I thereupon announced that I should arrive at Friedrichsruh on the 12th of November. I started on the 11th, and, travelling viâ Berlin, reached Friedrichsruh shortly after 12 o’clock on the following day. I was met at the station by a servant, who accompanied me to the Prince’s house and showed me to my room. Shortly afterwards I was called downstairs, where I had a friendly reception from the Chancellor and his wife. We then took lunch, Rantzau being also present, and immediately afterwards the Prince went with me into his study in order to discuss the matter that had brought me hither. He first gave expression to his indignation at Grunow’s letter, in which connection I also came in for my share. Among other things which he said was: “You have turned me into a bookseller’s hack; I am to be exploited like a Christmas speculation, and harnessed to his cart, the impudent fellow! He should have known nothing whatever of my assistance!” I explained to him that I had to inform Grunow owing to the possibility of a considerable delay in the return of my proofs, that I had previously mentioned this to him, the Chancellor, and that he had agreed, and that the same course had been adopted in the case of the first book. In his excitement he appeared to have overlooked what I had said, as he went on as follows: “That must remain between ourselves. I can trust you. You may write to me. But he! What right has a bookseller got to correspond with me, to warn and threaten me?” I tried in vain to appease him, endeavouring to show that the passage quoted by Rantzau when read in connection with the remainder of the letter was perhaps not a threat, but only a strong and not particularly felicitous expression of Grunow’s difficulty and embarrassment. The latter was a man of straightforward character, who knew how to keep his own counsel, and who was incapable of wishing to bring pressure of a threatening character to bear upon the Chancellor, for whom he entertained the highest regard. He then rang for Rantzau, and asked him to bring Grunow’s letter, which he handed to me to read. I could not see that it contained anything more than a cry of distress on the part of the publisher, who had promised the booksellers that a certain book would appear at a fixed date, and who feared he could not keep his word nor find any sufficient excuse to give them. I was as little affected by this embarrassment as I was by any loss which Grunow might suffer in case the book was not published at Christmas. I could have waited for a long time, and even if that were not the case it would never have occurred to me to press him. He said: “You acted in a perfectly proper way when the matter was postponed, and I had not expected anything different from you. But all the same that remains a threat on his part, and a piece of presumption, and I hesitated whether I should not decline to have anything further to do with the book, and afterwards publicly contradict erroneous passages in it. But then I thought of you, although I altogether object to having books written about me and to people trading with me and my affairs. Poschinger has done so, and sold my despatches and letters, forgetting even to send me any remuneration.” (Sometimes his humour does not desert him even in his anger.) “Besides, this new book is not so good as the preceding one. It does not contain much that is new, and what it does is false. You are not such a good observer as you were; you have grown older; and you want to divine and picture my inner man from fragmentary observations, which were mainly misconceptions. You draw conclusions from occasional utterances which you jotted down under the table-cloth. According to you I am always in deadly earnest, as if I were on oath, &c.”
I abstained from urging what could be said on the other side, and his excitement gradually subsided. Taking some of the proofs he sat down at his writing-table and invited me to take a place opposite, in order that I might note down his corrections and additions. He was rather impatient over it, said my hearing was not so good as formerly, and complained that I did not take down dictation as rapidly as his sons, and so on. On this occasion we went through the greater part of the third chapter, and he had very much less to object to and alter than I had apprehended from his letter of the 3rd of August. By far the greater part of these pages he turned over without any remarks. With respect to the others he made observations that had no reference to the book, as for instance: “Thadden, a narrow-minded fellow, who has no brains.” After about three-quarters of an hour he stood up and said: “I must now get some fresh air.” He strode up and down the room, however, for a while, as before, and began again to vent his anger at the presumption and threats of “this bookseller who wanted to harness me to his Christmas cart.” Ultimately, however, he quieted down, grew more friendly, and showed me over the apartments, including his bedroom. In one of the first of these was hung a portrait in oils of a Roman prelate of high rank. In reply to my inquiry he informed me that it was Cardinal Hohenlohe.
He then went out for a walk or drive, while I proceeded to my room and wrote out his observations and the corrections which he had dictated to me. This room, which contains pictures of Grant, Washington and Hamilton, looks out on the park. After 3 P.M. I paid a visit to the Head Forester, Lange, with whom I took a drive.
