I take it for granted that you are already in Berlin, as I do not know what you could do in the long evenings at Kröchlendorf, although they are not so long as here, where lights are now brought punctually at three o’clock, to see to read and write. On some of our foggy days it is hardly possible, despite of the double windows and distance from the cold, to enter upon such pursuits after noon. But I can not say that my evenings or nights are too long; my anger at the swift progress of time is as great in the evening when I go to bed, or in the morning when I rise. I have just now a great deal to do; we are not at all social—my means do not permit it. I catch cold in other people’s houses, and generally an ambassador with 30,000 thalers salary is condemned to great economy. I receive visitors at dinner, i.e., I give them according to fortune de pot, but no evening parties. Evening parties, theatres, and so forth, are interdicted by the mourning carriages; coachmen, jägers, are all dressed in black. I have been out hunting once, but found the wolves wiser than the huntsmen; I was glad, however, to be able to do so once more. The cold is not very intense; three, five, seven, seldom eleven degrees of frost; there has been good sledging for some weeks.
I am in the midst of Christmas plagues, and find nothing for Johanna that is not too dear. Please buy her some twelve or twenty pearls at Friedberg’s, suitable for her necklace, i.e. for the largest; say about 300 thalers. I should also like some picture-books, in Schneider’s Library; if you are unable to get them, ask —— to do so. I should like “Düsseldorf Magazines” of last year, “Düsseldorf Art Albums” of last and this year, München Fliegender Blätter of last year, and München Bilderbogen of this year and the last; also Kladderdatsch Almanac, and such nonsense.
Please get all this as soon as you can, and send it me by the aid of Harry with the next dispatch-bag—also the pearls, so that they may be here by Christmas; a courier will probably start before then. Put a few boxes of confections with them, but not too many, for the children are in a customary state of digestion without them.
The death of old Bellin makes a breach at Schönhausen, and puts me into some doubt as to my arrangements there. I do not know whether the widow will remain in the mansion, or whether she will prefer her little cottage—the ice-house—which the old man arranged for her. The garden I shall have to resign to the farmer, but will reserve a right of resumption by a notice from year to year, should I return thither. The accounts I must give to my attorney; I do not know any one there.
THE SAME TO THE SAME.
Petersburg, 26 (14) March, 1861.
I first congratulate you on my birthday; this disinterested step, however, is not the only reason of the unusual appearance of an autograph letter from me. You know that on the 11th April the basis of my domestic bliss was born; it is not, however, as well known to you that I signified my delight at the return of this day last year by the present of a pair of earrings, brilliants, purchased of Wagner Unter von Linden, and that they have recently disappeared from the possession of the charming owner, and have probably been stolen. In order to soften the sorrow of this loss, I should be glad to receive by the 11th—there is sure to be a courier or some other traveller before that time—a pair of similar decorations of the conjugal earshells. Wagner will know about what they were and cost; if possible I should like them similar; a simple setting like your own, and they may be a little dearer than those of last year. The equality of my budget can not be maintained, whether the deficit be a hundred thalers more or less. I must await the restoration of my finances, when I take wife and children to Pomerania, and send the horses to grass in Ingermanland in the summer. Experience alone can tell how great the saving will be by such an operation. Should it prove insufficient, I shall next year leave my very pleasant house, and put myself on a Saxo-Bavaro-Würtemberg footing, until my salary is raised, or the leisure of private life is restored me. Otherwise I have grown friendly with the existence here, do not find the winter so bad as I thought, and require no change in my position, until, if it be God’s will, I can sit down in peace at Schönhausen or Reinfeld, to have my coffin made without undue haste. The ambition to be a minister dies away nowadays from a multitude of causes, not all fitted for epistolary communication; in Paris or in London I should live less pleasantly than here, and have no more to say; and a removal is half a death. The protection of two hundred thousand vagabondizing Prussians, one-third of whom live in Russia, and two-thirds of whom visit it annually, gives me enough to do not to get bored. My wife and children endure the climate very well; there is a certain number of people with whom I associate; now and then I shoot a bear or an elk, the latter some two hundred versts hence; there is charming sledging; high society—whose daily visits are without the slightest advantage for the royal service—I avoid, because I can not sleep if I go to bed so late. It is impossible to appear much before eleven; most people come after twelve, and about two go to a second soirée of supper-eating folks. This I am unable yet to endure, and perhaps never shall again, and I am not angry at it, as the ennui of a rout is more intense here than anywhere else, because one has too few circumstances of life and interests in common. Johanna goes out often, and answers without annoyance all questions about my health, as the necessary manure on the unfertile soil of conversation. I wish Johanna, for economical reasons, would go to Germany as soon as possible, but she will not! I mean to Pomerania, and I would follow her as soon and for as long as I can get leave of absence. I will take the waters somewhere, and then above all take a sea-bath, to get rid again of this intolerable tenderness of skin. There is nothing heard from and seen of ——; couriers seem to have left off travelling. For months I have had no express dispatches from the Ministry, and what come by post are tiresome. Farewell, dear heart; greet Oscar. The Neva still bears carriages of every kind, although we have had a thaw for weeks, so that no sledges can pass in the city, and carriages are daily broken in the deep fissures in the ice which covers the pavements; it is like driving over a frozen ploughed field. You, no doubt, have green leaves about you.
BISMARCK TO OSCAR VON ARNIM.