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The Story of My Life — Complete

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Title: The Story of My Life — Complete

Author: Georg Ebers

Translator: Mary J. Safford


        
Release date: November 15, 2004 [eBook #5599]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5599

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF MY LIFE — COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





THE STORY OF MY LIFE FROM CHILDHOOD TO MANHOOD

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

By Georg Ebers



Translated from the German by Mary J. Safford



                       TO MY SONS.

        When I began the incidents of yore,
        Still in my soul’s depths treasured, to record,
        A voice within said: Soon, life’s journey o’er,
        Thy portrait sole remembrance will afford.

        And, ere the last hour also strikes for thee,
        Search thou the harvest of the vanished years.
        Not futile was thy toil, if thou canst see
        That for thy sons fruit from one seed appears.

        Upon the course of thine own life look back,
        Follow thy struggles upwards to the light;
        Methinks thy errors will not seem so black,
        If they thy loved ones serve to guide aright.

        And should they see the star which ‘mid the dark
        Illumed thy pathway to thy distant goal,
        Thither they’ll turn the prow of their life bark;
        Its radiance their course also will control.

        Ay, when the ivy on my grave doth grow,
        When my dead hand the helm no more obeys,
        This book to them the twofold light will show,
        To which I ne’er forget to turn my gaze.

        One heavenward draws, with rays so mild and clear,
        Eyes dim with tears, when the world darkness veils,
        Showing ‘mid desert wastes the spring anear,
        If, spent with wandering, your courage fails.

        Since first your lips could syllable a prayer,
        Its mercy you have proved a thousandfold;
        I too received it, though unto my share
        Fell what I pray life ne’er for you may hold.

        The other light, whose power full well you know,
        E’en though in words I nor describe nor name,
        Alike for me and you its rays aye glow--
        Maternal love, by day and night the same.

        This light within your youthful hearts has beamed,
        Ripening the germs of all things good and fair;
        I also fostered them, and joyous dreamed
        Of future progress to repay our care.

        Thus guarded, unto manhood you have grown;
        Still upward, step by step, you steadfast rise
        The oldest, healing’s noble art has won;
        The second, to his country’s call replies;

        The third, his mind to form is toiling still;
        And as this book to you I dedicate,
        I see the highest wish life could fulfil
        In you, my trinity, now incarnate.

        To pay it homage meet, my sons I’ll guide
        As I revere it, ‘mid the world’s turmoil,
        Love for mankind, which putteth self aside,
        In love for native land and blessed toil.

                       GEORG EBERS.

        TOTZING ON THE STARNBERGER SEE,
        October 1, 1892.




INTRODUCTION.

In this volume, which has all the literary charm and deftness of
character drawing that distinguish his novels, Dr. Ebers has told the
story of his growth from childhood to maturity, when the loss of
his health forced the turbulent student to lead a quieter life, and
inclination led him to begin his Egyptian studies, which resulted, first
of all, in the writing of An Egyptian Princess, then in his travels in
the land of the Pharaohs and the discovery of the Ebers Papyrus (the
treatise on medicine dating from the second century B.C.), and finally
in the series of brilliant historical novels that has borne his name to
the corners of the earth and promises to keep it green forever.

This autobiography carries the reader from 1837, the year of Dr. Ebers’s
birth in Berlin, to 1863, when An Egyptian Princess was finished.
The subsequent events of his life were outwardly calm, as befits the
existence of a great scientist and busy romancer, whose fecund fancy was
based upon a groundwork of minute historical research.

Dr. Ebers attracted the attention of the learned world by his treatise
on Egypt and the Book of Moses, which brought him a professorship at
his university, Gottingen, in 1864, the year following the close of this
autobiography. His marriage to the daughter of a burgomaster of Riga
took place soon afterward. During the long years of their union Mrs.
Ebers was his active helpmate, many of the business details relating to
his works and their American and English editions being transacted by
her.

After his first visit to Egypt, Ebers was called to the University of
Leipsic to fill the chair of Egyptology. He went again to Egypt in
1872, and in the course of his excavations at Thebes unearthed the
Ebers Papyrus already referred to, which established his name among the
leaders of what was then still a new science, whose foundations had been
laid by Champollion in 1821.

Ebers continued to occupy his chair at the Leipsic University, but,
while fulfilling admirably the many duties of a German professorship, he
found time to write several of his novels. Uarda was published in
1876, twelve years after the appearance of An Egyptian Princess, to be
followed in quick succession by Homo Sum, The Sisters, The Emperor,
and all that long line of brilliant pictures of antiquity. He began his
series of tales of the middle ages and the dawn of the modern era in
1881 with The Burgomaster’s Wife. In 1889 the precarious state of his
health forced him to resign his chair at the university.

Notwithstanding his sufferings and the obstacles they placed in his
path, he continued his wonderful intellectual activity until the end.
His last novel, Arachne, was issued but a short time before his death,
which took place on August 7, 1898, at the Villa Ebers, in Tutzing,
on the Starenberg Lake, near Munich, where most of his later life was
spent. The monument erected to his memory by his own indefatigable
activity consists of sixteen novels, all of them of perennial value
to historical students, as well as of ever-fresh charm to lovers of
fiction, many treatises on his chosen branch of learning, two great
works of reference on Egypt and Palestine, and short stories, fairy
tales, and biographies.

The Story of my Life is characterized by a captivating freshness. Ebers
was born under a lucky star, and the pictures of his early home life,
his restless student days at that romantic old seat of learning,
Gottingen, are bright, vivacious, and full of colour. The biographer,
historian, and educator shows himself in places, especially in the
sketches of the brothers Grimm, and of Froebel, at whose institute,
Keilhau, Ebers received the foundation of his education. His discussion
of Froebel’s method and of that of his predecessor, Pestalozzi, is full
of interest, because written with enthusiasm and understanding. He was
a good German, in the largest sense of the word, and this trait, too,
is brought forward in his reminiscences of the turbulent days of 1848 in
Berlin.

The story of Dr. Ebers’s early life was worth the telling, and he has
told it himself, as no one else could tell it, with all the consummate
skill of his perfected craftsmanship, with all the reverent love of
an admiring son, and with all the happy exuberance of a careless youth
remembered in all its brightness in the years of his maturity. Finally,
the book teaches a beautiful lesson of fortitude in adversity, of
suffering patiently borne and valiantly overcome by a spirit that,
greatly gifted by Nature, exercised its strength until the thin silver
lining illuminated the apparently impenetrable blackness of the cloud
that overhung Georg Moritz Ebers’s useful and successful life.




THE STORY OF MY LIFE.




CONTENTS.

     BOOK 1.
     I.    -GLANCING BACKWARD.
     II.   -MY EARLIEST CHILDHOOD
     III.  -ON FESTAL DAYS
     IV.   -THE JOURNEY TO HOLLAND TO ATTEND THE GOLDEN WEDDING
     V.    -LENNESTRASSE.--LENNE--EARLY IMPRESSIONS

     BOOK 2.
     VI.   -MY INTRODUCTION TO ART, AND ACQUAINTANCES
     VII.  -WHAT A BERLIN CHILD ENJOYED ON THE SPREE AND GRANDMOTHER’S
     VIII. -THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD
     IX.   -THE EIGHTEENTH OF MARCH

     BOOK3.
     X.    -AFTER THE NIGHT OF REVOLUTION
     XI.   -IN KEILHAU
     XII   -FRIEDRICH FROEBEL’S IDEAL OF EDUCATION

     BOOK 4.
     XIII. -THE FOUNDERS OF THE KEILHAU INSTITUTE
     XIV.  -IN THE FOREST AND ON THE MOOR.
     XV.   -SUMMER PLEASURES AND RAMBLES
     XVI.  -AUTUMN, WINTER, EASTER, AND DEPARTURE

     BOOK 5.
     XVII.  -THE GYMNASIUM AND THE FIRST PERIOD OF UNIVERSITY LIFE
     XVIII. -THE TIME OF EFFERVESCENCE AND MY SCHOOLMATES
     XIX.   -A ROMANCE WHICH REALLY HAPPENED
     XX.    -AT THE QUEDLINBURG GYMNASIUM

     BOOK 6.
     XXI.   -AT THE UNIVERSITY
     XXII.  -THE SHIPWRECK
     XXIII. -THE HARDEST TIME IN THE SCHOOL OF LIFE
     XXIV.  -THE APPRENTICESHIP
     XXV.   -THE SUMMERS OF MY CONVALESCENCE
     XXVI.  -CONTINUANCE OF CONVALESCENCE AND THE FIRST NOVEL




THE STORY OF MY LIFE.




CHAPTER I. GLANCING BACKWARD.

Though I was born in Berlin, it was also in the country. True, it was
fifty-five years ago; for my birthday was March 1, 1837, and at that
time the house--[No. 4 Thiergartenstrasse]--where I slept and played
during the first years of my childhood possessed, besides a field and
a meadow, an orchard and dense shrubbery, even a hill and a pond. Three
big horses, the property of the owner of our residence, stood in the
stable, and the lowing of a cow, usually an unfamiliar sound to Berlin
children, blended with my earliest recollections.

The Thiergartenstrasse--along which in those days on sunny mornings,
a throng of people on foot, on horseback, and in carriages constantly
moved to and fro--ran past the front of these spacious grounds, whose
rear was bounded by a piece of water then called the “Schafgraben,” and
which, spite of the duckweed that covered it with a dark-green network
of leafage, was used for boating in light skiffs.

Now a strongly built wall of masonry lines the banks of this ditch,
which has been transformed into a deep canal bordered by the handsome
houses of the Konigin Augustastrasse, and along which pass countless
heavily laden barges called by the Berliners “Zillen.”

The land where I played in my childhood has long been occupied by
the Matthaikirche, the pretty street which bears the same name, and a
portion of Konigin Augustastrasse, but the house which we occupied and
its larger neighbour are still surrounded by a fine garden.

This was an Eden for city children, and my mother had chosen it because
she beheld it in imagination flowing with the true Garden of Paradise
rivers of health and freedom for her little ones.

My father died on the 14th of February, 1837, and on the 1st of March of
the same year I was born, a fortnight after the death of the man in whom
my mother was bereft of both husband and lover. So I am what is termed a
“posthumous” child. This is certainly a sorrowful fate; but though there
were many hours, especially in the later years of my life, in which
I longed for a father, it often seemed to me a noble destiny and one
worthy of the deepest gratitude to have been appointed, from the
first moment of my existence, to one of the happiest tasks, that of
consolation and cheer.

It was to soothe a mother’s heartbreak that I came in the saddest hours
of her life, and, though my locks are now grey, I have not forgotten the
joyful moments in which that dear mother hugged her fatherless little
one, and among other pet names called him her “comfort child.”

She told me also that posthumous children were always Fortune’s
favorites, and in her wise, loving way strove to make me early familiar
with the thought that God always held in his special keeping those
children whose fathers he had taken before their birth. This confidence
accompanied me through all my after life.

As I have said, it was long before I became aware that I lacked
anything, especially any blessing so great as a father’s faithful love
and care; and when life showed to me also a stern face and imposed heavy
burdens, my courage was strengthened by my happy confidence that I was
one of Fortune’s favorites, as others are buoyed up by their firm faith
in their “star.”

When the time at last came that I longed to express the emotions of my
soul in verse, I embodied my mother’s prediction in the lines:

        The child who first beholds the light of day
        After his father’s eyes are closed for aye,
        Fortune will guard from every threatening ill,
        For God himself a father’s place will fill.

People often told me that as the youngest, the nestling, I was my
mother’s “spoiled child”; but if anything spoiled me it certainly was
not that. No child ever yet received too many tokens of love from a
sensible mother; and, thank Heaven, the word applied to mine. Fate had
summoned her to be both father and mother to me and my four brothers and
sisters-one little brother, her second child, had died in infancy--and
she proved equal to the task. Everything good which was and is ours we
owe to her, and her influence over us all, and especially over me, who
was afterward permitted to live longest in close relations with her,
was so great and so decisive, that strangers would only half understand
these stories of my childhood unless I gave a fuller description of her.

These details are intended particularly for my children, my brothers and
sisters, and the dear ones connected with our family by ties of blood
and friendship, but I see no reason for not making them also accessible
to wider circles. There has been no lack of requests from friends that
I should write them, and many of those who listen willingly when I tell
romances will doubtless also be glad to learn something concerning the
life of the fabulist, who, however, in these records intends to silence
imagination and adhere rigidly to the motto of his later life, “To be
truthful in love.”

My mother’s likeness as a young woman accompanies these pages, and must
spare me the task of describing her appearance. It was copied from the
life-size portrait completed for the young husband by Schadow just prior
to his appointment as head of the Dusseldorf Academy of Art, and now in
the possession of my brother, Dr. Martin Ebers of Berlin. Unfortunately,
our copy lacks the colouring; and the dress of the original, which shows
the whole figure, confirms the experience of the error committed in
faithfully reproducing the fashion of the day in portraits intended
for future generations. It never fully satisfied me; for it very
inadequately reproduces what was especially precious to us in our mother
and lent her so great a charm--her feminine grace, and the tenderness of
heart so winningly expressed in her soft blue eyes.

No one could help pronouncing her beautiful; but to me she was at once
the fairest and the best of women, and if I make the suffering Stephanus
in Homo Sum say, “For every child his own mother is the best mother,”
 mine certainly was to me. My heart rejoiced when I perceived that
every one shared this appreciation. At the time of my birth she was
thirty-five, and, as I have heard from many old acquaintances, in the
full glow of her beauty.

My father had been one of the Berlin gentlemen to whose spirit of
self-sacrifice and taste for art the Konigstadt Theater owed its
prosperity, and was thus brought into intimate relations with Carl von
Holtei, who worked for its stage both as dramatist and actor. When, as
a young professor, I told the grey-haired author in my mother’s name
something which could not fail to afford him pleasure, I received the
most eager assent to my query whether he still remembered her. “How I
thank your admirable mother for inducing you to write!” ran the letter.
“Only I must enter a protest against your first lines, suggesting that
I might have forgotten her. I forget the beautiful, gentle, clever,
steadfast woman who (to quote Shakespeare’s words) ‘came adorned hither
like sweet May,’ and, stricken by the hardest blows so soon after her
entrance into her new life, gloriously endured every trial of fate to
become the fairest bride, the noblest wife, most admirable widow, and
most faithful mother! No, my young unknown friend, I have far too much
with which to reproach myself, have brought from the conflicts of a
changeful life a lacerated heart, but I have never reached the point
where that heart ceased to cherish Fanny Ebers among the most sacred
memories of my chequered career. How often her loved image appears
before me when, in lonely twilight hours, I recall the past!”

Yes, Fate early afforded my mother an opportunity to test her character.
The city where shortly before my birth she became a widow was not her
native place. My father had met her in Holland, when he was scarcely
more than a beardless youth. The letter informing his relatives that
he had determined not to give up the girl his heart had chosen was not
regarded seriously in Berlin; but when the lover, with rare pertinacity,
clung to his resolve, they began to feel anxious. The eldest son of one
of the richest families in the city, a youth of nineteen, wished to bind
himself for life--and to a foreigner--a total stranger.

My mother often told us that her father, too, refused to listen to the
young suitor, and how, during that time of conflict, while she was with
her family at Scheveningen, a travelling carriage drawn by four horses
stopped one day before her parents’ unpretending house. From this coach
descended the future mother-in-law. She had come to see the paragon of
whom her son had written so enthusiastically, and to learn whether it
would be possible to yield to the youth’s urgent desire to establish a
household of his own. And she did find it possible; for the girl’s rare
beauty and grace speedily won the heart of the anxious woman who had
really come to separate the lovers. True, they were required to wait a
few years to test the sincerity of their affection. But it withstood the
proof, and the young man, who had been sent to Bordeaux to acquire in
a commercial house the ability to manage his father’s banking business,
did not hesitate an instant when his beautiful fiancee caught the
smallpox and wrote that her smooth face would probably be disfigured by
the malignant disease, but answered that what he loved was not only her
beauty but the purity and goodness of her tender heart.

This had been a severe test, and it was to be rewarded: not the smallest
scar remained to recall the illness. When my father at last made my
mother his wife, the burgomaster of her native city told him that he
gave to his keeping the pearl of Rotterdam. Post-horses took the young
couple in the most magnificent weather to the distant Prussian capital.
It must have been a delightful journey, but when the horses were changed
in Potsdam the bride and groom received news that the latter’s father
was dead.

So my parents entered a house of mourning. My mother at that time had
only the slight mastery of German acquired during hours of industrious
study for her future husband’s sake. She did not possess in all Berlin
a single friend or relative of her own family, yet she soon felt at home
in the capital. She loved my father. Heaven gave her children, and her
rare beauty, her winning charm, and the receptivity of her mind quickly
opened all hearts to her in circles even wider than her husband’s large
family connection. The latter included many households whose guests
numbered every one whose achievements in science or art, or possession
of large wealth, had rendered them prominent in Berlin, and the
“beautiful Hollander,” as my mother was then called, became one of the
most courted women in society.

Holtei had made her acquaintance at this time, and it was a delight
to hear her speak of those gay, brilliant days. How often Baron von
Humboldt, Rauch, or Schleiermacher had escorted her to dinner! Hegel
had kept a blackened coin won from her at whist. Whenever he sat down
to play cards with her he liked to draw it out, and, showing it to his
partner, say, “My thaler, fair lady.”

My mother, admired and petted, had thoroughly enjoyed the happy period
of my father’s lifetime, entertaining as a hospitable hostess or
visiting friends, and she gladly recalled it. But this brilliant life,
filled to overflowing with all sorts of amusements, had been interrupted
just before my birth.

The beloved husband had died, and the great wealth of our family, though
enough remained for comfortable maintenance, had been much diminished.

Such changes of outward circumstances are termed reverses of fortune,
and the phrase is fitting, for by them life gains a new form. Yet real
happiness is more frequently increased than lessened, if only they do
not entail anxiety concerning daily bread. My mother’s position was far
removed from this point; but she possessed qualities which would have
undoubtedly enabled her, even in far more modest circumstances, to
retain her cheerfulness and fight her way bravely with her children
through life.

The widow resolved that her sons should make their way by their own
industry, like her brothers, who had almost all become able officials
in the Dutch colonial service. Besides, the change in her circumstances
brought her into closer relations with persons with whom by inclination
and choice she became even more intimately associated than with the
members of my father’s family--I mean the clique of scholars and
government officials amid whose circle her children grew up, and whom I
shall mention later.

Our relatives, however, even after my father’s death, showed the same
regard for my mother--who on her side was sincerely attached to many of
them--and urged her to accept the hospitality of their homes. I, too,
when a child, still more in later years, owe to the Beer family many a
happy hour. My father’s cousin, Moritz von Oppenfeld, whose wife was
an Ebers, was also warmly attached to us. He lived in a house which he
owned on the Pariser Platz, now occupied by the French embassy, and in
whose spacious apartments and elsewhere his kind heart and tender love
prepared countless pleasures for our young lives.




CHAPTER II. MY EARLIEST CHILDHOOD

My father died in Leipzigerstrasse, where, two weeks after, I was born.
It is reported that I was an unusually sturdy, merry little fellow. One
of my father’s relatives, Frau Mosson, said that I actually laughed
on the third day of my life, and several other proofs of my precocious
cheerfulness were related by this lady.

So I must believe that--less wise than Lessing’s son, who looked at life
and thought it would be more prudent to turn his back upon it--I greeted
with a laugh the existence which, amid beautiful days of sunshine, was
to bring me so many hours of suffering.

Spring was close at hand; the house in noisy Leipzigerstrasse was
distasteful to my mother, her soul longed for rest, and at that time she
formed the resolutions according to which she afterward strove to train
her boys to be able men. Her first object was to obtain pure air for the
little children, and room for the larger ones to exercise. So she looked
for a residence outside the gate, and succeeded in renting for a term of
years No. 4 Thiergartenstrasse, which I have already mentioned.

The owner, Frau Kommissionsrath Reichert, had also lost her husband a
short time before, and had determined to let the house, which stood near
her own, stand empty rather than rent it to a large family of children.

Alone herself, she shrank from the noise of growing boys and girls. But
she had a warm, kind heart, and--she told me this herself--the sight of
the beautiful young mother in her deep mourning made her quickly forget
her prejudice. “If she had brought ten bawlers instead of five,” she
remarked, “I would not have refused the house to that angel face.”

