CHAPTER XII

Bonn—An Anecdote of Beethoven—The King’s Hussars—The Howard Vyses—A German Professor on England—Domesticated Habits of German Girls—Professor Delbrück

On my arrival at Bonn, I stayed at the Hôtel Rheineck, which commanded a splendid view of the distant mountains. Here I made the acquaintance of the late Mr. Ranyard, the celebrated astronomer, who told me that the well-known author “A. L. O. E.” was his aunt. Mr. Ranyard was also stopping at the “Rheineck,” and at the midday _table d’hôte_ sat next to a Frau Phillip, a German lady from Frankfurt, who was rather stout, but good-looking. He made love to her, and, though he spoke German very badly, she appeared to understand him. At four o’clock we used to sit out on the verandah of the hôtel, which overlooked the Rhine, and take our coffee there, with an excellent _Kuchen_, for which Germany is famous. Some days after my arrival at Bonn, Ranyard, who was flirting with Frau Phillip, quite forgot that he had to catch the boat to Cologne, and missed it. He was quite in despair at this, as he had not enough money with him to stay any longer at Bonn. However, the proprietor of the hotel said he would lend him some, which he could repay him when he arrived in England. Ranyard accordingly arranged to stay on a day or two longer at Bonn, as the hotel-keeper was confiding enough to advance him £5. I mention this incident to show how kind Germans are at times, though, of course, there are exceptions everywhere.

I called on Professor Dr. Binz and his wife, who lived in a pretty villa with a delightful garden attached to it. The latter’s sister, Miss Salis-Schwabe, and her brother, who was an officer in the 7th Dragoon Guards, were staying with her on a visit, and I went for several rides with them. Miss Salis-Schwabe was a nice-looking girl, with a considerable fortune of her own, and lived chiefly in England. She afterwards married the late Sir Frank Lockwood, the well-known Q.C.; and I was told by the Hon. Mrs. Henry Orde-Powlett, who knew her, that she was always very disappointed if her husband did not come home every day with fifty guineas as “refreshers” in his pocket.

Frau Professor Binz told me that she knew of a Professor Dr. Andrä, who had a pretty daughter, so that his house would be just the very one for me to live at; and I accordingly made arrangements to take rooms there, with board.

Fräulein Margarethe Andrä was a rather pretty girl, a blonde, with blue eyes, but she was, I thought, somewhat insipid, and very strait-laced. She was well read and a free-thinker, like her father, who never went to any church. Professor Dr. Andrä was very clever, and, indeed, some people said he was the cleverest of the professors at Bonn University. I remember him telling me about his wife, whom he had recently lost. She knew, according to him, exactly what he was going to say before he opened his mouth, and had also foretold many events before there was a chance of their happening, in a marvellous manner. I asked Andrä if he would not like to see his wife again.

“No,” he replied. “I loved her very much, but I have no desire to live again, and, what is more, I am sure that after this existence there is no other. And it is much better so.”

He lectured on Anthropology and Mineralogy, two sciences in which I took no interest. I attended the lectures of Geheimrath von Sybel, the famous historian, who, Dr. Andrä said, was a Republican at heart, but pretended not to be, in order to keep in with Bismarck, who since 1870 had been all powerful in Germany. Von Sybel was one of the finest lecturers I ever heard. He contrived to make his subject most interesting, however dry it might otherwise have appeared; and his lectures were always crowded with students, whereas those of some of the other professors were attended by very few, as it was entirely optional which lectures the students at the University attended.

Bonn is the birthplace of Beethoven, a fine statue of whom was erected in 1845 on the Poppelsdorfer Allee. Grillparzer writes in his diary for 1843:—

“The windows of my grandmother’s house faced the courtyard of the dwelling of a peasant called Flehberger, who bore a bad name. This Flehberger had a very pretty daughter, called Lisa, whose reputation was also not of the best. Beethoven appeared to be much interested in the girl, and I can see him as he came up the little street, dragging his white handkerchief after him, until he came to a stop at Flehberger’s house, where the frivolous beauty was standing on a wagon filled with hay, working with a pitchfork, and laughing the while. Beethoven stood silent and looked at her, until the girl, whose taste lay more in the direction of peasant boys, made him angry by rude words or by obstinately ignoring his presence. Then he walked away, but did not fail, the next time he passed that way, to stop and look into the courtyard. Indeed, his interest in the girl went so far that, when her father was arrested and put in prison for being concerned in a drunken brawl in the village, Beethoven endeavoured to rescue him, and narrowly escaped having to share the captivity of the man whom he had so unwisely protected.”

