MY TUTORS
I use the word advisedly, the direction of my studies, after my twelfth
year, being almost entirely taken out of female hands, my mother feeling
more confidence in the competence of persons of the other sex to impart
to me the sound and thorough instruction she insisted on and which must
moreover be in accordance with her own views, and not in the least on
the pattern of the ordinary curriculum for girls. Religious instruction
she had always been in the habit of giving us herself and she kept up
the practice until within a few weeks of my confirmation, preparing over
night with great pains the subject of the lesson which she gave us every
morning at six o’clock, and which was sometimes a theological
disquisition, sometimes a survey of ecclesiastical history. For these,
as for all my other lessons, I had to write essays, rather for the
purpose of obliging me to summarise and recapitulate systematically all
that I had learnt, than as an encouragement to the expression of my own
ideas; this exercise was, notwithstanding, probably of the greatest
value to me as enabling me to acquire very early great facility with my
pen. Already at quite an early age I had my own very decided views about
style, and I remember as quite a child coming into conflict with the
very first of my male teachers--one of the masters from the Neuwied
Grammar-school, engaged to give me German lessons--concerning an essay
on “Springtime,” I had written for him. Inspired by so congenial a
theme, I had simply let myself go, and the pages I handed to Herr Nohl
were probably more remarkable for originality than for academic
correctness of form. Whether he laid too much stress on negligencies of
styles, which in my youthful impetuosity I was too little inclined to
heed, I can no longer say; but I know that his unsparing criticism of my
work struck me as unjust, and that the corrections he proposed did not
seem to me to improve it at all.
Latin I was taught by my brother’s tutor, joining Wilhelm at his
lessons, a plan adopted partly in order to give him the stimulant of
emulation, but which became a source of unspeakable pleasure and profit
to myself. I had such delight and displayed so much facility in the
acquisition of a new language, that linguistic talent was supposed to be
my special gift. No one understood, nor was I myself until long after
aware, that it was language, and not languages, that was my real
concern. Unconsciously, I was forging for my own use the weapon that was
to serve me later on, and this peep into the beauties of the Latin
tongue--for a mere peep it was, since I laboured under the disadvantage
of having to plunge into its mysteries at the point at which my brother
had arrived,--was yet of immense service to me, in enlarging my horizon,
and affording me a cursory inspection of the treasures of another world.
The grammar of that noble idiom I never rightly mastered, it is true,
conscientiously as I battled with it. Many and many a night have I
fallen asleep over my books, my head resting on the ponderous old
dictionary in which I was seeking the key to some involved construction
in the verse, whose majestic cadence enchanted my ear, even before I had
fully apprehended its true significance. My brother’s tastes were very
different from my own; it was not languages that interested him, but
mathematics and the exact sciences. Inventions of all sorts were his
special hobby, every new kind of machine had a special fascination for
him, and he would have loved to be an engineer. The other course of
lessons given us by Professor Preuner, on classic art, was perhaps of
even greater efficiency in opening my eyes to the glories of the ancient
world, since here there were no technical obscurities to interpose
themselves between my vision and the masterpieces revealed. In a series
of excellent drawings these were displayed to us, and their perfection
pointed out and explained with so much enthusiasm by our professor,
himself an ardent devotee of Grecian art, that we in turn learned to
know and love these treasures of antiquity so thoroughly and well, my
subsequent visits to the great European galleries containing the
originals had nothing of strangeness or surprise,--it was but as if I
were renewing acquaintance with old and well-loved friends, of whom I
had lost sight for a while.
An equal meed of gratitude, though on other grounds, is due from me to
the old mathematician, Henkel, who had been my father’s tutor in former
days, and who now laboured hard, though with but poor results, to
introduce the rudiments of his to me most dismal science into my very
refractory brain! What endless trouble the dear old man took, and what
inexhaustible patience he displayed in the attempt to initiate me into
the mysteries of progressions and equations, or even the simple
extraction of a square root! Under his kindly tuition I filled many
note-books, covered whole pages with figures supposed to calculate the
logarithm of a number, without even knowing what a logarithm was! Euclid
I never understood at all; I can just remember that in every
right-angled triangle the square on the hypothenuse is equal to the sum
of the squares on the other two sides; but why? Ah! that is a very
different matter! As for algebra, it was utterly incomprehensible to me,
so I contented myself with learning a few of the formulæ by heart. Just
as in a cousin of mine,--a man of great learning, considerable literary
culture, and possessed of a fine taste in painting,--the musical sense
is entirely wanting, so to me the properties pertaining to number and
quality will forever remain a sealed book.
