CHAPTER IV

SUMMER HOLIDAYS

“Cretâ an carbone notandi?” The summer holidays of 1851 shall be “noted” with the whitest of chalk. The first three or four days were spent in London exploring the treasures and wonders of the Fairy Palace which the imagination of the Prince Consort and the talent of Paxton called up in Hyde Park—of which Sydenham gives no conception. It was but a baby compared with the great exhibitions—labyrinthine cities in themselves—by which it was followed—but it was so graceful, so delicate, so airy, that its translucent beauty remains graven on my memory as something which must defy all rivalry. When first I saw it glittering in the morning sun, I felt as if Aladdin and the Jin who was the slave of the lamp must have been at work upon it—no mere human hands and hammers and builders’ tools could have wrought such a miracle. A single relic marks the site: one of the two great elms which were enclosed in it, now a feeble old truncated pollard, piously fenced in by the care of those who rule the Park, still stands in the great stretch of grass opposite the Knightsbridge Barracks; its mate sickened and died.

There were two exhibits which struck my boyish imagination: one the great crystal fountain in the centre of the building—the sun was shining gloriously, charming all the jewels of the world into the plashing water—it seemed to me a dream of beauty. The other was Koh-i-Nur, in the cutting of which the great Duke of Wellington took so much interest; its fire has now been eclipsed by the mightier light of that wonder-stone, the Cullinane diamond, but the poetry of its story remains now, as it was then, one of the great traditions of the gorgeous East, reaching back into legendary times, when there were still Afrits to do the bidding of King Solomon. No stone newly found in the blue earth of Africa can dim the magic halo of Eastern romance, or blur the succession of pictures which the crystal-gazer should see in the mystic depths of the Mountain of Light—all the glamour of “the thousand nights and one.”

But it is idle to talk of this or of that exhibit, or even of many. There were things beautiful, and things hideous, for art at that moment had sunk very low; but the general effect of beauty and airy grace, together with the delicate framework and brilliancy of the whole structure, was indelible—unlike its more modern successors its size was not so great as to prevent one from gaining a general impression of the whole, and that was a joyous, sensuous revelling in a palace of light. Even those whom I remember scoffing at the idea when it was first mooted were compelled to admit that it was a great conception nobly carried out; it was a triumph of which the present Crystal Palace gives no conception. The transfer to Sydenham and the increase in size seemed at once to vulgarize it.

Great were the joys of the Exhibition! but there were greater yet in store for me in the first sight of the richly fabled Rhineland, where, after a few happy days in London, I was to join my father. Those were times when the “Pilgrims of the Rhine” wandered through a realm of romance and poetry untouched by the vulgar hand of utilitarianism. The air that we breathed was as pure, as nipping, and as eager as that which many centuries ago floated round the Dragon’s rock and the eyrie from which the brave Roland looked down upon the island convent—the prison of all that he held dearest upon earth.

Now tall chimneys cut up the lovely views, belching out sulphurous vapours upon the castles and fastnesses of the old Robber Knights. Factories and huge industries darken the blue of the sky. The siren song of the Lorelei is no longer heard from the rock where she used to sit “combing her golden locks with a golden comb,” and luring the benighted fisherman to his doom; she has fled, Heaven knows whither, scared by the prose of a cruel century; the clang of the Nibelungen’s hammer and anvil has ceased to beat in the dark caverns of the earth. Giants and dwarfs have disappeared, and the Rheingold is now won by methods in which there is neither beauty nor romance, nor fairy lore. What was the _Wacht am Rhein_ about, that it did not strike a blow to hinder the defiling of the sacred river? It has been fierce enough against the Frenchman; could it do nothing to stay the hand of the sacrilegious German money-spinner?

Last year (May, 1914) I took a novice to view the scenes which had cast a spell over my young enthusiasm. He was disappointed, and I could not wonder at it. No crucible of the imagination can weld together Manchester and the Sieben Gebirge.

In 1851 life on the Rhine sped like a happy dream. My father made Coblenz our headquarters, and we made many delightful expeditions; among others, a trip by steamer up to Bingen and thence across the river into the lovely Schweitzer Thal, which, lying as it does just out of the beaten track, is so seldom seen.

