SUMMER HOLIDAYS
“Cretâ an carbone notandi?” The summer holidays of 1851 shall be “noted”
with the whitest of chalk. The first three or four days were spent in
London exploring the treasures and wonders of the Fairy Palace which the
imagination of the Prince Consort and the talent of Paxton called up
in Hyde Park—of which Sydenham gives no conception. It was but a baby
compared with the great exhibitions—labyrinthine cities in themselves—by
which it was followed—but it was so graceful, so delicate, so airy, that
its translucent beauty remains graven on my memory as something which
must defy all rivalry. When first I saw it glittering in the morning sun,
I felt as if Aladdin and the Jin who was the slave of the lamp must have
been at work upon it—no mere human hands and hammers and builders’ tools
could have wrought such a miracle. A single relic marks the site: one of
the two great elms which were enclosed in it, now a feeble old truncated
pollard, piously fenced in by the care of those who rule the Park, still
stands in the great stretch of grass opposite the Knightsbridge Barracks;
its mate sickened and died.
There were two exhibits which struck my boyish imagination: one the
great crystal fountain in the centre of the building—the sun was shining
gloriously, charming all the jewels of the world into the plashing
water—it seemed to me a dream of beauty. The other was Koh-i-Nur, in the
cutting of which the great Duke of Wellington took so much interest; its
fire has now been eclipsed by the mightier light of that wonder-stone,
the Cullinane diamond, but the poetry of its story remains now, as it was
then, one of the great traditions of the gorgeous East, reaching back
into legendary times, when there were still Afrits to do the bidding of
King Solomon. No stone newly found in the blue earth of Africa can dim
the magic halo of Eastern romance, or blur the succession of pictures
which the crystal-gazer should see in the mystic depths of the Mountain
of Light—all the glamour of “the thousand nights and one.”
But it is idle to talk of this or of that exhibit, or even of many. There
were things beautiful, and things hideous, for art at that moment had
sunk very low; but the general effect of beauty and airy grace, together
with the delicate framework and brilliancy of the whole structure, was
indelible—unlike its more modern successors its size was not so great as
to prevent one from gaining a general impression of the whole, and that
was a joyous, sensuous revelling in a palace of light. Even those whom I
remember scoffing at the idea when it was first mooted were compelled to
admit that it was a great conception nobly carried out; it was a triumph
of which the present Crystal Palace gives no conception. The transfer to
Sydenham and the increase in size seemed at once to vulgarize it.
Great were the joys of the Exhibition! but there were greater yet in
store for me in the first sight of the richly fabled Rhineland, where,
after a few happy days in London, I was to join my father. Those were
times when the “Pilgrims of the Rhine” wandered through a realm of
romance and poetry untouched by the vulgar hand of utilitarianism. The
air that we breathed was as pure, as nipping, and as eager as that which
many centuries ago floated round the Dragon’s rock and the eyrie from
which the brave Roland looked down upon the island convent—the prison of
all that he held dearest upon earth.
Now tall chimneys cut up the lovely views, belching out sulphurous
vapours upon the castles and fastnesses of the old Robber Knights.
Factories and huge industries darken the blue of the sky. The siren song
of the Lorelei is no longer heard from the rock where she used to sit
“combing her golden locks with a golden comb,” and luring the benighted
fisherman to his doom; she has fled, Heaven knows whither, scared by the
prose of a cruel century; the clang of the Nibelungen’s hammer and anvil
has ceased to beat in the dark caverns of the earth. Giants and dwarfs
have disappeared, and the Rheingold is now won by methods in which there
is neither beauty nor romance, nor fairy lore. What was the _Wacht am
Rhein_ about, that it did not strike a blow to hinder the defiling of the
sacred river? It has been fierce enough against the Frenchman; could it
do nothing to stay the hand of the sacrilegious German money-spinner?
Last year (May, 1914) I took a novice to view the scenes which had cast
a spell over my young enthusiasm. He was disappointed, and I could not
wonder at it. No crucible of the imagination can weld together Manchester
and the Sieben Gebirge.
In 1851 life on the Rhine sped like a happy dream. My father made Coblenz
our headquarters, and we made many delightful expeditions; among others,
a trip by steamer up to Bingen and thence across the river into the
lovely Schweitzer Thal, which, lying as it does just out of the beaten
track, is so seldom seen.
