BUNSEN
It was at the time when this learned and accomplished friend of the
highly gifted King Frederick William IV. was the representative of
Prussia at the Court of St. James, that I first visited England in my
childhood. We came over twice, on the first occasion to stay in the Isle
of Wight, whilst our second visit was divided between Hastings and
London. A sincere and lasting friendship then sprang up between my
family and that of this remarkable man, continuing to this day among the
members of a younger generation.
Bunsen loved to be the Mecænas of men of talent, and many were the
interesting people whom we met at his house. The whole family was
musical; two of the sons, just then students at the University of Bonn,
sang most delightfully; “Kathleen Mavourneen” was first made known to me
by the pleasing tenor of the one, and the other gave the famous “Figaro
quà, Figaro là,” of the “Barber of Seville,” with great effect in his
agreeable baritone. I had the pleasure of hearing the organ in
Westminster Abbey played by the eldest daughter, whose professor, the
celebrated organist, Neukomm, became from that moment a most welcome
guest in our house, sometimes staying with us for weeks at a time. It
was from this fine old musician that in my twelfth year I began learning
the harmonium, and became moreover an enthusiast like himself for the
sweet plaintive tones of the Æolian harp. It was his delight to fix one
of these simple instruments in the crack of an open door, and seat
himself in the full draught, to listen for and note down the weird
melodies played by the wind. Often on a lovely summer’s evening,--in the
moonlight of Monrepos that has been sung of among us from generation to
generation,--we would have the harmonium brought out on the terrace, and
letting his fingers stray over the keys, Neukomm would imitate the
sighing of the breeze in the strings of the harp, catching up the echo
of some murmuring sound, and repeating and improvising on it for hours.
Our stay in the Isle of Wight was delightful, and I look back on the
pretty little island as a sort of earthly paradise, fit scene for a
happy, idyllic life. Our little villa was smothered in the clustering
roses that climbed over it everywhere, and on all sides stretched a lawn
of beautiful soft green grass, perfectly kept, but upon which we
children could fling ourselves and play to our hearts’ content; such a
relief after the perpetual injunctions to refrain from stepping on the
grass, to which we were accustomed in Germany. Then we had the good luck
too, to be by the sea during a spring-tide, a novel experience, that
gave us a most glorious excitement, as we happened to be taking our
daily sea-bath, and there was the very greatest difficulty in getting
the bathing-machine safely back to the beach again. The ropes with which
the poor horse was harnessed gave way, and the man, who was pale with
fright, had hard work to rescue the little house-on-wheels with its
occupants, whilst my brother and I were simply delighted to see the
waves dash over it, rejoicing at last to encounter something that was
like a real adventure!
Our second visit to England was in the year 1851, and we were in London
just at the closing of the first great International Exhibition, at
which I remember seeing immense crowds of people standing bare-headed
and cheering, as “God save the Queen!” was played. That spectacle made
more impression on me than anything in the Exhibition itself, unless it
was perhaps the splendid trees, one giant oak-tree in particular, which
had been built in with the edifice, completely roofed over by the big
glass dome. Other contemporary events I did not witness myself, but only
heard of them from our friends,--the funeral of the Duke of Wellington,
for instance,--which they described to us passing their house, the
Embassy in Carlton Terrace, in an endless procession rolling on for
hours, like wave on wave in swift succession, to the mournful strains of
the Dead March from the Eroica Symphony. As the sounds of one military
band died away in the distance, the next one had already come up in step
to the melancholy cadence of the selfsame march. Just like the rising
and sinking of ocean waves was the impressive yet monotonous grandeur of
the nation’s tribute to its great soldier.
The Prussian Embassy was at that time frequented by almost every one of
talent or high intellectual culture to be found in London, Bunsen
possessing in a remarkable degree the gift of attracting clever people
to himself. He was quick too to discern the promise of future eminence
in others, and many might relate how in that genial atmosphere their
talent was discovered and encouraged and obtained its first recognition.