We all cherish a kindly memory of the vigorous, alert woman, with
her round, bright countenance and laughing eyes. She soon became very
intimate with my mother, and my second sister, Paula, was her special
favorite, on whom she lavished every indulgence. Her horses were the
first ones on which I was lifted, and she often took us with her in the
carriage or sent us to ride in it.

I still remember distinctly some parts of our garden, especially
the shady avenue leading from our balcony on the ground floor to the
Schafgraben, the pond, the beautiful flower-beds in front of Frau
Reichert’s stately house, and the field of potatoes where I--the
gardener was the huntsman--saw my first partridge shot. This was
probably on the very spot where for many years the notes of the organ
have pealed through the Matthaikirche, and the Word of God has been
expounded to a congregation whose residences stand on the playground of
my childhood.

The house which sheltered us was only two stories high, but pretty and
spacious. We needed abundant room, for, besides my mother, the five
children, and the female servants, accommodation was required for the
governess, and a man who held a position midway between porter and
butler and deserved the title of factotum if any one ever did. His name
was Kurschner; he was a big-boned, square-built fellow about thirty
years old, who always wore in his buttonhole the little ribbon of the
order he had gained as a soldier at the siege of Antwerp, and who had
been taken into the house by our mother for our protection, for in
winter our home, surrounded by its spacious grounds, was very lonely.

As for us five children, first came my oldest sister Martha--now, alas!
dead--the wife of Lieutenant-Colonel Baron Curt von Brandenstein, and my
brother Martin, who were seven and five years older than I. They were,
of course, treated differently from us younger ones.

Paula was my senior by three years; Ludwig, or Ludo--he was called by
his nickname all his life--by a year and a half.

Paula, a fresh, pretty, bright, daring child, was often the leader in
our games and undertakings. Ludo, who afterward became a soldier and
as a Prussian officer did good service in the war, was a gentle boy,
somewhat delicate in health--the broad-shouldered man shows no trace
of it--and the best of playfellows. We were always together, and were
frequently mistaken for twins. We shared everything, and on my birthday,
gifts were bestowed on him too; on his, upon me.

Each had forgotten the first person singular of the personal pronoun,
and not until comparatively late in life did I learn to use “I” and “me”
 in the place of “we” and “us.”

The sequence of events in this quiet country home has, of course,
vanished from my mind, and perhaps many which I mention here occurred
in Lennestrasse, where we moved later, but the memories of the time we
spent in the Thiergarten overlooked by our second home--are among the
brightest of my life. How often the lofty trees and dense shrubbery
of our own grounds and the beautiful Berlin Thiergarten rise before my
mental vision, when my thoughts turn backward and I see merry children
playing among them, and hear their joyous laughter!

             FAIRY TALES AND FACT.

What happened in the holy of holies, my mother’s chamber, has remained,
down to the smallest details, permanently engraved upon my soul.

A mother’s heart is like the sun--no matter how much light it diffuses,
its warmth and brilliancy never lessen; and though so lavish a flood of
tenderness was poured forth on me, the other children were no losers.
But I was the youngest, the comforter, the nestling; and never was the
fact of so much benefit to me as at that time.

My parents’ bed stood in the green room with the bright carpet. It had
been brought from Holland, and was far larger and wider than bedsteads
of the present day. My mother had kept it. A quilted silk coverlet was
spread over it, which felt exquisitely soft, and beneath which one could
rest delightfully. When the time for rising came, my mother called me.
I climbed joyfully into her warm bed, and she drew her darling into her
arms, played all sorts of pranks with him, and never did I listen to
more beautiful fairy tales than at those hours. They became instinct
with life to me, and have always remained so; for my mother gave them
the form of dramas, in which I was permitted to be an actor.

The best one of all was Little Red Riding Hood. I played the little girl
who goes into the wood, and she was the wolf. When the wicked beast
had disguised itself in the grandmother’s cap I not only asked the
regulation questions: “Grandmother, what makes you have such big eyes?
Grandmother, why is your skin so rough?” etc., but invented new ones to
defer the grand final effect, which followed the words, “Grandmother,
why do you have such big, sharp teeth?” and the answer, “So that I can
eat you,” whereupon the wolf sprang on me and devoured me--with kisses.

Another time I was Snow-White and she the wicked step-mother, and also
the hunter, the dwarf, and the handsome prince who married her.

How real this merry sport made the distress of persecuted innocence, the
terrors and charm of the forest, the joys and splendours of the fairy
realm! If the flowers in the garden had raised their voices in song, if
the birds on the boughs had called and spoken to me--nay, if a tree
had changed into a beautiful fairy, or the toad in the damp path of our
shaded avenue into a witch--it would have seemed only natural.

It is a singular thing that actual events which happened in those early
days have largely vanished from my memory; but the fairy tales I heard
and secretly experienced became firmly impressed on my mind. Education
and life provided for my familiarity with reality in all its harshness
and angles, its strains and hurts; but who in later years could have
flung wide the gates of the kingdom where everything is beautiful and
good, and where ugliness is as surely doomed to destruction as evil to
punishment? Even poesy in our times turns from the Castalian fount whose
crystal-clear water becomes an unclean pool and, though reluctantly,
obeys the impulse to make its abode in the dust of reality. Therefore I
plead with voice and pen in behalf of fairy tales; therefore I tell them
to my children and grandchildren, and have even written a volume of them
myself.

How perverse and unjust it is to banish the fairy tale from the life of
the child, because devotion to its charm might prove detrimental to the
grown person! Has not the former the same claim to consideration as the
latter?

Every child is entitled to expect a different treatment and judgment,
and to receive what is his due undiminished. Therefore it is unjust to
injure and rob the child for the benefit of the man. Are we even sure
that the boy is destined to attain the second and third stages--youth
and manhood?

True, there are some apostles of caution who deny themselves every joy
of existence while in their prime, in order, when their locks are grey,
to possess wealth which frequently benefits only their heirs.

All sensible mothers will doubtless, like ours, take care that their
children do not believe the stories which they tell them to be true.
I do not remember any time when, if my mind had been called upon to
decide, I should have thought that anything I invented myself had really
happened; but I know that we were often unable to distinguish whether
the plausible tale related by some one else belonged to the realm of
fact or fiction. On such occasions we appealed to my mother, and her
answer instantly set all doubts at rest; for we thought she could never
be mistaken, and knew that she always told the truth.

As to the stories invented by myself, I fared like other imaginative
children. I could imagine the most marvellous things about every member
of the household, and while telling them--but only during that time--I
often fancied that they were true; yet the moment I was asked whether
these things had actually occurred, it seemed as if I woke from a
dream. I at once separated what I had imagined from what I had actually
experienced, and it would never have occurred to me to persist against
my better knowledge. So the vividly awakened power of imagination led
neither me, my brothers and sisters, nor my children and grandchildren
into falsehood.

In after years I abhorred it, not only because my mother would rather
have permitted any other offence to pass unpunished, but because I had
an opportunity of perceiving its ugliness very early in life. When only
seven or eight years old I heard a boy--I still remember his name--tell
his mother a shameless lie about some prank in which I had shared. I did
not interrupt him to vindicate the truth, but I shrank in horror with
the feeling of having witnessed a crime.

If Ludo and I, even in the most critical situations, adhered to the
truth more rigidly than other boys, we “little ones” owe it especially
to our sister Paula, who was always a fanatic in its cause, and even
now endures many an annoyance because she scorns the trivial “necessary
fibs” deemed allowable by society.

True, the interesting question of how far necessary fibs are justifiable
among children, is yet to be considered; but what did we know of such
necessity in our sports in the Thiergarten? From what could a lie have
saved us except a blow from a beloved mother’s little hand, which, it is
true, when any special misdeed was punished by a box on the ear, could
inflict a tolerable amount of pain by means of the rings which adorned
it.

There is a tradition that once when she had slapped Paula’s pretty face,
the odd child rubbed her cheek and said, with the droll calmness that
rarely deserted her, “When you want to strike me again, mother, please
take off your rings first.”

          THE GOVERNESS--THE CEMETERY.

During the time we lived in the Thiergarten my mother’s hand scarcely
ever touched my face except in a caress. Every memory of her is bright
and beautiful. I distinctly remember how merrily she jested and played
with us, and from my earliest recollections her beloved face always
greets me cheerily. Yet she had moved to the Thiergarten with a heart
oppressed by the deepest sorrow.

I know from the woman who accompanied her there as the governess of the
two eldest children, and became a faithful friend, how deeply she needed
consolation, how completely her feelings harmonized with the widow’s
weeds she wore, and in which she is said to have been so beautiful.

The name of this rare woman was Bernhardine Kron. A native of
Mecklenburg, she united to rich and wide culture the sterling character,
warmth of feeling, and fidelity of this sturdy and sympathetic branch of
the German nation. She soon became deeply attached to the young widow,
to whose children she was to devote her best powers, and, in after
years, her eyes often grew dim when she spoke of the time during which
she shared our mother’s grief and helped her in her work of education.

Both liked to recall in later days the quiet evenings when, after the
rest of the household had retired, they read alone or discussed what
stirred their hearts. Each gave the other what she could. The German
governess went through our classic authors with her employer, and my
mother read to her the works of Racine and Corneille, and urged her to
speak French and English with her; for, like many natives of Holland,
her mastery of both languages was as thorough as if she had grown up
in Paris or London. The necessity of studying and sharing her own rich
intellectual possessions continued to be a marked trait in my mother’s
character until late in life, and how much cause for gratitude we all
have for the share she gave us of her own knowledge and experience!

Fraulein Kron always deeply appreciated the intellectual development
she owed to her employer, while the latter never forgot the comfort and
support bestowed by the faithful governess in the most sorrowful days of
her life. When I first became conscious of my surroundings, these days
were over; but in saying that my first recollections of my mother were
bright and cheerful, I forgot the hours devoted to my father’s memory.
She rarely brought them to our notice; a certain chaste reserve, even
later in life, prevented her showing her deepest grief to others. She
always strove to cope with her sorest trials alone. Her sunny nature
shrank from diffusing shadow and darkness around her.

On the 14th of February, the anniversary of my father’s death, wherever
she might be, she always withdrew from the members of the household,
and even her own children. A second occasion of sharing her sorrowful
emotion was repeated several times every summer. This was the visit to
the cemetery, which she rarely made alone.

The visits impressed us all strongly, and the one I first remember could
not have occurred later than my fifth year, for I distinctly recollect
that Frau Rapp’s horses took us to the churchyard. My father was buried
in the Dreifaltigkeitskirchhof,--[Trinity churchyard]--just outside the
Halle Gate. I found it so little changed when I entered it again, two
years ago, that I could walk without a guide directly to the Ebers
family vault. But what a transformation had taken place in the way!

When we visited it with my mother, which was always in carriages, for
it was a long distance from our home, we drove quickly through the city,
the gate, and as far as the spot where I found the stately pile of the
brick Kreuzkirche; then we turned to the right, and if we had come in
cabs we children got out, it was so hard for the horses to drag the
vehicles over the sandy road which led to the cemetery.

During this walk we gathered blue cornflowers and scarlet poppies from
the fields, bluebells, daisies, ranunculus, and snapdragon from the
narrow border of turf along the roadside, and tied them into bouquets
for the graves. My mother moved silently with us between the rows of
grassy mounds, tombstones, and crosses, while we carried the pots of
flowers and wreaths, which, to afford every one the pleasure of helping,
she had distributed among us at the gravedigger’s house, just back of
the cemetery.

Our family burial place--my mother’s stone cross now stands there beside
my father’s--was one of those bounded in the rear by the church yard
wall; a marble slab set in the masonry bears the owner’s name. It is
large enough for us all, and lies at the right of the path between
Count Kalckreuth’s and the stately mausoleum which contains the earthly
remains of Moritz von Oppenfeld--who was by far the dearest of our
father’s relatives--and his family.

My mother led the way into the small enclosure, which was surrounded by
an iron railing, and prayed or thought silently of the beloved dead who
rested there.

Is there any way for us Protestants, when love for the dead longs to
find expression in action, except to adorn with flowers the places which
contain their earthly remains? Their bright hues and a child’s beaming
face are the only cheerful things which a mourner whose wounds are still
bleeding freshly beside a coffin can endure to see, and I might compare
flowers to the sound of bells. Both are in place and welcome in the
supreme moments of life.

Therefore my mother, besides a heart full of love, always brought to my
father’s grave children and flowers. When she had satisfied the needs of
her own soul, she turned to us, and with cheerful composure directed the
decoration of the mound. Then she spoke of our father, and if any of us
had recently incurred punishment--one instance of this kind is indelibly
impressed on my memory--she passed her arms around the child, and in
whispered words, which no one else could hear, entreated the son or
daughter not to grieve her so again, but to remember the dead. Such
an admonition on this spot could not fail to produce its effect, and
brought forgiveness with it.

On our return our hands and hearts were free again, and we were
at liberty to use our tongues. During these visits my interest in
Schleiermacher was awakened, for his grave--he died in 1834, three years
before I was born--lay near our lot, and we often stopped before the
stone erected by his friends, grateful pupils, and admirers. It was
adorned with his likeness in marble; and my mother, who had frequently
met him, pausing in front of it, told us about the keen-sighted
theologian, philosopher, and pulpit orator, whose teachings, as I was to
learn later, had exerted the most powerful influence upon my principal
instructors at Keilhau. She also knew his best enigmas; and the
following one, whose terse brevity is unsurpassed:

          “Parted I am sacred,
          United abominable”--

she had heard him propound himself. The answer, “Mein eid” (my oath),
and “Meineid” (perjury), every one knows.

Nothing was further from my mother’s intention than to make these
visits to the cemetery special memorial days; on the contrary, they were
inter-woven into our lives, not set at regular intervals or on certain
dates, but when her heart prompted and the weather was favourable for
out-of-door excursions. Therefore they became associated in our minds
with happy and sacred memories.




CHAPTER III. ON FESTAL DAYS

The celebration of a memorial day by outward forms was one of my
mother’s customs; for, spite of her sincerity of feeling, she favoured
external ceremonies, and tried when we were very young to awaken a sense
of their meaning in our minds.

On all festal occasions we children were freshly dressed from top to
toe, and all of us, including the servants, had cakes at breakfast, and
the older ones wine at dinner.

On the birthdays these cakes were surrounded by as many candles as we
numbered years, and provision was always made for a dainty arrangement
of gifts. While we were young, my mother distinguished the “birthday
child”--probably in accordance with some custom of her native
country--by a silk scarf. She liked to celebrate her own birthday, too,
and ever since I can remember--it was on the 25th of July--we had a
picnic at that time.

We knew that it was a pleasure to her to see us at her table on
that day, and, up to the last years of her life, all whose vocations
permitted met at her house on the anniversary.

She went to church on Sunday, and on Good Friday she insisted that
my sisters as well as her self should wear black, not only during the
service, but throughout the rest of the day.

Few children enjoyed a more beautiful Christmas than ours, for under the
tree adorned with special love each found the desire of his or her
heart gratified, while behind the family gift-table there always stood
another, on which several poorer people whom I might call “clients” of
the household, discovered presents which suited their needs. Among them,
up to the time I went as a boy of eleven to Keilhau, I never failed
to see my oldest sister’s nurse with her worthy husband, the shoemaker
Grossman, and their well-behaved children. She gladly permitted us to
share in the distribution of the alms liberally bestowed on the needy.
The seeming paradox, “No one ever grew poor by giving,” I first heard
from her lips, and she more than once found an opportunity to repeat it.

We, however, never valued her gifts of money so highly as the trouble
and inconveniences she cheerfully encountered to aid or add to the
happiness of others by means of the numerous relations formed in her
social life and the influence gained mainly by her own gracious nature.
Many who are now occupying influential positions owe their first start
or have had the path smoothed for them by her kindness.

As in many Berlin families, the Christmas Man came to us--an old man
disguised by a big beard and provided with a bag filled with nuts and
bonbons and sometimes trifling gifts. He addressed us in a feigned
voice, saying that the Christ Child had sent him, but the dainties he
had were intended only for the good children who could recite some thing
for him. Of course, provision for doing this had been made. Everybody
pressed forward, but the Christmas Man kept order, and only when each
had repeated a little verse did he open the bag and distribute its
contents among us.

Usually the Christmas Man brought a companion, who followed him in the
guise of Knecht Ruprecht with his own bag of presents, and mingled with
his jests threats against naughty children.

The carp served on Christmas eve in every Berlin family, after the
distribution of gifts, and which were never absent from my mother’s
table, I have always had on my own in Jena, Leipsic, and Munich, or
wherever the evening of December 24th might find us. On the whole, we
remain faithful to the Christmas customs of my own home, which vary
little from those of the Germans in Riga, where my wife’s family belong;
nay, it is so hard for me to relinquish such childish habits, that, when
unable to procure a Christmas tree for the two “Eves” I spent on the
Nile, I decked a young palm and fastened candles on it. My mother’s
permission that Knecht Ruprecht should visit us was contrary to her
principle never to allow us to be frightened by images of horror. Nay,
if she heard that the servants threatened us with the Black Man and
other hobgoblins of Berlin nursery tales, she was always very angry. The
arguments by which my wife induced me to banish the Christmas Man and
Knecht Ruprecht seem still more cogent, now that I think I understand
the hearts of children. It is certainly far more beautiful and just
as easy-if we desire to utilize Christmas gifts for educational
purposes--to stimulate children to goodness by telling them of the
pleasure it will give the little Christ Child, rather than by filling
them with dread of Knecht Ruprecht.

True, my mother did not fail to endeavor to inspire us with love for
the Christ Child and the Saviour, and to draw us near to him. She saw in
him, above all else, the embodiment of love, and loved him because her
loving heart understood his. In after years my own investigation and
thought brought me to the same conviction which she had reached through
the relation of her feminine nature to the person and teachings of her
Saviour. I perceived that the world as Jesus Christ found it owes
him nothing grander, more beautiful, loftier, or more pregnant with
importance than that he widened the circle of love which embraced only
the individual, the family, the city, or, at the utmost, the country
of which a person was a citizen, till it included all mankind, and this
human love, of which my mother’s life gave us practical proof, is the
banner under which all the genuine progress of mankind in later years
has been made.

Nineteen centuries have passed since the one that gave us Him who died
on the cross, and how far we are still from a perfect realization of
this noblest of all the emotions of the heart and spirit! And yet, on
the day when this human love has full sway, the social problems which
now disturb so many minds and will permit the brains of our best
citizens to take no rest, will be solved.

     OTHER OBLIGATIONS TO MY MOTHER, AND A SUMMARY OF THE NEW
     AND GREAT EVENTS WHICH BEFELL THE GERMANS DURING MY LIFE.

I omit saying more of my mother’s religious feelings and relations to
God, because I know that it would be contrary to her wishes to inform
strangers of the glimpse she afterward afforded me of the inmost depths
of her soul.

That, like every other mother, she clasped our little hands in prayer is
a matter of course. I could not fall asleep until she had done this
and given me my good-night kiss. How often I have dreamed of her when,
before going to some entertainment, she came in full evening dress to
hear me repeat my little prayer and bid us good-bye!

But she also provided most carefully for the outward life; nay,
perhaps she laid a little too much stress upon our manners in greeting
strangers, at table, and elsewhere.

Among these forms I might number the fluent use of the French language,
which my mother early bestowed upon us as if its acquisition was mere
sport-bestowed; for, unhappily, I know of no German grammar school
where pupils can learn to speak French with facility; and how many
never-to-be-forgotten memories of travel, what great benefits during my
period of study in Paris I owe to this capacity! We obtained it by the
help of bonnes, who found it easier to speak French to us because our
mother always did the same in their presence.

My mother considered it of the first importance to make us familiar
with French at a very early age, because, when she reached Berlin with
a scanty knowledge of German, her mastery of French secured numerous
pleasant things. She often told us how highly French was valued in the
capital, and we must believe that the language possesses an imperishable
charm for Germans when we remember that this was the case so shortly
after the glorious uprising against the terrible despotism of France.
True, French, in addition to its melody and ambiguity, possesses more
subtle turns and apt phrases than most other languages; and even the
most German of Germans, our Bismarck, must recognize the fitness of its
phrases, because he likes to avail himself of them. He has a perfect
knowledge of French, and I have noticed that, whenever he mingles
it with German, the former has some sentence which enables him to
communicate in better and briefer language whatever he may desire to
express. What German form of speech, for instance, can convey the idea
of fulness which will permit no addition so well as the French popular
saying, “Full as an egg,” which pleased me in its native land, and
which first greeted me in Germany as an expression used by the great
chancellor?

