The home in which Fräulein Lavater had grown up, in happy companionship of her brothers and sisters, under the guidance of their excellent mother, was a comfortable old-fashioned house in Hanau, surrounded by a pretty garden of considerable size. A genial and healthy spirit animated the whole household; the inhabitants of the little town prided themselves on the literary and artistic interests which they considered had been wafted over to them from Frankfort, the Frankfort of Goethe’s days; they read much, and were fond of meeting together for philosophic discussion as well as for amateur acting. Those were still the good old honest simple times in which living was so cheap that an excellent mid-day meal, a slice of a roast joint with vegetables, bread and ale, could be had for three kreuzers, and in which young girls made their own simple white muslin ball-dresses, and embroidered them in coloured wools, wearing the same dress contentedly for a dozen dances; and assuredly they looked just as pretty and attractive in their modest attire as do the young women of the present day in the extravagant toilettes on which such preposterous sums are spent, often bringing ruin on a whole family. That so-called period of stagnation at which it is so easy to sneer, was in reality but the necessary reaction after the too great tension, the strain and stress of the War of Liberation, a rest after the storm, in which the nation might recuperate its energies, exhausted by the long conflict. No one talked then of national antipathies or hereditary enmities; and religious strife was also unknown. It was, at all events, a peaceful happy existence which people led in Hanau, as in many another of the smaller German towns, in which little colonies of French Protestants, driven out of their own country by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had settled down. There was something so distinctive about these worthy people, something that seemed to differentiate them from their compatriots of the Catholic Faith, and that has sometimes set me wondering as to what other possible turn affairs might have taken for France and for Europe in consequence, had Henry IV instead of hearing his first Mass thrown the whole weight of his influence into the other side of the scale, and brought his countrymen over to his religion! However that may be, it is certain that the presence of these foreigners gave Hanau something cosmopolitan, that the tone of thought and feeling which prevailed there was exceptionally liberal and enlightened. Anglophobia had not yet been invented in Germany, on the contrary, one admired and imitated everything English, looking up to the English nation as the most highly civilised of all.
Before Fanny Lavater’s first day in Biebrich was over, her little pupil was already sitting on her knee, and telling her:—“Je vous aime déjà beaucoup!” “Vraiment?” said the young governess, somewhat surprised. “Je vous aime déjà beaucoup plus que ma sœur Thérèse!” “Oh!” and this time there was something not merely incredulous, but almost of protest in the tone. “C’est que je n’aime pas beaucoup ma sœur Thérèse!” The elder sister had, after the mother’s death, at once assumed the reins of government, and carried it on in so high-handed a manner, that she had by no means increased the affection in which she was held by her younger brothers and sisters.
The very next evening there was a big reception at the Castle, at which Fräulein Lavater, young and timid and unknown to everyone, had to appear. As she shyly entered the room, nobody made way for her, or took any notice of her at all, and my grandfather, observing this, strode through the room to the place where she stood, offered her his arm, and conducted her in this manner through the whole assembly, everyone falling back as they passed along. Needless to say, that her position in society was from that hour assured, and that she never required to assert herself in any way. And this little anecdote shows my grandfather, then a handsome dignified man in the prime of life, in the light in which he must have always appeared to the outside world; towards strangers he was affable, courteous and charming, reserving his ill-temper for his own family, his treatment of his children not allowing them to see in him aught but a pitiless tyrant.
For my mother a happy time now began, in which she and her dear governess lived quite by themselves in the rooms set apart for them in one wing of the castle, where they had their own little establishment—maid, footman and housemaids, all to themselves. Only once or twice a day did the children have to appear before their parents, kiss their hands and be dismissed again at once. Pupil and governess were all in all to one another, and the former had already made up her mind that no circumstances which she could control, should ever separate them. Fräulein Lavater must come and live with her, the little girl explained, when she got married. “But if your husband does not want me?” “Alors, je dirai; mon homme, tu peux rester dans ta chambre, et moi je resterai dans la mienne!” My mother kept her word, insisting, to our unspeakable happiness, on Fräulein Lavater remaining with her for weeks, sometimes months together, throughout her married life, and afterwards, during her widowhood, altogether.
The saddest day in her whole childhood was that in which her dear governess was dismissed. The latter had often defended her little pupil when she saw her unjustly accused, as not infrequently occurred, her otherwise admirable and dearly-loved stepmother having the weakness—it was the only fault that could be laid to her charge—sometimes to try to shield her own children from their father’s severity, at the expense of the others. And Fräulein Lavater’s zealous efforts to exculpate the poor child, on an occasion when she knew her to be the victim of a most cruel injustice, simply led to her own dismissal. It was for both of them a cruel blow, and my mother has often told me how she wandered next day heartbroken through the empty desolate rooms, throwing herself at last on a sofa to cry her eyes out, with no one to care what had become of her.
My mother had hardly been able to speak a word of German at the time when Fräulein Lavater came to her. Nassau belonged to the Confederation of the Rhine and had decidedly French sympathies, so that everything was new to my mother, when she came to Neuwied, marrying into a family that had been mediatised for having drawn the sword for Germany. She was simply shocked at the brutality of one of my great-uncles, who related how he had ridden about on the field of Waterloo, in the hope of finding Napoleon and making an end of him. “That fellow Bonaparte! if I could but have got at him!” Uncle Max would say, clenching his fist; and my mother turned away in horror at such savage sentiments.
