[Image not available: H. M. Queen Elisabeth of Roumania]H. M. Queen Elisabeth of Roumania
but all of them dying young, to the unspeakable grief of the poor parents. It was hard indeed for them, to see their darlings go from them to the grave so young, but for these, for the children themselves, must they not afterwards often have blessed heaven in their hearts, that they should have been spared the misery inevitable to a longer sojourn on earth! The sons came often to us, and shared my brother’s games, but he could not join them at their studies, as they were so much older than himself and naturally much more advanced. A little companion was found, the son of Professor Dorner, to learn Latin with him, but he also was older and had the start, my brother being only just seven, rather young perhaps for such serious studies. It is true that Otto was able to begin Greek when he was seven, but then he was altogether exceptional, having a love of study, in addition to his excellent abilities. Besides the sister of the young Perthes, I had another favourite companion in a daughter of Professor Sell, a young girl so versed in the Rhineland folk-lore, she had an unfailing supply of the most delightful tales and legends, all of which were instantly turned into impromptu plays, and acted by us with the greatest spirit and zest.
Nor was that special form of amusement confined to our school-room and our play hours; amateur theatricals of a more ambitious kind were a constant source of entertainment at the Vinea Domini, and afforded an opportunity for the display of some rather remarkable talent. In the first place there was my mother herself, an admirable performer,and at the same time the most severe, most merciless of stage-managers. She would think nothing of having a scene rehearsed sixty times, till it went to her satisfaction. She was admirably seconded by the bevy of charming young girls that gathered round her—her own younger sisters, her niece of Solms-Laubach, the daughter of an intimate friend, the diplomatist, Heinrich von Arnim, and the two sisters von Preen, of whom the one was her own and the other her step-mother’s lady-in-waiting. All these thronged, happy and light-hearted, round my mother, vying with one another in the effort to win her approbation. Sometimes there were most amusing scenes, that were not played on the mimic stage, as for instance that which I myself witnessed, of my cousin and Else Arnim sitting on the floor, one on each side of my mother’s chair, disputing till they cried, as to which of them loved her best! And my mother cried too, with laughter! But whatever her own mood, well or ill herself, she never relaxed her efforts to provide wholesome and interesting entertainment for all these young people, and in everything she undertook Perthes was the most efficient auxiliary, as well as the surest adviser in any dilemma. Himself a professor at the university and resident in Bonn for many years, he was well acquainted with every section of society, and none could have been more competent than he, to advise her as to the selection of the elements from which her own circle should be composed. It was her desire to admit to her house every one possessing any claim to personal distinction, above all topre-eminence in the world of science, of letters and art. Among the younger men, those who were at that time studying at the university, how many there were who have since played a conspicuous part in the drama of European history! For the moment they were content to display their talents in the little theatre of the Vinea Domini. The drawing-room was divided, the one-half being converted into a stage, while in the other sat an audience composed in great part of scholars of note, all the learned dons and doctors of the university,—no mean tribunal certainly to sit in judgment on the performance. The actors had, however, little to fear even if judged by the most exacting standard, the histrionic ability of some of these young people being of a very high order, and they were well drilled in their parts, and the rehearsals superintended by the mistress of the house, until everything reached an unwonted pitch of perfection. In the pretty comedy of the “King’s Lieutenant” the leading part was played by George Bunsen in a style that left no room for criticism. Years after I saw the famous actor, Haase, as Thorane, but I cannot see that the professional comedian in any way excelled the amateur in the part. That of Goethe, the youthful Goethe, in the same play, was taken by Prince Reuss, who looked the sixteen-year-old poet to the life, and the parents were impersonated by Prince Frederick William of Prussia as Privy-Councillor Goethe and Fräulein von Preen as the majestic Privy-Councilloress. The future Emperor Frederick was just a little stiff in his acting, hence thestaid part of the elderly man had been given him, but all played delightfully, the younger Fräulein von Preen also making a most successful entrance as the girl who runs in with her market basket on her arm. Some evenings only charades were represented, and on others tableaux vivants, in both of which the commanding officer of the Hussars, Count Oriola, a remarkably handsome man, was generally the most striking figure. I remember how splendid he looked as a brigand-chief, with one of my young aunts, afterwards Princess Waldeck, as his wife. He had married one of the daughters of Bettina von Arnim, but it is in some cases little more than a name or the vague outline of some person seen in my mother’s drawing-room that I can call to mind. It may even appear surprising, that I should remember so much, as I was only eight years old at the time I speak of, but my recollections do in truth go much further back, as the following incident will show:
It concerns the departure of my little brother’s wet-nurse, which took place when I could not have been more than two years and a half old. She was so unhappy at leaving, and wept so bitterly while being shown the big pile of house-linen which my mother gave her as a present, I thought I would find something better to console her, and rushing off to the nursery, I returned with one of my dearest possessions, a little doll’s tea-kettle, which I tried to thrust into her hand. I can see distinctly her look of amazement, as she smiled through her tears, and hear the tone of my mother’s voice, saying,--“But what good can that be to her?” I felt as if I had had a bucket of cold water thrown over me, and I turned away with my treasure, disappointed and mortified at the fruitlessness of my good intentions. So I kept my poor little tea-kettle, and in course of time my own child played with it, as with many of my dolls and other playthings, with such affection had they been preserved. I may surely claim to have ever shown fidelity to the past, and as for my memory, I might liken it to lava, on which every impression from without, stamping itself at white-heat, is indelibly engraven for all time.
How well I remember the melancholy Christmas we spent that year in Bonn without my father, his absence taking all the joy out of the festival, in spite of my mother’s efforts to prevent the happiness of others being dimmed by her own sadness. It was the very moment when the American mail was due, and on Christmas Eve we waited and waited, everyone hoping that at least the amount of gladness a letter could give might still be hers. And the last post did bring the expected missives, the well-known thin, pale blue envelopes, which Fräulein von Preen quickly tied on with red ribbons to the Christmas-tree. But at the sight of the handwriting my mother fairly broke down, and it was some time before she had recovered her composure sufficiently to collect, as was her habit, the whole household, children, friends, and the old servants round her, to listen with rapt attention to the interesting description of scenes in the New World which those pages contained.
