One of my best and happiest experiences belongs however here, and must not be forgotten. It relates to that very Fräulein von Bunsen, the lame daughter, Emilie, “Aunt Mim,” as we afterwards called her, of whom I have already spoken. And the incident was called forth by some childish misdeed of mine, one of those trivial offences many would deem scarce worth noticing, but for which with us a punishment utterly disproportionate to the enormity of the crime was invariably inflicted. I was thus on this occasion condemned to be left behind alone, while the others set off joyously in five or six carriages to spend a day among the hop-pickers,—a treat to which I had been looking forward for weeks past. As they drove off, and I stood watching them sadly from the balcony, seeing their happy faces and listening to their gay laughter, feeling myself to be an outcast from the paradise towards which they were setting forth,—it was then that the lame Fräulein von Bunsen, happening to look up, caught sight of me, and before I could hide myself, had waved her hand to me with a friendly smile that went far to reconcile me with my lot and the world in general. The greeting, the smile, fell on my wounded heart like balm. Up to that moment I had felt somewhat like a condemned criminal, fearing that I must be looked down upon and shunned by every member of that happy party, since it was known to them all that I was deprived by my own fault of the pleasure of joining them. But the kind thought, the kind smile, took away all the bitterness of my reflections, and were treasured piously in my memory. Years after, when I reminded dear Aunt Mim of the occurrence, I was still more pleased to hear from her that my absence had been much regretted, not by her alone, but by all the others, on that day. They were all so sorry for me, she said, and missed the wonderful stories, which I was never tired of telling on all such excursions. I had forgotten all about that, my best stories being always made up for myself alone, as I lay in bed in the morning, awake with the birds and listening to their singing, and feeling the spirit of song just as alive in me, while the rest of the house was still fast asleep. I only remembered her kindness and the comfort it gave me, and until she reminded me of it, had never thought again of that other unlucky day on which the wheel of the little donkey-carriage, with her mother and youngest sister sitting in it, passed over my foot, at which I took care not to cry out or even make a face, and was only betrayed by the torn condition of my shoe, which led to my being scolded and sent home to have my foot bathed, instead of being allowed to continue my walk.
What a pretty picture Fräulein von Bunsen made in those days with her sweet expression, and pink and white complexion, leaning back in her bath-chair in her pink dress and hat with pink roses, pink veil and sunshade, looking a very rosebud herself! She was like my mother in this also, that the same treatment by which the latter was restored to health was very effective in her case too, and after undergoing it she spent many years in our house. Very intelligent, she possessed in a high degree the riper wisdom peculiar to those who have watched from afar the waves of life go surging by, themselves untouched by their tumult. An invalid looks on at the spectacle of human existence with something of the aloofness of a recluse, and is able to preserve the same childlike candour and crystalline purity of soul. No passion had ever stirred the depths of hers. It was like a deep transparent lake, in which earth and sky are reflected, clouds and sunshine, night and storm, and which yet remains unchanged through all. She reached her eightieth year in the same untroubled harmony of thought and feeling, her features very little altered by age, and her voice as sweet and clear as ever. Music was the very centre of her being, round which her whole existence revolved. I played duets with her for hours together, learning to know all the best works of the great classic composers so thoroughly and well, it was as if the glorious floods of melody had passed into my veins, to flow there mingled with my blood for evermore. How often did we thus succeed in flinging away all sorrow and care, feeling our troubles ooze out at the finger-tips, and our souls grow lighter as we played! All the days of my youth seem to pass before me, whenever I hear Beethoven’s Symphonies: certain of them,—the second, and that in C minor,—represent for me, as do Schubert’s Quartet and Mozart’s Symphony in G minor, very special phases of my existence, storms that were laid to rest by their potent spell. Our piano was a very old instrument whose keys were yellow with age, but to us it had the fulness of tone of a whole orchestra. And to strengthen the illusion, my father would often join us and hum or whistle some special passage as it is written for the different instruments, to try to give me some faint idea of the orchestral effect. In our enthusiasm we had soon forgotten the limitations of the means at our command, above all we forgot our own imperfections, we felt the whole orchestration, and in the grandeur of the conception the inadequacy of the performance was quite swallowed up. Is that not the best way to enjoy these divine masterpieces, the safest method of interpretation? It would not suffice, I am well aware, for the exigencies of a modern audience, incapable of drawing on the imagination to supply the deficiencies of execution. The hurry and bustle of the century leave no room for the modest efforts of a dilettante, imbued though these may be with the spirit of truest adoration. Ours was the purest hero-worship, unmixed with aught of personal vanity or ambition. We simply thanked God, in the fulness of our hearts, that He had sent Beethoven to enrich and beautify the world!
At other times Aunt Mim would sit quietly at work in the library, whilst I wandered restlessly to and fro, like a caged lion, as she always said, telling her all that passed through my brain. It was just her unruffled calm that encouraged me to let loose on her the flood-gates of my soul. Surely those human beings come nearest perfection, who have preserved through life their angelic innocence, and it is perhaps to further this that such are often afflicted with some bodily infirmity, whereby the soul has power to raise itself above this earth.
