Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (71 page)
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Authors: Peter Demetz
BOOK: Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City
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Barbora attended the local elementary school and was later, after the grandmother had left, sent by her ambitious and impatient mother to live with the family of the steward of nearby Chvalkovice Castle to refine her manners, to perfect her German, and to play the piano. In a fashionable way, people called her Fräulein Betty, which she enjoyed, and as time went by she preferred the admiring glances of men, among them the steward himself, to the company of boys. There was flirting, whispers, and first kisses, and long hours of reading Schiller and Wieland, but also a good deal of third-rate German trash nourishing her dreams about the fairy-tale prince to arrive; yet Betty had also a sharp eye for the tangible social world, and at another time described the married life of the steward and his older wife with devastating precision: “in the evening, when she went to bed, she rigged herself out like a wagoneer who wants to go to Amsterdam, with flannel drawers, a skirt, a bodice, and stockings; and above all that she put a warm corset and a shawl around her neck.” The many-layered lady, who had served in Vienna, was jealous, so Betty returned home to her mother, who had her hands full and did not know what to do with her lively and imaginative seventeen-year-old daughter; when a member of the border guard revealed that his chief, a man with prospects, was looking for a young wife, the family was more than willing to arrange the marriage.
In due course Josef N
mec, of military bearing, rather educated and coarse, presented himself to the parents and to Barbora. At first she was not ready to take the talk of marriage seriously, but she had no other choice and married Josef (twice her age) in a formal ceremony, she in a pale blue dress, he in his Sunday uniform, on September 12, 1827. They both came to regret the day.
mec, of military bearing, rather educated and coarse, presented himself to the parents and to Barbora. At first she was not ready to take the talk of marriage seriously, but she had no other choice and married Josef (twice her age) in a formal ceremony, she in a pale blue dress, he in his Sunday uniform, on September 12, 1827. They both came to regret the day.There is not another marriage in Czech intellectual history that has been more closely scrutinized by biographers and literary critics than that of Josef N
mec and Barbora Panklová. The bridegroom had been a student
of philosophy when he was accused of participating in a silly street demonstration and, as punishment, forced to join the army (the regular term of service was fourteen years). Being a proud patriot, he refused to swear the oath of allegiance in German (his officer accepted the Czech version), served many years in Italy, carrying Professor Jungmann’s famous book on Czech rhetoric in his pack, perhaps the reason why he never had anything to say about the glories of Italy. When his time of service was reduced, he joined the financial, or border, guards, organized to levy food taxes and fight smugglers of tobacco and cheap cotton. He was a stubborn and pugnacious man, often in conflict with his superiors, and made a slow and meandering career through the ranks. In early June 1853, he was officially notified that he was suspended from the service, confined to a little Hungarian town (which he had chosen to speed up his promotion), and investigated as an
enragé
Czech of republican sentiments, especially dangerous because of his influence on his wife, the writer Božena N
mcová, who in turn enjoyed considerable prestige among Czech intellectuals (one of her women friends was a spy in the service of the police, elaborately trained for the job). For brief periods Josef, a man of the barracks, and Božena felt close to each other, especially in the Bohemian provinces, where they were both active in Czech civic life, or when they organized Karel Havlí
ek’s funeral in 1856; though it is impossible to say that he did not know the importance of literature (as correspondent of Czech newspapers he wrote more than sixty articles himself), he did not wish his wife to be a writer—wanting her to be a devoted and practical housewife as were the other petit bourgeois women of Prague. He certainly knew something about Božena’s passionate affairs, and there is evidence that he crudely mistreated her (she had to run for protection to the nearest police precinct) or locked her up in her room (she had to escape through the window). Marital rape has a variety of methods.