Mendelssohn and Max Müller were amongst those who quite young there
found themselves at once prized at their true value. The conversational
powers of the master of the house himself, the young people so gifted
and versatile, the open hospitality, the excellent music,--all these
things were so many magnets, that drew strangers within the charmed
sphere. I was of course not capable then of appreciating the depth of
Bunsen’s learning or his intellectual worth, but his marvellous command
of language and rhetorical facility impressed me greatly. In the fluency
of his speech, the ease and elegance with which on all occasions he
expressed himself, he resembled his royal friend, Frederick William IV.
And his handsome face recalled that of the great Goethe at an advanced
age, the likeness being especially striking on his deathbed.
But it was only natural that at that time Bunsen’s children and
grandchildren should interest me much more than he did himself. The lame
daughter, above all, like my mother at that time, being always wheeled
about in her chair and unable to walk a step, and in whose features I
also discovered something of a likeness to my mother, that perhaps lay
in the kind gentle smile. The sympathy they felt for one another was
naturally strengthened by their common misfortune, in each case the
lameness appearing to be absolutely incurable. During the summer we
spent in the Isle of Wight, my mother could still go about on crutches,
then after the birth of my younger brother her condition grew far worse,
complete atrophy of the one leg having apparently set in, and the pain
hardly allowing her any sleep at night. Fräulein von Bunsen’s lameness
proceeded from an attack of coxalgia as an infant, and since her sixth
year all hope had been abandoned of her ever being able to walk. We
children were meantime quite at home in the house of one of her
brothers, playing with his children, with whom we continued on
affectionate terms our whole life long. It is a satisfaction to be able
to look back on fifty years of uninterrupted friendship such as this.
Very specially did it exist between myself and Bunsen’s daughter-in-law,
Elizabeth, so dear to me, that it was almost as if ties of blood had
united us. Only quite recently did I bid a last farewell to this sweet
and lovable woman, death having called her away. But she lives on in my
remembrance, and I have an agreeable recollection also of her father,
the Quaker, Gurney, and of his greeting, warm and courteous in spite of
his keeping his hat on his head, as he met us on the threshold of his
house with the words--“Be welcome to my home!”
I observed and learned a great deal more than anyone at that time
suspected! It was my first stay in a great city, and the first lesson it
brought home to me was that of complete acquiescence in my own
limitations, or rather in those imposed on me by circumstances, my very
modest supply of pocket-money making quite unattainable all the
splendours I saw exhibited in the shop windows. There was one lovely
doll-shop, with the most exquisite dolls, as big as real babies, and
directly I had a small sum to spend, I made my way thither, quite happy
to have a close view of all these treasures, even if I should be unable
to purchase any of them. And in truth, it was just the tiniest wax-doll
of all that the contents of my small purse could buy--but such a lovely
one, in a dear little tiny bed with curtains of rose-coloured silk,
through which the rosy light streamed over the delicate little wax face.
How I loved that doll! It looked just like a little princess in a fairy
tale, or a fairy itself, sleeping there in the beautiful rose-coloured
light. None of the bigger, grander dolls could have appealed to my
imagination as did this little one. After all it is on _that_--on the
part played by their own imagination, that chiefly depends the amount of
pleasure children get out of their toys, and those that are in
proportion to their own diminutive scale and on a level with their
simple requirements, appeal to them far more than others, chiefly
remarkable for their magnitude and costliness. Lively as I was, I took
the very greatest care of all my toys, treating them as if they were
animate, sentient objects, so that I was in despair if any of them got
broken or hurt. Demonstrations of affection never being encouraged, in
fact being rather sternly repressed in our family, all my pent up
tenderness poured itself out on my dolls and also on my little
horse-hair pillow which I used to hug and kiss in gratitude every night
before going to sleep. It was all the dearer to me, because it was not
taken with us on our journeys, and as I was not allowed to sleep on a
down pillow, I generally, when we were away from home, had to do without
altogether, which was by no means pleasant. Notwithstanding--or perhaps
in consequence of this severe training,--having always been accustomed
in my youth to sleep on a rather hard thin mattress stretched on a very
narrow camp bedstead, I have grown somewhat more luxurious in that
respect in my later years, and can hardly now be too softly pillowed in
order to rest at ease. It is as if there were a sort of reaction,--a
revolt of human nature against unnecessary and useless hardships
imposed,--a lassitude of the whole frame to which some slight measure of
indulgence must be accorded. Not in the matter of the palate though!
