When I came back from St. Petersburg everything was changed, my dear father dead, and quite a different way of living to be entered on by my mother and myself, she being restricted henceforth to her dower for her own use, the estates of course passing into my brother’s hands, and simply being administered by her until his coming of age. We could now no longer keep open house as in the old days, in which the carriage had scarcely departed that took away one party of guests, when already and perhaps quite unexpectedly another would appear round the corner bringing a fresh relay. It was a quiet and rather lonely life that began thus suddenly for us three women, but no less full of interest, thanks to the one of us, to our dear Fräulein Lavater! We were hardly an hour of the day apart from one another, she and I; when the weather made it impossible for us to go out, if the wind was raging or the snow falling fast, then we contented ourselves with walking up and down indoors, pacing the rooms sometimes for hours, subjects of conversation never failing, her well-stored mind always ready to provide some fresh topic, and her marvellous swiftness of intuition enabling her to place herself at another’s point of view, and participate in phases of thought and feeling quite new to her. I had but just returned home after a lengthy absence, in which I had travelled much, seen many new countries, and met numbers of celebrated and interesting people. She meanwhile had remained quietly at home, surrounded daily by the same scenes, the same faces. And yet, how infinitely richer and fuller she had contrived to make her life, that inner life, which is in truth independent of and superior to all influences from without!
I could wish that many another young girl might go through the experience that then was mine, that she might enjoy and profit by days like our winter-days in Monrepos, provided, of course, that she had such a companion as Fräulein Lavater to share in them. And better still were the long winter evenings, when we sat round the lamp, the immense deep stillness of the mighty woods reigning outside and a like feeling of calm, of aloofness from the world dwelling within our souls. Of inestimable value was that time for me, after all the bustle and fatigue of the long journeys, of the rapid succession of events, of all the changing, shifting phantasmagoria of the busy, restless world, stamped in almost bewildering variety on my brain. The impressions had been so vivid, so multitudinous, they bade fair to grow confused or distorted, crowding on and threatening to efface each other. But now, in this quiet uneventful existence, I could look through the rich collection I had brought home with me, could examine each treasure undisturbed, and range them all in order, could bring myself into harmony with all I had so recently acquired. How quickly those evenings passed! Our fingers were busy all the time; my mother spinning, and I already making all sorts of new inventions in tatting,—that pretty work of which I have always been so fond, and which I have gone on elaborating of late years into something resembling old-fashioned ecclesiastical embroideries. We talked at intervals, or else read aloud by turns,—from some author whose high and noble thoughts we might meditate on for long after.
It was the sensation of being enfolded and shut off from the rest of the world by the woods around us, that lent those evenings their peculiar charm. Often during the day I had wandered for hours through my beloved woods, with the sole companionship of the faithful St. Bernard dogs, my trusty guardians. We did not keep to the beaten path, but plunged into the deepest thickets, threading our way through the most tangled growth of brushwood. And on my return, my first care was to note down the songs which the trees had whispered in my ear as I passed beneath them. I was the wild rose, the wood rose, for all my friends. They had christened me thus, because of the roses on my cheeks, which I never lost, although so much of my youth had been spent in the atmosphere of the sick-room. I might indeed pass as a living contradiction to every sort of theory of infection, my magnificent health would have given the lie to all stories of germs and microbes,—I was really never ill in my life, and never had occasion to see a doctor, until the attack of typhoid fever I had while in St. Petersburg. That was perhaps in a great measure the result of the long anxiety, the sadness of years, but it did not come on till afterwards, not in the least as an immediate consequence of the unhealthy atmosphere in which I had grown up.
The drawback to the life we were now leading, lay of course in its natural tendency to encourage mere dreaming, almost at the expense perhaps of one’s active duties, of all practical work. For me this might have been a special danger, had I not been preserved from it by the good sense, the clearsightedness, the spirit of self-sacrifice of my Mentor. Of herself she never thought at all. Therein lay the secret of her great power, of her unbounded influence. On her deathbed she could say:—“How good it is, when one’s whole life has been filled by one great affection!”
