and meadows radiant with wild-flowers to Segenhaus, standing on the
crest of the mountain, which is literally “the House of Blessing” to all
around it. The beautiful spacious rooms, full of books and pictures,
look down over a steep declivity upon an immense view of the Rhineland.
The Princess came in immediately with a most warm welcome--a noble,
beautiful woman in a black dress, something like that one sees in
pictures of Spanish Queens-Dowager, with snow-white hair drawn back
under a long black veil. After a life of love, having lost all those who
gave its greatest charm, she still finds much happiness in making
herself the mother of her people, and the centre of good to the
Rhineland from her high forest-home. After a few minutes spent in
explaining the towns in the vast map-like view below us, she said,
“There is a lady here who is anxious to make your acquaintance, and who
was delighted to hear that you were coming: it is the Queen of Sweden.”
At that moment the doors were thrown open, and the Queen entered--of
middle age, with a beautiful expression, and possessing, with the utmost
regal dignity, the most perfect simplicity and even cordiality of
manner. She desired me to sit by the Princess upon a divan facing her.
She said that I must consider her at once as a friend; that, in a life
of great troubles, the “Memorials” had been her greatest comfort; that
she never went anywhere without them; that my mother had been for
several years the intimate friend to whom she always had recourse, and
in whose written thoughts she could always find something which
answered to her own feeling and the difficulty of the moment. She asked
after “Mary Lea,” and how old she was now. She also talked much and
naturally of my Bunsen work, and entirely entered into all the
difficulties of meeting the views of so large a family of varying
dispositions.
The Princess took me away to see her own room with her family portraits
and photographs. She spoke of her daughter, the Princess of
Roumania,[281] “in her terrible position between Russia and Turkey.”
Then she said, “I want to prepare you for something. At my daughter’s
court there is a blind Roumanian noble who has an only daughter. She is
deaf and dumb. I could not bear that they should never communicate, so I
have taken her home with me, and I am teaching her to speak by making
her hold her hand _on my throat_ as I speak very slowly; and she is
already learning, and, though it takes almost all my time, I am already
rewarded by her making sounds which are intelligible to me.” When we
went back into the other room, the young lady was there, a most strange
being, making sounds inarticulate, but intelligible to the Princess.
When she saw that the Princess was going to speak, she rushed
across the room and held her hand on her throat, which had an almost
terrible effect, like garrotting.
[Illustration: Sophie.
Queen of Sweden and Norway.]
After tea the Queen ordered her donkey, which was brought round by a
handsome Swedish chasseur. We went out into the forest. The Queen rode:
the Princess led the donkey: I walked by the side, and only the chasseur
followed. We actually went on thus for three hours, through beautiful
forest glades with exquisite sylvan views, the whole reminding me of
descriptions in Auerbach’s “Auf der Höhe.” The Queen never ceased
talking or asking. She wished to know the whole story of my mother’s
trances at Pau, of Madame de Trafford, of Prince Joseph Bonaparte--“a
sort of cousin of my husband’s.” She talked much and most touchingly of
her own life and its anxieties. “What I feel most,” she said, “is the
impossibility of ever being alone. I have much happiness, much to be
thankful for, but I feel that what one has really to look forward to
must come after death, and I do not wish to live.” With her truly “la
grandeur est un poids qui lasse,” as Massillon said. When alone with her
sister at the Segenhaus in the quiet forest-life, she finds most
happiness, and they live in a higher world, mentally as well as
physically. As we went down a steep bank the donkey stumbled, and the
Queen cried out. “Pardon me that I have seemed to be afraid,” she said;
“I have been so very ill, that my nerves are quite shattered;” and in
fact a severe illness, long supposed to be mortal, had at this time
obliged her for several years to leave Sweden in the winter, to be under
a great doctor at Heidelberg. She asked me to come to Norway to visit
her. “You must also know my husband,” she said, “and my four sons, my
four blessings of God.” She repeatedly expressed her wish that I should
be at Rome in the winter with the Prince Royal. “I am sending him out to
learn his world.” She asked most warmly after Lea, and sent a message to
her--“I know her so well.” She also desired I would give her tender
sympathy to Hilda Hare,[282] “For can I not feel for her? my second boy
is at sea.” She gave a charming description of her first tour through
Norway to her coronation. “I sat in my carriole by myself, and a peasant
sat upon the little portmanteau behind which held my things, and told me
all about the places and people.” We walked on and on through the vast
woods, with lovely glimpses of country through the open glades, and
masses of huge foxgloves where the wood was cut down, and one really
forgot the queen, the almost _tête-à-tête_ of three hours with a queen,
in the noble great-souled woman, whose high ideal of life and all that
it should be seemed for the time to ennoble all the world to one.
