[Image not available: H. M. Queen Elisabeth of Roumania]H. M. Queen Elisabeth of Roumania
me after all these years. What happy hours we passed, playing in the beautiful garden, which our friends shared in common with several other families, whom we also learned to know. It was such a delicious new sensation to us, of freedom from all restraint and supervision, our elders always remaining together talking, leaving us children to race unmolested through house and garden, exercising our active young limbs and our sound young lungs, and clearing away the cobwebs from our tired brains. Staircase, passages, basement, how well I remember it all, and the pastor himself, whom we thought at first rather stiff, but who occasionally unbent to joke with us. And his dear good wife, who let us do just whatever came into our heads, never interfering with our wildest play, as we tore through the rooms, springing down the stairs two or three steps at a time, and hiding in dark corners, whence we could spring out and frighten one another. On cold dull days we stayed indoors, acting charades, or sitting contentedly round the big dining-room table covered with oil-cloth, telling stories in turn, laughing and chattering, so perfectly happy and at our ease in these modest surroundings, and learning more French in half-an-hour than in a whole week’s lessons.
The eldest daughter, Marie, was almost grown up, but I was especially fond of her, she was the leader in all our games, and told us most delightful stories. Her next sister, Minna, was more reserved, and did not care to join in our play, but then came two, just of our own age, Cècile and Charlotte. The last-named,who died quite young, was the sweetest little creature, and I still see her flying to meet us, with her long fair curls streaming behind her, and flinging her arms round us both in her joy to welcome us. The only son, a gentle, dreamy lad, of a serious turn of mind, afterwards became a pastor. Marie afterwards married the son of the celebrated preacher, Adolphe Monod, whose sermons were so much talked of, that it was a great disappointment to me not to be taken to hear him, but my mother would not consent to our going to church before we had attained our twelfth year.
The French Protestants gave me the impression at the time of being rather stiff and formal people, austere and almost morose in their religious views, though I really hardly know what it was made me think so, as we never heard them discuss religious matters at all. We simply came there to play, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, and if the gloomy appearance of the parents was sometimes in striking contrast to the high spirits of our little companions, that may of course have been due to quite other causes than a depressing creed, and I have often thought since that with the large family and very small means, there were probably material cares whose existence we did not even suspect. Of cares of that nature we knew nothing; we had others, in our own home life, of which of course we never spoke to our little friends, and they very likely used equal discretion concerning their family troubles towards us. Children who have never been encouraged to chatter, nor had the evil example of gossip beforetheir eyes, are naturally discreet, and very great reserve was always impressed on us by our parents.
The good custom of the weekly half-holiday, with which we became acquainted in Paris, was found to be so beneficial, sending us back refreshed and invigorated to our lessons next day, that, once introduced, it was not given up on our return to Neuwied, but became firmly established with us. The afternoon then was, however, no longer entirely devoted to play, but a part of it employed for those delightful lessons in book-binding—only another form of recreation, and perhaps, of more lasting enjoyment than the running wild, good as that was at the time.
Every Saturday I attended a class in the rue des Saints Pères,le cours de l’Abbé Gaultier, it was called, and to this also I walked, accompanied by Fräulein Josse. The professor, the Abbé Gaultier, sat at a green table, round which all the young girls were ranged, behind each one her mother or governess sitting, and then we were questioned on the lessons done during the week and our written work was examined, and fresh subjects given to prepare for the following week. It was rather an ordeal for me, with my invincible shyness, and accustomed as I had always been to learning alone, to have to speak out before all these strangers, and in a language that after all was not my mother-tongue. And some of the other little girls were so bright and clever, they always had something to say and turned their answers so prettily, the poor little German envied them their readiness and brilliancy, and felt quite dull and awkward in their midst. Only oncedid I bear off the honours, but that was not in the least by my cleverness or presence of mind, but simply by sheer honest stupidity.
We had just been told in the grammar lesson to form a sentence in the imperfect tense, to show that we understood the right use of the imperfect. Here I was on my own ground, for I at once made a sentence bringing intwoimperfects, and waited in burning impatience for it to be my turn to reply, feeling this time sure of myjeton. These “counters” or good-marks were given for every correct answer, and twenty of them made up what was called aprésidence, twenty of which again entitled to abrevet, or certificate with a seal attached, the highest honour of all. I was in two classes, for certain subjects with little girls of my own age, but had been put into a higher one for history, in order that I might learn French history very thoroughly, and this it was that stood in my way, for history was my aversion and dates a stumbling-block to me—I never could remember a single one!—My failures in this field I however made up for in the grammar lesson, which was already my passion, and my lips were quivering with impatience to bring out my example of the imperfect tense. At last the Abbé Gaultier looked in my direction. “Quand j’étais petite, je ne réfléchissais pas!” The good priest came close up to me:—“Et maintenant?” I turned crimson, but blurted out quite honestly: “Maintenant je ne réfléchis pas non plus!”—The whole room burst out laughing, but the professor quietly placed one of the much-coveted red counters before me with thewords: “Tenez, mon enfant; violà dix jetons, pour votre jolie phrase et pour votre naïve réponse!” And thanks to this I really did get the brevet at last, of which I had again nearly been deprived by the unlucky history-lesson.
