I flew to him with a cry of joy.

_Du, du selber!_—“It is your own self!” he cried, and we were once again

sobbing in each other’s arms, just as on that evening when we parted,

only this time not with feelings of pain but rather of unbounded

happiness.

“I have thee, I have thee again—I will never let thee go.”

“No, never again!”

We sat down on the sofa, nestling close, and we began our story. What he

had suffered, what I had suffered ... how he had already begun to think

of suicide.... “No, no, we belong together, nothing shall ever part us

again....”

But what now?—what was to be done?

“Leave planning till later,” I besought. I felt so completely satiated

with bliss by this festal meeting that I could not attend to questions

and doubts and the making of projects. Of all tender speeches such as

are used by lovers and poets, “Thou art an angel,” “Thou art my all,”

and the like, the loveliest and most significant is _Du bist die Ruh_!

But he awakened me from “Rest.”

“We must talk about the future,” he said. “One thing is clear,—it must

never happen again that we let ourselves be parted, or that we actually

separate of our own accord for wretched considerations of worldly

wisdom. We will be married,—that is settled.”

Yes, that was settled. We had honestly tried to separate, and had seen

that it was impossible, simply impossible. To have each other forever

was unspeakable happiness; to renounce each other forever was synonymous

with dying. With this choice set before us, there could be no further

hesitation. To live, to live and be happy!

And so we did begin planning. We would be married—secretly—and then out

into the world! We could surely make our way: we would work, put our

talents to profitable use, find a situation.... To the Caucasus!—was my

proposal. There I had powerful friends. The Dedopali had years and years

before made me promise to come and make her a visit with my husband.

Thither, then, should be our wedding journey. Through their relations

with the emperor of Russia it would be possible to secure a position in

the Russian court or state service....

The plan was carried out. No one was allowed to know of my return from

Paris; I went into hiding for a few weeks with a family in

Lundenburg—very dear people. In the meantime My Own—I never called him

Artur, but My Own, so I shall do the same here in these

recollections—provided for the publishing of the banns, secured trusty

witnesses who would hold their tongues, made everything ready that was

necessary, documents, traveling money, luggage, etc. Fortune favored us;

the family got no wind of the banns published in a remote suburban

church, and one fine morning—it was June 12, 1876—I drove in my

traveling dress and hat to Gumpoldskirchner parish church; my betrothed

was waiting for me there with his witnesses and mine, and in a side

chapel a priest of venerable years united us. We were man and wife.

PART FOUR

1876–1885

XVII

WEDDING JOURNEY

On the Black Sea · Jason mood · Arrival in Asia · The hotel in Poti ·

Kutais· Count Rosmorduc · Reception at Prince Zeretelli’s · National

dances · Journey to Gordi · Prince Niko with escort comes to meet us ·

Arrival at Gordi · Ceremonious reception

I see us next on board the steamship that was to take us from Odessa

across the Black Sea to the port of Poti. It was My Own’s first sea

voyage in all his life; he passionately loved the sea, had always longed

to take a voyage, and now he reveled in the fulfillment of his wishes.

Our goal was the land whither Jason went in his quest for the Golden

Fleece. I think there was much of the Jason mood in us both at that

time: a mingling of delight in adventure, confidence of conquest, the

intoxication of hope. Before us lay a world of things new and

surprising; we were going to set foot on a land consecrated by the most

classical legends, and experiences which we could not even well imagine

beckoned us onward.

We knew that we were expected and should be received with open arms. I

had written from Vienna to the Dedopali, and to Prince Niko, who also

was at that time sojourning in the Caucasus, telling our whole romance

and announcing our visit. A joyous “Welcome” was wired back to us. We

both thought it likely that my old friend Niko would secure for My Own a

position as aide to the emperor or something of the sort. And altogether

we were so inordinately enraptured at being together, our bold stroke

had aroused in us such an intense feeling of happiness, everything thus

far had gone so _sur des roulettes_, that we looked forward to a

constant increase in our good fortune. One day we should return home in

triumph; but it would be a long time before we should want to return

home; for the present, out into the wide, beautiful, rich, wonderful

world! we were after the Golden Fleece. Nor did we need it—that was the

best part. Whatever treasures the world might grant or deny us, we had

in each other measureless riches. And My Own felt all this even more

keenly than I. He was only twenty-six years old, and this was his first

journey into the Unknown. I had already experienced so much

disillusionment, and had already, with my thirty-three years, emerged in

a measure from that state of intoxication which is called youth; but I

caught the contagion of his youthful enthusiasm, and was as childish as

he.

After a calm passage our steamboat landed us on the Asiatic shore. A

different continent—it fills the comparatively inexperienced traveler

with a peculiar pride, a pride upon which old globe-trotters look down

with a smile. My Own set his foot on the un-European soil with the

haughtiness of a conqueror.

“So,” said he exultingly, “here we are in Asia!”

Whether Asia or Australia, whether earth or Mars, cried the exultation

within me, we are together, and that is the main thing.

A messenger from the princess was on the landing-place to meet us. He

handed me a letter from his mistress with a renewed welcome and the

request that we should delay our arrival at Gordi—the summer

residence—for a week, till our hosts, who as yet were still at Zugdidi,

had had time to establish themselves in their mountain abode. We were to

trust ourselves to the direction of her messenger, who would conduct us

to the town of Kutais, where we might put up at the hotel for the time

being. So we turned the arrangements over to this factotum, a Georgian

steward, who spoke a little broken French. He wore the national costume:

long caftan, cartridge shells across the chest, bashlyk on head, dagger

in belt.

There would not be another train for Kutais that day, hence we had to

spend the night at Poti. The place had only a very simple inn, to be

sure, but _que faire?_—This phrase, adopted from the Russian _chto

dyelat_, often came to our ears in that country; it imports that

resignation, coupled with a shrug of the shoulders, which does not so

much enunciate the question what one is to do in order to contend

against something as intimate rather that nothing can be done.

The inn was in truth very simple: we spent the night in chairs because

the beds proved to be too thickly inhabited, and when we wanted to make

our toilets and looked for a washstand there was none to be found. I

rang for the chambermaid. One appeared in the form of a barefooted

peasant with a scrubby beard and a forest of curly black hair. We could

not make him understand what we wanted, and called to our aid our

factotum, who had also put up at this palace hotel of Poti. Then it was

made known to us that the house possessed only one tin washdish, which

was carried from one room to another as it was needed, and with it the

towel—in what a condition!

Not especially refreshed by this resting-place, but in unruffled good

spirits, we continued our journey the following morning in order to

reach our next stop, Kutais, the capital of the province of the same

name. There another messenger from the Mingrelian family was also

awaiting us—the young prince’s intendant, a portly, tumultuous Armenian,

who likewise could speak broken French, and wore the European dress. He

conducted us to the best inn of Kutais; this was certainly not a palace

hotel either, but might be so regarded in comparison with the hole where

we had been the day before, for here each guest had his own washbasin

and even his own towel, and the rooms and beds were clean. But

everything we saw and heard—and smelt—seemed to us so terribly exotic:

the strange types of people, the strange costumes, the strange

architecture of the buildings, and—as to the sense of smell—a quite

peculiar and not disagreeable odor of sundried buffalo dung. The

buffaloes themselves, which are used here to draw loads and as milch

cattle, and which we had already seen idling in sundry mudholes on our

way to Kutais, were an exotic phenomenon to us.

The heat was frightful. One could hardly endure it in the rooms, and we

spent our days and took our meals (consisting of mutton, mutton, mutton)

on a wooden balcony which ran around the house over the court.

After two days our Armenian took his departure, and a third messenger

came to be our guardian and protector. This time it was a family friend

of the Dadianis, an old French nobleman _de vieille roche_, with the

fine manners _de l’ancien régime_. His name was Comte de Rosmorduc. Born

in Bretagne, he had come to the Caucasus some twenty-five years before

(for what reason I do not know) and had settled down there for good. He

had married a Mingrelian woman, and owned a house which he had himself

built at Zugdidi. He was a welcome associate of the princess and her

children, and later became a dear friend of ours also.

He now did us the honors of Kutais. He introduced us at the home of

General Zeretelli, the foremost house in the city. The Zeretellis were

Caucasians and relatives of the Dadianis. They showed themselves very

obliging, even arranging for a great reception in our honor on the

following evening, to which all the notabilities and aristocratic

families of the place were invited. The daughter, Nina, was a famous

beauty, but as she was twenty-five she was regarded already as an old

maid. Girls in the Caucasus usually marry at fifteen or sixteen. The

Countess Rosmorduc, who was then thirty-five, had been married for

twenty years. She also was a great beauty; but we did not make her

acquaintance until the next year.

The soirée at the house of the Zeretellis left an ineffaceable

impression on our minds, because it was the first time that we got a

glimpse of the social life of the country. Here we saw ladies in their

national costume and witnessed for the first time the performance of the

national dance—the _Lesginka_. We also participated for the first time

at a banquet where the fiery Kachetin wine was poured from slender

silver flagons into great drinking-horns, and where a toastmaster,

chosen to this honorable office, proposed the healths—on this occasion,

as first of all, the health of the guests from Austria. The host and

hostess did not sit down at table but helped serve. Among those present

we found many who spoke French, and where that was not the case Count

Rosmorduc, who had learned the language of the country, served as

dragoman.

In the salon stood a piano. My husband sat down at it and played some of

the waltzes which he had himself composed, and the Caucasian society was

full of admiration and danced to this music with perfect grace. But they

were most pleasing in the _Lesginka_. This dance is usually executed by

only one couple, while the rest sit in a circle and clap their hands in

time to the music. The accompaniment is provided by a small native

instrument which endlessly repeats a certain melody three bars long, and

by tambourines adorned with little bells, on which skillful hands thump

with an increasingly lively rhythm. The dance itself is a pantomime of

the immemorial play of love: pursuit, flight, enticement. The men

perform artistic _pas_; the women fairly float along the floor, the

long, heavy silken garment concealing the feet so that they look as if

they were rolling on invisible casters; the veil which is attached to

their headdress flows behind them, and from the arms, stretched out in

circling gestures, float the long double sleeves. As a conclusion to the

festivity I treated the company to an Italian bravura aria and then to

Auber’s Laughing-Song—Carlotta Patti’s show piece; the laughter in the

song infected everybody, and the whole ended with a chorus of laughter.

And now the next morning we started for the goal of our journey, for

Gordi, situated on a high plateau among the mountains. Count Rosmorduc

chartered a troika and escorted us. It was jolly riding behind that

spike team; the more the springless vehicle shook us up, the more fun we

had out of it. The way was splendid; all the hedges were abloom with

cascades of wild roses. At the same time the heat was frightful. All the

more delightful the prospect that we were going among the mountains,

where, as Count Rosmorduc assured us, cool and almost raw winds blow all

the time.

After a journey of several hours across the plain we came to Pompey’s

Bridge; this is that place where one must leave the carriage and ride

horseback the rest of the way. We were now at the entrance of the

defile, and the peaks of the mountains which we were to climb stood out

steeply against the azure sky. The stream which roared and foamed under

Pompey’s Bridge roared perhaps twice as loud in our ears because it had

been described to us as the “Hippus” of the ancients; what classic

craft—doubtless even Jason’s _Argo_ when he went to capture the Golden

Fleece—must it not have rocked on its billows! This was the place, I

remembered from the Dedopali’s letters, where the young princely couple

on their home journey had dismounted from the carriage, where the bridge

had been spread with a carpet, and a triumphal arch of flowers had

marked the boundary line of Mingrelia.

There was no triumphal arch awaiting us at Pompey’s Bridge, but there

was a pleasing surprise: Prince Niko, accompanied by a great retinue,

had ridden down to the threshold of his dominion to welcome the

“Contessina” and her husband. Under a tent a table was spread with

refreshments. There we had breakfast first and a toast of welcome was

drunk, and then we addressed ourselves to the ascent. Horses were in

readiness also for us and Count Rosmorduc; for me a gentle pacer. Prince

Niko lifted me to the saddle, and now we had to ride up the seven

kilometers of serpentine road, while the cavalcade of the princely

escort, in their picturesque costume, were around us performing all

sorts of feats of horsemanship in their high saddles, springing up and

down the steep sides of the pass, and offering a perfectly wonderful

spectacle.

