And that was the end of a painful and yet beautiful episode of my life,—a short romance of the magic of song, and of melancholy resignation. On board the Rhein a mourning flag was raised, a choral was sung, the ship’s engines were stopped, and a body was lowered into the ocean with salvos of guns. On the silent heart of the man who there disappeared in the waters—an artist, a prince, a good-hearted man—was laid the photograph of his betrothed, and the billows of the ocean murmured a sobbing wedding song to the dead and my picture.
PART THREE
1873–1876
XV
IN THE SUTTNER HOUSE
Resolve to take a position · The Suttner family · Artur Gundaccar von Suttner · Life in the Vienna palais and in Schloss Harmannsdorf · The Exposition year · Secret love · Letters from the Princess of Mingrelia · Marriage of Prince Niko · Zogelsdorf quarry · Three happy years · I tear myself away · Departure
Summer, 1873. The brief romance was not forgotten, but the sharp pain of it was assuaged. The love borne “on the pinions of song” had not made too deep an impression on my heart; the whole affair had passed swiftly by and vanished like a dream. I spent a few weeks in deep, genuine grief; then the tears began gradually to dry up, and life again made its rights prevail—and all the more powerfully as the necessity was upon me to earn my own livelihood. Our property was quite used up; I was obliged to leave home. My mother could live on her widow’s portion, but I did not want to be a burden upon her, although she entreated me to stay with her and once more attempt to take up my artistic career. Of that I would hear positively nothing more. Thirty years old—that is no time to begin an artistic career; and the remembrance of the pangs that I had suffered through nervousness, the various fiascoes connected with my tests, made the mere thought of “Singsang,” as I called it, detestable. Neither was I willing to remain inactive at home in narrow circumstances, and grow sour. I wanted to see more of the world; I wanted to accomplish some work. With my perfect command of French, English, and Italian, with my superior artistry in music, unusual in one not a professional, with my extensive acquirements in other branches of knowledge, I could make myself useful and brilliant in the outside world.
So I took a position that was offered to me as instructor and companion to four grown-up daughters in the baronial house of Suttner.
Here was I first to win the crown of my life. Blessed be the day that brought me to that house; it was the bud from which the hundred-leaved rose of my good fortune opened out. That day also opened the door through which there could enter that Bertha Suttner whom, with her experiences of the purest married bliss and the deepest woes of widowhood, with her participation in the critical issues of the time, I feel myself to be to-day, while that Bertha Kinsky of whom I have hitherto been writing hovers before me like a figure in a picture book, whose adventures—in vague outlines—are indeed known to me, but do not affect me.
The Suttner family occupied their own palais in Canova Street, Vienna. One side looked out on the Karlskirche across the Vienna River, the other on the Musikverein building. We—that is to say the baron, the baroness, the four daughters, and I—occupied the first floor; in the mezzanine lived the oldest son Karl, who had been married a few months previously to a marvelously beautiful woman born Countess Firmian, and the third and youngest son Artur Gundaccar. The second son, likewise married, a former captain of cavalry, who had fought in Bohemia in 1866, lived on the manor of Stockern.
“Papa” Suttner, at that time fifty-one years of age, a goodly man, an Austrian cavalier of the old school, conservative—not to say reactionary—in his political ideas, always welcome at court. “Mamma” Suttner, about the same age, with traces of great beauty, somewhat formal and cold in her bearing. The daughters, Lotti, Marianne, Luise, and Mathilde, aged twenty, nineteen, seventeen, and fifteen, each prettier than the other. Especially Mathilde, the mother’s favorite, had a truly angelic look with her wavy blond hair, her dazzling complexion, and her regular features. Two other living beings belonged to the family,—Schnapfel, a yellow-haired Pintscher, a constant companion to Papa and Mamma; and Amie, a wise white poodle with a laughing physiognomy, the confidante of the girls.
It was a great establishment; the household servants were a valet, a chasseur, serving men, a lady’s maid, housemaids, a cook, a scullery maid, a coachman, and a porter. Carriages and opera box. The dwelling—I still see it before me: antechamber with Gobelin tapestries on the walls; a suite of three drawing-rooms, one green, one yellow, and one blue; the mother’s bedchamber in lilac; the father’s office, which served also for a smoking room, with leather-covered furniture and wooden wainscoting. Then two other chambers for the girls,—Lotti and Marianne slept together, and so did Luise and Mathilde; my room was next to theirs.
The girls and I were soon the best of friends. I did not play my rôle as instructor too strictly; a few hours in the morning were regularly spent in the study of music and the languages, but the rest of the time was nothing but enjoyment, joking, and jollity. I did not parade the dignity of my thirty years, nor yet the authority of my position. We five were playmates. Our days were fairly regular: in the morning, before breakfast, a walk in the neighboring city park; at nine o’clock, coffee together in Papa’s office (in connection with which Mamma made inquiries about the progress of the lessons and laid down all sorts of rules of behavior and other good advice); from ten till twelve, lessons; at noon, déjeuner à la fourchette all together in the dining-room; from one o’clock on, music, school tasks, etc., alternating, until it was time to dress for the five-o’clock dinner.