It was no mere chance that made my father choose Coblenz for our
temporary abode. Mrs. Bradshaw was living there with her son-in-law and
daughter, and she had been a great friend of my father and mother. When
I knew her, she was an old lady and quite blind, bearing her affliction
with that gentle patience which is so usual with those who are thus
punished. She still had the delicately cut features and charm of manner
which had made her famous in her youth; for she was no less a person than
Miss Maria Tree, the singer and actress who took all London by storm when
on the 8th of May, 1823, she “created,” as the phrase now goes, “Home,
Sweet Home,” in the opera of _Clari_ by Sir Henry Bishop. The words were
by John Howard Payne, an American author, paraphrased from lines by T.
Haynes Bayly, the author of “I’d be a Butterfly,” a song now probably
forgotten, but in my childhood almost as popular as “Home, Sweet Home,”
itself—especially in seminaries such as that of the Misses Pinkerton on
Chiswick Mall. It is said that the motive of the air was taken from a
Sicilian melody: be that as it may, it has been so long naturalized that
it lives as something purely English. It will always be associated with
Patti, but Maria Tree, who first made it live, should not be forgotten.
The libretto of _Clari_ was based upon the old, old tragedy. It was the
story of a beautiful girl, who after some months of luxurious misery
in a city, comes back to seek peace in her village home. I have often
heard my father and Mr. Henry Greville say what a dream of fascination
she was when with her wide-brimmed straw hat, slung by a ribbon to her
arm—looking like a dainty picture by Morland—she came forward and in her
sweet voice—a voice which in speaking retained its charm to the end—sadly
warbled the pathetic song. The town was conquered and there was not a dry
eye in the house.
In circumstances so romantic that even at this distance of time it would
be indiscreet to mention them, she won the heart of Mr. Bradshaw—the
Jemmy Bradshaw of contemporary memoirs—one of the great dandies of the
early days of the nineteenth century, a friend of the Prince Regent. It
was a happy marriage, and there was one beautiful daughter, who became
the wife of Captain Langley, an officer in the 2nd Life Guards. They were
as handsome a couple as could be seen—and they were made very welcome
in the society of Coblenz. The sympathy of the sword and great personal
charm were a passport to the friendship of the very smart garrison.
I can see Mrs. Bradshaw coming into the room tapping her way with her
stick. Gracious and kind she always was, and her poor dim eyes, that used
to laugh so merrily, had not forgotten how to smile a welcome. Many happy
hours I spent as a boy and afterwards as a young man in her house in the
Schloss-Strasse.
During the fifties, the old Emperor William, his brother being still
alive, was military governor or viceroy of Rhenan Prussia and Westphalia,
and held his Court at Coblenz. Both he and his Princess, afterwards the
Empress Augusta, were most graciously kind to foreigners. My father
was a frequent guest at the Palace, and even I, though a mere boy,
was more than once invited to the afternoon coffee parties. Naturally
enough the Court was a centre for the best society of the town and
neighbourhood—mostly military and official.
The Prince was a handsome, soldier-like figure, bluff and hearty, royal
to his fingers’ tips, most gracious and friendly in the reception of his
guests. He was all his life the sworn foe of anarchism and socialism,
and at one time was so clearly marked as a probable object of attack,
that in March, 1848, he was compelled by his brother and the government
to leave Germany for a while. He remained in London only until June,
when he returned to Berlin as a member of the National Assembly, and
declared himself a conscientious supporter of the Constitutional
Monarchy. He assumed his high office at Coblenz in 1849, shortly after
the attempt upon his life by a ruffianly anarchist named Adam Schneider
at Niederingelheim.
The certainty that he must succeed his brother in the kingship, as well
as his own commanding character made his Court very regal and very
important. He was admirably seconded by his Princess, a daughter of the
House of Saxe-Weimar. The Empress Augusta, to give her the title by which
she is best known, was in 1851 a graceful, still very attractive lady,
in spite of her forty years. She was a woman of refined accomplishments,
a scientific musician, a great lover of art. She was very well read,
especially in French literature, and kept a French reader, M. Guillard,
attached to her household. She preferred Victor Hugo, Balzac, Lamartine,
Alexandre Dumas and the English writers to the dull dogmatics of the
German schoolmen of that day. Bismarck complained not a little of her
foreign predilections, and considered that she was far too much inclined
to belittle what was German in favour of exotic literature.
