you, and, above all, if I had you with me. All official matters--and
in them rests really the calling which in this world has fallen to my
lot, and which you, through your significant "Yes" in the Kolziglow
church, are bound to help bear in joy and sorrow--all official matters
are, in comparison with Frankfort, changed from thorns to roses;
whether they will ever blossom is, indeed, uncertain. The aggravations
of the Diet and the palace venom look from here like childishness. If
we do not wantonly make ourselves disagreeable, we are welcome here.
Whenever the carriages are called here, and "_Prusku passlanika"_
("Prussian carriage") is cried out among those waiting, then all the
Russians look about with pleasant smiles, as though they had just
popped down a ninety-degree glass of schnapps. There is some social
affair every evening, and the people are different from those in
Frankfort. Your aversion to court life will weaken. You cannot fail to
like the Czar; you have seen him already--have you not! He is
extremely gracious to me, as well as the Czarina--the young Czarina, I
mean. And it is easy to get along with the mother, in spite of her
imposing presence. I dined with her today with the Meiendorfs and
Loen,[18] and it was just like that dinner at our house with Prince
Carl and the Princess Anna, when we enjoyed ourselves so much. In
short, only take courage, and things will come out all right. So far I
have only agreeable impressions; the only thing that provokes me is
that smoking is not allowed on the street. One can have no idea in
what disfavor the Austrians are over here; a mangy dog will not take a
piece of meat from them. I am sorry for poor Szechenyi; I do not
dislike him. They will either drive things to a war from here, or let
it come, and then they will stick the bayonet into the Austrians'
backs; however peacefully people talk, and however I try to soften
things down, as my duty demands, the hatred is unlimited, and goes
beyond all my expectations. Since coming here I begin to believe in
war. There seems to be no room in Russian politics for any other
thought than how to strike at Austria. Even the quiet, mild Czar falls
into rage and fire whenever he talks about it, as does the Czarina,
although a Darmstadt Princess; and it is touching when the Dowager
Czarina talks of her husband's broken heart, and of Francis Joseph,
whom he loved as a son, really without anger, but as if speaking of
one who is exposed to God's vengeance. Now I have still much to write
for the carrier tomorrow, and this you will not receive, I suppose,
until two days after your dear birthday, just when I am celebrating
mine by the calendar here. Farewell, my dear, and give each child a
sweet orange from me. Love to all.
Your most faithful v.B.
Petersburg, June 4, '59.
_My Dear Heart_,--At last, day before yesterday, came the
long-yearned-for news from you, with the reassuring post-mark, Stolp.
I could not go to sleep at all in the evening, because of anxious
pictures of my imagination, whose scenes were all the stopping-places
between Berlin and Reinfeld. * * * Yesterday I dined at the Czarina's,
in Zarske, where I found the Grand Princess Marie, who could tell me
at least that she had seen you in Berlin, and that you were all right.
On the way back the Czar met me at the station, and took me into his
coupé--very conspicuous here for a civilian with such an old hat as I
generally wear. In the evening I was, of course, on the islands, on a
lively dark-brown horse, and drank tea there with a nice, old,
white-haired Countess Stroganoff. The lilac, I must tell you, has
flowered here as beautifully as in Frankfort, and the laburnum, too;
and the nightingales warble so happily that it is hard to find a spot
on the islands where one does not hear them. In the city, during these
days, we had such unremitting heat as we almost never have at home.