My mother’s solicitude concerning good manners and perfection
in speaking French, which so easily renders children mere dolls,
fortunately could not deprive us of our natural freshness and freedom
from constraint. But if any peril to the character does lurk in being
unduly mindful of external forms, we three brothers were destined to
spend a large portion of our boyhood amid surroundings which, as
it were, led us back to Nature. Besides, even in Berlin we were not
forbidden to play like genuine boys. We had no lack of playmates of
both sexes, and with them we certainly talked and shouted no French, but
sturdy Berlin German.

In winter, too, we were permitted to enjoy ourselves out of doors, and
few boys made handsomer snow-men than those our worthy Kurschner--always
with the order in his buttonhole--helped us build in Thiergartenstrasse.

In the house we were obliged to behave courteously, and when I recall
the appearance of things there I become vividly aware that no series
of years witnessed more decisive changes in every department of life in
Germany than those of my boyhood. The furnishing of the rooms differed
little from that of the present day, except that the chairs and tables
were somewhat more angular and the cushions less comfortable. Instead of
the little knobs of the electric bells, a so-called “bell-rope,” about
the width of one’s hand, provided with a brass or metal handle, hung
beside the doors.

The first introduction of gas into the city was made by an English
company about ten years before my birth; but how many oil lamps I still
saw burning, and in my school days the manufacturing city of Kottbus,
which at that time contained about ten thousand inhabitants, was lighted
by them! In my childhood gas was not used in the houses and theatres of
Berlin, and kerosene had not found its way to Germany. The rooms were
lighted by oil lamps and candles, while the servants burned tallow-dips.
The latter were also used in our nursery, and during the years which I
spent at school in Keilhau all our studying was done by them.

Matches were not known. I still remember the tinder box in the kitchen,
the steel, the flint, and the threads dipped in sulphur. The sparks made
by striking fell on the tinder and caught it on fire here and there.
Soon after the long, rough lucifer matches appeared, which were dipped
into a little bottle filled, I believe, with asbestos wet with sulphuric
acid.

We never saw the gardener light his pipe except with flint, steel,
and tinder. The gun he used had a firelock, and when he had put first
powder, then a wad, then shot, and lastly another wad into the barrel,
he was obliged to shake some powder into the pan, which was lighted by
the sparks from the flint striking the steel, if the rain did not make
it too damp.

For writing we used exclusively goose-quills, for though steel pens were
invented soon after I was born, they were probably very imperfect; and,
moreover, had to combat a violent prejudice, for at the first school we
attended we were strictly forbidden to use them. So the penknife played
an important part on every writing-desk, and it was impossible to
imagine a good penman who did not possess skill in the art of shaping
the quills.

What has been accomplished between 1837 and the present date in the way
of means of communication I need not recapitulate. I only know how long
a time was required for a letter from my mother’s brothers--one was a
resident of Java and the other lived as “Opperhoofd” in Japan--to reach
Berlin, and how often an opportunity was used, generally through the
courtesy of the Netherland embassy, for sending letters or little
gifts to Holland. A letter forwarded by express was the swiftest way of
receiving or giving news; but there was the signal telegraph, whose arms
we often saw moving up and down, but exclusively in the service of the
Government. When, a few years ago, my mother was ill in Holland, a
reply to a telegram marked “urgent” was received in Leipsic in eighteen
minutes. What would our grandparents have said to such a miracle?

We were soon to learn by experience the number of days required to reach
my mother’s home from Berlin, for there was then no railroad to Holland.

The remarkable changes wrought during my lifetime in the political
affairs of Germany I can merely indicate here. I was born in despotic
Prussia, which was united to Austria and the German states and small
countries by a loosely formed league. As guardians of this wretched
unity the various courts sent diplomats to Frankfort, who interrupted
their careless mode of life only to sharpen distrust of other courts or
suppress some democratic movement.

The Prussian nation first obtained in 1848 the liberties which had been
secured at an earlier date by the other German states, and nothing gives
me more cause for gratitude than the boon of being permitted to see the
realization and fulfilment of the dream of so many former generations,
and my dismembered native land united into one grand, beautiful whole. I
deem it a great happiness to have been a contemporary of Emperor William
I, Bismarck, and Von Moltke, witnessed their great deeds as a man of
mature years, and shared the enthusiasm they evoked and which enabled
these men to make our German Fatherland the powerful, united empire it
is to-day.

The journey to Holland closes the first part of my childhood. I look
back upon it as a beautiful, unshadowed dream out of doors or in a
pleasant house where everybody loved me. But I could not single out the
years, months, or days of this retrospect. It is only a smooth stream
which bears us easily along. There is no series of events, only
disconnected images--a faithful dog, a picture on the wall, above all
the love and caresses of the mother lavished specially on me as the
youngest, and the most blissful of all sounds in the life of a German
child, the ringing of the little bell announcing that the Christmas tree
is ready.

Only in after days, when the world of fairyland and legend is left
behind, does the child have any idea of consecutive events and human
destinies. The stories told by mother and grandmother about Snow-White,
the Sleeping Beauty, the giants and the dwarfs, Cinderella, the stable
at Bethlehem where the Christ-Child lay in the manger beside the oxen
and asses, the angels who appeared to the shepherds singing “Glory to
God in the Highest,” the three kings and the star which led them to the
Christ-Child, are firmly impressed on his memory. I don’t know how young
I was when I saw the first picture of the kings in their purple robes
kneeling before the babe in its mother’s lap, but its forms and hues
were indelibly stamped upon my mental vision, and I never forgot its
meaning. True, I had no special thoughts concerning it; nay, I scarcely
wondered to see kings in the dust before a child, and now, when I hear
the summons of the purest and noblest of Beings, “Suffer little children
to come unto me,” and understand the sacred simplicity of a child’s
heart, it no longer awakens surprise.




CHAPTER IV. THE JOURNEY TO HOLLAND TO ATTEND THE GOLDEN WEDDING.

The rattle of wheels and the blast of the postilion’s horn closed the
first period of my childhood. When I was four years old we went to my
mother’s home to attend my grandparents’ golden wedding. If I wished to
describe the journey in its regular order I should be forced to depend
upon the statements of others. So little of all which grown people
deem worth seeing and noting in Belgium, Holland, and on the Rhine has
remained in my memory, that I cannot help smiling when I hear people
say that they intend to take children travelling for their amusement and
instruction. In our case we were put in the carriage because my mother
would not leave us behind, and wanted to give our grandparents pleasure
by our presence. She was right, but in spite of my inborn love of travel
the month we spent on the journey seemed a period of very uncomfortable
restlessness. A child realizes only a single detail of beauty--a flower,
a radiant star, a human face. Any individual recollection of the journey
to Holland, aside from what has been told me, is getting into the
travelling carriage, a little green leather Bajazzo dressed in red and
white given to me by a relative, and the box of candies bestowed to take
on the trip by a friend of my mother.

Of our reception in the Belgian capital at the house of Adolphe Jones,
the husband of my aunt Henriette, a sister of my mother, I retain many
recollections.

Our pleasant host was a painter of animals, whom I afterward saw sharing
his friend Verboeckhoven’s studio, and whose flocks of sheep were very
highly praised. At that time his studio was in his own house, and it
seems as if I could still hear the call in my aunt’s shrill voice,
repeated countless times a day, “Adolphe!” and the answer, following
promptly in the deepest bass tones, “Henriette!” This singular freak,
which greatly amused us, was due, as I learned afterward, to my aunt’s
jealousy, which almost bordered on insanity.

In later years I learned to know him as a jovial artist, who in the days
of his youth very possibly might have given the strait-laced lady
cause for anxiety. Even when his locks were white he was ready for
any pleasure; but he devoted himself earnestly to art, and I am under
obligation to him for being the means of my mother’s possessing the
friendship of the animal painter, Verboeckhoven, and that greatest of
more modern Belgian artists, Louis Gallait and his family, in whose
society and home I have passed many delightful hours.

In recalling our arrival at the Jones house I first see the merry,
smiling face--somewhat faunlike in its expression--of my six-foot uncle,
and the plump figure of his wonderfully good and when undisturbed by
jealousy--no less cheery wife. There was something specially winning and
lovable about her, and I have heard that this lady, my mother’s oldest
sister, possessed in her youth the same dazzling beauty. At the famous
ball in Brussels this so captivated the Duke of Wellington that he
offered her his arm to escort her back to her seat. My mother also
remembered the Napoleonic days, and I thought she had been specially
favoured in seeing this great man when he entered Rotterdam, and also
Goethe.

I remember my grandfather as a stately old gentleman. He, as well as
the other members of the family, called me Georg Krullebol, which means
curly-head, to distinguish me from a cousin called Georg von Gent. I
also remember that when, on the morning of December 5th, St. Nicholas
day, we children took our shoes to put on, we found them, to our
delight, stuffed with gifts; and lastly that on Christmas Eve the tree
which had been prepared for us in a room on the ground floor attracted
such a crowd of curious spectators in front of the Jones house that we
were obliged to close the shutters. Of my grandparents’ day of honor I
remember nothing except a large room filled with people, and the minutes
during which I repeated my little verse. I can still see myself in a
short pink skirt, with a wreath of roses on my fair curls, wings on my
shoulders, a quiver on my back, and a bow in my hand, standing before
the mirror very much pleased with my appearance. Our governess had
composed little Cupid’s speech, my mother had drilled me thoroughly
in it, so I do not remember a moment of anxiety and embarrassment, but
merely that it afforded me the purest, deepest pleasure to be permitted
to do something.

I must have behaved with the utmost ease before the spectators, many of
whom I knew, for I can still hear the loud applause which greeted me,
and see myself passed from one to another till I fled from the kisses
and pet names of grandparents, aunts, and cousins to my mother’s lap.
Of the bride and groom of this golden wedding I remember only that
my grandfather wore short trousers called ‘escarpins’ and stockings
reaching to the knee. My grandmother, spite of her sixty-six years--she
married before she was seventeen--was said to look remarkably pretty.
Later I often saw the heavy white silk dress strewn with tiny bouquets
which she wore as a bride and again remodelled at her silver wedding;
for after her death it was left to my mother. Modern wedding gowns
are not treasured so long. I have often wondered why I recollect my
grandfather so distinctly and my grandmother so dimly. I have a clear
idea of her personal appearance, but this I believe I owe much more to
her portrait which hung in my mother’s room beside her husband’s, and is
now one of my own most cherished possessions. Bradley, one of the best
English portrait painters, executed it, and all connoisseurs pronounce
it a masterpiece.

This festival lives in my memory like the fresh spring morning of a
day whose noon is darkened by clouds, and which ends in a heavy
thunderstorm.

Black clouds had gathered over the house adorned with garlands and
flowers, echoing for days with the gay conversations, jests, and
congratulations of the relatives united after long separation and the
mirth of children and grandchildren. Not a loud word was permitted to
be uttered. We felt that something terrible was impending, and people
called it grandfather’s illness. Never had I seen my mother’s sunny face
so anxious and sad. She rarely came to us, and when she did for a short
time her thoughts were far away, for she was nursing her father.

Then the day which had been dreaded came. Wherever we looked the women
were weeping and the eyes of the men were reddened by tears. My mother,
pale and sorrowful, told us that our dear grandfather was dead.

Children cannot understand the terrible solemnity of death. This is
a gift bestowed by their guardian angels, that no gloomy shadows may
darken the sunny brightness of their souls.

I saw only that cheerful faces were changed to sad ones, that the
figures about us moved silently in sable robes and scarcely noticed
us. On the tables in the nursery, where our holiday garments were made,
black clothes were being cut for us also, and I remember having my
mourning dress fitted. I was pleased because it was a new one. I tried
to manufacture a suit for my Berlin Jack-in-the-box from the scraps that
fell from the dressmaker’s table. Nothing amuses a child so much as to
imitate what older people are doing. We were forbidden to laugh, but
after a few days our mother no longer checked our mirth. Of our stay
at Scheveningen I recollect nothing except that the paths in the little
garden of the house we occupied were strewn with shells. We dug a big
hole in the sand on the downs, but I retained no remembrance of the sea
and its majesty, and when I beheld it in later years it seemed as if
I were greeting for the first time the eternal Thalassa which was to
become so dear and familiar to me.

My grandmother, I learned, passed away scarcely a year after the death
of her faithful companion, at the home of her son, a lawyer in The
Hague.

Two incidents of the journey back are vividly impressed on my mind. We
went by steamer up the Rhine, and stopped at Ehrenbreitstein to visit
old Frau Mendelssohn, our guardian’s mother, at her estate of Horchheim.
The carriage had been sent for us, and on the drive the spirited horses
ran away and would have dashed into the Rhine had not my brother
Martin, at that time eleven years old, who was sitting on the box by the
coachman, saved us.

The other incident is of a less serious nature. I had seen many a salmon
in the kitchen, and resolved to fish for one from the steamer; so I tied
a bit of candy to a string and dropped it from the deck. The fish were
so wanting in taste as to disdain the sweet bait, but my early awakened
love of sport kept me patiently a long time in the same spot, which was
undoubtedly more agreeable to my mother than the bait was to the salmon.
As, protected by the guards, and probably watched by the governess and
my brothers and sisters, I devoted myself to this amusement, my mother
went down into the cabin to rest. Suddenly there was a loud uproar on
the ship. People shouted and screamed, everybody rushed on deck and
looked into the river. Whether I, too, heard the fall and saw the
life-boat manned I don’t remember; but I recollect all the more clearly
my mother’s rushing frantically from the cabin and clasping me tenderly
to her heart as her rescued child. So the drama ended happily, but there
had been a terrible scene.

Among the steamer’s passengers was a crazy Englishman who was being
taken, under the charge of a keeper, to an insane asylum. While my
mother was asleep the lunatic succeeded in eluding this man’s vigilance
and plunged into the river. Of course, there was a tumult on board, and
my mother heard cries of “Fallen into the river!”

“Save!” “He’ll drown!” Maternal anxiety instantly applied them to the
child-angler, and she darted up the cabin stairs. I need not describe
the state of mind in which she reached the deck, and her emotion when
she found her nestling in his place, still holding the line in his hand.

As the luckless son of Albion was rescued unharmed, we could look back
upon the incident gaily, but neither of us forgot this anxiety--the
first I was to cause my mother.

I have forgotten everything else that happened on our way home; but when
I think of this first journey, a long one for so young a child, and
the many little trips--usually to Dresden, where my grandmother Ebers
lived--which I was permitted to take, I wonder whether they inspired the
love of travel which moved me so strongly later, or whether it was an
inborn instinct. If a popular superstition is correct, I was predestined
to journey. No less a personage than Friedrich Froebel, the founder of
the kindergarten system, called my attention to it; for when I met him
for the first time in the Institute at Keilhau, he seized my curly hair,
bent my head back, gazed at me with his kind yet penetrating eyes, and
said: “You will wander far through the world, my boy; your teeth are
wide apart.”




CHAPTER V. LENNESTRASSE.--LENNE.--EARLY IMPRESSIONS.

Lennestrasse is the scene of the period of my life which began with my
return from Holland. If, coming from the Brandenburg Gate, you follow
the Thiergarten and pass the superb statue of Goethe, you will reach a
corner formed by two blocks of houses. The one on the left, opposite
to the city wall, now called Koniggratz, was then known as
Schulgartenstrasse. The other, on the right, whose windows overlooked
the Thiergarten, bore the name in my childhood of Lennestrasse, which it
owed to Lenne, the park superintendent, a man of great talent, but
who lives in my memory only as a particularly jovial old gentleman.
He occupied No. 1, and was one of my mother’s friends. Next to Prince
Packler, he may certainly be regarded as one of the most inventive and
tasteful landscape gardeners of his time. He transformed the gardens of
Sans-Souci and the Pfaueninsel at Potsdam, and laid out the magnificent
park on Babelsberg for Emperor William I, when he was only “Prince of
Prussia.” The magnificent Zoological Garden in Berlin is also his work;
but he prided himself most on rendering the Thiergarten a “lung” for
the people, and, spite of many obstacles, materially enlarging it.
Every moment of the tireless man’s time was claimed, and besides King
Frederick William IV, who himself uttered many a tolerably good joke,
found much pleasure in the society of the gay, clever Rhinelander,
whom he often summoned to dine with him at Potsdam. Lenne undoubtedly
appreciated this honour, yet I remember the doleful tone in which he
sometimes greeted my mother with, “Called to court again!”

Like every one who loves Nature and flowers, he was fond of children. We
called him “Uncle Lenne,” and often walked down our street hand in hand
with him.

It is well known that the part of the city on the other side of the
Potsdam Gate was called the “Geheimerath-Quarter.” Our street, it is
true, lay nearer to the Brandenburg Gate, yet it really belonged to
that section; for there was not a single house without at least one
Geheimerath (Privy Councillor).

Yet this superabundance of men in “secret” positions lent no touch
of mystery to our cheerful street, shaded by the green of the forest.
Franker, gayer, sometimes noisier children than its residents could not
be found in Berlin. I was only a little fellow when we lived there, and
merely tolerated in the “big boys’” sports, but it was a festival when,
with Ludo, I could carry their provisions for them or even help them
make fireworks. The old Rechnungsrath, who lived in the house owned
by Geheimerath Crede, the father of my Leipsic colleague, was their
instructor in this art, which was to prove disastrous to my oldest
brother and bright Paul Seiffart; for--may they pardon me the
treachery--they took one of the fireworks to school, where--I hope
accidentally--it went off. At first this caused much amusement, but
strict judgment followed, and led to my mother’s resolution to send her
oldest son away from home to some educational institution.

The well-known teacher, Adolph Diesterweg, whose acquaintance she had
made at the house of a friend, recommended Keilhau, and so our little
band was deprived of the leader to whom Ludo and I had looked up with
a certain degree of reverence on account of his superior strength, his
bold spirit of enterprise, and his kindly condescension to us younger
ones.

After his departure the house was much quieter, but we did not
forget him; his letters from Keilhau were read aloud to us, and his
descriptions of the merry school days, the pedestrian tours, and
sleigh-rides awakened an ardent longing in Ludo and myself to follow
him.

Yet it was so delightful with my mother, the sun around which our little
lives revolved! I had no thought, performed no act, without wondering
what would be her opinion of it; and this intimate relation, though in
an altered form, continued until her death. In looking backward I may
regard it as a law of my whole development that my conduct was regulated
according to the more or less close mental and outward connection in
which I stood with her. The storm and stress period, during which my
effervescent youthful spirits led me into all sorts of follies, was the
only time in my life in which this close connection threatened to be
loosened. Yet Fate provided that it should soon be welded more firmly
than ever. When she died, a beloved wife stood by my side, but she was
part of myself; and in my mother Fate seemed to have robbed me of the
supreme arbitrator, the high court of justice, which alone could judge
my acts.

In Lennestrasse it was still she who waked me, prepared us to go to
school, took us to walk, and--how could I ever forget it?--gathered us
around her “when the lamps were lighted,” to read aloud or tell us some
story. But nobody was allowed to be perfectly idle. While my sisters
sewed, I sketched; and, as Ludo found no pleasure in that, she sometimes
had him cut figures out; sometimes--an odd fancy--execute a masterpiece
of crocheting, which usually shared the fate of Penelope’s web.

We listened with glowing cheeks to Robinson Crusoe and the Arabian
Nights, Gulliver’s Travels and Don Quixote, both arranged for children,
the pretty, stories of Nieritz and others, descriptions of Nature and
travel, and Grimm’s fairy tales.

On other winter evenings my mother--this will surprise many in the case
of so sensible a woman--took us to the theatre. Two of our relatives,
Frau Amalie Beer and our beloved Moritz von Oppenfeld, subscribed for
boxes in the opera-house, and when they did not use them, which often
happened, sent us the key.

So as a boy I heard most of the operas produced at that time, and I
saw the ballets, of which Frederick William IV was especially fond, and
which Taglioni understood how to arrange so admirably.

Of course, to us children the comic “Robert and Bertram,” by Ludwig
Schneider, and similar plays, were far more delightful than the grand
operas; yet even now I wonder that Don Giovanni’s scene with the statue
and the conspiracy in the Huguenots stirred me, when a boy of nine or
ten, so deeply, and that, though possessing barely the average amount of
musical talent, Orpheus’s yearning cry, “Eurydice!” rang in my ears so
long.