At the top of a high declivity the Princess unlocked a small gate.
Within, in a little circular grove of lime-trees, were two marble
crosses over the grave of the Prince of Wied and his martyr-like son
Otto.[283] “And here,” said the Princess very simply, “is my grave
also.” The plan of these green mausoleums has been adopted by the
present family, and two more are planted to be ready for two
generations.
Behind the palace of the Princess is the great white château of
Monrepos, where her son lives with his wife, who is Princess Royal of
the Netherlands. Above the lower range of windows is a line of huge
stags’ heads, trophies of the chase of some former prince in the
forest. The House of Wied are “_ehenwürdig_,” and so may always marry
royalty.
I said something about never having seen the kitchen-garden of a German
house, so when we came home the Princess took me to hers. The Queen then
walked with us. The Princess prunes and grafts her own roses, &c., but
she seems to have no perception whatever of any beauty in wild-flowers.
We went in, and I was shown to a room, whence I came down to that in
which the court ladies were assembled. It was rather formidable, but the
Countess Ebba von Rosen, dame du palais of the Queen, talked pleasantly
in English. Doors were thrown open, and the Queen and Princess entered
and we went in to supper. The Queen made me sit by her: the four court
ladies sat opposite: the Princess, on the other side of the Queen, made
tea. Thick slices of bread and butter, like those of English
school-feasts, and mutton-chops were handed round. When we went into the
other room, I wrote down some names of books as desired, and then at
9.30 took leave. The Princess most cordially invited me to return, and
the Queen again pressed me to visit her in her own country. The vision
of the Queen’s serene noble face as she took leave has ever since
remained with me, and I parted from both the royal sisters with a
stronger feeling of affectionate regard than I have ever felt towards
any one else upon so short an acquaintance.”
* * * * *
JOURNAL _and_ LETTERS _to_ MISS LEYCESTER _and_ MISS WRIGHT.
“_June 2._--I slept at Neuwied, and then crossing the Rhine in the
morning mist, passed a few hours at Boppart, where the colouring of the
river and old houses and the peculiar grey hills was most lovely.
Charles de Bunsen met me at the station of Mosbach, and took me to his
villa, much like one in Italy, with the same rich intermingled
vegetation of fruit and flowers growing around it.”
* * * * *
“_June 4._--Yesterday, a very sultry day, we went to Wiesbaden. The
heavy trees in the gardens looked dripping even more with heat than with
rain, and there is a splendid dulness in the great rooms, formerly the
gambling-house, and in the park beyond, with the many chairs under the
trees on which people sit to listen to the band; but the fountain is
pretty.
“Mrs. de Bunsen[284] was very amusing in her account of the crowded
musical festival at Baireuth. When they complained that there were not
enough carriages there, a native replied, ‘Pardon me! of carriages there
are quite enough, but of people there are too many.’
“In and out, whilst I have been here, has come the next neighbour--‘the
Herr Major.’ He is quite a character, and devotes his whole life to his
garden. From Holland he--a poor man--ordered some fruit-trees for a very
large sum, but they have been a total failure and have borne nothing.
The other day Charles, driving with him, passed these trees, and knowing
they were a sore subject, turned his head the other way and pretended
not to see them. ‘Oh, thank you, dear friend; I appreciate what you are
doing,’ said the Herr Major, enthusiastically clasping his hand. When
the boys of Mosbach stole his fruit, he put up an electric wire on the
wall which caused a bell to ring in his bedroom whenever any one got
over it. A few nights ago the bell rang violently; the Herr Major took
his stick and rushed down the garden in his night-shirt: it was only his
own bulldog, which had jumped over the wall to pay a visit to a friend
in Mosbach. Another time, when his fruit was stolen, the Herr Major
issued a placard offering a reward of a hundred marks to any one who
would deliver up the thief. The placard was read by two men sitting
outside a beer-house, who were the men who had stolen the fruit. They
immediately agreed upon their course of action; one man delivered the
other up to justice, and he was sentenced to pay ten marks or to three
days’ imprisonment; the other claimed the hundred marks, of which they
had ninety to divide and to spend in drinking for whole days together to
the health of the Herr Major.”
