The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 10

The salt water has already gone from here. If you are too weak for riding, then take a drive every day. When you are writing to me, and begin to feel badly in the least, stop immediately; give me only a short bulletin of your health, even if it is but three lines, for, thank Heaven, words can be dispensed with between us—they cannot add or take away anything, since our hearts look into each other, eye to eye, to the very bottom, and though here and there, behind a fold, some new thing is discovered, a strange thing it is not. Dear heart, what stuff you talk (excuse my rudeness) when you say I must not come if I would rather stop in Zimmerhausen or Angermünde at Whitsuntide! How can I take pleasure anywhere while I know that you are suffering, and moreover, am uncertain in what degree? With us two it is a question, not of amusing and entertaining, but only of loving and being together, spiritually, and, if possible, corporeally; and if you should lie speechless for four weeks—sleep, or something else—I would be nowhere else, provided nothing but my wish were to decide. If I could only "come to your door," I would still rather be there than with my dear sister; and the sadder and sicker you are, so much the more. But the door will not separate me from you, however ill you may be. That is a situation in which the slave mutinies against his mistress. * * *

Your faithful B.

Berlin, Tuesday Morning, May 18, '47.

Dearest,—The last letters from Reinfeld permit me to hope that your illness is not so threatening at the moment as I feared from the first news, although I am continually beset by all possible fears about you, and thus am in a condition of rather complicated restlessness. * * * My letter in which I told you of my election you have understood somewhat, and your dear mother altogether, from a point of view differing from that which was intended. I only wanted to make my position exactly clear to you, and the apologies which to you seemed perhaps forced, as I infer from your mother's letter, you may regard as an entirely natural outflow of politeness. That I did not stand in need of justification with you I very well know; but also that it must affect us both painfully to see our fine plans cancelled. It was my ardent wish to be a member of the Landtag; but that the Landtag and you are fifty miles apart distressed me in spite of the fulfilment of my wish. You women are, and always will be, unaccountable, and it is better to deal with you by word of mouth than by writing. * * * I have ventured once or twice on the speaker's platform with a few words, and yesterday raised an unheard-of storm of displeasure, in that, by a remark which was not explained clearly enough touching the character of the popular uprising of 1813, I wounded the mistaken vanity of many of my own party, and naturally had all the halloo of the opposition against me. The resentment was great, perhaps for the very reason that I told the truth in applying to 1813 the sentence that any one (the Prussian people) who has been thrashed by another (the French) until he defends himself can make no claim of service towards a third person (our King) for so doing. I was reproached with my youth and all sorts of other things. Now I must go over before today's session to see whether, in printing my words, they have not turned them into nonsense. * * *

Yours forever, B.

Berlin, Friday, May 21, '47.

Très chère Jeanneton,—When you receive this letter you will know that I am not to visit you in the holidays. I shall not offer "apologies," but reasons why it is not to be. I should miss certainly four, and probably five, meetings of the estates, and, according to the announcement we have received, the most important proceedings are to be expected at the coming meetings. There it may depend upon one vote, and it would be a bad thing if that were the vote of an absentee; moreover, I have succeeded in acquiring some influence with a great number, or, at least, with some delegates of the so-called court party and the other ultra-conservatives from several provinces, which I employ in restraining them so far as possible from bolting and awkward shying, which I can do in the most unsuspected fashion when once I have plainly expressed my inclination. Then, too, I have some money affairs to arrange, for which I must make use of one of the holidays. The Landtag will either be brought to a close on the 7th of June—and in that case I should stay here until that date—or it will continue in session until all the matters have been arranged, in which event I should stay till after the decision of the important political questions which are now imminent and shall be less conscientious about all the insignificant petitions that follow after, and await their discussion in Reinfeld. It will, besides, be pleasanter for you and the mother not to have us both—the father and me—there at one time, but relieving each other, so that you may be lonely for a shorter time. * * * Your father will tell you how I stirred up the hornet's-nest of the volunteers here lately, and the angry hornets came buzzing to attack me; on the other hand, I had as compensation that many of the older and more intelligent people drew near to me—people I did not know at all—and assured me that I had said nothing but the truth, and that was the very thing that had so incensed the people. But I must take the field now; it is ten o'clock. Please ask your father to write immediately about your health. I should so much like to hear the opinion of another person besides your mother. I am all right—only much excited. Farewell, and God guard you.

