XLIX[ToC]
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY AND BISMARCK
John Lothrop Motley, the American historian, a writer who in his The Rise of the Dutch Republic produced a history as fascinating as a romance and a work that was immediately in Europe translated into three different languages, was, after graduation from Harvard, a student at Goettingen. Here he studied German so well that in after years he was asked by the emperor of Austria whether he were not a German. Here too he became acquainted with Bismarck.
That they were great friends is evident from letters by Bismarck himself. "I never pass by old Logier's House, in the Friedrichstrasse—wrote Bismarck in 1863—without looking up at the windows that used to be ornamented by a pair of red slippers sustained on the wall by the feet of a gentleman sitting in the Yankee way, his head below and out of sight. I then gratify my memory with remembrance of 'good old colony times when we were roguish chaps.'" And here is another part of a letter which illustrates that even dignitaries like to unbend and become like boys again. This letter was written by the minister of foreign affairs to the minister of the United States at the court of Vienna:
Jack my Dear,— ... what do you do that you never write a line to me? I am working from morn to night like a nigger, and you have nothing to do at all—you might as well tip me a line as well as looking at your feet tilted against the wall of God knows what a dreary color. I cannot entertain a regular correspondence; it happens to me that during five days I do not find a quarter of an hour for a walk; but you, lazy old chap, what keeps you from thinking of your old friends? When just going to bed in this moment my eye met with yours on your portrait, and I curtailed the sweet restorer, sleep, in order to remind you of Auld Lang Syne. Why do you never come to Berlin? It is not a quarter of an American's holiday from Vienna, and my wife and me should be so happy to see you once more in this sullen life. When can you come, and when will you? I swear that I will make out the time to look with you on old Logier's quarters, ... and at Gerolt's, where they once would not allow you to put your slender legs upon a chair. Let politics be hanged and come to see me. I promise that the Union Jack shall wave over our house, and conversation and the best old hock shall pour damnation upon the rebels. Do not forget old friends, neither their wives, as mine wishes nearly as ardently as myself to see you, or at least to see as quickly as possible a word of your handwriting.
Sei gut und komm oder schreibe.
Dein,
V. Bismarck.