To my French governesses I owe thanks for having so thoroughly grounded
me in their language, that I could employ it for my literary work as
well as my mother-tongue, one of my books being written originally in
French. They too were my guides on my first incursions in the glorious
domain of French literature, whose vast treasure-house I ransacked
greedily, dwelling with special delight on the matchless beauty of the
great prose-writers, my ear, accustomed to the more marked cadence of
German verse, having always, I confess, been slightly deaf to the
melody of the Alexandrine couplet. To the earlier poets of course this
restriction does not apply, and Villon and Clément Marot became each in
his own way dear to me, as were Ronsard and the other illustrious
members of the Pléïade.
Then came a moment, on which I can look back with a certain special
satisfaction, during which I was left without either governess or
preceptor of any sort to pursue my studies entirely on my own account,
save for the advice given me for my reading by my parents. Those were
the months which I devoured with avidity every book that came in my
way--even history, I remember, and not only such works as Schiller’s
“Thirty Years’ War” and “Revolt of the Netherlands,” rendered
fascinating by their literary style, but, to please my mother, the drier
pages of Becker’s great Universal History, in its fourteen volumes, were
all waded through, rather more perfunctorily, I fear, than some of my
lighter reading! Still, the hours spent thus were surely not altogether
lost, and the habit of independent study, once acquired, never left me.
But this course of independent study could not of course be allowed to
go on indefinitely, and with the professor on whom, after much
deliberation, my parents’ choice ultimately fell, they, like myself, had
every reason to be satisfied. This was a very young _savant_, named
Sauerwein, a protégé of the Prince Consort’s friend, Baron Stockmar, by
whom he was recommended to my parents, as being capable of undertaking
the entire direction of my studies, from the stage at which I had now
arrived. He was a man of quite remarkable attainments, his linguistic
talent in particular having gained for him the reputation of a second
Mezzofanti, with such apparent ease did he apply himself to acquiring
each new language to add to his already goodly store--about thirty, it
seems to me, he spoke quite fluently at the time when I knew him. To
myself the charm of Sauerwein’s teaching lay in his having no cut and
dried pedagogic method; not considering it the chief object of education
to alter the direction towards which his pupil’s tastes and abilities
naturally turned, he had no wish to force my mind into a groove into
which it could never fit itself, but rather made it his aim to adapt
himself to the exigencies of the situation. In after years my tutor
owned to me how great his amazement had been, when in the place of the
child of thirteen he believed his future pupil to be, he found a young
girl, tall for her years and very self-composed, who in a few
well-chosen words thanked him for the trouble he was about to give
himself. And his surprise reached its height when the following morning
he heard the “Prisoner of Chillon” very dramatically recited by the
pupil who was to learn English from him!
It was well for me that I was so thoroughly prepared, as to be the
better able to profit by the unusual and really admirable course of
instruction Herr Sauerwein now entered on. Its range was wide
and varied, history--and English constitutional history in
particular--occupying a very considerable part of it, an exhaustive
knowledge of the political development of that country being deemed
essential, at a moment when all other nations seemed bent on blindly
copying English customs and institutions, however little compatible
these might be with their own mind and character. Many a State has since
had to learn to its cost, the mistake of transplanting growths of
foreign culture upon their soil, and the impossibility of amalgamating
these alien elements with the national life. But at that time, in
Germany as elsewhere, the admiration for all things English made
historians like Macaulay and Carlyle extremely popular, and also
encouraged the study of English literature. That part of the programme
was pure delight to me. Under my new preceptor’s guidance I obtained a
comprehensive survey of the whole vast field, from Chaucer to modern
times. The Scottish dialect was no bar to my appreciation of Burns; many
of his poems I learnt by heart, and can remember still. But the
literature of my own country was not neglected, and here also we started
reviewing it from its origins, deciphering early Gothic fragments,
continuing our quest through Eddas and Nibelungen, and lingering with
joyful pride among the heroes sung of by Gottfried and by Wolfram, in
the poems that are so glorious a national heritage. So well did I love
them, the noble knights of King Arthur’s Court, and the doughty
champions of the Holy Grail, that I can hardly forgive Wagner the
liberties he has taken with these fine old stories, in order to suit
them to the requirements of his music, glorious though that be. The
versions of these sublime legends given by Wagner came doubtless as a
revelation to those to whom they were as yet unknown;--but to us, who
had lived among them and loved them from our birth, his arbitrary mode
of treatment was rather of the nature of a sacrilege. The term is
perhaps too strong, but I cannot forget my keen disappointment at
certain features of the representations at Bayreuth. It is on this
account that I prefer the _Meistersinger_ to all Wagner’s other works,
since he had here no legend to alter or spoil, but simply a material
which he could turn and twist as he pleased, and which could only gain
by his skilful handling and by the musical atmosphere which his genius
conjured up around the personages of his drama.