Yours altogether and forever, B.

Berlin, May 26, '47.

Dearest,– * * * If I were only through with the Landtag and the delivery of Kniephof, could embrace you in health, and retire with you to a hunting-lodge in the heart of green forest and the mountains, where I should see no human face but yours! That is my hourly dream; the rattling wheel-work of political life is more obnoxious to my ears every day.—Whether it is your absence, sickness, or my laziness, I want to be alone with you in contemplative enthusiasm for nature. It may be the spirit of contradiction, which always makes me long for what I have not. And yet, I have you, you know, though not quite at hand; and still I long for you. I proposed to your father that I should go with him; we would immediately have our banns published and be married, and both come here. An apartment for married people is empty in this house, and here you could have had sensible physicians and every mortal help. It seemed to him too unbecoming. To you, too? It seems to me still the most sensible thing of all, if you are only strong enough for the trip. If the Landtag should continue longer than to the 6th of June—which I still hope it will not—let us look at the plan more carefully. * * *

Your faithful B.

Schönhausen, Friday, May 28, '47.

My Poor Sick Kitten,– * * * In regard to your illness, your father's letter has calmed my anxiety somewhat as to the danger, but yours was so gloomy and depressed that it affected me decidedly. My dear heart, such sadness as finds expression there is almost more than submission to God's will: the latter cannot, in my opinion, be the cause of your giving up the hope, I might say the wish, that you may be better, physically, and experience God's blessing here on earth as long as may be in accordance with His dispensation. You do not really mean it, either—do you, now?—when, in a fit of melancholy, you say that nothing whatever interests you genuinely, and you neither grieve nor rejoice. That smacks of Byron, rather than of Christianity. You have been sick so often in your life, and have recovered—have experienced glad and sad hours afterwards; and the old God still lives who helped you then. Your letter stirred in me more actively than ever the longing to be at your side, to fondle you and talk with you. * * *

I do not agree with you in your opinion about July, and I would urge you strongly, too, on this point to side with me against your parents. When a wife, you are as likely to be sick as when a fiancée—and will be often enough, later; so why not at the beginning, likewise? I shall be with you as often as I am free from pressing engagements, so whether we are together here or in Reinfeld makes no difference in the matter. We do not mean to marry for bright days only: your ill-health seems to me an utterly frivolous impediment. The provisional situation we are now in is the worst possible for me. I scarcely know any longer whether I am living in Schönhausen, in Reinfeld, in Berlin, or on the train. If you fall sick, I shall be a sluggard in Reinfeld all the autumn, or however long our marriage would be postponed, and cannot even associate with you quite unconstrainedly before the ceremony. This matter of a betrothed couple seventy miles apart is not defensible; and, especially when I know you are ailing, I shall take the journey to see you, of course, as often as my public and private affairs permit. It seems to me quite necessary to have the ceremony at the time already appointed; otherwise I should be much distressed, and I see no reason for it. Don't sell Brunette just now; you will ride her again soon. I must be in Berlin at noon for a consultation about plans for tomorrow. Farewell. God strengthen you for joy and hope.

Your most faithful B.

Tomorrow I'll send you a hat.16

Berlin, Sunday, May 30, '47.

