Part 3

A Parisian lady taught the Princess French. Of an evening after tea she read with her; mostly the old chronicles and memoirs, Froissart, Joinville, Philippe de Comines, St. Simon, &c., and also the dramas of Molière, Racine, and Corneille. The Princess of Wied now began to read the most beautiful of the dramas of the German classical authors to her daughter, also Schiller’s “Thirty Years’ War,” and they read and re-read “Nathan the Wise” of Lessing. Princess Elizabeth studied Decker’s “Universal History” by herself in one summer, as also the historical works of Gibbon. Her wonderful memory helped her, too, in this, and she understood the reality of what she read. When fifteen years old she studied three newspapers daily and displayed a great interest in politics. Her greatest joy was to write essays, and she ever delighted in fairy tales and national songs. “For a little fairy tale,” she says, “I was capable of throwing aside the finest historical work, and even the comparisons of grammar which I studied with such passionate interest.” Once the “Wide Wide World,” by Mrs. Wetherall, fell into her hands. She read it over and over again, hiding it meanwhile under her translations of Ovid, that no one might know what so absorbed and excited her. She was not allowed to look into a novel till her nineteenth year. Then she was permitted to read out “Ivanhoe” and “Soll und haben” of Freitag after tea. Everything was avoided which could further excite the workings of her restless imagination. The spirit of duty and labour, of love and piety, which reigned in this princely house had, unknown to herself, exercised its strong spell over her. Much that is so beautifully and harmoniously developed in the character of the Princess Elizabeth is owing to the noble example of her parents and the refined atmosphere of her home.

IV.

Youth.

The sojourn of the family in Monrepos was constantly lengthened because of the increasing illness of the Prince of Wied. The surroundings seemed eminently fitted for the residence of a man who was happiest in the immediate circle of his own family, and who gladly gave himself up to the study of theology and philosophy.

The Castle of Monrepos is built on the ridge of a hill amongst mountains which belong to the Westerwald. The magnificent valley of Neuwied lies at one’s feet, and the Rhine winds itself in great circles through the historic ground where Romans, Teutons, Alemans, and Franks fought for power and sovereignty. On the right bank of the river extends the little town of Neuwied, with its beautiful Palace and park opposite the houses of Weissenthurm. The shining Rhine increases in width as it flows before our eyes. The slate-rocks and lines of the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein are visible in a good light, as also the houses and towers of Coblentz. Little villages are dotted about the valley as though they were embedded in green woodland shade. First comes Segendorf, then Niederbibra with its old church in Romanic style on Roman foundations, farther on Oberbibra, on the height the ruins of Braunsberg, &c. The little river Wied winds itself between these on its way to the Rhine.

The horizon is bounded on all sides by many chains of mountains. Towards the east are seen the heights of the Westerwald, to the south those of the Taunus, then the Hunderücken. Where the mountain chains seem to sink into one another they suggest the valley of the Moselle. To the left tower the volcanic peaks of the Maifeld and Eifel. Historic recollections are everywhere awakened. It is a landscape teeming with life, beauty, and variety.

The most magnificent beech-woods adjoin the Castle. Their mighty trees form halls of verdure with their crowns of foliage. They offer refreshing shade on hot summer days, for the sunshine is caught up by each leaf and sheds only a subdued light on the ground. Well-kept paths lead you for miles through splendid woods and shady valleys. Near the Castle, and easy of access, are beautiful views into the romantic Friedrichsthal, with its green meadows, upon which the deer roam at liberty, towards Altwied, which lies embedded in the Wiedbach valley, with its picturesque ruins of the ancient castle, or to the distant shooting-lodge now called the Maienhof.

The lower storey of Schloss Monrepos is like a vast hall, for the large saloon takes up the whole width. From its many windows one looks from one side into the wide valley of the Rhine surrounded by mountains; from the others into the deep shades of the forests. It is about a German mile from Neuwied, and can be reached by an easy carriage-road by Irlich and Rodenbach, or by Heddesdorf and Segendorf. The long light-coloured buildings of Schloss Monrepos are to be seen for a great distance.

Here Princess Elizabeth was in her element. Here was the forest and liberty! The greater the raging of the storm, the happier the young enthusiast felt herself. Amid the wildest gusts of wind and rain she hurried into the forests, and neither snow nor thunder growling overhead could stop her. In the house the world seemed too narrow for her, and she longed for the freedom of nature. Three magnificent St. Bernard dogs sprang romping and bounding after her; foremost of all Mentor, the favourite. When the storm broke mighty branches from the trees and drove the dry leaves whirling before her the young Princess was joyous, roaming through the pathless forests and listening to the howling and whistling of the wind and the creaking of the branches.

STORM IN THE FOREST.

There roars from the forest A symphony wild; The wind drives before it The tempest-clouds piled.

