Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century

by George Paston

The summer months were spent in visits to Windsor and other parks near London, and in a tour through Yorkshire. In October his Highness was back in town, and engaged in a new matrimonial venture. He writes to Lucie that 'the fortune in question is immense, and if I obtain it, I shall end gloriously.' In the correspondence published after the prince's death is the draft of a letter to Mr. Bonham of Titness Park, containing a formal proposal for the hand of his daughter, 'Miss Harriet,' and detailing (with considerable reservations) the position of his financial affairs. Muskau, he explains, is worth £4,000 a year, an income which in Germany is equivalent to three times as much in England. 'Everything belonging to me,' he continues, 'is in the best possible order; a noble residence at Muskau, and two smaller chateaux, surrounded with large parks and gardens, in fact, all that make enjoy life (sic) in the country is amply provided for, and a numerous train of officious (sic) of my household are always ready to receive their young princess at her own seat, or if she should prefer town, the court of Prussia will offer her every satisfaction.' Owing to the fact that Muskau was mortgaged for £50,000, he was forced, he confesses, to expect an adequate fortune with his wife, a circumstance to which, if he had been otherwise situated, he should have paid little attention.

This missive was accompanied by a long letter, dated Nov. 1, 1827, to 'Miss Harriet,' in which the suitor explains the circumstances of his former marriage, and of his divorce, the knowledge of which has rendered her uneasy. 'It is rather singular,' he proceeds, 'that in the very first days after my arrival, you, Miss Harriet, were named to me, together with some other young ladies, as heiresses. Now I must confess, at the risk of the fact being doubted in our industrious times, that I myself had a prejudice against, and even some dread of heiresses. I may say that I proved in some way these feelings to exist by marrying a lady with a very small fortune, and afterwards in England by never courting any heiresses further as common civility required. My reasons for so doing are not without foundation. In the first instance, I am a little proud; in the second, I don't want any more than I possess, though I should not reject it, finding it in my way, and besides all this, rich young maidens are not always very amiable.' The prince continues that he had gone, out of principle, into all kinds of society, and seen many charming and handsome girls, but had not been able to discover his affinity. At last, after renouncing the idea of marriage, he heard again of Miss Harriet Bonham, not of her fortune this time, but of her many excellent qualities, and the fact that she had refused several splendid offers. His curiosity was now at last aroused; he sought an opportunity of being introduced to her, and--'Dearest Miss Harriet, you know the rest. I thought--and I protest it by all that is sacred--I thought when I left you again, that here at last I had found united all and everything I could wish in a future companion through life. An exterior the most pleasing, a mind and person equally fit for the representation of a court and the delight of a cottage, and above all, that sensibility, that goodness of heart, and that perfect absence of conceitedness which I value more than every other accomplishment.... I beheld you, besides all your more essential qualities, so quick as lively, so playful as whitty (sic), and nothing really seemed more bewitching to me as when a hearty, joyful laugh changed your thoughtful, noble features to the cheerful appearance of a happy child! And still through every change your and your friends' conversation and behaviour always remained distinguished by that perfect breeding and fine tact which, indeed, is to private life what a clear sky is to a landscape....'

There is a great deal mere to the same effect, and it is sad to think that all this trouble, all this expenditure of ink and English grammar, was thrown away. Papa Bonham could not pay down the fortune demanded by the prince without injuring the other members of his family; [Footnote: Mr. Bonham's eldest daughter was the second wife of the first Lord Garvagh.] and although Miss Harriet deplores 'the cruel end of all our hopes,' the negotiations fell through.

The prince consoled himself for his disappointment with a fresh round of sight-seeing. He became deeply enamoured of a steam-engine, of which newly-invented animal he sends the following picturesque description to Lucie: 'We must now be living in the days of the Arabian Nights, for I have seen a creature to-day far surpassing all the fantastic beings of that time. Listen to the monster's characteristics. In the first place, its food is the cheapest possible, for it eats nothing but wood or coals, and when not actually at work, it requires none. It never sleeps, nor is weary; it is subject to no diseases, if well organised at first; and never refuses its work till worn out by great length of service. It is equally active in all climates, and undertakes all kinds of labour without a murmur. Here it is a miner, there a sailor, a cotton-spinner, a weaver, or a miller; and though a small creature, it draws ninety tons of goods, or a whole regiment of soldiers, with a swiftness exceeding that of the fleetest mail-coaches. At the same time, it marks its own measured steps on a tablet fixed in front of it. It regulates, too, the degree of warmth necessary to its well-being; it has a strange power of oiling its inmost joints when they are stiff, and of removing at pleasure all injurious air that might find the way into its system; but should anything become deranged in it, it warns its master by the loud ringing of a bell. Lastly, it is so docile, in spite of its enormous strength (nearly equal to that of six hundred horses), that a child of four years old is able in a moment to arrest its mighty labours by the pressure of his little finger. Did ever a witch burnt for sorcery produce its equal?'

A few weeks later we hear of one manifestation of the new power, which did not quite come up to the expectations of its admirers. On January 16, 1828, the prince writes: 'The new steam-carriage is completed, and goes five miles in half an hour on trial in the Regent's Park. But there was something to repair every moment. I was one of the first of the curious who tried it; but found the smell of oiled iron, which makes steamboats so unpleasant, far more insufferable here. Stranger still is another vehicle to which I yesterday intrusted my person. It is nothing less than a carriage drawn by a paper kite, very like those the children fly. This is the invention of a schoolmaster, who is so skilful in the guidance of his vehicle, that he can get on very fairly with half a wind, but with a completely fair one, and good roads, he goes a mile in three-quarters of a minute. The inventor proposes to traverse the African deserts in this manner, and has contrived a place behind, in which a pony stands like a footman, and in case of a calm, can he harnessed to the carriage.'

