Of all my reminiscences of Vienna, and those I saw there, the most
interesting are those connected with my introduction to Prince
Metternich.
The present generation is perhaps hardly aware--or not habitually so--of
the largeness of the space Metternich occupied in the political world
half a century ago. It is not too much to say that Europe in those days
thought as much about Metternich as it does in these days about
Bismarck. Of course the nature of the two men, as of the circumstances
with which they were called on to deal, is far as the poles asunder. But
on the European stage--not, of course, on the English--no actor of that
day could compete with Prince Metternich in the importance of the
position assigned to him by the world in general, as no actor of this
day can with Prince Bismarck.
It is hardly enough to say, as is said above, that the nature of the two
men was as far as the poles asunder, it was singularly contrasted. To
both of them the _salus patriæ_ has ever been the _suprema lex_; and
both of them, with increasingly accepted wisdom; have sought that
supreme end in the strengthening of the principle of authority. The
history of human affairs has not yet sufficiently unfolded itself for it
to be possible to say in this year of grace, 1887, whether they have
done so with very different measures of success. But it is very curious
to mark the similarity thus far existing between the two great
ministers, chancellors, and statesmen, combined with such very marked
(though perhaps in fact more or less superficial) differences between
the two men.
Prince Bismarck has not been thought, even by those who have most
thoroughly admired and applauded his _fortiter in re_, to have very
successfully combined with it the _suaviter in modo_. The habit of
clothing the iron hand with a velvet glove has not been considered to be
among his characteristics. And these qualities were very pre-eminently
those of the other all-powerful minister.
And the outward and bodily presentment of the two men was as contrasted
and as expressive of this difference as that of two high-born gentlemen
could well be. I saw recently in Berlin a portrait by Lembach of the
great North German chancellor. It is one of those portraits which
eminently accomplishes that which it is the highest excellence of every
great portrait to achieve, in that it gives those who look at it with
some faculty of insight not only that outward semblance of the man,
which all can recognise, but something more, which it is the artist’s
business to reveal to those who have not the gift of reading it for
themselves. That portrait, in common with most of those by the great
masters in the art of portraiture, reveals to you, with an instantly
recognised truthfulness, the interior and intrinsic nature of the man,
with a luminousness which your own gaze on the living person would not
achieve for you. I have also before me a portrait of Prince Metternich,
made at the time of which I am writing by M. Hervieu in crayons for my
mother. And without of course claiming either for the artist or for the
style of work such power as belongs to the portrait of which I have been
speaking, I may say that it does very faithfully and expressively give
you the presentment of a man in whom strength of will, tenacity of
purpose, and high intellectual power are combined with suave gentleness
of manner and an air of high-bred courtesy.
_That_ is the man whose lineaments I look on in the sketch, and that is
the man with whom I had many opportunities of being in company, and had
on several occasions the high honour of conversing. Whether it might be
possible for a man devoid of all advantage of feature to produce on
those brought into contact with him the same remarkable impression of
dignity, the consciousness of high station, and perfection of courtly
bearing combined with a pellucid simplicity of manner, I cannot say. But
it is true that all this was rendered more possible in the case of
Metternich by great personal handsomeness. He was, of course, when I saw
him, what may be called an old man--a white-headed old man--but I doubt
if at any time of his life he could have been a better-looking man.
My mother notes in her book on _Vienna and the Austrians_, that as we
were returning from a dinner at the house of the English ambassador, Sir
Frederic Lamb, where we had just met Metternich for the first time, I
observed that he was just such a man as my fancy painted Sir William
Temple to have been, and that she thought the illustration a good one.
And I don’t think that any subsequent knowledge or reflection would lead
me to cancel it.
He was a man of middle height, slenderly made rather than thin, though
carrying no superfluous flesh; upright, though without the somewhat
rigid uprightness which usually characterises military training to the
last, however far distant the training time may have been; and
singularly graceful in movement and gesture. He must have been a man of
sound body and even robust constitution, but he did not look so at the
time of which I am speaking. Not that he had the appearance or the
manner of a man out of health; but his extreme refinement and delicacy
of feature seemed scarcely consistent with bodily strength. I remember a
man--the old Dr. Nott spoken of in the first chapter of this book--who
must have been about the same age with Metternich when I first saw him,
who equalled him in clear-cut delicacy and refinement of feature, who
was certainly a high-bred gentleman, not altogether ignorant of the
ways and manners of courts, and who was emphatically a man of
intellectual pursuits and habits. But there all equality and similarity
between the two men ends. Good, refined, elegant Dr. Nott produced no
such impression on those near him as the Austrian statesman did. There
must have been therefore a _something_ in the latter beyond all those
advantages of person and feature with which he was so eminently endowed.
