On the 29th of January Princess Elizabeth writes to her brother at Basle:—“My studies are now making great progress, and I have as many tasks as I can get through. Forty pages of Schlosser in a week, forty of Macaulay, twice arithmetic, and twice geometry. More history and literature instead of Latin and Italian, natural philosophy and Church history, and, last not least, religion with mamma. For all these things I have only two hours daily for preparation, of which one is taken up with the tasks set me by mamma. I do not learn from the Catechism usually employed. Mamma has made a Catechism of her own for me, and in the following manner:—During the lesson she has a note-book in her hand with more than a hundred questions in it. She puts these questions to me, and we talk them over together; then she writes one of the questions into my book, and I write an answer which takes up four to six pages before the next lesson. I am sure you can understand what I feel in having entered into the year in which I have to bind myself with a promise before the altar to become a responsible member of human society. I think of it with real apprehension, for I am not yet ripe for it. Pray think of me sometimes.”
“Monrepos, May 26th, 1860.—Those were wonderful days when Professor Gelzer was here. I cannot tell you how interesting they were. At last I shall become jealous of you, who have him always about you! What conversations those were after tea, more interesting than all those of the rest of the year put together! I was always wishing that my head were a wax tablet, that all he had said might remain engraven upon it.”
In the summer of 1860 Princess Elizabeth was confirmed. The Princess of Wied had already in the winter begun to prepare her child for this, and had spoken with the Prince about all the articles of belief. Forgetting her own sorrows, the faithful mother had often written down in the night, beside the bed of suffering of her beloved son, Prince Otto, the questions and comments which her daughter was to work out next morning. When the young girl felt particularly interested in writing these essays, it often happened that, having begun in prose, she, almost unwillingly, finished in beautiful verse. Kirchenrath Dilthey gave her religious instruction the last two months before her confirmation. This was done in the open air, whilst walking to and fro with her in the beautiful avenue of beeches. The sacred ceremony was performed at Monrepos, and, for the purpose, the gallery was converted into a chapel. All the sponsors of the Princess and the nearest relations of the Houses of Wied and Nassau, as also the Empress of Germany, then Princess of Prussia, had assembled in Monrepos for the occasion.
Her poetic journal of that time reveals a soul longing for God. In a poem of the 15th July, shortly before her confirmation therefore, she writes:—
“Praise ye the Lord who in mightiness wrought ye,
Praise Him who safely with blessings hath brought ye,
Praise Him, thou earth! and thou star of the sky!
Let what hath being the Lord glorify!
I will give thanks to Him, Father of Life,
I in His way will walk, faithful in strife;
I for His light will seek, guiding us all,
Him I will love, for without Him I fall.”
—Translated by Sir Edwin Arnold.
In September 1860 she writes in her journal, “Only the deepest and most absorbing thoughts give us clearness. Only a purely objective reflection can bring us knowledge. To delight in undefined feelings and dally with the images of poetry, draws our soul to the dust and hinders the stirrings of godly power.”
Now came days and years full of sorrow. Her father was always ill, her mother occupied in absorbing duties, the sufferings of her little brother meanwhile increasing. During the long agony of this beloved son, when the Princess had to give herself entirely up to nursing him, Princess Elizabeth passed many hours in her father’s study. That a man like the Prince of Wied, in whose mind and mode of thought, mysticism and naturalism, romantic and rationalistic ideas were united in a peculiar manner, should have a great influence over the mental progress of his daughter, was very natural. Sometimes she was allowed to work with him, to copy out for him, to read to him. Then the Prince would ask many questions of the child, which had been raised through reading his book “On the Unconscious Life of the Soul.” He wished to see if she understood what he had written, and was happy in the impression made on the mind and heart of his daughter. If she could catch his train of thought he often said, “So now it is clear! then so it can remain.”
Still it was but a quiet house for so lively a girl. “The bird has outgrown its cage,” said the anxious mother. So it was settled to accept the invitation of the Queen of Prussia, and to let Princess Elizabeth travel to Berlin with Fraülein Lavater. We hear from a letter to her brother what she thought of this plan.