certain that I shall take Rochow's position in the summer. In that
event, if the rating remains as it was, I shall have a salary of
twenty-one thousand rix-dollars, but I shall have to keep a large
train and household establishment and you, my poor child, must sit
stiff and sedate in the drawing-room, be called Excellency, and be
clever and wise with Excellencies. * * * The city is not so bad as you
suppose; there are a great many charming villas before the gates,
similar to those in the Thiergarten, only more sunny. As Councillor of
Legation, it will be difficult for us to live there, owing to distance
and expense; but as Ambassador, quite as charming as is possible in a
foreign land. By letters of introduction I have quickly become
acquainted with the charming world hereabouts. Yesterday I dined with
the English Ambassador, Lord Cowley, nephew of the Duke of Wellington;
very kind, agreeable people; she is an elegant woman of about forty,
very worldly, but benevolent and easy to get acquainted with; I have
immediately put myself on a friendly footing with her, so that when
you step into the cold bath of diplomatic society she may be a
powerful support for you. Previously I called on a Frau von Stallupin
(pronounce Stolipine), a young woman without children, kindly, like
all Russian women, but terribly rich, and settled in a little
castle-like villa, so that one hardly dares to take a step or to sit
down; a Scharteuck interior is a rude barn compared with it. Day
before yesterday evening I called on Frau von Vrintz, a sister of
Meyendorf's wife; the diplomatic folks assemble every evening in her
drawing-room. Countess Thun was there, a very handsome young woman, in
the style of Malvinia; also the Marquis de Tallenay, French
Ambassador, a polite fifty-year-old; Count Szechenyi, a gay young
Magyar, full of pranks, and divers other foreign personages. They
gamble there every evening, the lady of the house, too, and not for
very low stakes; I was scolded for declaring it boresome, and told
them it would be my rôle to laugh at those who lost. Society probably
does not appeal to you very strongly, my beloved heart, and it seems
to me as though I were harming you by bringing you into it, but how
shall I avoid that? I have one favor to ask of you, but keep it to
yourself, and do not let mother suspect that I have written you one
word about it, otherwise she will worry needlessly over it: occupy
yourself with French as much as you can in the meantime, but let it be
thought that you yourself have discovered that it is useful. Read
French, but, if you love me, do not do so by artificial light, or if
your eyes pain you; in that case you had better ask mother to read to
you, for it is almost harder to understand than to speak. If you know
of any agreeable piece of baggage you can get in a hurry to chatter
French to you, then engage one; I will gladly pay the bill. You will
enter here an atmosphere of French spirit and talk, anyway; so you
cannot avoid familiarizing yourself with it as far as possible. If you
know of no person whom you like and who is available, let it go; and,
at any rate, I beg you sincerely not to consider this advice as a
hardship, or otherwise than if I asked you to buy yourself a green or
a blue dress; it is not a matter of life and death; you are _my_ wife,
and not the diplomats', and they can just as well learn German as you
can learn French. Only if you have leisure, or wish to read anyway,
take a French novel; but if you have no desire to do so, consider this
as not written, for I married you in order to love you in God and
according to the need of my heart, and in order to have in the midst
of the strange world a place for my heart, which all the world's bleak
winds cannot chill, and where I may find the warmth of the home-fire,
to which I eagerly betake myself when it is stormy and cold without;
but not to have a society woman for others, and I shall cherish and
nurse your little fireplace, put wood on it and blow, and protect it
against all that is evil and strange, for, next to God's mercy, there
is nothing which is dearer and more necessary to me than your love,
and the homelike hearth which stands between us everywhere, even in a
strange land, when we are together. Do not be too much depressed and
sad over the change of our life; my heart is not attached, or, at
least, not strongly attached, to earthly honor; I shall easily
dispense with it if it should ever endanger our peace with God or our
contentment. * * * Farewell, my dearly beloved heart. Kiss the
children for me, and give your parents my love.
Your most faithful v.B.
Frankfort, May 16, '51.
_Dear Mother_,--* * * So far as I am at present acquainted with the
_highest_ circles of society, there is only one house which seems to
me to promise company for Johanna--that of the English Ambassador. As
this letter will probably be opened by the Austrian (Frankfort)
post-office authorities, I shall refrain from explaining on this
occasion the reasons therefor. Even those letters which, like my last
ones, I took occasion to send by a courier, are not secure from
indiscretions at _Berlin_; those to me as well as those from me; but
those which go by the regular mail are always opened, except when
there is no time for it, as the gentleman who will read this could
probably testify. But all that, for better, for worse, forms part of
the petty ills of my new position.