That these frequently repeated pleasures were harmful to us children
I willingly admit. And yet--when in after years I was told that I
succeeded admirably in describing large bodies of men seized by some
strong excitement, and that my novels did not lack dramatic movement
or their scenes vividness, and, where it was requisite, splendour--I
perhaps owe this to the superb pictures, interwoven with thrilling
bursts of melody, which impressed themselves upon my soul when a child.

Fortunately, the outdoor life at Keilhau counteracted the perils which
might have arisen from attending theatrical performances too young. What
I beheld there, in field and forest, enabled me in after life, when I
desired a background for my stories, not to paint stage scenes, but take
Nature herself for a model.

I must also record another influence which had its share in my creative
toil--my early intercourse with artists and the opportunity of seeing
their work.

The statement has been made often enough, but I should like to repeat
it here from my own experience, that the most numerous and best impulses
which urge the author to artistic development come from his childhood.
This law, which results from observing the life and works of the
greatest writers, has shown itself very distinctly in a minor one like
myself.

There was certainly no lack of varied stimulus during this early period
of my existence; but when I look back upon it, I become vividly aware of
the serious perils which threaten not only the external but the internal
development of the children who grow up in large cities.

Careful watching can guard them from the transgressions to which there
are many temptations, but not from the strong and varying impressions
which life is constantly forcing upon them. They are thrust too early
from the paradise of childhood into the arena of life. There are many
things to be seen which enrich the imagination, but where could the
young heart find the calmness it needs? The sighing of the wind sweeping
over the cornfields and stirring the tree-tops in the forest, the
singing of the birds in the boughs, the chirping of the cricket, the
vesper-bells summoning the world to rest, all the voices which, in the
country, invite to meditation and finally to the formation of a world of
one’s own, are silenced by the noise of the capital. So it happens
that the latter produces active, practical men, and, under favorable
circumstances, great scholars, but few artists and poets. If,
nevertheless, the capitals are the centers where the poets, artists,
sculptors, and architects of the country gather, there is a good reason
for it. But I can make no further digression. The sapling requires
different soil and care from the tree. I am grateful to my mother for
removing us in time from the unrest of Berlin life.

        FIRST STUDIES.--MY SISTERS AND THEIR FRIENDS.

My mother told me I was never really taught to read. Ludo, who was a
year and a half older, was instructed in the art. I sat by playing, and
one day took up Speckter’s Fables and read a few words. Trial was then
made of my capability, and, finding that I only needed practice to be
able to read things I did not know already by heart, my brother and I
were thenceforth taught together.

At first the governess had charge of us, afterward we were sent to a
little school kept by Herr Liebe in the neighbouring Schulgarten
(now Koniggratz) Strasse. It was attended almost entirely by children
belonging to the circle of our acquaintances, and the master was a
pleasant little man of middle age, who let us do more digging in his
garden and playing or singing than actual study.

His only child, a pretty little girl named Clara, was taught with us,
and I believe I have Herr Liebe to thank for learning to write. In
summer he took us on long walks, frequently to the country seat of Herr
Korte, who stood high in the estimation of farmers.

From such excursions, which were followed by others made with the son
and tutor of a family among our circle of friends, we always brought our
mother great bunches of flowers, and often beautiful stories, too; for
the tutor, Candidate Woltmann, was an excellent story-teller, and I
early felt a desire to share with those whom I loved whatever charmed
me.

It was from this man, who was as fond of the beautiful as he was of
children, that I first heard the names of the Greek heroes; and I
remember that, after returning from one of these walks, I begged my
mother to give us Schwab’s Tales of Classic Antiquity, which was
owned by one of our companions. We received it on Ludo’s birthday, in
September, and how we listened when it was read to us--how often we
ourselves devoured its delightful contents!

I think the story of the Trojan War made a deeper impression upon me
than even the Arabian Nights. Homer’s heroes seemed like giant oaks,
which far overtopped the little trees of the human wood. They towered
like glorious snow mountains above the little hills with which my
childish imagination was already filled; and how often we played the
Trojan War, and aspired to the honor of acting Hector, Achilles, or
Ajax!

Of Herr Liebe, our teacher, I remember only three things. On his
daughter’s birthday he treated us to cake and wine, and we had to sing
a festal song composed by himself, the refrain of which changed every
year:

       “Clara, with her fair hair thick,
        Clara, with her eyes like heaven,
        Can no more be called a chick,
        For to-day she’s really seven.”

I remember, too, how when she was eight years old we had to transpose
the words a little to make the measure right. Karl von Holtei had a
more difficult task when, after the death of the Emperor Francis (Kaiser
Franz), he had to fit the name of his successor, Ferdinand, into the
beautiful “Gotterhalte Franz den Kaiser,” but he got cleverly out of the
affair by making it “Gott erhalte Ferdinandum.”--[God save the Emperor
Francis.]

My second recollection is, that we assisted Herr Liebe, who was a
churchwarden and had the honour of taking up the collection, to sort
the money, and how it delighted us to hear him scold--with good reason,
too--when we found among the silver and copper pieces--as, alas!
we almost always did--counters and buttons from various articles of
clothing.

In the third place, I must accuse Herr Liebe of having paid very little
attention to our behaviour out of school. Had he kept his eyes open, we
might have been spared many a bruise and our garments many a rent; for,
as often as we could manage it, instead of going directly home from the
Schulgartenstrasse, we passed through the Potsdam Gate to the square
beyond. There lurked the enemy, and we sought them out. The enemy were
the pupils of a humbler grade of school who called us Privy Councillor’s
youngsters, which most of us were; and we called them, in return,
‘Knoten,’ which in its original meaning was anything but an insult,
coming as it does by a natural philological process from “Genote,” the
older form of “Genosse” or comrade.

But to accuse us of arrogance on this account would be doing us wrong.
Children don’t fight regularly with those whom they despise. Our
“Knoten” was only a smart answer to their “Geheimrathsjoren.” If they
had called us boobies we should probably have called them blockheads, or
something of that sort.

This troop, which was not over-well-dressed even before the beginning of
the conflict, was led by some boys whose father kept a so-called flower
cellar--that is, a basement shop for plants, wreaths, etc.--at the head
of Leipzigerstrasse. They often sought us out, but when they did not we
enticed them from their cellar by a particular sort of call, and as
soon as they appeared we all slipped into some courtyard, where a battle
speedily raged, in which our school knapsacks served as weapons of
offence and defence. When I got into a passion I was as wild as a
fighting cock, and even quiet Ludo could deal hard blows; and I can
say the same of most of the “Geheimrathsjoren” and “Knoten.” It was not
often that any decided success attended the fight, for the janitor or
some inhabitant of the house usually interfered and brought it all to an
untimely end. I remember still how a fat woman, probably a cook, seized
me by the collar and pushed me out into the street, crying: “Fie! fie!
such young gentlemen ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

Hegel, however, whose influence at that time was still great in the
learned circles of Berlin, had called shame “anger against what is
natural,” and we liked what was natural. So the battles with the
“Knoten” were continued until the Berlin revolution called forth more
serious struggles, and our mother sent us away to Keilhau.

Our sisters went to school also, a school kept by Fraulein Sollmann in
the Dorotheenstrasse. And yet we had a tutor, I do not really know
why. Whether our mother had heard of the fights, and recognized the
impossibility of following us about everywhere, or whether the candidate
was to teach us the rudiments of Latin after we went to the Schmidt
school in the Leipziger Platz, at the beginning of my tenth year, I
neglected to inquire.

The Easter holidays always brought Brother Martin home. Then he told us
about Keilhau, and we longed to accompany him there; and yet we had so
many good schoolmates and friends at home, such spacious playgrounds and
beautiful toys! I recall with especial pleasure the army of tin soldiers
with which we fought battles, and the brass cannon that mowed down
their ranks. We could build castles and cathedrals with our blocks,
and cooking was a pleasure, too, when our sisters allowed us to act as
scullions and waiters in white aprons and caps.

Martha, the eldest, was already a grown young lady, but so sweet and
kind that we never feared a rebuff from her; and her friends, too, liked
us little ones.

Martha’s contemporaries formed a peculiarly charming circle. There was
the beautiful Emma Baeyer, the daughter of General Baeyer, who afterward
conducted the measuring of the meridian for central Europe; pretty,
lively Anna Bisting; and Gretchen Bugler, a handsome, merry girl,
who afterward married Paul Heyse and died young; Clara and Agnes
Mitscherlich, the daughters of the celebrated chemist, the younger of
whom was especially dear to my childish heart. Gustel Grimm, too, the
daughter of Wilhelm Grimm, was often at our house. The queen of my
heart, however, was the sister of our playmate, Max Geppert, and at this
time the most intimate friend of my sister Paula. The two took dancing
lessons together, and there was no greater joy than when the lesson was
at our house, for then the young ladies occasionally did us the favour
of dancing with us, to Herr Guichard’s tiny violin.

Warm as was my love for the beautiful Annchen, my adored one came near
getting a cold from it, for, rogue that I was, I hid her overshoes
during the lesson on one rainy Saturday evening, that I might have the
pleasure of taking them to her the next morning.

She looked at that time like the woman with whom I celebrated my silver
wedding two years ago, and certainly belonged to the same feminine
genre, which I value and place as high above all others as Simonides von
Amorgos preferred the beelike woman to every other of her sex: I mean
the kind whose womanliness and gentle charm touch the heart before one
ever thinks of intellect or beauty.

Our mother smiled at these affairs, and her daughters, as girls, gave
her no great trouble in guarding their not too impressionable hearts.

There was only one boy for whom Paula showed a preference, and that was
pretty blond Paul, our Martin’s friend, comrade, and contemporary, the
son of our neighbour, the Privy-Councillor Seiffart; and we lived a good
deal together, for his mother and ours were bosom friends, and our house
was as open to him as his to us.

Paul was born on the same November day as my sister, though several
years earlier, and their common birthday was celebrated, while we were
little, by a puppet-show at the neighbour’s, conducted by some master
in the business, on a pretty little stage in the great hall at the
Seiffarts’ residence.

I have never forgotten those performances, and laugh now when I think
of the knight who shouted to his servant Kasperle, “Fear my thread!”
 (Zwirn), when what he intended to say was, “Fear my anger!” (Zorn). Or
of that same Kasperle, when he gave his wife a tremendous drubbing with
a stake, and then inquired, “Want another ounce of unburned wood-ashes,
my darling?”

Paula was very fond of these farces. She was, however, from a child
rather a singular young creature, who did not by any means enjoy all the
amusements of her age. When grown, it was often with difficulty that
our mother persuaded her to attend a ball, while Martha’s eyes sparkled
joyously when there was a dance in prospect; and yet the tall and
slender Paula looked extremely pretty in a ball dress.

Gay and active, indeed bold as a boy sometimes, so that she would lead
in taking the rather dangerous leap from a balcony of our high ground
floor into the garden, clever, and full of droll fancies, she dwelt much
in her own thoughts. Several volumes of her journal came to me after our
mother’s death, and it is odd enough to find the thirteen-year-old girl
confessing that she likes no worldly pleasures, and yet, being a very
truthful child, she was only expressing a perfectly sincere feeling.

It was touching to read in the same confessions: “I was in a dreamy
mood, and they said I must be longing for something--Paul, no doubt. I
did not dispute it, for I really was longing for some one, though it was
not a boy, but our dead father.” And Paula was only three years old when
he left us!

No one would have thought, who saw her delight when there were fireworks
in the Seiffarts’ garden, or when in our own, with her curls and her
gown flying, her cheeks glowing, and her eyes flashing, she played with
all her heart at “catch” or “robber and princess,” or, all animation
and interest, conducted a performance of our puppet-show, that she would
sometimes shun all noisy pleasure, that she longed with enthusiastic
piety for the Sunday churchgoing, and could plunge into meditation on
subjects that usually lie far from childish thoughts and feelings.

Yet who would fancy her thoughtless when she wrote in her journal: “Fie,
Paula! You have taken no trouble. Mother had a right to expect a better
report. However, to be happy, one must forget what cannot be altered.”

In reality, she was not in the least “featherheaded.” Her life proved
that, and it is apparent, too, in the words I found on another page of
her journal, at thirteen: “Mother and Martha are at the Drakes; I will
learn my hymn, and then read in the Bible about the sufferings of Jesus.
Oh, what anguish that must have been! And I? What do I do that is
good, in making others happy or consoling their trouble? This must be
different, Paula! I will begin a new life. Mother always says we are
happy when we deny self in order to do good. Ah, if we always could! But
I will try; for He did, though He might have escaped, for our sins and
to make us happy.”

===


CHAPTER VI. MY INTRODUCTION TO ART, AND ACQUAINTANCES GREAT AND SMALL IN
THE LENNESTRASSE.

The Drakes mentioned in my sister’s journal are the family of the
sculptor, to whom Berlin and many another German city owe such splendid
works of art.

He was also one of our neighbours, and a warm friendship bound him and
his young wife to my mother. He was kind to us children, too, and had
us in his studio, which was connected with the house like the other and
larger one in the Thiergarten. He even gave us a bit of clay to shape. I
have often watched him at work for hours, chattering to him, but happier
still to listen while he told us of his childhood when he was a
poor boy. He exhorted us to be thankful that we were better off, but
generally added that he would not exchange for anything in the world
those days when he went barefoot. His bright, clear artist’s eyes
sparkled as he spoke, and it must indeed have been a glorious
satisfaction to have conquered the greatest hindrances by his own might,
and to have raised himself to the highest pinnacle of life--that of art.
I had a dim impression of this when he talked to us, and now I consider
every one enviable who has only himself to thank for all he is, like
Drake, his friend in art Ritschl, and my dear friend Josef Popf, in
Rome, all three laurel-crowned masters in the art of sculpture.

In Drake’s studio I saw statues, busts, and reliefs grow out of the rude
mass of clay; I saw the plaster cast turned into marble, and the master,
with his sure hand, evoking splendid forms from the primary limestone.
What I could not understand, the calm, kindly man explained with
unfailing patience, and so I got an early insight into the sculptor’s
creative art.

It was these recollections of my childhood that suggested to me the
character of little Pennu in Uarda, of Polykarp in Homo Sum, of Pollux
in The Emperor, and the cheery Alexander in Per Aspera.

I often visited also, during my last years in Berlin, the studio of
another sculptor. His name was Streichenberg, and his workshop was in
our garden in the Linkstrasse.

If a thoughtful earnestness was the rule in Drake’s studio, in that of
Prof. Streichenberg artistic gaiety reigned. He often whistled or sang
at his work, and his young Italian assistant played the guitar. But
while I still know exactly what Drake executed in our presence, so that
I could draw the separate groups of the charming relief, the Genii of
the Thiergarten, I do not remember a single stroke of Streichenberg’s
work, though I can recall all the better the gay manner of the artist
whom we again met in 1848 as a demagogue.

At the Schmidt school Franz and Paul Meyerheim were among our comrades,
and how full of admiration I was when one of them--Franz, I think, who
was then ten or eleven years old--showed us a hussar he had painted
himself in oil on a piece of canvas! The brothers took us to their home,
and there I saw at his work their kindly father, the creator of so many
charming pictures of country and child life.

There was also a member of the artist family of the Begas, Adalbert,
who was one of our contemporaries and playmates, some of whose beautiful
portraits I saw afterward, but whom, to my regret, I never met again.

Most memorable of all were our meetings with Peter Cornelius, who also
lived in the Lennestrasse. When I think of him it always seems as if
he were looking me in the face. Whoever once gazed into his eyes could
never forget them. He was a little man, with waxen-pale, and almost
harsh, though well-formed features, and smooth, long, coal-black hair.
He might scarcely have been noticed save for his eyes, which overpowered
all else, as the sunlight puts out starlight. Those eyes would have
drawn attention to him anywhere. His peculiar seriousness and his
aristocratic reserve of manner were calculated to keep children at a
distance, even to repel them, and we avoided the stern little man whom
we had heard belonged to the greatest of the great. When he and his
amiable wife became acquainted with our mother, however, and he called
us to him, it is indescribable how his harsh features softened in the
intercourse with us little ones, till they assumed an expression of
the utmost benevolence, and with what penetrating, I might say fatherly
kindness, he talked and even jested with us in his impressive way. I
had the best of it, for my blond curly head struck him as usable in some
work of his, and my mother readily consented to my being his model. So
I had to keep still several hours day after day, though I confess, to
my shame, that I remember nothing about the sittings except having eaten
some particularly good candied fruit.

Even now I smile at the recollection of his making an angel or a spirit
of peace out of the wild boy who perhaps just before had been scuffling
with the enemy from the flower-cellar.

There was another celebrated inhabitant of the Lennestrasse whose
connection with us was still closer than that of Peter Cornelius. It was
the councillor of consistory and court chaplain Strauss, who lived at
No. 3.

Two men more unlike than he and his great artist-neighbour can hardly be
imagined, though their cradles were not far apart, for the painter was
born in Dusseldorf, and the clergyman at Iserlohn, in Westphalia.

Cornelius appears to me like a peculiarly delicate type of the Latin
race, while Strauss might be called a prototype of the sturdy Lower
Saxons. Broad-shouldered, stout, ruddy, with small but kindly blue eyes,
and a resonant bass voice suited to fill great spaces, he was always at
his ease and made others easy. He had a touch of the assured yet fine
dignity of a well-placed and well-educated Catholic prelate, though
combined with the warlike spirit of a Protestant.

Looking more closely at his healthy face, it revealed not only
benevolent amiability but superior sense and plain traces of that cheery
elasticity of soul which gave him such power over the hearts of the
listening congregation, and the disposition and mind of the king.

His religious views I do not accept, but I believe his strictly orthodox
belief was based upon conviction, and cannot be charged to any odious
display of piety to ingratiate himself with the king. It was in the time
of our boyhood that Alexander von Humboldt, going once with the king
to church, in Potsdam, in answer to the sneering question how he, who
passed for a freethinker at court, could go to the house of God, made
the apt reply, “In order to get on, your Excellency.”

When Strauss met us in the street and called to us with a certain
unction in his melodious voice, “Good-morning, my dear children in
Christ!” our hearts went out to him, and it seemed as if we had received
a blessing. He and his son Otto used to call me “Marcus Aurelius,” on
account of my curly blond head; and how often did he put his strong hand
into my thick locks to draw me toward him!

Strauss was in the counsels of the king, Frederick William IV, and at
important moments exercised an influence on his political decisions. Yet
that somewhat eccentric prince could not resist his inclination to make
cheap jokes at Strauss’s expense. After creating him court-chaplain, he
said to Alexander von Humboldt: “A trick in natural history which
you cannot copy! I have turned an ostrich (Strauss) into a bullfinch
(Dompfaffer)”--in allusion to Strauss’s being a preacher at the
cathedral (Dom).

Fritz, the worthy man’s eldest son, came to see me in Leipsic. Our
studies in the department of biblical geography had led us to different
conclusions, but our scientific views were constantly intermingled with
recollections of the Lennestrasse.

But better than he, who was much older, do I remember his brother Otto,
then a bright, amiable young man, and his mother, who was from the Rhine
country, a warm-hearted, kindly woman of aristocratic bearing.

Our mother had a very high opinion of the court chaplain, who had
christened us all and afterward confirmed my sisters, and officiated
at Martha’s marriage. But, much as she appreciated him as a friend
and counsellor, she could not accept his strict theology. Though she
received the communion at his hands, with my sisters, she preferred
the sermons of the regimental chaplain, Bollert, and later those of
the excellent Sydow. I well remember her grief when Bollert, whose free
interpretation of Scripture had aroused displeasure at court, was sent
to Potsdam.

I find an amusing echo of the effect of this measure in Paula’s journal,
and it would have been almost impossible for a growing girl of active
mind to take no note of opinions which she heard everywhere expressed.

Our entire circle was loyal; especially Privy-Councillor Seiffart, one
of our most intimate friends, a sarcastic Conservative, who was credited
with the expresssion, “The limited intellect of subjects,” which,
however, belonged to his superior, Minister von Rochow. Still, almost
all my mother’s acquaintances, and the younger ones without exception,
felt a desire for better political conditions and a constitution for the
brave, loyal, reflecting, and well-educated Prussian people. In the
same house with us lived two men who had suffered for their political
convictions--the brothers Grimm. They had been ejected from their chairs
among the seven professors of Gottingen, who were sacrificed to the
arbitrary humour of King Ernst August of Hanover.