Naturally abstemious, the habits of my youth still prevail with me there
to such an extent, that to this day I prefer a slice of good wholesome
black bread to all the daintiest, most skilfully prepared dishes in the
world! We children knew too by experience the relish that the
imagination may impart to the simplest fare, unconsciously resembling
one of the creations of the great English novelist as we “made believe”
to spread a little butter on the bread which the hygienic theories of
the age insisted on our eating dry! But everything has its compensation,
and who knows if those pleasures of the imagination, which were our
chief resource, are not denied to the younger generation, from whom we
scarcely seem to exact even needful self-restraint and self-denial,
much less to call upon them for any exceptional sacrifice of their own
comfort. Where every whim is gratified from the outset, there remains
neither the necessity nor the inclination to seek refuge from unpleasant
realities in a fairer world, to spread one’s wings and take flight for
the realms of Fancy. Do the children of the present day even rightly
believe in the possibility of thus spreading their wings? Would not some
of these little sceptics laugh at the idea? Poor little things! Can it
really be that there is no fairyland for them, no enchanted isles in the
distant ocean, no kingdoms to conquer, no heroic deeds to be performed,
that their souls find complete satisfaction in the prosaic details of
everyday life, and never soar beyond the region of dull commonplace fact
of their dreary school-hours? They little know of what they are
deprived! They could never guess the joy we knew in the possession of
this wondrous secret, this magic key, which unlocked the gates of
fairyland, of the world of dreams, of noble adventure, wherein we could
wander at will. What battles we fought, what gallant deeds we performed,
what wrongs we redressed with the aid of those invisible armies, always
at hand to come to our assistance and conduct us to victory, when the
odds seemed too overpowering! But we had not invariably such exalted
ambitions as these, it was not even always the discovery of some lonely
desert island on which we were bent, but a much simpler, more modest lot
satisfied us, provided it were but sufficiently removed from that which
in truth was ours! Thus it was one of my favourite ideas from the time
I was four years old, to be a village schoolmistress, but I could not
persuade my brother to promise that he would settle down beside me as
the schoolmaster. That would have clashed with his dream of being a
soldier, so it was settled that I should be the “daughter of the
regiment,” the _vivandiére_, and accompany it everywhere so that we
might not be separated. Ah! what marvellous adventures, what hairbreadth
escapes, what glorious triumphs were ours! Sometimes we were sold as
slaves, at others we were bold sea-farers and again quiet peasant-folk
carrying our spades and milk-cans. It was by this means that we kept up
our spirits, and preserved our good humour successfully, in spite of all
that was irksome in our actual surroundings. Thanks to my lively
imagination, I did not succumb to the persistent onslaught of the
educational efforts destined to turn the current of my thoughts into a
perfectly alien channel. In vain was I tied down to science and
mathematics, logarithms and equations will forever be to me lifeless,
meaningless abstractions, and it took me much less time than I had spent
in acquiring it, to forget the velocity of a body falling through space!
As for doing a simple sum in addition, I might as well never have
learned the process at all for the little I know about it now. But the
art of inventing a story, of calling up imaginary beings, of following
them through the vicissitudes of their career, and weaving all this
together to a plot--that was mine then and is still mine,
notwithstanding all that was done to crush it out of me. What should I
have done on the long tedious journeys, had I not been able to amuse
myself by the delightful stories I thought out. Sitting cramped in my
corner of the travelling-carriage or railway compartment, afraid even to
stretch my limbs lest the movement should disturb one or other of the
invalids, I owe it to my imagination alone, that child as I was, I did
not fall into hopeless melancholy.
It was this same happy faculty of creating for myself an ideal
atmosphere, and peopling this new world with my best-beloved heroes, and
the no less heroic creations of my own brain,--this it was which lent so
great a charm to many of our resorts,--standing us in good stead for
instance, in investing with beauty the rather tame, stiff garden of a
London square, so unsuited for the abode of mystery or romance. Apart
from our intimacy with the Bunsen family, our stay in London possessed
indeed few attractions for us. There was no relaxation of the customary
strictness with which we were treated, on the contrary, there seemed to
be an accumulation of wearisome restrictions and petty annoyances
attendant on the stay in strange houses. Even when there was a garden,
we might hardly play there, certainly not dig in it, nor run across the
lawn, and as for venturing to gather a flower, I was haunted by visions
of angry men pursuing us with thick sticks, ever since the day when the
landlord had shaken his finger at us, just for touching his
orange-trees! It was a little better in Hastings, where we had the
beautiful open sea, and the beach on which we could play undisturbed.
