"chair" for saying too freely in 1820 what Princes had openly proclaimed
in 1813. Dahlmann was, in truth, still one of "the Seven of Goettingen,"
inasmuch as Ernest Augustus had not yet made his Hanoverians to regret
that they were governed by the Salic law. But there was Welcker, the great
historian of art, and the brilliant elocutionist, from whom the Prince
must have learnt much of that close knowledge and warm appreciation of art
which afterwards made him so efficient a furtherer of culture in this
kingdom. There were Loebell and Perthes, von Alten, Bethmann-Hollweg,
Walter, Brandis, Nitzsch, Deiters, Bleek, Breidenstein, Noeggerath,
Argelander, Schlegel, Fichte, Pluecker, Boecking, and many more--not a few
of whom I can perfectly remember from my own days. The two Princes, and
more particularly Prince Albert, knew how to turn the opportunities at
their command to admirable account, not merely by attending the public
lectures with exemplary regularity, but, in addition, by seeking out
learning, so to speak, _en deshabille_, and drawing from it in the easy
way of conversation and chat probably more information than it dispensed
on more formal occasions. Prince Albert was on excellent terms with the
most able of these men--Schlegel, Perthes, Bethmann-Hollweg, Walter and
some more--and was frequently to be seen walking with one or other of them
in the Poppelsdorfer Allee, or else on the Venusberg, or along the Rhine,
keeping up an animated conversation. And often would he ask some one or
two to his house, or else drop in--sometimes on his own invitation--to
that peculiarly German repast of evening "tea," further to prosecute his
cross-questioning. "Tea," of course, does not in this application mean
anything like our own "five o'clock," nor yet quite so substantial a meal
as our middle-class "high tea," but a light evening repast, such as is
usual (viz., after a good mid-day dinner) among the cultivated classes in
Germany, when _en famille_, from the Imperial Court downward. Taxing the
stomach but little, such a meal leaves the head all the more free for
intellectual occupation, and is, in truth, dependent for its best relish
on the Attic salt supplied by the company. (The "tea" itself is,
unfortunately, as a rule, indifferent in quality.) At Bonn these "teas"
became little feasts of reason, and used to be, I am told, one of the
Prince's particular delights. He was in the habit of discussing questions
of learning and politics and statesmanship very freely with his own chosen
little set, Prince Loewenstein and others. But he knew the difference
between this and putting Professors (who in Bonn were then not merely men
of the lamp) into the witness-box and pleasurably pumping them dry over
their own tea-table. Nobody relished this treatment more than the
Professors themselves, who in after-time often spoke of the enjoyable
evenings which they had spent, and the pleasure of discussing matters on
which they were masters with so apt a pupil, who knew how to put
brightness and stimulating interest into the conversation. The Prince's
enjoyment, it is to be suspected, went even a little further. For, men of
great learning as these Professors were, more than one of them had
contracted odd habits of speech and manner, which no man was more quick to
note and more apt inoffensively to caricature--in mien and with
pencil--than the Prince. We know that he could use pen and brush deftly
enough. And more particularly of his artist's work completed at Bonn
several specimens survive--for instance, the Queen's "Savoyard Boy." Some
of the caricature sketches referred to are said to have been admirable,
and no less so the mimicry which, without malice or guile, brought out
tellingly the little oddities of these learned gentry, to the intense
amusement of a privileged and very select audience. There was, as it
happened, ample material. Schlegel, the great and the witty--there could
have been no pleasanter companion than he who first made the Germans
understand Shakespeare--was, with all his merits, vain and conceited, and
foolishly insisted upon parading his conceit before the world. He was old
at that time, and lectured only at rare intervals, but every now and then
some of that old impetuosity would break out, which in earlier days had
made him, without regard for conventionalities, pull off his coat and
waistcoat in the midst of an evening party, in order to fling to his
brother Frederick the smaller garment, for which in a rash moment he had
bartered away a good story. Then there was Loebell, the friend of Tieck,
the uncompromising Protestant, full of historic lore as an egg is of meat,
and of truly magnetic attractiveness to his pupils, but ugly as a monkey,
diffident and gauche, and, thanks to his habitual absence of mind, a
source of the oddest and never-failing anecdote. Perthes and Fichte laid
themselves equally open to ridicule. The "University Judge" (Proctor) von
Salomon, commonly nicknamed "the Salamander," was made more than once to
sit for a comic portrait; and Oberberghauptmann Count Beust--the Prince's
own countryman, a native of Saxe-Coburg, with whom the Prince was on terms
of comparative intimacy--provided at times irresistible food for laughter,
not only by his curious squat little figure, but even more by that
genuinely Saxon sing-song accent, which seems to be a common feature of
all Beusts who have not remained in their old Brandenburg home. The
statesman of the same name, whom we have seen in our midst, shared this
same family defect, and was accordingly known in Saxony as "Beist;" and
one of the Ministries of which he formed a member was currently spoken of,
by way of joke, as "Behr _beisst_ Rabenhorst." As droll as any was
Professor Kaufmann, from whom, long before I listened to the curious
cadences of his speech, the Prince Consort learnt very orthodox political
economy conveyed in the prosiest of ways, fortunately relieved by the
quaintest illustrations of economic truths which could ever have issued
from the brain of man. He looked like one of Cruikshank's figures come to
life, and it was really difficult not to laugh at him.