In my thoughts I must always ask you and our dad to forgive me for
depriving you of the pleasure and the happiness of your old days,
inasmuch as I transplant to such a distance the bright child-life,
with all its dear cares, and take Johanna away a second time from her
father's house; but I see no other way out of it, which would not be
unnatural, or even wrong, and the strong arm which separated us when
we hoped to be united can also unite us when we least expect it. You
shall at least have the conviction, so far as human purpose can give
it, that I shall wander, together with Johanna, with the strong staff
of the Word of God, trough this dead and wicked activity of the world,
whose nakedness will become more apparent to us in our new position
than before, and that to the end of our joint pilgrimage my hand shall
strive, in faithful love, to smooth Johanna's paths, and to be a warm
covering to her against the breath of the great world.
Your faithful son, v.B.
Frankfort, May 18, '51.
_My Darling_,--Frankfort is terribly tiresome; I am so spoiled by so
much affection and so much business that I am only just beginning to
suspect how ungrateful I always was to some people in Berlin, to say
nothing of you and yours; but even the cooler measure of fellowship
and party affiliation which came to me in Berlin may be called an
intimate relationship compared with intercourse here, which is, in
fact, nothing more than mutual mistrust and espionage, if there only
were anything to spy out or to conceal! The people toil and fret over
nothing but mere trifles, and these diplomats, with their
consequential hair-splitting, already seem to me more ridiculous than
the Member of the Second Chamber in the consciousness of his dignity.
If foreign events do not take place, and those we over-smart Diet
people can neither direct nor prognosticate, I know quite definitely
now what we shall have accomplished in one, two, or five years, and am
willing to effect it in twenty-four hours if the others will but be
truthful and sensible for a single day. I have never doubted that they
all use water for cooking; but such an insipid, silly water-broth, in
which not a single bubble of mutton-suet is visible, surprises me.
Send me Filöhr, the village-mayor, Stephen Lotke, and Herr von
Dombrowsky, of the turnpike-house, as soon as they are washed and
combed, and I shall cut a dash with them in diplomatic circles. I am
making headlong progress in the art of saying nothing by using, many
words; I write reports of many pages, which read nice and smooth as
editorials; and if Manteuffel, after he has read them, can tell what
they contain, he can do more than I. Each of us makes believe that he
thinks the other is full of ideas and plans, if he would but speak
out, and yet we none of us know a jot better than the man in the moon
does what is to become of Germany. No mortal, not even the most
malevolently skeptical Democrat, will believe what a vast amount of
charlatanism and consequential pomposity there is in this diplomacy.
But now I have done enough scolding, and want to tell you that I am
well, and that I was very glad and gave thanks to the Lord that,
according to your last letter, all was well with you, and that I love
you very much, and look at every pretty villa, thinking that perhaps
our _babies_ will be running about in it in summer. Do see that you
get the girls to come along, or if they absolutely refuse, bring
others from there with whom we are already somewhat acquainted. I
don't care to have a Frankfort snip in the room, or with the children;
or we must take a Hessian girl, with short petticoats and ridiculous
head-gear; they are half-way rural and honest. For the present I shall
rent a furnished room for myself in the city; the inn here is too
expensive. Lodgings, 5 guilders per day; two cups of tea, without
anything else, 36 kreutzers (35 are 10 silbergroschen), and, served as
the style is here, it is insulting. Day before yesterday I was at
Mayence; it is a charming region, indeed. The rye is already standing
in full ears, although the weather is infamously cold every night and
morning. The excursions by rail are the best things here. To
Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, Odenwald, Hamburg, Soden, Wiesbaden, Bingen,
Rüdesheim, Niederwald, is a leisurely day's journey; one can stay
there for five or six hours and be here again in the evening; hitherto
I have not yet availed myself of it, but shall do so, so that I may
escort you when you are here. Rochow left for Warsaw at nine o'clock
last night; he will arrive there day after tomorrow at noon, and will
most likely be here again a week from today. About politics and
individuals cannot write you much, because most letters are opened,
When once they are familiar with your address on my letters and with
your handwriting on yours, they will probably get over it, because
they have no time to read family letters. Do not be afraid of the
local aristocracy; as to money, Rothschild is the most aristocratic,
but deprive them _all_ of their money and salaries, and it would be
seen how little each one is aristocratic in himself; money doesn't do
it, and otherwise--may the Lord keep me in humility, but here the
temptation is strong to be content with one's self.