But our pleasure there was damped by our perpetual anxiety and sadness
on my mother’s behalf, whose illness had already entered then on its
most distressing stage. From the window I could see her carried in and
out of the sea, sometimes alas! to lie in convulsions on the beach, the
servants standing round holding up umbrellas to protect her from the
gaze of inquisitive onlookers. I stood sad and helpless at the window,
unable to understand the unfeeling curiosity of these strangers. It was
not quite so bad on their part though, as the behaviour of two Germans
on the steamer that brought us over from Ostend, who kept pushing
against my mother’s lame foot as she sat on deck, and even complained at
her, for taking up so much room. It hurt her most of all, that it should
be her own countrymen who were thus rude and heartless. Let us hope that
it was merely sea-sickness which made them so inhuman! And the lady
resembled them who, when my mother had dragged herself on her crutches
to a railway-carriage and was preparing to enter it, shut the door in
her face, saying:--“there is no room here!” What a contrast to the good
old bathing-man at Hastings, who used to carry her in and out of the
water, and was so sorry to see how she suffered, that he would pat her
cheek gently, and talk to her as if he were comforting a small
child:--“There, there, poor dear! it will be better soon!”
That journey from Ostend belongs to the most painful experiences of my
childhood, it was nothing but discomfort and sadness, and I shall never
forget the wailing of my poor little baby brother Otto, suffering all
night long in one of the frightful paroxysms of pain, for which in vain
relief was sought. His devoted English nurse, our good Barnes, sat
rocking him in her arms the whole time, and every now and then she cast
a sympathetic glance my way, but she could do nothing to help or comfort
me, she was entirely taken up with her poor little charge. Had there
been anyone there who could have told me a story to distract my
thoughts, to take me for a moment out of myself, and away from the
unhappiness which I was helpless to console! How often may not some
pretty well-told tale, some little snatch of song, help a child to
forget the misery of its weary limbs and aching head, and soothe it to
sleep.
One of my best and happiest experiences belongs however here, and must
not be forgotten. It relates to that very Fräulein von Bunsen, the lame
daughter, Emilie, “Aunt Mim,” as we afterwards called her, of whom I
have already spoken. And the incident was called forth by some childish
misdeed of mine, one of those trivial offences many would deem scarce
worth noticing, but for which with us a punishment utterly
disproportionate to the enormity of the crime was invariably inflicted.
I was thus on this occasion condemned to be left behind alone, while the
others set off joyously in five or six carriages to spend a day among
the hop-pickers,--a treat to which I had been looking forward for weeks
past. As they drove off, and I stood watching them sadly from the
balcony, seeing their happy faces and listening to their gay laughter,
feeling myself to be an outcast from the paradise towards which they
were setting forth,--it was then that the lame Fräulein von Bunsen,
happening to look up, caught sight of me, and before I could hide
myself, had waved her hand to me with a friendly smile that went far to
reconcile me with my lot and the world in general. The greeting, the
smile, fell on my wounded heart like balm. Up to that moment I had felt
somewhat like a condemned criminal, fearing that I must be looked down
upon and shunned by every member of that happy party, since it was known
to them all that I was deprived by my own fault of the pleasure of
joining them. But the kind thought, the kind smile, took away all the
bitterness of my reflections, and were treasured piously in my memory.
Years after, when I reminded dear Aunt Mim of the occurrence, I was
still more pleased to hear from her that my absence had been much
regretted, not by her alone, but by all the others, on that day. They
were all so sorry for me, she said, and missed the wonderful stories,
which I was never tired of telling on all such excursions. I had
forgotten all about that, my best stories being always made up for
myself alone, as I lay in bed in the morning, awake with the birds and
listening to their singing, and feeling the spirit of song just as alive
in me, while the rest of the house was still fast asleep. I only
remembered her kindness and the comfort it gave me, and until she
reminded me of it, had never thought again of that other unlucky day on
which the wheel of the little donkey-carriage, with her mother and
youngest sister sitting in it, passed over my foot, at which I took
care not to cry out or even make a face, and was only betrayed by the
torn condition of my shoe, which led to my being scolded and sent home
to have my foot bathed, instead of being allowed to continue my walk.