It is said that Beethoven wept when his “Overture to Leonora” was first played at Vienna, where it met with no success. He only passed his youth at Bonn, and then went to Vienna, where the Archduke Rudolf, Prince Kinsky and Prince Lobkowitz gave him an annuity of 4,000 florins (nearly £350) for life, in order that he might devote his time entirely to music, free from all financial cares. The fact that the same provision was never made for Mozart, who was an Austrian by birth, makes one think of the proverb: “_Nemo propheta in patria_.” Grillparzer, Austria’s greatest poet, wrote the funeral speech read at Beethoven’s tomb in Vienna on March 27th, 1827, and on May 1st, 1880, a statue to his memory was erected there, near the garden of the Hof Burg, on the Ringstrasse.

Captain Horrocks, whom my father knew very well, was then living at Bonn with his family. His brother held an appointment at the Court of the Grand Duke of Hesse. Captain Horrocks once wrote a three-volume novel, which my mother tried to read, but said that she never could get beyond the first volume. She lent the first volume of the book to several of her friends, but not one of them ever asked for the second and third. When I mentioned Captain Horrocks’s name to my mother, she said:—

“When I think of him, I cannot imagine how he could have written such a dull book. I have never yet come across any one who has had the courage to read the whole of his novel.”

Horrocks was, nevertheless, an amusing man, who had a great deal of dry wit. He had several very pretty daughters, the eldest one being considered the belle of Bonn at that time. I remember his remarking to me once that a poor man could never dress well, as he always bought cheap clothes, and they never lasted any time. “Depend upon it, whatever is cheap is bad,” he always used to say.

The regiment stationed at Bonn was the King’s Hussars. It was commanded by Prince Reuss, and there were seven princes amongst its officers. I knew the two Princes Bentheim, and Counts von der Goltz, Metternich, Moltke and Bernstorff. The last-named was a gay young officer, who spoke English like an Englishman. I saw a good deal of him. His father had been Prussian Ambassador in England, and he had a brother serving in the Garde Kürassier Regiment in Berlin. Prince Reuss was very severe with his officers, and insisted that, when they attended a ball, they should wear their swords the whole time, except when actually dancing. On one occasion, an officer, who had omitted to replace his sword after a dance, was put under arrest for a week and confined to his quarters. Bernstorff, so he told me, once entered a tavern of bad reputation in Cologne in plain clothes, as he did not like to go to such a place in uniform, and on his return to Bonn was placed under arrest for a week. Notwithstanding the severity of the punishment meted out for minor offences against discipline, very little, if any, notice was taken when officers in uniform became intoxicated at balls. I can remember attending a ball at the Royal Hôtel at Bonn, at which several officers of the King’s Hussars were present wearing their dark blue uniform with gold lace, as they were never allowed to attend dances in plain clothes. One of them insisted on dancing, though he was so intoxicated that he could scarcely stand, and the others were highly amused at his efforts to dance with a lady, who must have been in entire ignorance of the state her partner was in.

When the King’s Hussars gave a ball at Bonn, which they did once every winter, they only invited the officers of the 7th Kürassiers from Cologne, and not a single infantry officer from the Line regiments at either place. Some of the English at Bonn were invited to this ball, but I cannot say that it came up to one’s expectations. In the first place, it was a terribly stiff affair. The officers stood in one part of the ball-room; the ladies, mostly seated, occupied the other part, and at the end of a dance, an officer generally conducted his partner back to her seat and left her with her lady friends. The supper was not at all a bad one, and there was plenty of champagne, but the guests had to pay for what they ate and drank. However, it was considered so great an honour to be invited to this ball that no one grumbled; in fact, they appeared to think it quite natural that they should have to pay for their refreshments.