For those who knew her best, her whole existence was summed up in those words. But did they also contain a hidden meaning, the key to a secret none had ever guessed, some page of quite unsuspected romance, an attachment which death or circumstances had cut short? I had sometimes wondered that she alone of all her sisters had remained unmarried, had therefore never known the happiness of having a home, a family of her own; but, like everyone else, I had grown accustomed to the idea that her devotion to my mother was so all-absorbing as to leave no room for any other affection in her heart. Most probably was it so, and that her last words did but refer to the friendship, the affection, to which she had devoted her whole life, identifying herself so entirely with the feelings, the hopes, the interests and aims of the family of which in the truest sense she had become a member, that she found within that circle ample scope for the exercise of all her energy, the satisfaction of all her wishes, nor ever for one moment regretted having formed no other ties. She died in the year 1877, after the Balkan war, that war on which hung the destinies of Roumania, and out of which the country came forth victorious and independent, and before her death she had come to pay me a visit there, appearing in her old character of an angel of peace and consolation. For it was in the saddest, darkest hour of my whole existence, that in which its whole joy and happiness, granted to me for so short a time, had been torn from me forever, and when my only wish was to be allowed myself to die also. In that moment of utter hopelessness, none knew as did this old friend of mine, in what manner alone to strive to reconcile me with life. Hers were the gentle words, the gentle touch, that can never hurt, that one can bear, even when one’s whole heart seems to be an open wound. “Bun de pus pe rana,”—“good enough to be put on a wound,” is a Roumanian proverb, that always recurs to me, in thinking of Fräulein Lavater, for it exactly describes the feeling one had when with her. Her hands were soft as satin, and in the moral or spiritual sphere, she had just the same exquisite softness of touch. Whilst others, even with the very best intentions, seemed only too often to bear heavily on a spot too sensitive to be breathed upon, every word and action of hers was like balm to the soul. Instead of making the vain attempt to offer consolation for a sorrow beyond redress, she understood at once that in such utter bereavement one can only be reconciled to the world by the effort to live for others. And that lesson she was best fitted to teach, who had for so many years practised it in her own person, putting herself so entirely on one side, and only thinking how she could help and comfort those around her. One felt sure of never being misunderstood or misjudged by her, since her readiness of sympathy enabled her at all times to put herself in another’s place, and look at the situation from another point of view. Witty and amusing in conversation, her modesty made her draw back more and more from general society as she grew older, under the plea that old people are always dull, but this did not prevent a proper sense of her own dignity, of that which was due to herself. She once said to me with a smile, in relating an incident from which it appeared that she had scarce been treated with due consideration—“Well, if the place allotted me at table did me no honour, I must suppose that I did honour to the place by accepting it!” Impartial and dispassionate in her judgment of men and events, she was equally unbiased in her literary criticisms, paying absolutely no heed to the voice of public opinion in such matters, but thinking and judging for herself. No one I have known ever possessed in the same degree the gift of rapid and unerring discernment: she would glance through a volume, and in a moment her mind was made up as to its contents; she seemed able to take in, and digest and assimilate them, in less time than it would take most people to read the headings of the chapters. It was a real pleasure to see her, when a big parcel of books arrived from a library; sometimes a peep into the uncut pages of a volume sufficed for it to be put on one side to be returned as not worthy of further attention, whilst over others she hovered, paper-knife in hand, glancing now here, now there, and choosing the best for more serious perusal, like a bee, we used to tell her, that darts from one plant to the other, sipping honey from the choicest blossoms!
Like the bees too, who are not content each to gather honey for itself alone, but bring it all to the common store, the treasures culled by Fräulein Lavater from her reading were not intended solely for her own pleasure and profit, but were ever destined to more unselfish purposes. She could enliven the dullest society, revive the most languishing conversation with some apposite remark, some reference to a topic so well chosen that even the most listless felt their interest aroused. And best of all, her soft low voice was like a charm for mental fatigue or overstrung nerves. It was as if she could wile away headache or worry with her gentle tones, she brought comfort to every sick-bed, and in the long weary day of convalescence, when the work of taking up again the burden of existence is perchance almost too great an effort for the weakened frame, who was there could ever, like Fräulchen, cheer and rouse one from one’s apathy, who else possessed such an inexhaustible fund of delightful stories, or could relate them as she did? How often, in later days, in the long slow recovery from illness, have I not sighed for her presence, feeling that she could beguile my pain and weariness with one of the stories or legends she told so well. She it was who first encouraged in me the taste for literature, the love of poetry, in which others saw only a weakness and a danger. It was her guiding hand that directed my youthful