pressed into the service of the vulgar clamour
against James Bruce, whose "Travels to Discover the Sources of the
Nile" had appeared in 1790. In particular Bruce's description of the
Abyssinian custom of feeding upon "live bulls and kava" provoked a
chorus of incredulity. The traveller was ridiculed upon the stage as
Macfable, and in a cloud of ephemeral productions; nor is the
following allusion in Peter Pindar obscure:—
"Nor have I been where men (what loss alas!)
Kill half a cow, then send the rest to grass."
The way in which Bruce resented the popular scepticism is illustrated
by the following anecdote told by Sir Francis Head, his biographer. A
gentleman once observed, at a country house where Bruce was staying,
that it was not possible that the natives of Abyssinia could eat raw
meat! "Bruce said not a word, but leaving the room, shortly returned
from the kitchen with a piece of raw beef-steak, peppered and salted
in the Abyssinian fashion. 'You will eat that, sir, or fight me,' he
said. When the gentleman had eaten up the raw flesh (most willingly
would he have eaten his words instead), Bruce calmly observed, 'Now,
sir, you will never again say it is impossible.'" In reality, Bruce
seems to have been treated with much the same injustice as Herodotus.
The truth of the bulk of his narrative has been fully established,
although a passion for the picturesque may certainly have led him to
embellish many of the minor particulars. And it must be remembered,
that his book was not dictated until twelve years after the events
narrated.
Apart from Bruce, however, the sequel, like the previous continuation,
contains a great variety of political, literary, and other allusions
of the most purely topical character—Dr. Johnson's Tour in the
Hebrides, Mr. Pitt, Burke's famous pamphlet upon the French
Revolution, Captain Cook, Tippoo Sahib (who had been brought to bay by
Lord Cornwallis between 1790 and 1792). The revolutionary pandemonium
in Paris, and the royal flight to Varennes in June 1791, and the loss
of the "Royal George" in 1782, all form the subjects of quizzical
comments, and there are many other allusions the interest of which is
quite as ephemeral as those of a Drury Lane pantomime or a Gaiety
Burlesque.
Nevertheless the accretions have proved powerless to spoil
"Munchausen." The nucleus supplied by Raspe was instinct with so much
energy that it has succeeded in vitalising the whole mass of
extraneous extravagance.
Although, like "Gulliver's Travels," "Munchausen" might at first sight
appear to be ill-suited, in more than one respect, for the nursery,
yet it has proved the delight of children of all ages; and there are
probably few, in the background of whose childish imagination the
astonishing Munchausen has not at one time or another, together with
Robinson Crusoe, Jack-the-Giant-Killer, and the Pied Piper of Hamelyn,
assumed proportions at once gigantic and seductively picturesque.
The work, as has been shown, assumed its final form before the close
of the eighteenth century; with the nineteenth it commenced its
triumphant progress over the civilised world. Some of the subsequent
transformations and migrations of the book are worthy of brief record.
A voluminous German continuation was published at Stendhal in three
volumes between 1794 and 1800. There was also a continuation
comprising exploits at Walcheren, the Dardanelles, Talavera, Cintra,
and elsewhere, published in London in 1811. An elaborate French
translation, with embellishments in the French manner, appeared at
Paris in 1862. Immerman's celebrated novel entitled "Munchausen" was
published in four volumes at Dusseldorf in 1841, and a very free
rendering of the Baron's exploits, styled "Munchausen's
Lugenabenteuer," at Leipsic in 1846. The work has also been translated
into Dutch, Danish, Magyar (Bard de Mánx), Russian, Portuguese,
Spanish (El Conde de las Maravillas), and many other tongues, and an
estimate that over one hundred editions have appeared in England,
Germany, and America alone, is probably rather under than above the
mark.
The book has, moreover, at the same time provided illustrations to
writers and orators, and the richest and most ample material for
illustrations to artists. The original rough woodcuts are anonymous,
but the possibilities of the work were discovered as early as 1809, by
Thomas Rowlandson, who illustrated the edition published in that year.
The edition of 1859 owed embellishments to Crowquill, while Cruikshank
supplied some characteristic woodcuts to that of 1869. Coloured
designs for the travels were executed by a French artist Richard in
1878, and illustrations were undertaken independently for the German
editions by Riepenhausen and Hosemann respectively. The German artist
Adolph Schrödter has also painted a celebrated picture representing
the Baron surrounded by his listeners. But of all the illustrations
yet invented, the general verdict has hitherto declared in favour of
those supplied to Théophile Gautier's French edition of 1862 by
Gustave Doré, who fully maintained by them the reputation he had
gained for work of a similar genre in his drawings for Balzac's
Contes Drôlatiques. When, however, the public has had an opportunity
of appreciating the admirably fantastic drawings made by Mr. William
Strang and Mr. J. B. Clark for the present edition, they will probably
admit that Baron Munchausen's indebtedness to his illustrations,
already very great, has been more than doubled.