The captain of the _Eagle_ told me that the temperature in southern
Pomerania was actually refreshing in comparison; with such short
nights, too, the morning brings no real coolness, and I could ride or
drive about for hours in the mysterious gloaming which hovers at
midnight over the surface of the water, if the increasing brightness
did not give warning that another day is waiting with its work and
care, and that sleep demands its rights beforehand. Since I have had
the drosky, in which there is too little room for an interpreter, I am
making, to the smirking delight of Dmitri, the coachman, progress in
Russian, since there is nothing left for me to do but to speak it
_tant bien que mal_. I am sorry that you have not been able to watch
with me the sudden awakening of spring here; as if it had suddenly
occurred to her that she had overslept her time, she is putting on, in
twenty-four hours, her entire green dress, from head to foot. * * *
This whole preparation for war is somewhat premature, and is causing
us unnecessary expense. I hope we shall come to our senses finally
before setting all Europe on fire, for the sake of obliging some
little princes, and, at our own cost, helping Austria in glory out of
her embarrassment. We cannot allow Austria either to be annihilated
or, through brilliant victory, to be strengthened in her feeling of
self-confidence and to make us the footstool of her greatness. But
there is plenty of time for either case before we take the plunge, and
many a piece of Lombard water can be dyed red, for things will not go
forward so easily as hitherto when the Austrians have once placed
themselves in their line of forts, as they should have done at the
first. * * *
It is a misfortune that I always write to you in a steaming hurry; now
the foxy face of the chancery servant, who is in the police pay,
besides, is before me again already, and is hurrying me up, and
everything I wanted to say is shrivelling before the fellow, who is
useful, however. I was just thinking of much more that I wanted to
write, and now I do not know anything except that I should like to
beat him. * * * In the greatest love,
Your most faithful v.B.
Moscow, June 6, '59.
A sign of life, at least, I want to send you from here, my dear, while
I am waiting for the samovar, and a young Russian in a red shirt is
struggling, with vain attempts, to light a fire; he blows and sighs,
but it will not burn. After complaining so much before about the
scorching heat I waked up today between Twer and here, and thought I
was dreaming when I saw the land and its fresh green covered far and
wide with snow. Nothing surprises me any more so when I could no
longer be in doubt about the fact I turned quietly on my other side to
continue sleeping and rolling on, although the play of the
green-and-white colors in the morning red was not without charm. I do
not know whether the snow still lies about Twer; here it is all
melted, and a cool, gray rain is drizzling down on the sheet of roofs.
Russia certainly has a perfect right to claim green as her color. Of
the four hundred and fifty miles hither I slept away one hundred and
eighty, but of the other two hundred and seventy every hand's-breadth
was green, of all shades. Cities and villages, especially houses, with
the exception of the stations, I did not notice; bushy forests,
chiefly birches, cover swamps and hills, fine growth of grass under
them, long meadows between. So it goes for fifty, one hundred, one
hundred and fifty miles. I don't remember to have noticed any fields,
or any heather or sand; lonely grazing cows or horses waken in one now
and then the conjecture that there are people, too, in the
neighborhood. Moscow looks from above like a corn-field, the soldiers
green, the furniture green, and I have no doubt that the eggs lying
before me were laid by green hens. You will want to know how I happen
to be here; I have asked myself the same question, and presently
received the answer that variety is the spice of life. The truth of
this profound observation is especially obvious when one has been
living for ten weeks in a sunny hotel-room, looking out upon stone
pavements. Besides, one's senses become somewhat blunted to the joys
of moving, if repeated often in a short time, so I determined to
forego these same pleasures, handed over all papers to Klüber, gave
Engel my keys, explained that I should take up my lodgings in the
Stenbock house in a week, and rode to the Moscow station. That was
yesterday, twelve noon, and today early, at eight, I alighted here at
the Hôtel de France. * * * It lies in the nature of this people to
harness slowly and drive fast. I ordered my carriage two hours ago,
and to all inquiries which I have been making about every ten minutes
during the last hour and a half they say (Russian), "_Ssitschàss_,"
("immediately"), with unshaken and amiable calm, but there the matter
ends. You know my exemplary patience in waiting, but everything has
its limits; hunting comes later, and horses and carriages are broken
in the bad roads, so that one finally takes to walking. While writing
I have drunk three glasses of tea and made way with a number of eggs;
the attempts at heating up have also been so entirely successful that
I feel the need of getting some fresh air. I should shave myself for
very impatience if I had a mirror, in default of which, however, I
shall send a greeting to my dear Tata, with yesterday's stubble beard.
It is very virtuous really that my first thought is always of you
whenever I have a moment free, and you should make an example of that
fact. Very rambling is this city, and especially foreign-looking, with
its churches and green roofs and countless cupolas, quite different
from Amsterdam, but the two are the most original cities that I know.
