I knew hardly any Germans while I was at Berlin. I had a letter of introduction to a Frau von Arnim, and one night I had dinner at her house. There were five or six officers present, all in uniform, and one of them described a day’s hunting in England, and said that the meet was crowded with bildschöne Frauen. The Ambassador at Berlin was Sir Edward Mallet, and he asked us to dinner sometimes.
It had been my intention to attend the lectures of the Berlin University, and I was formally enrolled as a student. I matriculated at the University, but the formalities before this was accomplished were so long, that by the time they were finished, I had little time left for a University career. However, I received a card which placed me outside the jurisdiction of the Berlin police and under the jurisdiction of the University authorities, but I only went to one lecture. I had private lessons in German throughout my stay.
I read a good many miscellaneous books during my stay in Berlin, and Arthur Ponsonby introduced me to many new things, and opened many doors for me, especially in French literature. He gave me Tolstoy and Loti to read, and we both had a passion for Ibsen. I, on the other hand, plied him with Pater, Stevenson, and Swinburne. I was just at the age when one can digest anything in the way of books, and the sweeter it is the more one enjoys it. Afterwards much of the stuff I was greedily devouring then was to seem like the almond paste on the top of a wedding-cake. But in those days nothing was too luscious or too sweet. Arthur’s taste was already more sober and grown-up; the drama appealed to both of us, and we would spend hours discussing plays and players, and deploring the state of the English stage.
At the end of December I went back to England and spent the last Christmas but one at Membland I was ever to spend there.
CHAPTER VIII
ITALY, CAMBRIDGE, GERMANY, LONDON
After Christmas I stayed a few days with Chérie at her house at Cosham and with the Ponsonbys at the Isle of Wight. Uncle Henry Ponsonby said he had taken one book with him in the Crimean War, and he had read it through. This was Paradise Lost. The conversation arose from his quoting the lines:
“The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven,”