The Prince's shafts of wit never wanted point, but at the same time they
never struck painfully home. There was no mimicry or jest which even its
victims could not readily forgive. Years after the Prince had left Bonn,
the very men whom he had amused himself by taking off most mercilessly
looked back, not only without resentment, but with absolute satisfaction,
on all this intercourse. And when, on the approach of the Prince's
marriage, it was proposed to send him a Latin address of congratulation,
and to bestow upon him--as the fittest offering for the occasion that the
Senate could think of--the Degree of _Doctor utriusque juris_, the motion
was carried by acclamation, and the learned Professor Ritschl was at once
commissioned to compose a Latin ode, which turned out perfect in grammar
and prosody, but which is a trifle too long to be here quoted.
With the students, generally speaking--apart from his own little princely
set--the Prince was less intimate. He would mingle with them in the
quadrangle, the lecture-hall, and the fencing-room, and he would invite
them periodically, in batches, to his hospitable table, where, of course,
he made a most genial host. But I have heard complaints of his supposed
reserve and coldness, and his keeping people at a distance, contrasting
just a little with the _engouement_ with which Prince Ernest was ready to
take part in the fun and frolic of German student life. It was said that
the coming engagement with the Queen, which rumour considerably
ante-dated, had chilled Prince Albert's young blood, and led him to stand
a little on his dignity. Probably this was to some extent a question of
manner. But, moreover, it ought to be borne in mind, that student life was
in those days just a trifle rough, and, knowing what it was, one can
readily understand the Prince's disinclination to identify himself
altogether with habits not by any means congenial to himself. He could
grow sociable enough with students on proper occasions. He is known to
have been a regular attendant at the _Fechtboden_--where, however, he
practised rather with the broad-sword than with the student's
rapier--ready to accept the challenge of any competent opponent; and he
would occasionally look on with interest at a real _Mensur_, whenever good
fencers were put forward to fight. We know that at a great fencing match
he carried off the first prize.[11] Even beyond this, from time to time he
would visit a students' _Kneipe_--having duly prepared himself for the
short nocturnal dissipation with a little snooze--and join very readily in
the fun and the mirth, more particularly in such amusements as allowed
play for the intellectual faculties. He was fond of German melodies, and
knew how to delight his audience with a song. And when it came to some
serio-comic diversion--such as the mock-trial know as a _Bierconvent_, a
travesty of legal proceedings, conceived, when ably led, in the spirit of
Demosthenes' hypothetical lawsuit about "the shadow of an ass"--he is said
to have been excellent. But mere beer-drinking and shouting were not in
his line. At home he was wont to cultivate the Muses, People still talk of
a little volume of poetry which the two brothers are said to have brought
out conjointly in support of a local charity, and to which Prince Albert
is supposed to have contributed the verse, and Prince Ernest the tunes. I
should not be surprised to learn that Prince Albert had as much to do with
the music as with the text. So far as there was poetry and music and
geniality to be found under the rough mask of student life, the Prince was
very ready to take part in it. And during the sixteen months of his
studentship he grew sufficiently familiar with some of his fellow-students
even to _tutoyer_. My friend, E. von C----, who was then a boy, distinctly
remembers meeting him walking towards the Rhine, and hearing him accosted
by two burly "Westphalians": "Wo gehst du hin, Albert?" "Ich gehe ins
Schiff," was his reply; "ich reise nach England." The Westphalians at once
turned round to see him off. That was an eventful journey "to England."
How little _hauteur_ really had to do with the Prince's intercourse with
his fellow-men is testified by the friendly acquaintanceship which grew up
at Bonn between him and persons of an entirely different class, and which
has still left its honourable memories behind.