mec and Barbora Panklová. The bridegroom had been a studentof philosophy when he was accused of participating in a silly street demonstration and, as punishment, forced to join the army (the regular term of service was fourteen years). Being a proud patriot, he refused to swear the oath of allegiance in German (his officer accepted the Czech version), served many years in Italy, carrying Professor Jungmann’s famous book on Czech rhetoric in his pack, perhaps the reason why he never had anything to say about the glories of Italy. When his time of service was reduced, he joined the financial, or border, guards, organized to levy food taxes and fight smugglers of tobacco and cheap cotton. He was a stubborn and pugnacious man, often in conflict with his superiors, and made a slow and meandering career through the ranks. In early June 1853, he was officially notified that he was suspended from the service, confined to a little Hungarian town (which he had chosen to speed up his promotion), and investigated as an
enragé
Czech of republican sentiments, especially dangerous because of his influence on his wife, the writer Božena N
mcová, who in turn enjoyed considerable prestige among Czech intellectuals (one of her women friends was a spy in the service of the police, elaborately trained for the job). For brief periods Josef, a man of the barracks, and Božena felt close to each other, especially in the Bohemian provinces, where they were both active in Czech civic life, or when they organized Karel Havlíek’s funeral in 1856; though it is impossible to say that he did not know the importance of literature (as correspondent of Czech newspapers he wrote more than sixty articles himself), he did not wish his wife to be a writer—wanting her to be a devoted and practical housewife as were the other petit bourgeois women of Prague. He certainly knew something about Božena’s passionate affairs, and there is evidence that he crudely mistreated her (she had to run for protection to the nearest police precinct) or locked her up in her room (she had to escape through the window). Marital rape has a variety of methods.When Josef married Betty, he was proud of her beauty, and her later friends and enemies speak of her raven-black hair of metallic luster, dark eyes under strong brows, and a high seriousness of feeling. In Prague, scandalized mothers and adamant wives were quickly jealous rather than hospitable to the remarkable newcomer from the countryside; her free way of moving, talking, and conversing with the young did not endear her to the people in conservative salons (she may have occasionally smoked cigars, as did George Sand when she visited Prague). She loved to love, absolutely and in total disregard of the conventions, and when as a married woman and caring mother of four, she chose a man, she
abandoned herself to her desires and in her letters, almost blindly. Her
grands amours
tended to follow a recurrent and depressing scenario: “a night of nightingales,” or a one-night stand on a Prague hill or in a newspaper office, then painful absence and renewed embraces, confessions and correspondences; finally, fiery demands on the men who, usually, feared her sudden passions and were unwilling to become prisoners of her almost masochistic surrender. At least one of them, a physician who was also a translator of Boccaccio, in a cynical communication to a friend called her “the Spleen,” alluding to her many health problems (she was to die of uterine cancer). All these men belonged to patriotic circles or were well-educated medical students or doctors, but none had the courage to confront her expectations, and what remained to her was, again and again, bitterness, silence, and despair. In a letter of searing honesty of June 13, 1857, when Josef wanted to return to her, she told him what she thought of modern marriage—“the deceit, the privileged slavery, duty enforced”—and confessed all her disappointments to him. “They possessed my body but my action, honesty and desire looked into a far distance, which I did not know myself … . I thought I could fill the emptiness of my feelings only loving a man but now I know that it was not so … . I wanted to be better, live in truth, and the world forced me to lie.”
abandoned herself to her desires and in her letters, almost blindly. Her
grands amours
tended to follow a recurrent and depressing scenario: “a night of nightingales,” or a one-night stand on a Prague hill or in a newspaper office, then painful absence and renewed embraces, confessions and correspondences; finally, fiery demands on the men who, usually, feared her sudden passions and were unwilling to become prisoners of her almost masochistic surrender. At least one of them, a physician who was also a translator of Boccaccio, in a cynical communication to a friend called her “the Spleen,” alluding to her many health problems (she was to die of uterine cancer). All these men belonged to patriotic circles or were well-educated medical students or doctors, but none had the courage to confront her expectations, and what remained to her was, again and again, bitterness, silence, and despair. In a letter of searing honesty of June 13, 1857, when Josef wanted to return to her, she told him what she thought of modern marriage—“the deceit, the privileged slavery, duty enforced”—and confessed all her disappointments to him. “They possessed my body but my action, honesty and desire looked into a far distance, which I did not know myself … . I thought I could fill the emptiness of my feelings only loving a man but now I know that it was not so … . I wanted to be better, live in truth, and the world forced me to lie.”
Strangely enough, it was the gruff patriot N
mec himself who had greatly strengthened his wife’s renewed interest in Czech life and literature, dormant as long as she satisfied her emotional needs by reading sentimental German novels. Her grandmother had told her old Czech peasant stories, but it was her self-consciously Czech husband who prompted her to read Prague newspapers and Czech books, and even before she laid hands on Tyl’s sentimental prose, she perused as her first Czech text a local translation of a novel by the American writer Washington Irving, who had visited Prague too. After they moved to Prague, N
mec introduced her to the family of Dr. Josef Fri
, the well-known lawyer and father of the radical, and at the Fri
es’ home she met all the important people of Czech polite society in the 1840s, including the young poet and medical student Nebeský, her lover, who corrected her first poem “To Czech Women!,” published to great acclaim. She enjoyed herself among her new friends and admirers, attended dances, balls, and patriotic picnics, which were then
en vogue
; “like a queen / you came,” Nebeský wrote in one of his ardent poems before he escaped to Vienna to continue his studies.
mec himself who had greatly strengthened his wife’s renewed interest in Czech life and literature, dormant as long as she satisfied her emotional needs by reading sentimental German novels. Her grandmother had told her old Czech peasant stories, but it was her self-consciously Czech husband who prompted her to read Prague newspapers and Czech books, and even before she laid hands on Tyl’s sentimental prose, she perused as her first Czech text a local translation of a novel by the American writer Washington Irving, who had visited Prague too. After they moved to Prague, Nmec introduced her to the family of Dr. Josef Fri, the well-known lawyer and father of the radical, and at the Fries’ home she met all the important people of Czech polite society in the 1840s, including the young poet and medical student Nebeský, her lover, who corrected her first poem “To Czech Women!,” published to great acclaim. She enjoyed herself among her new friends and admirers, attended dances, balls, and patriotic picnics, which were thenen vogue
; “like a queen / you came,” Nebeský wrote in one of his ardent poems before he escaped to Vienna to continue his studies.
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