From the study of our old Germanic legends in their epic form, we passed
on to the early poetic monuments of other lands, collections of
primitive songs and ballads being ransacked for their best specimens,
whilst the great national epics were made the object of more exhaustive
scrutiny. Throughout the whole of this vast field of exploration, my
tutor’s remarkable linguistic equipment made him the surest and best
qualified of guides; Sanscrit and Russian were as familiar to him as the
Neo-Latin tongues or Celtic idioms; snatches of Hungarian song
alternated on his lips with verses of the Persian and Arabic poets; and
his reading was as extensive as his literary taste was sound. Some of
the fine old poems with which I then became acquainted--the “Kalerala”
or “Ramayana” and “Mahalharata” for instance, in which the soul of a
whole race has been enshrined and preserved, have since by the talent
and industry of translators, and increased facilities of publication,
been made easily accessible to all; but in those days neither the
Finnish, nor the great epics of Hindustan, were popularly known, and it
was no mean privilege I enjoyed, in being led through these labyrinths
of delight by one to whom every step of the way was familiar.
It was Sauerwein’s aim, to give me something more than a superficial
acquaintance with all that is best in the literature of the whole world;
our course of reading was in consequence strangely diversified; Ossian
and the Minnesänger, Sakuntala and the “Gerusalemme Liberata,” these
were but a few of the multitudinous and bewildering contrasts forced
upon my youthful brain, to which some credit is perhaps due for having
borne without ill results so unusual a strain. On my progress in Italian
Herr Sauerwein laid special stress, and, as I afterwards learnt, from
the very kindest motives. He was well aware both of my poetic
proclivities and of the persistent attempts to stifle these, and,
thinking it a pity that my imaginative powers should not have fair play,
he quietly encouraged me under cover of the Italian essays set me and
into which no one else looked, to give my fancy the reins and write as
the spirit prompted. Long after, he showed me a whole pile of these
compositions, and told me of the satisfaction he had felt in watching
the dawn of a talent, of whose existence no one else, and I myself least
of all, was really cognisant at that time. Little did he think, when he
recited to me some of the old Welsh songs, that one day, in the
assembly of the bards, I should be acclaimed by them as one of their
number. Nor could my mother foresee, in the infinite pains she bestowed
on improving my handwriting, that the Gothic and ornamental letters she
set before me as models would become to me as a simple running-hand, and
that I should fill whole volumes with finely traced characters,
imitating the missals illuminated with such care and reverence by pious
monks of old.
I had as schoolroom a little room leading out of my mother’s, so that
she could be present at all my lessons, in the next room, even when she
was too ill to leave her bed. Few mothers I think can have taken their
duties more seriously. Our religious instruction, as I said, she always
gave us herself, assisted by my father. Her old clerical friend, Pastor
Dilthey, came and stayed with us at Monrepos just a few weeks before my
confirmation, to prepare me for it, but the real work of preparation had
been accomplished by my mother beforehand. The examination that precedes
the ceremony took place in Monrepos, in our own woods, in the presence
of more than a hundred people, members of our family on both sides and
many friends, and among the latter that most constant of friends, the
Empress Augusta, who never missed an opportunity of showing her
affection and regard. Never shall I forget that solemn moment of my
life, and my dear little Otto’s touching words, which he wrote for me in
the little volume of the “Imitation” he gave me in remembrance of the
day. For some time before the confirmation, in order that I might give
my whole thoughts to preparing for so serious an event, my
music-lessons had been stopped; I had not been allowed to practise at
all, so that it was with renewed energy that I returned to it
afterwards. The riding-lessons which I now had from one of my uncle’s
equerries, a most excellent riding-master, gave me less pleasure. This
exercise, like dancing, seemed dull to me, from lack of intellectual
stimulus.
But I should never have done if I tried to enumerate all those who
contributed to my education, and from whom at some time or other I have
learnt. It was not always from one’s regular professors that the most
useful lessons came. We are forever learning, for Life itself is a
school from which there is no playing truant, and whose teaching only
stops at the grave. As for educational systems and theories, Nature, the
greatest teacher of all, often laughs these to scorn. The best of them
is but a bed of Procrustes, to fit which human limbs are ruthlessly
lopped or stretched. Wiser were we to leave to Nature’s self the task of
fashioning each individual in youth. She has not made all on one
pattern, and diversity, not uniformity, is her aim.