At a quarter-past six I was called to dinner. Among those present, in addition to the Prince and Princess, were the Rantzaus, Dr. Schweninger, of Munich, who was in attendance on the Chancellor, and Herr von Ohlen, another of the doctor’s patients. The Prince, as I now observed for the first time, suffered from a slight attack of jaundice. Schweninger (a man of lively temperament, with dark hair and beard, who seems to be very much at home here) diagnosed the Prince’s ailment as chronic catarrh of the stomach, and has been successful in his treatment. (...) While taking our coffee, which was served in the Princess’s room, the conversation was at first of little significance. It turned on Becker’s portrait of the Prince during the Frankfurt period, and on two groups of his male and female ancestors, who from their costumes would appear to have flourished in the time between the death of Luther and the Thirty Years’ War, and on the portrait of his sporting grandfather with the shot-gun, which was formerly in Berlin, but has now found a place here too. The conversation gradually grew more lively and interesting; and the Chancellor, who had remarked in the tête-à-tête with me at midday that he would henceforth be careful of what he said in my presence, had probably forgotten his intention. On my stating, among other things, that the war of 1870 appeared to have had an excellent effect upon the national feeling in Saxony, he added, “and still more so in Bavaria. I once said jestingly to Fabrice[10] that we should live to see order restored in Saxony one day by Bavarian troops.” Speaking of Court circles in Berlin, he complained: “Whenever I performed on the political tight-rope they hit me on the shins, and, if I had only fallen, how delighted they would have been! Particularly the eternal feminine (das ewig Weibliche).”
It was only after lunch on Tuesday, the 13th, and again before dinner, that the work with the Prince was resumed, when Chapter II., the remainder of Chapter III., and about half of Chapter IV. were weeded out, the weeds again proving much less abundant than I had anticipated. He maintained that in the second chapter I made him out to be a “hypocrite” in religious matters, an idea which he had no difficulty in entirely disproving, inasmuch as he justified his belief in God among other things by a reference to facts which could only be accounted for by the existence of a Deity.
In the second section he began to dictate to me an account of his attitude towards the Kulturkampf, which he broke off on our being called to dinner. Before that he again suddenly renewed his grumbling at Grunow, I, too, coming in for a small share. He was also displeased with my long full beard. “My wife asked me,” he said, “if you were older than I. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I thought you were four or five years younger.’ But she was right. It’s your beard. It should be cut shorter. As it is it makes you look fearfully ancient.”
On Wednesday, the 14th, the Chief set to work on the proofs with me after breakfast. At Chapter IV. he exclaimed: “Look here, you must have a thoroughly wicked heart. You are delighted every time you hear and can jot down a disagreeable remark about somebody.” I rejoined: “I cannot trust myself to give any opinion upon my own heart. But one thing I do know, it has always been devoted to you. I only hate your enemies.” He afterwards reflected for a moment, looked at the clock, and said: “I must now go out to receive Giers, who is coming from Berlin to discuss important matters with me. We shall introduce you and Schweninger to him as doctors of medicine, for if he ascertained that Dr. Busch belonged to another variety he would be afraid that he was being watched and that it would get into the newspapers. By the way, you have included him among the Jews in your diplomatic chapter, and that must be struck out. (I had referred to his name, Giers, as a russified form of Hirsch.) He may be a Jew, although he asserts that he is the son of a Finnish officer. But we must not write that, as he is well disposed, desires peace, and does what he can to secure it. He is quite indispensable to us.”
The Russian Minister arrived between 2 and 3 P.M. The Chancellor received him at the station, drove with him to the house, and then conferred with him until nearly 6 o’clock, when Giers dined with us, the company remaining together over their coffee until about 9 P.M. Giers is a man of medium height, and would seem to be well advanced in the fifties. He has somewhat of a stoop as he walks. His features are of a slightly Jewish cast, a characteristic which is also evident in his gestures and movements, there being something in the hands in particular which recalled our Semites. On this occasion he spoke only in French.
On Thursday, the 15th, I wrote in my diary: Giers went off again last night about 10 o’clock, and Schweninger and Ohlen left at noon to-day. I took lunch with the Prince’s family, Count William being also present. The Prince, who, by the way, now observes great moderation in diet and drinks only the lightest wines, read despatches, and gave Rantzau instructions for replying to them. The subjects were Bulgarian affairs, and the North Sea and Baltic Canal. I then retired to my room to work, and afterwards made an excursion to the Aumühl. As I was about to return I saw the Chief coming towards me in a carriage. When he recognised me he reached out both hands towards me from a distance, left the carriage, and walked back with me to the mill. (I therefore fancy that he cannot have been so very angry with me.) He described to me a pretty pathway through the woods on the other side of the streamlet, saying: “I know you are also a lover of lonely country walks.” Yesterday evening over our coffee, after Giers had left, he also said: “I always feel happiest in my top-boots, striding through the heart of the forest, where I hear nothing but the knocking and hammering of the woodpecker, far away from your civilisation.”
Again at work with the Chancellor from 4 o’clock onwards. He told me his wife had said: “The doctor may be very clever and amiable, but all the same you should be on your guard at table when he is present. He always sits there with his ears cocked, writes everything down, and then spreads it abroad.” She herself, however, in her simple way, forgot to keep on her guard to-day. While seated on her right at dinner my napkin accidentally dropped, and, lo and behold! her Serene Highness, the lady of the house, bent down for it before I could prevent her! I felt that I had been fearfully awkward.