Simple as it might at first sight appear, there is perhaps nothing so difficult as clearly to convey by words a picture of any human existence. Difficult enough it must be in any case, oneself to gain a clear conception of the real person, but how much more so to make the written portrait a true likeness. So indomitable was my mother’s courage, so thoroughly did the natural elasticity of her temperament enable her to rise superior to every trial, many of her acquaintance might well see in her only the charming, clever and accomplished woman, the life and soul of the brilliant society she loved to gather round her, and which her own personality seemed so happily fitted to lead and dominate. But there was another, sadder side to her existence, no less real for being revealed alone to the members of her family and more intimate friends.
Exercising the same powers of attraction alike on young and old, and in her own person combining the keenest interest in every intellectual problem with a remarkable capacity for entering into any form of innocent mirth, the young mistress of the Vinea Domini was able to control and blend the different elements of her little society, to a harmony complete and pleasing to all. Representative men in science and art, in literature and politics, met there to discuss topics of gravest import; every talent found welcome recognition. What pretty water-colour sketches were made by the young Prince Reuss, whose long and eventful diplomatic career none yet foresaw! When, later on, I came across the drawings he had made of us children, I had a surprisesimilar to that told in a preceding chapter, to see the melancholy expression I wore, but was assured by my mother that I did indeed often look thus. I struggled so perpetually to appear cheerful, I could hardly believe that anyone could have seen me looking sad; we keep count of the efforts we make, but cannot judge of the results we achieve. Of the Shakespeare readings, and lectures upon Shakespeare, given by Professor Löbell at our house, I can only speak from hearsay, for I was not present, but all the hearers pronounced them admirable, and I was sorry to be excluded, my curiosity being stimulated by the passages my mother had read to me from some of the plays, and I had wept bitterly over the pathetic scenes concerning poor little Prince Arthur. I was, however, sometimes allowed to make one of the party in the excursions down the Rhine, and I listened, now with delight to the melodious part-songs, now wondering, and storing up in my mind fragments of the animated discourse—on every subject, it seemed to me, of highest interest in heaven or earth—with which the boat’s joyous passengers filled up the intervals of their singing. To draw others into conversation and lead them to impart their deepest thoughts, was one of my mother’s special gifts. Young as she was, her mind had been early matured by sorrow, and she could associate herself as easily with the aims and aspirations of artists and scholars as with the plans of statesmen and politicians. The speculative curiosity of men of science ever had a peculiar fascination for her, and she was no less receptive for schemes of benevolenceand philanthropy. All phases of contemporary thought, all shades of opinion, were represented in her drawing-room, together with the harmless mirth, the love of amusement of the junior portion of the assembly. Never, however, in their moments of most reckless high spirits, did any of these young folk overstep the bounds of the strictest decorum and good taste. Had there been any such danger, a word, a look from my mother—nay, the mere presence of my grandmother, in her quiet stately dignity, would have sufficed to call the offender to order. The power can scarcely be over-rated, which well-bred and high-minded women may exercise over their surroundings. Nor had it yet been admitted as a possibility in good society, for young men to allow themselves to take the liberties of which in a modern drawing-room, they are too often guilty towards their hostesses. Once, on a lovely summer’s night, two or three scions of princely houses among the students took it into their heads to serenade my mother from the river; but when next day, to their timid enquiry how she had liked the music, they received the chilling reply that she had certainly heard a noise, but thought it must be some drunken people returning home, their crestfallen looks showed that they would not venture to repeat the experiment.
In this light then, of the woman of varied interests and far-reaching influence did my mother appear to the world at large. It was reserved for her intimates, for her children and attendants, to see her in the hours of despondency, racked with pain, and torturedstill more by the gravest fears for the safety of her distant husband and of the child whose life seemed ever but to hang upon a thread. To those who knew of her sleepless nights, of her own bodily sufferings, and anxiety on behalf of others, she might well appear rather under the aspect of a martyr, bowed down by a load of physical and mental anguish, that must in time wear out her powers of resistance. She believed herself constantly to be at the point of death, and those around her often shared her fears.—“Let yourself cry, you have only too good reason for your tears!” was all our good old doctor could find to say to her by way of comfort, one day when he surprised her sobbing in despair.
In every emergency, whether he were called upon for practical advice, or simply to cheer and console when the cloud of sorrow seemed well-nigh overpowering, Perthes proved himself, as my father had foreseen, the kindest and most invaluable of friends. Even friendship, however, was powerless to soften the blow, when after the long separation, the months of weary waiting and intense anxiety, the travellers returned, for it but to become evident to my mother at the first glance at my father’s pale face and wasted form, that the good results hoped for from the voyage were far from being realised. It seemed indeed at first sight to have only done him harm, for he was thinner than ever, with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, suffering moreover from temporary surdity, after-effect of an acute attack of inflammation of the ear, by which he had been laid upat New Orleans. To him the shock, the disappointment can have been no less severe, to find poor little Otto’s condition so much worse, whilst my mother’s state of health seemed also well nigh past hope. It was a melancholy return home. As the travellers approached the porch, towards which my mother’s chair had been wheeled to meet them, the shouts of welcome sent up by the men-servants assembled on the steps, the waving of their plumed caps in the air at their master’s approach, all this semblance of rejoicing died away in a general feeling of consternation, in the mute exchange of glances of dismay, in the unspoken dread of that which should come next.
Had we but known then, in that darkest, saddest hour, that help was already at hand, standing there ready to cross the threshold, when the need should be greatest!
Itwas in those days that there suddenly came wafted to us across the ocean the tidings of a wondrous discovery, a strange new pursuit for pastime,—I scarce know what to call it,—a new method of healing and new branch of scientific research, some would say, though certainly in this last particular it has not yet justified its claims to be admitted to rank as a science, but has like that other dark mysterious agent, electricity, of which we also know so little, to this day advanced but little beyond the infantile stage. Animal magnetism, table-turning, spirit-rapping, thought-reading and psychography, each and all of these names have been used in turn to designate the various manifestations of this hitherto unknown, or it may be merely neglected and forgotten force.