It was no mere chance that made my father choose Coblenz for our temporary abode. Mrs. Bradshaw was living there with her son-in-law and daughter, and she had been a great friend of my father and mother. When I knew her, she was an old lady and quite blind, bearing her affliction with that gentle patience which is so usual with those who are thus punished. She still had the delicately cut features and charm of manner which had made her famous in her youth; for she was no less a person than Miss Maria Tree, the singer and actress who took all London by storm when on the 8th of May, 1823, she “created,” as the phrase now goes, “Home, Sweet Home,” in the opera of _Clari_ by Sir Henry Bishop. The words were by John Howard Payne, an American author, paraphrased from lines by T. Haynes Bayly, the author of “I’d be a Butterfly,” a song now probably forgotten, but in my childhood almost as popular as “Home, Sweet Home,” itself—especially in seminaries such as that of the Misses Pinkerton on Chiswick Mall. It is said that the motive of the air was taken from a Sicilian melody: be that as it may, it has been so long naturalized that it lives as something purely English. It will always be associated with Patti, but Maria Tree, who first made it live, should not be forgotten.

The libretto of _Clari_ was based upon the old, old tragedy. It was the story of a beautiful girl, who after some months of luxurious misery in a city, comes back to seek peace in her village home. I have often heard my father and Mr. Henry Greville say what a dream of fascination she was when with her wide-brimmed straw hat, slung by a ribbon to her arm—looking like a dainty picture by Morland—she came forward and in her sweet voice—a voice which in speaking retained its charm to the end—sadly warbled the pathetic song. The town was conquered and there was not a dry eye in the house.

In circumstances so romantic that even at this distance of time it would be indiscreet to mention them, she won the heart of Mr. Bradshaw—the Jemmy Bradshaw of contemporary memoirs—one of the great dandies of the early days of the nineteenth century, a friend of the Prince Regent. It was a happy marriage, and there was one beautiful daughter, who became the wife of Captain Langley, an officer in the 2nd Life Guards. They were as handsome a couple as could be seen—and they were made very welcome in the society of Coblenz. The sympathy of the sword and great personal charm were a passport to the friendship of the very smart garrison.

I can see Mrs. Bradshaw coming into the room tapping her way with her stick. Gracious and kind she always was, and her poor dim eyes, that used to laugh so merrily, had not forgotten how to smile a welcome. Many happy hours I spent as a boy and afterwards as a young man in her house in the Schloss-Strasse.

During the fifties, the old Emperor William, his brother being still alive, was military governor or viceroy of Rhenan Prussia and Westphalia, and held his Court at Coblenz. Both he and his Princess, afterwards the Empress Augusta, were most graciously kind to foreigners. My father was a frequent guest at the Palace, and even I, though a mere boy, was more than once invited to the afternoon coffee parties. Naturally enough the Court was a centre for the best society of the town and neighbourhood—mostly military and official.

The Prince was a handsome, soldier-like figure, bluff and hearty, royal to his fingers’ tips, most gracious and friendly in the reception of his guests. He was all his life the sworn foe of anarchism and socialism, and at one time was so clearly marked as a probable object of attack, that in March, 1848, he was compelled by his brother and the government to leave Germany for a while. He remained in London only until June, when he returned to Berlin as a member of the National Assembly, and declared himself a conscientious supporter of the Constitutional Monarchy. He assumed his high office at Coblenz in 1849, shortly after the attempt upon his life by a ruffianly anarchist named Adam Schneider at Niederingelheim.

The certainty that he must succeed his brother in the kingship, as well as his own commanding character made his Court very regal and very important. He was admirably seconded by his Princess, a daughter of the House of Saxe-Weimar. The Empress Augusta, to give her the title by which she is best known, was in 1851 a graceful, still very attractive lady, in spite of her forty years. She was a woman of refined accomplishments, a scientific musician, a great lover of art. She was very well read, especially in French literature, and kept a French reader, M. Guillard, attached to her household. She preferred Victor Hugo, Balzac, Lamartine, Alexandre Dumas and the English writers to the dull dogmatics of the German schoolmen of that day. Bismarck complained not a little of her foreign predilections, and considered that she was far too much inclined to belittle what was German in favour of exotic literature.