Pretty well opposite his own quarters, cornering the Martinsplatz--where
now are two much-frequented shops--in those days stood a middle-sized
house, over the door of which might be read the inscription
"Weinwirthschaft von Peter Stamm." In later days, under a new proprietor,
the house came to be more ambitiously christened "Gasthaus zum Deutschen
Hof." In this establishment both Princes were frequent visitors, perhaps
Prince Albert more so than his brother. It was at this corner generally
that they mounted horse for a ride--I believe that some of their horses
were put up in the "Weinwirthschaft"--and here accordingly my friend, von
C----, used to watch for them, in order to hold their stirrups. In a
University town, in which
Bibit hera, bibit herus,
Bibit miles, bibit clerus,
Bibit ille, bibit illa,
Bibit servus cum ancilla,
Bibit velox, bibit piger,
Bibit albus, bibit niger,
Bibit constans, bibit vagus,
Bibit rudis, bibit magus,
Bibit pauper et aegrotus,
Bibit exul et ignotus,
Bibit puer, bibit canus,
Bibit praesul et decanus,
Bibit soror, bibit frater,
Bibit anus, bibit mater,
Bibit iste, bibit ille,
Bibunt centum, bibunt mille:
Tam pro Papa, tam pro rege
Bibunt omnes sine lege,
of course there are wine-shops many, and beer-shops many; and neither
student nor "Philistine" need ever be in any fear of having to remain
"dry" for want of liquor. But there has always been some one or other
wine-house raised a little above the common run, not by any pretentious
architecture or outfit--as a rule it was in external features one of the
most unpretending in the town--but by the superior quality of the liquor
served. Here would meet--as is doubtless the case now--the _honoratiores_
of the town, and some other blithe spirits, admitted almost by favour, a
select _clientele_, to sip down, to the accompaniment of fluent
conversation, not the vulgar "schoppen" of the multitude, but the
capitalist "special"--a half-pint held in a massive goblet-shaped glass.
In my time the "select" wine-house of this sort was that of
"Schmitzkoebes"--which means "James Schmitz"--in the market-place. In the
Prince's time it was the house of Peter Stamm. However, it was not for the
wine that the Prince came to this house--though in moderation he
appreciated a glass of good Rhenish, or Walporzheim. In our
aristocratically organised country, where, moreover, sportsmanship is held
to be public property, as accessible to the stockbroker as to the squire,
we have no idea of the fast link which in Germany--altogether differently
constituted, at any rate, then--the love of sport will bind between
persons of totally different classes. It holds them together like a
bracket. Prince and farmer, noble and tradesman--it is all alike _quoad_
sport; for that purpose genuine comradeship is established, on altogether
equal terms. There is no giving one's self away in this, nor yet any undue
presumption. The tradesman remains a tradesman, the prince no less a
prince; social differences are merely put aside. Now Peter Stamm was a
most zealous sportsman, who knew where to find a hare or a bird for many
miles round, and could spend whole nights and days with his dog and with
his gun--more particularly if there were some like-minded companion to
share the sport. And what was more for the present purpose, he was an
ardent horse-fancier, and a connaisseur of horse-flesh. His brother,
"Stamm-hannes"--that is, "John Stamm"--was a noted horse-dealer and
horse-breaker, who always had some good cattle on hand. And, moreover,
Peter Stamm was a great dog-fancier, and known for having the best dogs in
all Bonn. From him, I believe, it was that the Prince purchased that
handsome favourite of his, Eos, whom he brought over with him to England,
his constant companion then on walks and drives and travels. So here was a
threefold cord which bound together these two neighbours, living within a
stone's throw of one another--a link which never broke in after-life. Long
after the Prince had left Bonn, there used to be messages going backwards
and forwards. When Peter was gone, Stamm-hannes kept up the intercourse,
and on one of his travels to England even visited the Prince as an old
friend. They are both dead now--and so is Nicolas, the third brother, who
kept the Bellevue Hotel on the Rhine. But to the present day old Fraeulein
Stamm, now eighty-three years of age, carefully preserves and
affectionately cherishes the few keepsakes which still remain of the
Prince's giving--originally to Peter--and there is nothing that the old
lady is more fond of talking about than those old days, when the Prince
and Peter used to drive out to the Kottenforst together, and Peter would
come home and tell her of their common, not overexciting, adventures. The
keepsakes have dwindled down to three pictures and two porcelain cups, the
latter rather rudely painted, as was the fashion in those days, with views
of the Drachenfels and Rolandseck. Of the pictures, two are portraits of
the young Princes taken at Brussels before they repaired to Bonn, and
showing their boyish faces flanked by two heavy pairs of epaulettes. The
third, a woodcut, represents some unknown sportsman going a-stalking.
