We strolled up and down in the park for about an hour longer, and spoke of other matters. I congratulated the Prince on the success with which he had repelled the attacks of his opponents in the Reichstag three or four days previously. “Yes, successfully,” he rejoined. “That’s very fine, but what good has it done? They have, all the same, refused the 80,000 marks for an adviser on political economy; and the Government has now no means of keeping itself informed.” I remarked that they had obviously been influenced by their own ignorance of practical affairs, and particularly with industrial matters, as well as by jealousy and fear. Bamberger’s assertion that they knew enough themselves was no proof of the contrary. They wished to appear before the public as the only infallible wiseacres, and also being doctrinarians, they could afford to ignore economic facts.
We then spoke about Windthorst, of whom the Chief said: “His vote against the Government has destroyed the slight degree of confidence I was beginning to feel in him.” The conversation then turned upon Bennigsen’s Parliamentary activity, and I remarked on the striking circumstance that up to the present he had taken no part in any of the debates. The Prince rejoined: “It is very sensible on his part to keep silent, although he is a good speaker. He sent the others to the front—Benda, and he also voted against it—a further proof that he and his party are quite untrustworthy. He has no decided views, he is not frank, and he is afraid of Lasker. With him it is always vacillation and half measures. Do you play cards?” I replied in the negative. “But you know the cards?” “Yes.” “Now, at whist he always keeps three aces in his hand, and gives no indication that he holds them. He can no longer be counted upon, and besides his followers have been greatly reduced owing to their vague and vacillating policy. Nevertheless, he still sits there with the same high opinion of himself and the same dignified air as formerly when he commanded hundreds; and he will continue to do so even if they should be reduced to thirteen, like George Vincke’s Old Liberals. There is nothing to be done with the others either. It has now come to pass, through the absurdities of the Liberals, that the tag, rag and bobtail, the Guelphs, Poles, and Alsacians, the Social Democrats, and the People’s Party, turn the scale, putting those they support in the majority. Mittnacht, who was with me before you came, is of the same opinion. In future we shall have to count upon the Governments rather than upon the Reichstag, and, indeed, we may ultimately have to reckon upon the Governments alone.”
I said that the whole Parliamentary system would in time lose all credit, even with the public, through such senseless attacks and votes. It brought everything to a standstill, but was itself unable to produce anything better. “The effect of the recent debates,” I went on, “is already here and there observable. This morning I met Thile, who stopped me and asked what I thought of the Parliamentary struggle. He was immensely pleased with the attitude you had adopted. A friend of his, whom he did not wish to name, but who was an admirer of the new era, though up to the present by no means favourable to you, had said that the manner in which you spoke and repelled the attacks of the Opposition was simply magnificent, and excited universal admiration. And women speak with disgust of the way in which you were hounded down and personally insulted by the Progressists and Lasker. A Hanoverian lady, of Guelph sympathies, spoke to my wife yesterday in this sense. This disgust and this pity for you will gradually affect the men, and help to bring about a change in the present tendency. I myself feel no pity, I only foresee your triumph. Pray excuse me for comparing you to an animal, but you remind me of the picture of a noble stag, which time after time shakes off the snarling pack, and then, proud and unhurt, regains the shelter of his forest, crowned by his branching antlers.” “Yes,” he said, “one might take another animal, the wild boar, which gores the hounds and tosses them away from him.”
He was silent for a time, and as we walked up and down he hummed the tune “Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus.” He then remarked suddenly: “But if they go on in that style they will ultimately meet the fate to which I alluded—the Luck of Edenhall. You know Uhland’s poem? It will be a case of Bang! and snap goes the German Constitution! You spoke of Thile. Do you mean the former Secretary of State?” I said “Yes, I meet him sometimes as he lives in my neighbourhood.” “He is a dangerous man,” he observed. “He was quite incapable. He could do nothing, and wrote nothing, because he was afraid it would be corrected; and yet I kept him for ten years, although he conspired against me with Savigny. He is to blame for the Diest libels, which led to the prosecution. I heard the whole story and how it began from Rothschild. Savigny went to him about the promotion of the company in question, and asked him if he could not let him have a share in it. Rothschild said no, he had already been obliged to part with a large share, a million and a half—meaning to his branches, the houses with which he is associated. Savigny, however, thought he was alluding to me, and would appear to have hinted something of the kind, but Rothschild seems either not to have understood him, or not to have answered with sufficient clearness. Savigny then carried the tale further, telling it first to Thile, who mentioned it to his brother, the general, instead of speaking to me, his chief, and in this way Diest ultimately came to hear of it. But, as Minister, I have never done any business with Rothschild, and even as envoy at Frankfurt very little. I drew my salary through him, and on one occasion I exchanged some stock for Austrian securities. I have not found it necessary. My profession as Minister has brought me in something, and through the grants and the gift of the Lauenburg estates I have become a rich man. It is true that if I had gone into a business, or carried on a trade, and devoted to it the same amount of labour and intelligence, I should doubtless have made more money.”