Not a single German conductor has any idea of the luggage that can be
slipped into one of these coupés; not a Russian without two real,
covered head-cushions, children in baskets, and masses of provisions
of every sort, although they eat five big meals at the stations on the
way, breakfast at two, dinner five, tea seven, supper ten; it's only
four, to be sure, but enough for the short time. I was complimented by
an invitation into a sleeping-coupé, where I was worse off than in my
easy-chair; it is a wonder to me that so much fuss is made over one
night.
Moscow, June 8th.
This city is really, for a city, the most beautiful and original that
there is; the environs are pleasant, not pretty, not unsightly; but
the view from above out of the Kremlin, over this circle of houses
with green roofs, gardens, churches, towers of the most extraordinary
shape and color, most of them green or red or light blue, generally
crowned on top by a colossal golden bulb, usually five or more on
one church, and surely one thousand towers! Anything more strangely
beautiful than all this, lighted by slanting sunset rays, cannot be
seen.
[Illustration: CORONATION OF KING WILLIAM I AT KÖNIGSBERG. From the
Painting by Adolph von Menzel.]
The weather is clear again, and I should stay here some days longer if
rumors of a big battle in Italy were not going about, which may result
in lots of diplomatic work, so that I must get back to my post. The
house in which I am writing is wonderful enough, really; one of the
few that have outlived 1812--old, thick walls, as in Schönhausen,
Oriental architecture, Moorish, large rooms, almost entirely occupied
by the chancery officers, who administer, or maladminister, Jussupow's
estates. He, his wife, and I have the one livable wing in the midst of
them. Lots of love.
Your most faithful v.B.
Petersburg, July 2, '59.
_My Dear Heart_,--I received your letter of the 25th yesterday, and
you will probably get tomorrow the one that I sent to Stettin on
Wednesday with the Dowager Czarina. My homesick heart follows its
course with yearning thoughts; it was such charming clear weather and
fresh winds when we escorted her Highness on board in Peterhof that I
should have liked to leap on the ship, in uniform and without baggage,
and go along with her. Since then the heat has grown worse, about the
temperature of a freely watered palm-house, and my lack of summer
materials is making itself decidedly felt. I go about in the rooms in
my shirt alone, as the dear blue dressing-gown is too narrow, even now
at six o'clock in the morning. A courier wakened me half an hour ago,
with his war and peace, and I cannot sleep any more now, although I
did not get to bed until towards two. Our politics are drifting more
and more into the Austrian wake, and as soon as we have fired a shot
on the Rhine then it's all over with the war between Italy and
Austria, and, instead of that, a war between France and Prussia will
take the stage, in which Austria, after we have taken the burden from
her shoulders, will stand by us or will not stand by us, just as her
own interests dictate. She will certainly not suffer us to play a
gloriously victorious rôle. It is quite remarkable that in such crises
Catholic ministers always hold the reins of our destiny--Radowitz once
before, now Hohenzollern, who just now has the predominant influence,
and is in favor of war. I look very darkly into the future; our troops
are not better than the Austrian, because they only serve half as
long; and the German troops, on whose support we reckon, are for the
most part quite wretched, and, if things go ill with us, their leaders
will fall away from us like dry leaves in the wind. But God, who can
hold up and throw down Prussia, and the world, knows why these things
must be, and we will not embitter ourselves against the land in which
we were born, and against the authorities for whose enlightenment we
pray. After thirty years, perhaps much sooner, it will be a small
matter to us how things stand with Prussia and Austria, if only the
mercy of God and the deserving of Christ remain to our souls. I opened
the Scriptures last evening, at random, so as to rid my anxious heart
of politics, and my eye lighted immediately on the 5th verse of the
110th Psalm. As God wills--it is all, to be sure, only a question of
time, nations and people, folly and wisdom, war and peace; they come
and go like waves of water, and the sea remains. What are our states
and their power and honor before God, except as ant-hills and
bee-hives which the hoof of an ox tramples down, or fate, in the form
of a honey-farmer, overtakes? * * * Farewell, my sweetheart, and learn
to experience life's folly in sadness; there is nothing in this world
but hypocrisy and jugglery, and whether fever or grape-shot shall bear
away this mass of flesh, fall it must, sooner or later, and then such
a resemblance will appear between a Prussian and an Austrian, if they
are of the same size, like Schrech and Rechberg, for example, that it
will be difficult to distinguish between them; the stupid and the
clever, too, properly reduced to the skeleton state, look a good deal
like each other. Patriotism for a particular country is destroyed by
this reflection, but we should have to despair in any case, even now,
were it linked with our salvation. Farewell once more, with love to
parents and children. How impatient I am to see them! As soon as
_Vriendschap_--so our vessel is called--is in sight, I shall
telegraph. With love, as always,
Your most faithful VON B.