* * * * *
“_June 15._--I have had a charming week at Herrenalb, whither Charles
and Theodore de Bunsen accompanied me. It was a real pleasure to be
again with the dear Frances and Emilia de Bunsen, who are so like
sisters to me, and the kind pleasant Sternbergs. We were occupied almost
entirely with my book, the sisters taking it in turn to talk over all
the different parts, but there were also delightful intervals of forest
rambles, and sittings out under the old apple-trees with Emilia.
Reinhold von Ungern Sternberg came for the Sunday with Herr von Klüden,
the ‘_Bräutigam_’ of his sister Dora. The place is just what my sweetest
mother would most have enjoyed for a summer residence--no grand scenery,
but very high forest-clad hills all round the rich green meadows, with
the crystal Alb tossing through them. The village of quaint black and
white houses clusters round the old-fashioned inn and the water-cure
establishment in the buildings of the suppressed monastery, of which a
beautiful ruin of red sandstone--‘The Paradise’--still stands in the
churchyard. In all directions are well-kept walks and drives, and
comfortable seats at every picturesque point. The people are most
friendly and primitive, all the men taking off their hats, and all
greeting strangers with a friendly ‘Morgen’ or ‘Tag.’
“A terrible sensation has been created by the attack on the Emperor, and
still more by the first false report of his death. Men and women were
alike in tears, and the national disgrace is intensely felt. I hope, if
the Emperor is better, that I may see the Crown Princess again at
Berlin.
“I spent four hours at Heidelberg, and revisited all our old haunts, the
gardens most lovely in their luxuriance of green. Thence I had intended
to go to Weimar to visit the Grand Duchess, but at Eisenach received a
telegram from her lady-in-waiting, the Countess Kalkreuth, to put off my
visit, as they were gone off to Berlin, the Empress Augusta being sister
of the Duke of Weimar. A wet morning at the Wartburg and an afternoon at
Erfurth brought me to Jena. There my cousin Alexander Paul met me at the
station, a pleasant, fat, frank Prussian officer, with a face very like
that of the first Napoleon.[285]
“There is much charm in this old town of Jena and its simple population,
increased by the five hundred students of the university. The houses of
Schiller, Alex. v. Humboldt, &c., have inscriptions in honour of those
who lived there: the streets wind picturesquely around the old Schloss
and its gardens, and the trumpet still sounds every quarter of an hour
from the tall grey tower of the noble old church. From my own window in
Alexander’s house in the Cahl’sche Allée, I see on one side a robber
castle, on the other a wonderful old church of the time of the ‘Heilige
Bonifacius.’
“On Thursday afternoon we went to Dornberg, where three castles crown
the cliff above the village with a narrow terrace running in front of
them along the edge of the precipice. One castle is occasionally
inhabited by the Grand Duke; another, very old and picturesque, was
given by Carl August to Goethe, and having been inhabited by him in the
last years of his life, still contains much furniture of his time: the
third was the palace of--the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.
“Yesterday we went a fatiguing excursion to Schwartzberg, the palace of
the Prince of Rudolstadt, by which we saw the finest parts of
Thuringia. A railway took us to Schwarza, where, in a ball on the top of
the church steeple, is a dart thrown by a Cossack as the Russian army
passed through Germany. Thence we took an omnibus to the little
Chrysopraz Hotel at Blankenberg, where, after beer and brown bread and
butter under the trees, we walked up the Schwarzthal to Oppelei, where a
Swiss cottage has been built by the Prince to indemnify a forester,
whose daughter he had made his mistress! Hence, by a steep path, we
ascended the Treppstein, whence there is a lovely view over the hollow
in the forest-clad mountains, in the midst of which the great castle of
the Prince of Rudolstadt rises above the little town. The Prince is not
unpopular, though his life has an Eastern license. On the day when he
succeeded to his tiny sovereignty he happened to be at Berlin. ‘Bonjour,
souverain,’ said the Emperor when he met him, and, when he took off his
hat--‘Pray put on your crown.’
“We dined at the charming little inn, where thousands of wild stags
often assemble under the windows in the evenings, when the place is
comparatively empty, but take flight into the woods before the summer
guests. In returning, we were much amused with the old ‘Herr Apotheke’
of Rudolstadt, who had come out with a tin case to gather simples, and
who insisted upon stopping to drink a tankard of beer wherever one was
to be had.