With a crash the stems sunder, The tossing trees moan; The wind and the thunder Hold revel alone;

’Tis a joust which they play at, A contest of might Shall adjudge which is stronger To lash the waves white,

To ravage the woodland:-- But, ’midst their mad noises, I go with firm footstep And soul that rejoices.

A ray beams upon me From heart to heart ranging; For me there is sunshine Unclouded, unchanging.

--_Translated by Sir Edwin Arnold._

In the autumn, when the golden leaves lay thick on the ground, she would wander for hours in the rustling foliage and listen to the sound it made. It had a voice which spoke to her. Each ray of sunshine which lighted up the forest or the long sweeps of country before her, each blade of grass, light and air, birds and flowers, had a personal meaning for her. She returned with her head full of poetic thoughts, and wrote down what the forest, the storm, the sun, and the birds had confided to her.

“Thou forest-scent! Thou forest-song! Sounds, perfumes, freshly borne along, How sweet to me you are! How glad grow heart and ear for you! What joy you bring, and comfort too, Unto our little Star!”

--_Translated by Sir Edwin Arnold._

With such strains of poetry Princess Elizabeth calmed her excited fancy. But no one was to know that she secretly wrote these little verses. It was a deep secret which she “hid from the books on the shelf and even the air in the room.”

“So lived I in spirit, Lonely, my own hidden life, by none to be known of; Never a sound, nor cloud-picture, but brought to my fancy Matter for thought without end, and a keen-edged emotion.”

--_Translated by Sir Edwin Arnold._

It is possible that many people would have different ideas as to the freedom that should be accorded to a Princess’s daughter from those of the wise mother, who, looking deeper, had discovered the right way of calming this passionate and peculiar character. “We must let her go her own way and not disturb the working within,” she wrote to a friend at the time. The Prince met her great spirit of contradiction on the same principle. When his daughter insisted on having her way he used to say, “You cannot force people to their happiness, but must let them come to a sense of it.”

From her sixteenth year Princess Elizabeth began to write her poems regularly in a book. The gifted child, with her restless feelings, thoughtful and penetrating in her judgment of the world around her, now put all her ideas and emotions into the poems which she wrote almost involuntarily, and which now became her journal. In her fear not to be true, she never wrote them down first, and never altered what was written, “because she had originally thought it out in those words.”

Till her thirtieth year she had no technical knowledge of the art of writing poetry, and did not venture to learn it for fear of betraying herself. A time came when she thought she must despise poetry and turn it into ridicule. Then she threw all her power into the study of music. She played wildly on the piano! But the more she played and the louder she sang the less contented she seemed; for the inner fire which consumed her was not quieted; the ideal which she had before her was not reached. “The songs sounded so weak and small instead of sighing and rushing.” Music put her into such a state of nervous excitement that her mother forbade her to play the piano for two years. She now took to pencil and colours, and tried to draw and to paint. But here she did not find satisfaction, despaired of herself and of her powers, and thought she could never attain that which she sought with such fervent longing.

All who then knew Princess Elizabeth are still full of the impression of her grace and charm. Of slight figure, high colour, a quantity of dark-brown hair, which often defied restraint, and large blue eyes, which looked as if she were always trying to listen to and find out something in the depths of her own soul, without being really beautiful, her appearance was particularly attractive, because of the spiritual expression of her features. She was then called “the Princess of the Wild Rose” by those around her.

At this time came the long visit of Princess Sophie of Nassau, a younger sister of the Princess of Wied, and the Countess Thekla of Solms-Laubach, a niece of the Prince. These two young girls lived for a whole year at Neuwied and Monrepos like daughters of the house. Princess Sophie was engaged to be married whilst under the protection of the princely pair. Her marriage was celebrated at Biebrich in the summer of 1857 with the Duke of Ostgothland, the present reigning King of Sweden.

Tutors and governesses had now left the Castle. Pastor Harder, a clergyman from Neuwied, came daily to Princess Elizabeth to lecture upon logic, history, and Church history. Her intercourse with this esteemed master was very precious to her, not only on account of the teaching which she received, but also because she had the greatest confidence in him. When she felt herself slighted or misunderstood, she spoke of all that she otherwise anxiously concealed from every one with Pastor Harder during their walks. His sermons went to her heart. In her journals we find many notes and comments which were written down by the Princess after these sermons.

In the autumn of 1858 the princely pair made a journey of three months’ duration through Switzerland and the north of Italy. Prince Otto was well enough to be of the party. His interest and delight in all the beauties of nature and art were endless. The sensible questions of this boy of eight years soon turned the attention of the guides to him; they addressed their explanations mostly to the little Prince, who listened with glowing interest. He was quite overcome at the sight of the Falls of the Rhine, and began to recite “Der Taucher;” he was also enthusiastic for human greatness, and at Milan was enchanted by the life of Carlo Borromeo.