What a pretty picture Fräulein von Bunsen made in those days with her
sweet expression, and pink and white complexion, leaning back in her
bath-chair in her pink dress and hat with pink roses, pink veil and
sunshade, looking a very rosebud herself! She was like my mother in this
also, that the same treatment by which the latter was restored to health
was very effective in her case too, and after undergoing it she spent
many years in our house. Very intelligent, she possessed in a high
degree the riper wisdom peculiar to those who have watched from afar the
waves of life go surging by, themselves untouched by their tumult. An
invalid looks on at the spectacle of human existence with something of
the aloofness of a recluse, and is able to preserve the same childlike
candour and crystalline purity of soul. No passion had ever stirred the
depths of hers. It was like a deep transparent lake, in which earth and
sky are reflected, clouds and sunshine, night and storm, and which yet
remains unchanged through all. She reached her eightieth year in the
same untroubled harmony of thought and feeling, her features very little
altered by age, and her voice as sweet and clear as ever. Music was the
very centre of her being, round which her whole existence revolved. I
played duets with her for hours together, learning to know all the best
works of the great classic composers so thoroughly and well, it was as
if the glorious floods of melody had passed into my veins, to flow there
mingled with my blood for evermore. How often did we thus succeed in
flinging away all sorrow and care, feeling our troubles ooze out at the
finger-tips, and our souls grow lighter as we played! All the days of my
youth seem to pass before me, whenever I hear Beethoven’s Symphonies:
certain of them,--the second, and that in C minor,--represent for me, as
do Schubert’s Quartet and Mozart’s Symphony in G minor, very special
phases of my existence, storms that were laid to rest by their potent
spell. Our piano was a very old instrument whose keys were yellow with
age, but to us it had the fulness of tone of a whole orchestra. And to
strengthen the illusion, my father would often join us and hum or
whistle some special passage as it is written for the different
instruments, to try to give me some faint idea of the orchestral effect.
In our enthusiasm we had soon forgotten the limitations of the means at
our command, above all we forgot our own imperfections, we felt the
whole orchestration, and in the grandeur of the conception the
inadequacy of the performance was quite swallowed up. Is that not the
best way to enjoy these divine masterpieces, the safest method of
interpretation? It would not suffice, I am well aware, for the
exigencies of a modern audience, incapable of drawing on the imagination
to supply the deficiencies of execution. The hurry and bustle of the
century leave no room for the modest efforts of a dilettante, imbued
though these may be with the spirit of truest adoration. Ours was the
purest hero-worship, unmixed with aught of personal vanity or ambition.
We simply thanked God, in the fulness of our hearts, that He had sent
Beethoven to enrich and beautify the world!
At other times Aunt Mim would sit quietly at work in the library, whilst
I wandered restlessly to and fro, like a caged lion, as she always said,
telling her all that passed through my brain. It was just her unruffled
calm that encouraged me to let loose on her the flood-gates of my soul.
Surely those human beings come nearest perfection, who have preserved
through life their angelic innocence, and it is perhaps to further this
that such are often afflicted with some bodily infirmity, whereby the
soul has power to raise itself above this earth.
By her perfect submission to the Divine Will, her firm faith which no
doubt had ever clouded, no less than by her unswerving fidelity in
friendship, and the cheerful, sunny temperament that had in it something
of the playfulness and simplicity of a child, Aunt Mim was the pearl of
her whole family and became invaluable and indispensable to ours. In
those hours of greatest suffering, when words of good cheer could no
more avail, then her quiet sympathy would yet often find means of making
life a little more endurable to the poor sick child, of distracting my
father’s thoughts from present sadness. Only one so utterly detached
from all thought of self could have refreshed and lightened that
atmosphere of gloom. So heavily did it press at times on my childish
mind, and so thoroughly had my mother inculcated the belief in death as
the supreme good to be wished and desired by us all, as the sole release
from pain and suffering for ourselves and others, that during the weeks
in which, after my brother Otto’s birth, she lay between life and death,
my governess often heard me praying that God would take her to Himself!