Now with regard to the phenomena I am about to describe, there could perhaps scarce be a more accurate and trustworthy witness than a child of nine years, absolutely healthy in mind and body, and bringing the quick observation and clear untroubled gaze of childhood to bear on these strange occurrences, without preconceived leanings towards belief or doubt, and even probably with a little less curiosity than might have belonged to one a few years older. To so young a child, the whole world is a subject of perpetual awe and wonder, nearlyevery incident in its daily experience being startling and inexplicable, yet all accepted alike in the same spirit of implicit good faith. Was there then after all, in these new occurrences that set everyone talking, anything so much more wonderful than in a hundred others with which we were already familiar? Were we not acquainted with the miracle of the caterpillar’s metamorphosis to the butterfly, of the transformation of the blossom into fruit? And could there be anything at once more natural and more terrible than those frightful spasms that racked my mother’s whole frame, paralysing every movement of her limbs? That this never struck us as anything unusual or uncommon was shown by my answer to another little girl, who had asked me to suggest a new game.—“Let us play at being mother and child,” I promptly replied, “and you shall be the mother, and must sit still in this chair, as you cannot walk about.” And I was honestly surprised both at my little companion’s astonishment and also to hear my mother’s voice calling to me from the next room, enquiring if I thought that a nice sort of game, to be making fun of my mother’s ill-health? I was dreadfully discomfited, but I had meant no harm at all, it simply arose from the impossibility of dissociating in my own mind the idea of one’s mother from that of being lame. I had seen too how completely medical science had been at fault, just with those of my own family who had been obliged to have recourse to the doctors’ skill, one celebrated practitioner after another having tried in vain to bring about some improvement in myfather’s health, or to find out a course of treatment that should alleviate my mother’s sufferings, and bring some relief to the constant pain that made my younger brother’s life a martyrdom. It was perhaps the reiterated failure of any of the old recognised methods to work a cure, that rendered us all quite free from prejudice against the pretensions of outsiders, and hearing so much said of the wonderful cures wrought by magnetism, I felt no surprise when I learnt that it was to be tried in my mother’s case. Soon the professional magnetiser appeared upon the scene, in the person of a very stout Englishwoman with beady black eyes, to whom my brothers and I immediately took an intense dislike, on account of her appearance and her very disagreeable manner towards us. Her skill did procure for my mother a little of the rest she stood so much in need of, as the operator could by means of the magnetic passes, or even by merely laying her hand on the patient’s forehead, send her for hours into a deep sleep, from which she could not awake of her own accord. But the fact that the magnetiser had, as she boasted, herself brought fifteen children into the world, had not apparently imbued her with very tender feelings towards children in general, and the influence she was not slow in acquiring over her patient she so thoroughly abused in tyrannising over us, that we three cordially detested her, and were thankful when a too glaring usurpation of authority led to her summary dismissal. Her brief stay in our midst had, however, awakened among us all the desire to ascertainby similar experiments, what latent magnetic power might possibly reside in some of us, and it was very soon shown that my uncle, Nicholas of Nassau, was possessed of a quite exceptional degree of the mesmeric or hypnotic force, which he, a lively, thoughtless youth of twenty, did not scruple to use for all sorts of practical jokes. A favourite one was to prevent his sister’s governess from getting up out of her chair; do what she would, she was as if nailed down to it whenever he chose to forbid her to rise, and he would even sometimes mount his horse and ride away for a couple of hours, deaf to the entreaties and adjurations of his victim. Another time he ordered her to put out her tongue, in the midst of a ceremonious Court dinner, and almost crying with indignation, she was forced to obey. His sisters found it equally impossible to disobey whatever extravagant commands he might lay on them, such as forcing my mother to stand still holding out her hand whilst he threatened to aim a heavy blow at it with his riding-whip. Such displays of his extraordinary and inexplicable powers afforded great amusement to himself and others, above all to the child spectators, who laughed heartily to see their elders for once reduced to such submissiveness. It was therefore a sad disappointment to us when, in consequence of the fits of hysterics into which one or two ladies had been thrown by some of my uncle’s pranks, he was obliged to desist from them. We little ones had enjoyed them the more, that he never tried them on us, from whom it would indeed have been superfluous to exact obedience in thisfashion, trained as we were to carry out unquestioningly and with military promptness and exactitude, whatever orders were given us. For this was in the old days, when it seemed to be a recognised thing, that children had come into the world just to do what they were told, and learn whatever was taught them! Nobody thought of asking them if they found it a tedious restraint to behave properly, nor were they consulted as to whether their lessons bored them. If in my youthful days, for instance, I played badly in my piano-lesson, it was so much the worse for me, as I soon found out, when the music-master had gone. As for over-pressure, the word had not been invented then, and nervous fatigue, hysteria and neurasthenia, with all of which the modern child is familiar, had not yet been heard of. Our elders certainly themselves set us a good example in all such respects, and I can remember the severe animadversion passed on the poor degenerate creatures who first indulged in the above unbecoming weaknesses. All through her married life my grandmother had to stand every evening with her ladies, in full dress upright beside the billiard-table, to watch her lord and master’s play, and neither she nor anyone else dared to be tired or feel bored, until the match was finished. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that people in those days knew how to be bored to death with the utmost decorum! There were no comfortable easy-chairs to lean back in; if one sat down at all, it was bolt upright on a chair of most uncompromising severity. For our lessons we had very hard high wooden chairs, fromwhich our poor little legs dangled till they ached, very different from the nice comfortable schoolroom chairs with their foot-rest, which children have now. And worst of all, there was the dreadful invention for deportment, a horrible heart-shaped contrivance, of iron covered with leather, into which we were strapped to make us hold ourselves upright. To my indescribable humiliation, I was sometimes obliged to go for a walk with the odious machine fastened to my back. Even this seemed quite mild though, compared to the means employed in a former generation, one of my great-aunts being able to tell of the spiked collar, which in addition to the iron back-board, she was forced to wear, to prevent her from ever allowing her head to droop. Was it the effect of this instrument of torture, that in her ninetieth year, she had never been known to lean back in her chair?