And this “something” I take to have been produced partly by native
intellectual power, and partly by the long possession of quite
uncontested authority.
Upon that first occasion I had no opportunity of hearing any word from
Metternich save one gracious phrase on being presented to him. He took
my mother in to dinner. I was seated at a far distant part of the huge
round table, where I could see, but not hear. And it was the fashion in
Vienna for people to leave the house at which they had been dining
almost immediately after taking their cup of coffee. But before the
party separated it had been arranged that we were to dine at the
minister’s house on the following Monday.
But all this time I have said no word of the Princess Metternich, who
also dined with Sir Frederic Lamb on that, to me, memorable day. In one
word, she was one of the most beautiful women I ever looked on. She was
rather small, but most delicately and perfectly formed in person, and
the extreme beauty of her face was but a part, and not the most peerless
part, of the charm of it. To say that it sparkled with expression, and
an expression which changed with each changing topic of conversation, is
by no means enough. Every feature of her face was instinct with meaning
and intelligence. The first impression her face gave me was that of a
laughter-loving and _mutine_ disposition. But my mother, who saw much of
her--more, of course, than it was possible for her to see of the
chancellor (especially while the princess was sitting for her portrait
by M. Hervieu for her, during which sitting my mother, by her express
stipulation, was always with her), and who learned to love her dearly,
testified that there was much more behind; that her unbounded affection
and veneration for her husband was not incompatible with the formation
of thoughtful opinions of her own upon the questions which were then
exercising the minds of politicians, as well as all the higher topics of
human interest.
I dined at Metternich’s table on the day mentioned above as well as on
sundry other occasions; on some of which I was fortunate enough to make
one of the little circle enjoying his conversation. Of course the dinner
parties at the prince’s house were affairs of much magnificence and
splendour. But I had, on more than one occasion, the higher privilege of
dining with him _en famille_.
On both and all occasions, whether it was a grand banquet of thirty
persons or more, or a quite unceremonious dinner _en famille_, the
prince’s practice was the same, and was peculiar.
He did not in any wise partake of the spread before him. He had always
dined previously at one o’clock. But he had a loaf of brown bread and a
plate of butter put before him; and, while his guests were dining, he
occupied himself with spreading and cutting a succession of daintily
thin slices of bread and butter for his own repast.
Victor Emmanuel used similarly to dine in the middle of the day, and at
his state banquets used to take no more active part than was involved in
honouring them with his presence. But Metternich, I think, would not
have said what my friend G. P. Marsh, the United States minister, once
told me Victor Emmanuel said to him on one occasion. Mr. Marsh, as dean
of the diplomatic body (it was before any of the great powers sent
ambassadors to the court of the Quirinal), was seated next to his
majesty at table. Innumerable dishes were being carried round in long
succession, when the king, turning to his neighbour with a groan, said,
“Will this _never_ come to an end?” I have no doubt Marsh cordially
echoed his majesty’s sentiments on the subject.
The words of men who have occupied positions in any degree similar to
that of Prince Metternich are apt to be picked up, remembered, and
recorded, when in truth the only value of the utterances in question is
to show that such men do occasionally think and speak like other
mortals! And my notebooks are not without similar evidences of
_gobemoucherie_ on my own part. But there is one subject on which I
have heard Metternich speak words which really are worth recording. That
subject was the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte.
Of course on such a topic the Austrian statesman might have said much
that he was not at liberty to say; and there was also much that he might
have said which could not have found place in one halfhour’s
conversation. The particular point upon which I heard him speak was the
celebrated interview, at which the emperor lost his temper because he
could not induce Austria to declare war.
Metternich described the way in which the emperor, with the manners of
the guard-room rather than those of the council-chamber, suddenly and
violently tossed his cocked hat into the corner of the room, “evidently
expecting that I should pick it up and present it to him,” said the old
statesman; “but I judged it better to ignore the action and the
intention altogether, and his majesty after a minute or two rose and
picked it up himself.”
He went on to express his conviction that all this display of passion on
the emperor’s part was altogether affected, fictitious, and calculated;
and said that similar manifestations of intemperate violence were by no
means infrequently used by the emperor with a view to produce calculated
effects, and were often more or less successful.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that the most cynical observer
could have detected the slightest shade of bitterness in the words or
the manner of Prince Metternich. On _that_ field of battle at all
events the honours did not fall to the share of Napoleon. And his aged
adversary spoke of the encounter with the amused pleasantry and easy
smile of a veteran who recounts passages at arms in which his part has
been that best worth telling.
