The year 1848 came at last, and everything was changed. There were émeutes in the streets of Dessau, and when one of my uncles, the General commanding the ducal army, was telling his men that they would have to fire on the people, he received a message from some of them to say that they would willingly fire on anybody outside the town in the open, but not in the streets, because they might smash their own fathers’ windows. This respect for window-glass served, however, another good purpose. When my uncle, in default of a large enough prison, had to confine a number of people in the Duke’s hothouses, they were as quiet as lambs, because here too they were afraid of breaking the glass. In spite of this innate respect for glass and established authority, much mischief was done at Dessau in 1848. Splendid old oaks in the ducal forests were cut down, the game was killed by hundreds, and a new constitution was proclaimed. There was a chamber, I believe there was even a desire for a House of Peers, if Peers could be found; there were two responsible ministers, and the Duke had to be satisfied with a Civil List.

The Duke bore all this with wonderful serenity, but the Duchess died, I believe, from anxiety and nervous prostration. In 1848 even Dukes and Duchesses were hustled, and this was more than she could bear. She had done all that was in her power to make herself useful in her exalted position, and she deeply felt the ingratitude of those whom she had helped and befriended in former years, and who had joined the opposition. She told me herself that she had once to walk out on foot from her palace with an umbrella, because every one of her four carriages had been ordered by the Prime Minister, the Second Minister, the wife of the Prime, and some friend of the Second Minister. This Second Minister was a young man who had left the University not many years before, and was practising at Dessau as a lawyer. Of course, there was great joy among his former University friends; many were invited to Dessau, and as there was an abundance of old wine in the castle, the gates of the ducal cellar, so I was informed, were thrown open, and the thirsty young students soon reduced the store of wine to what they thought more reasonable dimensions. Some of the Rhenish wines in that cellar were more than a hundred years old, so old that but a few bottles were fit for drinking. A thick crust had formed inside the bottles, and only one or two glasses of wine were left. But what was left was considered so useful as medicine in certain illnesses that any doctor was allowed to prescribe and order bottles of it from the ducal cellars. My uncle, the Commander-in-chief of the small Anhalt army, had been through all the Napoleonic wars, had marched twice into Paris, and was such a Franzosenfresser, that, fond as he was of wine, he would never touch French wine, least of all French champagne. He lived to a very considerable age, he celebrated his silver, his golden, his diamond, and his iron (sixty-five years) wedding, and danced at his diamond wedding with his wife and one of the bridesmaids. He was my godfather, and as he had made the acquaintance of his wife at my christening, he never called me by any other name but “mein Wohlthäter,” my benefactor. As he had been at the battle of Jena (1806) with the Emperor William, then a mere cadet in the Prussian army, and afterwards through many campaigns, the Emperor treated him to the very end of his life as his personal friend. Once every year he had to go to Berlin to stay with the Emperor, and talk over old times. He was about five years older than the Emperor, and almost the last time he saw him the Emperor said to him: “Well, Stockmarr, we are both getting old, but as long as you march ahead, I shall follow.” “Yes, your Majesty,” Stockmarr replied, “and as long as you are behind to support me, I hope we shall get on and bring our shares up to par.” “Oh, Stockmarr,” the Emperor replied, “you are not a courtier. If you knew what the courtiers say to me, you would have said, ‘Oh, your Majesty, your Majesty, your shares will rise to at least 15 per cent. premium.’” General Stockmarr told me the story himself, and it gave me a new idea of the old Emperor’s humour, and his insight into the character of his surroundings.

Kind-hearted as the Duke of Dessau was, there were certain things that he could not stand. As his deafness grew upon him his chief amusement was shooting and driving about in his open carriage through the beautiful oak-forests that surround Dessau. There are long avenues through the old oak-forests like bowers formed by the lower branches of the trees, so that one can see the deer a mile off. Here the old Duke was to be seen almost every day. The common people had many endearing names for him, and when they saw his carriage from a distance they shouted Hä Kimmet, and the whole village was soon gathered to see their kind old Duke passing. He knew every tree, every stone, every road. In a wood not far from Dessau there was a large boulder, dropped there by a passing iceberg long before the time even of Albrecht the Bear and Count Esiko. One day, as he was passing by, the Duke missed the stone and drove straight to the next village to find out who had dared to move it. The Schulze of the village stood trembling before the Duke, and had to confess that as the road had had to be mended, the village commune had decided to blast the old useless stone and to break it up for that purpose. The Duke declared that it was his stone, that they had no right to touch it, and that they must replace it. That was, of course, an impossibility, without going back as far as the Glacial period. But the peasants had to go on searching all over the neighbourhood till at last they found two similar boulders, not quite so large as the original stone of offence, still, large enough to cause them much trouble and expense in transporting them to their village. This was their punishment, and from it there was no appeal. The two new stones may now be seen in a public park near Dessau, dedicated to the memory, one of Bismarck, the other of Moltke.

