"Come of a gentle, kind, and noble stock."
--Pericles.
One of the pleasant incidents to vary our social life was the arrival in
1850 of the young Prince of Schleswig-Holstein, to whom there occurred,
during the German dynastic confusion that followed the revolutionary
year 1848, an opportunity to see the world. Accompanied by his guardian,
Captain Stanley Carr, he arrived by one of the Messrs. Godeffroy's ships
from Hamburg, having been swayed to some extent in selection of travel
route by the fact of German emigration to Port Phillip having commenced
the year before through the same firm. The Prince, who was then only of
the age of nineteen, and of most amiable and ingenuous look, had that
charm of the true politeness of his years, which left you the impression
that he thought that everyone was to be preferred to himself. If
unfortunate, in the chances of the struggle, in being dropped out of his
principality, he was afterwards compensated in another direction, for
not only is his younger brother our Queen's son-in-law, but one of his
daughters is to-day Empress of Germany. What a reminder are such changes
of the swift passing of time and of the crowd of portentous events in
these quick-speeding years.
The Prince and his guardian landed, as it were, in my arms, by virtue
both of introductions from the Godeffroys, and of my position as virtual
parental head of the German flock which had begun to stream into Port
Phillip. Unacquainted myself with the language, I was ably and
untiringly helped, as I have said, by my late friend Mr. Neuhauss. The
Prince took the thin disguise of Lieutenant Groenwald, but I never heard
that name, except in Captain Carr's official intimation. We all called
him the Prince, but he was equally courteous and unassuming whatever way
we addressed him. It was quite touching to see the harmony that existed
between ward and guardian, the one looking up to his sage Mentor with
the trustful tractability of a child, the other reciprocating high
regard out of the depths of that ultra-Tory sentiment with which long
residence within German Court vicinities, and perhaps a natural turn of
mind, had imbued him. We have been apprised of this still lingering
German high sentiment by hearing at times of the late Emperor
Frederick's habit, when Crown Prince, of calling the Princess "wife,"
and of asking, when looking for her, where his "wife" was--a
transgression of court etiquette so appalling as well nigh to send the
queried parties off into a fit. There was another amusing illustration
from Captain Carr. He came to me once very considerably disconcerted by
the report of a public meeting the day before, at which he, oblivious
for the moment of the inevitable omnipresent English free press, had
offered some remarks. The "Argus", under the undiscriminating democratic
pen of Kerr, its editor, had reported that "Captain Stanley Carr had
told the meeting that the King of Prussia had told him" so and so;
whereas, as Carr sorrowfully complained, the proper expression should
have been that "an exalted personage in Prussia had led him to
understand" so and so. But, added my friend, with manifest comfort, the
departure from propriety was so flagrant that, if the report did happen
to reach the king's eyes, he would never believe it of him.
Both distinguished visitors honoured me and two of my sisters, who had
by this time followed their brother to the land of promise, with a few
days' residence at our cottage, with its garden so full of fruit, upon
the Merri Creek. When so many other invitations pressed, we were in
honour bound to this time-limitation. They were easily entertained with
such few elegancies as we could then boast of. But we were bound also,
even in mere good feeling to surrounding ambitious maidens, to get up a
ball in the Prince's honour. I had my task in discriminating the
comparative few of the fair hands that could possibly be placed in that
of the guest, for even a prince could not dance for ever, so as to
overtake all. On the Prince's part every successive hand was accepted
with equal readiness, and every favoured maiden was duly encouraged, or
discouraged, by faultlessly impartial courtesy.