“To-day we have been in a different direction, by rail to Roda, a
charming little Thuringian town, and thence by carriage to the Fröhliche
Wiederkunft, the old moated castle built by Friedrich Johann, father of
Friedrich der Weise, on the spot where he met his family on his return
from a long captivity abroad. The old Princess Therèse of
Saxe-Altenbourg now lives there, she and her sisters--the Queen of
Hanover, the Grand Duchess of Oldenbourg, and the Grand Duchess
Constantine of Russia--having been daughters of the old Duke Josef, by
whom the castle was restored. The news of the King of Hanover’s death
had just arrived. ‘How many tears,’ said the old man who showed the
castle, ‘did the old Duke my master shed in that chair over the King’s
misfortunes.’ The story of the founder is most quaintly told in
paintings on panels round one of the rooms, and there are pictures and
memorials of Luther and of Friedrich Johann and his wife Sibylla over
and over again.”
* * * * *
“_June 23._--A vision of many great towns is all that I carry away from
the varied journey which has brought me to Hildesheim--the old cities of
Wittenberg and Eisleben, with their glorious works of Lucas Cranach and
varied memorials of Luther and Melancthon: Magdeburg, great and noisy,
with its dull, restored cathedral: Halberstadt, also restored, but
glorious in spite of its injuries, and with intensely picturesque
streets of old houses: the romantic beauty of imperial Goslar: stately
Quedlinburg, where German princesses constantly reigned as abbesses:
beautiful Thale, at the entrance of the Harz, with its exquisite
combination of wood and rock and water: Brunswick and its many
market-places, full of old houses: dull Hanover, with the great deserted
gardens of Herrenhausen.
“Aunt Marcia (Frau Paul von Benningsen[286]) and my cousins Jane and
Clementine met me here at the station.”
* * * * *
“_Berlin, June 27._--My visit at Hildesheim had much of quiet interest.
The town is wonderfully picturesque, and I was glad to make acquaintance
with my cousins, who are perfectly _grandes dames_ and highly educated
young ladies, though they cook and do almost all the housework
themselves. I drew in the early mornings, and went to dinner each day
with them at 12.30.
“The Hildesheim churches are magnificent, but spoilt, ruined, by
so-called restoration--the old pavements torn up, the old ornaments
removed and replaced by tawdry and vulgar imitation of Munich
wall-painting.
“On Monday George de Bunsen met me with his carriage at the Berlin
station, and brought me through the Thier-Garten, like a bit of wild
forest, to the charming airy Villa Bunsen, standing in its own garden on
the extreme outskirts of the town. Here I have a most luxurious room,
filled with royal portraits, and every possible luxury. We dined _al
fresco_ on the broad terrace amid the flowers. On the next evening there
was a party of about fifty people--tea, and the garden and terrace
lighted up, a very pretty effect; the ladies in bright dresses, the men
with uniforms and orders, moving and sitting amongst the shrubs and
flowers, amid which endless little supper-tables were laid at a late
hour. Many were the historic names of those to whom I was
introduced--Falk of the Falk laws, Mommsen the historian, Austin the
poet, Mohl, and many ministers and generals. I found also Arthur
Balfour, and many waifs and strays of old acquaintance. The ‘Congress’
is going on, but excites little or no general interest, and is scarcely
mentioned here, German affairs being far too important.
“Berlin interests me extremely, though without preparation it can be of
small interest. It is almost entirely modern. In the sixteenth century
it must have been a tiny electoral town, the houses encircling the old
Schloss by the Spree in the time of the Great Elector, whose statue, a
grand though rococo work, stands close by on the bridge. Friedrich I.,
who got a kingdom by bribery, added the enormous castle, which,
ludicrous as it then was in a kingdom of five millions, is now
satisfactory in a kingdom of twenty millions. Close by, Frederick the
Great built two domes, merely as features in the distant view of an
otherwise featureless city, and to these his son added buildings which
turned them into churches. Under Friedrich Wilhelm III. and IV. the
great classical revival took place and endless fine buildings arose. The
library is one of the few buildings which date from Frederick the Great.
The architects were an endless time disputing over the designs, and at
last he said, ‘Damn you all, don’t waste any more time; this commode
opposite me is of a very good design, copy that,’ and accordingly the
design of the commode was copied.