Their dignified figures are among the noblest and most memorable
recollections of the Lennestrasse. They were, it might be said, one
person, for they were seldom seen apart; yet each had preserved his own
distinct individuality.

If ever the external appearance of distinguished men corresponded with
the idea formed of them from their deeds and works, it was so in their
case. One did not need to know them to perceive at the first glance
that they were labourers in the department of intellectual life, though
whether as scientists or poets even a practised observer would have
found it difficult to determine. Their long, flowing, wavy hair, and an
atmosphere of ideality which enveloped them both, might have inclined
one to the latter supposition; while the form of their brows, indicating
deep thought and severe mental labor, and their slightly stooping
shoulders, would have suggested the former. Wilhelm’s milder features
were really those of a poet, while Jakob’s sterner cast of countenance,
and his piercing eyes, indicated more naturally a searcher after
knowledge.

But just as certainly as that they both belonged to the strongest
champions of German science, the Muse had kissed them in their cradle.
Not only their manner of restoring our German legends, but almost all
their writings, give evidence of a poetical mode of viewing things,
and of an intuition peculiar to the spirit of poetry. Many of their
writings, too, are full of poetical beauties.

That both were men in the fullest meaning of the word was revealed at
the first glance. They proved it when, to stand by their convictions,
they put themselves and their families at the mercy of a problematical
future; and when, in advanced years, they undertook the gigantic work of
compiling so large and profound a German dictionary. Jakob looked as if
nothing could bend him; Wilhelm as if, though equally strong, he might
yield out of love.

And what a fascinating, I might almost say childlike, amiability was
united to manliness in both characters! Yes, theirs was indeed that
sublime simplicity which genius has in common with the children whom
the Saviour called to him. It spoke from the eyes whose gaze was
so searching, and echoed in their language which so easily mastered
difficult things, though when they condescended to play with their
children and with us, and jested so naively, we were half tempted to
think ourselves the wiser.

But we knew with what intellectual giants we had to do; no one had
needed to tell us that, at least; and when they called me to them I felt
as if the king himself had honoured me.

Only Wilhelm was married, and his wife had hardly her equal for sunny
and simple kindness of heart. A pleasanter, more motherly, sweeter
matron I never met.

Hermann, who won good rank as a poet, and was one of the very foremost
of our aesthetics, was much older than we. The tall young man, who often
walked as if he were absorbed in thought, seemed to us a peculiar and
unapproachable person. His younger brother, Rudolf, on the other hand,
was a cheery fellow, whose beauty and brightness charmed me unspeakably.
When he came along with elastic tread as if he were challenging life to
a conflict, and I saw him spring up the stairs three steps at a time,
I was delighted, and I knew that my mother was very fond of him. It was
just the same with “Gustel,” his sister, who was as amiable and kindly
as her mother.

I can still see the torchlight procession with which the Berlin students
honoured the beloved and respected brothers, and which we watched from
the Grimms’ windows because they were higher than ours. But there is
a yet brighter light of fire in my memory. It was shed by the burning
opera house. Our mother, who liked to have us participate in anything
remarkable which might be a recollection for life, took us out of our
beds to the next house, where the Seiffarts lived, and which had a
little tower on it. Thence we gazed in admiration at the ever-deepening
glow of the sky, toward which great tongues of flame kept streaming up,
while across the dusk shot formless masses like radiant spark-showering
birds. Pillars of smoke mingled with the clouds, and the metallic note
of the fire-bells calling for help accompanied the grand spectacle. I
was only six years old, but I remember distinctly that when Ludo and I
were taken to the Lutz swimming-baths next day, we found first on the
drill-ground, then on the bank of the Spree, and in the water, charred
pieces, large and small, of the side-scenes of the theatre. They were
the glowing birds whose flight I had watched from the tower of the Crede
house.

This remark reminds me how early our mother provided for our physical
development, for I clearly remember that the tutor who took us little
fellows to the bath called our attention to these bits of decoration
while we were swimming. When I went to Keilhau, at eleven years old, I
had mastered the art completely.

I did, in fact, many things at an earlier age than is customary, because
I was always associated with my brother, who was a year and a half
older.

We were early taught to skate, too, and how many happy hours we passed,
frequently with our sisters, on the ice by the Louisa and Rousseau
Islands in the Thiergarten! The first ladies who at that time
distinguished themselves as skaters were the wife and daughter of the
celebrated surgeon Dieffenbach--two fine, supple figures, who moved
gracefully over the ice, and in their fur-bordered jackets and Polish
caps trimmed with sable excited universal admiration.

On the whole, we had time enough for such things, though we lost many a
free hour in music lessons. Ludo was learning to play on the piano, but
I had chosen another instrument. Among our best friends, the three fine
sons of Privy-Councillor Oesterreich and others, there was a pleasant
boy named Victor Rubens, whose parents were likewise friends of my
mother. In the hospitable house of this agreeable family I had heard the
composer Vieuxtemps play the violin when I was nine years old. I went
home fairly enraptured, and begged my mother to let me take lessons.
My wish was fulfilled, and for many years I exerted myself zealously,
without any result, to accomplish something on the violin. I did,
indeed, attain to a certain degree of skill, but I was so little
satisfied with my own performances that I one day renounced the hope of
becoming a practical musician, and presented my handsome violin--a
gift from my grandmother--to a talented young virtuoso, the son of my
sisters’ French teacher.

The actress Crelinger, when she came to see my mother, made a great
impression on me, at this time, by her majestic appearance and her
deep, musical voice. She, and her daughter, Clara Stich, afterward Frau
Liedtcke, the splendid singer, Frau Jachmann-Wagner, and the charming
Frau Schlegel-Koster, were the only members of the theatrical profession
who were included among the Gepperts’ friends, and whose acquaintance we
made in consequence.

Frau Crelinger’s husband was a highly respected jurist and councillor of
justice, but among all the councillors’ wives by whom she was surrounded
I never heard her make use of her husband’s title. She was simply “Frau”
 in society, and for the public Crelinger. She knew her name had an
importance of its own. Even though posterity twines no wreaths for
actors, it is done in the grateful memory of survivors. I shall never
forget the ennobling and elevating hours I afterward owed to that great
and noble interpreter of character.

I am also indebted to Frau Jachmann-Wagner for much enjoyment both in
opera and the drama. She now renders meritorious service by fitting on
the soundest artistic principles--younger singers for the stage.

Among my mother’s papers was a humorous note announcing the arrival of a
friend from Oranienburg, and signed:

          “Your faithful old dog, Runge,
          Who was born in a quiet way
          At Neustadt, I’ve heard say.”

He came not once, but several times. He bore the title of professor, was
a chemist, and I learned from friends versed in that science that it was
indebted to him for interesting discoveries.

He had been an acquaintance of my father, and no one who met him,
bubbling over with animation and lively wit, could easily forget him. He
had a full face and long, straight, dark hair hanging on his short neck,
while intellect and kindness beamed from his twinkling eyes. When he
tossed me up and laughed, I laughed too, and it seemed as if all Nature
must laugh with us.

I have not met so strong and original a character for many a long year,
and I was very glad to read in the autobiography of Wackernagel that
when it went ill with him in Berlin, Hoffman von Fallersleben and this
same Runge invited him to Breslau to share their poverty, which was so
great that they often did not know at night where they should get the
next day’s bread.

How many other names with and without the title of privy-councillor
occur to me, but I must not allow myself to think of them.

Fraulein Lamperi, however, must have a place here. She used to dine with
us at least once a week, and was among the most faithful adherents of
our family. She had been governess to my father and his only sister,
and later was in the service of the Princess of Prussia, afterward the
Empress Augusta, as waiting-woman.

She, too, was one of those original characters whom we never find now.

She was so clever that, incredible as it sounds, she made herself a wig
and some false teeth, and yet she came of a race whose women were not
accustomed to serve themselves with their own hands; for the blood of
the venerable and aristocratic Altoviti family of Florence flowed in her
veins. Her father came into the world as a marquis of that name, but was
disinherited when, against the will of his family, he married the dancer
Lamperi. With her he went first to Warsaw, and then to Berlin, where he
supported himself and his children by giving lessons in the languages.
One daughter was a prominent member of the Berlin ballet, the other was
prepared by a most careful education to be a governess. She gave various
lessons to my sisters, and criticised our proceedings sharply, as she
did those of her fellow-creatures in general. “I can’t help it--I Must
say what I think,” was the palliating remark which followed every severe
censure; and I owe to her the conviction that it is much easier to
express disapproval, when it can be done with impunity, than to keep it
to one’s self, as I am also indebted to her for the subject of my fairy
tale, The Elixir.

I shall return to Fraulein Lamperi, for her connection with our
family did not cease until her death, and she lived to be ninety. Her
aristocratic connections in Florence--be it said to their honour--never
repudiated her, but visited her when they came to Berlin, and the
equipage of the Italian ambassador followed at her funeral, for he, too,
belonged to her father’s kindred. The extreme kindness extended to her
by Emperor William I and his sovereign spouse solaced her old age in
various ways.

One of the dearest friends of my sister Paula and of our family knew
more of me, unfortunately, at this time than I of her. Her name was
Babette Meyer, now Countess Palckreuth. She lived in our neighbourhood,
and was a charming, graceful child, but not one of our acquaintances.

When she was grown up--we were good friends then--she told me she was
coming from school one winter day, and some boys threw snowballs at her.
Then Ludo and I appeared--“the Ebers boys” and she thought that would be
the end of her; but instead of attacking her we fell upon the boys, who
turned upon us, and drove them away, she escaping betwixt Scylla and
Charybdis.

Before this praiseworthy deed we had, however, thrown snow at a young
lady in wanton mischief. I forgive our heedlessness as we were forgiven,
but it is really a painful thought to me that we should have snowballed
a poor insane man, well known in the Thiergarten and Lennestrasse, and
who seriously imagined that he was made of glass.

I began to relate this, thinking of our uproarious laughter when the
poor fellow cried out: “Let me alone! I shall break! Don’t you hear me
clink?” Then I stopped, for my heart aches when I reflect what terrible
distress our thoughtlessness caused the unfortunate creature. We were
not bad-hearted children, and yet it occurred to none of us to put
ourselves in the place of the whimpering man and think what he suffered.
But we could not do it. A child is naturally egotistical, and unable in
such a case to distinguish between what is amusing and what is sad.
Had the cry, “It hurts me!” once fallen from the trembling lips of the
“glass man,” I think we should have thrown nothing more at him.

But our young hearts did not, under all circumstances, allow what amused
us to cast kinder feelings into the shade. The “man of glass” had
a feminine ‘pendant’ in the “crazy Frau Councillor with the velvet
envelope.” This was a name she herself had given to a threadbare
little velvet cloak, when some naughty boys--were we among them?--were
snowballing her, and she besought us not to injure her velvet envelope.
But when there was ice on the ground and one of the boys was trying
to get her on to a slide, Ludo and I interfered and prevented it.
Naturally, there was a good fight in consequence, but I am glad of it to
this day.




CHAPTER VII. WHAT A BERLIN CHILD ENJOYED ON THE SPREE AND AT HIS
GRANDMOTHER’S IN DRESDEN.

In the summer we were all frequently taken to the new Zoological Garden,
where we were especially delighted with the drollery of the monkeys.
Even then I felt a certain pity for the deer and does in confinement,
and for the wild beasts in their cages, and this so grew upon me that
many a visit to a zoological garden has been spoiled by it. Once in
Keilhau I caught a fawn in the wood and was delighted with my beautiful
prize. I meant to bring it up with our rabbits, and had already carried
it quite a distance, when suddenly I began to be sorry for it, and
thought how its mother would grieve, upon which I took it back to the
spot where I had found it and returned to the institution as fast as I
could, but said nothing at first about my “stupidity,” for I was ashamed
of it.

Excursions into the country were the most delightful pleasures of the
summer. The shorter ones took us to the suburbs of the capital, and
sometimes to Charlottenburg, where several of our acquaintances lived,
and our guardian, Alexander Mendelssohn, had a country house with a
beautiful garden, where there was never any lack of the owner’s children
and grandchildren for playmates. Sometimes we were allowed to go there
with other boys. We then had a few Groschen to get something at a
restaurant, and were generally brought home in a Kremser carriage. These
carriages were to be found in a long row by the wall outside of the
Brandenburg Gate or at the Palace in Charlottenburg or by the “Turkish
tent”--for at that time there were no omnibuses running to the decidedly
rural neighbouring city. Even when the carriages were arranged to
carry ten or twelve persons there was but one horse, and it was these
Rosinantes which probably gave rise to the following rhyme:

          “A Spandau wind,
          A child of Berlin,
          A Charlottenburg horse,
          Are all not worth a pin.”

The Berlin children were, on the whole, better than their reputation,
but not so the Charlottenburg horses. The Kremser carriages were named
from the man who owned most of them. The business was carried on by an
association. A single individual rarely hired one; either a family took
possession of it, or you got in and waited patiently till enough persons
had collected for the driver to think it worth while to take his whip
and say, “Well, get up!”

But this same Herr Kremser also had nice carriages for excursions into
the country, drawn by two or four horses, as might be required. For the
four-horse Kremser chariots there was even a driver in jockey costume,
who rode the saddle-horse.

Other excursions took us to the beautiful Humboldt’s Tegel, to the
Muggel and Schlachten Lakes, to Franzosisch Buchholz, Treptow, and
Stralau. We were, unfortunately, never allowed to attend the celebrated
fishing festival at Stralau.

But the crowning expedition of all was on our mother’s birthday,
either to the Pichelsbergen, wooded hills mirrored in ponds where fish
abounded, or to the Pfaueninsel at Potsdam.

The country around Berlin is considered hopelessly ugly, but with great
injustice. I have convinced myself since that I do not look back as
fondly on the Pichelsbergen and the Havelufer at Potsdam, where it was
granted us to pass such happy hours in the springtime of life, because
the force of imagination has clothed them with fancied charms. No, these
places have indeed a singularly peaceful attractiveness, and if I prefer
them, as a child of the century, to real mountains, there was a time
when the artist’s eye would have given them the preference over the
grand landscapes of the Alpine world.

At the beginning of the last century the latter were considered
repelling. They oppressed the soul by their immensity. No painter then
undertook to depict giant mountains with eternal snow upon summits which
towered above the clouds. A Salvator Rosa or Poussin, or even the great
Ruysdael, would have preferred to set up his easel at the Pichelsbergen
or in the country about Potsdam, rather than at the foot of Mont Blanc,
the Kunigssee, or the Eibsee, in which the rocks of the Zugspitze--my
vis-a-vis at Tutzingen--are magnificently reflected.

There is nothing more beautiful than the moderate, finely rounded
heights at these peaceful spots rich in vegetation and in water, when
gilded by the fading light of a lovely summer evening or illumined by
the rosy tinge of the afterglow. Many of our later German painters
have learned to value the charm of such a subject, while of our writers
Fontane has seized and very happily rendered all their witchery. At
my brother Ludo’s manorhouse on the banks of the Dahme, at his place
Dolgenbrodt, in Mark Brandenburg, Fontane experienced all the attraction
of the plain, which I have never felt more deeply than in that very spot
and on a certain evening at Potsdam when the bells of the little church
of Sakrow seemed to bid farewell to the sinking sun and invite him to
return.

In the East I have seen the day-star set more brilliantly, but never
met with a more harmonious and lovely splendour of colour than on summer
evenings in the Mark, except in Holland on the shore of the North Sea.

Can I ever forget those festal days when, after saying our little
congratulatory verses to our mother, and admiring her birthday table,
which her friends always loaded with flowers, we awaited the carriages
that were to take us into the country? Besides a great excursion wagon,
there were generally some other coaches which conveyed us and the
families of our nearest friends on our jaunt.

How the young faces beamed, and how happy the old ones looked, and
what big baskets there were full of good things beside the coachman and
behind the carriage!

We were soon out of the city, and the birds by the wayside could not
have twittered and sung in May more gaily than we during these drives.

Once we let the horses rest, and took luncheon at Stimming near the
Wannsee, where Heinrich von Kleist with the beloved of his heart put
an end to his sad life. Before we stopped we met a troop of travelling
journeymen, and our mother, in the gratitude of her heart, threw them a
thaler, and said “Drink to my happiness; to-day is my birthday.”

When we had rested and gone on quite a distance we found the journeymen
ranged beside the road, and as they threw into the carriage an immense
bouquet of field flowers which they had gathered, one of them exclaimed:
“Long live the birthday-child! And health and happiness to the
beautiful, kind lady!” The others, and we, too, joined with all our
might in a “Hurrah!”

We felt like pagan Romans, who on starting out had perceived the
happiest omens in earth and sky.

And at the Pfaueninsel!

Frau Friedrich, the wife of the man in charge of the fountains, kept a
neat inn, in which, however, she by no means dished up to all persons
what they would like. But our mother knew her through Lenne, by whom her
husband was employed, and she took good care of us. How attractive to us
children was the choice yet large collection she possessed! Most of the
members of the royal house had often been her guests, and had increased
it to a little museum which contained countless milk and cream jugs of
every sort and metal, even the most precious, and of porcelain and glass
of every age. Many would have been rare and welcome ornaments to any
trades-museum. Our mother had contributed a remarkably handsome Japanese
jug which her brother had sent her.

After the banquet we young ones ran races, while the older people rested
till coffee and punch were served. Whether dancing was allowed at the
Pfaueninsel I no longer remember, but at the Pichelsbergen it certainly
was, and there were even three musicians to play.

And how delightful it was in the wood; how pleasant the rowing on the
water, during which, when the joy of existence was at its height, the
saddest songs were sung! Oh, I could relate a hundred things of those
birthdays in the country, but I have completely forgotten how we
got home. I only know that we waked the next morning full of happy
recollections.

In the summer holidays we often took journeys--generally to Dresden,
where our father’s mother with her daughter, our aunt Sophie, had gone
to live, the latter having married Baron Adolf von Brandenstein, an
officer in the Saxon Guard, who, after laying aside the bearskin cap
and red coat, the becoming uniform of that time, was at the head of the
Dresden post office.

I remember these visits with pleasure, and the days when our grandmother
and aunt came to Berlin. I was fond of both of them, especially my
lively aunt, who was always ready for a joke, and my affection was
returned. But these, our nearest relatives, in early childhood only
passed through our lives like brilliant meteors; the visits we exchanged
lasted only a few days; and when they came to Berlin, in spite of my
mother’s pressing invitations, they never stayed at our house, but in
a hotel. I cannot imagine, either, that our grandmother would ever have
consented to visit any one. There was a peculiar exclusiveness about
her, I might almost say a cool reserve, which, although proofs of
her cordial love were not wanting, prevented her from caressing us or
playing with us as grandmothers do. She belonged to another age, and
our mother taught us, when greeting her, to kiss her little white hand,
which was always covered up to the fingers with waving lace, and to
treat her with the utmost deference. There was an air of aristocratic
quiet in her surroundings which caused a feeling of constraint. I
can still see the suite of spacious rooms she occupied, where silence
reigned except when Coco, the parrot, raised his shrill voice. Her
companion, Fraulein Raffius, always lowered her voice in her presence,
though when out of it she could play with us very merrily. The elderly
servant, who, singularly enough, was of noble family--his real name was
Von Wurmkessel--did his duty as noiselessly as a shadow. Then there was
a faint perfume of mignonette in most of the rooms, which makes me think
of them whenever I see the pretty flower, for, as is well known, smell
is the most powerful of all the senses in awakening memory.

I never sat in my grandmother’s lap. When we wished to talk with her
we had to sit beside her; and if we kept still she would question us
searchingly about everything--our play, our friends, our school.

This silence, which always struck us children at first with
astonishment, was interrupted very gaily by our aunt, whose liveliness
broke in upon it like the sound of a horn amid the stillness of a
forest. Her cheerful voice was audible even in the hall, and when she
crossed the threshold we flew to her, and the spell was broken. For she,
the only daughter, put no restraint on herself in the reserved presence
of her mother. She kissed her boisterously, asked how she was, as if
she were the mother, the other the child. Indeed, she took the liberty
sometimes of calling the old lady “Henrietta”--that was her name--or
even “Hetty.” Then, when grandmother pointed to us and exclaimed
reproachfully, “Why, Sophie!” our aunt could always disarm her with gay
jests.