The truth was that the two natures were not sympathetic: she was highly strung and æsthetic—in him not even Paris and St. Petersburg (now Petrograd) had been able to polish the roughness of the diamond. When the fateful episode at Ems occurred, the plain-spoken statesman did not conceal his fear lest the King should come under the influence of the Queen, who was hard by at her beloved Coblenz. At any rate, she made the Princely Court gay and very agreeable, and Bismarck was able to console himself with the reflection that his policy—I am now speaking of nineteen years before the great war—had a strenuous supporter in the Prince’s right-hand man, Count Karl Von der Goltz.

Prince Frederick, the future hero of so many pitched battles, the father of the present Kaiser, was a tall, fair, handsome stripling, beardless and very young looking, who a year or two later confided to my father that he was “almost engaged” to our Princess Royal. His sister, Princess Louise, still alive as Grand Duchess of Baden, was a lovely maiden, such as Perrault might have imagined, or Madame d’Aulnoy portrayed.

The ladies- and gentlemen-in-waiting were well qualified to turn what might have been a very dull Court into an intimate little coterie, enlivened by private theatricals in French, music, readings and other amusements; it was very dignified in that there was nothing frivolous about it, but it was never stiff and never dull.

The two ladies were Countess Haack—elderly, and if the truth must be told, rather plain—and Countess Oriolla, a beauty who preferred maiden meditation to matrimony, and would not be won.

Count Karl Von der Goltz was, owing to his confidential position with the Prince, a real influence in Germany—an influence recognized by Bismarck himself, and of him I should like to say a few words. In his “_Gedanken und Erinnerungen_” the great man describes him as “an elegant and smart officer of the Guards, a Prussian to the core (_Stock-Preusse_), and courtier, who took no more heed of the rest of Germany outside of Prussia than his position about the Court involved. He was a man of the world, rode well to hounds, handsome, a favourite with women, a past master in courtly etiquette; politics were not the first consideration with him, but were only a means to his ends at Court. Nobody knew better than he did that the recollection of Olmütz was the right incentive to win over the Prince and induce him to take a hand in the fight against Manteuffel, and he had plenty of opportunities both when travelling and at home of making the best use of this spur to the feelings of the Prince.”

Count Von der Goltz’s brother Robert was the first instigator of the Bethmann-Hollweg coalition against Manteuffel. He was a man of unusual talent and energy “with whose active capacity Manteuffel had the tactlessness to deal imprudently.” (Bismarck _ut supra_.)

To Bismarck, Olmütz was the bitterest of thoughts. Two years after the Emperor Ferdinand had there abdicated in favour of his nephew, Francis Joseph, Prince Schwarzenberg, on behalf of Austria, and Manteuffel, as plenipotentiary for Prussia, met there and came to the agreement known as the “_Olmützer Punktation_”—which at a moment when war seemed inevitable, settled the differences between the two Powers, but entirely in favour of Austria.

It was the life’s aim and ambition of Bismarck to undo Manteuffel’s work, and to assert Prussia as the leading Power among the Teuton peoples by uniting all the German States, to the exclusion of Austria, under her hegemony. In May, 1851, he was appointed secretary to the Prussian representative at the Diet, and three months later was promoted to be himself representative.

His first move against Austria was characteristic. It had been the custom at the social gatherings of the Diet for the Austrian delegate to give the signal for smoking. Bismarck took an early opportunity of lighting his own cigar first, politely offering a match to Count Thun, his Austrian colleague. It was the bursting of a bombshell, and the incident, apparently so trivial, was electric. Everyone present knew what was meant. That match lit a flame which was only extinguished fifteen years later at Sadowa.

The hatred of Manteuffel and his policy was the secret of Bismarck’s admiration for the brothers Von der Goltz; for in the handsome courtier, Count Karl, he recognized an ally almost, if not quite, as powerful as the statesman and diplomatist Count Robert. It would be difficult to imagine two men more different than the polished guardsman and the rough, unkempt man-of-affairs, but they were both, to use Bismarck’s own expression “_Stock-Preussen_.” Olmütz was to both a haunting memory, and, the wiping out of that stain a sacred duty which united the two.

By the side of Count Von der Goltz the two other gentlemen-in-waiting were less conspicuous figures. He was always in the foreground, and remained the faithful friend and servant of his old master all through the glorious campaigns of 1866 and 1870, in both of which he earned great honour as a cavalry general, and having resigned his high military commands in 1888, remained attached as General aide-de-camp to the Emperor William until the old warrior’s death in the same year. He himself died thirteen years later at Nice, at the age of eighty-six.

