One incident—not unworthy of record—diversified the weeks at Kissingen and lighted up the autumn of 1893.
To his Mother.
August 7.—The sensation of yesterday was the visit of Prince Bismarck. We had left cards on him the day before, and I did not expect he would do more than return them. However, yesterday the weather was showery, and as Jennie was rather seedy we did not go our usual drive. I was reading the papers when a great big Chasseur appeared and informed me that the Fürst von Bismarck was in his carriage at the door and was asking for me. I hurried downstairs and met the Prince at his carriage. He came up to our rooms—which luckily are on the first floor—and sat down, and we began to converse. I had sent off a message to Jennie, who had gone to the Kurhaus to see a friend. So I had about a quarter of an hour in which to talk to the Prince. I will tell you of his appearance. He is seventy-eight—so he told me afterwards—but he looks so much younger than Mr. Gladstone that in fact you would hardly give him more than seventy-three or seventy-four years. He looked in good health, and came upstairs without the slightest difficulty. We discussed various subjects, which I will go through seriatim. We spoke in English; but whether it was for that reason, though he spoke very correctly, he struck me as being nervous. Perhaps it was meeting with a total stranger, because he had never seen me before. However, he was most gracious and seemed very anxious to please. You may imagine that I did my very best to please him, for I thought it a great honour for this old Prince to come and see us.
The conversation began on Kissingen—the baths, the waters, &c. He told me he had first come here in 1874, and had been here almost every year since. He gave up drinking the waters about eight years ago, but he continues to take baths, and thinks they do him good. After this I asked him why he never went now to Gastein. He said, laughing, ‘Oh, Gastein is a peculiar water to some people—sometimes dangerous’; that he knew two of his friends who died of apoplexy when taking the baths; and added that his doctor had told him that Gastein was the last resource; and he remarked, ‘And I am seventy-eight,’ and seemed quite pleased about it. Then he talked about the Emperor William on a question as to whether Gastein had not added some years to his life. He quite admitted it, and told me that for many years the Emperor used to go to Carlsbad, when he used to accompany him; and this reminiscence seemed very pleasing to him. In talking of the Emperor he always used the expression ‘my old master.’
Then I turned the conversation on to Siam, and asked him whether he did not think it was a satisfactory settlement. He appeared to agree and began speaking in this connection of M. Jules Ferry. He regretted his loss, and said that Jules Ferry was the best man that France had had for years, and joked a little about his appearance—long whiskers, &c. Then he went on to say that he thought, if Jules Ferry had remained in power, a very good arrangement and condition would have come about between the Germans and the French. He said that he had nearly concluded an agreement between himself and Jules Ferry that France should remain on friendly and peaceful terms with Germany, and that he (Prince B.) would support France in Tunis and Siam, and generally in her Eastern colonisation. Then I remarked about Siam that Rosebery had learned out of his book this principle—to ask for no more than he required, but to insist on getting what he required, and to treat with neglect what was not essential. He said that was so and he went on to praise Rosebery, and described him as a good combination of will and caution, and added that of all English statesmen he was the one who was most modest and quiet in his acts and attitude.
Of course, no conversation would be complete without a reference to Mr. Gladstone, to which I led him. He, of course, began by admitting that Mr. Gladstone was very eloquent; but that he had always been like an ungovernable horse whom no one could ride in any bridle, and was not to be controlled in any way. He used a German adjective to describe the horse, which I have forgotten; but seeing his drift, and in reply to his question what was the English expression for the German word, I said ‘ungovernable and unmanageable and hard to ride’ would express it, and I remarked that in England people often called such a horse a ‘rogue.’ On which he turned his face to me with a smile, but said nothing, though he clearly understood the allusion. He further in conversation said that he should be very alarmed and anxious if such a man as Mr. Gladstone governed ‘my country.’ Then Jennie arrived and he talked mainly to her for a few minutes, when he announced that his son Herbert and his recently married wife arrived that afternoon to stay a few days with him, and that he hoped we should see something of them.
Without doubt this Prince and statesman has a most powerful attraction. The whole of his career, from the time when he was First Minister of the King and fought the Parliament, to the time of the proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles, seems to me more intelligible now, and at the same time a work that only this man could have carried out or even conceived the possibility of. I never took my eyes off his face while he was talking to me and kept trying to fix it in my memory. For all his quiet manner his qualities would be apparent to any observer of experience; you can trace the iron will in great emergencies which has so frequently borne him up, all the calm courage for which the North Germans are peculiarly distinguished, and yet with all that—in spite of the recollection of the great things he had done—no trace of pride, no sign of condescension, but perfectly gracious and polite, a true Grand Seigneur. He carried himself at his age as erect as a soldier, and for all his long black coat and his rather old black, soft, low-crowned wideawake hat he looks all over what he is—the combination, so rarely seen in this century, of statesman and General.
This friendly conversation, proving mutually agreeable, was followed by an invitation to dinner with the Bismarck family. ‘We dined,’ so runs the account, ‘in the hall of an old Bishop’s palace, on the first floor, which a friend of the Prince owns and lends him every year. It was of large and fine proportion. At one end we assembled before dinner; at the other end the table was laid. The dinner was a regular old-fashioned German dinner, a little bourgeois (like the Berlin Court under the old Emperor), but everything was dignified as to the table—the food, the wine, the old servants—and, though very different to our ideas, had really un air noble. All this was greatly added to by the presence of the Prince, his impressive appearance, and the combination of respect and affection which all his family and those friends that were dining, showed him. His good spirits and excellent humour and his sustained support of the conversation—sometimes with Jennie, sometimes with me, sometimes with Herbert and his wife—can never be forgotten by anyone who saw it.’
Lord Randolph sat next to Prince Bismarck and was so occupied in observing him and the scene generally that he took but little part in the conversation. The picture was complete—the Princess, feeble and broken in health; Count Herbert and his wife; the famous black wolf-hounds which once upon a time frightened Gortschakoff so much; Bismarck himself, ‘speaking English very carefully and slowly, frequently pausing to get the right word, but always producing it, or something like it, in the end’; drinking a mixture of very old hock poured into a needle-glass of champagne—‘"the last bottle [of hock], a present from ——," a Grand Duke whose name I cannot remember’—at length arriving at his great pipe, prepared all ready for him by a venerable retainer, ‘stem two feet in length, curved mouthpiece, bowl long and large in china and standing up square with the stem, lighted by broad wooden safety-matches to prevent him burning his fingers; and all the time running on in talk brisk and light, always courtly and genial, never quite serious.’
‘I did not dare,’ declares Lord Randolph, ‘to drink this old hock, and only sipped it. The Prince, who was joking, said to Jennie that he was very sorry I had not drunk my share, as it would cause him to drink too much and he would be "half over the seas."’ Presently he wanted to know about Mr. Gladstone. He would be useful in putting to rights the disorders of German finance. Would the English people exchange him for General Caprivi? ‘I told him,’ writes Lord Randolph shamelessly, ‘that the English people would cheerfully give him Mr. Gladstone for nothing, but that he would find him an expensive present!’ So with chaff and good temper the evening passed away—pleasant, memorable, one of the last he was to know.