And as we rode upward the temperature grew cooler and cooler, and the

prospect over abysses and valleys more and more magnificent. The sun had

already disappeared behind the mountains when we arrived at our

destination. Gordi is situated on a great plateau, in the background of

which, buttressed by a mountain wall, stands the prince’s castle, a wide

edifice flanked with towers and adorned with numerous balconies and

terraces. On the right and left at intervals were small, neat wooden

villas. One of them was occupied by the dowager princess; one by Niko

himself, because his castle was another that was not yet completed; one

was for us; and the rest served as quarters for the other guests and

neighbors.

The Dedopali was standing on the terrace of her villa to welcome us.

Around her stood her women, her almoner, her private secretary, and her

bodyguard. She took me into her arms and bade me welcome.

“Présentez-moi votre cher mari, ma petite contessina, ou faut-il dire

‘baronessina’ maintenant?”

She kissed my husband on the forehead, in Russian fashion, when he bent

over her hand after the introduction.

We were soon conducted over to our little house, where we were to rest

and dress for dinner. The small guest villa, built on a level with the

ground, consisted of a sitting-room hung with gay cretonne and provided

with furniture of the same, a bedchamber, and rooms for the man and maid

who had been put wholly at our disposition. The dinner was served at the

Dedopali’s villa, on a broad open veranda. After dinner the

company—there had been about thirty at the table—went out on the

plateau, which lay in full moonlight; and now dances were performed,

rockets were set off, choral songs were sung, and not till midnight did

we retire.

That was our reception at Gordi.

XVIII

IN KUTAIS (1877)

Lessons · Rumors of war and outbreak of war · Red Cross fever · The

plague on the horizon · Bad times · Conclusion of peace · Mathilde ·

Beginning of literary career

Our wedding excursion to the Caucasus lasted nine years. A long

honeymoon!

The first summer we spent uninterruptedly in Gordi, where we were kept

until the family themselves went away—Niko to St. Petersburg, the

Dedopali to Zugdidi. But the illusion regarding a position at the

Russian court had shown itself to be an illusion. At first Niko took

kindly to the idea, but soon it became apparent that if an attempt

should be made to turn it into a reality, impossibilities would be

encountered. So what was to be done? That life of nothing but pleasure

and festivity which we had led there in the mountains could not be kept

up without end, and to be forever “an always welcome guest” is really

not a vocation. We had broken with Harmannsdorf—or rather the parents

had broken with us: they could not pardon us for our reckless step.

Neither did we seek pardon. We had defiantly announced that we would

make our way, and now we had to do it. We had kept up a most

affectionate correspondence with the brothers and sisters, but the

parents sent us a wrathy letter of reproach and repudiation, and never

another word. My mother, to whom My Own had made a visit before our

journey, had not indeed approved of the whole match and of the erratic

elopement; but in a few days she had taken My Own into her heart, and

her blessing accompanied us.

We now decided to settle in Kutais, and, for the time being, until

Prince Niko had found a suitable situation for us (which he still

treated as a possibility), to earn our living there by giving lessons in

music and the languages. A cousin of the princess, who had been visiting

at Gordi with us and whose home was in Kutais, promised to get pupils

for us in her circles. These were certainly not exhilarating prospects,

but our inner exhilaration was invulnerable. The whole life, the whole

country seemed to us so interesting that the intensified sense of travel

and adventure with which we had started out remained ever vivid; and,

moreover, we were so unspeakably happy in each other that really (just

as there are conditions in which one envies all people) we pitied all

people who were not ourselves. The most delightful thing was that we

felt our love not only not diminishing, but all the time increasing.

So, after the general breaking up of the party at Gordi, we went to

Kutais, where another friend of the Dedopali—General Hagemeister—took us

into his house as guests to remain until we should find a house and

pupils. In a few weeks we were established in a little home of our own,

and a number of the daughters of noble families in Kutais had presented

themselves to me for piano and singing lessons. My Own gave a few

lessons in German.

Now rumors of war began to buzz through the air. The year before an

insurrection had broken out in Bulgaria. (It was asserted in other than

Russian countries that this was fomented by Russian agents.) Russia

demanded of Turkey reforms and guaranties for the safety of the

Christians. Now the great powers met in conference—from November, 1876,

until January, 1877, in Constantinople; in March, 1877, in London; but

their decrees were refused by Turkey. Would Russia now declare war? This

portentous question was on every tongue. The troops were waiting in

expectation on the border.

And, sure enough, on the 24th of April came the Russian declaration of

war, and, simultaneously, the crossing of the Pruth and of the Armenian

border. The news was the more exciting for the reason that the Caucasus

itself served as one of the two theaters of the war, and an invasion of

Kutais by the Turks was one of the possible dangers.

I do not remember that we felt anxious. Nor did I have any feeling of

protest against war in general, any more than in the years ’66 and ’70.

My Own likewise looked upon the war that had broken out as merely an

elemental event, yet one of especial historical importance. To be in the

midst of it gives one personally an irradiation of this importance.

We received from my mother, from my sisters-in-law, letter after letter,

telegram after telegram: we must make our escape! We did not think of

such a thing; on the contrary we wanted to make ourselves useful, and we

offered our services to the governor, Prince Mirsky, as voluntary nurses

of the wounded. Only one condition we made,—that we should work in the

same place, if possible in the same hospital. That was not possible;

they wanted to use him here and me there, and so we withdrew our offer.

For to separate, especially in such perilous circumstances, no price

would tempt us! So we remained in Kutais. Our sympathies (at that time

we still had “sympathies” in war) were with the Russians. The word was,

“to free our Slav brethren”; that was the common talk all around us, and

we accepted it in perfect faith. Moreover, a second watchword was in the

air, raised by the Mohammedans living in the Caucasus, by the wild

mountain tribes, Shamyl’s comrades: revolt—shaking off the Russian yoke.

All this sounded very heroic. But no insurrection broke out; the

Caucasus proved to be satisfactorily Russianized and loyal. The sons of

the land, looking very handsome in their Cossack uniforms, went to the

front as one man to beat the Turks. “Sotnias,” as bodies of a hundred

mounted noblemen were called, joined the army as volunteers, and we saw

them riding away under our windows.

The first death announced in the war bulletins was that of a young

fellow whom we knew in Kutais, the only son of a Russian general’s

widow.

Of course, in all the neighborhood everybody who remained behind was

seized with the Red Cross fever: making bandages, sending off supplies

of tea and tobacco, treating the regiments that went through with food

and drink, collecting money, planning and executing enterprises of

beneficence,—all for the good of the poor soldiers. To-day it seems to

me there might be something still better than this good,—not to send

them out! To-day, too, we know from Tolstoi, the man who has the courage

of truth, what the case was with the “dear Slav brethren” at that time.

He writes thus in his book “Patriotism and Christianity,” which came out

since the war:

Just as is now the case with the love between the Russians and the

French, on the eve of the Turco-Russian war we had a sudden view of

the love of the Russians for I know not what Slavonic brethren. These

Slavonic brethren had been ignored for centuries; the Germans, the

French, the English, were and still are infinitely nearer to us than

these Montenegrins and Servians and Bulgarians. And at that time we

began to celebrate solemn festivities and organize receptions under

the puffing of men like Katkof and Aksákof, who are very properly

regarded in Paris as models of patriotism. Then, as now, the talk was

of nothing else than the sudden love with which the Russians were

burning for the Slavs of the Balkans.

First—exactly as was just now done in Paris—people gathered in Moscow

to eat and to drink and to talk nonsense to one another, to melt with

emotion over the noble feelings which they had, and to say things

about peace and harmony, passing over in silence the main point—the

project against Turkey. The press magnified the enthusiasm, and little

by little the government took a hand in the game. Servia revolted;

diplomatic notes and semi-official articles began to appear. The

newspapers produced more and more lies, inventions, and grew so heated

that at length Alexander II, who really did not want the war, could

not help giving his consent. And then what we know took place:

hundreds of thousands of innocent men were lost, and hundreds of

thousands were reduced to savagery and robbed of every Christian

feeling.

Well, at that time we two believed in this Slavonic brother love. My

husband sent to the _Neue Freie Presse_ at Vienna a series of letters

about those events of the war of which the echo reached us. These were

gratefully accepted for a time, but at length were found to be too

pro-Russian—the _Neue Freie Presse_ took the side of the Turks—and were

declined.

As far as I was concerned, since I could not take care of the wounded,

at least I helped diligently in the enterprises got up by the ladies of

Kutais in their behalf. I remember an evening garden-party which

assembled the inhabitants of the city on the “Boulevard,” as a promenade

in the middle of the town, shaded by trees, is called. There were

Chinese lanterns, orchestral music (“God save the Tsar,” a potpourri

from Glinka’s opera _Zhizn dlya Tsarya_, the Balkan March, Slavonic

songs, and the like), sale booths, and a tombola. Between two trees,

brilliantly lighted up, had been placed a great painting of a touching

scene on the battlefield: in the foreground a wonderfully beautiful

Russian sister of charity, with tears on her cheeks, bending tenderly

over a wounded Turkish soldier, whose head she was raising in order to

give him nourishment; in the background a tent, powder smoke, dead

horses, and bursting shells. I myself shed a tear or two as I stood in

front of that picture; and at the tombola, where I bought chances till

my pocketbook was drained, I won a small earthen vase, which I had them

raffle off again. And thus I believed that I had paid my tribute of

sympathy for the tragedy of the Balkans.

The war took its course. We received very sad letters from the Dedopali;

she was worried about her two sons, who had gone with the army.

Suddenly there arose the rumor that the plague had broken out in a place

not far away. That filled us with real dismay. When the news came I

burst out in self-reproaches.

“Oh, where have I brought you? It is my fault that you came here, My

Own.”

He comforted me: “Not for a moment have I regretted it. If only nothing

happens to you! But even if we must perish now, still we have had our

share of happiness.”

The pestilence, however did not spread. The fate of being carried off by

the terrible angel of destruction, to which we had resigned ourselves,

was spared us.

In other respects things were going very badly with us. In the disorder

caused by the events of the war no one any longer thought of taking

lessons, and we were fearfully pinched. There were days when we actually

made the acquaintance of the specter Hunger. But everything that befell

us, whether joy or sorrow, brought us closer and closer together, and

later we were grateful to Fate for having enriched us with such

experiences. Without doubt they were essential to the strengthening of

our characters, and to educating us into that sympathy with the sorrows

of humanity, with the wretchedness of the people, which in days to come

formed the basis of our united work in the service of mankind, and which

awakened in each of us feelings that gave delight to the other.

The war moved toward its end. On March 3, 1878, the Peace of San Stefano

was signed. The Dedopali’s two sons had come out unscathed; the

older—with the rank of colonel—had fought at Plevna in the emperor’s

suite; the younger, then a captain, had taken part in the storming of

Kars. In Kutais many families were in mourning. The returning sotnias

(“hundreds”) did not return as hundreds.

Our family at home were greatly rejoiced that the war had spared us. My

mother-in-law had gone with her two daughters Luise and Mathilde to

spend the winter in Florence, because the latter was ill with a severe

cough and the physician had prescribed a mild climate. In the spring, on

their way home, they stopped at Meran, and from there came the news that

Mathilde’s condition had grown worse; that she was suffering from severe

attacks of fever, and her life was in danger. A few days later came the

tidings of her death. Not yet twenty years old, and so beautiful and so

worshiped by her mother ... how could that mother bear such a blow!

They say she looked like an angel on her bier with a wreath of roses on

her golden hair unbound and streaming down on both sides. The remains

were brought back to Harmannsdorf—it must have been a sad journey for

the poor mother—and from there were transferred to the family vault in

Höflein.