The truth was that the two natures were not sympathetic: she was highly
strung and æsthetic—in him not even Paris and St. Petersburg (now
Petrograd) had been able to polish the roughness of the diamond. When
the fateful episode at Ems occurred, the plain-spoken statesman did not
conceal his fear lest the King should come under the influence of the
Queen, who was hard by at her beloved Coblenz. At any rate, she made the
Princely Court gay and very agreeable, and Bismarck was able to console
himself with the reflection that his policy—I am now speaking of nineteen
years before the great war—had a strenuous supporter in the Prince’s
right-hand man, Count Karl Von der Goltz.
Prince Frederick, the future hero of so many pitched battles, the father
of the present Kaiser, was a tall, fair, handsome stripling, beardless
and very young looking, who a year or two later confided to my father
that he was “almost engaged” to our Princess Royal. His sister, Princess
Louise, still alive as Grand Duchess of Baden, was a lovely maiden, such
as Perrault might have imagined, or Madame d’Aulnoy portrayed.
The ladies- and gentlemen-in-waiting were well qualified to turn what
might have been a very dull Court into an intimate little coterie,
enlivened by private theatricals in French, music, readings and other
amusements; it was very dignified in that there was nothing frivolous
about it, but it was never stiff and never dull.
The two ladies were Countess Haack—elderly, and if the truth must be
told, rather plain—and Countess Oriolla, a beauty who preferred maiden
meditation to matrimony, and would not be won.
Count Karl Von der Goltz was, owing to his confidential position with the
Prince, a real influence in Germany—an influence recognized by Bismarck
himself, and of him I should like to say a few words. In his “_Gedanken
und Erinnerungen_” the great man describes him as “an elegant and smart
officer of the Guards, a Prussian to the core (_Stock-Preusse_), and
courtier, who took no more heed of the rest of Germany outside of Prussia
than his position about the Court involved. He was a man of the world,
rode well to hounds, handsome, a favourite with women, a past master in
courtly etiquette; politics were not the first consideration with him,
but were only a means to his ends at Court. Nobody knew better than he
did that the recollection of Olmütz was the right incentive to win over
the Prince and induce him to take a hand in the fight against Manteuffel,
and he had plenty of opportunities both when travelling and at home of
making the best use of this spur to the feelings of the Prince.”
Count Von der Goltz’s brother Robert was the first instigator of the
Bethmann-Hollweg coalition against Manteuffel. He was a man of unusual
talent and energy “with whose active capacity Manteuffel had the
tactlessness to deal imprudently.” (Bismarck _ut supra_.)
To Bismarck, Olmütz was the bitterest of thoughts. Two years after the
Emperor Ferdinand had there abdicated in favour of his nephew, Francis
Joseph, Prince Schwarzenberg, on behalf of Austria, and Manteuffel, as
plenipotentiary for Prussia, met there and came to the agreement known as
the “_Olmützer Punktation_”—which at a moment when war seemed inevitable,
settled the differences between the two Powers, but entirely in favour of
Austria.
It was the life’s aim and ambition of Bismarck to undo Manteuffel’s work,
and to assert Prussia as the leading Power among the Teuton peoples
by uniting all the German States, to the exclusion of Austria, under
her hegemony. In May, 1851, he was appointed secretary to the Prussian
representative at the Diet, and three months later was promoted to be
himself representative.
His first move against Austria was characteristic. It had been the custom
at the social gatherings of the Diet for the Austrian delegate to give
the signal for smoking. Bismarck took an early opportunity of lighting
his own cigar first, politely offering a match to Count Thun, his
Austrian colleague. It was the bursting of a bombshell, and the incident,
apparently so trivial, was electric. Everyone present knew what was
meant. That match lit a flame which was only extinguished fifteen years
later at Sadowa.
The hatred of Manteuffel and his policy was the secret of Bismarck’s
admiration for the brothers Von der Goltz; for in the handsome courtier,
Count Karl, he recognized an ally almost, if not quite, as powerful
as the statesman and diplomatist Count Robert. It would be difficult
to imagine two men more different than the polished guardsman and the
rough, unkempt man-of-affairs, but they were both, to use Bismarck’s own
expression “_Stock-Preussen_.” Olmütz was to both a haunting memory, and,
the wiping out of that stain a sacred duty which united the two.
By the side of Count Von der Goltz the two other gentlemen-in-waiting
were less conspicuous figures. He was always in the foreground, and
remained the faithful friend and servant of his old master all through
the glorious campaigns of 1866 and 1870, in both of which he earned
great honour as a cavalry general, and having resigned his high military
commands in 1888, remained attached as General aide-de-camp to the
Emperor William until the old warrior’s death in the same year. He
himself died thirteen years later at Nice, at the age of eighty-six.