His colleagues at the Court of Coblenz as I knew it were Major Schimmelmann, a handsome giant, who was very good to me, and another officer, Herr Von Steinäcker, a rather melancholy man who worshipped the ground upon which Countess Oriolla’s pretty foot trod; it used to be said that he proposed to her once a month, and on being once a month refused, would take to his bed love-sick, disconsolate, emerging at the end of twenty-four hours to resume his duties. But his story belongs to the small-beer chronicles of the Court, whereas that of Count Von der Goltz, like that of the glorious Prince, King, Emperor, whom he loved and served, belongs to the old October ale of German politics and history, a heady brew if ever there was one.

We paid several visits to Coblenz during my Eton days—and in 1857, when I was already twenty years old, I went back there with a reading-party from Oxford. We stayed there for some five or six weeks and then went on to that wicked Paradise, Baden Baden. It was in the old days of the gaming tables—needless to say, we, like the other moths, had our wings singed, and when we had little more than enough to pay for third-class tickets, fled, and landed in Paris with just about a hundred francs between us. I managed to get three rooms in some obscure back street in the Quartier Latin for thirty francs the week—we breakfasted in a _crèmerie_ for a few sous—dined at the two-francs dinner in the Palais Royal—lived the _vie de Bohème_ with the students and _rapins_, who gave a warm welcome to Oxford, and when replenishment of our purses came from England, left our church-mouse poverty and wild cheery life with the greatest regret.

In the month of April, 1914, I was in Germany, with two days to spare. I had long been haunted by the wish once more to see Coblenz, the happy hunting-ground of sixty years ago. How could a veteran better wind up a holiday than by fulfilling that desire? We put up at the old hotel, “Zum Riesen”—the Giant—a _caravanserai_ that I knew well as long ago as my first visit in 1851. Not that we ever lodged there, for my father preferred the “Bellevue,” out of affection for old M. Hoche, the proprietor, who had been a famous cook in Paris.

Those were the days when the table d’hôte acted up to its name, and the host in person sat at the head of the table as Lord of the Feast; every now and then, as some special dish was being handed round, M. Hoche would get up from his seat and come to my father, saying, “Mangez de ça, Monsieur, j’y ai mis la main”—and what a cunning hand it was! and how cheap was the excellent dinner served at one o’clock—fifteen groschen (1s. 6d.) if you came at haphazard, ten groschen if you were _abonné_—supper was _à la carte_. These were the prices of the best hotels on the Rhine, and they must have been just, for dear old M. Hoche and his wife waxed fat upon them, and having lived in great content, died leaving a fortune. The table d’hôte at which the good old grey, snuffy generals and colonels and _Herren Geheimräte_ dined in state is a thing of the past. The old “Bellevue” has been pulled down and has been replaced by a gigantic new “Bellevue”—whose Pharaoh knew not Joseph—Coblenz has grown out of all recollection, and prices have followed suit.

Here and there I found some old parts of the town almost untouched, and the view from the bridge over the Moselle is a relic of the past, with its church spires and old-fashioned, rickety houses, roofed with brown tiles, weather-stained like the grey walls and shutters, as picturesque as age and just a modicum of dirt and shabbiness can make them. Here the character of the old German town reveals itself, and when we take our stand in front of the Giant Hotel and look out upon the Rhine, the bridge of boats opening to make way for some passing timber-raft—itself its own cargo from the depths of the far-away Black Forest—when we look at the grim Ehrenbreitstein with its batteries frowning threats from its rocky heights—then we forget all modern improvements and artistic misfortunes, and are once more in the old Rhineland.

On the evening of our arrival, after dark the riverside was gaily thronged with people drinking in the cool evening air after the heat of a day as hot as summer. The stream was brilliant with the reflection of electric lights, but across the water on the awe-striking fortress there was just one lamp to be seen peering out of the gloom of the black battlements like a watchful eye—a strange and weird effect, befitting the castle of an ogre—a silent BEWARE!