By her perfect submission to the Divine Will, her firm faith which no doubt had ever clouded, no less than by her unswerving fidelity in friendship, and the cheerful, sunny temperament that had in it something of the playfulness and simplicity of a child, Aunt Mim was the pearl of her whole family and became invaluable and indispensable to ours. In those hours of greatest suffering, when words of good cheer could no more avail, then her quiet sympathy would yet often find means of making life a little more endurable to the poor sick child, of distracting my father’s thoughts from present sadness. Only one so utterly detached from all thought of self could have refreshed and lightened that atmosphere of gloom. So heavily did it press at times on my childish mind, and so thoroughly had my mother inculcated the belief in death as the supreme good to be wished and desired by us all, as the sole release from pain and suffering for ourselves and others, that during the weeks in which, after my brother Otto’s birth, she lay between life and death, my governess often heard me praying that God would take her to Himself! It caused some perplexity, I believe, to her who overheard this singular prayer, to hit on the right method of bringing me to desist from it, without disturbing the effect of the maternal teaching, and she wisely contented herself with telling me that although it would doubtless be for Mamma’s happiness to go to heaven, I need not ask for this, as God would take her to Himself in His own good time, and that moreover I should then see her no more. I was very much astonished at this, never having for a moment contemplated the possibility of being deprived of my mother’s presence by death. My idea of heaven was of something so real and near, that whenever I gazed up into the blue sky, I felt sure that were my beloved ones there, I might at any moment see a little window opening to let me through to join them! Well is it with us if we can keep this belief through life, if like children, who have left their heavenly home too recently to accustom themselves to this earth, and could depart again from it without a pang, we can but bear in mind during the whole course of our dreary pilgrimage, that we have here no abiding place, and keep our hopes fixed on the life beyond!
If I appear to dwell overmuch on my inner life in childhood, it is for the sake of other children, many of whom are perhaps as liable to be misunderstood as I was myself. Who was there, of the grown-up people around me, who could ever guess what was really passing in my mind? Taught that it was my duty to enliven and gladden others, I had schooled my face to an expression of perpetual cheerfulness, and should have considered myself eternally disgraced, had anyone ever surprised me in tears. It is only by the utmost kindness and tenderness, that we can hope to win the confidence of a proud and sensitive child, and break down the wall of reserve behind which it early learns to intrench itself.
Among the many agreeable recollections I retain of the house in Carlton Terrace, that of the entrance and staircase is especially vivid, both being carpeted, as was the passage leading to the rooms above, with soft green felt, while book-shelves lined every available space along the walls. Such a friendly, home-like impression was thus at once created, intensified by the habit of making of the entrance-hall, on which the doors of all the rooms opened, a favourite resort for reading or conversation. That green carpeting, of just the tint of the green baize of a billiard-table, on which one’s eyes rested with so much pleasure, was no less agreeable to the ears, every sound being deadened, and the wheeled chairs of the invalids passing over it quite noiselessly.
Under Bunsen’s auspices, a literary society was founded in Bonn, whose members—generally under pseudonyms—submitted their work for his approval. Among the translators, my mother distinguished herself by a version of the magnificent Paternoster in Dante’s Purgatorio, and another of Longfellow’s Song of the Old Clock, with its mournful refrain—“Forever—never,—never—forever!”
Needless to say, though it is perhaps the proper place to insist upon it here, that I cannot pretend to describe the persons I have known, otherwise than just as they appeared to me at the time itself, these reminiscences being but the faithful transcription of the impressions received at different periods of my life, starting from my earliest childhood. Not for one moment can I profess to have been competent at the early age that then was mine, to form a correct idea of Bunsen’s literary merits. Of his books, the “Signs of the Times” and others, the titles were all that was known to me, but my respect for the career of letters was innate and unbounded, and the fact that he was an author impressed me immensely. Sometimes I have vaguely wondered since, whether with him intellectual brilliancy in the best meaning of the word may not have outweighed depth of thought. But this is a mere conjecture, on which it would be unfair to base a judgment. One talent, that was indisputably his, and which since I have been able rightly to appreciate it I have often envied him, was Bunsen’s marvellous facility for skimming through a book, and acquiring by that rapid survey a sufficient knowledge of its contents, to be able to discuss it afterwards, most minutely in all particulars with the author, as if he had read every word of it!
Another gift, which is sometimes denied to people of commanding intellect, but which invariably renders its possessor beloved, was also his in a supreme degree: the aptitude for drawing out all that was best and worthiest of notice in others, of making those around him feel, as if it were not merely his wit alone, but theirs also that made the conversation brilliant. A rare gift indeed! For all will agree, that pleasant as it is to be in the society of clever people, pleasantest of all is to have to do with those, who make us feel cleverer ourselves while we talk to them!