His colleagues at the Court of Coblenz as I knew it were Major
Schimmelmann, a handsome giant, who was very good to me, and another
officer, Herr Von Steinäcker, a rather melancholy man who worshipped
the ground upon which Countess Oriolla’s pretty foot trod; it used to
be said that he proposed to her once a month, and on being once a month
refused, would take to his bed love-sick, disconsolate, emerging at the
end of twenty-four hours to resume his duties. But his story belongs to
the small-beer chronicles of the Court, whereas that of Count Von der
Goltz, like that of the glorious Prince, King, Emperor, whom he loved and
served, belongs to the old October ale of German politics and history, a
heady brew if ever there was one.
We paid several visits to Coblenz during my Eton days—and in 1857, when I
was already twenty years old, I went back there with a reading-party from
Oxford. We stayed there for some five or six weeks and then went on to
that wicked Paradise, Baden Baden. It was in the old days of the gaming
tables—needless to say, we, like the other moths, had our wings singed,
and when we had little more than enough to pay for third-class tickets,
fled, and landed in Paris with just about a hundred francs between us. I
managed to get three rooms in some obscure back street in the Quartier
Latin for thirty francs the week—we breakfasted in a _crèmerie_ for a few
sous—dined at the two-francs dinner in the Palais Royal—lived the _vie
de Bohème_ with the students and _rapins_, who gave a warm welcome to
Oxford, and when replenishment of our purses came from England, left our
church-mouse poverty and wild cheery life with the greatest regret.
In the month of April, 1914, I was in Germany, with two days to spare.
I had long been haunted by the wish once more to see Coblenz, the
happy hunting-ground of sixty years ago. How could a veteran better
wind up a holiday than by fulfilling that desire? We put up at the old
hotel, “Zum Riesen”—the Giant—a _caravanserai_ that I knew well as long
ago as my first visit in 1851. Not that we ever lodged there, for my
father preferred the “Bellevue,” out of affection for old M. Hoche, the
proprietor, who had been a famous cook in Paris.
Those were the days when the table d’hôte acted up to its name, and
the host in person sat at the head of the table as Lord of the Feast;
every now and then, as some special dish was being handed round, M.
Hoche would get up from his seat and come to my father, saying, “Mangez
de ça, Monsieur, j’y ai mis la main”—and what a cunning hand it was!
and how cheap was the excellent dinner served at one o’clock—fifteen
groschen (1s. 6d.) if you came at haphazard, ten groschen if you were
_abonné_—supper was _à la carte_. These were the prices of the best
hotels on the Rhine, and they must have been just, for dear old M.
Hoche and his wife waxed fat upon them, and having lived in great
content, died leaving a fortune. The table d’hôte at which the good old
grey, snuffy generals and colonels and _Herren Geheimräte_ dined in
state is a thing of the past. The old “Bellevue” has been pulled down
and has been replaced by a gigantic new “Bellevue”—whose Pharaoh knew
not Joseph—Coblenz has grown out of all recollection, and prices have
followed suit.
Here and there I found some old parts of the town almost untouched, and
the view from the bridge over the Moselle is a relic of the past, with
its church spires and old-fashioned, rickety houses, roofed with brown
tiles, weather-stained like the grey walls and shutters, as picturesque
as age and just a modicum of dirt and shabbiness can make them. Here the
character of the old German town reveals itself, and when we take our
stand in front of the Giant Hotel and look out upon the Rhine, the bridge
of boats opening to make way for some passing timber-raft—itself its own
cargo from the depths of the far-away Black Forest—when we look at the
grim Ehrenbreitstein with its batteries frowning threats from its rocky
heights—then we forget all modern improvements and artistic misfortunes,
and are once more in the old Rhineland.
On the evening of our arrival, after dark the riverside was gaily
thronged with people drinking in the cool evening air after the heat of
a day as hot as summer. The stream was brilliant with the reflection
of electric lights, but across the water on the awe-striking fortress
there was just one lamp to be seen peering out of the gloom of the black
battlements like a watchful eye—a strange and weird effect, befitting the
castle of an ogre—a silent BEWARE!