Though the two were generally at a distance, their existence made itself
felt again and again either through letters or presents or by their
coming to Berlin, which always brought holidays for us.

These journeys were accomplished under difficulties. Our aunt had always
used an open carriage, and was really convinced that she would stifle in
a closed railway compartment. But as she would not forego the benefit
of rapid transit, our grandmother was obliged, even after her daughter’s
marriage, to hire an open truck for her, on which, with her faithful
maid Minna, and one of her dogs, or sometimes with her husband or
a friend as a companion, she established herself comfortably in an
armchair of her own, with various other conveniences about her. The
railway officials knew her, and no doubt shrugged their shoulders, but
the warmheartedness shining in her eyes and her unvarying cheerfulness
carried everything before them, so that her eccentricity was readily
overlooked. And she had plenty of similar caprices. I was visiting her
once in the Christmas holidays, when I was a schoolboy in the upper
class, and we had retired for the night. At one o’clock my aunt suddenly
appeared at my bedside, waked me, and told me to get up. The first snow
had fallen, and she had had the horses harnessed for us to go sleighing,
which she particularly enjoyed.

Resistance was useless, and the swift flight over the snow by moonlight
proved to be very enjoyable. Between four and five o’clock in the
morning we were at home again.

Winter brought many other amusements. I remember with particular
pleasure the Christmas fair, which now, as I learn to my regret, is no
longer held. And yet, what a source of delight it once was to children!
What rich food it offered to their minds! The Christmas trees and
pyramids at the Stechbahn, the various wares, the gingerbread and toys
in the booths, offered by no means the greatest charm. A still stronger
attraction were the boys with the humming “baboons,” the rattles and
flags, for from them purchases had always to be made, with jokes thrown
into the bargain--bad ones, which are invariably the most amusing; and
what a pleasure it was to twirl the “baboon” with one’s own little hand,
and, if the hand got cold during the process, one did not feel it, for
it seemed like midsummer with a swarm of flies buzzing about one!

But most enjoyable of all was probably the throng of people, great and
small, and all there was to hear and see among them and to answer. It
seemed as if the Christmas joy of the city was concentrated there, and
filled the not over-clear atmosphere like the pungent odour of Christmas
trees.

Put there were other things to experience as well as mere gaiety--the
pale child in the corner, with its little bare feet, holding in its
cold, red hands the six little sheep of snow-white wool on a tiny green
board; and that other yonder, with the little man made of prunes spitted
on tiny sticks.

How small and pale the child is! And how eloquently the blue eyes invite
a purchaser, for it is only with looks that the wares are extolled! I
still see them both before me! The threepenny pieces they get are to
help their starving mother to heat the attic room in those winter days
which, cold though they are, may warm the heart. Looking at them our
mother told us how hunger hurts, and how painful want and misery are to
bear, and we never left the Christmas fair without buying a few sheep
or a prune man, though all we could do with them was to give them away
again. When I wrote my fairy-tale, The Nuts, I had the Christmas fair
at Berlin in my mind’s eye, and I seemed to see the wretched little
girl who, among all the happy folk, had found nothing but cold, pain,
anguish, and a handful of nuts, and who afterward fared so happily--not,
indeed, among men, but with the most beautiful angels in heaven.

Why are the Berlin children defrauded of this bright and innocent
pleasure, and their hearts denied the practice of exercising charity?

Turning my thoughts backward, it seems to me as if almost too much
beauty and pleasure were crowded together at Christmas, richly provided
with presents as we were besides, for over and above the Christmas fair
there was Kroll’s Christmas exhibition, where clever heads and skilful
hands transformed a series of great halls, at one time into the domain
of winter, at another into the kingdom of the fairies. There was nothing
to do but look.

Imagination came to a standstill, for what could it add to these
wonders? Yet the fairyland of which Ludo and I had dreamed was more
beautiful and more real than this palpable magnificence of tin
and pasteboard; which is, perhaps, one reason why the overexcited
imagination of a city child shrinks back and tries to find in reality
what a boy brought up in the quiet of the country can conjure up before
his mind himself.

Then, too, there were delightful sights in the Gropius panorama and
Fuchs’s confectioner’s shop--in the one place entertaining things, in
the other instructive. At the panorama half the world was spread out
before us in splendid pictures, so presented and exhibited as to give
the most vivid impression of reality.

From the letters of our mother’s brothers, who were Dutch officials in
Java and Japan, as well as from books of travel which had been read to
us, we had already heard much of the wonders of the Orient; and at the
Gropius panorama the inner call that I had often seemed to hear--“Away!
to the East”--only grew the stronger. It has never been wholly silent
since, but at that time I formed the resolution to sail around the
world, or--probably from reading some book--to be a noble pirate. Nor
should I have been dissatisfied with the fate of Robinson Crusoe.
The Christmas exhibition at Fuchs’s, Unter den Linden, was merely
entertaining--Berlin jokes in pictures mainly of a political or
satirical order. Most distinctly of all I remember the sentimental lady
of rank who orders her servant to catch a fly on a tea-tray and put
it carefully out of the window. The obedient Thomas gets hold of the
insect, takes it to the window, and with the remark, “Your ladyship, it
is pouring, the poor thing might take cold,” brings it back again to the
tea-tray.

There was plenty of such entertainment in winter, and we had our part
in much of it. Rellstab, the well-known editor of Voss’s journal, made
a clever collection of such jokes in his Christmas Wanderings. We could
read, and whatever was offered by that literary St. Nicholas and highly
respected musical critic for cultivated Berlin our mother was quite
willing we should enjoy.




CHAPTER VIII. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

On the 18th of March, the day of the fighting in the streets of Berlin,
we had been living for a year in the large suite of apartments at No. 7
Linkstrasse.

Of those who inhabited the same house with us I remember only the
sculptor Streichenberg, whose studio was next to our pretty garden, and
the Beyers, a married couple. He, later a general and commander of the
troops besieging Strasburg in 1870, was at that time a first lieutenant.
She was a refined, extremely amiable, and very musical woman, who had
met our mother before, and now entered into the friendliest relations
with her.

A guest of their quiet household, a little Danish girl, one of Fran
Beyer’s relatives, shared our play in the garden, and worked with us
at the flower beds which had been placed in our charge. I remember how
perfectly charming I thought her, and that her name was Detta Lvsenor.

All the details of our intercourse with her and other new acquaintances
who played with us in the garden have vanished from my memory, for the
occurrences of that time are thrown into shadow by the public events and
political excitement around us. Even children could not remain untouched
by what was impending, for all that we saw or heard referred to it
and, in our household, views violently opposed to each other, with the
exception of extreme republicanism, were freely discussed.

The majority of our conservative acquaintances were loud in complaint,
and bewailed the king’s weakness, and the religious corruption and
hypocritical aspirations which were aroused by the honest, but romantic
and fanatical religious zeal of Frederick William IV. I must have heard
the loudest lamentations concerning this cancer of society at this time,
for they are the most deeply imprinted in my memory. Even such men as
the Gepperts, Franz Kugler, H. M. Romberg, Drake, Wilcke, and others,
with whose moderate political views I became acquainted later, used to
join us. Loyal they all were, and our mother was so strongly attached
to the house of Hohenzollern that I heard her request one of the younger
men, when he sharply declared it was time to force the king to abdicate,
either to moderate his speech or cease to visit her house.

Our mother could not prevent, however, similar and worse speeches from
coming to our ears.

A particularly deep impression was made upon us by a tall man with a big
blond beard, whose name I have forgotten, but whom we generally met at
the sculptor Streichenberg’s when he took us with him in our play
hours into his great workshop. This man appeared to be in very good
circumstances, for he always wore patent-leather boots, and a large
diamond ring on his finger; but with his vivacious, even passionate
temperament, he trampled in the dust the things I had always revered. I
hung on his lips when he talked of the rights of the people, and of
his own vocation to break the way for freedom, or when he anathematized
those who oppressed a noble nation with the odious yoke of slavery.

Catch phrases, like “hanging the last king with the guts of the last
priest,” I heard for the first time from him, and although such speeches
did not please me, they made an impression because they awakened so much
surprise, and more than once he called upon us to be true sons of our
time and not a tyrant’s bondmen. We heard similar remarks elsewhere in
a more moderate form, and from our companions at school in boyish
language.

There were two parties there also, but besides loyalty another sentiment
flourished which would now be called chauvinism, yet which possessed
a noble influence, since it fostered in our hearts that most beautiful
flower of the young mind, enthusiasm for a great cause.

And during the history lessons on Brandenburg-Prussia our cheeks would
glow, for what German state could boast a grander, prouder history than
Prussia under the Hohenzollerns, rising by ability, faithfulness
to duty, courage, and self-sacrificing love of country from small
beginnings to the highest power?

The Liebe school had been attended only by children of good families,
while in the Schmidt school a Count Waldersee and Hoym, the son of a
capmaker and dealer in eatables, sat together on the same bench. The
most diverse tendencies were represented, and all sorts of satirical
songs and lampoons found their way to us. Such parodies as this in the
Song of Prussia we could understand very well:

       “I am a Prussian, my colours you know,
        From darkness to light they boldly go;
        But that for Freedom my fathers died,
        Is a fact which I have not yet descried.”

Nor did more delicate allusions escape us; for who had not heard, for
instance, of the Friends of Light, who played a part among the Berlin
liberals? To whose ears had not come some longing cry for freedom, and
especially freedom of the press?

And though that ever-recurring word Pressfreiheit (freedom of the press)
was altered by the wags for us boys into Fressfreiheit (liberty to stuff
yourself); though, too, it was condemned in conservative circles as a
dangerous demand, threatening the peace of the family and opening the
door to unbridled license among writers for the papers, still we had
heard the other side of the question; that the right freely to express
an opinion belonged to every citizen, and that only through the power of
free speech could the way be cleared for a better condition of things.
In short, there was no catchword of that stormy period which we ten and
twelve-year-old boys could not have interpreted at least superficially.

To me it seemed a fine thing to be able to say what one thought right,
still I could not understand why such great importance should be
attributed to freedom of the press. The father of our friend Bardua was
entitled a counsellor of the Supreme Court, but then he had also filled
the office of a censor, and what a nice, bright boy his son was!

Among our comrades was also the son of Prof. Hengstenberg, who was the
head of the pietists and Protestant zealots, whom we had heard mentioned
as the darkest of all obscurants, and his influence over the king
execrated. By the central flight of steps at the little terrace in front
of the royal palace stood the fine statues of the horse-tamers, and the
steps were called Hengstenberg (Hengste, horses, and Berg, mountain).
And this name was explained by the circumstance that whoever would
approach the king must do so by the way of “Hengstenberg.”

We knew that quip, too, and yet the son of this mischievous enemy of
progress was a particularly fine, bright boy, whom we all liked, and
whose father, when I saw him, astonished me, for he was a kindly man and
could laugh as cheerfully as anybody.

It was all very difficult to understand; and, as we had more friends
among the conservatives than among the democrats, we played usually with
the former, and troubled ourselves very little about the politics of
our friends’ fathers. There was, however, some looking askance at each
other, and cries of “Loyal Legioner!” “Pietist!” “Democrat!” “Friend of
Light!” were not wanting.

As often happens in the course of history, uncomprehended or only
half-comprehended catchwords serve as a banner around which a great
following collects.

The parties did not come to blows, probably for the sole reason that
we conservatives were by far the stronger. Yet there was a fermentation
among us, and a day came when, young as I was, I felt that those who
called the king weak and wished for a change were in the right.

In the spring of 1847 every one felt as if standing on a volcano.

When, in 1844, it was reported that Burgomaster Tschech had fired at
the king--I was then seven years old--we children shared the horror and
indignation of our mother, although in the face of such a serious event
we boys joined in the silly song which was then in everybody’s mouth,
and which began somewhat in this fashion:

       “Was there ever a man so insolent
        As Tschech, the mayor, on mischief bent?”

What did we not hear at that time about all the hopes that had been
placed on the crown-prince, and how ill he had fulfilled them as king!
How often I listened quietly in some corner while my mother discussed
such topics with gentlemen, and from the beginning of the year 1847
there was hardly a conversation in Berlin which did not sooner or later
touch upon politics and the general discontent or anxiety. But I had no
need to listen in order to hear such things. On every walk we took they
were forced upon our ears; the air was full of them, the very stones
repeated them.

Even we boys had heard of Johann Jacoby’s “Four Questions,” which
declared a constitution a necessity.

I have not forgotten the indignation called forth, even among our
acquaintances of moderate views, by Hassenpflug’s promotion; and if his
name had never come to my ears at home, the comic papers, caricatures,
and the talk everywhere would have acquainted me with the feelings
awakened among the people of Berlin by the favour he enjoyed. And added
to this were a thousand little features, anecdotes, and events which all
pointed to the universal discontent.

The wars for freedom lay far behind us. How much had been promised to
the people when the foreign foe was to be driven out, and how little had
been granted! After the July revolution of 1830, many German states had
obtained a constitution, while in Prussia not only did everything
remain in the same condition, but the shameful time of the spying by
the agitators had begun, when so many young men who had deserved well
of their country, like Ernst Moriz, Arndt, and Jahn, distinguished and
honourable scholars like Welcker, suffered severely under these odious
persecutions. One must have read the biography of the honest and
laborious Germanist Wackernagel to be able to credit the fact that that
quiet searcher after knowledge was pursued far into middle life by
the most bitter persecution and rancorous injuries, because as a
schoolboy--whether in the third or fourth class I do not know--he had
written a letter in which was set forth some new division, thought out
in his childish brain, for the united German Empire of which he dreamed.

Such men as Kamptz and Dambach kept their places by casting suspicion
upon others and condemning them, but they little dreamed when they
summoned before their execrable tribunal the insignificant student Fritz
Reuter, of Mecklenburg, how he would brand their system and their names.
Most of these youths who had been plunged into misery by such rascally
abuse of office and the shameful way in which a king naturally anything
but malignant, was misled and deceived, were either dead and gone,
or had been released from prison as mature men. What hatred must have
filled their souls for that form of government which had dared thus
to punish their pure enthusiasm for a sacred cause--the unity and
well-earned freedom of their native land! Ah, there were dangerous
forces to subdue among those grey-haired martyrs, for it was their fiery
spirit and high hearts which had brought them to ruin.

Those who had been disappointed in the results of the war for liberty,
and those who had suffered in the demagogue period, had ventured to hope
once more when the much-extolled crown-prince, Frederick William IV,
mounted the throne. What disappointment was in store for them; what new
suffering was laid upon them when, instead of the rosy dawn of freedom
which they fancied they had seen, a deeper darkness and a more reckless
oppression set in! What they had taken for larks announcing the breaking
of a brighter day turned out to be bats and similar vermin of the night.
In the state the exercise of a boundless arbitrary power; in the Church,
dark intolerance; and, in its train, slavish submission, favour-seeking,
rolling up of the eyes, and hypocrisy as means to unworthy ends, and
especially to that of speedy promotion--the deepest corruption of
all--that of the soul.

What naturally followed caused the loyalists the keenest pain, for the
injury done to the strong monarchical feeling of the Prussian people
in the person and the conduct of Frederick William IV was not to be
estimated. Only the simple heroic greatness and the paternal dignity of
an Emperor William could have repaired it.

In the year preceding the revolution there had been a bad harvest,
and frightful stories were told of famine in the weaving districts
of Silesia. Even before Virchow, in his free-spoken work on the
famine-typhus, had faithfully described the full misery of those
wretched sufferers, it had become apparent to the rulers in Berlin that
something must be done to relieve the public distress.

The king now began to realize distinctly the universal discontent, and
in order to meet it and still further demands he summoned the General
Assembly.

I remember distinctly how fine our mother thought the speech with which
he opened that precursor of the Prussian Chambers, and the address
showed him in fact to be an excellent orator.

To him, believing as he did with the most complete conviction in
royalty by the grace of God and in his calling by higher powers, any
relinquishing of his prerogative would seem like a betrayal of his
divine mission. The expression he uttered in the Assembly in the course
of his speech--“I and my people will serve the Lord”--came from the very
depths of his heart; and nothing could be more sincerely meant than the
remark, “From one weakness I know myself to be absolutely free: I do not
strive for vain public favour. My only effort is to do my duty to the
best of my knowledge and according to my conscience, and to deserve the
gratitude of my people, though it should be denied me.”

The last words have a foreboding sound, and prove what is indeed evident
from many other expressions--that he had begun to experience in his own
person the truth of the remark he had made when full of hope, and hailed
with joyful anticipations at his coronation--“The path of a king is full
of sorrow, unless his people stand by him with loyal heart and mind.”

His people did not do that, and it was well for them; for the path
indicated by the royal hand would have led them to darkness and to the
indignity of ever-increasing bondage, mental and temporal.

The prince himself is entitled to the deepest sympathy. He wished to do
right, and was endowed with great and noble gifts which would have done
honour to a private individual, but could not suffice for the ruler of a
powerful state in difficult times.

Hardly had the king opened the General Assembly in April, 1848, and, for
the relief of distress among the poorer classes in the capital, repealed
the town dues on corn, when the first actual evidences of discontent
broke out. The town tax was so strictly enforced at that time at all
the gates of Berlin that even hacks entering the city were stopped and
searched for provisions of meat or bread--a search which was usually
conducted in a cursory and courteous manner.

In my sister Paula’s journal I have an almost daily account of that
period, with frequent reference to political events, but it is not my
task to write a history of the Berlin revolution.

Those of my sister’s records which refer to the revolutionary period
begin with a mention of the so-called potato revolution, which occurred
ten days after the opening of the General Assembly, though it had no
connection with it.

   [Excessive prices had been asked for a peck of potatoes, which
   enraged the purchasers, who threw them into the gutter and laid
   hands on some of the market-women. The assembled crowd then
   plundered some bakers’ and butchers’ shops, and was finally
   dispersed by the military. A certain Herr Winckler is said
   to have lost his life. Many windows were broken, etc.]

This riot took place on the 21st of April, and on the 2d of May Paula
alludes to a performance at the opera-house, which Ludo and I attended.
It was the last appearance of Fran Viardot Garcia as Iphigenia, but I
fear Paula is right in saying that the great singer did her best for
an ungrateful public, for the attention of the audience was directed
chiefly to the king and queen. The latter appeared in the theatre for
the first time since a severe illness, the enthusiasm was great, and
there was no end to the cries of “Long live the king and queen!” which
were repeated between every act.

I relate the circumstance to show with what a devoted and faithful
affection the people of Berlin still clung to the royal pair. On the
other hand, their regard for the Prince of Prussia, afterward Emperor
William, was already shaken. He who alone remained firm when all about
the king were wavering, was regarded as the embodiment of military rule,
against which a violent opposition was rising.

Our mother was even then devoted to him with a reverence which bordered
upon affection, and we children with her.

We felt more familiar with him, too; than with any other members of the
ruling house, for Fraulein Lamperi, who was in a measure like one of our
own family, was always relating the most attractive stories about him
and his noble spouse, whose waiting-woman she had been.

Of Frederick William IV it was generally jokes that were told, some of
them very witty ones. We once came in contact with him in a singular
way.

Our old cook, Frau Marx, who called herself “the Marxen,” was nearly
blind, and wished to enter an institution, for which it was necessary to
have his Majesty’s consent. Many years before, when she was living in
a count’s family, she had taught the king, as a young prince, to churn,
and on the strength of this a petition was drawn up for her by my
family. This she handed into the king’s carriage, in the palace
court-yard, and to his question who she was, she replied, “Why, I’m old
Marxen, and your Majesty is my last retreat.” This speech was repeated
to my mother by the adjutant who came to inquire about the petitioner,
and he assured her that his Majesty had been greatly amused by the old
woman’s singular choice of words, and had repeated it several times to
persons about him. Her wish was fulfilled at once.

The memory of those March days of 1848 is impressed on my soul in
ineffaceable characters. More beautiful weather I never knew. It seemed
as if May had taken the place of its stormy predecessor. From the 13th
the sun shone constantly from a cloudless sky, and on the 18th the
fruit-trees in our garden were in full bloom. Whoever was not kept in
the house by duty or sickness was eager to be out. The public gardens
were filled by afternoon, and whoever wanted to address the people had
no need to call an audience together. Whatever rancour, indignation,
discontent, and sorrow had lurked under ground now came forth, and
the buds of longing and joyful expectation hourly unfolded in greater
strength and fuller bloom.