My painful timidity made the classes somewhat of a trial to me; I felt ill beforehand at the thought of having to answer questions in public as it were, I hated to have to play the piano before people, and as for an examination, I should never have been able to pass even a very easy one! I have been the same my whole life long, and I laughed heartily one day at the perspicacity of one of our Ministers, who after accompanying me on a visit to some school, told me with a smile, when the inspection, speech-making, and prize-giving were all happily over, that he believed there had been only one person who felt intimidated in the whole assembly, and that was myself! It was quite true; I was afraid to put any questions to the children lest they should answer wrong, and was much too anxious on their behalf, to pay any attention to what they did say. On such occasions I always remember my own troubles with those wretched chronological tables, with which my poor memory was to be burdened! And then the horrors of arithmetic! The cells, whose function it should be to deal with numbers and calculations, must be altogether lacking in my brain! Perhaps if such dreary subjects could have been taught me in verse, I might have learnt something, for it is hard for me to forget any little tag of verse I have ever heard,and I remember every one of those that formed a summary of the chapters in our first simple little books of history. If only they had thought of teaching me dates in rhyme, I should not be so shockingly ignorant as I have remained to this day!
It was I suppose, because of my intense love of poetry, and that I felt so perfectly in my native element there, that my shyness always left me directly I had to read aloud or recite. I felt sure of myself then, and threw myself with passion into the verses I declaimed. We learned long poems by heart, “The Prisoner of Chillon,” Schiller’s “Lay of the Bell,” whatever we liked, and in whatever language we preferred, and recited them every Sunday to our parents, to our own great delight. My mother declaimed so admirably herself, that she was by no means easy to please, she insisted on good elocution, and showed us how by modulation of the voice to give the right expression to the words. We were all apt pupils, I fancy; what delicious drollery poor little Otto put into Bürger’s poem, “Emperor and Abbot,” when he was only five years old!
For all my shyness I had, before we left Paris, grown quite reconciled to the lessons in a big class, feeling how much more easily one learns together with companions of one’s own age, even if the incentive of rivalry, perhaps too active with some of these, played a very small part in my own case. This little taste of school-life made my lonely lessons seem so dull to me afterwards, that I was always longing to have a peep at a real school, notthis time a fashionablecours, like that I had attended in Paris, but a simple village school, full of little peasant children. So one morning I actually managed to steal out of the house unseen, and running away as hard as I could, I joined the children from the home-farm on their way to school. Oh! how I enjoyed myself! I sat on the bench between the farmer’s little boy and girl, and joined in the singing with the whole strength of my lungs, though the small girl kept trying to put her hand before my mouth, for she thought it highly improper that a princess should be singing with peasant children! It was a glorious day; but the most glorious day must come to an end, and this one ended sadly for me, for when I was missed, my parents were frightened to death, and the hue and cry was raised, and servants and game-keepers sent out in all directions, till at last I was found, seated in triumph in the midst of the village school, and putting my whole heart and soul into the singing! I was shut up in my room for the rest of the day, as a punishment for the alarm I had given, and I was in such disgrace for some time afterwards, that I was terribly ashamed of my escapade, and hardly liked to think of it any more, much less to plan another; but now, when I look back, it is a satisfaction to me that for once in my childhood I did break through my fetters and emancipate myself so thoroughly!
That was the year after our return from Paris. The next year, Marie Valette came on a visit to us, and we spent many pleasant hours together, readingand working. I was very busy at needlework just then, principally plain sewing, for our hospital, and very proud I was at my contribution, all of useful things I had made myself, underclothing for the poor people, which I was able to take them. While Marie and I sat at work, Fräulein Jose read aloud to us, and that somewhat recalled the pleasant days in Paris, when we met at her parents’ house, and all sat round the big table, while one of the party told or read a story to the rest. And these simple pleasures of my youth are still those I prefer—beautiful needlework with agreeable conversation, or a good book read aloud, in a sympathetic circle. I am still very fond of reading aloud myself, and can do that to a very large audience. It is perhaps the only time when I quite forget my shyness!
But I did forget it as a child too, at times, and above all in the society of good, kind, simple people like the Valettes, who just left us to ourselves, to amuse ourselves in our own way. For that reason, it would have been ungrateful indeed, if I had not given a corner among my Penates to Marie and her family. The whole remembrance is a pleasant one, beginning with the long walk through the streets of Paris, which we learned to know so well, we could almost have found our way through them blindfold. And the merry party round the dinner-table, for we dined there, and only returned home quite late in the evening. Our garden was too small for the other children to come to play in it with us, and then it would have disturbed the invalids, who had, ofcourse, to be considered first. Both for the sake of the sick people, and of my father’s work, it was no place for noisy games and joyous laughter; we had to creep about like little mice, and it was indeed a relief to us to get away, to escape into a fresher atmosphere, and shake off all the sadness that oppressed our young souls. To have been aided to this was an inestimable boon, and I still think with affection and gratitude of those, to whom we owed those happy hours.
