Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century

by George Paston

In 1816 Pückler became acquainted with Lucie, Gräfin von Pappenheim, a daughter of Prince Hardenberg, Chancellor of Prussia. The Gräfin, a well-preserved woman of forty, having parted from her husband, was living at Berlin with her daughter, Adelheid, afterwards Princess Carolath, and her adopted daughter, Herminie Lanzendorf. The Graf divided his attentions equally between the three ladies for some time, but on inquiring of a friend which would make the greatest sensation in Berlin, his marriage to the mother or to one of the daughters, and being told his marriage to the mother, at once proposed to the middle-aged Gräfin, and was joyfully accepted. The reason for this inappropriate match probably lay deeper than the desire to astonish the people of Berlin, for Pückler, with all his surface romanticism, had a keen eye to the main chance. His Lucie had only a moderate dower, but the advantage of being son-in-law to the Chancellor of Prussia could hardly be overestimated. Again, the Graf seems to have imagined that in a marriage of convenience with a woman nine years older than himself, he would be able to preserve the liberty of his bachelor days, while presenting the appearance of domestic respectability.

As soon as the trifling formality of a divorce from Count Pappenheim had been gone through, the marriage took place at Muskau, to the accompaniment of the most splendid festivities. As may be supposed, the early married life of the ill-assorted couple was a period of anything but unbroken calm. Scarcely had the Graf surrendered his liberty than he fell passionately in love with his wife's adopted daughter, Helmine, a beautiful girl of eighteen, the child, it was believed, of humble parents. Frederick William III. of Prussia was one of her admirers, and had offered to marry her morganatically, and create her Herzogin von Breslau. But Helmine gave her royal suitor no encouragement, and he soon consoled himself with the Princess Liegnitz. Lucie spared no pains to marry off the inconvenient beauty, but Pückler frustrated all her efforts, implored her not to separate him from Helmine, and suggested an arrangement based upon the domestic policy of Goethe's Wahlverwandschaften. But Lucie was unreasonable enough to object to a ménage à trois, and at length succeeded in marrying Helmine to a Lieutenant von Blucher.

In 1822 the Graf accompanied his father-in-law to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, and shortly afterwards was raised to princely rank, in compensation for the losses he had sustained through the annexation of Silesia by Prussia. By this time the prince's financial affairs were in so desperate a condition, thanks to the follies of his youth and the building mania of his manhood, that a desperate remedy was required to put them straight again. Only one expedient presented itself, and this Lucie, with a woman's self-sacrifice, was the first to propose. During a short absence from Muskau she wrote to her husband to offer him his freedom, in order that he might be enabled to marry a rich heiress, whose fortune could be used to clear off the liabilities that pressed so heavily on the estate. The prince at first refused to take advantage of this generous offer. He had become accustomed to his elderly wife, who acted as his colleague and helper in all that concerned his idolised Muskau, and upon whose sympathy and advice he had learned to depend. But as time went on he grew accustomed to the idea of an amicable divorce, and at length persuaded himself that such a proceeding need make no real difference to Lucie's position; in fact, that it would be an advantage to her as well as to himself. For years past he had regarded her rather in the light of a maternal friend than of a wife, and the close camaraderie that existed between them would remain unbroken by the advent of a young bride whom Lucie would love as her own child. A divorce, it must be remembered, was a common incident of everyday life in the Germany of that epoch. As we have seen, Pückler's father and mother had dissolved their marriage, and Lucie had been divorced from her first husband, while her father had been married three times, and had separated from each of his wives.

The matter remained in abeyance for a year or two, and it was not until 1826, when the prince probably felt that he had no time to lose, that the long-talked-of divorce actually took place. This curious couple, who appeared to be more tenderly attached to each other now than they had ever been before, took a touching farewell in Berlin. The princess then returned to Muskau, where she remained during her ex-husband's absence as his agent and representative, while the prince set out for England, which country was supposed to offer the best hunting-ground for heiresses. Week by week during his tour, Pückler addressed to his faithful Lucie long, confidential letters, filled with observations of the manners and customs of the British barbarians, together with minute descriptions of his adventures in love and landscape-gardening.