The news of the Paris revolution, whose confirmation had reached
Berlin in the last few days of February, had caused all this growth and
blossoming like sunshine and warm rain. There was no repressing it,
and the authorities felt daily more and more that their old measures of
restraint were failing.

The accounts from Paris were accompanied by report after report from
the rest of Germany, shaking the old structure of absolutism like the
repeated shocks of a battering-ram.

Freedom of the press was not yet granted, but tongues had begun to
move freely-indeed, often without any restraint. As early as the 7th of
March, and in bad weather, too, meetings began to be held in tents. As
soon as the fine spring days came we found great crowds listening to
bearded orators, who told them of the revolution in Paris and of the
addresses to the king--how they had passed hither and thither, and
how they had been received. They had all contained very much the same
demands--freedom of the press, representatives of the people to be
chosen by free election, all religious confessions to be placed on an
equal footing in the exercise of political rights, and representation of
the people in the German Confederacy.

These demands were discussed with fiery zeal, and the royal promise,
just given, of calling together the Assembly again and issuing a law
on the press, after the Confederate Diet should have been moved to a
similar measure, was condemned in strong terms as an insufficient and
half-way procedure--a payment on account, in order to gain time.

On the 15th the particulars of the Vienna revolution and Metternich’s
flight reached Berlin; and we, too, learned the news, and heard our
mother and her friends asking anxiously, “How will this end?”

Unspeakable excitement had taken possession of young and old--at home,
in the street, and at school--for blood had already flowed in the
city. On the 13th, cavalry had dispersed a crowd in the vicinity of
the palace, and the same thing was repeated on the two following days.
Fortunately, few were injured; but rumour, ever ready to increase and
enhance the horrible desire of many fanatics to stir up the fire of
discontent, had conspired to make wounded men dead ones, and slight
injuries severe.

These exaggerations ran through the city, arousing indignation; and the
correspondents of foreign papers, knowing that readers often like best
what is most incredible, had sent the accounts to the provinces and
foreign countries.

But blood had flowed. Hatred of the soldiery, to which, however, some
among the insurgents had once been proud to belong, grew with fateful
rapidity, and was still further inflamed by those who saw in the
military the brazen wall that stood between them and the fulfillment of
their most ardent wishes.

A spark might spring the open and overcharged mine into the air; an
ill-chosen or misunderstood expression, a thoughtless act, might bring
about an explosion.

The greatest danger threatened from fresh conflicts between the army and
the people, and it was to the fear of this that various young or
elderly gentlemen owed their office of going about wherever a crowd
was assembled and urging the populace to keep the peace. They were
distinguished by a white band around the arm bearing the words,
“Commissioner of Protection,” and a white rod a foot and a half
long designed to awaken the respect accorded by the English to their
constables. We recognized many well-known men; but the Berlin populace,
called by Goethe insolent, is not easily impressed, and we saw
constables surrounded by street boys like an owl with a train of little
birds fluttering teasingly around it. Even grown persons called them
nicknames and jeered at their sticks, which they styled “cues” and
“tooth-picks.”

A large number of students, too, had expressed their readiness to join
this protective commission, either as constables or deputies, and had
received the wand and band at the City Hall.

How painful the exercise of their vocation was made to them it would be
difficult to describe. News from Austria and South Germany, where the
people’s cause seemed to be advancing with giant strides to the desired
goal, hourly increased the offensive strength of the excited populace.

On the afternoon of the 16th the Potsdam Platz, only a few hundred steps
from our house, was filled with shouting and listening throngs, crowded
around the sculptor Streichenberg, his blond-bearded friend, and other
violently gesticulating leaders. This multitude received constant
reenforcements from the city and through Bellevuestrasse. On the
left, at the end of the beautiful street with its rows of budding
chestnut-trees, lay “Kemperhof,” a pleasure resort where we had often
listened to the music of a band clad in green hunting costume. Many must
have come thence, for I find that on the 16th an assemblage was held
there from which grew the far more important one on the morning of the
17th, with its decisive conclusion in Kopenickerstrasse.

At this meeting, on the afternoon of the 17th, it was decided to set
on foot a peaceful manifestation of the wishes of the people, and a new
address to the king was drawn up. It was settled that on the 28th of
March, at two o’clock, thousands of citizens with the badges of the
protective commission should appear before the palace and send in a
deputation to his Majesty with a document which should clearly convey
the principal requirements of the people.

What they were to represent to the king as urgently necessary was: The
withdrawal of the military force, the organization of an armed citizen
guard, the granting of an unconditional freedom of the press, which had
been promised for a lifetime, and the calling of the General Assembly. I
shall return to the address later.




CHAPTER IX. THE EIGHTEENTH OF MARCH.

THE 17th passed so quietly that hopes of a peaceable outcome of the
fateful conflict began to awake. My own recollections confirm this.

People believed so positively that the difficulty would be adjusted,
that in the forenoon of the 18th my mother sent my eldest sister Martha
to her drawing-lesson, which was given at General Baeyer’s, in the
Friedrichstrasse.

Ludo and I went to school, and when it was over the many joyful faces in
the street confirmed what we had heard during the school hours.

The king had granted the Constitution and the “freedom of the press.”

Crowds were collected in front of the placards which announced this
fact, but there was no need to force our way through; their contents
were read aloud at every corner and fountain.

One passer-by repeated it to another, and friend shouted to friend
across the street. “Have you heard the news?” was the almost invariable
question when people accosted one another, and at least one “Thank God!”
 was contained in every conversation. Two or three older acquaintances
whom we met charged us, in all haste, to tell our mother; but she had
heard it already, and her joy was so great that she forgot to scold us
for staying away so long. Fraulein Lamperi, on the contrary, who dined
with us, wept. She was convinced that the unfortunate king had been
forced into something which would bring ruin both to him and his
subjects. “His poor Majesty!” she sobbed in the midst of our joy.

Our mother loved the king too, but she was a daughter of the free
Netherlands; two of her brothers and sisters lived in England; and
the friends she most valued, whom she knew to be warmly and faithfully
attached to the house of Hohenzollern, thought it high time that the
Prussian people attained the majority to which that day had brought
them. Moreover, her active mind knew no rest till it had won a clear
insight into questions concerning the times and herself. So she had
reached the conviction that no peace between king and people could be
expected unless a constitution was granted. In Parliament she would have
sat on the right, but that her adopted country should have a Parliament
filled her with joyful pride.

Ludo and I were very gay. It was Saturday, and towards evening we
were going to a children’s ball given by Privy-Councillor Romberg--the
specialist for nervous diseases--for his daughter Marie, for which new
blue jackets had been made.

We were eagerly expecting them, and about three o’clock the tailor came.

Our mother was present when he tried them on, and when she remarked
that now all was well, the man shook his head, and declared that the
concessions of the forenoon had had no other object than to befool the
people; that would appear before long.

While I write, it seems as if I saw again that poor little bearer of
the first evil tidings, and heard once more the first shots which
interrupted his prophecy with eloquent confirmation.

Our mother turned pale.

The tailor folded up his cloth and hurried away. What did his words
mean, and what was the firing outside?

We strained our ears to listen. The noise seemed to grow louder and come
nearer; and, just as our mother cried, “For Heaven’s sake, Martha!”
 the cook burst into the room, exclaiming, “The row began in the
Schlossplatz!”

Fraulein Lamperi shrieked, seized her bonnet and cloak, and the
pompadour which she took with her everywhere, to hurry home as fast as
she could.

Our mother could think only of Martha. She had dined at the Baeyers’ and
was now perhaps on the way home. Somebody must be sent to meet her. But
of what use would be the escort of a maid; and Kurschner was gone, and
the porter not to be found!

The cook was sent in one direction, the chambermaid in another, to seek
a male escort for Martha.

And then there was Frau Lieutenant Beyer, our neighbour in the house,
whose husband was on the general staff, asking: “How is it possible?
Everything was granted! What can have happened?”

The answer was a rattle of musketry. We leaned out of the window, from
which we could see as far as Potsdamstrasse. What a rush there was
towards the gate! Three or four men dashed down the middle of the quiet
street. The tall, bearded fellow at the head we knew well. It was the
upholsterer Specht, who had often put up curtains and done similar work
for us, a good and capable workman.

But what a change! Instead of a neat little hammer, he was flourishing
an axe, and he and his companions looked as furious as if they were
going to revenge some terrible injury.

He caught sight of us, and I remember distinctly the whites of his
rolling eyes as he raised his axe higher, and shouted hoarsely, and as
if the threat was meant for us:

“They shall get it!”

Our mother and Frau Beyer had seen and heard him too, and the firing in
the direction of which the upholsterer and his companions were running
was very near.

The fight must already be raging in Leipzigerstrasse.

At last the porter came back and announced that barricades had been
built at the corner of Mauer-and Friedrichstrasse, and that a violent
conflict had broken out there and in other places between the soldiers
and the citizens. And our Martha was in Friedrichstrasse, and did not
come. We lived beyond the gate, and it was not to be expected that
fighting would break out in our neighbourhood; but back of our gardens,
in the vicinity of the Potsdam railway station, the beating of drums
was heard. The firing, however, which became more and more violent,
was louder than any other noise; and when we saw our mother wild with
anxiety, we, too, began to be alarmed for our dear, sweet Martha.

It was already dark, and still we waited in vain.

At last some one rang. Our mother hurried to the door--a thing she never
did.

When we, too, ran into the hall, she had her arms around the child who
had incurred such danger, and we little ones kissed her also, and Martha
looked especially pretty in her happy astonishment at such a reception.

She, too, had been anxious enough while good Heinrich, General Maeyer’s
servant, who had been his faithful comrade in arms from 1813 to 1815,
brought her home through all sorts of by-ways. But they had been obliged
in various places to pass near where the fighting was going on, and the
tender-hearted seventeen-year-old girl had seen such terrible things
that she burst into tears as she described them.

For us the worst anxiety was over, and our mother recovered her
composure. It was perhaps advisable for her, a defenceless widow, to
leave the city, which might on the morrow be given over to the unbridled
will of insurgents or of soldiers intoxicated with victory. So she
determined to make all preparations for going with us to our grandmother
in Dresden.

Meanwhile the fighting in the streets seemed to have increased in
certain places to a battle, for the crash of the artillery grapeshot
was constantly intermingled with the crackling of the infantry fire, and
through it all the bells were sounding the tocsin, a wailing, warning
sound, which stirred the inmost heart.

It was a fearful din, rattling and thundering and ringing, while the sky
emulated the bloodsoaked earth and glowed in fiery red. It was said that
the royal iron foundry was in flames.

At last the hour of bedtime came, and I still remember how our mother
told us to pray for the king and those poor people who, in order to
attain something we could not understand, were in such great peril.




CHAPTER X. AFTER THE NIGHT OF REVOLUTION.

When we rose the next morning the firing was over. It was said that all
was quiet, and we had the well-known proclamation, “To my dear people
of Berlin.” The horrors of the past night appeared, indeed, to have been
the result of an unfortunate mistake. The king himself explained that
the two shots by the troops, which had been taken for the signal to
attack the people, were from muskets which had gone off by some unlucky
accident--“thank God, without injuring any one.”

He closed with the words: “Listen to the paternal voice of your king,
residents of my loyal and beautiful Berlin; forget what has occurred,
as I will forget it with all my heart, for the sake of the great future
which, by the blessing of God, will dawn for Prussia, and, through
Prussia, for Germany. Your affectionate queen and faithful mother, who
is very ill, joins her heart-felt and tearful entreaties to mine.”

The king also pledged his royal word that the troops would be withdrawn
as soon as the Berlin people were ready for peace and removed the
barricades.

So peace seemed restored, for there had been no fighting for hours, and
we heard that the troops were already withdrawing.

Our departure for Dresden was out of the question--railway communication
had ceased. The bells which had sounded the tocsin all night with their
brazen tongues seemed, after such furious exertion, to have no strength
for summoning worshippers to church. All the houses of God were closed
that Sunday.

Our longing to get out of doors grew to impatience, which was destined
to be satisfied, for our mother had a violent headache, and we were sent
to get her usual medicine. We reached the Ring pharmacy--a little house
in the Potsdam Platz occupied by the well-known writer, Max Ring--in a
very few minutes. We performed our errand with the utmost care, gave the
medicine to the cook on our return, and hurried off into the city.

When we had left the Mauer-and Friedrichstrasse behind, our hearts
began to beat faster, and what we saw on the rest of the way through the
longest street of Berlin as far as the Linden was of such a nature that
the mere thought of it awakens in me to this day an ardent hope that I
may never witness such sights again.

Rage, hate, and destruction had celebrated the maddest orgies on our
path, and Death, with passionate vehemence, had swung his sharpest
scythe. Wild savagery and merciless destruction had blended with the
shrewdest deliberation and skillful knowledge in constructing the
bars which the German, avoiding his own good familiar word, called
barricades. An elderly gentleman who was explaining their construction,
pointed out to us the ingenuity with which some of the barricades had
been strengthened for defence on the one side, and left comparatively
weak on the other. Every trench dug where the paving was torn up had its
object, and each heap of stones its particular design.

But the ordinary spectator needed a guide to recognize this. At the
first sight, his attention was claimed by the confused medley and the
many heart-rending signs of the horrors practised by man on man.

Here was a pool of blood, there a bearded corpse; here a blood-stained
weapon, there another blackened with powder. Like a caldron where a
witch mixes all manner of strange things for a philter, each barricade
consisted of every sort of rubbish, together with objects originally
useful. All kinds of overturned vehicles, from an omnibus to a
perambulator, from a carriage to a hand-cart, were everywhere to be
found. Wardrobes, commodes, chairs, boards, laths, bookshelves, bath
tubs and washtubs, iron and wooden pipes, were piled together, and
the interstices filled with sacks of straw and rags, mattresses, and
carriage cushions. Whence came the planks yonder, if they were not
stripped from the floor of some room? Children and promenaders had sat
only yesterday on those benches and, the night before that, oil lamps
or gas flames had burned on those lamp-posts. The sign-boards on top had
invited customers into shop or inn, and the roll of carpet beneath was
perhaps to have covered some floor to-morrow. Oleander shrubs, which I
was to see later in rocky vales of Greece or Algeria, had possibly
been put out here only the day before into the spring sunshine. The
warehouses of the capital no doubt contained everything that could be
needed, no matter how or when, but Berlin seemed to me too small for all
the trash that was dragged out of the houses in that March night.

Bloody and terrible pictures rose before our minds, and perhaps there
was no need of Assessor Geppert’s calling to us sternly, “Off home with
you, boys!” to turn our feet in that direction.

So home we ran, but stopped once, for at a fountain, either in
Leipzigstrasse or Potsdamstrasse, a ball from the artillery had struck
in the wood-work, and around it a firm hand had written with chalk in
a semicircle, “TO MY DEAR PEOPLE OF BERLIN.” On the lower part of the
fountain the king’s proclamation to the citizens, with the same heading,
was posted up.

What a criticism upon it!

The address set forth that a band of miscreants, principally foreigners,
had by patent falsehood turned the affair in the Schlossplatz to the
furtherance of their evil designs, and filled the heated minds of his
dear and faithful people of Berlin with thoughts of vengeance for
blood which was supposed to have been spilled. Thus they had become the
abominable authors of actual bloodshed.

The king really believed in this “band of miscreants,” and attributed
the revolution, which he called a ‘coup monte’ (premeditated affair), to
those wretches. His letters to Bunsen are proof of it.

Among those who read his address, “To my Dear People of Berlin,” there
were many who were wiser. There had really been no need of foreign
agitators to make them take up arms.

On the morning of the 18th their rejoicing and cheering came from full
hearts, but when they saw or learned that the crowd had been fired into
on the Schlossplatz, their already heated blood boiled over; the people
so long cheated of their rights, who had been put off when half the rest
of Germany had their demands fulfilled, could bear it no longer.

I must remind myself again that I am not writing a history of the Berlin
revolution. Nor would my own youthful impressions justify me in forming
an independent opinion as to the motives of that remarkable and somewhat
incomprehensible event; but, with the assistance of friends more
intimately acquainted with the circumstances, I have of late obtained
a not wholly superficial knowledge of them, which, with my own
recollections, leads me to adopt the opinion of Heinrich von Sybel
concerning the much discussed and still unanswered question, whether the
Berlin revolution was the result of a long-prepared conspiracy or the
spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm for liberty among the citizens. He
says: “Both these views are equally well founded, for only the united
effort of the two forces could insure a possibility of victory.”

Here again the great historian has found the true solution. It was for
the interest of the Poles, the French, and other revolutionary spirits,
to bring about a bloody conflict in Berlin, and there were many of them
in the capital that spring, among whom must have been men who knew how
to build barricades and organize revolts; and it can hardly be doubted
that, at the decisive moment, they tried to enhance the vengefulness and
combativeness of the people by strong drink and fiery speeches, perhaps,
in regard to the dregs of the populace, by money. There is weighty
evidence in support of this. But it is still more certain--and, though
I was but eleven years old and brought up in a loyal atmosphere, I,
too, felt and experienced it--that before the 18th of March the general
discontent was at the highest point. There was no controlling it.

If the chief of police, Von Minutoli, asserts that he knew beforehand
the hour when the revolution was to break out, this is no special
evidence of foresight; for the first threat the citizens had ventured to
utter against the king was in the address drawn up at the sitting of the
popular assembly in Kopenickstrasse, and couched in the following terms
“If this is granted us, and granted at once, then we will guarantee a
genuine peace.” To finish the proposition with a statement of what would
occur in the opposite case, was left to his Majesty; the assembly had
simply decided that the “peaceful demonstration of the wishes of the
people” should take place on the 18th, at two o’clock, several thousand
citizens taking part in it. While the address was handed in, and until
the reply was received, the ambassadors of the people were to remain
quietly assembled in the Schlossplatz. What was to happen in case the
above-mentioned demands were not granted is nowhere set down, but there
is little doubt that many of those present intended to trust to the
fortune of arms. The address contained an ultimatum, and Brass is right
in calling it, and the meeting in which it originated, the starting
point of the revolution. Whoever had considered the matter attentively
might easily say, “On the 18th, at two o’clock, it will be decided
either so or so.” The king had come to his determination earlier than
that. Sybel puts it beyond question that he had been forced to it by the
situation in Europe, not by threats or the compulsion of a conflict in
the streets. Nevertheless it came to a street fight, for the enemies
of order were skillful enough to start a fresh conflagration with the
charred beams of the house whose fire had been put out. But all their
efforts would have been in vain had not the conduct of the Government,
and the events of the last few days, paved the way.

Among my mother’s conservative friends, and in her own mind, there was a
strong belief that the fighting in Berlin had broken out in consequence
of long-continued stirring of the people by foreign agitators; but I can
affirm that in my later life, before I began to reflect particularly
on the subject, it always seemed to me, when I recalled the time which
preceded the 18th of March, as if existing circumstances must have led
to the expectation of an outbreak at any moment.

It is difficult in these days to form an idea of the sharp divisions
which succeeded the night of the revolution in Berlin, just as one can
hardly conceive now, even in court circles, of the whole extent and
enthusiastic strength of the sentiment of Prussian loyalty at that time.
These opposite principles separated friends, estranged families long
united in love, and made themselves felt even in the Schmidt school
during the short time that we continued to go there.

Our bold excursion over the barricades was unpunished, so far as I
remember. Perhaps it was not even noticed, for our mother, in spite of
her violent headache, had to make preparations for the illumination of
our tolerably long row of windows. Not to have lighted the house would
have imperilled the window-panes. To my regret, we were not allowed to
see the illumination. I have since thought it a peculiarly amusing trick
of fate that the palace of the Russian embassy--the property of the
autocrat Nicholas--was obliged to celebrate with a brilliant display of
lights the movement for liberty in a sister country.

On Monday, the 20th, we were sent to school, but it was closed, and we
took advantage of the circumstance to get into the heart of the city.
The appearance of the town-hall peppered with balls I have never
forgotten. Most of the barricades were cleared away; instead, there were
singular inscriptions in chalk on the doors of various public buildings.

At the beginning of Leipzigstrasse, at the main entrance of the
Ministry of War, we read the words, “National Property.” Elsewhere, and
particularly at the palace of the Prince of Prussia, was “Property of
the Citizens” or “Property of the entire Nation.”