Ifever a face on this earth may be said to have been irradiated and illumined by the light of genuine kindliness—of the pure goodness of heart that transcends all other human qualities—it was the countenance of our beloved friend, Karl Sohn, the Düsseldorf artist. His features were not regular, but were refined and spiritualised by the beauty of the soul that shone through, the gentleness of his physiognomy being only enhanced by the commanding character of the lofty, well-chiselled brow, shaded as this was by soft masses of thick fair hair. He was tall of stature, well proportioned and of dignified bearing, his step light and easy, in spite of his great height, and with something almost willowy in his gait; every movement was impregnated with grace and harmony. There was a peculiar charm in his conversation, and this may probably have been in great measure due to the soft deep tones of his finely modulated voice, as clear and caressing as the sound of a silver bell, wrapt in velvet. But much of the fascination doubtless lay in the graceful and appropriate gestures with which he accompanied his words, and which lent singular force to his graphic descriptions. Thus, in expatiating on the beauties of some landscape, words and action seemed to go together to call it up before our eyes, one broad sweep of his well-shaped hand makingthe undulating line of the distant mountain-range visible to everyone.
What a pleasure it was to listen to that mellow voice, and to the low laugh with which he sometimes interrupted his own stories. Sohn was one of those exceptional, happily constituted beings, themselves so perfectly harmonious, that their presence seems to diffuse an atmosphere of peace and contentment, into which as each one enters he feels on better terms with himself and others. The world was full of beauty for him, as it is for few of us, and the joy he felt in every aspect of the beautiful—in Nature, in children, in the human form divine, and in pleasant companionship—was, like the whole nature of the man, at once ingenuous and profound. He had laid out for himself a little garden round his house in Düsseldorf, with so much skill, that the small space really looked like a miniature park. The effect was charming; but the proprietor seemed almost to find it necessary to apologise for such a display of luxury, saying deprecatingly,—“The beautiful is a necessary condition of existence to us poor artists! So indispensable is it to us, that we would willingly make every other sacrifice, just to be able to surround ourselves with things of beauty!”
It was through his pupil, my great-uncle Charles, that we first became acquainted with Sohn. My uncle, who had been a musical dilettante for the first fifty years of his life, attaining I believe a certain proficiency on the French horn, had recently turned his attention to painting, in which art he was stilla mere tyro at the time of my parents’ marriage. At first he was always sending for Sohn, to ask his criticism and advice, and by sheer hard work and perseverance he succeeded in the end in painting very good portraits. There was one of my mother, for which she declared she sat to him no less than seventy-five times. To beguile the tedium of those long sittings, she learned by heart the parts she was going to play in private theatricals, repeating the lines aloud without fear of disturbing the artist, who was quite absorbed in his work, and very hard of hearing into the bargain. But in the one play occurred a phrase so singularly appropriate, that she could not resist raising her voice for it to reach the ears of the deaf old man, who peeped out astonished from behind his easel and shook his finger at her, as she exclaimed:—“Dear Uncle! must I then really be bored to death!” And her subsequent assurance that this was only in her part only half mollified him. In spite of the long sittings, the portrait was not a success; it however brought Sohn to our house, and two admirable pictures of my mother by him represent her in all her youthful bloom at that period. The one is in a red velvet dress, her face framed in a mass of fair curls; the other in her riding-habit, just as he had seen her jump down from her horse, flushed with the exercise of a long ride.
These were the first two pictures Sohn painted in our family, but he was henceforth every year a welcome visitor, often making a stay of many weeks among us, and painting more than one portrait ofeach member of the family. He was inspired to his finest work, one of his many portraits of my mother—by seeing her in the ecstatic trance. So deeply had this impressed him, that it was almost under similar conditions that he worked, altogether removed from this earthly plane, blind and deaf to all that went on around him, and entirely absorbed in the contemplation of the radiant, transfigured countenance of his model, and in the feverish effort to transfer to his canvas some faint reflection of the wondrous radiance diffused over her whole person. In his despair of obtaining this effect from the ordinary resources of his palette, he was forever seeking some new means, devising some new combination of colour, he would fain have dipped his brush in pure light, have steeped the whole picture in unclouded sunshine! Something of this has been felt by all those who have striven, with like fidelity and with the same gross materials, to copy the dazzling hues even of some simple flower; has one but tried, with such poor pigments, with our muddy bismuths and dingy ochres, to reproduce the lily’s transparent whiteness or the rich gold of the humble buttercup, we can the better appreciate the vanity of all attempts at imitating on so feeble and limited a scale, the radiant tints and subtle, endless gradations of Nature’s colour-box, employed by the Divine Artist! We must needs perforce, for lack of the clear strong light, throw up our dim half-lights and faded colours by deeper shadows. But Sohn for this once would none of such artifice. Disdaining every expedient of contrast, he laid on thecolours simply and boldly, after the manner of the Early Masters, painting with the pious enthusiasm, the sacred fire that was theirs, and borrowing something of their technical methods to impart the expression of holy rapture to the face, a diaphanous delicacy to the folded hands, to give to the kneeling figure the semblance of a martyr at the stake, a saint to whose beatific vision the gates of Heaven are flung open wide!