There had been, quite unknown to herself, another marriage planned for her, with the heir to the throne of Russia, whose father, the Emperor Nicholas, was a great friend of my grandfather. But the match, on which both fathers were so bent, fell through after my grandfather’s death, the Emperor’s expressed desire merely having the effect of driving his son into opposition to his wishes. But my mother was ignorant of all this; all she knew of or cared for in Russia was the family of the Grand-Duchess Hélène, her own first cousin and sister to her stepmother. To her, the Grand-Duchess, and her daughters, she was deeply attached.
I cannot insist enough on the benefit resulting for us all from the presence of Fräulein Lavater in our midst. She came among us as a true angel of peace, bringing harmony into the strange mass of heterogeneous elements—sometimes most conflicting and discordant—of which our household was composed. Never were we so happy, either as children or a little later on, as when sitting with her, close up beside her chair, listening to all she had to tell us. Her memory was so excellent and had been so assiduously cultivated, that her mind was a perfect treasure-house of all that is best and noblest in the literature of the world. She was never idle; her fingers always occupied with some pretty piece of needlework whilst she talked, and when alone, they worked on indefatigably, her eyes meanwhile fixed on the book that lay open before her. It was owing to this praiseworthy habit, that in the course of completing some beautiful piece of lace or embroidery, that looked as if wrought by fairy fingers, she had at the same time committed whole pages of her favourite authors to memory, and would therefore not only relate to us the substance of her reading, but even recite long passages of poetry or prose by the hour together, in her soft agreeable voice, and with most admirable elocution. Her needlework was truly artistic; much of it would have been worthy to find a place in a museum. Her tapestry-work was as if painted, and an artist friend of ours once said of her groups and landscapes, that whilst the paintings done by some young ladies of his acquaintance looked as if worked in cross-stitch, Fräulein Fanny’s needlework was so fine that it might have been painted! “Look at that grey horse,” he went on, pointing to a little group, “so delicately is it shaded, that Wouwerman might have acknowledged it as the product of his brush!”
Her own harmonious and well balanced disposition enabled our dear “Fräulchen” to play the part of peace-maker among stormier natures, and her influence was ever used for good. Never in thirty years of the closest intimacy did I hear a single word fall from her lips, by which I could possibly have felt hurt; and I was as ultra-sensitive and liable to take offence, as are most children, who are too harshly brought up. With others I was always looking out for blame,—a scolding seemed the natural thing to expect,—never with her! She could find fault, too, when it was needful, but with so much tact and kindness, and accompanying her criticism with reflections that took away all its bitterness and made it sound almost like indirect praise; and then when I looked up at her, half in alarm, with her soft little hand she would stroke mine and say smiling:—“There was the horrid little serpent concealed beneath the roses, was it not?” She was for ever pouring oil on the troubled waters, making life better and happier for everyone, and most of all for us poor children, who had in many respects a very hard time, in an atmosphere so little conducive to our healthy and happy development. We were accustomed to say among ourselves that we were a three-leaved shamrock of ill-luck, our initials—(of all our names, Otto, Wilhelm, and Elizabeth),—forming together the sound Oweh, or Woe!
Poor little woful shamrock in truth it was! We often stood in need of someone to protect us, our parents’ ill-health placing us so entirely in the hands of our first governesses and nursery-governesses, who unfortunately happened to be anything but fitted for a position of such trust. We should have suffered still more from their harsh treatment and rough ways, had not Fräulein Lavater constantly stepped in, to interpose calmly and gently on our behalf. My gratitude towards her knew no bounds, and can find but scant expression in the words I write, which seem cold and colourless beside the feelings that dictate them. She alone understood the restless workings of my imagination, its insatiable thirst of beauty, not to be stilled by the daily portion of dull dry fact, which was alone provided by our earliest instruction, she alone cared to satisfy the intense longing for poetry, for literature, for some other knowledge than was contained in the little scholastic manuals of science and history on which our young minds were almost exclusively fed. Thanks to her, when I was eight years old, I was liberated from the very disagreeable young governess who had tyrannised over me since my fourth year, and a friend of her own substituted, an amiable and highly-instructed woman, with whom I at once made great progress, my studies becoming from that moment a real delight to me. Grammar, and French grammar above all, was a real passion with me, and unconsciously I was already then, in my love of languages and of language itself, cultivating and preparing the instrument that was one day to be my own, to be played on as others play on the strings of a harp or violin. But clever and accomplished as Fräulein Josse was, and much as I enjoyed my lessons with her, the hours spent with Fräulein Lavater were worth even more, for her knowledge had a still wider range, her judgment was more calm and clear, being utterly unbiased by any personal considerations. She possessed a special gift for calming the tumult—a tumult of thought unsuspected by everyone else—which my lively imagination sometimes set up in my brain. As she was the only person who could sympathise with my flights of fancy, perhaps the only one who did not consider absolutely culpable and reprehensible the tendency to indulge in them, it was only natural that she should be the sole confidante of my dreams and aspirations. With her too I could give vent to my natural liveliness, to the perpetual flow of high spirits, so sadly out of place in the atmosphere of the sick-room. My youthful health and strength drew down on me all sorts of uncomplimentary epithets from some of the elder members of the family, to whom, more even than to the invalids, my liveliness must have been a trial; Whirlwind, Flibbertigibbet, Will-o’-the-wisp, these were a few of the names showered on me by Uncle Max, and more or less acquiesced in by the rest. It must have been the sensation of exuberant, irrepressible vitality within me which made me one day exclaim—“Mamma, I feel as if I could carry away a mountain!” Alas! I have sometimes thought since that my heedless words must have been overheard by Fate!