VII.—THE PRINCE CONSORT'S UNIVERSITY DAYS.[10]
"Quarum virtutum laude hominum animas, dum in hac urbe morabaris, mirifice Tibi devinxisti."—Address of the Senate of Bonn to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, January, 28, 1840.
There are incidents in a man's life—sometimes important, sometimes insignificant—which impress themselves upon his mind as if graven in "with a pen of iron." Thirty-two years have now passed away, but I remember, as if it had happened only a few weeks ago, old "Senius" putting his weather-worn face into my bedroom at Bonn, on the memorable grey morning of mid-December, 1861, to make the melancholy announcement: "Uür Prinz is doht." "Dat war 'ne johde Heer," he added rather impressively.
"Senius" was our "Stiefelfuchs"—which means a great deal more than having to "polish our boots." And in some capacity or other—it must have been a subordinate one—it had been his fate to be employed in the Prince Consort's household while the latter was a student at Bonn. What qualified him for either of these positions I am at a loss to conjecture. He was nothing of a valet. We used to beg him, for mercy's sake, not to attempt to remove stains from our clothes, inasmuch as in doing so (in the only way which seemed to suggest itself to his untutored mind) he invariably made two smudges out of one by spitting just a little wide of the mark. At least that was the tradition. For any delicate mission, such as smuggling liquor into the "Carcer," he was absolutely useless. He knew well enough how to bandage a man for a "Mensur." And on the bitter cold days of a North-German winter the huge bowl of his ever-smoking pipe would be very acceptable as a hand-warmer to those gloved for the fight. He was honest, no doubt, and strictly faithful, and that must have helped to ingratiate him with the Prince. But his main recommendation appears to have been his curious capacity for saying odd things in an odd way, and in the quaintest of broad Rhenish patois, which made them sound doubly droll. What with quaint habits and quaint sayings, he had become a "character" at Bonn, generally popular as such, known to every man, woman and child in the place, and allowed almost any latitude of speech. The Prince, whose relish for humour was, in his student days, fully as keen as ever in after-life, appears to have been tickled with the man's unintended drollery; for, according to "Senius's" own naïvely frank account, he made it his amusement to "draw" him, eliciting odd answers by inoffensively unmerciful chaff. And this may account for "Senius" remaining in the princely household, and experiencing much kindness at his master's hands. If gratitude be a return, the Prince had it in ample measure. That "dat war 'ne johde Heer" was spoken with unmistakable feeling, and it proved the prelude to a whole string of little anecdotes which—though not perhaps in themselves particularly remarkable or worth repeating—were poured forth with such simple earnestness as sufficiently testified, how firmly a sense of regard and affection had taken root in the old man's heart, to live there through many years of separation.
"Senius" was not the only person in Bonn who could grow warm upon this subject. The Prince's death, indeed, set loose in the University town a whole flood of anecdotes and reminiscences, some very trivial and commonplace, but all of them evidencing a lively interest and abiding regard. It is strange what power some persons possess of impressing men's minds. There have been scores of princes students at Bonn since, some of them spending more money and making much more of a show; but memory has closed over them like water over a ripple. There is none remembered like the then Prince of Coburg—down to the days of his grandson, the present Emperor, who, of course, conquered local hearts by identifying himself rather demonstratively with the place.
At my time people spoke frequently of "der Prinz Albehrt." All the older townsfolk remembered the "bildschöne junge Mann," who sat his horse like a born cavalier, and whose mere appearance was calculated to prepossess people in his favour. Two friends of mine—the brothers von C—— (one of them is now a retired general who has covered himself with glory in the wars in 1866 and 1870)—used as boys to make a point of watching for the Coburg Princes when about to mount horse, from the house of their neighbour, Landrath von Hymmen, who lived just opposite. They would rush out eagerly at the proper moment to hold the Princes' stirrups, and consider themselves amply rewarded with a kind word or a genial smile. Travelling Englishmen have afterwards made it a matter of duty, Murray or Baedecker in hand, to "do" the simple house "in which Prince Albert lived," as they "did" the Münster and the Alte Zoll. To the people of Bonn the Prince's doings were a living memory. Only eighteen months ago I was surprised, while accidentally alluding to the subject in conversation with an old resident, since dead, to find that gentleman at once pulling out of his pocket a photograph of the Prince's house, which he seemed to carry about with him habitually. He knew all the windows, and the gateway, and answered questions about the Prince's habits of life as if they had referred to matters of yesterday.