It caused some perplexity, I believe, to her who overheard this singular
prayer, to hit on the right method of bringing me to desist from it,
without disturbing the effect of the maternal teaching, and she wisely
contented herself with telling me that although it would doubtless be
for Mamma’s happiness to go to heaven, I need not ask for this, as God
would take her to Himself in His own good time, and that moreover I
should then see her no more. I was very much astonished at this, never
having for a moment contemplated the possibility of being deprived of my
mother’s presence by death. My idea of heaven was of something so real
and near, that whenever I gazed up into the blue sky, I felt sure that
were my beloved ones there, I might at any moment see a little window
opening to let me through to join them! Well is it with us if we can
keep this belief through life, if like children, who have left their
heavenly home too recently to accustom themselves to this earth, and
could depart again from it without a pang, we can but bear in mind
during the whole course of our dreary pilgrimage, that we have here no
abiding place, and keep our hopes fixed on the life beyond!
If I appear to dwell overmuch on my inner life in childhood, it is for
the sake of other children, many of whom are perhaps as liable to be
misunderstood as I was myself. Who was there, of the grown-up people
around me, who could ever guess what was really passing in my mind?
Taught that it was my duty to enliven and gladden others, I had schooled
my face to an expression of perpetual cheerfulness, and should have
considered myself eternally disgraced, had anyone ever surprised me in
tears. It is only by the utmost kindness and tenderness, that we can
hope to win the confidence of a proud and sensitive child, and break
down the wall of reserve behind which it early learns to intrench
itself.
Among the many agreeable recollections I retain of the house in Carlton
Terrace, that of the entrance and staircase is especially vivid, both
being carpeted, as was the passage leading to the rooms above, with soft
green felt, while book-shelves lined every available space along the
walls. Such a friendly, home-like impression was thus at once created,
intensified by the habit of making of the entrance-hall, on which the
doors of all the rooms opened, a favourite resort for reading or
conversation. That green carpeting, of just the tint of the green baize
of a billiard-table, on which one’s eyes rested with so much pleasure,
was no less agreeable to the ears, every sound being deadened, and the
wheeled chairs of the invalids passing over it quite noiselessly.
Under Bunsen’s auspices, a literary society was founded in Bonn, whose
members--generally under pseudonyms--submitted their work for his
approval. Among the translators, my mother distinguished herself by a
version of the magnificent Paternoster in Dante’s _Purgatorio_, and
another of Longfellow’s _Song of the Old Clock_, with its mournful
refrain--“Forever--never,--never--forever!”
Needless to say, though it is perhaps the proper place to insist upon it
here, that I cannot pretend to describe the persons I have known,
otherwise than just as they appeared to me at the time itself, these
reminiscences being but the faithful transcription of the impressions
received at different periods of my life, starting from my earliest
childhood. Not for one moment can I profess to have been competent at
the early age that then was mine, to form a correct idea of Bunsen’s
literary merits. Of his books, the “Signs of the Times” and others, the
titles were all that was known to me, but my respect for the career of
letters was innate and unbounded, and the fact that he was an author
impressed me immensely. Sometimes I have vaguely wondered since, whether
with him intellectual brilliancy in the best meaning of the word may not
have outweighed depth of thought. But this is a mere conjecture, on
which it would be unfair to base a judgment. One talent, that was
indisputably his, and which since I have been able rightly to appreciate
it I have often envied him, was Bunsen’s marvellous facility for
skimming through a book, and acquiring by that rapid survey a sufficient
knowledge of its contents, to be able to discuss it afterwards, most
minutely in all particulars with the author, as if he had read every
word of it!
Another gift, which is sometimes denied to people of commanding
intellect, but which invariably renders its possessor beloved, was also
his in a supreme degree: the aptitude for drawing out all that was best
and worthiest of notice in others, of making those around him feel, as
if it were not merely _his_ wit alone, but theirs also that made the
conversation brilliant. A rare gift indeed! For all will agree, that
pleasant as it is to be in the society of clever people, pleasantest of
all is to have to do with those, who make us feel cleverer ourselves
while we talk to them!