Prince Otto was also very witty, and often saw the comic aspect of things, and he noticed everything, despite his tender age. He was the pet of all who knew him. When he felt pretty well joy reigned in the house. “From his babyhood,” writes the Prince in one of his letters, “we have seen him growing up, that is, dying a hundred deaths, which he, being gifted with great vital power and richly endowed by nature, always overcame but to begin a new life of pain and distress. If one thinks of the poor child grown up to man’s estate and troubled with that dreadful infirmity, which he till then bore without complaint and accepted gladly as being sent from God, one’s heart could break from sorrow.” His mother was not only his unwearying nurse, but his nearest friend, who shared every thought with him, and with wonderful power and resignation comforted him with thoughts of his release.

On the 12th of March 1860 Professor Busch of Bonn had tried an operation, which had succeeded as far as circumstances would allow, but only brought renewed sufferings to the heroic boy. He was bound to his couch of suffering, but his wonderful gentleness and amiability and gloriously quiet mind never deserted him. The body of the boy was lacerated; but the mind, with its marvellous powers, remained. None of the sufferings of illness had been able to dull his clear judgment. His mind, which was even here ennobled and brought to wonderful perfection, held intercourse with those about him, as if the poor body did not concern it.

_From a Letter of the Prince of Wied._

“A very touching and cordial friendship had existed between the children ever since their childhood. It was therefore a great sorrow to them when they had to separate from their eldest brother in 1879. His parents had sent Prince William to Basle, where he studied at the college and lived with Professor Gelzer as a child of the house, but amidst very different surroundings from those to which he had been accustomed.”

* * * * *

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.

“_Neuwied, 24th December 1860._--Oh! it is hard, very hard! the first absence from home, the first separation from mamma. You can realise what it is, and can understand that it is not easy, and particularly in this case. The Princess says that she will replace mamma. But a mother’s love cannot be replaced even by the warmest and noblest heart! Still I know she will be all to me that she can be, and that is very much. I well know what it means to be constantly in the society of distinguished and clever people. But I also know what it is to take a position which does not in reality belong to you, and to assume the right tone and the right manner there! Oh! shall I be at all able to do it? You can imagine in what an anxious state of tension I am, and how all my thoughts are centred in that one point.”

Such a child of nature as this daughter of a princely house had never appeared in Berlin before. They were not a little astonished at her.

“And I had taken the greatest pains to remain within the bounds of etiquette in the drawing-room, and to make conversation in a sensible manner.”

She felt most at home in the family of the Princess Hohenzollern,[2] who was spending the winter at Berlin. When, looking back to this time in later years, as Princess of Roumania, she wrote: “Had I only had an idea of all this, when I so enthusiastically admired the mother at Berlin. Or did I have a presentiment when I made friends with no one there but with Marie, and was nowhere so happy as in her family.” She also then shared in the studies of Princess Marie of Hohenzollern, now Countess of Flanders. The lectures which Professor Haagen held for them in the Museum were of particularly lively and lasting interest to her.

[2] Mother of the present King of Roumania.

It was here in Berlin that Princess Elizabeth met Prince Charles of Hohenzollern[3] for the first time. They say that as she was, according to her habit, rapidly jumping downstairs, she slipped on the last step, and that Prince Charles was able to prevent her from falling by catching her in his arms.

[3] Present King of Roumania.

_From a letter of Prince Herman to his Daughter at Berlin._

“NEUWIED, _23rd February 1861_.

“It appears to me that you have seen and experienced much that is interesting if you review the variety of pictures which have passed before you during these last days. You can only learn an easy and versatile intercourse with people by constantly meeting different ones, for each has to be taken in a different way, according to his peculiarities. Goethe regards it as a proof of dulness, not cleverness, if one is bored in the society of others. He declares that we can learn from the most commonplace people, were it only not to be like them! You are a recruit in aristocratic ranks, and not the slightest failing must be detected in you. At Court you must learn the balancing step so that you may not lose your balance and fall downstairs, or morally stumble and upset. In youth all this is learnt in play, whereas it is a martyrdom to elderly people. But where one is gifted, as you are, with an endless source of internal happiness, all disagreeables which one experiences are but as a fleeting shadow over the sunshine of life. Since you went away joy has departed from this house! The gay little bird has flown, and is now fluttering from flower to flower. Sometimes it pricks itself with their thorns, but it flies on, careless of what is behind it. Still it avoids the thorns in future. Now, good-bye; may God bless you, you dear little runaway.”

* * * * *

Notwithstanding all the kindness and amiability with which Queen Augusta and the Royal Family surrounded the charming girl, and the treasures of art of all kinds that Berlin offered to her, she longed to be back in her father’s house, in the quiet sick-room, in the freedom of the Forest and near the mighty Rhine. In her journal of this time are mainly poems which are full of these longings. The wild-rose could not feel at home in the large town, and on her return she fell into the arms of her mother with sobs of joy.

Prince William had already been for two years at Basle. During this whole time he had not come to Neuwied or seen any of his family. Princess Elizabeth thanks him for the letter she had received in Berlin, and writes as follows on her return to Neuwied:--