The news brought us deep grief, and we wept bitterly for the sister so

prematurely snatched away from us, with whom we had spent many happy

hours, and who had always stood lovingly by us.

As I say, it was ebb tide in the lessons. So my husband tried his hand

at writing. The war correspondence published in the _Presse_ had been

much praised, and in producing it he had discovered in himself a talent

for writing a light and picturesque style. He now composed some

descriptive articles on the Caucasus and its people, and sent them to

various German weeklies. These contributions were gladly accepted and

paid for.

Was it envy or was it imitativeness? I wanted to see if I could not

write something too. I had never felt the call within me. When I was

sixteen—at that time it was envy and imitativeness, awakened by Elvira’s

successes—I had indeed written a short story entitled _Erdenträume im

Monde_, and a periodical which long since had suspended publication,

_Die deutsche Frau_, had brought it out and through the editor’s

correspondence department had asked for further contributions: “I should

not bury my talent.” Since that time, however, with the exception of

letters (which I was tremendously fond of writing), I had written

nothing.

So now, in the year 1878, I made my first (the _Erdenträume_ did not

count) attempt as an author. I composed in all secrecy a feuilleton

entitled _Fächer und Schürze_—“Fans and Aprons”—and sent it to the old

_Presse_ at Vienna, and lo and behold! almost by return mail I received

a copy of the paper containing it, and twenty florins. Oh, that first

honorarium of an author! What a proud satisfaction its receipt

gives—indescribable! The little work was signed with the pseudonym B.

Oulot, a word formed from the nickname “Boulotte,” which had been given

to me at the Suttners’; and when I saw these six letters in print under

the feuilleton, which really seemed to me a very good one, I had the

impression that about that time Central Europe must be stirred by the

question, Now who can this B. Oulot be?

And from that moment I have gone on writing without interruption up to

this day.

XIX

TIFLIS

Another summer in Gordi · Business projects · Removal to Tiflis ·

Princess Tamara of Georgia · Our manner of life · Double position ·

Continued authorship · Illness

In the summer of 1878 we were again guests at the Mingrelian summer

residence.

The two sons for whom the Dedopali had trembled had now come to Gordi

also, decorated with various orders; likewise Prince Niko’s wife Mary.

And, in addition to these, Achille Murat with his wife and their two

boys. It afforded me great pleasure to see my friend Salomé once more,

and we had again a delightful time in this dear and merry circle. Count

Rosmorduc contributed not a little to the entertainment. This old

Frenchman had the gift of relating endless anecdotes from his life,

exciting, witty, and touching, and of never repeating himself.

We still found that nothing came of the position for My Own. There was

all the more of making plans and building castles in Spain. Businesses

were to be taken over, colonists to be imported, a trade in wood to be

started. Niko and Rosmorduc were especially inventive of such projects,

in which my husband was always to have lucrative functions. Various

things were actually entered upon: negotiations were begun, extended

correspondence was carried on, but in the end nothing came of it.

So winter approached again, the colony at Gordi separated, and this time

we decided to try our fortune at Tiflis; it was there that we could

avail ourselves of the best recommendations. Here was the home of

Princess Tamara, the widow of Heraclius of Georgia. He had died after a

long illness, during which he is said to have been unendurably

capricious, and his beautiful young widow had the most important house

in Tiflis next to the grand-duke-governor’s. There we were received with

the greatest kindness.

Tiflis is a city half Oriental, half West-European. In the European

quarter the same sort of life prevails as in our great cities: European

toilets, European manners, French cooks, English governesses, _jours_,

_soirées_, conversation in Russian and French. Princess Tamara had her

own _palais_, furnished with exquisite taste, and in her salons met the

cream of the local society, consisting of dignitaries of the grand-ducal

court,—the grand duke himself often used to come there,—of various

governors and generals, and the great people of the city. Tamara’s

younger sister, as beautiful as she herself, had married a general and

also lived in Tiflis.

Our social position there was something quite peculiar. We had to be

earning something, so that we might live,—hence in the forenoons I went

to several houses giving music lessons, for which I was well paid; my

husband had a place under a French wall-paper manufacturer and builder,

as bookkeeper and especially as designer of new patterns. For this

service he received a salary of one hundred and fifty rubles a month,

and moreover we had board and lodging in the pretty private house of the

manufacturer, Monsieur Bernex of Marseilles. The bell for work rang at

five o’clock in the morning. Then My Own, My Own who at home had been so

spoiled and in truth shamefully lazy, had to get up. He did it right

gayly; then he went to the press-room to oversee the workmen. At eight

o’clock he sat down with the owner and the bosses to the early

breakfast, consisting of a pail of weak coffee with milk, and black

bread—it tasted good to him!—then he had to go to the office and figure

and design till one. Meantime I had given a few lessons, and we all ate

dinner together at the Bernex table. In the afternoon My Own had to go

on business errands, to customers, to the customhouse, to the railway

station, all long distances; he did it with pleasure. But after six

o’clock in the evening we were free, put on full dress, and almost every

evening dined _en ville_, now with the Princess of Georgia, now with her

sister, and with all the great families of the city. Our romance was

generally known, also our close relations with the Dadiani family; and

in society we were not treated as the factory employee and the music

teacher, but as a sort of aristocratic emigrants, not only on a footing

of equality but with that peculiar courtesy which is usually shown to

illustrious foreigners. We could not help laughing about it.

I kept up my literary labors as far as my time permitted. I wrote

novels,—_Doras Bekenntnisse_, _Ketten und Verkettungen_,—and carried

about with me the scheme of a larger work, _Inventarium einer Seele_. My

husband got very little opportunity for writing, for now his employer

had set him to work also at designing architectural plans. And he did

it. How he made a success of it I do not understand to this day; but it

is a fact that several houses and castles in the vicinity of Tiflis were

built from his plans. As he played the piano without having taken music

lessons, so he made architectural designs without having studied

architecture. He had already picked up enough of the Georgian language

to be able to get along with the native workmen and contractors. In the

meantime I was perfecting myself in Russian, which I had already begun

to study in Vienna with a view to the prospect of residing in Zugdidi as

the Dedopali had planned for me. That castle, by the way, was not even

then finished; nor was it finished during the lifetime of its mistress.

During our sojourn in Tiflis I underwent an illness, the only one in my

whole life. The period of this illness is among my sweetest, dearest

recollections. I could not eat: my stomach refused everything that I

took. I could not walk: if I tried to take a few steps, I fell down.

Certainly that does not sound as if one were bringing up sweet, dear

recollections; and yet God knows it was a happy time. I was in a state

of half-stupefied faintness, lying down gave me a comfortable sense of

rest, and My Own’s care and assiduity and tenderness cradled me into a

deep quiet consciousness of bliss. This lasted about six weeks; then I

was well again, and we two were a good bit more in love with each other

than ever.

XX

ZUGDIDI

The capital of Mingrelia · Our little house · Labors on the Murat

estate · Social life at the Murats’ and the Dedopali’s · Lonely summer

at Zugdidi · New literary labors · Prototype of _Es Löwos_ · New

horizons · Study together

We changed our residence from Tiflis to Kutais again, then to Gordi and

to Zugdidi, and to many other places; I cannot here recount in

chronological order and in detail all the migrations that filled up our

nine years of the Caucasus. Nor was it external events that were the

“important thing” for us; it was inner experiences, there in our exile,

that made of us two wholly new persons,—two happy persons, two good

persons.

We spent a few lovely years in the little town of Zugdidi, the

Mingrelian capital; only a village, although a capital. A long row of

Oriental houses with open shops, stall on stall; for that reason the row

was called “The Bazaar”; but it was also called “The Boulevard,” because

the street was planted with a double row of tall trees. And what trees!

Nothing less than mimosas, if you please. When they were in bloom the

whole place was filled with drowsy fragrance. Besides this Oriental row

there was a bunch of little peasant huts occupied by—Württemberg

peasants: this was “the German colony.” Then, scattered about in larger

and smaller fenced grassplots or fields of Indian corn, one-storied

houses in the style of the Caucasus,—that is, built of wood and

surrounded with verandas; also, in a garden, Count Rosmorduc’s villa;

then the Princess’s provisional dwelling on the border of the great

park, in the midst of which rose the unfinished magnificence of the

castle,—this was Zugdidi.

There was to be something else added. Achille and Salomé Murat had

decided to take up their residence in the Caucasus. A large uncultivated

domain was assigned to them, and upon it a country house, farm

buildings, stables, flower and kitchen gardens, greenhouses, and

cultivated fields were to be created. And all this we actually saw

created in the course of four years.

For ourselves we had rented the cottage of a German colonist. Paradisal,

according to our ideas; in itself it was not so very pretentious. Level

with the ground, three low-studded rooms and a kitchen. A wooden veranda

in front of the entrance. The first room was our drawing-room. We had

got at the bazaar a sufficient quantity of a very inexpensive red

material, and we used it to tapestry the walls of the drawing-room and

to provide the windows with hangings. We were our own upholsterers. The

material was cut and sewed together, then tacked up, and it was done.

For furniture our red drawing-room had a very large table which served

both of us as a writing-table, a few chairs, another table, and a

_takhta_. This is a piece of furniture which is never lacking in a

Caucasian room,—a long, wide divan, uncovered and without a back. A rug

is thrown over it and forms the covering; four long bolsters covered

with carpeting serve as the back and arms. One can add a few fancy

pillows, and it makes the most comfortable contrivance for sitting,

lying down, or lounging. With the aid of a few bookcases, a few vases

kept always full of fresh flowers, a mirror over the fireplace, and a

carpet on the floor, the red drawing-room assumed an almost elegant

appearance. We were to the last degree proud of it.

The two other rooms were arranged with corresponding luxury as a

bedchamber and dressing-room. Our corps of servants consisted of the

daughter of our Swabian landlord, who lived in another little house

situated behind the grass-grown court; we also had a _fundus instructus_

consisting of five geese. These marched forth independently to pasture

every morning and came dignifiedly home toward evening. Of course they

had been acquired for culinary purposes; but having watched them every

day from our balcony returning home so unsuspiciously, we felt it so

hard to betray their confidence that during our whole residence there we

left them in possession of their lives. One may enjoy roast fowl, but it

should not be personal acquaintances.

The reason for our settling in Zugdidi was that Prince Achille Murat had

engaged my husband as overseer and assistant in the construction of his

buildings and other improvements. Designing plans and directing workmen

had become his specialty. Prince Murat himself was a sort of amateur

architect, amateur farmer, and amateur gardener; so the two shared in

making and executing plans. Gardens were plotted, wooden ceilings

painted, ditches dug, wall-paper put on, horse-thief-proof stalls

constructed, all with combined forces; I frequently saw the two, owner

and manager, together enthroned on the top of a ladder or wading in the

depths of a drainage-ditch. And now and then, in a short dress of rough

cloth, the princess herself, armed with paint-brush, spade, or shovel,

also gave her aid. I had another field of labor: for two hours every day

I taught German and the piano to the two little boys, Lucien and Napo.

The princely couple’s servants did not take existence so easily as their

masters; there was constant changing and friction; the correct English

coachmen and grooms, the exquisite French chefs, could not put up with

these primitive, inchoate conveniences. They would not remain in the

wilderness and disorder. Except for a faithful valet of long years’

standing and a chambermaid of the same kind (and even these felt that

they were martyrs), all rebelled. Then, each time, new regents of the

kitchen and stable would be imported, for Prince Achille could not live

without the finest French cookery and without sportsmanlike English

appointments for his horses, his carriages, and his hunting.

