The following answer came from Bucher:—
“Fr. 26/7/91.
“Dr. Fr,—Your letter of the 24th, which curiously enough bears the Leipzig postmark of the 26th, reached me last evening, and I have this morning communicated its contents. The reply ran literally: ‘I have nothing whatever against it. I have sometimes a feeling that the end will come suddenly for me one day. I should like to have the opportunity of correcting many errors viva voce, as Busch has a great deal of material. Things are going badly with me. I have pains in my hand, and other pains which I cannot write about. When I have pushed the stone a little way uphill it rolls back again to the bottom. I wish you better luck.’”
On receipt of this information I finally agreed with Kröner to write the book, and entered into a contract with him. A few weeks later, however, in thinking over the prospect, I was half sorry that I had done so, and wrote to Bucher (pointing out certain objections in the event of the Prince’s “Memoirs” being published, and competing with the book: and suggesting that in case they were not to appear until after Bismarck’s death, judicious extracts from them might be included in the biography, &c.)
Bucher’s reply:
“Laubbach bei Coblenz, September 1, 1891.
“Dear Friend,—Nothing will ever come of the ‘Memoirs,’ even if He[21] and I were to live for ten years to come. The chief hindrance is laziness, as He himself expresses it. My work can only consist in dividing up the chaos of dictated material, and uniting the pieces into mosaics, as also in correcting his chronology, which is quite untrustworthy, and of course falsifies the casual relations of things. What He has to do is to read over the chapters which I have put together, and at the same time the letters referring to the subject, which I put with them. He cannot, however, be brought to do that. Of the fourteen chapters which I have submitted to him since last September he had on my departure from Kissingen read one through, and a portion of another! In correcting his chronology in four important instances I have forced him to acknowledge that the affair cannot really have happened in the way in which he had dictated it; but it was impossible for me to squeeze out of him any statement as to what actually had occurred. I am well-nigh desperate, and should be very pleased if my work were stopped and the whole thing handed over to you. I do not know what he will think, but in any case make the attempt.
“Schweninger, who is very anxious to get him to take up some serious, continuous occupation, persuaded me to go to Kissingen, assuring me that he would keep the two disturbing elements, the Princess and Herbert, at a distance; we two should have him to ourselves, and he would therefore begin a new life. Nothing of the kind has occurred. It was the old lazy life in the Castle of Indolence (Schlaraffenleben)—guests and drinking every day. And, as I had suspected, the baths did me no good whatever. My right hand is greatly swollen, and it is only since I repeated my former cure here that a slight improvement is perceptible. In any case I shall be back in Berlin at the beginning of October, although He has expressed a wish that I should go direct from here to Varzin. For months together last year there was a temperature of 12 degrees in my room there, and that has ruined me.
“Ever yours (in English),
“B.”