There used to be other small articles, such as sportsman friends are in
the habit of presenting to one another; but time has, one after the other,
disposed of them.
The Prince, we know, was always particularly fond of bodily exercise. At
Bonn he would fence regularly. And he would swim with as much zest, and
think nothing of mixing with the common crowd in those rough-and-ready
swimming-baths which I well remember; for in my time they were still all
the convenience for river bathing that Bonn had to offer--a rude concern
on the other bank of the Rhine, knocked together out of a raft and a few
sheds. In those baths the Prince did not seem to mind whom he rubbed
shoulders with. In this respect he closely resembled his son-in-law, the
Emperor Frederick, whose popularity in Berlin was not a little enhanced by
the _sans gene_ with which he would, while in the water, join in the
splashing and larking of his future subjects, to whom it never on such
occasions occurred to forget themselves. A simple "Na, Jungens, jetzt ist
genug" from the Prince would at once warn them back into proper distance.
The Prince Consort became just as popular among the swimmers at Bonn. The
Rhine is really a troublesome river to swim in, on account of the force of
its current. The Prince would have himself rowed up a pretty long
distance, to swim back. I once or twice swam the same distance, in company
with Count H----, of the "Borussians," and we both found it quite long
enough. A very favourite sport with the Prince was, to tumble little boys
into the water--the swimming-master being by for safety--and then dive
after them to bring them up. He would select such as were not likely to be
frightened. And they came to like the fun.
But the Prince's favourite recreation of all was going a-shooting. In the
near neighbourhood of Bonn there is no very ambitious sport. The more
venturesome spirits go as far as the Eifel Mountains, there to kill
wild-boar and red-deer. For this the Prince grudged the time. So he had to
be content with hares and birds, an occasional roebuck--and, I dare say,
in those, early days he now and then brought down a fox, which in Germany
is reckoned rather good sport. When, in 1858, the Crown Prince, Emperor
Frederick, came back from his wedding, and found the officers of the Deutz
Cuirassiers drawn up in line at the Cologne station to salute him, he
singled out Count F----, of M--dorf, to present more especially to his
bride. "I must present Count F---- to you," he said; "it was on his estate
that I shot my first fox." Either Count F----'s conscience stung him, or
else he realised better than the Crown Prince in what light vulpicide is
regarded in the Princess's country: "It was not really a fox, Sir," he
explained with some embarrassment; "it was a wild cat."
There were water-fowl near Bruehl; there used to be a heronry there. But I
do not think the Prince went in that direction. His ordinary
shooting-ground was near Bergheim, on the other side of the Rhine and,
beyond the Venusberg, in the Kottenforst, a long stretch of forest, not
everywhere well-timbered, in which Peter Stamm had a "Jagd," to which of
course the Prince was welcome. Wherever the forest was a little ragged
there were, of course, black game. And then, in spring, to the Prince's
great delight, there was woodcock shooting. The "Schnepfenstrich" was his
pet sport, and never was he to be seen more regularly driving his plain
little trap out to Roettgen--where Stamm had his shooting--the faithful
Peter always by his side--than in the four weeks which precede Palm
Sunday, the season of all others sacred in Germany to woodcock shooting,
for
Oculi, da kommen sie;
Laetare, das ist das wahre;
Judica, sind sie auch noch da;
Palmarum, Trallarum.
The Latin words are the Lutheran calendar names for the four Sundays next
before Easter.
Often Stamm-hannes would be of the party--often also Everard Sator,
another local Nimrod and horse-fancier, of Stamm's peculiar set, and
acceptable to the Prince. And some of the Prince's more aristocratic
companions would likewise occasionally join. But the Prince and Peter were
in this matter inseparables, roughing it out on the wooded heights from
sheer love of sport; and after that they would meet in the
"Weinwirthschaft" and talk over their common experiences, being
attentively overheard by a small company who reckoned it a privilege,
however little they might know about shooting, to listen to these
sportmen's tales, and bottle them up to retail to others after the Prince
was gone.