We then returned once more to the recent debates in the Reichstag, and I again expressed in strong terms the contempt I felt for the Opposition. “You were always a gentleman pitted against vain and vulgar creatures,” I said, “and in saying that I am not thinking of your rank as a Prince.” “No, I understand—a gentleman in my way of thinking,” he rejoined. “Lasker’s Jewish forwardness and presumption,” I continued, “the Professors with their priggish airs of superiority, and their empty pathos; Hänel, the self-complacent and pathetic doctrinaire—it is impossible to imagine anything more repulsive. He wanted to be Minister of Justice in ‘sea-surrounded Schleswig-Holstein.’” “Yes,” said the Chancellor, interrupting me, “they had divided the parts among themselves before the piece had been secured, and they probably have done the same thing now. Nothing came of it, however, after the interview which our Most Gracious had with me upstairs in the yellow chamber, where he remained with me from 9 o’clock until near midnight.” “And where he heard the simile of the chickens in Low German,” I added. “And then that impudent, lying, clown Richter, and the whole tearing, snarling, sprawling pack face to face with simple, solid, positive greatness. It was as if you belonged to an entirely different species.” “Yes,” he said, “when I lie down in bed after such debates, I feel ashamed of ever having bandied words with them. You know the way one feels after a night’s drinking, if one has had a row and perhaps come to blows with vulgar people—when one begins to realise it next morning, one wonders how and why it all came about.” Then after I had promised to make the corrections immediately and send them to him, he took leave of me with the words “Good evening, Busch. Auf Wiedersehen.” Busch! Not “Herr Doctor” as usual.
In two hours I sent him the corrections, which I received back through a Chancery attendant before 10 P.M. There were only a few alterations in the second half.
On the 2nd of January, 1882, I again visited Bucher. He complained in general of the incapable entourage of the Prince, including his sons, and of Rudolf Lindau, whom they favoured because he gave card parties and made himself useful to them in other ways. (...) He was a mere tradesman without education or political knowledge. The Prince wished to make things comfortable for himself, and no blame to him, but he was mistaken if he thought the machine would still go on working as it ought to. In that respect the choice of the personnel was of importance, and those who were now engaged, particularly in the press department, were almost constantly blundering. The stuff which Paul Lindau wrote for the Kölnische Zeitung was also of little value.
We then spoke about the negotiations with the Curia, which were making satisfactory progress; of Held’s contribution to the social history of England; of Taine’s account of the Jacobins, in whom Bucher discovered some characteristics of the Progressist party; of Stirum, who had also left because he was not disposed to put up with the intrigues of the clique that surrounded the Prince, and who had told him, Bucher, that he “preferred in future to admire the Chancellor at a distance”; and of the Chief’s recent criticism of my article. I said that the Chief must be mistaken in asserting that after the visit to Varzin he had had no further negotiations with Bennigsen respecting his joining the Ministry, as he had himself told me that at that time Herbert had written to Bennigsen, which he would scarcely have ventured to do without his father’s knowledge. Bucher agreed with me, and added that some one had expressed the opinion that Bennigsen had acted like a gentleman with regard to the statements published by the semi-official press. Bucher arranged to send me Taine’s book when he had finished reading it, in order that I might write an article upon it. He is extracting passages which point to the similarity between the Jacobins and the Progressist party.
On the evening of the 8th of January, Count William Bismarck sent me an article for the Grenzboten on “Agricultural Credit in Prussia.”[3]
On Monday, the 16th of January, I took back the third volume of Taine’s History of the Revolution, La Conquête des Jacobins, to Bucher. He told me that according to a conversation with the Chief, a campaign would presently be opened in the press in order to clear up some points respecting Stockmar and Bunsen. He was to write a pamphlet on the latter in which various documents, of which only portions were given in Frau von Bunsen’s book, would be published in extenso. I could then make myself useful by utilising this information, in addition to which he would give me further material. We then spoke of the Coburg clique, of Abeken, who had been described on one occasion by Bunsen as the “magnificent Abeken,” of Max Müller of Oxford, with whom he had spent some pleasant hours, of Geffcken, and finally of Hepke. On my asking how it was that the latter had fallen into disfavour with the Prince, Bucher said that in 1862, shortly after the Chief had come into office, Hepke, who had charge of the German reports, reproduced, almost literally, in a brochure which he published under the title of “A Word from a Prussian,” a memorandum which Bismarck had submitted to the King. Although this pamphlet was anonymous, the Chief came to hear of it, and forbade Metzler to mention it in our papers. Then, again, shortly before the war of 1866, Hepke, “through vanity, in order to show how well informed he was,” communicated some scheme that was in hand against Austria to the Austrian Envoy, probably at dinner, and this came to the knowledge of the Chief later on, after our reconciliation with Austria, most likely through Rechberg.