There is much in Bismarck's Love Letters—which are hardly love letters—about his wife and much in other Bismarck books, notably in Sidney Whitman's Personal Reminiscences, the best of them all. The Princess will ever live as an amiable figure, and if she had not been that would still live as the wife of the one great German of his time; as the woman who had known how to captivate a fancy once supposed to be wayward, and to make it and him her own. The quality which distinguished her was sweetness or nature, which she never lost during a life harassed by many solicitudes and vexed by illness.
II
The Countess von Bismarck having departed out of the little room, the King's Minister plunged at once into his subject, which was nothing less than the history of the last four years during which he had ruled over Prussia. Much of what he said I repeated in The Tribune no very long time after. All that he said, or all that I could remember, I put down in writing that night before I slept. It contained, however, so much that obviously was not meant for print and could never be printed that, after using as much as I thought could properly be published, I destroyed my manuscript. I had said to Count Bismarck as I left that he knew he had been talking to a journalist and yet had said many things he could not wish made known to the public. He laughed and answered: "Well, it is your business to distinguish."
It is, therefore, still my business to distinguish. I may perhaps say a little more than I could while both the Emperor and the Prince were alive, but not much. For, in truth, I have never quite understood why confidences cease to be confidences because those who imparted them or those whom they concern are dead. A man who quits this world leaves his reputation, if he has any, behind him. Indiscretions may affect his memory as they might have affected his living fame. In this case they would exalt Count Bismarck's fame; but it might be at the expense of others whom he had no desire to belittle. So I keep for the most part to generalities.
Of the King he spoke with astonishing freedom, yet never a word to injure the sovereign whom he served. I will quote once more a sentence I have repeated before now:
"You are a Republican, and you cannot fully understand the loyalty I cherish to a King to whose ancestors my ancestors have been loyal for hundreds of years."
Yet it comes to this—and of this truth History has long since taken account—that between Count Bismarck and his august master there was a long-continuing conflict. If the King had won there would have been no Austro-Prussian War, nor any Franco-German War, nor any German Confederation, nor any Germany as we know Germany to-day. When, therefore, the present German Emperor puts forward his grandfather as the author of these changes, he is making for his grandfather a false claim. While he was still Prince William of Prussia he said:
"Whenever I hear a great event in my grandfather's reign discussed I never hear his name mentioned, but always Bismarck's. When I come to the throne it is my name you will hear as the author of the policies and deeds of my reign."
William the Second has kept that pledge, but that is no reason why he should try to rewrite the history of his grandfather's time or to rob Prince Bismarck of the renown which belongs to him and which the world awards him. Powerful as he is, he is not powerful enough for that.