But with a graver manner he went on to say, that the most unpleasant
part of the circumstance connected with dealing with Napoleon arose from
the fact that he was not a gentleman in any sense of the word, or
anything like one. Of course the prince, with his unblemished sixteen
quarterings, was not talking of anything connected with Napoleon’s
birth. And I doubt whether he may have been aware that Napoleon
Buonaparte was technically gentle by virtue of his descent from an
ancient Tuscan territorial noble race. Metternich, in expressing the
opinion quoted, was not thinking of anything of the kind. He was
speaking of the moral nature of the man. In these days, after all that
has since that time been published on the subject, the expression of
Metternich seems almost like the enunciation of an accepted and
recognised truism. Nevertheless, even now the judgment on such a point,
of one who had enjoyed (no, certainly not enjoyed, but we will say
undergone) so much personal intercourse with the great conqueror, is
worth recording.
My mother has given an account of the same conversation, which I have
here recorded, in the second volume of her book on _Vienna and the
Austrians_. Her account tallies with mine in all essentials (I did not
read it--in _this_ half-century--till after I had written the above
sentences); but she relates one or two circumstances which I have
omitted; and she apparently did not hear what the prince said afterwards
about Napoleon as a gentleman--or perhaps it was said upon another
occasion, which I cannot assert may not have been the case.
One point of my mother’s narrative should not be omitted. Metternich,
observing that it was impossible for any human being to have heard what
passed between him and Napoleon, but that everybody had read all about
it, said that Savary relates truly the incident of the hat, _which must
have been told him by Napoleon himself_. This is very curious.
Another amusing anecdote recounted by Metternich one evening, when my
mother and myself, together with only a very small circle of _habitués_
were present, I remember well, and intended to give my own reminiscences
of it in this place. But I find the story so well told by my mother, and
it is so well worth repeating, that I will reproduce her telling of it.
“During the hundred days of Napoleon’s extraordinary but abortive
restoration, he found himself compelled by circumstances, _bon gré mal
gré_ to appoint Fouché minister of police. About ten days after this
arch-traitor was so placed, Prince Metternich was informed that a
stranger desired to see him. He was admitted, and the prince recognised
him as an individual whom he had known as an _employé_ at Paris. But he
now appeared under a borrowed name, bringing only a fragment of Fouché’s
handwriting, as testimony that he was sent by him. His mission he said
was of the most secret nature, and in fact, only extended to informing
the prince that Fouché was desirous of offering to his consideration
propositions of the most important nature. The messenger declared
himself wholly ignorant of their purport, being authorised only to
invite the prince to a secret conference through the medium of some
trusty envoy, who should be despatched to Paris for the purpose. The
prince’s reply was, ‘You must permit me to think of this.’ The agent
retired, and the Austrian minister repaired to the emperor, and
recounted what had passed. ‘And what do you think of doing?’ said the
emperor.
“‘I think,’ replied the prince, ‘that we should send a confidential
agent, not to Paris, but to some other place that may be fixed upon, who
shall have no other instructions but to listen to all that the
Frenchman, who will meet him there, shall impart, and bring us
faithfully an account of it.’
“The emperor signified his approbation; ‘And then,’ continued the
prince, ‘as we were good and faithful allies, and would do nothing
unknown to those with whom we were pledged to act in common, I hastened
to inform the allied sovereigns, who were still at Vienna, of the
arrival of the messenger, and the manner in which I proposed to act.’
The mysterious messenger was accordingly dismissed with an answer
purporting that an Austrian, calling himself Werner, should be at a
certain hotel in the town of Basle, in Switzerland, on such a day, with
instructions to hear and convey to Prince Metternich whatever the
individual sent to meet him should deliver. This meeting took place at
the spot and hour fixed. The diplomatic agents saluted each other with
fitting courtesy, and seated themselves _vis-à-vis_, each assuming the
attitude of a listener.
“‘May I ask you, sir,’ said the envoy from Paris at length, ‘what is the
object of our meeting?’
“‘My object, sir,’ replied the Austrian, ‘is to listen to whatever you
may be disposed to say.’
“‘And mine,’ rejoined the Frenchman, ‘is solely to hear what you may
have to communicate.’
“Neither the one nor the other had anything further to add to this
interesting interchange of information, and after remaining together
long enough for each to be satisfied that the other had nothing to tell,
they separated with perfect civility, both returning precisely as wise
as they came.