In truth, Bonn owes a great deal to the Prince Consort—more than most people are aware. If the University has grown great and popular, a favourite with reigning houses, a High School in which every King of Prussia is expected to have pursued his studies, something like a "Christ Church" among German Universities; if the town has grown rich and flourishing, a favourite residence with wealth and position en retraite, the merit is in no small measure due to the Prince who, practically speaking, first set the fashion among illustrious folk. No scion of a reigning house, to speak of—none, certainly, to make a mark—had been at Bonn before. Indeed, Bonn, with its associations of the Burschenschaft, of disaffection and of ecclesiastical strife, did not stand in the best of odours. Hence, when a Prince came to break the ice, of more than ordinary promise, and already connected by rumour with a high destiny, very naturally, all eyes were turned upon him. His subsequent marriage with the Queen—at that time certainly the most powerful sovereign in Christendom—following almost immediately upon his studentship, no doubt emphasised the effect and added force to the example. We see at once princes flocking to the Fridericia Guilelmia Rhenana—Schaumburgs, and Mecklenburgs, and Schleswig-Holsteins, and Meiningens. Twelve years after we have the heir to the Prussian Crown matriculating as a student. We find the roll of students growing at a bound from 650 to 731—to increase since to above 1,200. In short, we see Bonn developing into a different place. English folk—as the Prince's friend, Professor Loebell, puts it, rather uncomplimentarily, in one of his Belgian letters—send their "young bears" to Bonn in whole batches, "to be licked." Then the parents come themselves, bringing their families with them, to settle there. German rank and fashion follow in their wake, quintupling the population in less than sixty years—and the reputation and position of the town are made.
Bonn was a very different place from the fashionable town that it is now, when, on May 3, 1837, Professor Wutzer, as Rector Magnificus, pledged "Prinz Albrecht Franz, Herzog von Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha", "by pressure of hand in place of oath," to be a faithful "citizen" of the University. Prince Ernest, the Prince's elder brother, matriculated at the same time. There was also a Prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, of whom little was seen or heard; moreover, Prince William of Löwenstein, who grew to be the Prince's intimate friend; and two Hohenlohes. (Prince Erbach is not in the University Register included among persons of illustrious birth.) All the wide belt of spruce and tidy villas set up amid laughing gardens, which now make Bonn so charming and attractive, and impart to it so pleasing a look of prosperity and comfort, were still a thing to come. The little town, having only about 12,000 inhabitants, still lay hemmed in within the lines of its old walls, the gates of which were carefully closed for security every night. There was an air of "smallness" about everything, except the handsome "Schloss," which Archbishop Clemens August had built (with money received from France) as a sumptuous residence for himself, but which King Frederick William III. in 1818, without much regard for Roman Catholic susceptibilities, converted into a "double-denomination" University. Lutheran divines now taught where the most orthodox of Catholic princes had held court. A non-denominational Senate conferred degrees where the last Archbishop-Elector, the Austrian Archduke Max Franz—"Abbé Sacrebleu," as he was popularly called—had danced with most unepiscopal perseverance and vigour. And at Poppelsdorf learned professors made the air malodorous with chemical stenches in the same palace in which that most courtly of all archbishops, Clemens August, had entertained those beautiful ladies who got him into rather serious trouble at Rome. But, apart from these costly buildings, all was country-townish. There was no Coblenzer Strasse as yet—only a small cluster of houses, among which the Vinca Domini—whilom the winepress of the local lord—and the villa of the patriot Arndt, were alone conspicuous. Inside the walls the students were much in evidence, rough in their uncouth costume of those days, very "Guys" in embroidered "pikesches" and wide petticoat-trousers, having long curls dangling from their heads and heavy rapiers from their waists. However, opinion in high quarters was not altogether favourable to them. The revolutionary "Burschenschaft" had been strong in Bonn, numbering Heinrich Heine among its members. Rhineland was, moreover, at that time still wholly unreconciled to Prussian rule. Its seventeen years of incorporation with France had raised a crop of free and anti-Prussian ideas which were not soon to be eradicated. And with Austria so powerful, and Austrian sympathies so widely diffused, thanks to Max Franz, the authorities