Out of this hard training, of this undue repression, and as a natural consequence too of the incessant cupping and bleeding, practised on the former generation as a remedy for all existent and non-existent maladies, there came forth another, debilitated, unnerved, an easy prey to the whole host of nervous disorders lying in wait for it. I have lived through and looked on at every phase of the transformation. Healthy as I was, I should hardly have escaped the drastic measures to which the so-called plethoric were subjected, had it not been sufficiently proved that their application had been injurious rather than beneficial to my mother. The immense strides made by medical science of recent years, make it difficultto judge rightly the mental attitude of those, who in their impatience of the inanity and futility of orthodox treatment, seem formerly to have welcomed and blindly followed the advice of every quack, calling himself a mesmeriser. We should be slower to condemn them, had we also suffered from the ignorance and incompetence of the regular practitioner, and perhaps be equally willing to sign a pact with the Evil One and his agents, in order to regain the blessing of health! It was this tendency that led to the first great disappointment of my life, which I experienced when I was only five years old, in the following manner:
I had a little birth-mark on my left cheek, which was a great source of vexation to my parents, nobody understanding in those days how to remove anything of the sort. They were therefore all the more readily disposed to put faith in the assertion of a wandering charlatan, of his ability to make it disappear. I was fetched from my lessons by my father, placed in a chair, and the stranger proceeded to apply a dark fluid from a little phial to the spot, assuring my parents that when this had dried up, they would find on its removal no trace of the mole left. Somehow or other I had understood that by means of this magical process, I should never be naughty again. As might be expected, when the stain of the fluid was washed away, the mole was there just as before, with a slight scar into the bargain, and I was as naughty as ever! That was my first real big disappointment. The next came when I was six, with my first glimpseof the sea. When we reached the shore to go on board the boat, it was low tide, and instead of the wide far-reaching plain of water I was prepared to see, there was nothing but sand, with a few pools. To my mother’s apostrophe,—“Look, Elizabeth! there is the sea!” I could not find a word to say in reply, I was too bitterly disappointed. I had expected to behold a great towering wall of water, like that I was familiar with in the pictures of the crossing of the Red Sea by the Children of Israel. And here was nothing but sand, with a few wretched pools! Afterwards I saw the great expanse of water, always in movement, and stretching out far away, but it was too late then, the first impression was over and all was spoilt. The third disappointment came much later, at first sight of Rome, and does not belong here.
To return to my story. In one of my uncle’s letters from America, he told us of his visit to a house, where the guests were all amusing themselves by setting a table in motion by simply letting their hands rest lightly on it, as they stood round. It had interested him, but he had not been able to induce my father to take any part in the proceedings, the latter declining even to countenance such nonsense, declaring himself the enemy of every sort of humbug. At home, on the contrary, curiosity was immediately aroused, our former experience with the magnetiser and the discovery of my uncle’s marvellous powers, having to a certain extent initiated us into the mysteries of the occult. Young and old, children and grown-up people, we were all pressedinto the service, and were soon all standing in a ring round a very big table, our hands resting on it, so that one’s little finger touched that of one’s neighbour on either side. Thus we stood and waited, with some impatience, and a good deal of inward merriment, to see what would occur. Just as we were getting thoroughly disheartened and tired out, a tiny tremor was felt in the table, which then, in spite of its great weight, actually began to move from the spot. Naturally, each one accused the other of pushing, but that explanation would have been neither satisfactory nor admissible, standing as we were with our hands in full view of one another, so that no attempt at cheating could have passed unperceived. And our astonishment was increased when we observed how when my mother was wheeled into the room, she had but to lay her finger ever so lightly on the table, for it at once to begin to move quicker, even setting off to rush about in all directions, so that she had to be pushed after it in her chair. We all followed, with peals of laughter at the strange sight, the ungainly movements of this new sort of dancing-bear, and so much amusement did this afford, that we set to work at once to experiment on all sorts of other inanimate objects. We soon found that all were not in the same degree susceptible of locomotion, nor were all human beings equally endowed with the latent force by which automatic movement could be imparted to things usually inert. Count Oriola proved to be the possessor of a quite exceptional degree of this psychic or magnetic force; he had only to stretch out hishand within a few paces of a small table, and it immediately came marching towards him, apparently with great glee, to our inexpressible delight, but to the unspeakable horror of my governess, from whose sitting-room the table had been borrowed, and who energetically refused to receive such an impish piece of furniture back again!
Not only tables, but chairs, sofas, all sorts of things seemed now suddenly to have become capable of walking about; it was even told of a young girl staying in our house, that holding her hand over a big glass shade that covered a clock, to her surprise the shade lifted itself up in the air to reach her hand, and remained for a time firmly fixed to it. Naturally enough, the thing being once admitted in principle, its possibility established beyond a doubt, there were no bounds, no limits to our curiosity, and every other form of amusement was cast into the background by this. It was much more interesting than simple mesmerising, and instead of being like that confined to an experiment on one person at a time, in this all could take part. We moreover obtained the proof that the force by which these results were obtained, was not entirely confined to certain more highly-favoured individuals, but lay in some degree latent in everyone, and could be immensely developed by practice. Nor was this ever attended with the least inconvenience to the experimenter, an effort of the will, a certain tension and concentration of mind, being the chief conditions of success. It was, however, also of great moment that such experiments should be undertaken in a properspirit,i.e., seriously, with a real desire to investigate their nature and to turn them to the advantage of one’s fellow-beings, for we soon noticed that those who treated the matter as a mere joke, approaching it in a frivolous mood, generally failed in all they attempted. As might be expected, the persons whose fund of magnetism was most considerable, proved also to be those who could most easily induce in others the magnetic trance. All seemed to resolve itself into that one process of mental concentration, and someone remarked that this word “concentration” was the one most often heard, and that formulated the rule of life and scheme of education in our family. Perhaps I owe it to the habit acquired then, that I am never absent-minded, but always able to concentrate my thoughts on the matter in hand, and taking into consideration my lively imagination, I think this may be looked upon as an educational triumph!
Whilst “concentration” was thus the order of the day among us, it happened that my mother heard of the marvellous cures, recalling those told of in the Bible, being worked in Paris by a “Faith-healer,” as we should certainly now call him, since they were effected by no other means than the simple laying-on of hands. One of the patients then under treatment, and making rapid progress, was Schleiermacher’s daughter, Countess Schwerin, whose case so nearly resembled my mother’s own, that the latter could not refrain from writing to tell my father all she had heard, with the result that on his way home from America he stopped in Paris, to make furtherenquiries. He called on the magnetiser, whose name was Count Szápary, and begged him to undertake my mother’s case. This request met at first with a decided refusal, it being impossible for him, the Count stated, to abandon for a new patient the many now being treated by him, these being, moreover, already so numerous that he could not think of adding to them. He did, however, in the end so far modify his refusal, as to promise that in the course of a journey he was about to take, and which should lead him Rhinewards, he would certainly pay my mother a visit, and see what could be done for her.