Sohn made a picture of my brother Wilhelm and myself, at four and five years of age, hand in hand; such a speaking likeness, that as we stood beside it holding a big wreath of flowers, when it was given to my father on his birthday, he kept looking from the painting to us, and then back again to the picture—quite puzzled for a moment, he assured us, as to which were the real children and which their portrait! Such restless beings as small children can never be very easy to paint; but Sohn succeeded wonderfully in catching the expression on each little face,—my brother’s serious and dreamy, with an almost stolid determination to keep quiet, and mine, all life and movement, with sparkling eyes and a dancing smile, that betokened anything but the requisite immobility ofpose. It was an amusing contrast; Wilhelm stood firm as a rock, whilst all my efforts to keep still as I was bidden only made me tremble from head to foot with impatience, and at one sitting resulted in my fainting away after I had actually accomplished the feat of keeping in the same position for five consecutive minutes! I remember how alarmed the artist was, when I suddenlyfell from my chair to the floor, in a dead faint, and how concerned he was about me, reproaching himself with the unnatural constraint imposed on my mercurial nature by the sittings. But what surprised him most of all, was to witness the means employed to bring me round; as I recovered consciousness, a sip of cold water, a little piece of black bread were given me by my mother to revive me, and Sohn, who was not then so well acquainted with the Spartan simplicity of our bringing up, felt amazed, as he afterwards told us, at the homeliness of the measures. Little princesses, he thought, were always fed on dainties, and would not condescend to eat anything less appetising than cake!
The torture those sittings were to me, I hope he never knew. He was so good and kind, and did so much to make them bearable, whiling away the time by talking to us and telling us amusing stories, or getting someone else to read an entertaining book aloud to us while he painted. But it was all no good. Outside I could see the sun shining, and hear the birds singing and the wind whistling through the trees, and I—who longed to be out there in the sunshine, singing with the birds, and running races with the wind,—I must be cooped up within four walls, in a room that instead of the fragrance of the flowers, smelt of nasty oil-colours! It was not to be borne. As well try to imprison the wild west wind, or stop the dancing mountain-stream in its course! I was just as wild and free, and my mother sometimes asked if any power on earth could be found to tame me. Had she but known! All too soon a spellwould be worked, transforming the wayward child into a quiet gentle maiden, grave-eyed and serious. It was by the discipline of sorrow that the change should be wrought—in the sick-room that the lesson must be learnt; there I could sit for hours, silent and motionless, dreading lest a movement, a whisper should disturb the dear sufferer beside whose pillow I watched.
But already then, in my wildest, most reckless mood, and however my spirit might chafe at the enforced immobility of the lengthy sittings, I felt the soothing influence of the artist’s gentle voice, and the deep full tones could lull my feverish impatience. Nor did the impression wear off as time went on; echoes of that sympathetic voice live in my memory, calling up many a bygone scene—long talks as we rambled through the forest, dreams and aspirations, hopes and fears, all the joys and sorrows of those vanished days,—Sohn’s memory is inseparably associated with all of these. The portraits he painted extend over a long series of years. One of Otto was done just before the poor boy’s death—my father’s also, at a time when we knew that he had not long to live among us—my mother he depicted at all times and seasons, and under all possible circumstances, from ecstasy to the deepest mourning. He used to say, that he hoped to live long enough to make one more portrait of her with snow-white hair. But this wish remained unfulfilled, for my mother’s hair had not yet turned grey, when he was called away from us.
One autumn Sohn came to us accompanied by hisfriend, the great artist, Lessing. The latter, a very handsome man, like so many of the followers of Art, was extremely taciturn. He was a good sportsman, shooting his deer almost daily. Much as I dislike all sport, my admiration of the artist induced me to bring him the proverbial good luck, by meeting him as if by chance when he set out in the early morn with his gun. As I passed with a smiling though silent greeting, I thought to myself that had he but known my horror of the slaughter of innocent dumb creatures, the great painter would have been still more flattered by this attention on the part of the daughter of the house. This was after Otto’s death, and Lessing made a sketch of the grave for my mother, with the wonderful precision in rendering every detail that characterised him. Every branch of the trees overshadowing the tomb was portrayed with lifelike fidelity; Lessing’s scrupulous exactitude refusing to sanction the slightest deviation from the original. Every bough, every twig must be in its place; even in a landscape his veracity would not tolerate any suppression or addition. His realism, his close copying of Nature, was coupled with a fear of accepting any other teacher; and he had always been afraid to visit Italy, lest he should sacrifice something of his own originality to the involuntary imitation of the Old Masters.
When I grew up, Sohn wished to make a portrait of me, as he often saw me, sitting in the shadow of a tree, a straw hat on my head, in my simple morning attire. But it was unfortunately quite another picture that was wanted—in evening dress, in the drawing-room—just something that I hated, and that seemed to me so little like myself. Sohn, who had known me from a child, understood this, and his idea was the true one. I shall always regret that picture that never was painted, it would have shown me exactly as I was, at that period of my life. I was the child of the forest, the forest-song, and have never wished to be aught else. The untamed and untamable in my nature, from which some good folk shrank in alarm, was just what pleased our kind artist-friend. Others might find my high spirits fatiguing, they were never so to him. My spontaneity, my frankness, refreshed him, and his heart melted towards this poor little child of Nature, who was to be forced against her will to become conventional—and even, without her knowing it, was being already educated to fit her for a throne! Anything rather than that, I should have said—for choice, a cottage, a little house hidden away in a wood—for I was not ambitious, at least my ambition took quite another direction. What could all worldly pomp mean to me, who had revelled in the forest-splendours, in the glories of Nature! The beeches of our lofty avenues would dwarf the finest columns ever reared to support a roof, and how poor and insignificant the hubbub of the crowd must sound, to ears accustomed to the mighty music of the storm-wind, making the tall trees bend and quiver in its path! In all this Sohn was of my way of thinking, and he had quick perceptions of the quieter beauties of Nature too, and never missed pointing out to me a single blossom sprouting, or an effect of sunlightthrough the intertwining branches. And he led me on to talk and pour out my confidences to him, and often broke into a hearty laugh at some unexpected sally. I was well willing, I told him, to devote myself to the service of my fellow-creatures, but not from a throne; I would live in their midst, to tend and comfort them. And the thought of marriage was hateful to me, for a husband, it seemed to me, must be a master, a sort of tyrant, but children I loved, and wished that I might have a dozen!