Twice a week we used to eat in the villa on which they were working, and

after dinner, at which, in contrast to the forenoon’s workaday garb, all

appeared in evening dress, the evenings were spent in chatting, music,

and chess-playing. Great amusement was afforded also by the caricatures

which my husband made and brought with him; they presented a complete

chronicle of the calamities which had attended the building operations

and a whole portrait gallery of exaggerated but speaking likenesses of

the various persons involved. Among the many talents with which My Own

was endowed was that of wielding an extraordinarily witty pencil. Once

he sent to the _Fliegende Blätter_ a series of illustrations to the

examples given in the Ollendorf grammars, such as “The candelabra of thy

uncle is larger than the cat of my aunt,” “The industrious apprentice of

the baker has seen the melancholy captain,” “The French gentleman has a

long walking-stick and the poor Russian is cold,” and the like, which

were accepted and made a great hit.

In the winter, when we stayed at Zugdidi with the Dedopali, Sunday was

the day on which her children and we were regularly invited to dinner.

In the summer, however, we were left at Zugdidi quite alone, and we

enjoyed this life the most. My husband devoted a few hours in the

morning to superintending the work on the Murat estate, and the rest of

the time belonged wholly to me; and then both of us could write

diligently. At this time were produced the novels _Ein schlechter

Mensch_, _Hanna_, and the book entitled _Inventarium einer Seele_, by B.

Oulot; and _Daredjan_, _Ein Aznaour_, and _Kinder des Kaukasus_, by A.

G. von Suttner. Time also was ours for reading together, for studying

together, for long conversations about everything between heaven and

earth, and we evolved a philosophy of life, a view of the universe,

which we should never have reached under other circumstances, nor either

of us without the other; we had won for ourselves a genuine Eden of

harmony, with new, wide, bright horizons.

But one cannot revel forever on the heights of thought; one must have

one’s little corner of the earth, one’s humble everyday home; and the

reason why we felt so utterly contented in ours was that we had quite

unintentionally fulfilled that command of the Saviour which says, “Be ye

therefore as little children.”

We talked nonsense, we did absurdities, we had invented a language of

our own, we flung the most shocking insults at each other, we had the

wildest romps and the most extraordinary songs, we played, not indeed

with dolls, but with creatures of our fancy; in short, we were silly,

silly, happy children. I embodied this phase of our life in a monograph

entitled _Es Löwos_, which appeared first in the Munich monthly _Die

Gesellschaft_, and then in book form. Many reproached me for it, saying,

“One does not expose such privacies to the multitude.” As if one wrote

for the multitude! One always imagines as one’s readers those in whom a

string tuned to the same note is vibrating. There are never more than a

few such in the multitude. In _Es Löwos_ I went so far as to imagine

only one, and always apostrophized as “One” this sympathetic,

comprehending person, who perchance had experienced the like in his own

life. And lo and behold! in the course of time I received something like

a hundred letters from the reading public, in which the writers assured

me that they had had all my experiences, and signed themselves “The

One.”

Our studies had opened to us a new horizon, I said just now. That must

be enlarged upon a little. It was especially through the natural

sciences that undreamed-of lights broke upon our minds. But not as they

were usually taught in the schools, mere classifications of plants and

animals into species and orders, mere enumerations of mineralogical and

geological formations, mere dry elements of physics and chemistry with

their proper figures and symbols; no, we gained our knowledge from the

works of the latest students of nature, those who are also philosophers

of nature, and from whose investigations bursts the radiance of a new

discovery, namely, that our whole glorious world is subject to the law

of evolution. By evolution from the simplest origins it has developed

into its present complexity and is assured of incalculable

transformations yet to come. Then these other truths perceived by modern

science, the transmutability of all forces one into another, the

unbroken concatenation of all causality, the indestructibility of atoms,

the uninterrupted continuity between the inorganic and the organic

world, between physical and psychical life,—in short, the unity of the

world, and the consequent inference that the development of human

society also goes on in accordance with the same laws and that it also

is assured of incalculable future transformations.

The authors in whose works we immersed ourselves were Darwin, Haeckel,

Herbert Spencer, Whewell (“History of the Inductive Sciences”), Carus,

Sterne, etc.; and, above all, the book which was a revelation to me,

Buckle’s “History of Civilization.” I had already read this book, and

several of those just mentioned, before my marriage; and I had brought

them in my trunk. Now My Own had also to make their acquaintance. I had

the advantage over him that I had read more works on the natural

sciences than he had; he had the advantage over me of loving nature more

passionately than I did. The magnificence of a beautiful landscape, the

sublimity of the sea, and the glory of the glittering firmament inspired

in him more than enjoyment and admiration; they inspired him with

religious awe. And he had such ability to see what nature has of sweet

and mighty fascination, that from it grew that force of description

which he put into his books on the Caucasus. The landscapes which formed

the background of his novels _Daredjan_ and _Aznaour_ were painted with

glowing, brilliant colors, and won the unanimous praise of the critics.

In analysis of character, construction of plot, inventiveness, his

novels were less successful—it was for this reason that he achieved no

abiding place in literature; but in the reproduction of nature he was a

past master. The secret of this faculty was that he loved nature. Any

love multiplies any power tenfold. As I have already said, we were

mutually complementary,—we helped each other upward. He taught me to

enjoy nature, I helped him to understand her. At my desire he had to

read—read with me—all those works which I had already looked into, and

in which I now for the first time thoroughly steeped myself. This

grasping of a new truth by two together makes the possession twice as

certain, the comprehension twice as clear.

A rich life we led there in that far-off peasant cottage, around which

at night we often heard the jackals howling. Rich, although our income

was the scantest; although our housekeeping was so insignificant that it

happened when our only housemaid was ill that we ourselves got the

midday meal ready, and once—full of gayety over it—scrubbed the floors

ourselves with sand and scrubbing-brush. Rich in happenings and in

experiences, although for weeks at a time we saw not a human being and

nothing actually happened to us; the source of our happenings was in our

books and our hearts. The rarest of all earthly fates was ours:

complete, firmly-anchored happiness.

XXI

OUR LAST DAYS IN THE CAUCASUS

The Dedopali’s death · Death of my mother · Prospect of coming home ·

Translation of “The Tiger’s Skin” · Sojourn in a Mingrelian village · A

bit of Georgian history · Queen Tamara

In the summer of 1882 the Dedopali was taken ill. We were just at that

time her guests again at Gordi. The physicians whom her son summoned

from Tiflis prescribed a “cure” at Karlsbad. But she refused to leave

her fatherland.

“I hope to get well again,” she said to me, “but if this should really

be my last illness I desire to die here near the Convent of Marthvilli,

where I shall be buried. I should not like to make the long journey back

from Europe in a box.”

Her condition gradually grew worse, and when we left Gordi in the autumn

we had no hope of ever seeing her again; and, in fact, we soon received

from Prince Niko by telegraph the news that his mother had passed away

painlessly and with Christian resignation. Although I was prepared for

the news, it was a sore grief to me, and I deeply mourned for this

friend of many years. She was laid away in the crypt of the Convent of

Marthvilli, in the midst of a gigantic mourning assembly, in which the

population of all the neighboring provinces participated; thousands and

thousands had made the pilgrimage to the ancient cloister which

contained the ancestral tomb of the princes, to pay the last honors to

the “Queen of Mothers.”

At the beginning of the year 1884 I suffered a far heavier

bereavement—my mother. I had confidently hoped to see her again very

soon, for our home-coming was now in immediate prospect, and she herself

was looking forward to this reunion with yearning joy. In that moment

death snatched her away with only a brief illness. Full of sympathy and

love, My Own did his best to console and comfort me.

The period of our exile was coming to an end. The parents, who now

recognized how faithfully and happily we clung to each other, how

bravely we had made our way without ever claiming their help, had given

over their obstinate rancor and were bidding us to come to Harmannsdorf.

We had in the meantime reached a position of independence, and could

therefore return home without any sense of humiliation. To be sure,

nothing had come of the hoped-for situations at the Russian court, and

the various plans for business undertakings that were to bring us a

competency; but we had both won a place in literature which gave us the

prospect of a sufficient and increasing income and assured us an

honorable position. The critics lauded us, editors asked for articles,

publishers wanted manuscripts. My husband’s Caucasian stories and novels

were meeting with great success, and my _Inventarium einer Seele_, in

which I had set forth all my views about nature and life, about science

and politics, had made somewhat of a sensation; my belles-lettres were

equally in demand. And we both felt that we still had a good deal to

say, that the fountain of inspiration would yet pour abundant streams;

the new calling had become for us “the one important thing.”

Our return was set for the month of May; it was still three months to

that time. We proposed to use these on a work which one of my husband’s

friends, a Tiflis journalist, had urged us to undertake. This was a

French and German translation of the national epic of Georgia, “The

Tiger’s Skin,” by Shosta Rustaveli. As we did not know the Georgian

language thoroughly, the work was to be done in this way: Mr. M—— (his

name, all except the initial, has slipped from my memory) was to give us

the poetry literally in such imperfect French as he knew; we would then

translate this into correct French, and from that into German. There was

at that time a plan of bringing out a great holiday edition of “The

Tiger’s Skin,” for which the painter Zychy had drawn splendid

illustrations. In order to be able to carry out this work undisturbed,

we accepted Mr. M——’s invitation to move with him to a remote Mingrelian

village where his father was the _pope_ and owned a little house, in

which he would take us as boarders for a nominal sum. There we could

regularly devote two morning hours and two afternoon hours to “The

Tiger’s Skin,” and the rest of the time we spent in walking, reading,

and “looking forward” (a business in itself) to the coming journey home.

We enjoyed twice as much as ever the wildness, the primitive conditions,

of that Caucasian solitude, in anticipation of once more plunging into

the bustle of European civilization. The little house that we inhabited

was, so to speak, not furnished at all; we had brought with us for our

room our own _takhta_ and a few other conveniences, among them a zither.

This is, to be sure, not one of the indispensable comforts of life; but,

as we had no piano, we satisfied our craving for music with the little

Styrian instrument, on which I played accompaniments for my sentimental

songs and My Own twanged most lively heel-tapping Ländler.

The room in which the _pope_, his son, the son’s old nurse, and we took

our meals contained nothing but a table and the necessary number of

chairs. The menu alternated between two dishes, one day chicken, the

next day mutton; and the napkins were changed only once a fortnight. The

_pope_ supped his broth with a noise that reminded one of sporting

whales. Below our room was a cellar in which sauerkraut was being made,

and the odor from it came up to us through the cracks in the flooring;

but nothing, nothing disturbed our good humor, and the actively

progressing translation of the Georgian poem gave us lively

satisfaction. A whole vanished world opened before us—the world of the

thirteenth century in this remote corner of the earth. An epoch to which

the Georgians look back with pride, because it was the climax of their

country’s glory—the epoch when the great Queen Tamara was on the throne.

Shosta Rustaveli sang at her court and celebrated her fame, her power,

her charms. We learned from the mouth of our patriotic journalist even

more of the past of his country, and of the departed splendor of Queen

Tamara, than we did from the poetry of the Georgian bard. Her name stirs

the Georgians to real religious devotion; the memory of those ancient

days celebrated by Rustaveli lives as something sublime and immortal.

The Georgians look back on a history extending over twenty-three

centuries; their first king, Phamawaz by name, was elected three hundred

and two years before Christ, and the Christian religion was introduced

four hundred years after Christ by Saint Nino. Like every ancient

history, that of Georgia is a history of wars. The land was surrounded

by hostile nations and tribes; in particular, it was constantly assailed

by the Ottomans and Persians. Of course the chronicles tell of the

victorious battles which the Georgians fought against their enemies, and

their pride in this finds expression in their greeting. “Good-morning”

in Georgia is _gamardjoba_, which means victory; the reply is

_gamardjosse_, “May he (God) make you victorious.”

The reign of Queen Tamara is regarded as the golden age of the land. The

chronicles aver that under this queen prosperity prevailed, the fine

arts flourished, splendid buildings were erected,—the same as you find

it in all the ancient documents of flattery under the name of history,

where all possible achievements are always ascribed to the then reigning

monarch. If the rulers were cruel, the strictness of their rule is

praised; if they were not, then this negative virtue is extolled to the

skies. So it is to be read in the chronicle concerning Tamara, “No one

at her command was deprived of his limbs or of his eyesight”; and that

is the more noteworthy as at her time and afterwards the principle laid

down by one of her ancestors, the heroic Wakhtang Gorgaslan, was in full

force: “Whoever in war escapes death and fails to bring back the head or

the hand of an enemy shall die by our hand.”