Three days had not yet passed over our heads in Bonn since my father’s return, when the little garden gate was suddenly flung open by a stranger of distinguished presence—in spite of a slight limp (the result, we afterwards learned, of a carriage accident, some time previous, in Hungary)—and in whose thick dark moustache the first silvery threads were beginning to appear, though not yet in the rather long and wavy thick dark hair, a lock of which, escaping, was continually falling over his forehead. My father went forward to meet this gentleman, whom he introduced as Count Szápary, and who brought the scrutinising glance of his big black eyes to bear on our little group, with but little, at first sight it seemed, of the kindly smile which on better intimacy lit up his face so constantly. His own wonderful powers, which he was now bent on using for the good of mankind, had been revealed to him by chance, some might call it, in reality byhis despairing efforts to procure by mesmerism the boon of sleep and respite from pain for an invalid daughter, given up by the regular doctor. To his glad astonishment, not only did the magnetic passes send the patient into a refreshing slumber, but a repetition of the experiment was equally successful, and, being persevered with, in time restored her to health. In his gratitude for his child’s life being spared, the father determined to use his gift henceforth for the benefit of others, and in order to cultivate it systematically, he went to Paris to study medicine for a time, and establishing himself there, the cures wrought by him were very soon widely talked of. There was a minute of suspense as the thoughtful, enquiring glance rested on my mother, and we trembled lest the objections urged against my father’s pleadings in Paris should still be maintained. But at that critical moment, poor little Otto happened to join us, and again the sharp restless eyes travelled from the sorely tried young mother to the unhappy child, and back again to the pale, emaciated father, already in a rapid decline, and all hesitation was at an end. The spectacle of so much suffering was decisive for the man whose whole life was given up to alleviating human misery. Without further demur he agreed to devote his time, his skill, to the case before him. “But,” he hastened to add, after a rapid examination of his patient, “your life I can perhaps save, more I cannot say, I cannot promise that you will ever recover the use of your limbs!” And indeed at that time it looked as if the one leg were completely atrophied, it wasas if withered—literally reduced to skin and bone. When our new friend took his leave, it was with the promise to return in a very few weeks’ time, to accompany us himself to Paris, as he feared that without him my mother might not even survive the journey.
So we set out for Paris, my brother Wilhelm and I in one railway compartment with tutor and governess, Otto in another for himself with his faithful attendant, our good old nurse, and my mother in hers, in the hammock slung for her, with my father and Fräulein von Preen close at hand, and Count Szápary standing beside her, steadying the hammock with the one hand, whilst with the other he continued uninterruptedly making the mesmeric passes, to still the frightful paroxysms of pain, which almost threatened to prove fatal during the journey. Terrible as it was, it yet differed from former journeys undertaken under like circumstances, in the absence of the overpowering smell of chloral, ether, and other medicaments, for all such were from this moment abolished and never heard of more. It was not astonishing, when we did arrive safely and were installed in the house taken for us in the Champs Elysées, that directly he had seen his patient carried upstairs and put to bed, Count Szápary should have sought his own room, and falling exhausted on his bed, have slept on without waking for ten hours.
Next day began the treatment—no easy matter, as my mother’s extreme weakness made it necessary to proceed with the utmost precaution, and Count Szápary afterwards owned that he had more thanonce feared that she might die while undergoing it. But he persevered, and was rewarded at the end of six months by perceiving a faint twitching in the toes of the till then apparently lifeless foot. “Ah! you will be able to walk again after all!” he exclaimed in his delight, and continued the massage so vigorously and to such good purpose, that life seemed to return gradually to the whole of the paralysed limb, and in the course of a few weeks the patient could actually take a few steps. Only a very few at first, leaning on her companion’s arm, and with the tears streaming down her cheeks with the effort and the pain, sometimes severe enough to make her faint away before it was over. But through it all she could see us watching her, the first time she was taken into the garden, and she told us afterwards of our anxious faces, mine flushed with excitement as I ran towards her, whilst Wilhelm turned deadly pale as he tried to move away every little pebble in her way in the path. Then, a few days later, Otto also was allowed to look on, and for him it was something even more solemn and wonderful, for it was the first time in his life that he had seen his mother able to walk a step. Without a word he went up to her, took her by the hand, and walked slowly beside her the whole time, in perfect silence. For all of us it was the grandest and most impressive event of our whole childhood, something that seemed to partake of the nature of a miracle, and that brought the stories of miraculous cures in times of old quite near to us, making them a more living reality than to most people, since wehad ourselves with our own eyes witnessed something similar in the person of one so near and dear to us. It will readily be believed, that our admiration and gratitude for him who had wrought this marvel knew no bounds. To say that we looked upon him as a saint, seems but a feeble expression of the feeling of veneration with which we regarded him.
Of the actual working of the cure, of the mode of treatment, we saw nothing, and heard but little; I only know that little by little, the terrible convulsions were transformed into regular exercise of the muscles, in fact into an involuntary process of therapeutic gymnastics. In course of time, not only was the cure complete, but her own fund of natural magnetism had been discovered to be so exceptional, that my mother was anxious to celebrate her restoration to health by performing a like good work for others, and began visiting Count Szápary’s other patients with him, undertaking a portion of the treatment. At her pressing invitation the lame Fräulein von Bunsen came to stay with us, and thanks to the combined efforts of my mother and Count Szápary, she also was set on her feet again and able to walk after being for five-and-twenty years considered beyond all hope of recovery!
