The Genesis of a Philosophical Myth

On Schopenhauer throwing a seamstress downstairs

As is well known, Arthur Schopenhauer once got himself into a spot of bother with a seamstress. Here’s how Bryan Magee describes what happened:

In the lodgings where Schopenhauer was staying in Berlin in 1821 the servant women working in the house were in the habit of congregating in the semi-private little hallway outside his rooms and holding conversations there… One day he asked a group of three chattering women to remove themselves. Two did, but the third refused. He became threatening. She obstinately refused to budge. He started pushing her, and a tussle ensued which ended with his throwing her down the stairs. She took him to court. He fought the case, and kept it going for nearly five years. In the end he was ordered to compensate her for her injuries by paying her 60 thalers a year for the rest of her life. (The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, pp. 12-13)

This story is mostly right, except Schopenhauer did not throw the woman–Caroline Marquet, a seamstress–down the stairs. This is a myth, but an oft repeated myth. Bertrand Russell, for example, makes exactly the same claim in A History of Western Philosophy, and in Schopenhauer: The Human Character, John Atwell lists the seamstress incident, including the fabrication that Marquet was pushed down the stairs, among the things that students most often think they know about Schopenhauer’s life.

So the interesting question is how did this myth get started? Let’s see if we can find out.

The definitive early biography of Schopenhauer is Wilhelm Gwinner’s Arthur Schopenhauer: From Personal Acquaintance, published in 1862, only two years after the philosopher’s death. Unsurprisingly, given the author’s personal connection with Schopenhauer, the work is somewhat adulatory in tone, as is evidenced by the way it treats the Marquet incident.

In 1821…an acquaintance of his landlady had the habit of receiving coffee visits in his anteroom. He once roughly threw this person out of the door, whereupon she fell on her right arm and claimed to have become unable to work. It came to a lawsuit, which ended unfavourably for him as he had to support the old woman for life. Unfortunately, she possessed a tough constitution: even the Angel of Death of cholera wrestled with her in vain, and he bore the burden for over twenty years, until he could finally write on her death notice: “obit anus abit onus!” (pp. 62-63)

The less said about the last part, particularly the idea that it was “unfortunate” that Marquet survived cholera, the better, but the account of the incident itself is accurate (insofar as it goes)–and you’ll note that there is no mention of stairs. So far, so good.

The first significant English language biography of Schopenhauer, Arthur Schopenhauer: His Life and His Philosophy, authored by Helen Zimmern, appeared some fifteen years later in 1876. It was self-avowedly a modest endeavour, relying primarily upon Gwinner for its biographical material. Thus, its treatment of the Marquet incident echoes Gwinner’s:

He hated all disturbance, despised all gossip and needless chatter. With horror he discovered that an acquaintance of his landlady's was in the habit of holding coffee parties–peculiarly German feminine institutions, sacred to small-talk, backbiting, and all uncharitableness–in his anteroom, in the very precincts of the philosophic temple. In an excess of blind fury, he seized her roughly and threw her out of the door. She fell on her right arm, and was severely injured, so that she declared herself incapable of earning her livelihood. (pp. 141-42)

It’s the same story, obviously, though enlivened by the irony of an accusation of uncharitableness in the midst of a highly uncharitable description of German coffee parties. The important point is that there is still no mention of Marquet having been thrown down the stairs.

This is also true of William Wallace’s Life of Schopenhauer, first published in 1890, which also includes a few additional details about the incident, suggesting that he had consulted new sources, likely the submissions that were made to court. Here’s how he describes the events of August 12 1821:

He took her by the waist, hauled her out, throwing her things after her when she cried for them; and, when she, almost immediately, returned to fetch something she had still left, he again, but this time violently and using an offensive epithet, pushed her forth, so that she fell and made outcry enough to alarm the whole house. On the following day, the sempstress, Caroline Luise Marguet (sic), aged forty-seven, laid her complaint before the court, alleging, in addition to the above facts (which seem to have been practically admitted by Schopenhauer), that he had torn her cap, kicked and beaten her, and left on her person the marks of his violence. The offensive epithet alone he admitted to have been in fault: for the rest he held he had only defended his rights as a lodger. (p. 152)

This treatment of the incident, which includes most of the relevant details, is accurate, and, as we noted, there is no mention of stairs. However, by the 1890s, other accounts do mention Schopenhauer having thrown a woman down stairs in a fit of rage.