How little it does take to kindle admiration in the biographer of a

king; among us too there are very many people who have no predilection

for tearing off limbs and putting out eyes, and no one heaps glory and

praise upon us on that account.

At the beginning of her reign Tamara’s kingdom was threatened by the

Persian caliph Nasir-ed-Din, who marched against the borders with a

“numberless” host. Then Tamara summoned her troops; in ten days she

collected battle-joyous legions from all quarters, had them march before

her in review, and addressed them with the following words: “Brothers,

let not your hearts sink when you compare the throng of your foes with

your own small numbers. Surely you have heard of Gideon’s three hundred

men and the innumerable multitude of Midianites that they overcame.

Remain fearless, and put your confidence in the bravery of each.” Then

she delivered to them the banner of her ancestor, the banner of

Gorgaslan (author of the above-mentioned edict, “Whoever in war escapes

death,” etc.). Of course the troops went and won a brilliant victory

over the foe. When they returned home the queen hastened to meet them,

and the soldiers, enraptured to see her in their midst, compelled all

the chieftains of the Persian army to bend their knees before the queen.

Probably the incident is related differently in the Persian chronicles.

A few years later Rokn-ed-Din, sultan of Asia Minor, collected eight

hundred thousand (!) men and marched against Georgia. He sent the queen,

by his ambassador, the following polite message: “I would have thee to

know, O Tamara, sultana of the Georgians, that all women are of weak

understanding. Now I come to teach thee, thee and thy people, no longer

to draw the sword, which God has given into our hands alone.” This note

was signed with the writer’s name and titles; among others, “Highest of

all Sultans on Earth, Equal to the Angels, God’s Privy Councilor,” and

the like.

Tamara read the message “without haste.” She gave her commands for the

troops to assemble, and she herself rode out at the head of her army

against the enemy. Of course the victory was complete; the streets of

Tiflis were decorated and the queen made her triumphal entry glittering

like the sun....

That the chronicles have as much to say of her piety as of her bravery

is a matter of course. The alliance of “saber and aspergillum” is as old

as these two symbols, whatever forms they have been, and are, exchanged

into. There is a national poem of Georgia, which every peasant knows by

heart, in which the following story is told of that famous queen: It was

again on a great day of victorious rejoicing. Tamara had put on all her

precious ornaments—her crown of precious stones, her gold brooches and

strings of pearls. Anew she glitters like the sun. She desires that all

her people be happy. She has given orders to her treasurer to distribute

gifts and alms to all the great and all the small. “Hast thou fulfilled

my command?” she asks. “Are all satisfied?” He answers, “Lady, I have

distributed gifts in accordance with thy will; only one beggar woman

received nothing, for she insisted on coming to thee to receive her alms

from thine own hands. We refused to admit her—she would take nothing

from us, and with angry face she went away.” The queen is in

consternation, and gives orders to make search for the beggar woman and

bring her into her presence. But she waits in vain; the couriers cannot

find the woman again. Then suddenly an inspiration comes to the queen;

she sinks on her knees before the sacred icons, crosses herself, and

cries in an ecstasy: “I know, I know now who that beggar woman was;

thou, O holy mother of God, hast sent her to me.” And she tears all the

precious ornaments from her body and carries everything, the pearls and

the diamonds, to the nunnery of Gaenathi, dedicated to the Madonna.

And in this nunnery, which is situated not far from Kutais, it is said

that Tamara was buried.

Our translation of “The Tiger’s Skin” was never published; but we did

not regret the time which we spent in this work. Through that, and

through the tales and observations which our enthusiastic Georgian

patriot connected with it, we were thoroughly initiated into the nature,

the history, and the spirit of the people and of that magical land in

which we had spent so many years; and we learned the chronicles of all

the families with which we had been associated, whose names—the

Orbelianis, the Zeretellis, the Gruzinskys, the Dadianis, the

Mukhranskys, the Tchavtchavadzes—have as proud a ring in that land as

the Montmorencys, Manchesters, Borgheses, Liechtensteins, etc. have with

us. And we were able to penetrate deeply not only into the history but

also and especially into the nature of the country, to observe the

customs of the people in this rural solitude, in the nearer or remoter

inns where our landlord took us to weddings, funerals, and baptisms.

But, interesting as all this was, we counted the days that separated us

from our return home, and the nearer this came the more we rejoiced in

the anticipation of it.

PART FIVE

1885–1890

XXII

AT HOME

Departure from the Caucasus · First destination, Görz · Return to

Harmannsdorf · Family life and neighborly visits · Literary

correspondence · Writers’ convention in Berlin

In May, 1885, nine years after our elopement, we returned home. Not

without a pang did we say farewell to the Caucasus; we had grown very

fond of the beautiful country, and our friends there also found it hard

to let us go. But the delight, after such a long separation, of coming

back “to our house” as a happy couple, who had proved their right to

such happiness and had fought their way to a self-supporting

profession,—this delight outweighed all the grief of leave-taking, and

just as jubilantly as we had originally set sail from Odessa to carry

our love and our passion for adventure to the legendary land of Colchis,

so jubilantly did we set sail from Batum to cross the Black Sea once

more: homeward—homeward!

Our first destination in Europe was Görz, the place where lay my

mother’s grave. There we desired to kneel before we returned to the

Suttners’ paternal house. Therefore we went directly through Vienna

without pausing, and it was only when that visit of pious sorrow had

been paid that we turned our faces back to the north again. Then we

spent one day in Vienna with Brother Karl, whose reception of us gave a

foretaste of the welcome that was awaiting us. We appointed the next day

for our arrival at Harmannsdorf. Artur begged that no one should come to

meet us at the station, so that he might find all his dear ones at once

in the Harmannsdorf that he so loved.

So, then, at the station of Eggenburg only the family carriage was

waiting for us. From Eggenburg to our destination is another three

miles. Ah, that splendid drive! It was a sunny, fragrant May day; the

song of larks in the air, red clover in the meadows, radiant joy in our

hearts. The landscape in the distant mountain land, where, according to

the myth, the earthly paradise was situated, was unquestionably grander

and finer than this flat Lower-Austrian region—but this was home. A

hundred sweet recollections arose in my mind, and doubtless a thousand

in his; it was the abode of his youth and childhood. When we reached the

place on the road where the tower of the castle becomes visible, he

stretched out his left arm toward the horizon with a cry of joy, and

with his right pressed me to him.

“Willkommen zu Hause, mein Weib!” he said in a tone of deep emotion. It

was the only time in his life that he called me “wife”; perhaps this is

why that moment, with all its blessed solemnity, has remained so clearly

impressed upon my mind.

And now the arrival,—the entrance through the gate, the pause before the

castle drawbridge, where the whole family was assembled,—well, we know

from the Bible how it is usual to celebrate the return of the prodigal

son.

The best rooms in the castle had been made ready for us, and thus I was

“at home” under the roof of Harmannsdorf—a roof that was to protect our

happiness for seventeen years longer.

Now began for us a new life, a family life. Harmannsdorf was occupied by

the parents and the three daughters; the eldest also, married to a Count

Sizzo at Trent, was with us making a visit. The oldest son, Karl,

secretary in the Department of Commerce, came every Saturday, and always

spent his vacation at Harmannsdorf with his beautiful wife and his

twelve-year-old daughter Mizzi, who was a pupil at the Sacré Cœur

Convent. As such she was very piously inclined, and made the most

strenuous endeavors to convert her Uncle Artur, for whom she had

conceived an ardent affection and whose ecclesiastical lukewarmness

caused her great anxiety as to the salvation of his soul. The second

oldest brother, Richard, lived with his family at the castle of

Stockern, a mile and a half distant, and of course the intercourse

between Stockern and Harmannsdorf was very lively. Of other neighbors,

whom we constantly saw, those we liked best were the owners of Mühlbach,

Baron and Baroness Josef Gudenus, and the castellan of Maissau, the

grand master of the huntsmen, Count Traun. From Vienna often came

Artur’s former schoolmates; in short, the domestic and social life left

nothing to be desired in agreeableness and liveliness of intercourse.

And yet we managed to save out many hours for laborious solitude. For we

kept up our scientific studies, were always reading the same books

together, and also writing together; not that we collaborated in

authorship,—each worked independently, and we each read the other’s

writings only after they had been printed,—but we wrote at the same

worktable.

Even while we were in the Caucasus we had entered into correspondence

with many of our contemporary authors. This correspondence was now

carried on even more assiduously. My _Inventarium_ had brought me many

unknown friends in literary circles.

Thus one day we were surprised by an enthusiastic letter from Friedrich

Bodenstedt. As the poet of _Mirza Schaffy_ had himself spent many years

in the Caucasus, he took a keen interest in Artur Gundaccar’s Caucasian

stories. M. G. Conrad of Munich, in whose newly founded monthly

magazine, _Die Gesellschaft_, had appeared _Es Löwos_ and other things,

had also engaged us in correspondence. Hermann Heiberg, Robert

Hamerling, Count von Schack, Ludwig Büchner, Konrad Ferdinand Meyer,

Karl Emil Franzos,—those are some of the names of our correspondents;

also Balduin Groller, who had long exchanged letters with B. Oulot in

the Zugdidi days without suspecting that this _nom de plume_ concealed a

woman, as he himself tells the story in one of his delicious

feuilletons.

I was fulfilling my duty as editor of a great literary periodical.

That flood of generally mediocre manuscripts, all of which demanded to

be read! Occasionally, as in a big, stupid cake, a raisin here and

there—the rare products of genius. Once there was a special editorial

feast-day; I had found a big raisin, a work of remarkable depth and

delicacy and quite incomparable grace of construction. That was a

delight, a genuine intoxication; a new talent—that is certainly

nothing trifling, is it? Above all things, what is the man’s name? B.

Oulot—a singular name, but the world will soon get used to it. But

this was not the only singularity. I take into my hand again the

letter which accompanied it. Where does the man live and what else

does he do? A Russian postage-stamp; the letter is dated from Zugdidi,

Government of Kutais.... And there is also a request for leniency, as

the work is the writer’s first. That too! I see to it at once that the

honorarium shall be sent immediately, so as to keep the new

contributor in good humor, and I write a letter of unreserved

appreciation of this first work, with an urgent request for further

articles.

These also came, and my delight and astonishment kept on increasing.

They betrayed a scientific and philosophical competence equal to that

of any university professor, but at the same time a grace, and a humor

that triumphed over everything—no, assuredly it was not a university

professor.

We got to talking together, of course through letters. We could not

get to the end of all that we had to say to each other. In this

exchange of ideas we discovered that we had in common so many opinions

about art and life that it would have been sheer nonsense to keep

bothering with society flourishes, and we began to use the “thou” like

two good comrades. It was brother heart on this side, brother heart on

that; but on one occasion I must have expressed myself so vigorously

and so unequivocally—between comrades one is not so particular about

little things—regarding some question which would have come within the

purview of the as yet unpromulgated _Lex Heinze_, that a protest might

seem proper. It followed in a very delicate, perfectly unobtrusive

manner. The next letter ended with _Deine ergebene_—the feminine form.

I was dumfounded. So B. Oulot is a woman—who would have thought that

of the man! I demanded an explanation and received one. B. Oulot

was—Baroness Bertha von Suttner, born Countess Kinsky.—Well, all right

then. I did not feel offended at it after that, and anyhow there was

no changing it now.

This was just at the time of “the revolution in literature,” and we

followed with the liveliest sympathy the phases of that revolution.

Conrad, Bleibtreu, Alberti—we read all that they wrote and were amazed

at their audacities. A _Moderne_ was beginning to show its head—which,

to be sure, has since been thrown on the rubbish heap by the very most

modern _Modernen_. And in the plastic arts too the first symptoms of the

Secession began to be distinguishable. Everywhere there was

fermentation.—After all, there is at every period a newest thing which

surprises and puzzles, is antagonized, wins, and soon becomes _vieux

jeu_. That the present phase seems to one to be so unprecedentedly

subversive of all that has been supreme, is mere illusion.