There was another very faithful friend, of humbler station still, whose
heart the Prince managed to capture by his genial affability and the kind
interest which it was his wont to manifest in others. Nobody could have
stayed any time in Bonn at that particular period without becoming
acquainted with "Appeltring"--or, as she was more ceremoniously called to
her face, "Frau Gevatterin." She was, without question, the most popular
"character" in Bonn, and there was no man who had not a kind word for her,
and was not ready to test her well-known power of repartee by a little
joke. "Appeltring," of course, means "Apple-kate"--"Tring" standing for
Katherine by one of those extraordinary transformations of names which,
probably, not even Grimm could explain, and which in the Rhenish dialect
convert "Heinrich" into "Drickes," and "Reinhard" into "Nieres." She was
an apple-woman, as her name implies, or, rather, a seller of fruit
generally, and had her stall or tent just outside the Neuthor, close to
the Prince's quarters, and on a spot which he must pass several times
almost every day--a coign of vantage, moreover, from which all the
fashionable and unfashionable world taking the air in the Poppelsdorfer
Allee, might be surveyed, as can all the fine folk passing in and out of
Hyde Park from Hyde Park Corner. She was on that spot still when I was at
Bonn twenty-three years later, and she was there for some time after--a
weather-bronzed, wrinkled old woman then, but still full of chat and
lively talk, humour and repartee, and endowed with a truly encyclopaedic
knowledge of everyone who had been anyone at Bonn, and of his life, and
failings, and little adventures. Even in the Prince's day she was
decidedly past her first youth, and devoid of personal attractions; but
she had still something of the halo about her then of a not very distant
serio-comic little love affair, about which she was made to hear no end of
chaff--with a trumpeter (named Bengler, if I recollect right) who lost his
life in that Russian war in which the great Moltke won his first spurs.
During all the time that she offered her wares outside the Neuthor her
stall was a favourite resort with folk who had a spare quarter of an hour
on their hands, some of them of the best blood. The Emperor Frederick has
sat on that spot many a time, watching the passers-by, and exchanging chat
with "Tring," while eating cherries from one of the shallow flat-bottomed
baskets in which "Frau Gevatterin," or her younger assistant, served them
from the tent; and so have the Coburg Princes, more particularly Prince
Albert, who had a peculiar liking for "Appeltring" and her quaint ways,
her good temper, and her ready answers. Barring the Princes, "Tring's"
customers were not always prompt paymasters. This necessitated the keeping
of accounts, which, as "Tring" was nothing of a penwoman, resulted in a
description of bookkeeping so curious as to induce a learned archaeological
society of Bonn afterwards to publish her records in facsimile. There were
no names, but rude imitations of a beard, or a tassel, or big top-boots,
or else a peculiar nose, or a pair of spectacles, or some other
distinguishing feature about the particular debtor.
The habit of almost daily chat begot a peculiar familiarity and interest
in one another's affairs between these two people at opposite poles of
society, and inspired "Tring" with a devotion to the Prince which has
just a touch of romance about it. To her simple but honest mind the Prince
was the noblest creature that walked the earth. Whenever he failed to pass
to bid her good-day, she seemed to feel as if deprived of a substantial
pleasure. For years and decades after he had gone she would relate with
striking animation little stories of his life in Bonn, and tell of his
kindness to her. She was indefatigable in inquiries about him, and would
draw in every word of information received with eager curiosity. Nor did
she ever hear of anyone going to England without commissioning
him--"Jruesse Se den Prinzen Albehrt." It sounded very ridiculous to some,
no doubt. But I venture to surmise, that to the Prince himself that
broadly Rhenish "Jruesse Se den Prinzen Albehrt" would have been a not
unwelcome greeting.
Most of the good people here spoken of, with whom the Prince exchanged
jokes and more serious intercourse, whom he charmed with his happy temper
or edified with graver talk, are now dead and gone. Bonn has grown a town
of 50,000 or 60,000 inhabitants, well-to-do, bright and attractive, adding
to its population year by year. The University has throughout its history
maintained its old high rank. As a new generation rises up old
reminiscences are dying out. Stories which thirty years ago passed current
from mouth to mouth are gradually being forgotten. There is so much more
that used to be told of the Prince, when memories were fresh; indeed,
there is much that might be told still, only the incidents seem trivial in
themselves, and memorable only as demonstrating what singular power their
hero possessed of riveting men's affections, and as concurring in
impressing a stamp of noble principle, unselfish consideration for others,
of a genial and happy disposition, and laborious devotion to study upon
his student life of sixteen months. There was, there is reason to believe,
very much good done in private, of which the outside world never heard. To
Bonn the Prince's stay was a turning-point in its history; and, since
elsewhere scarcely anything has been said about that particular epoch in
the Prince's life, it may not be unmeet to gather together the fragments
of traditions and reminiscences surviving, before they pass finally out of
men's minds, and thus to fill a gap hitherto left in the memorials of a
life which has in its later periods amply realized the promise given in
the early days of youth here spoken of.
VIII.--SOMETHING ABOUT BEER.[12]