Do these denote character?—for they apparently run from the sublime to the ridiculous.
My parents seem to have been less careful about choosing me a nurse of a literary turn, however otherwise excellent the woman was, for the following quaint letter to my mother from my old attendant, who was for nearly forty years in the family, is not exactly a model of epistolary art:
“I am wrighting to thank you for Papers you so kindly sent Mrs. B—— she wished me to do so i told her i would do so but there was plenty of time for doing it but on Monday morning she very quietly took her long departyer not being any the worse the Delusions was to much for her and she just went off hoping you are quite well also your four Gran children and there parents the wether is very cold for May i remain your Obident
“S. D.”
Apart from the undoubted virtues of my illiterate old nurse, my education proceeded on the usual infantile lines. My father taught us children a great deal about natural history, which we loved, as most children do, and many odds and ends of heterogeneous information picked up from him in those early days proved a mine of “copy” in years to come.
A sage once said the child should choose its own parents. He might have gone farther and said that the child should choose its own school, because if school-fellows have often had as much influence as mine did on me, then school companions are a matter of importance. Youth is the time of selfishness and irresponsibility. How cruel we are through thoughtlessness! How we stab and wound by quick, unmeditated words! The journey onwards is a stony one, but we all have to pass along if we are to attain either worldly success or, greatest of all blessings, mastery of self. I often wonder why people are so horrid at home. We know it, we deprecate it, but we don’t seem to have the pluck or the courage to change it. We suffer the loneliness of soul we all endure at times, even more than we need, because of our own foolish pride and want of sympathy with our surroundings. We could be so much nicer and more considerate if we really tried. We mean to be delightful, of course; but we signally fail.
In those far-away kindergarten days in Harley Street there were a little boy and three grown-up gentlemen with whom I made friends. The little boy grew up and went to Mexico, where I met him after a lapse of twenty-five years, a merchant in a good position. He was able to do a great deal for me during my stay there, and proved as a brother in occasions of difficulty.
Sir Felix Semon became a great physician, and Dr. von Mühlberg a German Ambassador. The more elderly gentleman was studying at the British Museum, and only lodged at the house. Dr. von Rottenburg was also a German, and he used to pat my head every morning on the stairs and talk to me about my playthings, calling me “leetle mees.” When I grew up this famous philosopher, diplomat, and writer never forgot the little black-eyed girl going to school with her doll, and was one of my dearest and best friends in Germany.
On his return to Berlin he published, in 1878, a book called Begriff des Staates. It was a learned volume and created much sensation in Germany. One day he was sitting in the Foreign Office when he received an invitation to dine with the great Bismarck. He was amazed, but naturally accepted. At the dinner were only two other men, the Imperial Chancellor and his son Herbert. The former talked to von Rottenburg about his book in most flattering terms. On his return home that night his wife asked him how he had got on.
“Not particularly well,” he replied. “I was so awe-stricken by the wondrous capacity, the bulk of both body and mind of Bismarck, that I seemed paralysed of speech and said practically nothing.