The sound of the Duke’s carriage was well known, not only in the town, but, as the people said, even by the deer in the forest. Other carriages might pass and the deer would not budge, but as soon as the Duke’s carriage was heard approaching they would all scamper away. The fact was that no one was allowed to shoot in the large ducal preserves except the Duke himself. It was a very great favour if he allowed even his brothers or his best friends to accompany him now and then.

Some of his forests were stocked with wild boars. These animals were quite tame while they were being fed in winter, but in summer they would attack the horses of a carriage and become really dangerous. If they could break out by night, which happened not unfrequently, the peasants would find next morning whole fields of corn ploughed up, trampled down, and destroyed. Large damages had to be paid by the Duke, but he never demurred as long as he was unshackled by his two responsible ministers. After 1848, however, not only was the amount to be paid for damages considerably reduced by his ministers, but the Duke was told that this pig-preserving was a very expensive amusement, and that it might make him very unpopular. The Duke knew better. He knew the peasants liked his boars, and still more the ample damages which he paid, but he did not like the advice of his ministers. So whenever any mischief had been done by the boars, the peasants ran after his carriage in the forest and told him how much they had lost. In his good-nature he used to say: “I will pay it all, let me know how much it is; only do not tell my ministers.”

After a time things settled down again at Dessau, still the old state of things could never come back. The three duchies of Anhalt-Dessau, Cöthen, and Bernburg with its beautiful Hartz mountains, when united, formed a more considerable principality, and it was thought necessary to have a regular parliament to control its finances, and watch over its legislation. Everything assumed a grander air; the Duke, who since the days of the Old Dessauer had been Serene Highness (Durchlaucht), now became Highness (Hoheit), which is supposed to be a step higher than Serene Highness (Durchlaucht), though I cannot see how language could ever produce a finer title than Serene Highness. The railway, which as the Berlin jokers said, had led to the discovery of Dessau, brought it at all events close to Berlin, Leipzig, Magdeburg, and the great Continental net of railways. People from all parts of Germany came to settle in the quiet, beautiful town on the Mulde; the Elbe had been made navigable nearly as far as Dessau, and the port near the Walwitzberg became an important commercial centre for export and import.

Whenever I pay a visit to Dessau I find the town more and more enlarged and much improved. The old lamps that swung across the streets are gone, the gurgoyles frown no longer on large red and green umbrellas; there are gas lamps, and there are waterworks, and cabs, and tramways. The grass is no longer allowed to grow in the chinks of the pavement. The old Duke is gone, and the old people whom I knew as a boy are gone too. The wild boars are still there, but they are no longer allowed to break out of bounds. Old men and women are still seen sawing wood and cutting it up in the street, but I do not know their faces, nor the faces of the old women from whom I bought my apples. I look at every man and woman that passes me, there is not one whose face or name I know. It is only when I go to the old cemetery outside the town that old names greet me again, some very dear to me, others almost forgotten during my Wanderjahre. No doubt the present is better, and the future, let us trust, will be better still; but the past had its own charms; our grandfathers were as wise as their sons and grandsons, and possibly they were happier.

RECOLLECTIONS OF ROYALTIES
II

My first and very pleasant contact with Royalty had taken place at Dessau, while I was a schoolboy. When afterwards I went to the University of Berlin, the Duchess of Dessau had given me an introduction to Alexander von Humboldt, and while I was in Paris, working at the then Bibliothèque Royale, Humboldt had used his powerful influence with the King, Frederick William IV., to help me in publishing my edition of the “Rig Veda” in Germany. Nothing, however, came of that plan; it proved too costly for any private publisher, even with Royal assistance. But when, after having published the first volume in England, under the patronage of the East India Company, I passed some weeks at Berlin, in 1850, collating some of the Vedic MSS. in the Royal Library there, I received a message from Humboldt that the King wished to see me.

Frederick William IV. was a man of exceptional talent, nay, a man of genius. I had heard much about him from Bunsen, who was a true friend and confidant of the King, ever since they had met at Rome. I had seen some of the King’s letters to Bunsen; some of them, if I remember rightly, signed, not by the King’s name, but by Congruentia Incongruentium, probably from his imagining that the different opinions and counsels of his various friends and advisers would find their solution in him. This idea, if it was entertained by the King, would account for the many conflicting sides of his character, and the frequent changes in his opinions. I presented my volume of the “Rig Veda” to him at a private audience. He knew all about it, and had so much to tell me about the oldest book of mankind, that I had hardly a chance to say anything myself. But it was impossible to listen to him without feeling that one was in the presence of a mind of very considerable grasp and of high and noble ideals.