In October of this year, the first year of our return, the Congress of

the Authors’ Union held its session in Berlin. In our capacity as

members of the Union we were invited to be present, and we needed no

second invitation.

I preserved in my diary a few pictures of this congress—the first which

I had ever attended in my life—and later turned them to account in my

_Schriftstellerroman_.

On the evening before the first business meeting, a “gathering and

informal greeting of the members of the Union” took place in the

Kaiserhalle.

At the entrance of the assembly hall, from which comes the loud buzz of

hundreds of voices speaking at once, stands the host, that is to say,

the President of the Congress, to receive the guests. That is Hermann

Heiberg,—tall, fair, elegant, with nobly formed features.

The hall is packed; only with difficulty can one make one’s way from

place to place. A large number of those present have already taken their

seats at two or three long tables which run from one end of the hall to

the other. With difficulty are places secured for us.

Hermann Heiberg introduces various colleagues to us, and these fetch

still others. As often as a name celebrated in literature is mentioned,

I am stirred by the same kind of joy that one feels when at a raffle a

winning number is called. There is only one thing that is often bitterly

disappointing,—sometimes the actuality so utterly fails to correspond to

the mental picture that one has formed of the author in question. To be

sure this picture was quite misty, indefinite, lineless as it were, and

yet one regrets its annihilation. What, were these fragrant love-songs,

these rapturous fancies, written by the brutal-looking stout man? And

can it be that this awkward little bourgeois manikin is the author of

those exquisitely elegant pictures of high life? What! Did that

downy-bearded youth yonder who looks like a grocery clerk write those

essays dripping with wisdom and experience?

Various figures and faces attract my attention, and I ask who they are.

An imposing female apparition in black toilet with transparent

sleeves—an interesting face: Frau Ida Boy-Ed, the author of _Männer der

Zeit_. A small man with long white hair and benevolently beaming eyes in

a beardless face; that is Paulus Cassel, an apostle of self-sacrificing

philanthropy. There, leaning against a column,—a sharp contrast to the

Apostle Paulus,—a dark Mephistophelian phenomenon: it is Fritz Mauthner

the satirist. Near him is a pretty, animated young woman—it is the

American Sara Hutzler, whose specialty is original child-scenes; the one

who afterward married the dramatist Kainz, but died within a short time.

There at last—we recognize him by his picture—is Mirza Schaffy, our dear

correspondent-friend Bodenstedt. He hastens to us and sits down with us.

Then follow new reminiscences of the Caucasus; it was there that the

poet spent the most joyous years of his youthful activity. And he tells

of Tiflis, of the forests of Mingrelia, of the roofs of the Oriental

houses on which in the moonlight beautiful women play the lute and

dance, and to which in the silence of the night a young German poet is

summoned for a tryst; of the Platonic passion which the beautiful wife

of a Russian general inspired in the same youth, and which even to-day

gleams as the most magical recollection in the poems of the gray-haired

man.

Not only on that evening but during the whole session of the Authors’

Congress, Friedrich Bodenstedt was our constant companion; we could not

weary of telling one another of the Caucasus.

On the next day the business meetings began. It was the first session of

a Union that I had ever attended. The whole affair—the green table

standing on the lofty podium, the members of the directorate sitting

around it, each with a pile of paper in front of him, the president in

the midst—made a solemn impression on me. It aroused in my mind the

comprehension of a thing which is destined to assume ever deeper and

more widely inclusive dimensions in the humanity of the future; that is

to say, the consciousness of solidarity. This is a consciousness which

works even more efficaciously than the command “Love your neighbor as

yourself”; for in the right kind of solidarity your neighbor is

identical with yourself to begin with. That the interests of all are at

the same time the interests of each, and vice versa, gives to each

individual such a heightened feeling of existence as if he were the

whole: he can no longer separate his ego from the collectivity, since

this is—as the word Union signifies—_one_, and therefore inseparable. Of

course that is only the ideal conception of a Union; in practice the

thing often lacks its own life principle, unity.

This is not the place to tell of the matters dealt with and the course

that the business took, although I find these stated in my notebook. Let

me only sketch two or three more features of the convention.

At the Rathaus, greetings by the Bürgermeister, and addresses following.

An address by Max Nordau was on the programme, but unfortunately this

fell through. The Lord Mayor of Berlin, in gala attire, welcomed the

guests and said all the flattering things that can be said to “the

laborers of the mind,” “the bearers of civilization,” those who embody

“the progress of the idea of our time” and constitute “the pride of the

nation.” After the perfunctory speech of thanks for the “honor of such a

reception” in “the Metropolis of the Intellect,” and the like, begin the

promised addresses,—addresses in connection with which the New York

_Staats-Zeitung_ later made the remark that “the association of literary

Freelunchers, instead of discussing arrangements for furthering the

interests of their profession, talked about the relation of Old Fritz to

German literature and about the Goethe House.”

On the sixth and last day, banquet and ball in the hall of the

“Harmonie.” Again Hermann Heiberg stands at the entrance and welcomes

his colleagues and numerous guests from Berlin society. The great hall,

made as light as day, is speedily filled; the guests take their places

at table, and when the roast comes in the toasts and speeches begin. The

first speaker is Karl Emil Franzos, who in the name of the Danube states

says all sorts of friendly things to the capital of the German Empire.

Then Julius Wolff. The speakers mount a tribune so that they may be

better heard. Among them there are women. It is incomprehensible to

me ... how can one have the courage to talk so in public? A young

Russian woman with a foreign accent praises _ger’manische_ poetry. An

elderly authoress also ascends the tribune. Her voice is so weak that

only those quite close to her can hear what she says; although

conversation is resumed throughout the hall, she goes on haranguing

indefatigably in a plea—as we afterwards come to learn—for putting up a

memorial tablet on the house of Gutzkow. With all zeal—especially with

sweeping movements of her arms, the only part of the address that the

audience can make out—she explains the imperative necessity for this

memorial tablet, until some one at the foot of the tribune cries out,

“It was put up long ago.”

Now Oskar Justinus recites a poetical toast to the women that write, and

points out that even in the most ancient times there were bluestockings,

for it is well known that Leda was not averse to taking a quill in her

hand.

The last address is delivered by Hermann Heiberg, in bringing the

banquet to an end. Raising his glass, he says: “May that be fulfilled

which each one wishes in the bottom of his heart, be it right or be

it—according to the world’s ideas—wrong.... The world’s ideas are often

false, and what is warmly wished has a right to be granted.—So I drink

to the fulfillment of our warmest wishes!”

“A strange toast,” remarked some one at the end of our table; “Heiberg

seems to be talking in a fever.”

“That would be nothing to wonder at,” said my husband; “the ungrateful

task of taking charge of a festival brings with it so much annoyance and

worry that—as he himself told me a little while ago—it is only with

quinine that he keeps himself up.... And then he is one who understands

everything, forgives everything, and would be willing that everybody

should have a bit of happiness, whether what they wish is right or—in

the opinion of the world—wrong. I am one who have had fulfilled a warm

wish which other people condemned—and it was my happiness.”

“And mine, too,” I added under my breath.

XXIII

A WINTER IN PARIS

_Schriftstellerroman_ and _Das Maschinenzeitalter_ · Journey to Paris ·

Renewed acquaintance with Alfred Nobel · The Schnäbele affair · Madame

Adam’s salon · Princess Tamara of Georgia in Paris · Max Nordau · A ball

in the Palais of the _Revue des deux mondes_ · Victor Cherbuliez ·

Ludovic Halévy · Alphonse Daudet

Now once more followed a long and industrious period of work in our dear

Harmannsdorf. We all stayed in the country, even in winter; the palace

in Vienna had been sold, for the quarry and other business transactions

had turned out badly. But none of us had any yearnings for the city; the

social companionship of the numerous members of the family, the

sleighing parties on the snow-covered fields, mailtime with its manifold

messages from the wide world, the sessions of joyous labor at our common

writing-table, the reading aloud to each other of some interesting

scientific book, the many little jokes and silly tricks which we still

kept playing on each other,—for we remained like children,—all this

filled our days so satisfactorily that we assuredly did not hanker for

the pleasures of city life.

And then when spring awoke, about Easter-time, how we did enjoy finding

the first violet in the sward of the park! and there followed the series

of ever-increasing pleasures in the first umbels of the elder, the first

call of the cuckoo, the first note of the blackbird.

“After all,” My Own remarked, “that is pleasanter to hear than the

howling of the jackal. Now spring was thoroughly beautiful in the home

of Medea too; but really the charm of the things which one has been

accustomed to since childhood, the beauty of one’s own garden, the

thousand greetings which come to one from the tones, the scents, and the

colors of one’s own home, are sweeter than the most splendid impressions

of travel.”

In this time I wrote my _Schriftstellerroman_ (“Romance of an Author”)

and _Das Maschinenzeitalter_ (“The Age of Machinery”). The latter

afforded me great enjoyment, for in it I threw off from my mind all that

had accumulated within me of grief and exasperation at the conditions of

the present, and of glowing hopes for the future so full of promise. The

book was not to appear under my own name; it was signed _Jemand_—“Some

One.” The motive for this anonymity was not cowardice, but, as it was

altogether scientific and philosophical themes that were very freely

treated in the _Maschinenzeitalter_, I was afraid that if the book were

signed with a woman’s name it would not reach the readers whom I

desired; for in scientific circles there is so much prejudice against

the capacity of women as thinkers that a book signed with a woman’s name

would simply remain unread by those for whom it was expressly designed.

When the second winter after our return from the Caucasus was coming on,

we decided to see a bit of the European world. The _Maschinenzeitalter_

was finished, and I had (not without difficulty) found a publisher for

it,—Schabelitz in Switzerland. It was not to appear till spring.

We decided to spend a few weeks in Paris, which My Own had never seen.

The payment for a novel sufficed to cover the expenses of the trip, and

we set forth with that full sensation of enjoyment which is involved in

the notion of a pleasure trip. I can still remember: deep snow was lying

on the fields around Harmannsdorf, a fierce snowstorm was blowing into

our faces as the sleigh took us to the station, and we rejoiced in it

and laughed immoderately. If the road was drifted so as to be

impassable, well, then we would start some other day; our trips in the

Caucasus had accustomed us to far more serious difficulties. There we

had often ridden on the edge of abysses and crossed narrow, swaying

bridges; had reached ferries which the ferryman refused to take us over

on account of the dangerously swollen state of the water, so that we had

to seek shelter in a wooden hut, content ourselves with a meal of bread,

sardines, and Kachetin wine, sleep on a bare bench,—and yet we used

often to recall even these experiences as blithesome recollections.

The sleigh took us to the station without mishap; only the luggage-sled

arrived too late, so we had to wait for a later train, and could not

continue our journey to Paris on the same day, as we had meant to, but

were obliged to spend a day in Vienna.

Our sojourn in Paris proved to be very pleasurable. We sauntered on the

boulevards and in the Champs-Élysées; we drove in the Bois; we were

assiduous attendants at the theaters great and little; we visited the

museums; we made excursions to Versailles, Saint-Cloud, and Sèvres; and

we took in all the other similar diversions that every visitor to Paris

feels he must enjoy.

I wrote a note to Alfred Nobel, with whom I had all along kept in touch

by correspondence,—perhaps in the eleven years eleven letters had passed

between us,—to acquaint him with our presence in Paris. He came without

delay to look us up. I found him unchanged, except that he had grown

somewhat gray, but he was more deeply than ever immersed in his labors

and inventions. My Own took a keen interest in his chemical

investigations, which he explained in detail with the help of his

crucibles and other apparatus when, a few days later, having invited us

to dinner, he did the honors of his house and his laboratory. He still

lived very much aloof from the world; the only house which he frequently

visited was Madame Juliette Adam’s, and he took us there.