Paris, May 31, '62.
_My Dear Heart_,--Only a few lines in the press of business to tell
you I am well, but very lonely, with a view out over the green, in
this dull, rainy weather, while the bumble-bees hum and the sparrows
twitter. Grand audience tomorrow. It's vexatious that I have to buy
linen, towels, table-cloths, and sheets. * * * Farewell. Hearty love,
and write! Your most faithful v.B.
Paris, June 1, '62.
_My Dear Heart_,--The Emperor received me today, and I handed over my
credentials; he received me kindly, is looking well, has grown
somewhat stouter, but by no means fat and aged, as he generally is in
caricatures. The Empress is still one of the most beautiful women I
know, in spite of Petersburg; she has, if anything, grown more
beautiful in the past five years. The whole affair was official,
ceremonial; I was taken back in court-carriage with master of
ceremonies, etc. Next time I shall probably have a private audience. I
long for business, for I don't know what to do with myself. Today I
dined alone, the young gentlemen were out; the entire evening rain;
and at home alone. To whom should I go? In the midst of big Paris I am
lonelier than you are at Reinfeld, and sit here like a rat in a
deserted house. The only pleasure I have had was sending the cook away
because of overcharges. You know my indulgence in this matter, but
Rembours was a child in comparison. I am dining for the present in a
café. How long that will last, God knows. I shall probably receive a
summons, by telegram, to Berlin, in eight or ten days, and then
good-by to this song-and-dance. If my opponents only knew what a boon
their victory would be to me, and how heartily I desire it! Then
Rechberg would, perhaps, out of malice, do his best to have me called
to Berlin. You can't have any more aversion to Wilhelmstrasse than
myself, and if I am not persuaded that it must be, then I will not go.
I consider it cowardice and disloyalty to leave the King in the lurch,
under pretence of illness. If it is not to be, then God will permit
those who search to find another _princillon_ who will offer himself
as cover for the pot. If it is to be, then "_s'Bogom"_ ("with God"),
as our Russian drivers used to say, when they took up the reins. * * *
Your v.B.
Bordeaux, July 27, '62.
_My Dear Heart_,--You cannot refuse to testify that I am a good
correspondent; I wrote this morning from Chenonceaux to your
birthday-child, and now this evening, from the city of red wine, to
you. But these lines will arrive a day later than those, as the mail
does not leave until tomorrow afternoon. I left Paris only day before
yesterday noon, but it seems to me a week. I have seen very beautiful
castles--Chambord, of which the enclosure (torn out of a book) gives
only an imperfect idea, corresponds, in its desolation, to the fate of
its owner (I hope you know it belongs to the Duke of Bordeaux). In the
wide halls and magnificent rooms, where so many kings kept their
court, with their mistresses and their hunting, the Duke's only
furniture consists now of the children's toys. My guide took me for a
French Legitimist, and squeezed out a tear as she showed me the little
cannon. I paid for the tear-drop, tariff-wise, with an extra franc,
although it is not my vocation to subsidize Carlism. The castle
court-yards lay in the sun as quiet as deserted churches; there is a
distant view round about from the towers, but on all sides silent
woods and heather to the farthest horizon; not a city, not a village,
not a farm-house, either near the castle or in the region round it.