For my mother it was the beginning of a new life in more meanings than one, for it was now her turn, after her own miraculous cure, to cultivate and turn to account in the service of humanity, the gift bestowed upon her unawares. She perhaps never became quite so strong as had been at first hoped,and, in fact, she often felt far from well, but the lameness never returned. And it very soon became clearly established, that the possession of magnetic force by no means corresponds to our physical strength or indeed to our bodily health. Concerning this, very thorough investigations were made by my father, who would not have tolerated the idea of anything being done by his wife which could possibly have been harmful to her own health. On that point there could be no shadow of doubt; our experiments in mesmerising and table-turning furnishing constant examples of the presence of these powers in a transcendent degree in persons of specially fragile build and constitutional delicacy. It was just by these that feats were accomplished, which would not merely have taxed their ordinary strength, but would have been impossible to the strongest man. All this will no longer seem so very surprising at the present day, but the period I deal with is of fifty years ago, when these marvels were not yet subjects of common parlance. No Charcot had yet made his experiments with suggestion and hypnotism; indeed, the very names were scarcely known. My father, who was so little inclined to credulity that friends and relations had dubbed him the unbelieving Thomas, gave himself up to the serious study of the question. His naturally philosophic bent found here ample matter for reflection. “I have not the dogmatic arrogance,” he was accustomed to say, “which would enable me to deny the existence of phenomena, simply because I fail to comprehend them!” Investigating them inthis spirit, from the purely scientific point of view, he acquired the conviction that they were manifestations of an inner life, the proof of a persistence of thought independent of cerebral cognition, and he therefore gave to the book he wrote on the subject, the title, “Subconscious Mental Life.” I am aware that the theory he upheld is now much contested, that there are those who, while they do not dispute the genuineness of the manifestations, would ascribe them to quite another cause, looking upon them as of purely objective nature, and entirely independent of the medium. Time alone can decide which of these two schools of psychical research is the better justified. Then, at all events, it had not yet occurred to any of us to seek the explanation of these phenomena from without, everything appearing sufficiently to demonstrate their origin in our own mentality; a belief which did not, however, in the least preclude our full recognition of the superiority of the results achieved, to all similar performances by the same individual in the normal state. Our experiments were now no longer confined to mere spirit-rapping or observations made on subjects during the mesmeric trance; they were henceforth specially directed to psychography, and with the most gratifying results. It was perhaps the manifestations in this higher sphere which overcame the last barriers of my father’s incredulity; the simple manner in which they were obtained, by means of a pencil, passed through a large woollen ball, on which two persons placed their hands, absolutely preventing any possibility of fraud. Very often he madethe experiment himself, together with one other person, generally a young girl whose store of magnetism was known to be above the average, and he was able thus to convince himself that the movements of the pencil, tracing characters with lightning rapidity in its course across the paper, were entirely independent of human agency.
Questions of deepest import were asked, answers on subjects either of private or of general interest obtained, and many a philosophic doubt laid to rest, by this spirit-writing. And these messages, I cannot sufficiently repeat, seemed to have as a rule little in common with the mental powers or culture of the person through whom they were transmitted, being on an altogether different plane, a higher intellectual level than that of society in general. Certainly no means was neglected of raising the tone of conversation among the ever-widening circle of friends who assembled for theseséances; all frivolous chatter was banished, gossip was a thing utterly unknown, and it is hardly too much to say, that it was in a well-nigh religious spirit that most of us gathered round the table on which the manifestations took place. Among the guests in our house, was the aged musician, Neukomm, and very often, as a preliminary to the evening’s proceedings, he would seat himself at the organ, and by a soft and solemn prelude would induce in all present a frame of mind suitable to the solemnity of the occasion. As I was now in my twelfth year, and my mind unusually developed for my age, I was allowed to participate in all that went on. Above all, I loved tohear my father talk of those philosophic questions that occupied his own thoughts, and it was from this time that dated the delightful long walks we took together, in which he instructed me in the history of philosophy, explaining to me the various philosophic systems, and reading to me passages from his own writings, thereby giving me my first insight into the metaphysical problems in which his soul took refuge from the noise and bustle of the world. His dream it doubtless was, to make of me a philosopher like himself, and his enthusiasm and earnestness could not fail to arouse my interest in the themes on which he waxed so eloquent; but my own bent was a different one—the field of metaphysical speculation, as thrown open to me by my beloved and revered father, might well entice my spirit awhile,—my sojourn there could be but brief, it was in another dreamland I was eventually to find my home, and already, unknown to everyone, I had made my first excursions, my first timid flights within those realms. Everything I heard, everything I saw, each fresh addition to my store of knowledge, each wonderful revelation of the world above and beyond the perception of the senses, into which it was our privilege to obtain a glimpse by the marvellous experiences chronicled above—all this did but furnish material for my active imagination, and was absorbed, and pondered over, and woven into the intangible, unsubstantial fabric of many a future song. Meantime, the influences of the hour were naturally all-powerful in magnifying the veneration in which I held my parents. It was in truthno ordinary every-day existence which they led; and that which was most remarkable was the perfect harmony in aim and action of these two so dissimilar natures, and their admirable co-operation in furthering the well-being of their fellow-creatures, the special gifts of each being employed to the same end, my father’s theoretically, my mother’s in the direction of practical utility. Of the cures which the latter was enabled to work, I shall tell elsewhere; suffice it to say in this place, that they were effected with a swiftness, and attended with circumstances so remarkable as to surpass if anything those of Szápary himself. In later years, when the extraordinary cures wrought by Metzger and other masseurs were spoken of in my mother’s presence, it did not astonish anyone who knew her that she should calmly remark, with a pitying smile—“That is all very well, but it is nothing to what I could do! I had but to stretch out my hand and say—Rise up, thou art healed!”
The somnambulistic experiments I witnessed were perhaps more marvellous than all the rest. It would almost seem as if in the case of the somnambulist the law of gravitation were abolished, so entirely free from the trammels of material existence does the human body appear to be while in this state. Certainly my mother often appeared to us no longer to tread the earth, she seemed to float rather than walk, and any further and more complete abolition of what we are accustomed to term the laws of nature, would assuredly have occasioned among us no surprise at all. No amount of familiarity,on the other hand, could ever do away with the feeling of awe, with which my mother’s ecstatic trance invariably inspired us. Unconscious of all around, she sang and prayed—the words and melody alike of her own composition; it was a deeply moving spectacle.