Countess Pückler, sister of the Countess Stolberg, resides at
Weistritz, near Schweidnitz. Now, farewell; I must go out. God's
blessing be with you. Give F. and M. much love. Your most faithful v.
B.
Frankfort, May 27, '51.
_My Darling_,--* * * On Friday there was a ball at Lady Cowley's,
which lasted until five in the morning; they all dance here as if
possessed; the oldest delegates of fifty, with white hair, danced to
the end of the cotillion, in the sweat of their brows. At midnight
"God Save the Queen" was solemnly played, because her birthday was
dawning, and it was all a transparency of English coats-of-arms and
colors from top to bottom, and very many odd, stiff ladies, who "lisp
English when they lie," as I read once upon a time the translation of
that passage in _Faust_; that is to say, they all have a passion for
talking bad French, and I am altogether forgetting my English, as I
have discovered to my dismay. * * * Oftentimes I feel terribly
homesick, and that is to me an agreeable sadness, for otherwise I seem
to myself so aged, so dryly resigned and documentary, as if I were
only pasted on a piece of card-board. * * * Give your dear parents my
heartfelt love, and kiss Annie's pretty hand for me, because she stays
with you so sweetly-Now, I shall not write another word until I have a
letter from you in hand. Yesterday I attended the Lutheran church
here; a not very gifted, but devout, minister; the audience consisted,
apart from myself, of just twenty two women, and my appearance was
visibly an event. God bless and keep you and the children.
Your most faithful v.B.
[Illustration: PRINCESS BISMARCK]
Frankfort, Ascension Day--Evening.
(Postmarked Berlin, June 1, '51.)
_My Heart_,--How good it is of you all that, directly after I had
mailed my complaint of lack of news, there arrives such a shower of
letters. A thousand thanks to your dear parents, and I shall answer
dad tomorrow, when I am less hurried than today, for on this dear
holiday, after a big dinner, I must still write some long despatches.
I was at the French church today, where at least there was more
congregation and devotion, and the minister was passable, too, but I
cannot talk French with my dear, faithful Lord and Saviour; it seems
to me ungrateful. For the rest, they sang pretty hymns, these insipid
Calvinists, almost in the sweet Catholic tune which you always
play. * * *
Your most faithful v.B.
Your letter had been opened again.
Frankfort, June 4, '51.
_My Darling_,--Were you not going to write to me any more? I was
resolved even yesterday not to put pen to paper until I should have a
letter from you, but, anyway, I will be good, and tell you that I am
well and love you, even if you let your little inkstand dry up. I long
exceedingly for you and the children, and for quiet, comfortable
domesticity at Schönhausen or Reinfeld. As soon as I have finished my
hitherto rather unimportant occupations, my empty lodgings, and the
whole dreary world behind, face me, and I know not where to set my
foot, for there is nothing which particularly attracts me. Day before
yesterday I ate at Biberich, with the Duke of Nassau, the first fresh
herrings and the first strawberries and raspberries of the season. It
is certainly a delightful piece of earth along the Rhine, and I looked
pensively from the castle windows over to the red cathedral of
Mayence, which, almost four years ago, we both went to see very early
in the morning, in times for which we were not then sufficiently
grateful to God; I remembered how, on board the steamer, the blue
hills before us, we passed by the Duke's handsome castle, without
dreaming how and why I should stand there at the window this year, an
old wig of a Minister before me, who unravelled his views on national
polities, while I was thinking, with an occasional absent-minded
"Quite so," of our trip of '47, and sought with my eyes the spot on
the Mayence bridge whence you, in your little Geneva coat, embarked on
the steamer; and then I thought of Geneva. * * * Countess Thun
unfortunately left on Sunday for Tetschen, to spend three months with
her father-in-law. She is a kindly lady, womanly and devout (Catholic,
very), attributes which do not grace the women here in general; her
husband gambles and flirts, I believe, more so than is agreeable to
her. I hardly believe that you will like her, but she is one of the
better specimens of women of the great world, even though that just
proves to me that a woman of that world would not have been suitable
for me; I like her to associate with, but not to marry. Perhaps, by
comparing her with the others of her sort, you will learn to
appreciate her. The gentlemen are unendurable. The moment I accost one
he assumes a diplomatic countenance, and thinks of what he can answer
without saying too much, and what he can write home concerning my
utterances. Those who are not so I find still less congenial; they
talk equivocally to the ladies, and the latter encourage them
shamefully. It makes a less morbid impression on me if a woman falls
thoroughly for once, but preserves a sense of shame at heart, than if
she takes pleasure in such chatter; and I value the Countess Thun,
because, despite the general fashion prevailing here, she knows how to
keep decidedly clear of all that sort of thing. * * * Your most
faithful v.B.