How heartily Sohn would laugh at all this, and then grow serious again, and crown my hair with glow-worms, as we strolled home through the twilight. I sang like the birds in those days, in the truest sense of the word, for every verse I made I sang to myself, in the joy of my heart. My life was full of poetry indeed—of poetry fostered by the surroundings. I have always thought that the happiest lot on earth is that of the mediatised princes. They are like little kings, but without the cares of government, enjoying the same liberty as people in private life, yet with a patriarchal interest in the weal and woe of all their people. Such happy mortals are generally beloved from their birth, their fortune suffices for their needs without awakening envy in others, and they have opportunities for indulging intellectual and artistic tastes, such as few others possess. Their country seat is generally some old castle, to which historic memories attach, probably with a fine library or picture gallery, and archeological treasures perhaps beneath the soil. As patrons of Art, as hosts to a company of well-chosenguests, as friends of scholars and men of letters, as descendants of forefathers renowned for talents and virtues, they are privileged beyond all others. And friends like Sohn must be counted among their best treasures!
A portrait-painter, worthy of the name, must generally be a good psychologist, for he must study his models well, and learn their character through the physiognomy.
I shall never forget a day Sohn spent with us at Altwied, the lovely old ruined castle, which was the cradle of our family. It stands shut in by high hills on a little peninsula formed by the meanderings of the Wiedbach, the mountain stream. Many a dream have I dreamt within those crumbling walls, of which much more was standing then, but on the day in question we came, I know not how, to speak of the opera, “la Dame Blanche,” and as we all lay stretched on the grass, Sohn related the story. So poetically, so touchingly did he tell of the young man’s return to the castle of his ancestors, and of the long-forgotten song that stirs in his memory as he crosses the threshold—I was carried away by it, and the actual performance of the opera, which I witnessed some years later, fell very flat in comparison. The glare of the foot-lights, the painted scenery, the stiffness of the acting, destroyed the beauty of the story as first revealed to me through the medium of an artist’s soul, and on the picturesque site to which it seemed naturally to belong.
Informer days nurses and waiting-women in the princely families were themselves gentlewomen. It was rightly deemed all-essential for children, only to come in contact with people of good breeding, that they might never incur the danger of acquiring bad manners. It was thus that the sister of General Weiz, a young and accomplished woman, became my mother’s nurse soon after my grandmother’s death, and stayed on in charge of the younger children for many years after my grandfather’s second marriage. Later on, when these also were growing up, Fräulein Weiz accompanied my mother to Neuwied, where she remained as housekeeper for many years, and where we all grew much attached to her.
Weizchen, as she was always affectionately called in both families, was young and very pretty when she entered the ducal household, blest moreover with a very fine voice, which my grandmother had had carefully cultivated, but which its possessor had never felt the slightest wish to display on the stage or in the concert-room, contenting herself with the pleasure her talent was able to bestow in a smaller circle. She soon made herself beloved in her post in Biebric, but just at first my mother was simply inconsolable at the parting with her dear oldbonne, Mlle. Clausel, by whom she had been petted andmade much of since her birth, and from whom she had just been separated. Weizchen’s beautiful voice had therefore for the moment no charm for the little girl, although it excited such general admiration, as would also at the present day the singer’s magnificent red hair, that set off the dazzling whiteness of her skin, but which was then looked upon with such disfavour, that she was quite glad to hide it under a light sprinkling of powder, according to prevailing etiquette, whenever she appeared in low dress, with the children, in the drawing-room.
As far back as my recollections go, Weizchen was always an inmate of my paternal home, having very soon followed my mother there after the latter’s marriage. From the very first my mother was accompanied by Louise von Preen, as lady-in-waiting, and very amusing tales were told afterwards of the home-sickness of the two young things—barely eighteen years of age either of them—in their new surroundings. When my mother in a moment of loneliness rushed to Louise’s room for comfort, she found the poor girl seated among her boxes, which she had not yet had the heart to have unpacked, crying her eyes out. They sobbed together, sighing as they gazed at the distant hills, beyond which lay their old home. And yet that home was not in reality so very far away, and at the present day could easily be reached in a couple of hours, though to their romantic feelings they seemed to be pining for it in distant exile! Very soon, however, the young bride was cheered by a visit from her brothers, and after that gay days began for Neuwied,the castle often resounding with the happy voices and ringing laughter of the merry young people assembled within its walls.