The enclosed sprigs, specimens of heather, will no longer show you how
purple this plant I love so much blooms here, the only flower in the
royal garden, and swallows the only living creatures in the castle; it
is too solitary for sparrows. The situation of the old castle of
Amboise is glorious; from the top you can look up and down the Loire
for about thirty miles. Coming from there to this place one passes
gradually into the south; wheat disappears, giving way to maize;
between, twining vines and chestnut woods, castles and country-seats,
with many towers, chimneys, and gables, all white, with high-pointed
slate roofs. It was boiling hot, and I was very glad to have a
half-coupé to myself. In the evening glorious lightning in the whole
eastern sky, and now an agreeable coolness, which I should find sultry
at home. The sun set at 7.35; in Petersburg one can see now, without a
light, at eleven o'clock. As yet there is no letter for me here;
perhaps I shall find one in Bayonne. I shall stay here probably two
days, to see where our wines grow. Now, good-night, my angel. Dearest
love. Your most faithful v.B.
San Sebastian, August 1, '62.
_My Dear Heart_,--I could not have believed last year that I should
celebrate Bill's birthday this time in Spain. I shall not fail to
drink his health in dark red wine, and pray God earnestly to take and
keep all of you under His protection; it is now half past three, and I
imagine you have just got up from table and are sitting in the front
hall at your coffee, if the sun permits. The sun is probably not so
scalding there as it is here, but it doesn't do me any harm, and I am
feeling splendidly well. The route from Bayonne here is glorious; on
the left the Pyrenees, something like the Dent du Midi and Moléson,
which, however, are here called "Pie" and "Port," in shifting
Alpine panorama, on the right the shores of the sea, like those at
Genoa. The change in entering Spain is surprising; at Behobie, the
last place in France, one could easily believe one's self still on the
Loire; in Fuentarabia a steep street twelve feet wide, every window
with balcony and curtain, every balcony with black eyes and mantillas,
beauty and dirt; at the market-place drums and fifes, and some
hundreds of women, old and young, dancing a fandango, while the men in
their drapery looked on, smoking. Thus far the country is
exceptionally beautiful--green valleys and wooded slopes, with
fantastic lines of fortifications above them, row after row; inlets of
the sea, with very narrow entrances, which cut deep into the land,
like Salzburg lakes in mountain basins. I look down on such a one from
my window, separated from the sea by an island of rocks, set in a
steep frame of mountains with woods and houses, below to the left city
and harbor. My old friend Galen, who is taking the baths here, with
wife and son, received me most warmly; I bathed with him at ten, and
after breakfast we walked, or, rather, crawled, through the heat up to
the citadel, and sat for a long time on a bench there, the sea a
hundred feet below us, near us a heavy fortress-battery, with a
singing sentry. This hill or rock would be an island did not a low
tongue of land connect it with the mainland. This tongue of land
separates two inlets from each other, so you get towards the north a
distant view of the sea from the citadel, towards the east and west a
view of both inlets, like two Swiss lakes, and towards the south of
the tongue of land, with the town on it, and behind it, landward,
mountains as high as the heavens. I wish I could paint you a picture
of it, and if we both were fifteen years younger then we would take a
trip here together. Tomorrow, or day after, I go back to Bayonne. * * * I
am very much sunburned, and should have liked best to float on the
ocean for an hour today; the water bears me up like a piece of wood.
It is still just cool enough to be pleasant. By the time one gets to
the dressing-room one is almost dry, and I put on my hat, only, and
take a walk in my peignoir. The ladies bathe fifty paces away--custom
of the country. * * * I do not like the Spaniards so well as I like
their country; they are not polite, talk too loud, and the conditions
are in many ways behind those in Russia. Custom-houses and passport
annoyances without end, an incredible number of turnpike tolls, four
francs for one hour's drive, or else I should stay here still longer,
instead of bathing in Biarritz, where a bathing-suit is necessary.
Love to our dear parents and children. Farewell, my angel.
Your v.B.
Biarritz, August 4, '62.