The author of _Païenne_ and editor of the _Nouvelle Revue_ lived in her

own house in the street named after her the Rue Juliette Lambert. As

every one knows, Madame Adam was a great _patriote_, which at that epoch

signified a representative of the idea of _revanche_. And I can remember

that in our very first call she steered the conversation into a

political channel. But just then was one of the moments when it was

generally believed that the war of revenge, predicted for sixteen years,

was coming. Herr von Bismarck was in want of a military law valid for

seven years, and in the German parliament the method of “War in Sight”

was employed as is usual on such occasions. The recipe is a sure one:

with a view to this all military demands are readily granted.

Furthermore, the Schnäbele incident on the frontier happened, and on the

horizon, slowly mounting, appeared General Boulanger’s black horse. What

an outpouring of amateur political opinion there was! Wherever one went

this question was asked, Will it break out? In the newspapers, and still

more in the air, there was the anticipation of some great event. In the

_Chat noir_, that famous artists’ Gschnas-Café (the ancestor of all the

_cabarets_ that now flood the world), Caran d’Ache was conducting his

magic lantern “L’Épopée,” Napoleonic war scenes, and _cela fait vibrer

la fibre patriotique_. Madame Adam also vibrated.

And she invited us in a most friendly way to a great evening reception

which was to take place at her house within a few days. Of that soirée I

have preserved a rather lively recollection.

The little house in the Rue Juliette Lambert was filled with guests from

the first landing of the staircase to the farthest corner of the salon.

On the threshold of the salon door stood Madame Adam, an imposing and

captivating figure. She wore a dark-red velvet gown with long train,

diamonds on the bosom, and diamonds in her white hair massed high. Her

face under this white hair looked still youthful,—somewhat in the style

of Marie Geistinger as _la belle Hélène_. Of course, as the duty of a

hostess required, she gave each person a gracious word with a gracious

smile.

“Ah, dear baron,” she said to my husband, “I am so much attracted toward

you because the country which you describe so excellently in your books,

the semibarbarous Caucasus, is so fascinating to me.”

Certainly, it was well known how much everything Russian fascinated

Madame Adam, the glorifier of Aksákof and of General Skóbelef. “How can

a woman ever busy herself so much with politics?” was my thought at that

time. “How much that is disagreeable, and sometimes ridiculous, she

brings upon herself by that! And how can one bother herself with editing

a review into the bargain?”

Many distinguished men—artists, authors, politicians—were gathered in

Madame Adam’s salons, and many pretty women. Madame Napoleon Ney was

pointed out to us as one of the most famous beauties of Parisian

society. Unfortunately, one could not make the acquaintance of all the

interesting persons present; the throng was so dense that one had to

stay in his corner and be contented with talking to a few in his own

vicinity. And for the most part one had to be still and listen, for—as

was the custom in Paris—the guests were served with all sorts of

artistic delectations: a pianist played Hungarian melodies; an author of

great promise, but as yet unknown, read a few short stories; and

Mademoiselle Brandés, at that time not yet engaged at the Théâtre

Français, declaimed a poem. But even here, amid this artistic and social

gayety, the dark word “War” was buzzing through the room; here and there

the names of Bismarck and Moltke and Schnäbele were heard, and

prophecies that next spring it surely would come to something were

boldly uttered, but without detracting from the spirit of cheerfulness

that prevailed; these vaticinations probably aroused fine hopes in the

hostess, enthusiastic for her country’s glory as she was. I was no

longer so indifferent in the presence of these things as I had been

during my youth. I already hated war fervently, and this frivolous

trifling with the possibility of it seemed to me as lacking in

conscience as in common sense.

It was a great joy to us to meet in Paris a friend from the Caucasus,

Princess Tamara of Georgia. The beautiful young widow had been

established in the French capital for a year with her two half-grown

girls; she lived in a fascinatingly furnished mansion in the Elysée

quarter. We were very frequently invited to her functions, and always

found a large company there, Russians for the most part. General Baron

Frederiks, who afterward became, and is still, chief master of

ceremonies to the Tsar, was a friend of the house.

We cultivated literary society extensively. A Dr. Löwenthal, who had

written to me on account of my _Inventarium einer Seele_ when we were

still in the Caucasus, and with whom, after an ardent exchange of ideas,

we two had become close friends, made us acquainted with Max Nordau. The

greatly celebrated author of “Conventional Lies,” although then only

thirty-eight, had very thick snow-white hair, which was very effective

with his black beard, black eyes, and interesting face. There were some

unforgettable hours which we four spent in conversation about God’s

magnificent world and the conventional, lie-ridden world of humanity.

In the Buloz house, where we attended a ball a few days after the Adam

soirée, there was not so strong a flavor of politics as in the home of

the _Nouvelle revue_; here homage was paid to only two things, the

_Revue_ _des deux mondes_ and the Académie Française. The Buloz house

had the reputation of being a center of the literary and intellectual

life of Paris. On Madame Buloz’s Tuesdays half of the Forty Immortals

were to be found there, and of course all the collaborators of the

_Revue_, from which the Academy so often draws its recruits. The solid

old _palais_ in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, with its ground floor

devoted to the offices of the monthly, and its big reception rooms on

the floor above, had a grave and dignified air. The furnishings of the

salon were of rich and substantial plainness. The tone all through the

house was rather stiff, puristic, erudite—in short, academic. The same

tone, you know, that permeates the so often uncut pages of the articles

in the old _Revue_. The married life of the husband and wife seemed to

be exemplary. M. Buloz, a man of serious and steady look, and at the

same time amiable, of about forty, with full red beard trimmed to a

point—liking best of all to talk about his _Revue_, the conduct of which

cost him much labor, for he read every line of the manuscripts that were

sent in, and sternly repelled any encroachment of frivolous realism—who

could have suspected at that time that a few years later he would be

compelled to part from his _Revue_, and that under such frivolous

circumstances as he would never have permitted one of his colleagues to

incorporate in a novel? Most surprising and startling for the whole

serious _milieu_ came the sudden discovery that M. Buloz had wasted

nearly all his property, besides incurring a million in debts,—all for a

woman. A separation resulted—whether Madame Buloz got one or whether she

pardoned him I do not know—but a separation from his _Revue_, the proud

paternal inheritance. He was forced to leave the management; and the

monthly, which ever since its foundation, for more than a half century,

had borne the name of Charles Buloz, both father and son, came out with

the name of Brunetière.

Since then the undertaking has fallen off in circulation; various new

monthlies have come into existence to enter into active rivalry with

this great-grandmother of reviews. At that time it was in full flower;

it had a circulation of 25,000 copies and brought its stockholders large

and ever-increasing dividends. At that ball M. Buloz told me that his

father had for thirty years published the magazine under a deficit; then

suddenly came the change—the _Revue_ was read all over the world and its

owners became millionaires.

“You see, gracious lady,” added M. Buloz jestingly, “if a periodical has

been kept up for a time, it can expect further duration and some profit;

only the first thirty years are rather hard sailing.”

The connections which we formed at the Buloz house brought us into

relations with various members of the Academy. I remember one evening

which we spent with Victor Cherbuliez and when we met Ernest Renan. It

was but a small circle of people that was grouped around the fireplace

there, and the result was a genuine _causerie_, such as cannot be had in

reception rooms filled with hundreds of people. There were present M.

and Mme. Cherbuliez and their daughter; M. and Mme. Renan; M. de Rothan,

a former diplomat and author of highly valued political articles and

contemporaneous reminiscences, especially regarding Alsace-Lorraine; his

wife; and lastly, Ludovic Halévy, the latest of the Academicians. The

merry blasphemer of the Grecian Olympus,—for with the aid of the equally

merry Meilhac he had exposed Jupiter, Juno, Venus, and Mars to

Offenbach’s musical mockery,—the creator of Madame Cardinal, mistress of

the household, and her daughters who “went on the boards,” was sparkling

with wit in his conversation too. As a novelist, however, he was also

successful in striking the serious strings; remember his novel _L’Abbé

Constantin_, with its tinge of sentimentality and its harmlessness for

boarding-school misses. And by no means did he fail to make the famous

patriot fiber vibrate; he became the historian of the invasion of 1871,

and celebrated the military glory and the heroic misfortunes of the

conquered.

So it came about that when the conversation that evening touched upon

the predominant question of the day—the threatening war-cloud—Halévy

welcomed, with some pathos, the possibly approaching day of requital.

Renan excitedly took the other side. He did not conceal his horror for

national massacres in general, but as a thinker he was especially pained

by the hostility between his nation and “the nation of thinkers.” He

acknowledged that he had learned much from German philosophy, and spoke

with the greatest respect of its representatives in both older and later

times.

I had expected that Renan should be ugly in his outward appearance, for

that was notorious; but this expectation fell below the reality: short,

stout, sallow, with a broad, beardless face, reminding one of Grützner’s

monks, a monstrous bald cranium,—with these qualities, the author of the

_Vie de Jésus_ gave me at first glance the impression that he was the

ugliest man I had seen in my life. Ten minutes after he had begun to

speak, this impression was effaced. Not only tolerable did he seem to

me, but possessed of a genuine charm.

Another charmer whose acquaintance we made in Paris was Alphonse Daudet.

In his case the power of the intellect, the fiery, easy discourse, were

accompanied by an externally beautiful appearance. With his flashing

black eyes, his thick curling hair, his mobile, aristocratic features,

Alphonse Daudet could not have helped pleasing every one even if he had

not been Alphonse Daudet. His wife—who was more of a collaborator to him

than the world suspects, though his grateful testimony to the fact was

public and plain-spoken—was likewise a very attractive personality. I

often called there on her day at home. The man of the house was not

present on these occasions, but stayed shut up in his workroom. It was

in this that he used to receive us and fascinate us with his gift of

fiery conversation.

XXIV

THERE IS A PEACE MOVEMENT

Return from Paris · International Peace Association · _Das

Maschinenzeitalter_ by “Jemand” · Anonymity attains its end ·

Bartholomäus von Carneri · At the Carneri table · In the Hotel Meissl

In the spring of 1887 we returned home from Paris enriched with many

experiences and impressions. One thing especially I had learned there,

which had a decisive influence on my after life and work. In a

conversation about war and peace—a theme which was already mightily

filling my soul—our friend Dr. Wilhelm Löwenthal informed us that there

existed in London an “International Peace and Arbitration Association,”

the aim of which was to bring about, by creating and organizing public

opinion, the establishment of an international court of appeal which

should take the place of armed force in settling disputes between

nations.

“What! Madrid had such a girl, and I learn it for the first time

to-day!” cries Don Carlos, when, in the scene with the Princess Eboli,

she discloses her soul to him. Just so I felt. What? such a league

existed,—the idea of justice between nations, the struggle to do away

with war, had assumed form and life? The news electrified me. Dr.

Löwenthal had to give me on the spot all the details about the formation

of the Association, its aim, its methods, and the persons who were

associated with it. What I learned was as follows:

The name of the founder and president of the Association was Hodgson

Pratt. The Duke of Westminster, the Earl of Ripon, the Bishop of Durham,

and others were among its directors. Its headquarters were in London.

Hodgson Pratt, a man of lofty ethical and philanthropical principles,

had, within a few years, journeyed over the Continent for the purpose of

calling into existence branches of his society. Since then there were in

Stuttgart a “Württembergischer Verein,” Fr. von Hellwald, president; in

Berlin a provisional committee, Professor Virchow, president; in Milan a

“Unione lombarda per la pace,” Professor Vigano, president (after him,

Teodoro Moneta); in Rome an “Associazione per l’arbitrio e la pace,”

Ruggero Bonghi, Minister of Instruction, president. Others in Sweden,

Norway, and Denmark.

The appeal which the London society had adopted as the basis of its

propaganda, a copy of which Dr. Löwenthal handed me, contained the

following introduction:

Lately a member of the English ministry declared that England’s

greatest interest is peace. Could not the same thing be said of every

civilized country?