The prince, though at this time in his forty-first year, was still, to all appearance, in the prime of life, still an adept in feats of skill and strength, and not less romantic and susceptible than in the days of his youth. With his high rank, his vast though encumbered estates, his picturesque appearance, and his wide experience in affairs of the heart, he anticipated little difficulty in carrying off one of the most eligible of British heiresses; but he quite forgot to include the hard-hearted, level-headed British parent in his reckoning. The prince's first letter to Lucie, who figures in the published version as Julie, is dated Dresden, September 7, 1826, and begins in right Werterian strain:--

'My dear friend--The love you showed me at our parting made me so happy and so miserable that I cannot yet recover from it. Your sad image is ever before me; I still read deep sorrow in your looks and in your tears, and my own heart tells me too well what yours suffered. May God grant us a meeting as joyful as our parting was sorrowful! I can only repeat what I have so often told you, that if I felt myself without you, my dearest friend, in the world, I could enjoy none of its pleasures without an alloy of sadness; that if you love me, you will above all things watch over your health, and amuse yourself as much as you can by varied occupation.' There are protestations of this kind in nearly every letter, for the prince's pen was always tipped with fine sentiment and vows of eternal devotion came more easily to him than the ordinary civilities of everyday life to the average man.

A visit to Goethe at Weimar, on the traveller's leisurely journey towards England, furnished his notebook with some interesting specimens of the old poet's conversation. 'He received me,' writes the prince, 'in a dimly-lighted room, whose clair obscure was arranged with some coquetterie; and truly the aspect of the beautiful old man, with his Jovelike countenance, was most stately.... In the course of conversation we came to Walter Scott. Goethe was not very enthusiastic about the Great Unknown. He said he doubted not that he wrote his novels in the same sort of partnership as existed between the old painters and their pupils; that he furnished the plot, the leading thoughts, the skeleton of the scenes, that he then let his pupils fill them up, and retouched them at the last. It seemed almost to be his opinion that it was not worth the while of a man of Scott's eminence to give himself up to such a number of minute and tedious details. "Had I," he said, "been able to lend myself to the idea of mere gain, I could formerly have sent such things anonymously into the world, with the aid of Lenz and others--nay, I could still, as would astonish people not a little, and make them puzzle their brains to find out the author; but after all, they would be but manufactured wares...."

'He afterwards spoke of Lord Byron with great affection, almost as a father would of a son, which was extremely grateful to my enthusiastic feelings for this great poet. He contradicted the silly assertion that Manfred was only an echo of his Faust. He extremely regretted that he had never become personally acquainted with Lord Byron, and severely and justly reproached the English nation for having judged their illustrious countryman so pettily, and understood him so ill.' The conversation next turned on politics, and Goethe reverted to his favourite theory that if every man laboured faithfully, honestly, and lovingly in this sphere, were it great or small, universal well-being and happiness would not long be wanting, whatever the form of government. The prince urged in reply that a constitutional government was first necessary to call such a principle into life, and adduced the example of England in support of his argument. 'Goethe immediately replied that the choice of the example was not happy, for that in no country was selfishness more omnipotent; that no people were perhaps essentially less humane in their political or their private relations; that salvation came, not from without, by means of forms of government, but from within, by the wise moderation and humble activity of each man in his own circle; and that this must ever be the chief source of human felicity, while it was the easiest and the simplest to attain.'

The prince seems always to have played the part of Jonah on board ship, and on the occasion of his journey to England, he had a terrible passage of forty hours, from Rotterdam to the London Docks. As soon as he could get his carriage, horses, and luggage clear of the customs, he hastened to the Clarendon Hotel, where he had stayed during his first visit to London. Unlike the American, N. P. Willis, he had come armed with many prejudices against England and the English, few of which he succeeded in losing during the two years of his sojourn among us. In his first letter from London, dated October 5, 1826, he writes: 'London is now so utterly dead to elegance and fashion that one hardly meets a single equipage, and nothing remains of the beau monde but a few ambassadors. The huge city is at the same time full of fog and dirt, and the macadamised streets are like well-worn roads. The old pavement has been torn up, and replaced by small pieces of granite, the interstices between which are filled up with gravel; this renders the riding more easy, and diminishes the noise, but on the other hand changes the town into a sort of quagmire.' The prince comments favourably on the improvements that had recently been carried out by Nash the architect, more especially as regards Regent Street and Portland Place, and declares that the laying out of the Regent's Park is 'faultless,' particularly in the disposition of the water.

The comfort and luxury of English hotels, as well as of private houses, is a subject on which the traveller frequently enlarges, and in this first letter he assures his Lucie that she would be delighted with the extreme cleanliness of the interiors, the great convenience of the furniture, and the good manners of the serving-people, though he admits that, for all that pertains to luxury, the tourist pays about six times as much as in Germany. 'The comfort of the inns,' he continues, 'is unknown on the Continent; on your washing-table you find, not one miserable water-bottle with a single earthenware jug and basin, and a long strip of towel, but positive tubs of porcelain in which you may plunge half your body; taps which instantly supply you with streams of water at pleasure; half-a-dozen wide towels, a large standing mirror, foot-baths and other conveniences of the toilet, all of equal elegance.'