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON’S FUNERAL

On the eighteenth of November, 1852, the great Duke of Wellington was buried. Of course many boys, myself among the number, had leave to go up to London to see the funeral procession. It had been a very rainy autumn and the Thames was swollen to an inordinate degree. Eton was flooded and we were taken up part of the High Street in punts. I believe that no such flood has been seen since, though the year 1894, when the boys were sent home on the seventeenth of November, fell not far short of it.

I witnessed the funeral from the first floor of the Bath Hotel, which stood at the corner of Arlington Street and Piccadilly, at the north-eastern corner of the modern Ritz Hotel. I have since seen many great ceremonies, many magnificent and moving spectacles in many lands, but none that could be named in the same day with the funeral of the Iron Duke. As a military display it was, of course, superb. All arms were represented, and a brave show they made; uniforms were far more gorgeous in those days than they are now that the spirit of economy has cut off epaulettes and gold lace from officers, shabracks and other ornaments from their horses. The bands of the various regiments, the muffled roll of the kettle-drums, mysterious in the distance, heralding the dirge of the “Dead March in Saul,” followed by the wailing of the bagpipes of the Highland regiments; the solemnity of the reversed arms, the charger with empty boots—always a pathetic sight at a soldier’s funeral—led behind the great bronze car, hung with wreaths of cypress and bay, drawn by twelve black horses, three abreast, housed with black velvet and a blaze of heraldry; the deputations of splendidly clad foreign officers, following the car. All this appealed to the imagination of the huge crowd, often moving them to tears, for they knew full well that “a Prince and a great man was dead in Israel.” Few there were, even among the poorest, who had not managed to don some slight sign of mourning, the slighter the more touching, for it meant the more: a scrap of crape, a bit of black cloth worn as an armlet were but the tokens of the real mourning which was in men’s hearts. He was such a familiar sight to Londoners, this wonderful old hero whom they used to watch riding along Constitution Hill to and from the Horse Guards—to and from duty—to the last a spare, lithe, active figure, smart as a young boy, dressed with scrupulous neatness, and even a tinge of dandyism, in a tight-fitting, single breasted blue frock coat, with spotless white trousers. When he passed all men doffed their hats as if he had been a king, and the answering salute of the forefinger raised to the brim of his hat, never omitted, never varying, became almost historic. Often I saw him: he was a very old man, and the neck was a little bent, but the chiselled face was still commanding, and the fire had not ceased to glow in those eagle eyes, the _finestra dell’ anima_—altogether an unforgettable figure.

London loved him. Much water, as the saying goes, had flowed under the bridges since April, 1831, when the mob broke the windows of Apsley House, while the body of the Duchess, just dead, was lying there waiting burial. The iron shutters were the only signs left of the fleeting unpopularity of the Reform days. The life that was in the Duke, his activity, his unwearying interest and the share which he took in affairs and events great and small, from the quelling of the Chartist insurrection, only five years before his death, to the opening of the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in 1851 and the cutting of the Koh-i-Nur, stirred the imagination and roused the admiration of all men, rich and poor. People used to tell how, when he and Lord John Russell were discussing the steps to be taken for the safety of London in 1848, and Lord John suggested one measure after another, the invariable answer from the grim old soldier was, “Done already.” Nothing had escaped that wonderful eye. And so he became, as it were, a superman, and when he died men looked around them and there was none found to fill the gap.

As the great funeral car passed opposite the window where I was, one of the wreaths of cypress and bay leaves fell off. So soon as the last soldier closing the procession had disappeared, a poor old woman dashed forward and picked up the wreath. I ran down and tried to buy it of her, but she would not part with her precious relic. At last I persuaded her to sell me one cypress cone for a shilling. The cone was full of seed which I sent down to Exbury in Hampshire, at that time belonging to my father; and there are now, in the wood near the house, a number of quite important cypress trees, the beautiful sixty-year-old children of that wreath.

After the funeral, “The death of the Duke of Wellington” was set as the subject for a copy of Alcaics for fifth-form boys at Eton. It was an unfortunate subject, for it was sure to lead to some regrettable absurdity: that did not fail: one boy began his copy of verses with the two lines:

Ut dixit olim magnus Horatius, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Apart from the bathos of the drivel, it was so inappropriate, seeing that the glorious old warrior fell asleep at Walmer full of years (eighty-three) and honour, on the fourteenth of September, 1852. His body was brought to London, and lay in state at Chelsea for a week before the funeral.