An excited throng had gathered in front of the plain and simple palace
to whose high ground-floor windows troops of loyal and grateful Germans
have often looked up with love and admiration to see the beloved
countenance of the grey-haired imperial hero. That day we stood among
the crowd and listened to the speech of a student, who addressed us
from the great balcony amid a storm of applause. Whether it was the same
honest fellow who besought the people to desist from their design of
burning the prince’s palace because the library would be imperilled,
I do not know, but the answer, “Leave the poor boys their books,” is
authentic.

And it is also true, unhappily, that it was difficult to save from
destruction the house of the man whose Hohenzollern blood asserted
itself justly against the weakness of his royal brother. Through those
days of terror he was what he always had been and would remain, an
upright man and soldier, in the highest and noblest meaning of the
words.

What we saw and heard in the palace and its courts, swarming with
citizens and students, was so low and revolting that I dislike to think
of it.

Some of the lifeless heroes were just being borne past on litters,
greeted by the wine-flushed faces of armed students and citizens. The
teachers who had overtaken us on the way recognized among them college
friends who praised the delicious vintage supplied by the palace guards.

My brother and I were also fated to see Frederick William IV. ride down
the Behrenstrasse and the Unter den Linden with a large black, red, and
yellow band around his arm.

The burial of those who had fallen during the night of the revolution
was one of the most imposing ceremonies ever witnessed in Berlin. We
boys were permitted to look at it only for a short time, yet the whole
impression of the procession, which we really ought not to have been
allowed to see, has lingered in my memory.

It was wonderful weather, as warm as summer, and the vast escort which
accompanied the two hundred coffins of the champions of freedom to
their last resting-place seemed endless. We were forbidden to go on the
platform in front of the Neuenkirche where they were placed, but the
spectacle must have produced a strange yet deeply pathetic impression.

Pastor Sydow, who represented the Protestant clergy as the Prelate
Roland did the Catholics, and the Rabbi Dr. Sachs the Jews, afterwards
told me that the multitude of coffins, adorned with the rarest flowers
and lavishly draped with black, presented an image of mournful splendour
never to be forgotten, and I can easily believe it.

This funeral remains in my memory as an endless line of coffins and
black-garbed men with banners and hats bound with crape, bearing
flowers, emblems of guilds, and trade symbols. Mounted standard bearers,
gentlemen in robes--the professors of the university--and students in
holiday attire, mingled in the motley yet solemn train.

How many tears were shed over those coffins which contained the earthly
remains of many a young life once rich in hopes and glowing with warm
enthusiasm, many a quiet heart which had throbbed joyously for man’s
noblest possession! The interment in the Friedrichshain, where four
hundred singers raised their voices, and a band of music composed of the
hautboy players of many regiments poured mighty volumes of sound
over the open graves of the dead, must have been alike dignified and
majestic.

But the opposition between the contending parties was still too great,
and the demand upon the king to salute the dead had aroused such anger
in my mother’s circle, that she kept aloof from these magnificent and
in themselves perfectly justifiable funeral obsequies. It seemed almost
unendurable that the king had constrained himself to stand on the
balcony of the palace with his head bared, holding his helmet in his
hand, while the procession passed.

The effect of this act upon the loyal citizens of Berlin can scarcely be
described. I have seen men--even our humble Kurschner--weep during the
account of it by eye-witnesses.

Whoever knew Frederick William IV. also knew that neither genuine
reconciliation nor respect for the fallen champions of liberty induced
him to show this outward token of respect, which was to him the deepest
humiliation.

The insincerity of the sovereign’s agreement with the ideas, events, and
men of his day was evident in the reaction which appeared only too
soon. His conviction showed itself under different forms, but remained
unchanged, both in political and religious affairs.

During the interval life had assumed a new aspect. The minority had
become the majority, and many a son of a strictly conservative man was
forbidden to oppose the “red.” Only no one needed to conceal his loyalty
to the king, for at that time the democrats still shared it. A good word
for the Prince of Prussia, on the contrary, inevitably led to a brawl,
but we did not shrink from it, and, thank Heaven, we were among the
strongest boys.

This intrusion of politics into the school-room and the whole tense life
of the capital was extremely undesirable, and, if continued, could not
fail to have an injurious influence upon immature lads; so my mother
hastily decided that, instead of waiting until the next year, we should
go to Keilhau at once.

She has often said that this was the most difficult resolve of her life,
but it was also one of the best, since it removed us from the motley,
confusing impressions of the city, and the petting we received at home,
and transferred us to the surroundings most suitable for boys of our
age.

The first of the greater divisions of my life closes with the Easter
which follows the Berlin revolution of March, 1848.

Not until I attained years of maturity did I perceive that these
conflicts, which, long after, I heard execrated in certain quarters as a
blot upon Prussian history, rather deserved the warmest gratitude of
the nation. During those beautiful spring days, no matter by what
hands--among them were the noblest and purest--were sown the seeds of
the dignity and freedom of public life which we now enjoy.

The words “March conquests” have been uttered by jeering lips, but
I think at the present time there are few among the more far-sighted
conservatives who would like to dispense with them. To me and, thank
Heaven, to the majority of Germans, life deprived of them would seem
unendurable. My mother afterward learned to share this opinion, though,
like ourselves, in whose hearts she early implanted it, she retained to
her last hour her loyalty to the king.




CHAPTER XI. IN KEILHAU

Keilhau! How much is comprised in that one short word!

It recalls to my memory the pure happiness of the fairest period of
boyhood, a throng of honoured, beloved, and merry figures, and hundreds
of stirring, bright, and amusing scenes in a period of life rich in
instruction and amusement, as well as the stage so lavishly endowed by
Nature on which they were performed. Jean Paul has termed melancholy the
blending of joy and pain, and it was doubtless a kindred feeling which
filled my heart in the days before my departure, and induced me to be
particularly good and obliging to every body in the house. My mother
took us once more to my father’s grave in the Dreifaltigkeits cemetery,
where I made many good resolutions. Only the best reports should reach
home from Keilhau, and I had already obtained excellent ones in Berlin.

On the evening of our departure there were numerous kisses and farewell
glances at all that was left behind; but when we were seated in the
car with my mother, rushing through the landscape adorned with the most
luxuriant spring foliage, my heart suddenly expanded, and the pleasure
of travel and delight in the many new scenes before me destroyed every
other feeling.

The first vineyard I saw at Naumburg--I had long forgotten those on the
Rhine--interested me deeply; the Rudelsburg at Kosen, the ruins of a
real ancient castle, pleased me no less because I had never heard Franz
Kugler’s song:

       “Beside the Saale’s verdant strand
        Once stood full many a castle grand,
        But roofless ruins are they all;
        The wind sweeps through from hall to hall;
        Slow drift the clouds above,”

which refers to this charming part of the Thuringian hill country. We
were soon to learn to sing it at Keilhau. Weimar was the first goal
of this journey. We had heard much of our classic poets; nay, I knew
Schiller’s Bell and some of Goethe’s poems by heart, and we had heard
them mentioned with deep reverence. Now we were to see their home, and a
strange emotion took possession of me when we entered it.

Every detail of this first journey has remained stamped on my memory.
I even know what we ordered for supper at the hotel where we spent the
night. But my mother had a severe headache, so we saw none of the sights
of Weimar except the Goethe house in the city and the other one in the
park. I cannot tell what my feelings were, they are too strongly blended
with later impressions. I only know that the latter especially seemed to
me very small. I had imagined the “Goethe House” like the palace of
the Prince of Prussia or Prince Radziwill in Wilhelmstrasse. The Grand
Duke’s palace, on the contrary, appeared aristocratic and stately. We
looked at it very closely, because it was the birthplace of the Princess
of Prussia, of whom Fraulein Lamperi had told us so much.

The next morning my mother was well again. The railroad connecting
Weimar and Rudolstadt, near which Keilhau is located, was built long
after, so we continued our journey in an open carriage and reached
Rudolstadt about noon.

After we had rested a short time, the carriage which was to take us to
Keilhau drove up.

As we were getting in, an old gentleman approached, who instantly made
a strong impression upon me. In outward appearance he bore a marked
resemblance to Wilhelm Grimm. I should have noticed him among hundreds;
for long grey locks, parted in the middle, floated around a nobly formed
head, his massive yet refined features bore the stamp of a most kindly
nature, and his eyes were the mirror of a pure, childlike soul. The rare
charm of their sunny sparkle, when his warm heart expanded to pleasure
or his keen intellect had succeeded in solving any problem, comes back
vividly to my memory as I write, and they beamed brightly enough when he
perceived our companion. They were old acquaintances, for my mother had
been to Keilhau several times on Martin’s account. She addressed him by
the name of Middendorf, and we recognized him as one of the heads of the
institute, of whom we had heard many pleasant things.

He had driven to Rudolstadt with the “old bay,” but he willingly
accepted a seat in our carriage.

We had scarcely left the street with the hotel behind us, when he began
to speak of Schiller, and pointed out the mountain which bore his name
and to which in his “Walk” he had cried:

     “Hail! oh my Mount, with radiant crimson peak.”

Then he told us of the Lengefeld sisters, whom the poet had so often met
here, and one of whom, Charlotte, afterward became his wife. All
this was done in a way which had no touch of pedagogy or of anything
specially prepared for children, yet every word was easily understood
and interested us. Besides, his voice had a deep, musical tone, to which
my ear was susceptible at an early age. He understood children of our
disposition and knew what pleased them.

In Schaale, the first village through which we passed, he said, pointing
to the stream which flowed into the Saale close by: “Look, boys, now we
are coming into our own neighbourhood, the valley of the Schaal. It owes
its name to this brook, which rises in our own meadows, and I suppose
you would like to know why our village is called Keilhau?”

While speaking, he pointed up the stream and briefly described its
course.

We assented.

We had passed the village of Schaale. The one before us, with the
church, was called Eichfeld, and at our right was another which we could
not see, Lichtstadt. In ancient times, he told us, the mountain sides
and the bottom of the whole valley had been clothed with dense oak
forests. Then people came who wanted to till the ground. They began to
clear (lichten) these woods at Lichtstadt. This was a difficult task,
and they had used axes (Keile) for the purpose. At Eichfeld they felled
the oaks (Fiche), and carried the trunks to Schaale, where the bark
(Schale) was stripped off to make tan for the tanners on the Saale. So
the name of Lichtstadt came from the clearing of the forests, Eichfeld
from the felling of the oaks, Schaale from stripping off the bark, and
Keilhau from the hewing with axes.

This simple tale of ancient times had sprung from the Thuringian soil,
so rich in legends, and, little as it might satisfy the etymologist,
it delighted me. I believed it, and when afterward I looked down from
a height into the valley and saw the Saale, my imagination clothed the
bare or pineclad mountain slopes with huge oak forests, and beheld the
giant forms of the ancient Thuringians felling the trees with their
heavy axes.

The idea of violence which seemed to be connected with the name of
Keilhau had suddenly disappeared. It had gained meaning to me, and Herr
Middendorf had given us an excellent proof of a fundamental requirement
of Friedrich Froebel, the founder of the institution: “The external must
be spiritualized and given an inner significance.”

The same talented pedagogue had said, “Our education associates
instruction with the external world which surrounds the human being as
child and youth”; and Middendorf carried out this precept when, at
the first meeting, he questioned us about the trees and bushes by the
wayside, and when we were obliged to confess our ignorance of most of
them, he mentioned their names and described their peculiarities.

At last we reached the Keilhau plain, a bowl whose walls formed
tolerably high mountains which surrounded it on all sides except toward
Rudolstadt, where an opening permitted the Schaalbach to wind through
meadows and fields. So the village lies like an egg in a nest open in
one direction, like the beetle in the calyx of a flower which has lost
one of its leaves. Nature has girded it on three sides with protecting
walls which keep the wind from entering the valley, and to this, and the
delicious, crystal-clear water which flows from the mountains into
the pumps, its surprising healthfulness is doubtless due. During my
residence there of four and a half years there was no epidemic disease
among the boys, and on the fiftieth jubilee of the institute, in 1867,
which I attended, the statement was made that during the half century of
its existence only one pupil had died, and he had had heart disease when
his parents sent him to the school.

We must have arrived on Sunday, for we met on the road several peasants
in long blue coats, and peasant women in dark cloth cloaks with
gold-embroidered borders, and little black caps from which ribbons three
or four feet long hung down the wearers’ backs. The cloaks descended
from mother to daughter. They were very heavy, yet I afterward saw
peasant women wear them to church in summer.

At last we drove into the broad village street. At the right, opposite
to the first houses, lay a small pond called the village pool, on which
ducks and geese floated, and whose dark surface, glittering with many
hues, reflected the shepherd’s hut. After we had passed some very fine
farmhouses, we reached the “Plan,” where bright waters plashed into
a stone trough, a linden tree shaded the dancing-ground, and a pretty
house was pointed out as the schoolhouse of the village children.

A short distance farther away the church rose in the background. But
we had no time to look at it, for we were already driving up to the
institute itself, which was at the end of the village, and consisted
of two rows of houses with an open space closed at the rear by the wide
front of a large building.

The bakery, a small dwelling, and the large gymnasium were at our left;
on the right, the so-called Lower House, with the residences of the
head-masters’ families, and the school and sleeping-rooms of the smaller
pupils, whom we dubbed the “Panzen,” and among whom were boys only eight
and nine years old.

The large house before whose central door--to which a flight of stone
steps led--we stopped, was the Upper House, our future home.

Almost at the same moment we heard a loud noise inside, and an army of
boys came rushing down the steps. These were the “pupils,” and my heart
began to throb faster.

They gathered around the Rudolstadt carriage boldly enough and stared
at us. I noticed that almost all were bareheaded. Many wore their hair
falling in long locks down their backs. The few who had any coverings
used black velvet caps, such as in Berlin would be seen only at the
theatre or in an artist’s studio.

Middendorf had stepped quickly among the lads, and as they came running
up to take his hand or hang on his arm we saw how they loved him.

But we had little time for observation. Barop, the head-master, was
already hastening down the steps, welcoming my mother and ourselves with
his deep, musical tones, in a pure Westphalian dialect.

          ENTERING THE INSTITUTE.

Barop’s voice sounded so sincere and cordial that it banished every
thought of fear, otherwise his appearance might have inspired boys of
our age with a certain degree of timidity, for he was a broad-shouldered
man of gigantic stature, who, like Middendorf, wore his grey hair parted
in the middle, though it was cut somewhat shorter. A pair of dark eyes
sparkled under heavy, bushy brows, which gave them the aspect of clear
springs shaded by dense thickets. They now gazed kindly at us, but later
we were to learn their irresistible power. I have said, and I still
think, that the eyes of the artist, Peter Cornelius, are the most
forceful I have ever seen, for the very genius of art gazed from them.
Those of our Barop produced no weaker influence in their way, for they
revealed scarcely less impressively the character of a man. To them,
especially, was clue the implicit obedience that every one rendered him.
When they flashed with indignation the defiance of the boldest and most
refractory quailed. But they could sparkle cheerily, too, and whoever
met his frank, kindly gaze felt honoured and uplifted.

Earnest, thoroughly natural, able, strong, reliable, rigidly just, free
from any touch of caprice, he lacked no quality demanded by his arduous
profession, and hence he whom even the youngest addressed as “Barop”
 never failed for an instant to receive the respect which was his due,
and, moreover, had from us all the voluntary gift of affection, nay, of
love. He was, I repeat, every inch a man.

When very young, the conviction that the education of German boys was
his real calling obtained so firm a hold upon his mind that he could not
be dissuaded from giving up the study of the law, in which he had made
considerable progress at Halle, and devoting himself to pedagogy.

His father, a busy lawyer, had threatened him with disinheritance if he
did not relinquish his intention of accepting the by no means brilliant
position of a teacher at Keilhau; but he remained loyal to his choice,
though his father executed his threat and cast him off. After the old
gentleman’s death his brothers and sisters voluntarily restored his
portion of the property, but, as he himself told me long after, the
quarrel with one so dear to him saddened his life for years. For the
sake of the “fidelity to one’s self” which he required from others he
had lost his father’s love, but he had obeyed a resistless inner voice,
and the genuineness of his vocation was to be brilliantly proved.

Success followed his efforts, though he assumed the management of the
Keilhau Institute under the most difficult circumstances.

Beneath its roof he had found in the niece of Friedrich Froebel a
beloved wife, peculiarly suited both to him and to her future position.
She was as little as he was big, but what energy, what tireless activity
this dainty, delicate woman possessed! To each one of us she showed
a mother’s sympathy, managed the whole great household down to the
smallest details, and certainly neglected nothing in the care of her own
sons and daughters.

A third master, the archdeacon Langethal, was one of the founders of the
institution, but had left it several years before.

As I mention him with the same warmth that I speak of Middendorf and
Barop, many readers will suspect that this portion of my reminiscences
contains a receipt for favours, and that reverence and gratitude, nay,
perhaps the fear of injuring an institution still existing, induces me
to show only the lights and cover the shadows with the mantle of love.

I will not deny that a boy from eleven to fifteen years readily
overlooks in those who occupy an almost paternal relation to him faults
which would be immediately noted by the unclouded eyes of a critical
observer; but I consider myself justified in describing what I saw in
my youth exactly as it impressed itself on my memory. I have never
perceived the smallest flaw or even a trait or act worthy of censure in
either Barop, Middendorf, or Langethal. Finally, I may say that, after
having learned in later years from abundant data willingly placed at my
disposal by Johannes Barop, our teacher’s son and the present master of
the institute, the most minute details concerning their character and
work, none of these images have sustained any material injury.

In Friedrich Froebel, the real founder of the institute, who repeatedly
lived among us for months, I have learned to know from his own works and
the comprehensive amount of literature devoted to him, a really talented
idealist, who on the one hand cannot be absolved from an amazing
contempt for or indifference to the material demands of life, and on the
other possessed a certain artless selfishness which gave him courage,
whenever he wished to promote objects undoubtedly pure and noble, to
deal arbitrarily with other lives, even where it could hardly redound to
their advantage. I shall have more to say of him later.

The source of Middendorf’s greatness in the sphere where life and his
own choice had placed him may even be imputed to him as a fault. He, the
most enthusiastic of all Froebel’s disciples, remained to his life’s
end a lovable child, in whom the powers of a rich poetic soul surpassed
those of the thoughtful, well-trained mind. He would have been
ill-adapted for any practical position, but no one could be better
suited to enter into the soul-life of young human beings, cherish and
ennoble them.

A deeper insight into the lives of Barop and Langethal taught me to
prize these men more and more.

They have all rested under the sod for decades, and though their
institute, to which I owe so much, has remained dear and precious,
and the years I spent in the pleasant Thuringian mountain valley are
numbered among the fairest in my life, I must renounce making proselytes
for the Keilhau Institute, because, when I saw its present head for the
last time, as a very young man, I heard from him, to my sincere regret,
that, since the introduction of the law of military service, he found
himself compelled to make the course of study at Rudolstadt conform to
the system of teaching in a Realschule.--[School in which the arts and
sciences as well as the languages are taught.-TR.]--He was forced to
do so in order to give his graduates the certificate for the one year’s
military service.

The classics, formerly held in such high esteem beneath its roof, must
now rank below the sciences and modern languages, which are regarded
as most important. But love for Germany and the development of German
character, which Froebel made the foundation of his method of education,
are too deeply rooted there ever to be extirpated. Both are as zealously
fostered in Keilhau now as in former years.

After a cordial greeting from Barop, we had desks assigned us in the
schoolroom, which were supplied with piles of books, writing materials,
and other necessaries. Ludo’s bed stood in the same dormitory with mine.
Both were hard enough, but this had not damped our gay spirits, and when
we were taken to the other boys we were soon playing merrily with the
rest.

The first difficulty occurred after supper, and proved to be one of the
most serious I encountered during my stay in the school.

My mother had unpacked our trunks and arranged everything in order.
Among the articles were some which were new to the boys, and special
notice was attracted by several pairs of kid gloves and a box of pomade
which belonged in our pretty leather dressing-case, a gift from my
grandmother.

Dandified, or, as we should now term them, “dudish” affairs, were not
allowed at Keilhau; so various witticisms were made which culminated
when a pupil of about our own age from a city on the Weser called us
Berlin pomade-pots. This vexed me, but a Berlin boy always has an answer
ready, and mine was defiant enough. The matter might have ended here had
not the same lad stroked my hair to see how Berlin pomade smelt. From a
child nothin

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