Frankfort, June 26, '51.
_My Darling_,--Today I have been suffering all day long from
homesickness. I received your letter of Sunday early, and then I sat
in the window and smelled the summer fragrance of roses and all sorts
of shrubs in the little garden, and while so doing I heard one of your
dear Beethoven pieces, played by an unknown hand on the piano, wafted
over from some window opposite, distantly and in snatches, and to me
it sounded prettier than any concert. I kept wondering why I must,
after all, be so far away, for a long time, from you and the children,
while so many people who do not love each other at all see one another
from morning till night. It is now seven months since I received at
Reinfeld the order to join the regiment; since then we have twice paid
each other a hasty visit, and it will be eight or nine months before
we shall be again united. It must, indeed, be the Lord's will, for I
have not sought it, and when I am sorrowful it is a consolation to me
that I did not speak a syllable in order to come here, and that
ambition for outward pomp was not what led me to this separation. We
are not in this world to be happy and to enjoy, but to do our duty;
and the less my condition is a self-made one, the more do I realize
that I am to perform the duties of the office in which I am placed.
And I certainly do not wish to be ungrateful, for I am, nevertheless,
happy in the knowledge of possessing so much that is dear, even if far
away from here, and in the hope of a happy reunion. On the arrival of
every letter from Reinfeld my first feeling is one of hearty gratitude
for the unmerited happiness that I still have you in this world, and
with every death of wife or child which I see in the newspaper the
consciousness of what I have to lose comes forcibly home to me, and of
what the merciful God has granted and thus far preserved to me. Would
that gratitude therefor might so dispose my obstinate and worldly
heart to receive the mercy of the Lord that it shall not be necessary
for Him to chastise me in what I love, for I have greater fear of that
than of any other evil. * * * In a few weeks it must be decided
whether I shall be made Envoy here or stay at Reinfeld. The Austrians
at Berlin are agitating against my appointment, because my
black-and-white is not sufficiently yellow for them; but I hardly
believe they will succeed, and you, my poor dear, will probably have
to jump into the cold water of diplomacy; and the boy, unlucky wight
that he is, will have a South-German accent added to his Berlin
nativity. * * * As far as can now be foreseen, I shall not be able to
get away from this galley for two or three weeks, for, including
Silesia, that amount of time would probably be necessary for it. But
much water will flow down the Main before then, and I am not worrying
before the time comes. How I should like to turn suddenly around the
bushy corner of the lawn and surprise all of you in the hall! I see
you so plainly, attending to the children, covering up Midget, with
sensible speeches, and father sitting at his desk smoking, the mayor
beside him, and mammy bolt-upright on her sofa, by wretched light, one
hand lying on the arm-rest, or holding _Musée Français_ close before
her eyes. God grant that at this moment everything at Reinfeld is
going as smoothly as this. I have at last received a letter from Hans,
one that is very charming, and, contrary to his custom, mysterious, in
view of the post-office spies. You may imagine how Senfft writes to me
under these circumstances. I received an unsigned letter from him the
other day, out of which the most quick-witted letter-bandit would have
been at a loss to decipher what he was driving at. If you occasionally
come across some unintelligible notices at the tail end of the
_Observer_, they will thus seem to you more puzzling still, and to the
blockhead who breaks open this letter they will remain unintelligible,
even if I tell you that they are a part of my correspondence. Only
give me frequent tidings, my beloved heart, even if short ones, so
that I may have the assurance that you are alive and well. A have
picked the enclosed leaves for you in the garden of old Amschel
Rothschild, whom I like, because he is simply a haggling Jew, and does
not pretend to be anything else, and, at the same time, a strictly
orthodox Jew, who touches nothing at his dinners, and eats only
"undefiled" food. "Johann dage vid you some bread for de deers," he
said his servant as he came out to show me his garden, in which there
were some tame fallow deer. "Baron, dat blant costs me two thousand
guilders, honor bride, two thousand guilders gash; I vill let you have
it for one thousand or, if you vant it for nuddings, he shall bring id
to your house. God knows I abbrejiate you highly, Baron; you are a
nize man, a brave man." With that he is a little, thin gray imp of a
man, the patriarch of his tribe, but a poor man in his palace,
childless, a widower, cheated by his servants, and ill-treated by
aristocratically Frenchified and Anglicized nephews and nieces who
will inherit his treasures without gratitude and without love.