had still to deal gingerly with their new subjects. It made them wince to hear the words "'ne Prüss" commonly and openly used as a term of reproach and contempt—they were so to down in the fifties. But they could not interfere too rigorously. Then there was the ecclesiastical squabble, foreshadowing Prince Bismarck's "Culturkampf," and every bit as serious and as violent. Only incapacity like that of a Schmedding, and infatuation like that of a Bunsen, could have created such a hopeless dilemma. "Is your Government mad?" Cardinal Lambruschini is reported to have asked, when Bunsen communicated to him the appointment of Droste von Vischering to be Archbishop of Cologne, as a supposed "angel of peace." The Crown Prince, subsequently Frederick William IV., favoured the appointment. The "angel of peace" proved a very demon of war. What with the dispute over mixed marriages, the Episcopal protest against State interference in Church matters, the Anathema pronounced by the new prelate against the latitudinarian school of the followers of Hermes, particularly favoured by the Government and deliberately installed at Bonn, and the Archbishop's uncompromising ban upon the University Convictorium, there was war along the whole line. All Rhineland, be it remembered, was then still staunchly Romanist. Bonn contained but a handful of Protestants. The "concurrently endowed" University, planted in the midst of a Catholic country, was a standing abomination and a perpetual taunt to the native population. The Prince's letters of that time show how fully he appreciated the grave significance of the struggle even at his early age. It was while he was at Bonn that the refractory Archbishop was carried off by force, to be "interned" at Minden.
Under such circumstances it required some resolution for a young Protestant Prince to settle amid an excited Romanist population. If to be "'ne Prüss" was a reproach, to be "'ne Jüss"—that is "Gueux," or Protestant—meant downright anathema. And Prince Albert settled right in what may be called a little Protestant colony, saucily set up under the very shadow of the beautiful east-end of that splendid old "Münster," which traces its foundation to Constantine, and has been the scene of Councils and Imperial coronations from the tenth century downwards.
The Empress Frederick, a few years ago, when in Bonn, very naturally asked to be shown the house in which her father had lived. By that time every vestige of it had disappeared, and she could only be pointed out the site—a garden it is now, fronting an entirely new building in the Martinsplatz, close to where, up to the beginning of the century, stood the church which gave the square its name. But I can perfectly recall the unpretending structure, a three-storied, flat-gabled house, with a two-storied wing—the old-fashioned windows set off by dark-green shutters—lying rather in a hollow, within a yard enclosed in a stone wall pierced by a gate, but generally open in situation and yet, thanks to the enclosure, pretty private. It commanded very fair views of the Poppelsdorfer Allee—the favourite strolling-ground, ever since it was planted, for fashionable and unfashionable Bonn—of the Kreuzberg, and sideways of the more distant Seven Mountains. It seemed a small house to harbour two Princes and their suite, more especially when one was told that what seemed the main portion was reserved for the use of the owner. But it was a building of considerable depth, and so afforded sufficient room for the illustrious inmates and all their not very numerous household, which included, of course, the "excellent" Doctor Florschütz as tutor, the rather starchy martinet-soldier Herr von Wiechmann, who acted as governor, the Prince's favourite valet, and some more. All about the household, as about the Prince's doings generally, was marked by extreme simplicity, which could not, however, in any particular have suggested anything like niggardliness, but merely the voluntary plain living of a gentleman who had no taste for sumptuous habits. Meals, appointments, entertainments, everything indicated a dislike of display. The Prince's trap was such as an innkeeper living opposite could, on its original owner's departure, purchase and use for his business-drives without occasioning remark. If there was one material thing in respect of which the Prince practised luxury, it was his little stud, which was small, but generally admired as choice, and which was, it need scarcely be added, much prized by its owner. The hours kept in the little green-shuttered house were probably the most regular in all the town. Everything in the illustrious student's life was subordinated to the purposes of study. Every hour had its allotted task. He must have been an early riser who could have seen the blinds down of a morning; and long before lights went out in some of the adjoining houses, all was darkness and rest in the Prince's home, which was a veritable temple of method and punctuality.