There were also several other questions no less difficult, those relating to the exportation of American products to Germany and the troubles already brewing in Samoa being especially prominent; so that it was with anything but an easy feeling that, on the 29th of May, I sailed from New York.
On the 12th of June I presented the President's letter of credence to the Emperor William II. The more important of my new relations to the sovereign had given me no misgivings; for during my stay in Berlin as minister, eighteen years before, I had found him very courteous, he being then the heir apparent; but with the ceremonial part it was otherwise, and to that I looked forward almost with dismay.
For, since my stay in Berlin, the legation had been raised to an embassy. It had been justly thought by various patriotic members of Congress that it was incompatible, either with the dignity or the interests of so great a nation as ours, to be represented simply by a minister plenipotentiary, who, when calling at the Foreign Office to transact business, might be obliged to wait for hours, and even until the next day, while representatives from much less important countries who ranked as ambassadors went in at once. The change was good, but in making it Congress took no thought of some things which ought to have been provided for. Of these I shall speak later; but as regards the presentation, the trying feature to me was that there was a great difference between this and any ceremonial which I had previously experienced, whether as commissioner at Santo Domingo and Paris, or as minister at Berlin and St. Petersburg. At the presentation of a minister plenipotentiary he goes in his own carriage to the palace at the time appointed; is ushered into the presence of the sovereign; delivers to him, with some simple speech, the autograph letter from the President; and then, after a kindly answer, all is finished. But an ambassador does not escape so easily. Under a fiction of international law he is regarded as the direct representative of the sovereign power of his country, and is treated in some sense as such. Therefore it was that, at the time appointed, a high personage of the court, in full uniform, appeared at my hotel accompanied by various other functionaries, with three court carriages, attendants, and outriders, deputed to conduct me to the palace. Having been escorted to the first of the carriages,—myself, in plain citizen's dress, on the back seat; my escort, in gorgeous uniform, facing me; and my secretaries and attaches in the other carriages,—we took up our march in solemn procession—carriages, outriders, and all—through the Wilhelmstrasse and Unter den Linden. On either side was a gaping crowd; at the various corps de garde bodies of troops came out and presented arms; and on our arrival at the palace there was a presentation of arms and beating of drums which, for the moment, somewhat abashed me. It was an ordeal more picturesque than agreeable.
The reception by the Emperor was simple, courteous, and kindly. Neither of us made any set speech, but we discussed various questions, making reference to our former meeting and the changes which had occurred since. Among these changes I referred to the great improvement in Berlin, whereupon he said that he could not think the enormous growth of modern cities an advantage. My answer was that my reference was to the happy change in the architecture of Berlin rather than to its growth in population; that, during my first stay in the city, over forty years before, nearly all the main buildings were of brick and stucco, whereas there had now been a remarkable change from stucco to stone and to a much nobler style of architecture. We also discussed the standing of Germans in America and their relations to the United States. On my remarking that it was just eighteen years and one day since the first Emperor William had received me as minister in that same palace, he spoke of various things in the history of the intervening years; and then ensued an episode such as I had hardly expected. For just before leaving New York my old friend Frederick William Holls, after a dinner at his house on the Hudson, had given his guests examples of the music written by Frederick the Great, and one piece had especially interested us. It was a duet in which Mr. Holls played one part upon the organ, and his wife another upon the piano; and all of us were greatly impressed by the dignity and beauty of the whole. It had been brought to light and published by the present Emperor, and after the performance some one of the party remarked, in a jocose way, "You should express our thanks to his Majesty, when you meet him, for the pleasure which this music has given us." I thought nothing more of the subject until, just at the close of the conversation above referred to, it came into my mind; and on my mentioning it the Emperor showed at once a special interest, discussing the music from various points of view; and on my telling him that we were all surprised that it was not amateurish, but really profound in its harmonies and beautiful in its melodies, he dwelt upon the musical debt of Frederick the Great to Bach and the special influence of Bach upon him. This conversation recurred to me later, when the Emperor, in erecting the statue to Frederick the Great on the Avenue of Victory, placed on one side of it the bust of Marshal Schwerin, and on the other that of Johann Sebastian Bach, thus honoring the two men whom he considered most important during Frederick's reign.
After presenting my embassy secretaries and attaches, military and naval, I was conducted with them into the presence of the Empress, who won all our hearts by her kindly, unaffected greeting. On my recalling her entrance into Berlin as a bride, in her great glass coach, seventeen years before, on one of the coldest days I ever knew, she gave amusing details of her stately progress down the Linden on that occasion; and in response to my congratulations upon her six fine boys and her really charming little daughter, it was pleasant to see how
"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,"
her eyes lighting up with pride and joy, and her conversation gladly turning to the children.
It may be added here that the present Empress seems to have broken the unfortunate spell which for about half a century hung over the queens and empresses of the house of Hohenzollern. I remember well that, among the Germans whom I knew in my Berlin-University days, all the sins of the period, political and religious, seemed to be traced to the influence of Queen Elizabeth, the consort of the reigning King Frederick William IV; and that, during my first official stay in the same capital as minister, a similar feeling was shown toward the Empress Augusta, in spite of her most kindly qualities and her devotion to every sort of charitable work; and that the crown princess, afterward the Empress Frederick, in spite of all her endowments of head and heart, was apparently more unpopular than either of her two predecessors. But the present Empress seems to have changed all this, and, doubtless, mainly by her devotion to her husband and her children, which apparently excludes from her mind all care for the great problems of the universe outside her family. So strong is this feeling of kindness toward her that it was comical to see, at one period during my stay, when she had been brought perilously near a most unpopular course of action, that everybody turned at once upon her agent in the matter, saying nothing about her, but belaboring him unmercifully, though he was one of the most attractive of men.
These presentations being finished, our return to the Kaiserhof Hotel was made with the same ceremony as that with which we had come to the palace, and happy was I when all was over.
Of the other official visits at this time, foremost in importance was that to the chancellor of the empire, Prince Hohenlohe. Although he was then nearly eighty years old and bent with age, his mind in discussing public matters was entirely clear. Various later conversations with him also come back to me—one, especially, at a dinner he gave at the chancellor's palace to President Harrison. On my recalling the fact that we were in the room where I had first dined with Bismarck, Prince Hohenlohe gave a series of reminiscences of his great predecessor, some of them throwing a strong light upon his ideas and methods. On one occasion, at my own table, he spoke very thoughtfully on German characteristics, and one of his remarks surprised me: it was that the besetting sin of the Germans is envy (Neid); in which remark one may see a curious tribute to the tenacity of the race, since Tacitus justified a similar opinion. He seemed rather melancholy; but he had a way of saying pungent things very effectively, and one of these attributed to him became widely known. He was publicly advocating a hotly contested canal bill, when an opponent said, "You will find a solid rock in the way of this measure"; to which the chancellor rejoined, "We will then do with the rock as Moses did: we will smite it and get water for our canal."