Good-night, my angel. The clock is striking twelve; I want to go to
bed and read chap. ii. of the Second Epistle of St. Peter. I am now
doing that in a systematic way, and, when I have finished St. Peter,
at your recommendation I shall read the He-brews, which I do not know
at all as yet. May God's protection and blessing be with you all.
Your most faithful v.B.
Frankfort, July 3, 1851.
_My Pet_,--Day before yesterday I very thankfully received your letter
and the tidings that you are all well. But do not forget when you
write to me that the letters are opened not by me alone, but by all
sorts of postal spies, and don't berate particular persons so much in
them, for all that is immediately reported and debited to my account;
besides, you do people injustice. Concerning my appointment or
non-appointment I know nothing as yet, except what was told me when I
left; everything else is possibilities and surmises. The only
crookedness about the matter us far has been the government's silence
towards me, for it would have been only fair to let me know by this,
and officially at that, whether during next month I to live here or in
Pomerania with wife and child. Be careful in your remarks to every one
there, without exception, not to Massow alone; particularly in your
criticisms of individuals, for you have no idea what one experiences
in this respect after once becoming an object of surveillance; be
prepared to see warmed up with sauce, here or at Sans Souci, what you
may perhaps whisper to Charlotte[17] or Annie in the boscages or the
bathing-house. Forgive me for being so admonitory, but after your last
letter I have to take the diplomatic pruning-knife in hand a bit. Do
not write me anything that the police may not read and communicate to
King, ministers, or Rochow. If the Austrians and many other folks can
succeed in sowing distrust in our camp, they will thereby attain one
of the principal objects of their letter-pilfering. Day before
yesterday I took dinner at Wiesbaden, with Dewitz, and, with a mixture
of sadness and knowing wisdom, I inspected the scenes of past
foolishness. Would that it might please God to fill with His clear and
strong wine this vessel, in which at that time the champagne of
twenty-two-year-old youth sparkled uselessly away, leaving stale dregs
behind. Where and how may Isabella Loraine and Miss Russel be living
now? How many of those with whom I then flirted, tippled, and played
dice are now dead and buried! How many transformations has my view of
the world undergone in the fourteen years which have since elapsed,
while I always considered the existing one as alone correct! and how
much is now small to me which then appeared great, how much now
deserving of respect which I then ridiculed! How many a green bud
within us may still come to mature blossom and wither worthlessly away
before another period of fourteen years is over, in 1865, if we are
then still alive! I cannot realize how a person who is thoughtful and,
nevertheless, knows nothing or wishes to know nothing of God, can
endure giving a despised and tedious life, a life which is fleeting as
a stream, as a sleep, even as a blade of grass that soon withers; we
spend our years as in a babble of talk.
I do not know how I endured it in the past; if I should live now as I
did then, without God, without you, without children, I should, in
fact, be at a loss to know why I should not cast off this life like a
soiled shirt; and yet most of my acquaintances are thus, and they
live. If in the case of some one individual I ask myself what reason
he can have, in his own mind, for continuing to live, to toil, to
fret, to intrigue, and to spy--verily I do not know. Do not conclude
from this scribbling that I happen to be in a particularly black mood;
on the contrary, I feel as when, on a beautiful September day, one
contemplates the yellowing foliage; healthy and gay, but a little
sadness, a little homesickness, a longing for woods, lake, meadow, you
and the children, all mingled with the sunset and a Beethoven
symphony. Instead of that I must now call upon tiresome serene
Highnesses and read endless figures about German sloops of war and
cannon-yawls which are rotting at Bremerhaven and devouring
cash. * * * Farewell, my beloved heart. Much love to our parents, and
God keep you all.
Your most faithful v.B.
Frankfort, July 8, 1851.