The King’s Hussars was regarded as one of the crack Prussian regiments, and undoubtedly some of its officers were of very high social standing. But by no means all of these officers were wealthy, and I was told that the Princes Bentheim had only £150 a year each, besides their pay. The officers generally rode in the Poppelsdorfer Allee of a morning, making their horses perform _la haute école_, as though they were at a circus. Only one corps of students mixed at all with the officers. This was the well-known Borussia Corps, the members of which—the _Borussen_—wore a white cap somewhat similar in shape to that worn by French officers. This corps was composed entirely of members of the Prussian nobility, most of them being counts and barons, and they did not associate at all with any of the other student corps. They fought duels with the _Schläger_, and got cut about the face, but the more they were disfigured, the more pleased they appeared to be. Some of the _Borussen_ joined the King’s Hussars afterwards, but what became of their scars I do not know, for, strange to say, I have never seen any officers with these ugly marks on their faces. Perhaps, after a time, the scars disappear; I can think of no other explanation, for all the corps students are forced to fight duels.

I can remember Dr. Andrä once showing me a tiny shop at Bonn, above which the royal arms of a certain country were displayed, and when I inquired the reason of this, he told me the following story, which I give in his own words:—

“When the heir to a certain principality was a student at Bonn, he happened to enter this shop, in which there was a very pretty girl serving. The latter, who pretended ignorance of his identity, invited the Prince to come and see her one evening. The Prince went, and a violent flirtation was in progress, when the door opened, and the owner of the shop entered. This person affected the utmost astonishment and indignation, and, informing the Prince that the girl was his wife, threatened that, unless the would-be destroyer of his domestic happiness were prepared to write him out there and then a cheque for several thousand thalers, he would make the affair public. The Prince, anxious to avoid a scandal, complied with his demand, and, moreover, gave him permission to display the arms of his country over his shop-front as supplying His Highness with goods. After the Prince had left Bonn, the cunning rascal sent the girl, who was not his wife at all, back to Cologne, from which she had come, it was said, for the express purpose of assisting the shopkeeper to entrap the Prince.”

I used to go to the “Kneipe,” where the corps students assembled, with a young American named Howard Vyse and his younger brother.[20] We always went of an evening, when songs, principally “Studenten Lieder,” were sung, and there was heavy drinking. On one occasion, the younger Vyse, on coming out into the night air, after attending one of these entertainments, told me that he felt so queer that he could not find his way home, and asked if I could put him up for the night. I took him to Dr. Andrä’s house, and he slept in my sitting-room. Next morning, the professor inquired why I had brought Vyse home with me, and I told him the reason, quoting, at the same time, the words of Nietzsche:—

“_Alles ist erlaubt, nichts ist verboten._”

To which he replied that such were not his views; that he considered that everyone ought to lead a very moral life; that it was wrong to get intoxicated, and that, although he never entered a church, he lived as moral a life as many religious people, who often professed to be better than they really were.

Professor Andrä was an intimate friend of the famous author, Berthold Auerbach, and once, when he was staying with Auerbach, the latter was engaged in writing his celebrated novel, _Das Landhaus am Rhein_. One day, Andrä asked him to walk to Poppelsdorf, where the professor was going to lecture. But he declined, saying that to do so would put some of his ideas for his novel out of his head, as it was essential for him to keep constantly in mind what he intended to write about. Andrä showed me the house on the Rhine which Auerbach had described in his novel, and one day took me there to visit a retired merchant, who, after making a fortune in America, had bought this beautiful villa in the Koblentzer Strasse, which had a very fine garden leading down to the Rhine. Andrä told me that he detested novels; nevertheless, one day, when I happened to be reading _Auf der Höhe_, by Auerbach, he asked me to lend it him, and, after reading it, said

“After all, it is very well written, and I am pleased with it; some of the ideas are uncommonly good, and the plot is ingenious.”