talent into the right path, treating it as a plant worthy of cultivation, and not as a dangerous or perhaps even poisonous weed, to be rooted up or trodden under foot! For it was to many quite a shocking idea, that a princess should not merely have the misfortune to be born a poet, but that she should actually take no pains to conceal so terrible a fact! That sort of talent really could not be considered suitable to one’s station, and where there was no possibility of extirpating, it must at least be hidden away out of sight! But Fräulein Lavater, in her quiet unobtrusive way, saying no word to hurt prevailing prejudices and thereby expose me to still greater disapprobation, found the means of lending just the aid and sheltering care so requisite to my first timid attempts at giving poetic form to the emotional and intellectual chaos over which I brooded. The sure and refined taste of the elder woman rendered invaluable service to the somewhat headlong and indiscriminating enthusiasm of youth, in pointing out to me, at the same time with the best models for admiration and imitation, errors to be avoided, excesses and weaknesses to be condemned. Then, as later, it was the certainty that one’s efforts and aspirations, one’s failures and mistakes would meet in her, not merely with justice, but with that indulgence which is perhaps the highest form of human justice, this it was which inspired one with confidence in seeking her verdict, and spared one the excessive discouragement some criticisms invariably leave behind. A sense of justice is very strong in most children, and they suffer more acutely than is generally supposed, in the consciousness of being unjustly treated. Misjudged as in my childhood I felt myself to be by the iron disciplinarians whose aim it was to crush out all originality, it was a comfort to know that to one person I never appeared wilful or headstrong, and it was perhaps scarce possible to experience a greater satisfaction than was mine in later years, in hearing Fräulchen’s affectionate tribute to “our sunbeam,” as she was fond of calling me:—“She was always a dear good child, only wishing to make everyone happy!”
To this very day, in those moments of disappointment and lassitude by which all of us are at times beset, I have but to think of Fräulein Lavater, for the old feeling of peace and calm to come over me, and the physical pain is at once stilled, and the cares and troubles that seemed overpowering shrink into insignificance. More than once, in times gone by, when the burden laid upon my shoulders seemed greater than I could bear, her adroit touch adjusted it and turned it into a feather-weight, and recalling this, I rouse myself again to the struggle, to find as before my strength and courage increase, in proportion to the difficulties of the situation. I was in good truth Fräulchen’s pupil, her spiritual child, and it was as much for her as for myself that I was indignant, when of recent years an absurd report came to my knowledge, of a nervous complaint from which I was said to be suffering! As soon might one have credited her, the best-balanced person in the world, with an hysterical or nervous attack, since, like herself, I have always had my nerves under perfect control, and sharing in her somewhat contemptuous feeling for neurasthenia, neurosis, or any other such new-fangled disorder, I should consider it something degrading, of which to be ashamed, to be justly ranged among its victims. I have given, I think, sufficient proof to the contrary, and have shown of what well-tempered steel my nerves are made, by continuing my work uninterruptedly during long years of ill-health, and in spite of severe and almost unremitting pain, of which the doctors only much later discovered the cause. Well may I claim to disdain nerves and all who suffer from them, considering that they only too often serve as a mask, behind which selfishness and hypocrisy are hidden. Fräulein Lavater, at any rate, did not plead nerves if ever her equanimity were disturbed; she would own quite candidly:—“I am so irritable to-day!”
In one of the little albums—“Books of Confessions,” as they were called,—that at one time had so much vogue, among a host of silly questions, this one was asked: “Of all human qualities which do you prize most highly?” Without a moment’s hesitation, my father wrote down: “Enlightened goodness of heart!” No better description could be given of our Fräulein. Hers was the kindness, the goodness of heart, that may be truly said to be “illuminated” by the understanding; not that mere unthinking, easy good nature, blind in perception and indiscriminate in action, but the sympathy that springs from deepest insight, the indulgence that is born of comprehension—in a word, the charity that “beareth and endureth all things.” In each family circle, ever a little world in itself, with its sometimes incongruous elements and oft divergent and conflicting interests, and wherein the little rift may so soon be widened to an irreparable breach, the trifling dissension develop into implacable enmity, the presence of one person endowed with this rarest of human attributes will ever be the harmonising medium, the spirit of conciliation, the factor indispensable to the cohesion of the group.
Would that there were more like Fräulchen in this weary world! Fate is hard enough towards most of us. No need that we should ever strive to place a stumbling-block in another’s path, or make it darker by one shadow the more. Let us at least cherish the memory of all, whose “irradiating kindliness” for a moment brightened the gloom.
Wherever great intelligence and true culture combine, as in the person of Fanny Lavater, with moral strength and sweetness to the formation of a character, the result is like the harmonious blending of rich hues in some beautiful old cathedral window, through which the daylight streaming, transforms into new and unwonted loveliness even the commonest objects on which it falls!