In the early part of 1828 Henriette Sontag arrived in London, and the prince at once fell a victim to her charms. The fascinating singer, then barely three-and-twenty, was already the idol of the public, at the very summit of her renown. Amazing prices were paid for seats when she was announced to appear. Among his Highness's papers was found a ticket for a box at the opera on 'Madame Sontag's night,' on which he notes that he had sold a diamond clasp to pay the eighty guineas demanded for the bit of cardboard. He was in love once again with all the ardour of youth, and for the moment all thoughts of a marriage of convenience were dismissed from his mind. He was now eager for a love-match with the fair Henriette, whose attractions had rendered him temporarily forgetful of those of Muskau. But Mademoiselle Sontag, though carried away by the passionate wooing of the prince, actually remembered that she had other ties, probably her engagement to Rossi, to which it was her duty to remain true. She told her lover that he must learn to forget her, and that when they parted at the conclusion of the London season, they must never meet again. The prince was heart-broken at the necessity for separation, and we are assured that he never forgot Henriette Sontag (though she had many successors in his affections), and that after his return to Germany he placed a gilded bust of the singer in his park, in order that he might have her image ever before his eyes.

In the hope of distracting his thoughts from his disappointment, Prince Pückler decided to make a lengthened tour through Wales and Ireland, and with this object in view he set out in July 1828. Before his departure, however, he had an interesting rencontre at a dinner-party given by the Duchess of St. Albans-the ci-devant Harriet Melton. 'I arrived late,' says the prince, in his account of the incident, 'and was placed between my hostess and a tall, very simple, but benevolent-looking man of middle age, who spoke broad Scotch--a dialect anything but agreeable; and would probably have struck me by nothing else, if I had not discovered that I was sitting next to ----, the Great Unknown! It was not long ere many a sally of dry, poignant wit fell from his lips, and many an anecdote told in the most unpretending manner. His eye, too, glanced whenever he was animated, with such a clear, good-natured lustre, and such an expression of true-hearted kindness, that it was impossible not to conceive a sort of affection for him. Towards the end of the dinner he and Sir Francis Burdett told ghost-stories, half terrible, half humorous, one against the other.... A little concert concluded the evening, in which the very pretty daughter of the great bard--a healthy-looking Highland beauty--took part, and Miss Stephens sang nothing but Scottish ballads.'

Before entering upon a new field of observation, the prince summed up his general impressions of London society with a candour that cannot have been very agreeable to his English readers. The goddess of Fashion, he observes, reigns in England alone with a despotic and inexorable sway; while the spirit of caste here receives a power, consistency, and completeness of development unexampled in any other country. 'Every class of society in England, as well as every field, is separated from every other by a hedge of thorns. Each has its own manners and turns of expression, and, above all, a supreme and absolute contempt for all below it.... Now although the aristocracy does not stand as such upon the pinnacle of this strange social edifice, it yet exercises great influence over it. It is, indeed, difficult to become fashionable without being of good descent; but it by no means follows that a man is so in virtue of being well-born--still less of being rich. Ludicrous as it may sound, it is a fact that while the present king is a very fashionable man, his father was not so in the smallest degree, and that none of his brothers have any pretensions to fashion; which unquestionably is highly to their honour.' The truth of this observation is borne out by the story of Beau Brummell, who, when offended by some action of the Regent's, exclaimed, 'If this sort of thing goes on, I shall cut Wales, and bring old George into fashion!'

'A London exclusive of the present day,' continues our censor, 'is nothing more than a bad, flat, dull imitation of a French roué of the Regency, Both have in common selfishness, levity, boundless vanity, and an utter want of heart. But what a contrast if we look further! In France the absence of all morality and honesty was in some degree atoned for by the most refined courtesy, the poverty of soul by agreeableness and wit. What of all this has the English dandy to offer? His highest triumph is to appear with the most wooden manners, as little polished as will suffice to avoid castigation; nay, to contrive even his civilities so that they are as near as may be to affronts--this is the style of deportment that confers on him the greatest celebrity. Instead of a noble, high-bred ease, to have the courage to offend against every restraint of decorum; to invert the relation in which his sex stands to women, so that they appear the attacking, and he the passive or defensive party; to cut his best friends if they cease to have the strength and authority of fashion; to delight in the ineffably fade jargon and affectations of his set, and always to know what is "the thing"--these are the accomplishments that distinguish a young "lion" of fashion. Whoever reads the best of the recent English novels--those by the author of Pelham--may be able to abstract from them a tolerably just idea of English fashionable society, provided he does not forget to deduct qualities which the national self-love has erroneously claimed --namely, grace for its roués, seductive manners and witty conversation for its dandies.'

The foregoing is a summary of the prince's lengthy indictment against London society. 'I saw in the fashionable world,' he observes in conclusion, 'only too frequently, and with few exceptions, a profound vulgarity of thought; an immorality little veiled or adorned; the most undisguised arrogance; and the coarsest neglect of all kindly feelings and attentions haughtily assumed for the sake of shining in a false and despicable refinement; even more inane and intolerable to a healthy mind than the awkward stiffness of the declared Nobodies. It has been said that vice and poverty form the most revolting combination; since I have been in England, vice and boorish rudeness seem to me to form a still more disgusting union.'