Brought up in an atmosphere so highly charged with the marvellous, it has ever been impossible to me to assume a sceptical attitude towards mysteries which elude my comprehension. The word supernatural seems to me to be an absolute contradiction in terms. Who are we that we should dare to set limits to the forces of nature, and to decide that this or that occurrence is beyond her control? Did we but understand such events aright, we must needs acknowledge them to be perfectly natural. Egyptian priests of old, and Indian fakirs of the present day may alike laugh us to scorn, that in our ignorance and impotence we presume to question the existence of forces whose workings they have fathomed and turned to such good account. Recourse to the supernatural is but a return to nature. For this reason it may well be that outside the domain of surgery, wherein such incontestable triumphs have been achieved, of the whole of our modern medical practice the so-called nature-cures will in the end alone survive. They rest indeed on a purely rational basis, the treatment being none other than the art of transforming pathological phenomena into therapeutical processes.
I refer of course to the treatment I have myself seen practised and to the examples quoted here.The system made considerable demands on the goodwill and concurrence of the patient, these being, in the opinion of Count Szápary, indispensable conditions of its success. An entirely different principle is acted upon, I am aware, by those who practise massage at the present day. With them the patient remains entirely passive, and the massage itself is alone supposed to work the cure. I will not enter into the question of the respective merits of the two systems, I would merely point out the benefit that accrued to the patient from the independence to which he was encouraged by the earlier one. All who had sufficient energy to follow the prescribed path, were able in course of time to continue the treatment alone, whilst such as were found incapable of making the necessary effort for recovery, and disposed to fall into a morbid state of dependence on the doctor, were dismissed as a hindrance to the others. Every phase of illness was treated as a stepping-stone to progress, every symptom turned to account; the somnambulistic trance, for instance, was made use of as a stage in the transition from sickness to health, a state of repose deeper and more refreshing than ordinary sleep, during which by no other means than the rest prescribed by nature, the weakened frame and overstrung nerves might recover their equilibrium. Every step in the treatment was accompanied by prayer; it bore indeed from first to last a markedly religious character. All the members of our little circle felt themselves lifted above the common wants and desires of humanity by the nobler prospects which thewider horizon opened out before them; we were as neophytes whom some rite of initiation sets apart for holier purposes. It was difficult to live invariably on that exalted level, the circumstances might not always be propitious, and on myself they seemed sometimes to bear too heavily. It was the sight of so much suffering, the perpetual intercourse with invalids, that preyed on my spirits and against which my own youthful health and strength could at times scarce react. But at such moments my mother’s iron discipline stood me in good stead. I had been so well drilled, and had my feelings under such perfect control, that neither to her nor anyone else, and scarce even to myself would I ever have acknowledged that life had sometimes become a burden to me. I knew that for the sake of others I must keep a smiling face, and do my best to cheer them, whatever my own sadness.
Count Szápary was always cheerful, or at any rate always wore an appearance of cheerfulness, laughing and singing with the joviality of a true Hungarian, and rejoicing in magnificent health and strength. This doubtless aided him to give confidence to his patients, who must have been trying at times with their whims and caprices. It has been given to few to benefit their fellow-creatures to a like extent, or to reap the harvest of benedictions that will forever blossom round his name.
I seeher still, in her plain black dress, coming towards the castle from the landing-stage of the steamer, and crossing the quadrangle with soft, noiseless tread, as gentle and calm as the breath of the evening breeze, bringing with her an atmosphere of comfort and peace of which we became conscious even before she had crossed the threshold.
We were looking out for her with impatience and some misgivings, my brother Wilhelm and I, for the advent of a new nurse is an event of no small importance in children’s lives, and already, scarce three and four years of age as we were respectively, we had undergone the trial of parting with the dear old one who had made herself so justly beloved, and whose place was taken by a younger woman, whom we detested with equal vehemence and on equally good grounds. So we ensconced ourselves firmly in the broad window-sill to have a better view of the new-comer, wondering to ourselves which of her two predecessors she would resemble. Our doubts were dispelled even before Barnes entered the house; the quick, unerring instinct of childhood told us that many happy days were in store for us in the care of this good, kind soul, who came along as noiselessly as a leaf wafted hither by the wind. I do not think she was at all beautiful—in point of fact rather a plain-featured elderly woman, withat times a decided squint; but our eyes had quickly discerned the beauty of the soul under that homely exterior, and lovely she ever remained to us. We saw in her a sort of guardian angel, shielding us from every peril that might beset the path of childhood, watching over our health with untiring zeal, and entirely wrapped up in our happiness. For herself she seemed to ask nothing, to want nothing, to have no wishes or desires beyond those that affected the well-being of her little charges. That the motherly instinct should be so strong in her, and should, so to say, pervade her whole person, was the less surprising considering that she had, as she herself told us, from the age of ten played the part of the mother they had lost to her own younger brothers and sisters. She was the ideal nurse; scrupulous in the fulfilment of all her duties, and her honest simplicity coupled with such innate delicacy of feeling as to lend a certain refinement to her whole person. She was at her happiest as she sat, needle in hand, watching our games, and from time to time laying down her work, the more thoroughly to enter into our merriment; we might laugh and romp to our heart’s content, her calm was unruffled, her patience inexhaustible. Our childish intuition had not been at fault in foreseeing that under her kindly sway our nursery would once more become a little paradise, the dearest corner for us in the whole house. We should have asked nothing better than to be left there as long as possible; but alas! the governess was already on the way to whom I was to be handed over, and who was antipathetic to mefrom the very first, her cleverness availing nothing to conceal that she was both underbred and ill-tempered. I fled as often as I could from her harshness and bad manners, back to the dear old nursery—back to the good angel, Barnes! I was surely somewhat young to have been removed at all from those gentle influences, but the step had been judged a wise one by my parents, in order to turn to account as early as possible the magnificent health and excellent abilities with which I was blessed. To this young, but physically fragile couple—the valetudinarian father, pale, melancholy, of sedentary and studious habits, and the mother, whose own natural liveliness was being undermined by the attacks of an insidious and baffling malady—to them there may well have been something disconcerting and almost alarming in the temperament of such a child, the quintessence of health, restless as quicksilver and blithe as a bird, in whose young limbs the joy of living pulsed wildly and on whose lips snatches of song were forever alternating with ringing laughter! It cannot be wondered at if they only saw in my high spirits a sure sign of frivolity, and that on every occasion on which my indomitable will showed itself, I should simply have been condemned as headstrong and obstinate.