The international political conditions in the civilized world when

contemplated arouse no less astonishment than reflection.

On the one hand men of every rank and of all shades of opinion desire

progress, the common advantage and happiness of mankind; and the

object of all the endeavors of the men of science, the enlightened

writers and thinkers, culminates in the accomplishment of this

progress and well-being.

On the other hand, in opposition to these endeavors, the fruits of

industry and diligence are constantly sacrificed in behalf of military

objects, and this sacrifice serves to delay and hinder all progress.

Has the time not arrived, at the close of the Nineteenth Century, for

all men to consult together and get into agreement to put an end to

this folly, this terrible plague which can be avoided only through a

common understanding and endeavor?

But how arrive at this result? Through the irresistible power of

widely directed and energetically organized public opinion.

The means for attaining this propaganda and this organization is to be

found in the formation of a great league, with branches in all

European cities.

The appeal goes on to explain what the league was to aim at and what

were to be its methods.

On my return I found awaiting me the proof sheets of my book _Das

Maschinenzeitalter_ (“The Age of Machinery”). I added in the chapter

entitled “Zukunftsausblicke” (“Glimpses into the Future”) an account of

the London League. Just as I had previously known nothing about it, I

took it for granted that my readers also were unacquainted with this

phenomenon of the times. For in that thing called “Publicity,” the

endeavors of a few hundred men—even of a few thousand—disappear like so

many drops of carmine in an arm of the sea.

When the book came out, shortly afterward, I had the satisfaction that

not a single one of the very numerous critics who devoted whole columns

to their reviews of it ever suspected that “Jemand”—Some One—could

possibly belong to “the weak-minded sex.” Doctor Moritz Necker, the

well-known literary editor of the Vienna _Tagblatt_, in writing to me

about another matter, mentioned that he had recently been reading an

anonymous book called _Das Maschinenzeitalter_; in his mind there was no

doubt that the author was Max Nordau. Cherbuliez was of the same

opinion, and in a sixteen-page article in the _Revue des deux mondes_

designated Max Nordau as the author of the work he was reviewing. Max

Nordau met this with a published declaration that he did not know the

book, and that he was in the habit of signing what he wrote.

For some time I had been in correspondence with the philosopher

Bartholomäus von Carneri, to whom, after reading his _Sittlichkeit

und Darwinismus_ (“Morality and Darwinism”), I had written a letter

expressing my admiration; he had replied that he knew and prized my

_Inventarium_, and a regular correspondence had ensued. I had not

revealed to him anything about my anonymous book; I was all the more

pleasingly surprised when in the newspaper report of the

parliamentary proceedings I found a speech of Carneri’s, delivered

in the Austrian Reichsrat the day before, in which he mentioned _Das

Maschinenzeitalter_. Thereupon I asked him what kind of a book it

was, and who was the author. To this he replied that the author was

not named, but he had guessed who it was—Karl Vogt; he had instantly

recognized him by his style. Many, however, believed that he

himself, Carneri, had written the book. Then I confessed to him that

I was the guilty one, but begged him to keep the secret, and this he

agreed to do.

At the beginning of the next autumn we had gone to Vienna for a

fortnight, as we often did. At the hotel at which we put up we learned

that the member of the Reichsrat from Styria, B. von Carneri, was in the

same house. The prospect of becoming personally acquainted with my

famous correspondent was extremely tempting to me, and we sent in our

names to him. The savant received us with alacrity. An old man, a sick

man,—almost a cripple,—and yet what gayety and freshness! Carneri had

never been well in his life. His head was all the time bent over to his

right shoulder, he could walk only with difficulty, and since his early

youth he had not spent a day without agonizing pain. And he called

himself a happy man; he not only called himself so, he was. His

intellectual labors, his political activities, the possession of a

beloved daughter and a beloved son-in-law, the high regard which he had

won in the learned world and among his parliamentary associates, may

well have been the basis of his enjoyment of life; but the real secret

was doubtless that he not only dealt in philosophy but actually was a

philosopher, that is to say, a man who can pass beyond the miseries of

life and thankfully enjoy its beauty.

We spent some exhilarating hours in Carneri’s company; all the themes

which we had broached in our correspondence were discussed, and the

friendship which had begun through our letters was only confirmed by

this personal association. That same evening we met again. When the

member from Marburg-an-der-Drau stayed in Vienna during the sessions of

the parliament, he was accustomed to take his supper at a certain long

table in the hotel dining-room, and at that table a number of his

colleagues and other prominent personages from the political, literary,

and learned circles of Vienna used to gather. The “Carneri table” at the

Hotel Meissl was a sort of salon of wit and talent. That evening we also

took our places at this table, and listened with interest to the lively

conversation, the center of which was our friend Carneri, at whose right

hand I sat. I can remember one episode. My neighbor on the right

suddenly spoke past me to my neighbor on the left, and said to him:

“Say, I have bought the book you quoted in your speech lately. Do you

still not know who ‘Jemand’ is?”

“No, I have not a suspicion,” replied Carneri, and exchanged a smiling

glance with me. “And what do you say to it?”

My right-hand neighbor began a long dissertation on _Das

Maschinenzeitalter_, and another man who had also read it joined in the

conversation. What was said I no longer recall; I only know that it was

not disagreeable to me, but amused me immensely, especially when I threw

in the remark, “I shall have to get that myself,” and some one cried,

“Oh, that is not a book for ladies!”

XXV

_DIE WAFFEN NIEDER_

How the plan for the book originated · Study of sources · The model of

my hero · Satisfaction in writing the word “End” · Unanimously rejected

by the editors · The publisher’s scruples · Publication · How the book

was received · Favorable and hostile criticisms · Personal contact with

the peace movement resulting from the novel · The peace congress of 1889

in Paris · Founding of Interparliamentary Union

But I no longer had “The Age of Machinery” and its fate so much at

heart. I had on the stocks another work, which had taken possession of

me; to this all my thoughts and purposes were turned. I wanted to be of

service to the Peace League, and how could I better do so than by trying

to write a book which should propagate its ideas? And I could do it most

effectively, I thought, in the form of a story. I should certainly find

a larger public for that than for a treatise. In treatises one can only

lay down abstract appeals to the reason, can philosophize, argue, and

dissertate; but I wanted something else: I wanted to be able to put into

my book not only what I thought but what I felt, felt passionately; I

wanted to give expression to the pain which the image of war burned into

my soul; I wanted to present life, palpitating life, reality, historical

reality; and all this could be done only in a novel, and best in a novel

written in the form of an autobiography. And so I went ahead and wrote

_Die Waffen nieder_, “Away with Weapons.”[20]

It was to be the history of a young woman whose fate was closely

involved with the wars fought in our own day. But in order that the

historical events introduced should correspond to the reality, that the

descriptions of the battle scenes should be truthful, it was requisite

for me to make preliminary studies and collect material and documents.

This I did conscientiously, as well as I could. I read up in big-volumed

histories, I rummaged in old newspapers and archives, to find reports of

war correspondents and military surgeons; I got such acquaintances of

mine as had been in the field to relate episodes of battles; and during

this period of study my horror of war waxed to the most agonizing

intensity. I can certify that the sufferings through which I led my

heroine were actually experienced by me while I was working on it. What

a woman must suffer when she knows that a beloved husband is engaged in

war I could now more easily imagine, for the depth of my own conjugal

love sufficed to put me mentally in such a situation. And the portrayal

of a noble personality, as I attempted it in drawing the figure of my

hero, was rendered the easier by the fact that my own husband sat as

model for this character.

What a feeling of relief and satisfaction when I wrote the word “End” at

the bottom of the second volume!

Now for placing it. I had no fears about this; many periodicals had

begged me to send them a manuscript, and that great weekly which had

printed my earlier works, and which had never refused anything I sent,

would doubtless publish this manuscript too. I sent it in without

misgivings. My astonishment was not little when the reply came:

Gracious Lady:

It is with regret that we find ourselves compelled to return to you

the ... [some compliments] manuscript. Large classes of our readers

would take offense at what it contains.

So I tried it on another editor: the same result. And then on

others—unanimously rejected. In one of the answers (which were all more

or less sugar-coated with courteous phrases) it said: “In spite of all

these merits, however, it is quite out of the question to publish the

novel in a military country.”

So perhaps it was better to forego the thought of serial publication and

let _Die Waffen nieder_ make its first appearance in book form; and so I

sent the much-traveled package to my publisher Pierson. He hesitated a

long time. The book seemed to him dangerous. At that time there had just

been decided in Germany a case under the press laws, of which the

consequence was to be an increase in the strictness of the censorship

and a rigorous suppression of all writings that contained any sort of

mutinousness against existing institutions. Pierson advised that I

should give the manuscript to some experienced statesman to look over,

and ask him to strike out everything that could give offense. I cried

out in indignation at such a demand. A work in which I had written off

from my soul all the rage and all the pain that the hallowed “existing

institution” of war had begotten in me (and assuredly in thousands of

others beside me, only that they dared not express it)—to get somebody

to lop and trim in diplomatic-opportunist fashion such a work, which,

whatever its worth or worthlessness, had at least the one merit of being

hotly felt and _unreservedly sincere_,—to remodel it by the rules of

that most contemptible of all arts, the art of suiting everybody,—no,

sooner into the stove with it. Then I should alter the title at least,

was the publisher’s next suggestion. No! The title embraces in three

words the whole aim of the book. Of the title, too, not a syllable is to

be changed. After this ultimatum Pierson gave way, and _Die Waffen

nieder_ made its appearance.

The publisher had no cause to regret his audacity: to-day the novel is

circulated by hundreds of thousands and has been translated into a dozen

languages. From this quite unexpected success I draw only one

conclusion: the idea which permeates the book was to the taste of the

public. In spite of the editors’ fears that the warlike German public

would take no interest in the idea of peace, it was shown that this idea

is cherished in wide circles—even in military circles; for from these

too there came to me many tokens of appreciation. When a musical note

sounds strongly in a room, this does not demonstrate so much the

fullness of the tone as the favorable acoustic properties of the room.

The spirit that usually obtains in newspaper offices, in theatrical

directorates (as a generality, in managements of all sorts), is usually

behind the times with regard to the wants of those masses who are in

each case concerned: judgments are formed there according to the state

of public opinion as it made itself felt ten or twenty years ago; but

meanwhile public opinion itself, in its uninterrupted transformation,

has progressed to another stage.

So I am ready to believe that a book against war, appearing at the

beginning of the seventies, when the intoxication of victory still

effervesced in Germany and the wrathful clamor for revenge still raged

in France, would have had no success whatever. The cult of arms, too,

had to attain those huge dimensions whereby it has since then harnessed

the peoples under its heavy yoke, it had to have brought the world to

the brink of ruin, in order that the watchword “Away with Weapons” might

find so powerful an echo.

Every day brought me reviews from far and near,—feuilletons and

editorials. Bartholomäus Carneri published a ten-column article in the

_Neue Freie Presse_, J. V. Widmann a series of five feuilletons in the

_Bund_. I received criticisms from Russia, where the book appeared in

five different translations,—one of them authorized by me,—criticisms

from America, from England, from the Scandinavian countries, where even

in its first year translations were made.

I was now brought into living touch with all those who were connected

with the peace movement, or who, having had their attention drawn to the

existence of such a movement by my book, were now joining it.

The following letter afforded me especial pleasure, The inventor of

dynamite wrote me:

Dear Baroness and Friend:

I have just finished reading your admirable masterpiece. We are told

that there are two thousand languages—1999 too many—but certainly

there is not one in which your delightful work should not be

translated, read, and studied.

How long did it take you to write this marvel? You shall tell me when

next I have the honor and happiness of pressing your hand—that

amazonian hand which so valiantly makes war on war.

Nevertheless you make a mistake to cry “Away with Weapons,” because

you yourself make use of them, and because yours—the charm of your

style and the grandeur of your ideas—carry and will carry much farther

than the Lébels, the Nordenfelts, the De Banges, and all the other

implements of hell.[21]