Excellenz von Dechen, Minister of the Rhine Provinces, told me that Andrä might have occupied Bismarck’s position,[21] but that he was too honest a man to change his opinions. Andrä told me that Germany was far more fitted than France for a republican form of government, and that, if the War of 1870 had had a different issue, Germany would have been a republic, as France is now. He entertained a poor opinion of England and the English, whom he considered the most selfish and self-opinionated nation in Europe, and years behind Germany in intelligence. He held that Darwin, whose works he had read, had merely been the first to publish the ideas of a well-known German professor; and he himself had lectured upon Darwin’s theory,[22] in which he was a firm believer, long before he had ever heard of him.

Andrä told me that at all the dinners which he attended, as a professor of the University, he took precedence of all the officers of the King’s Hussars and of any titled person who had not some higher State appointment than he held. When I told him that this would not have been the case in England, he smiled and said:—

“In your country, with your antiquated laws, how can you expect so much civilization as in Germany? The English have a great deal to learn, and it will be a very long while before their barbarous customs are knocked on the head. So far as civilization is concerned, England is in a worse condition than France, and, Heaven knows, France has yet a good deal to learn.”

In his opinion, Bismarck was a man of great intellect, but without any conscience whatever. Moltke, he told me, was quite positive that Germany would defeat France before the war had begun, and he was a man “_welcher schweigt in sieben Sprachen_,” as he rarely ever spoke. Moltke’s son, afterwards Field-Marshal Count von Moltke, was then in the King’s Hussars at Bonn, and I knew him very well, but, save for indulging in some amorous escapades and getting very much into debt, he did not distinguish himself, though I have no doubt he deserved the Iron Cross which he obtained in the War of 1870, with most of the officers of the King’s Hussars. Of Field-Marshal Freiherr von der Goltz it was said:—

“Freiherr von der Goltz, Von seiner Dummheit ist er stoltz.”[23]

I often would ask Andrä what books I ought to read, and one of the first he recommended was Hauff’s _Lichtenstein_, a charming romance in the style of Sir Walter Scott. Heine was a great favourite with Andrä, and he could repeat his _Lieder_ off by heart.[24] Goethe he ranked far above Schiller, and considered the first part of _Faust_ vastly superior to the second. He had a very high opinion of Lessing’s works in general. Of modern authors, he recommended Karl von Holtei’s _Die Vagabunden_, which was, he told me, quite a classic, and I have read it again and again with pleasure. It is somewhat in the style of _la Vie de Bohème_, by Mürger, but I prefer it to the French work. In comparing Lesage with Scott, Victor Hugo seems to think more highly of the latter; but Andrä considered that _Gil Blas_ would outlive all Scott’s novels, which was also the opinion of Grillparzer. It was through Andrä that I became a supporting member of the “Verein zur Verbreitung naturwissenschaftlicher Kenntnisse in Wien,” which I have been for many years. The ill-fated Crown Prince Rudolf was formerly the Protector of this society, a position which was held recently by the late Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne.

Andrä had held a post in Siebenbürgen, in Hungary, under the Archduke Johann, for some years before his appointment to be a professor at Bonn. He was very fond of the Hungarians and told me that he and some friends were one evening at a restaurant in a village in Hungary, where three or four musicians played so delightfully that his party kept giving them money to continue, and that he was sure that they went on playing until about five o’clock the following morning. He was passionately fond of music, and I would often ask him to play me some Austrian marches and waltzes on the piano, which he did with the true Austrian spirit. His daughter never played the piano, telling me that unless you can play exceptionally well, it is better to leave it alone. I wish all English girls were of her opinion.

German girls are as a rule very clever, and have a good deal to say for themselves. They are highly sentimental, far more so than English girls, and can generally read French and English books easily enough, though I found that they could speak very little of these languages, as they had very little practice and few occasions to do so. Every girl in Germany can do the most difficult needlework, embroidery and knitting wonderfully well, in addition to which she thoroughly understands how to cook a good dinner. Fräulein Andrä generally cooked the dinner herself, though she had servants, one of whom was a sort of cook. I remember that, in more recent years, at the Hôtel Neckar at Heidelberg, I caught sight of a pretty, graceful young girl wearing an apron going into the hôtel kitchen, and, on my asking who she was, I was told that she was the daughter of a count, and engaged to be married to a young count of high family, but before her marriage she was required to learn cooking for six months at this hôtel.