“Some time after the imperial restoration had given way to the royal one
in France, the mystery was explained. Fouché, _cette revolution
incarnée_, as the prince called him, no sooner saw his old master and
benefactor restored to power, than he imagined the means of betraying
him, and accordingly despatched the messenger, who presented himself to
Prince Metternich. Fouché was minister of police, and probably all the
world would have agreed with him in thinking that if any man in France
could safely send off a secret messenger it was himself. But all the
world would have been mistaken, and so was Fouché. The Argus eyes of
Napoleon discovered the proceeding. The first messenger was seized and
examined on his return. The minister of police was informed of the
discovery, and coolly assured by his imperial master that he would
probably be hanged. The second messenger was then despatched by Napoleon
himself with exactly the same instructions as the envoy who met him from
Vienna, to the effect that he was to listen to all that might be said to
him, and when questioned himself, confess, what was the exact truth,
that all he knew of the mission on which he came was that he was
expected to remember and repeat all that he should hear.”
On the 30th of November in that year I witnessed the by far most
gorgeous pageant I ever saw--for I was not in Westminster Abbey on the
21st of June, 1887--the installation of eleven Knights of the Golden
Fleece. As a pageant, nothing, I think, could exceed the gorgeous and
_historic_ magnificence of this ceremony; but no “Kings of the Isles
brought gifts,” nor was the imperial body-guard composed of sovereign
princes or their representatives. In _significance_, that show and all
others such, even the meeting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold itself,
is eclipsed by the ever-memorable day which England has just seen. But
it was not only a very grand but a very interesting sight, the whole
details of which may be found by those interested in such matters very
accurately described in the volume by my mother which I have so often
quoted.
On the very next day I saw another sight which I think it probable no
subsequent sight-seer in Vienna during all the half-century that has
elapsed since that day has seen, or any will see in the future. It was a
sight more monstrously contrasted with the scene I had yesterday
witnessed than it could well enter into the human mind to conceive. It
was a visit to the vast, long-disused catacombs under the cathedral
church of St. Stephen. It was then about sixty years, as I was told--now
more than a hundred--since these vaults were used as a place of
sepulture. Here, as in many other well-known instances, the special
peculiarities of soil and atmosphere prevent all the usual processes of
decay, and the tens of thousands of corpses which have been deposited
there--very many uncoffined and unshrouded during the visitation of the
plague in 1713--have become to all intents and purposes mummies. They
retain not only the form of human beings, but in many cases the features
retain the ghastly expression which was their last when the breath of
life left them. The countless forms, which never apparently from the day
they were deposited there had been subjected to any sort of arrangement
whatever, lay in monstrous confused heaps, mingled with shattered
remains of coffins. The skin in every case had become of the
consistency of very thick and tough leather, not quite so thick as that
used for the sole of a stout shoe, but a good deal thicker than what is
generally used for the upper leather even of the stoutest. There was not
the slightest disagreeable odour in any part of the vaults. In the
course of a long life I have seen very many strange sights, but never
any one to match that in weird strangeness and impressive horror. If any
sight on earth merits the degraded epithet “awful,” it must be that of
those fearsome catacombs.
What I have written here conveys but a very imperfect notion of all that
we saw and felt during our progress through that terrible succession of
vaults. But I abstain from chronicling the sights of this charnel-house
for the same reason that I refrained from any attempt at describing the
cloth of gold and the velvets and the silks and satins of the previous
day. The detailed description of them may all be found in my mother’s
book, in the fortieth chapter of which the reader so inclined may sup
full of horrors to his heart’s content. I will content myself with
testifying to the perfect accuracy and absence of exaggeration in the
account there given.
My mother expresses disapproval of the authorities who permit such an
exhibition, and she is very vague as to the means by which we obtained
admission to it. Nor does my memory furnish any clear information upon
this point, but I have a strong impression that it was all an affair of
bribery, managed “under the rose” (what a phrase for such an exploit!)
by backstairs influence in some way. I do not think that the first
comer, with however large a fee in his hand, could have caused the door
of that chamber of horrors to be opened to him. There are, it is true,
sundry words and incidents in my mother’s account which seem to indicate
that the showman guide, who attended us, was in the habit of similarly
attending others; but I am persuaded that my mother was in error in
supposing, if she did suppose, that to be the case. Unquestionably the
man was at home in the gruesome place, and well acquainted with all the
parts of it, but I have reason to be persuaded that his familiarity with
it arose simply from the habit of pillaging the remains of the coffins
for firewood!
Not long after this memorable expedition to the catacombs I received a
communication from Birmingham which rendered it necessary for me to
leave Vienna and turn my face homewards.