Essays of Schopenhauer | Page 3

farm, the Stuthof, in the
neighbourhood of Dantzic. This ancestor, Andreas Schopenhauer,
received here on one occasion an unexpected visit from Peter the Great

and Catherine, and it is related that there being no stove in the chamber
which the royal pair selected for the night, their host, for the purpose of
heating it, set fire to several small bottles of brandy which had been
emptied on the stone floor. His son Andreas followed in the footsteps
of his father, combining a commercial career with country pursuits. He
died in 1794 at Ohra, where he had purchased an estate, and to which
he had retired to spend his closing years. His wife (the grandmother of
Arthur) survived him for some years, although shortly after his death
she was declared insane and incapable of managing her affairs. This
couple had four sons: the eldest, Michael Andreas, was weak-minded;
the second, Karl Gottfried, was also mentally weak and had deserted
his people for evil companions; the youngest son, Heinrich Floris,
possessed, however, in a considerable degree the qualities which his
brothers lacked. He possessed intelligence, a strong character, and had
great commercial sagacity; at the same time, he took a definite interest
in intellectual pursuits, reading Voltaire, of whom he was more or less
a disciple, and other French authors, possessing a keen admiration for
English political and family life, and furnishing his house after an
English fashion. He was a man of fiery temperament and his
appearance was scarcely prepossessing; he was short and stout; he had
a broad face and turned-up nose, and a large mouth. This was the father
of our philosopher.
When he was thirty-eight, Heinrich Schopenhauer married, on May 16,
1785, Johanna Henriette Trosiener, a young lady of eighteen, and
daughter of a member of the City Council of Dantzic. She was at this
time an attractive, cultivated young person, of a placid disposition, who
seems to have married more because marriage offered her a
comfortable settlement and assured position in life, than from any
passionate affection for her wooer, which, it is just to her to say, she
did not profess. Heinrich Schopenhauer was so much influenced by
English ideas that he desired that his first child should be born in
England; and thither, some two years after their marriage, the pair, after
making a d�tour on the Continent, arrived. But after spending some
weeks in London Mrs. Schopenhauer was seized with home-sickness,
and her husband acceded to her entreaties to return to Dantzic, where a
child, the future philosopher, was shortly afterwards born. The first five

years of the child's life were spent in the country, partly at the Stuthof
which had formerly belonged to Andreas Schopenhauer, but had
recently come into the possession of his maternal grandfather.
Five years after the birth of his son, Heinrich Schopenhauer, in
consequence of the political crisis, which he seems to have taken
keenly to heart, in the affairs of the Hanseatic town of Dantzic,
transferred his business and his home to Hamburg, where in 1795 a
second child, Adele, was born. Two years later, Heinrich, who intended
to train his son for a business life, took him, with this idea, to Havre, by
way of Paris, where they spent a little time, and left him there with M.
Gr�goire, a commercial connection. Arthur remained at Havre for
two years, receiving private instruction with this man's son Anthime,
with whom he struck up a strong friendship, and when he returned to
Hamburg it was found that he remembered but few words of his
mother-tongue. Here he was placed in one of the principal private
schools, where he remained for three years. Both his parents, but
especially his mother, cultivated at this time the society of literary
people, and entertained at their house Klopstock and other notable
persons. In the summer following his return home from Havre he
accompanied his parents on a continental tour, stopping amongst other
places at Weimar, where he saw Schiller. His mother, too, had
considerable literary tastes, and a distinct literary gift which, later, she
cultivated to some advantage, and which brought her in the production
of accounts of travel and fiction a not inconsiderable reputation. It is,
therefore, not surprising that literary tendencies began to show
themselves in her son, accompanied by a growing distaste for the career
of commerce which his father wished him to follow. Heinrich
Schopenhauer, although deprecating these tendencies, considered the
question of purchasing a canonry for his son, but ultimately gave up the
idea on the score of expense. He then proposed to take him on an
extended trip to France, where he might meet his young friend Anthime,
and then to England, if he would give up the idea of a literary calling,
and the proposal was accepted.
In