Très Chère Jeanneton,—Your letter of day before yesterday, which I have just received, has given me profound pleasure and poured into me a refreshing and more joyous essence: your happier love of life is shared by me immediately. I shall begin by reassuring you about your gloomy forebodings of Thursday evening. At the very time when you were afflicted by them I was rejoicing in the happiness I had long missed, of living once more in a comfortable Schönhaus bed, after I had suffered for weeks from the furnished-apartments couch in Berlin. I slept very soundly, although with bad dreams—nightmares—which I ascribed to a late and heavy dinner, inasmuch as the peaceful occupations of the previous day—consisting in viewing many promising crops and well-fed sheep, together with catching up with all sorts of police arrangements relating to dike, fire, and roads—could not have occasioned them. You see how little you can depend upon the maternal inheritance of forebodings. Also in regard to the injurious effects of the Landtag excitement upon my health, I can completely reassure you. I have discovered what I needed—physical exercise—to offset mental excitement and irregular diet. Yesterday I spent in Potsdam, to be present at the water carnival—a lively picture. The great blue basins of the Havel, with the splendid surroundings of castles, bridges, churches, enlivened with several hundred gayly decorated boats, whose occupants, elegantly dressed gentlemen and ladies, bombard one another lavishly with bouquets when they can reach each other in passing or drawing up alongside. The royal pair, the whole court, Potsdam's fashionable people, and half of Berlin whirled in the skein of boats merrily, pell-mell; royalists and liberals all threw dry or wet flowers at the neighbor within reach. Three steamboats at anchor, with musical choruses, constituted the centre of the ever-changing groups. I had the opportunity to salute, hurriedly and with surprise, and throw flowers at, many acquaintances whom I had not seen for a long time. My friend Schaffgotsch is passionately fond of walking, and he was responsible for our returning to the railway station on foot—a distance of almost three miles—at such a pace as I had not kept up in a long while. After that I slept splendidly until nine, and am in a state of physical equilibrium today such as I have not enjoyed for some time. As the rather dusty promenades in the Thiergarten do not give me enough of a shaking-up in the time that I have available for that purpose, Mousquetaire will arrive here tomorrow, so that he, with his lively gallop, may play the counterpart to the tune that politics is dancing in my head. My plan about Berlin and the wedding immediately, etc., was certainly somewhat adventurous when you look at it in cold blood, but I hope there will be no change from July. If I am to be tormented, as you say, with an "unendurable, dispirited, nervous being," it is all the same in the end whether this torment will be imposed upon me by my fiancée or—forgive the expression—by my wife. In either case I shall try to bear the misfortune with philosophical steadfastness; for it is to be hoped that it will not be so bad that I must dig deeper and seek Christian consolation for it.

Your very faithful B.

Berlin, July 4, '47.

Juaninina,—Happily, I have left Schönhausen behind me, and do not expect to enter it again without you, mon ange. Only some business matters detain me here, which I cannot attend to today because it is Sunday; but I confidently anticipate starting for Angermünde tomorrow at four, and accordingly, unless the very improbable event occurs that I am detained outrageously in Kniephof, shall arrive in Schlawe on Thursday. * * * Farewell, my heart. This is probably the last post-marked paper that you will receive from your Bräutigam17 (I hate the expression). Our banns were cried today for the first time in Schönhausen. Does that not seem strange to you But I had learned your given names so badly that I could mention only Johanna Eleonore: the other six you must teach me better. Farewell, my heart. Many salutations to the parents.

Your very faithful B.

My Dear,—I believe I can now reassure you most completely as to the safety of the members of the Landtag. The Landtag was opened today, minus King and minus cheers, with quite calm discussion. In a few words I uttered my protest against the thanks and exultation that were voted to the King, without hostilities becoming overt. Ten thousand men of the city militia were posted for our protection, but not even a slight disturbance occurred at the palace. I could be with you tomorrow, as there is no session, if I had ordered a carriage to meet me at Genthin this evening. But as the whole affair apparently will come to an end this week, perhaps as early as Thursday, I was too stingy to hire a carriage. Brauchitsch was taken violently ill again last evening. * * * Give cordial remembrances to your mother, and be of good courage. I am much calmer than I was: with Vincke one heart and one soul.

Your faithful B.

April 2, '48, Sunday Evening.

