What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

Of all my reminiscences of Vienna, and those I saw there, the most interesting are those connected with my introduction to Prince Metternich.

The present generation is perhaps hardly aware—or not habitually so—of the largeness of the space Metternich occupied in the political world half a century ago. It is not too much to say that Europe in those days thought as much about Metternich as it does in these days about Bismarck. Of course the nature of the two men, as of the circumstances with which they were called on to deal, is far as the poles asunder. But on the European stage—not, of course, on the English—no actor of that day could compete with Prince Metternich in the importance of the position assigned to him by the world in general, as no actor of this day can with Prince Bismarck.

It is hardly enough to say, as is said above, that the nature of the two men was as far as the poles asunder, it was singularly contrasted. To both of them the salus patriæ has ever been the suprema lex; and both of them, with increasingly accepted wisdom; have sought that supreme end in the strengthening of the principle of authority. The history of human affairs has not yet sufficiently unfolded itself for it to be possible to say in this year of grace, 1887, whether they have done so with very different measures of success. But it is very curious to mark the similarity thus far existing between the two great ministers, chancellors, and statesmen, combined with such very marked (though perhaps in fact more or less superficial) differences between the two men.

Prince Bismarck has not been thought, even by those who have most thoroughly admired and applauded his fortiter in re, to have very successfully combined with it the suaviter in modo. The habit of clothing the iron hand with a velvet glove has not been considered to be among his characteristics. And these qualities were very pre-eminently those of the other all-powerful minister.

And the outward and bodily presentment of the two men was as contrasted and as expressive of this difference as that of two high-born gentlemen could well be. I saw recently in Berlin a portrait by Lembach of the great North German chancellor. It is one of those portraits which eminently accomplishes that which it is the highest excellence of every great portrait to achieve, in that it gives those who look at it with some faculty of insight not only that outward semblance of the man, which all can recognise, but something more, which it is the artist’s business to reveal to those who have not the gift of reading it for themselves. That portrait, in common with most of those by the great masters in the art of portraiture, reveals to you, with an instantly recognised truthfulness, the interior and intrinsic nature of the man, with a luminousness which your own gaze on the living person would not achieve for you. I have also before me a portrait of Prince Metternich, made at the time of which I am writing by M. Hervieu in crayons for my mother. And without of course claiming either for the artist or for the style of work such power as belongs to the portrait of which I have been speaking, I may say that it does very faithfully and expressively give you the presentment of a man in whom strength of will, tenacity of purpose, and high intellectual power are combined with suave gentleness of manner and an air of high-bred courtesy.

That is the man whose lineaments I look on in the sketch, and that is the man with whom I had many opportunities of being in company, and had on several occasions the high honour of conversing. Whether it might be possible for a man devoid of all advantage of feature to produce on those brought into contact with him the same remarkable impression of dignity, the consciousness of high station, and perfection of courtly bearing combined with a pellucid simplicity of manner, I cannot say. But it is true that all this was rendered more possible in the case of Metternich by great personal handsomeness. He was, of course, when I saw him, what may be called an old man—a white-headed old man—but I doubt if at any time of his life he could have been a better-looking man.

My mother notes in her book on Vienna and the Austrians, that as we were returning from a dinner at the house of the English ambassador, Sir Frederic Lamb, where we had just met Metternich for the first time, I observed that he was just such a man as my fancy painted Sir William Temple to have been, and that she thought the illustration a good one. And I don’t think that any subsequent knowledge or reflection would lead me to cancel it.

He was a man of middle height, slenderly made rather than thin, though carrying no superfluous flesh; upright, though without the somewhat rigid uprightness which usually characterises military training to the last, however far distant the training time may have been; and singularly graceful in movement and gesture. He must have been a man of sound body and even robust constitution, but he did not look so at the time of which I am speaking. Not that he had the appearance or the manner of a man out of health; but his extreme refinement and delicacy of feature seemed scarcely consistent with bodily strength. I remember a man—the old Dr. Nott spoken of in the first chapter of this book—who must have been about the same age with Metternich when I first saw him, who equalled him in clear-cut delicacy and refinement of feature, who was certainly a high-bred gentleman, not altogether ignorant of the ways and manners of courts, and who was emphatically a man of intellectual pursuits and habits. But there all equality and similarity between the two men ends. Good, refined, elegant Dr. Nott produced no such impression on those near him as the Austrian statesman did. There must have been therefore a something in the latter beyond all those advantages of person and feature with which he was so eminently endowed. And this “something” I take to have been produced partly by native intellectual power, and partly by the long possession of quite uncontested authority.

Upon that first occasion I had no opportunity of hearing any word from Metternich save one gracious phrase on being presented to him. He took my mother in to dinner. I was seated at a far distant part of the huge round table, where I could see, but not hear. And it was the fashion in Vienna for people to leave the house at which they had been dining almost immediately after taking their cup of coffee. But before the party separated it had been arranged that we were to dine at the minister’s house on the following Monday.

But all this time I have said no word of the Princess Metternich, who also dined with Sir Frederic Lamb on that, to me, memorable day. In one word, she was one of the most beautiful women I ever looked on. She was rather small, but most delicately and perfectly formed in person, and the extreme beauty of her face was but a part, and not the most peerless part, of the charm of it. To say that it sparkled with expression, and an expression which changed with each changing topic of conversation, is by no means enough. Every feature of her face was instinct with meaning and intelligence. The first impression her face gave me was that of a laughter-loving and mutine disposition. But my mother, who saw much of her—more, of course, than it was possible for her to see of the chancellor (especially while the princess was sitting for her portrait by M. Hervieu for her, during which sitting my mother, by her express stipulation, was always with her), and who learned to love her dearly, testified that there was much more behind; that her unbounded affection and veneration for her husband was not incompatible with the formation of thoughtful opinions of her own upon the questions which were then exercising the minds of politicians, as well as all the higher topics of human interest.