“The Museum was begun when the country was poor and had no money to
spend. After the French war, when the country became rich, the design
expanded and became magnificent. Of the sculptures, four works deserve
especial attention--the ‘Adorante,’ the exquisite bronze boy who, in the
early morning, stretches out his arms in adoration: the noble vivid bust
of Julius Caesar in basalt, with agate eyes, so speaking though
voiceless, so never to be forgotten, of which Rauch had three copies in
different parts of his house that it might never be long absent from his
mind: the bust of Sappho, with banded hair, recognised as the poetess
from a Hermes; and the Augustus statue, more noble than that of Livia’s
villa, because taken in earlier youth, when his one feeling was that he
was born to command, and when no furrow of disappointment or care was
yet traced on his brow.
“The collection of casts is most interesting, as showing the important
statues of each subject, Venus, Minerva, Mercury, &c., side by side for
instruction or contrast.
“The pictures are a grand collection, spoilt by over-cleaning.
Especially worthy of remembrance are an Adoring Madonna by Filippino
Lippi, with God the Father above in glory; two noble portraits by
Giorgione; one by Lorenzo Lotto (possibly of Sansovino); some
marvellously graphic pictures, eloquently expressed in well-considered
touches, by Franz Hals; and a noble Holbein of ‘Kaufmann Georg Gigge aus
Basel.’
“Last night we went late to the Zoological Garden. The most interesting
thing was a solemn congregation of ibises listening in a row, each bird
with one foot in the air, and its head attentively on one side, to an
ibis preacher, who never ceased a continuous discourse to them, standing
on a stone. The elephant is said to be five hundred years old; what a
solemn silent witness! Apropos of the future of beasts, George de Bunsen
talked much of the absence of all allusion to _any_ future in the Old
Testament--that it grew up, partly in the Talmud, partly in the
Apocryphal writers, in what Luther beautifully calls ‘the great empty
leaf between the Old and New Testaments.’
“Montbijou, the curious little one-storied palace of Sophia Charlotte,
wife of Friedrich I., is now a museum for relics of the House of
Brandenbourg. The chairs, sledges, and table of Friedrich I. are very
curious; the wheel-chairs of his unhappy second wife: the wax figures of
his grand-daughters as babies; and their portraits as grown
women--queens and duchesses. Here also are three masks from the dead
face of the lovely Queen Louisa, that taken immediately after death most
exquisitely beautiful.”
* * * * *
“_June 30._--The day after I last wrote, I went with the Bunsens and Mr.
Waddington, the French Minister[287] (come for the Congress of Berlin)
to Charlottenbourg. The palace there is charming--the large gardens, the
groves of orange-trees in tubs, the great lawns sweeping away into
woods, and above all the mausoleum in one of the thick groves, with the
tombs of Queen Louisa and her husband. Hither the old Emperor and all
the royal family come still once a year, on the anniversary of her
death, to look upon the beautiful form of his young mother, snatched
away in the very zenith of beauty and popularity, not living to see the
re-establishment of the kingdom in whose cause she sacrificed her life.
Exquisitely, perfectly beautiful is the intense repose of her lovely
countenance, in what I must ever feel to be the most beautiful and
impressive statue in the world. The statue of the King is very fine too,
but in her angelic presence he is forgotten. And such was the feeling
for _her_, that though he did not marry again for many years after he
had lost her in his youth, his people at first would not believe it, and
then never forgave it. Mr. Waddington felt nothing in the presence of
this sublime statue. ‘Yes, it is very clever, it is a very clever figure
indeed,’ he said. Never was any remark more completely out of tune,
making it difficult for one to believe in the great power of the man.
“The next day I went to Potsdam--quite a place by itself in the world,
with its endless great ultra-German palaces and stiff gardens, arid and
dusty, though surrounded by many waters. Without Carlyle’s ‘Frederick
the Great,’ they would be mere dead walls enclosing a number of costly
objects; illuminated by the book, each room, each garden walk, thrills
with human interest. In the Residenz Schloss are the rooms in which
Frederick the Great passed his winters, with massive silver furniture
and priceless ornaments, amid which the portrait of Wilhelmina in her
childhood is a touching feature. In the Garrison Kirche is the tomb of
the great king. The terrace at Sans Souci, in this dried-up land, is
quite lovely with its fountains and orange-trees. Close behind is the
famous windmill.