But it was from Weizchen that we loved to hear anecdotes of my mother’s childhood. When she was only three years old her life was saddened by the loss of the little brother, just a year older than herself, who had been her constant companion. During his illness it was the poor little boy’s one delight to make his sister dance to the accompaniment of a toy harmonica he played, propped up among the pillows in his bed, and Weizchen said it was the prettiest sight to see the little girl, whose movements had already all the lightness and natural grace which afterwards earned for her the sobriquet of the Rhineland Fairy at the court of Berlin, dancing away indefatigably for the pleasure of the poor sick child, whose eyes wore a most pathetic expression as they watched her. Sad and lonely the little girl was, when the brother had gone. The lives of little princes were indeed lonely enough at the best of times in those days, for once out of the nursery they saw but little of one another, not even having their meals in common, but each child brought up quite apart from the rest with a special tutor or governess, with whom the repasts were taken,tête-à-tête, and to whose tender mercies the pupil was somewhat ruthlessly abandoned. In my own early childhood we still experienced the inconveniences of this system of education, but the transition to more rational and humane treatment of the young was already taking place, and children evenof the highest rank now-a-days lead happy natural lives, associating with others of their age and constantly seeing their parents, of whom they no longer stand in dread. Quite early we came to table with our parents, but that was very uncommon, and in an older generation still would have been thought impossible. Of course in very many cases the instruction children received suffered from the lack of supervision, and some of these young people grew up deplorably ignorant, notwithstanding very fair natural abilities. My highly gifted uncle Maurice, for instance—artist, musician, and adept at surgery—capable it seemed of learning anything to which he turned his attention, was yet never able to pen the shortest note without making some mistake in spelling. But he painted and composed, as a mere dilettante it is true, but with very decided talent, and with the same grace and brilliancy that he brought into everything else, whether losing his money to his male friends at cards, or creating havoc among female hearts at the Viennese Court, whither he had been sent at the age of seventeen, and where he soon showed himself proficient in the various accomplishments supposed to be befitting a young man of his rank, very handsome and well-endowed endowed with worldly goods. He was my mother’s idol, and made the little sister his confidant—even of his love affairs—at a very early age! Very early indeed he had begun practising his seductive arts on the other sex, if it be true that at the age of ten, seeing one of his mother’s young maids-of-honour in tears, he sidled up to her in his most caressing,most coaxing way, looking up in her face with all the melting tenderness of which his big blue eyes were capable, and murmuring persuasively:—“Do not cry, Louise; you know I shall always be your friend!”
But it was a little later, when the gay handsome youth had really begun to turn female heads, that his confidences to the younger sister must often have assumed a very amusing character. Fräulein Lavater once found her little pupil dissolved in tears, and it was only after reiterated promises of secrecy on the part of the governess, that the child at last sobbed out:—“Maurice is in love—in love! And she whom he loves can never be his, for she is a married woman!” That Fräulein Lavater had some difficulty in restraining her laughter, may be easily imagined; but she succeeded, and had moreover the good sense and good feeling to respect her promise and keep the story of this comic episode to herself, until a time when its being made known could no longer be prejudicial to anyone. She was rewarded for her discretion by being also made the recipient of some of the young man’s confidences—glimpses of the innumerable adventures of which he was the hero in the gay Austrian capital.
The idolising affection my mother bestowed on her elder brother, was felt for her in turn by her younger brothers and sisters. She was never tired of playing with them and of telling them the wonderful stories which she made up for their amusement. The announcement of their step-sister’s engagement and approaching marriage was received with characteristiccomments by these little ones. The nine-year-old Helene wept bitterly, affirming that it was utterly impossible for her to live without Marie; Nicholas, a year younger, but always practical and reasonable, consoled himself with the thought of the beautiful gardens and fine collection of stuffed animals of which his sister would become possessor by her marriage to a Prince of Wied; and little Sophie, frankly indignant, exclaimed:—“It is too bad! I will tell mamma at once, and see if she will allow such a thing!”
Those were bright and happy days that dawned on Neuwied, soon after my parents’ marriage, when my mother, herself in the heyday of youth, led the revels, supported by her young brothers, the gayest of the gay. Dances, shooting-parties, amateur theatricals, followed one another in rapid succession, and the woods echoed with song and laughter of the happy light-footed young people who scampered through them from morn till night. All this has been told in a family chronicle, written and illustrated by my father himself, and carefully preserved in our archives. But the story does not go beyond the year 1847; there it suddenly breaks off. The festival was over; the lights had all burnt out; the fun and frolic had come to an end, and a great cloud of sadness seemed to descend on us and envelop everything. My mother’s lameness; Uncle Maurice’s death; the dangerous illness of my brother Wilhelm; all these misfortunes, occurring almost simultaneously, plunged our whole household ingloom, and the gaiety and merry-making of those early days was never to return.
Then began, with our journey to Heidelberg attended with so much discomfort and disappointment, the long series of those pilgrimages to consult the most renowned oracles of medical science, which entirely occupied our lives during several years. The celebrated Dr. Chelius, whose advice we now sought, certainly did restore my brother to health by the treatment he prescribed, but to my mother he could do no good at all. With the illogical prejudice of childhood, I took a great dislike to the famous doctor on that account, looking upon him as a most cruelly disposed individual, who was putting my mother to great pain for his own pleasure, but an anecdote I heard of him in later years invested him with a certain interest in my eyes and made me regret my hasty judgment.
It appears that when, after a very hard struggle in his youth, Dr. Chelius had at last become celebrated, he one day received a message from King Maximilian of Bavaria, to the effect that he was the latter’s son, and that the King wished to know if he could do anything for him. With proper spirit Chelius replied, that having done without a father for all these years, he thought that he could get on without one very well in future!