There were at this time several English families whom I knew residing at Bonn, among them being Captain and Mrs. Bean, who were living there to educate their children, and to whose house I was often invited to tea. I recollect once Mrs. Bean telling me and some other friends of hers that she intended going to a masked ball dressed as a gipsy fortune-teller, with packs of cards and bells sewn over her costume. On my arrival at the ball, I had no difficulty in recognizing this dress, but the voice of the wearer seemed very different from that of Mrs. Bean, and it transpired that the fortune-teller was Captain Bean, who, as his wife found herself unable to go to the ball, owing to a severe cold, had assumed her costume and come instead. He intrigued a great many people who were there, telling them their fortunes and more about themselves than they cared to know, and got a good deal of amusement out of his impersonation, no one but myself having the least idea who he was the whole time.

There were also two sons of Peabody, the millionaire, at Bonn. The name they were known by was George, and one of them was married and had two very pretty daughters. The Georges were quite unaware who their father was until after Peabody’s death, when they were angry at only being left two thousand pounds a year each, the bulk of Peabody’s enormous fortune having been bequeathed to charities.

The Carnival was very amusing for young people, as everyone had to be disguised and masked during the three days it lasted, and this custom afforded a good deal of fun. Besides, every house was thrown open, and we entered the houses of different people whom we knew with our masks on, and partook of tea and cakes without being recognized. The students, and, indeed, most young men, wore a blue blouse and white kid gloves, and a mask, over which a blue cap with a red tassel was worn. Some of the English girls at Bonn asked me to get up a ball, but only the bachelors would have anything to do with it. I arranged with the proprietor of the Rheineck Hotel that the ball should be given there, and he prepared his large dining-room for the dancing and a room adjoining it for the supper. The supper was to be provided at so much a head, wine being extra, as is the general custom in Germany. The members of the committee wore red, white and blue rosettes in their buttonholes. About sixty or seventy people came to this ball, including the officers of the King’s Hussars, who, of course, were present in uniform, and it went off very well, as it was conducted on English lines, and was a much more free and easy affair than the average German ball. The supper was a very passable one, and a great deal of wine was consumed, particularly sparkling Moselle and champagne, so the company was pretty merry. Miss Edith Horrocks was the belle of the ball. She danced chiefly with a young Baron von Plessen, an officer in the King’s Hussars, whom she afterwards married, though, as there was not much money on either side, the young officer’s father, who was a general of cavalry, at first made some difficulties. It was five o’clock in the morning before the last guests had taken their departure.

During the winter several small dances were given by different English families, and these I generally attended. I also went to some German balls, but, as there were no English present except myself, and they were conducted in a very stiff and formal manner, I cannot say that I derived much pleasure from them, apart from the dancing itself, of which I was then very fond.

At Von Sybel’s lectures I made the acquaintance of a young man named Hans Delbrück, whom I liked very much indeed. He afterwards became a university professor, and was imprisoned some years ago for having expressed certain political views which were not in accordance with those of the “All Highest.” He is now Professor of History at the University of Berlin. Some little time before the War he was interviewed by the correspondent of the _Daily Mail_, when he gave his opinion about the possibility of a war between Great Britain and Germany.

During the spring and summer there was very little going on at Bonn, with the exception of steam-boat excursions up and down the Rhine. For the residents, the winter is the season, but the climate at that time of year is no better than in England; indeed, it is perhaps even worse than in some English towns, as in the morning there are often thick fogs rising from the river. Living at Bonn is cheap—cheaper than at Wiesbaden or Frankfurt, to say nothing of Homburg, which is far more expensive and much more pleasant in summer. But there are many worse places than Bonn in the winter, so far as amusements are concerned.