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON’S FUNERAL
On the eighteenth of November, 1852, the great Duke of Wellington was
buried. Of course many boys, myself among the number, had leave to go up
to London to see the funeral procession. It had been a very rainy autumn
and the Thames was swollen to an inordinate degree. Eton was flooded and
we were taken up part of the High Street in punts. I believe that no such
flood has been seen since, though the year 1894, when the boys were sent
home on the seventeenth of November, fell not far short of it.
I witnessed the funeral from the first floor of the Bath Hotel,
which stood at the corner of Arlington Street and Piccadilly, at the
north-eastern corner of the modern Ritz Hotel. I have since seen many
great ceremonies, many magnificent and moving spectacles in many lands,
but none that could be named in the same day with the funeral of the Iron
Duke. As a military display it was, of course, superb. All arms were
represented, and a brave show they made; uniforms were far more gorgeous
in those days than they are now that the spirit of economy has cut off
epaulettes and gold lace from officers, shabracks and other ornaments
from their horses. The bands of the various regiments, the muffled roll
of the kettle-drums, mysterious in the distance, heralding the dirge of
the “Dead March in Saul,” followed by the wailing of the bagpipes of the
Highland regiments; the solemnity of the reversed arms, the charger with
empty boots—always a pathetic sight at a soldier’s funeral—led behind the
great bronze car, hung with wreaths of cypress and bay, drawn by twelve
black horses, three abreast, housed with black velvet and a blaze of
heraldry; the deputations of splendidly clad foreign officers, following
the car. All this appealed to the imagination of the huge crowd, often
moving them to tears, for they knew full well that “a Prince and a great
man was dead in Israel.” Few there were, even among the poorest, who
had not managed to don some slight sign of mourning, the slighter the
more touching, for it meant the more: a scrap of crape, a bit of black
cloth worn as an armlet were but the tokens of the real mourning which
was in men’s hearts. He was such a familiar sight to Londoners, this
wonderful old hero whom they used to watch riding along Constitution Hill
to and from the Horse Guards—to and from duty—to the last a spare, lithe,
active figure, smart as a young boy, dressed with scrupulous neatness,
and even a tinge of dandyism, in a tight-fitting, single breasted blue
frock coat, with spotless white trousers. When he passed all men doffed
their hats as if he had been a king, and the answering salute of the
forefinger raised to the brim of his hat, never omitted, never varying,
became almost historic. Often I saw him: he was a very old man, and the
neck was a little bent, but the chiselled face was still commanding, and
the fire had not ceased to glow in those eagle eyes, the _finestra dell’
anima_—altogether an unforgettable figure.
London loved him. Much water, as the saying goes, had flowed under the
bridges since April, 1831, when the mob broke the windows of Apsley
House, while the body of the Duchess, just dead, was lying there waiting
burial. The iron shutters were the only signs left of the fleeting
unpopularity of the Reform days. The life that was in the Duke, his
activity, his unwearying interest and the share which he took in
affairs and events great and small, from the quelling of the Chartist
insurrection, only five years before his death, to the opening of the
Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in 1851 and the cutting of the Koh-i-Nur,
stirred the imagination and roused the admiration of all men, rich
and poor. People used to tell how, when he and Lord John Russell were
discussing the steps to be taken for the safety of London in 1848, and
Lord John suggested one measure after another, the invariable answer
from the grim old soldier was, “Done already.” Nothing had escaped that
wonderful eye. And so he became, as it were, a superman, and when he died
men looked around them and there was none found to fill the gap.
As the great funeral car passed opposite the window where I was, one
of the wreaths of cypress and bay leaves fell off. So soon as the last
soldier closing the procession had disappeared, a poor old woman dashed
forward and picked up the wreath. I ran down and tried to buy it of her,
but she would not part with her precious relic. At last I persuaded her
to sell me one cypress cone for a shilling. The cone was full of seed
which I sent down to Exbury in Hampshire, at that time belonging to my
father; and there are now, in the wood near the house, a number of quite
important cypress trees, the beautiful sixty-year-old children of that
wreath.
After the funeral, “The death of the Duke of Wellington” was set as
the subject for a copy of Alcaics for fifth-form boys at Eton. It was
an unfortunate subject, for it was sure to lead to some regrettable
absurdity: that did not fail: one boy began his copy of verses with the
two lines:
Ut dixit olim magnus Horatius,
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
Apart from the bathos of the drivel, it was so inappropriate, seeing
that the glorious old warrior fell asleep at Walmer full of years
(eighty-three) and honour, on the fourteenth of September, 1852. His body
was brought to London, and lay in state at Chelsea for a week before the
funeral.