The winter of 1862-63 was passed with her parents at Baden-Baden on account of her father’s health. Here she “came out.” From entries in her diary it would appear that she had offers of marriage at this time. There are some lines in which she writes of the kind of love that alone brings happiness, and she adds that a maiden rejects anyone who does not really love her. “A maiden,” she says, “is happy in her parents’ house, from whence she casts modest looks into the world.”
In the autumn of 1863 she went with her aunt, the Grand Duchess Helena of Russia, to Ouchy, on the Lake of Geneva, and for the winter to St. Petersburg. On the way to the latter place she saw her father for the last time at Wiesbaden. He did not expect ever to see his daughter again. Everybody was charmed with her at the Russian Court. She did not feel at ease, however, amid the grandeur which surrounded her. Her imagination was excited by all that she saw and heard, but her nerves suffered. The Grand Duchess sought to calm her mind by varied but regular occupation. The day was filled with music, reading, study of the Russian language, etc. Rubinstein first, and afterwards Clara Schumann, taught her music. When she expected Rubinstein to come, her excitement was so great that it almost took away her breath. She regarded him with such veneration that she lost all heart, from a sense of her own little talent. The climate and nervous excitement brought on gastric fever. For weeks she was confined to bed. It was her first illness. She had never tasted medicine before she was twenty. She could hardly believe, therefore, that she was really ill. As soon as she was able to do so, she buried herself in a philosophical work by her father, a copy of which he had sent her, and wrote to him telling him the pleasure it gave her. She enjoyed the seclusion from the gaieties that were going on. “It is very strange,” she wrote to her father; “yesterday I read ninety pages of philosophy, and was so rested that everyone was astonished at my looking so well. But if only two or three ladies come, and tell me the gossip of the town, and of all the things that are going on, it makes me droop like a withered leaf.” When she was well enough she resumed her social intercourse with the Grand Duchess, but had a sudden relapse. It was an anxious time for her mother: her husband dangerously ill, her daughter invalided at a distance, and she not there to nurse her! “I know she is in God’s hands,” she wrote, “and under the care of faithful and loving friends, but that does not take the pain, the load of sorrow, from my heart.” The Princess Elizabeth was able to venture into the open air again at the beginning of March. It seemed as if her recovery would be rapid. A few days later, however, she received the tidings of her father’s death. She loved her father with enthusiastic tenderness. She owed her intellectual development, for the most part, to him. Her grief was heightened by the thought that she had not been with him in his last days. But no murmur escaped her lips. She bore the blow with such composure and resignation that everyone about her was deeply impressed and touched. She sought to comfort and strengthen her mother. “We shall fill the desolate void with our love,” she wrote, “and therein find our happiness.” She regarded her father as a shining example, and sought to think and act according to his ideas. In the judgments she formed, she imitated his mildness and candour, which condemned nothing without fully proving it.
At Easter she left St. Petersburg with the Grand Duchess Helena, and visited Moscow, and in June returned to Germany. Her mother met her in Leipzig. The meeting, as may be imagined, was very affecting. After their return to Mon Repos a reaction from the recent excitement and agitation which she had experienced set in, and the Princess Elizabeth was overcome by apathy. Her mother, therefore, gladly consented to her accompanying the Grand Duchess Helena to Ouchy.
During the years 1866, 1867, 1868, she paid visits with her aunt or mother to Switzerland, Italy, France, and Sweden, meeting with much to interest her.
Little did she think at the end of this time of the career on which she was so soon to enter. She always wished to have “a calling” in life. She did not wish to live a life of pleasure, or the life of an intellectual dilettante, but one of real usefulness. She resolved to devote herself to the work of education, and be the teacher of a school. Her mother consented, on the condition that she should go through a regular course of preparatory training for the purpose, and pass an examination. But “man proposes and God disposes.” During the spring of 1869, while she was with her mother in Bonn, they received an invitation from the Prince of Hohenzollern to pay a visit to Düsseldorf. The mother divined the purpose of the proposed visit, but the daughter had no suspicion of it. She was delighted only with the prospect of seeing the Princess of Hohenzollern and Princess Marie, whom she had met in Berlin, and with whom she had corresponded ever since.
(To be concluded.)
THE SHEPHERD’S FAIRY.
A PASTORALE.
By DARLEY DALE, Author of “Fair Katherine,” etc.