The earliest appearance of the “thrown down stairs” myth I've managed to locate is in an article by W. S. Lilly published in the May 1882 edition of The Nineteenth Century, an important UK literary journal. Here’s what he has to say:

In the pleasures of the senses he indulged freely. Wine, indeed, soon mounted to his head. He was obliged therefore to content himself with shallow potations. But he was a great eater, and, as Miss Zimmern euphemistically expresses it, “he was very susceptible to female charms,” with a preference, as that lady is obliging to note, for brown women. His landlady at Berlin, it may be assumed, either was not charming or was not brown, as he distinguished himself by kicking her downstairs with such violence as permanently to cripple her… (“The Goal of Modern Thought”, W. S. Lilly, The Nineteenth Century, p. 701)

He completely mangles the story, which is odd, because his main source seems to be Helen Zimmerm’s biography, which, as we have seen, gets the story right.

What happened next is significant. Within weeks, Lilly’s article was cited in The Saturday Review, an influential London weekly newspaper. The story stays mangled with the victim identified as Schopenhauer’s “unlucky landlady”:

…in a fit of anger, he kicked her downstairs and crippled her for life and was consequently sentenced by a court of law to maintain her; she revenged herself by living to old age, and he wrote on the certificate of her death, Obit anus, abit onus. (The Saturday Review, May 6, 1882)

By this point, the “thrown down stairs” myth has gained traction. W. S. Lilly repeats his original fabrication in a book length treatment of the conflict between religion and modernity (Ancient Religion and Modern Thought, 1884, p. 10). The Reverend Sterling Berry weaponises the fabrication in a work of Christian apologetics written in the last decade of the 19th century, dismissing Schopenhauer as:

A selfish cynic, who lived with no regard for the fulfilment of even the commonest duties; neglectful of his clever and charming mother; so devoid of humanity as to kick his landlady downstairs, thereby crippling her for life; his writings are at once the mirror of his own inner life and the fuel by which he fed the bitter spirit that possessed him. (The Problem of Human Suffering, p. 18)

So much for loving the sinner, and hating the sin. More to the point, it’s instructive that the language used here mirrors that used by Lilly: Schopenhauer kicked his landlady downstairs, thereby crippling her for life.

There’s also a passing reference to the incident in a book by George Herbert Perris on Tolstoy, published in 1898, which is worth noting because though it repeats the “thrown down stairs” fabrication, does at least get it right that the victim was a seamstress, not Schopenhauer’s landlady:

One wonders whether, and to what extent, his [Tolstoy’s] views of woman and sex-relations were affected by those of the philosopher who threw the seamstress downstairs. (Leo Tolstoy, The Grand Mujik, p. 65)

By the turn of the twentieth century the myth was well-established. It now crops up routinely as something that’s known anecdotally about Schopenhauer’s life. Here, for example, in The New Statesman in 1915:

The moral elevation and intellectual soundness of such passages may come as something of a surprise to those who associate Schopenhauer only or primarily with his cheaper, more violent essays, or with the anecdotes told of his life. Was it not he, for instance, who is recorded to have kicked his housekeeper downstairs (ex pede pessimism) and permanently injured her, so that he had to keep her for the rest of a tactlessly prolonged life… (November 6, 1915)

To which the appropriate response is–well yes, sort of, but you really shouldn’t believe everything you read.

It is perhaps worth concluding by noting Bertrand Russell’s version of the myth, which appeared in A History of Western Philosophy, written towards the end of the Second World War.

[Schopenhauer] habitually dined well, at a good restaurant; he had many trivial love-affairs, which were sensual but not passionate; he was exceedingly quarrelsome and unusually avaricious. On one occasion he was annoyed by an elderly seamstress who was talking to a friend outside the door of his apartment. He threw her downstairs, causing her permanent injury. She obtained a court order compelling him to pay her a certain sum (15 thalers) every quarter as long as she lived. When at last she died, after twenty years, he noted in his account-book: "Obit anus, abit onus." (p. 786)

It’s the same mix of fact and fiction. The seamstress wasn’t elderly, she was talking to two friends, not one friend, they were in the entrée to his apartment, not outside of it, and she wasn’t thrown downstairs. But she was hurt by Schopenhauer, and he was compelled to support her for the remainder of her life. The important point here, apart from the fact you shouldn’t trust Bertrand Russell’s popular writings, is that the runaway success of A History of Western Philosophy has inevitably solidified this myth in the public imagination.