I fear, my dear heart, the letter I wrote you last evening reached the post-office so late, through an oversight, that you will not receive it today, and not before tomorrow with this; and it pains me to think that you were disappointed in your hope when the mail was delivered, and now (9 o'clock in the evening) are perhaps troubled with disquietude of all sorts about me. I have spent a tiresome day, tramping the pavement, smoking and intriguing. Do not judge of the few words I spoke yesterday from the report in the Berlin Times. I shall manage to bring you a copy of the speech, which has no significance except as showing that I did not wish to be included in the category of certain venal bureaucrats who turned their coat with contemptible shamelessness to suit the wind. The impression it made was piteous, while even my most zealous opponents shook my hand with greater warmth after my declaration. I have just come from a great citizens' meeting, of perhaps a thousand people, in the Milenz Hall, where the Polish question was debated very decorously, very good speeches were made, and on the whole the sentiment seemed to turn against the Poles, especially after a disconsolate Jew had arrived, straight from Samter, who told terrible stories about the lawless excesses of the Poles against the Germans; he himself had been soundly beaten. * * *

Just for my sake do not alarm yourself if each mail does not bring you a letter from me. There is not the slightest probability that a hair of our heads will be touched, and my friends of all kinds overrun me, to share their political wisdom with me, so that I began a letter of one-quarter sheet to Malle this morning at 9, and could not finish before 3. I am living in comfort and economy with Werdeck, only rather far away, in consequence of which I already feel the pavement through my soles. Cordial remembrances to the mother and the Bellins. I am writing on the table d'hôte table of the Hôtel des Princes, and a small salad has just been brought for my supper.

Your very faithful B. April 3, '48.

Schönhausen, August 21, '48. 8.30 P.M.

To HERR VON PUTTKAMER, AT REINFELD, NEAR ZUCKERS, POMERANIA.

Dear Father,—You have just become, with God's gracious help, the grandfather of a healthy, well-formed girl that Johanna has presented me with after hard but short pains. At the moment mother and child are doing as well as one could wish. Johanna lies still and tired, yet cheerful and composed, behind the curtain; the little creature, in the meantime, under coverlets on the sofa, and squalls off and on. I am quite glad that the first is a daughter, but if it had been a cat I should have thanked God on my knees the moment Johanna was rid of it: it is really a desperately hard business. I came from Berlin last night, and this morning we had no premonition of what was to come. At ten in the morning Johanna was seized with severe pains after eating a grape, and the accompanying symptoms led me to put her at once to bed, and to send in haste to Tangermünde, whence, in spite of the Elbe, Dr. Fricke arrived soon after 12. At 8 my daughter was audible, with sonorous voice. This afternoon I sent Hildebrand off to fetch nurse Boldt from Berlin in a great hurry. I hope you will not postpone your journey now; but earnestly beg dear mother not to make the trip in an exhausting manner. I know, of course, that she has little regard for her own health, but just for Johanna's sake you must take care of yourself, dear mother, so that she may not be anxious on your account. Fricke pleases us very much—experienced and careful. I do not admit visits: Bellin's wife, the doctor, and I attend to everything. Fricke estimates the little one at about nine pounds in weight. Up to the present time, then, everything has gone according to rule, and for that praise and thanks be to the Lord. If you could bring Aennchen with you that would make Johanna very happy.

22. Morning.—It is all going very well, only the cradle is still lacking, and the little miss must camp meanwhile on a forage-crib. May God have you and us in his keeping, dear parents.

Until we meet again, presently. B.

Have the kindness to attend to the announcements, save in Berlin and Reddentin, in your neighborhood: Seehof, Satz, and so forth. Johanna sends cordial greetings. She laments her daughter's large nose. I think it no larger than it has a right to be.

Berlin, Saturday, 11 p. m. September 23, '48.

To FRAU VON BISMARCK, SCHÖNHAUSEN, NEAR JERICHOW.