I seized, then, every possible opportunity to rush off to the nursery, to shake myself free of all fetters and restraint—to breathe freely once more! I kept up the habit for some time of going every now and then to spend a quiet hour with Barnes, helping her with her mending and sewing, for her needle wasnever idle, and it was so soothing to sit and talk with her. I have said how she watched over us, tending us with such admirable care that my brother’s health improved from the day she entered our house. But all that was nothing compared to the superhuman devotion, the heroic self-sacrifice of the life which began for her from the moment of poor little Otto’s birth. She it was who first discovered what was wrong with the unfortunate child, and with tenderness and loving care that are beyond all praise and which words are inadequate to describe, she gave herself up heart and soul to his service, mitigating as far as might be the terrible sufferings that made a martyrdom of his short life. Day and night she was at her post, indefatigable, uncomplaining, holding him in her arms for hours at a time to ease his pain and enable him to breathe with a little less difficulty, her whole thought how to bring some relief to the poor tortured little frame. What those tortures were, none knew so well as the faithful Barnes, and I have therefore chiefly borrowed her own simple words, when I have tried to tell the story of my poor little brother’s life. He did not live to complete his twelfth year, but in that short space of time he had suffered so unutterably and with so little respite, one could not have wished the trial to be prolonged. Hardest of all it was to his devoted nurse to leave him before the end, but even that sacrifice was demanded of her, my mother believing it to be for the boy’s good and all important for the formation of his character that he should not be left too long under feminine control.Just as she had never complained of fatigue or discomfort during all the sleepless nights and weary days in which she had watched beside him, so now this hardest trial brought no murmur to her lips. She accepted it with the same pious resignation, bravely hiding under a smiling face her own aching heart, in order to soften the pangs of separation to her beloved foster-child. Otto had always called her Nana, and Nana she remained for us, even after she had left us altogether to take charge of the nursery of the Grand Duchess of Baden, in whose service she died.
But before the end came for Otto, Barnes was sent for once more, and stayed with him some days, days unspeakably precious to both, until all was over. And again she had the courage, the supreme courage of true affection, to smile as she bade him that last farewell!
Were it not for my profound conviction, that in publishing these reminiscences, I am but extending to a larger circle of friends and sympathisers the confidence already reposed in some, I should never have the courage to throw open the sacred precincts of the Past. But the lesson of these lives may be useful thus, and bring hope and comfort to souls still fainting under their heavy burden.
Above all do I feel it a duty, when I hear so much said of the worthlessness of human nature, to tell of the good which I have witnessed and experienced. Fate has perhaps in this dealt more kindly with me than with most, for I have met far more good than evil, and have seldom been disappointed and deceived where I have bestowed affection and trust.
Can one even believe in absolute malevolence? May not those who appear animated by ill-will sometimes be simply mistaken? Surely the noble-minded Lamartine was right, when he spoke of “les pauvres méchants!” With some of them it is perhaps sheer clumsiness; they think to show their affection, but its object is crushed to death by it, as surely as the victim of a bear’s uncouth embrace!
How should those who are born with a bear’s ungainly paws, bear the branch of palm or scatter lilies throughout the world! There are a few, like our good Barnes, whose hands were made to carry lilies. Wherever she turned, balsam sprang forth. Her own life was joyless, but for the comfort it brought to others, and therein she found abiding happiness.
Barnes lies buried in the church at Meinau, and a tablet with a most touching and beautiful inscription is put up to her memory. But what is that beside the tablet on which her memory is engraved within my heart!—I still see her with her eyes riveted on Otto’s face, following every change in it with an expression of the deepest concern, and the words, “that poor child!” ever and anon breaking involuntarily from her lips. Of herself, her own sufferings, her own fatigue, never a word; it was always ofhimshe spoke, of his marvellous patience, his unexampled fortitude. Surely she must be rewarded now, in seeing him no longer writhing with pain, but radiant in health and youthful beauty, having shuffled off this mortal coil, to live on triumphant with the life of the spirit.
Itwas on my governess, Fräulein Josse, that devolved the pleasing task of bringing a little innocent amusement into our lives. She lent herself the more willingly to this, I fancy, that she was often in her inmost soul distressed to see us thus early initiated into so much sorrow and suffering, such painful daily experiences naturally robbing us of the healthy unthinking lightheartedness, befitting our age. Nor was she in the least a partisan of the uncompromisingly matter-of-fact system of education on which we were brought up. She actually read someMährchenaloud to us, and we absolutely revelled in the enchantments of that delicious fairy-world, whose gates were thus thrown open to us. This was the beginning of a quite new sort of game, in which even poor little Otto could take part, these delightful stories being acted over and over again by us, and we grew quite inventive in devising characters for him, which he could impersonate sitting in his chair, and thus have the illusion of playing his part. It was kind Fräulein Josse too, who gave me the “Wide, Wide World,” the only book in the least resembling a novel which I was allowed to read while in my teens. I was so fond of it, that I used to hide it under a chair, whence I could fetch it out and devour a few pages, in the hours when I ought, perhaps, to have been committing lines ofHorace or Ovid to memory, or writing an essay on some period of Church history.
The “Wide, Wide World” thus became, with “Augustin,” the story I have already mentioned, the favourite reading of my childhood, and those two simple books were my inseparable companions all through my schooldays. My own pleasure in them had been so great, I would have liked to share it with others, and one of the very first things I did on arriving in Roumania, was to have “Augustin” translated into the language of my new country. Unfortunately, the translator’s knowledge of Roumanian was insufficient, a circumstance of which I was then unable to judge, so my plan did not succeed.
During my first stay in Paris, whither Fräulein Josse had accompanied us, in 1853-54, I made the acquaintance of her best friends there, a family called Valette. My governess and Madame Valette had known one another as young girls, the latter being the daughter of the Pasteur Affiat, pastor of the French Protestant community in Hanau, so that both were delighted at thus meeting again. And now, Madame Valette’s husband being pastor of the little Protestant chapel in the Marais, it became our delight, Wilhelm’s and mine, to wander over there with our governess, to spend our weekly half-holiday with the Valette children. Every Thursday then, we set out on foot from our house in the Champs Elysées, for the picturesque little dwelling in the Rue Pavée, that quaint old-fashioned street, whose very name conjures up such pleasant memories for