We spent the year ’48 in Heidelberg, coming in for all the excitement of the Revolution, with which we children were vastly pleased; it amused us to see bands of men wearing red caps, and armed with scythes, go past shouting and singing, and above allwe were delighted with the exploits of the “Free Companions,”—volunteers who apparently found our garden the most convenient place for their rifle-practice. We felt no alarm, even when someone, who was just then standing close beside me, kindly helping me to arrange my doll’s wig, was struck on the forehead, fortunately, as it happened, by a spent bullet, which glanced off without inflicting any real injury.
But we were warned at last that we had better leave without further delay, and the return journey was not accomplished without peril. The name of the demagogue, Hecker, was scrawled everywhere in the dust that covered our travelling-carriage, on the box of which my father, disguised as a servant, sat beside the coachman. In Mannheim the carriage was surrounded by a noisy group of men in red caps, who tore open the door, and contemptuously exclaiming:—“Nothing but women!” banged it again. When we reached Biebrich, we found the castle empty. Everyone had left in haste, and we had to go to an hotel to spend the night. This was a cold and comfortless reception indeed—no one expecting us, or even seeming to know or care who we were—in the place where a welcome as warm as it was ceremonious usually awaited us—servants lining the steps, sentries presenting arms, and the Duke, surrounded by his courtiers, advancing to meet his sister and her family. The contrast was so complete and chilling, I might well feel shocked and hurt and dazed, as if the solid ground had suddenly given way under my feet, to find myself sosmall, so unimportant, so utterly unrecognised—and just in my dear Biebrich, the paradise of my childhood, where, as in Wiesbaden, I had spent my happiest days, made much of and enjoying the nearest approach to being petted and spoilt that I had ever known. This sensation of bewilderment, as of one walking in a topsy-turvy world, was carried to its height by the familiar address of the chamber-maid in the inn, whom I watched preparing our beds. Altogether I received a lesson on the insignificance of worldly honours and distinction, and perhaps even on the instability of all mundane things, more to the point in teaching me humility than any of my mother’s homilies on the subject.
A great change came over our household after the year ’48, whose events had swept away half our revenues, our style of living was much simplified, the little court disbanded, even some of the servants—among them my mother’s first waiting-maid—dismissed, and everything reorganised on a much smaller, more modest scale. And to what purpose had been henceforth pomp and lavish expenditure, in a house in which sorrow and sickness had taken up their abode! The diminished retinue, the cessation of open-handed hospitality, those were as naught beside the weightier cares that combined to crush the gay spirits of the revellers, and in the first place, of the young châtelaine herself. The death of her beloved brother Maurice was a blow from which my mother never recovered, and the shock much accelerated the morbid symptoms that had just begun to declare themselves. Never shallI forget the heartrending expression on her face, as bathed in tears, she made her appearance in the nursery to tell us children, that the bright, handsome, gallant Uncle Maurice was dead! So small was I at the time, that I could not help finding a little consolation in the black and black and white striped dresses made for me on this occasion—it was a change from the perpetual white! But the gloom of mourning did not pass away; my mother’s health had begun to fail. I remember her listless gait, how she seemed each day to find greater difficulty in going about, holding on to every piece of furniture for support, and then how, all at once, she could no longer walk at all. It seemed doubly hard that this should be her fate, who had been the gayest of the gay, blithe as a lark and lightfooted as a gazelle, out-tiring all her partners in the dance, and out-stripping every one of her young companions in their mad races through the woods, bounding up and down the hills as if she scarcely touched the ground!
Throughout those mirthful days, in their maddest pranks and most reckless fun, it was always to Weizchen that the young folk turned for help to carry out their most extravagant devices. They knew they might count on her to aid and abet them in every harmless plot, indeed her own inventive genius sometimes furnished invaluable hints, as in the memorable birthday reception prepared by my mother for Uncle Maurice, in retaliation for a practical joke he had played on her a short time before. Remembering his sister’s fondness for the Nassau bonbons, a sweetmeat her father’s cooks excelled inpreparing, the young man had sent her a magnificent box of these, which she handed round with delight to her guests one evening, only discovering by the wry faces or half-smothered ejaculations of disgust of those who partook of the confectionery, that the interior of these well-sugared delicacies by no means corresponded with their tempting outside! It was to punish him for this sorry trick—a little too much resembling, it must be owned, the “merrie jestes” with which Louis XI is credited—that my mother planned the following revenge. During the gala dinner being given in my uncle’s honour, a servant suddenly made the announcement that the three Graces begged for a moment’s audience, to present their congratulations to the Prince. Amused and smiling the young man left his seat and advanced to the door, where he was met by a trio, resembling the Three Furies, or the witches in “Macbeth”—anything rather than the vision of feminine loveliness to have been expected. Three of the most gaunt and ill-favoured washerwomen of the district had been selected by the malicious Weizchen, crowned with roses, and clad in snow-white draperies, through which their bony necks and red arms looked only the more frightful, and primed with champagne in order that they might enact their part with the greater zest, they surrounded their victim, whose short-sight prevented him from seeing them distinctly until at quite close quarters. Poor Maurice, whose susceptibility to female charms was only equalled by his aversion for every form of ugliness, promptly turned and fled; but the ladies, nothingdaunted, pursued and again drew him into their midst, executing a wild bacchanalian dance while they tried to imprison and bind fast the fugitive with the long green garlands they carried. At last, breaking away from his tormentors, and jumping over chairs and tables which he upset in his flight, the young man sank, breathless and exhausted, behind a sofa in one corner of the room, whilst at a sign from my mother, the Mænads vanished. The hero of the adventure only came forth from his hiding-place, when a few minutes later Weizchen entered the room, to ask my mother demurely if she were content with the way her orders had been executed. Then, springing to his feet, he seized Weizchen round the waist, and kissed her so heartily, that all present who were not in the secret believed that this also was a part of the masquerade.