My Pet!—Today at last I have news of your condition, and am very grateful to mother for the letter. * * * I am beginning to be really homesick for you, my heart, and mother's letter today threw me into a mood utterly sad and crippling: a husband's heart, and a father's—at any rate, mine in the present circumstances—does not fit in with the whirl of politics and intrigue. On Monday, probably, the die will be cast here. Either the ministry will be shown to be weak, like its predecessors, and sink out—and against this I shall still struggle—or it will do its duty, and then I do not for a moment doubt that blood will flow on Monday evening or on Tuesday. I should not have believed that the democrats would be confident enough to take up the gage of battle, but all their behavior indicates that they are bent on it. Poles, Frankfort men, loafers, volunteers—all sorts of riffraff are again at hand. They count on the defection of the troops, apparently misled by the talk of individual discontented gabblers among the soldiers; but I think they will make a great mistake. I personally have no occasion to await the thing here, and so to tempt God by asking him to protect me in perils that I have no call to seek. Accordingly, I shall betake my person to a place of safety not later than tomorrow. If nothing important occurs on Monday, on Tuesday I shall reach you; but, if the trouble begins, I should still like to stay near the King. But there you may (in an aside I say "unfortunately") assume with confidence that there will be no danger. You received no letter from me today, because I sent a report about the society to Gärtner, and you will learn from him that I am all right. You will receive this tomorrow, and I shall write again on Monday. Send horses for me on Tuesday. God bless and guard you, my sweetheart.

Your faithful B.

(Postmark, Berlin, November 9, '48.)

My Dearest,—Although I am confident that I shall be with you in person a few hours after this letter, I want to inform you immediately that everything is quiet till now. I go to Potsdam at nine, but must post the letter here now, as otherwise it will not reach you today. Our friends have been steadfast till now, but I cannot take courage yet to believe in anything energetic. I still fear, fear, and the weather is unfavorable, too. Above all, you must not be afraid of anything, if I should stay away today by any chance. The K. may send for me, or some one else in Potsdam earnestly wish that I should stay there to advise upon further measures, the trains may be delayed because the carriages are required for soldiers, and other things of the sort. Then, courage and patience, my heart, in any event. The God who makes worlds go round can also cover me with his wings. And in P. there is no danger anyhow. So expect me in the evening; if I happen not to come, I shall be all right nevertheless. Cordial remembrances to our cross little mother.

Your most faithful B.

Potsdam, November 10, '48.

My Angel,—Please, please do not scold me for not coming today either; I must try to put through some more matters in relation to the immediate future. At two this afternoon all Wrangel's troops will reach Berlin, disarm the flying corps, maybe, take the disaffected deputies from the Concertsaal, and make the city again a royal Prussian one. It is doubtful whether they will come to blows in the process. Contrary to our expectations, everything remained quiet yesterday; the democrats seem to be much discouraged. * * *

Your v.B.

Potsdam, November 14, '48.

My Dear Pet,—Long sleep can certainly become a vice. Senfft has just waked me at nine o'clock, and I cannot yet get the sand out of my eyes. It is quiet here. Yesterday it was said to be the intention to serenade the Queen (on her birthday) with mock music; one company posted there sufficed to make the audacious people withdraw in silence. Berlin is in a state of siege, but as yet not a shot fired. The disarming of the city militia goes on forcibly and very gradually. The meeting in the Schützenhaus was dispersed by soldiers yesterday; six men who were unwilling to go were thrown out. Martial law will be proclaimed over there today. My friend Schramm has been arrested. That Rob. Blum, Fröbel, Messenhauser, have been shot in Vienna, you already know from the newspapers. Good-by, you angel; I must close. Many remembrances to all. The peasants of the neighborhood have declared to the King that if he has need of them he should just call them: that they would come with weapons and supplies to aid his troops, from the Zauch-Belzig-Teltow, the Havelland, and other districts. Mention that in Schönhausen, please, so that it may go the rounds.

Your v.B.

Potsdam, Thursday Morning, November 16, '48.

Dear Nanne!—I did not get your very dear, nice letter of Tuesday morning until yesterday afternoon, but none the less did I right fervently rejoice and take comfort in it, because you are well, at least in your way, and are fond of me. There is no news from here except that Potsdam and Berlin are as quiet as under the former King, and the surrender of arms in B. continues without interruption, with searching of houses, etc. It is possible that there may be scenes of violence incidentally—the troops secretly long for them—but on the whole the "passive resistance" of the democrats seems to me only a seasonable expression for what is usually called fear. Yesterday I dined with the King. The Queen was amiable in the English fashion. The enclosed twig of erica I picked from her sewing-table, and send it to keep you from being jealous. * * *