I should never have finished if I were to try to tell of all the amusing scenes that then took place, of some of which I retain a faint recollection, while others are only known to me by hearsay. One of the beautifully illuminated pages of my father’s “Chronicle of Monrepos,” depicts the mock solemnities of the reception awaiting my mother and himself on one of their visits to the castle of Braunfels. The customary bevy of white-robed maidens, deputed to hand my mother a bouquet with an address of welcome, was on this occasion represented by all the elderly gentlemen present in the castle—the Prince’s old bachelor uncles and their friends—who attired themselves in the traditional white muslin frocks and wreaths of roses, and with well-simulatedbashfulness recited verses in honour of the visitor.
The amateur theatricals too, what delight they gave, and how many diverting incidents sprang from these performances! One of them must find a place here. An aunt of mine, whose height would very well enable her to pass for a man, had agreed to enact a male character in some comedy, and for this she was to wear a suit of my father’s clothes, stipulating, however, that neither he nor any other of the opposite sex were to know of this,—the impersonation was to remain a profound secret to the audience. But unfortunately on the evening in question, as my father sat quietly smoking with a few friends, his valet appeared, and without the slightest circumlocution, bluntly requested “the loan of the brocaded breeches, for Her Serene Highness, Princess Solms!” Inextinguishable laughter broke forth from all present, and I really doubt whether my aunt’s success in the part itself, which she now threw up, would have been as great, or have provoked such hilarity.
In nearly all such episodes Weizchen was mixed up. It was to her that one turned, in every emergency, and not merely in our own household, but on both sides of the family, she came to be looked upon as a sort of institution, something belonging to us all, and firmly rooted in the past, but no less indispensable to the present. The Duchess of Oldenburg, my mother’s eldest sister, never came back to the Rhineland without at once sending for Weizchen, in order to revive old memories, and live bygone scenes over again with her, who was herself a pieceof family history, the repository of so many a family secret.
It is on the lighter side of her nature that I have chiefly dwelt, on the easier duties of those happier days. But in the hour of trial, Weizchen proved herself no less true and devoted, standing firmly at her post, as unwearied in her nursing, in her care and attendance on my mother, as she had formerly been in contributing to every scheme of amusement. All her best qualities were shown during those years of sorrow, and it was perhaps the large share of the burden which she took upon her own shoulders, by which she was herself prematurely aged and saddened. She lived with us till I was about fourteen, and then retired with a pension to rooms assigned her in grandmamma’s pretty house. Her memory is bound up with some of the happiest recollections of my childhood, and still at times I fancy I hear her voice ring out in one or other of the dear old melodies—the plaintive ballad of “Emma and Eginhard,” or Mozart’s graceful “Lullaby,” which she sang so often to us in the bygone days, in the old home by the Rhine.
Ofthese there are so many—kind honest hearts, whose worth I learnt to recognise in bygone days, and whom it would be impossible for me to leave unnoticed here. I cannot name them all, but all are in my thoughts, as I select just a few from their number to inscribe among my Penates.
The one I would mention first, the truly excellent women who when Weizchen retired undertook the management of our household, was with us through those especially trying years in which my parents’ ill-health and poor Otto’s constant sufferings made the interior of our house more resemble that of a hospital than of an ordinary home. Frau Baring was a gentle-voiced, mild-eyed woman past middleage, who had herself experienced much sorrow, and this very fact made her more fitted for the surroundings than a younger, livelier person would have proved. Not that there was anything morose or depressing about our new housekeeper, of whom I happened to see a good deal, it being my mother’s wish now that my more serious studies were finished, that I should gain some practical knowledge of the matters under her control. So I was duly initiated into some of the mysteries of her domain, watching her at her work of superintending, and giving orders, learning the art of book-keeping and even making an occasional inspection with her of larders,pantry and linen-closet. As for the results achieved, I cannot look back on these with very great satisfaction, as all such commonplace details of daily life seemed to me scarcely worth the time and trouble bestowed on them, and I by no means relished being called upon to waste any thought on such dry and prosaic matters. Entering the daily or weekly expenditure in an account-book appeared to me the most cruel trial of human patience that could possibly have been devised, but the very horror with which the sight of these dreary ledgers inspired me, did but increase my admiration and respect for all those whose duty compels them to pass their days in the contemplation of dull columns of meaningless figures! In my personal distaste for all the petty details pertaining to the direction of a household, I was therefore but the more disposed to feel sympathy for good Frau Baring, and indeed for all her myrmidons, having often had occasion to observe the conscientious zeal with which all of these, every maid-servant and laundress down to the meanest scullion, performed the duties laid on them. So many instances have I known of these humblest functions patiently and punctiliously discharged, that I for one can never join in the complaints too often raised against the servant-class. Every service rendered us seemed always to be a labour of love, and this experience can surely not have been confined to ourselves alone.
I have often thought that I perhaps owed my magnificent health in a certain measure to my nurse, the simple peasant-woman picked out for her own