Bismarck

We left Ferrières about 7 o’clock on the morning of the 5th of October. At first we drove along by-roads, which were however in excellent condition, passing a large wood, several parks and châteaux and a number of respectable villages that appeared to be entirely deserted by their inhabitants and were now occupied solely by German soldiers. Everywhere an appearance of exceptional prosperity. Later on we reached a pontoon bridge decorated with the Prussian colours, which took us over the Seine. On the other side we met the Crown Prince and his suite, who had ridden out to welcome the King. The latter, accompanied by the Chancellor, was to proceed from this point on horseback to a review of troops. We then drove on alone, turning into a high road which led to the village of Villeneuve le Roi.

I had long been looking forward to my first glimpse of Paris. It was however out off on the right by a rather high range of wooded hills, on the sides of which we now and then, noticed a village or small white town. At length we come to an opening, a little valley, and we observe the blue outline of a great cupola—the Pantheon! Hurrah! we are at last outside Paris.

We shortly afterwards turned into a broad paved highway where a Bavarian picket was stationed to watch a road which crossed it at this point and led towards Paris. To the left an extensive plain, and on the right a continuation of the chain of wooded heights. A white town half way up the slope, then, lower down, two other villages, and we finally pass through an iron gateway partially gilt, traverse some busy streets, and a straight avenue with old trees, and then find ourselves in front of our quarters in Versailles.

On the 6th of October, the day after our arrival in the old royal town of France, Keudell remarked that we might possibly remain here for some three weeks. Nor did I think it improbable, as the course of the war up to that time had accustomed us to speedy success. We remained however five long months. But, as will be seen later on, the Minister must have suspected that our stay would not be a short one. For this reason, and as our lodging was the scene of very important events, a fuller description of it will probably be welcome.

The house which was occupied by the Chancellor of the Confederation belonged to one Madame Jesse, widow of a wealthy cloth manufacturer, who shortly before our arrival fled to Picardy with her two sons, leaving her property to the care of her gardener and his wife. It is No. 14 in Rue de Provence, which connects the Avenue de St. Cloud with the Boulevard de la Reine. The Rue de Provence is one of the quietest in Versailles. Many of the houses are surrounded by gardens. Ours is a slate-roofed house of three stories, the third of these being a garret. From the entrance in the courtyard a flight of stone steps leads up to the hall door. On the right of this hall is the principal staircase, and the following rooms open on to it; the dining-room looking out on the garden, the salon, a billiard-room, a conservatory, and the library of the deceased M. Jesse.

On the table in the salon stood an old-fashioned chimney clock with a fiendish figure in bronze biting his thumb. This demon grinned sarcastically at all the negotiations which led to the treaties with the South German States, the proclamation of the German Emperor and Empire, and afterwards to the surrender of Paris and the preliminaries of peace, all of which were signed in this salon, thus securing it a place in the world’s history.

The billiard-room was arranged as an office for the councillors, secretaries, and decipherers. In January, when there was a severe frost, a portion of the winter garden was assigned to the officers on guard. The library was occupied by orderlies and Chancery attendants.

The principal staircase led to a second hall, which received a dim light from a square flat window let into the roof. The doors of the Minister’s two rooms opened off this hall. Neither of them was more than ten paces by seven. One of these, the window of which opened on the garden, served at the same time as study and bed-chamber, and was very scantily furnished.

The other chamber, which was somewhat better furnished, although not at all luxuriously, served, in addition to the salon on the ground floor, for the reception of visitors. During the negotiations for the capitulation of Paris it was put at the disposal of Jules Favre for his meditations and correspondence.

Count Bismarck-Bohlen had a room to the left of the Chancellor’s, which also opened on the park and garden, Abeken having the opposite room looking on the street. Bölsing had a small chamber near the back-stairs, while I was lodged on the second floor over Bohlen’s room.

The park behind the house, though not large, was very pretty, and there during the bright autumn nights the tall figure and white cap of the Chancellor was frequently to be seen passing from the shade into the moonlight as he slowly strolled about. What was the sleepless man pondering over? What ideas were revolving through the mind of that solitary wanderer? What plans were forming or ripening in his brain during those still midnight hours?

It will be seen that the whole Field Foreign Office was not quartered at Madame Jesse’s. Lothar Bucher had a handsome apartment in the Avenue de Paris, Keudell and the decipherers were lodged in a house somewhat higher up than ours in the Rue de Provence, and Count Hatzfeldt lived in the last house on the opposite side of the way. There was some talk on several occasions of providing the Chancellor with more roomy and better furnished lodgings, but the matter went no further, possibly because he himself felt no great desire for such a change, and perhaps also because he liked the quiet which prevailed in the comparatively retired Rue de Provence.

During the day, however, this stillness was less idyllic than many newspaper correspondents described it at the time. I am not thinking of the fifes and drums of the troops that marched through the town and which reached our ears almost daily, nor of the noise which resulted from two sorties made by the Parisians in our direction, nor even of the hottest day of the bombardment, as we had become accustomed to all that, much as the miller does to the roar and rattle of his wheels. I refer principally to the numerous visitors of all kinds, many of them unwelcome, who were received by the Chancellor during those eventful months. Our quarters was often like a pigeon house from the constant flow of strangers and acquaintances in and out. At first non-official eavesdroppers and messengers came from Paris, followed later by official negotiators in the persons of Favre and Thiers, accompanied by a larger or smaller retinue. There were princely visitors from the Hôtel des Reservoirs. The Crown Prince came several times, and the King once. The Church was also represented amongst the callers by high dignitaries, archbishops, and other prelates. Deputations from the Reichstag, individual party leaders, higher officials, and bankers arrived from Berlin, while Ministers came from Bavaria and other South German States for the purpose of concluding treaties. American generals, members of the foreign diplomatic body in Paris, including a “coloured gentleman,” and envoys of the Imperialist party wished to speak to the busy statesman in his small room upstairs, and, as a matter of course, English newspaper correspondents eagerly tried to force their way into his presence. Then there were Government couriers with their despatch bags, Chancery attendants with telegrams, orderlies with messages from the general staff, and besides all these a superfluity of work which was as difficult as it was important. In short, what with deliberating on old schemes and forming new ones, seeking how to overcome difficulties, vexation and trouble, the disappointment of well-grounded expectations, now and then a lack of support and readiness to meet his views, the foolish opinions of the Berlin press and their dissatisfaction notwithstanding our undreamt of success, together with the agitation of the Ultramontanes, it was often hard to understand how the Chancellor, with all these calls upon his activity and patience, and with all this disturbance and friction, was, on the whole, able to preserve his health and maintain that freshness which he showed so frequently late in the evening in conversations both serious and humorous. During his stay at Versailles he was only once or twice unwell for three or four days.

The Minister allowed himself little recreation—a ride between 3 and 4 o’clock, an hour at table with half an hour for the cup of coffee which followed it in the drawing-room, and now and then, after 10 P.M., a longer or shorter chat at the tea-table with whoever happened to be there, and a couple of hours sleep after daybreak. The whole remainder of the day was devoted to business, studying or writing in his room, or in conversations and negotiations,—unless a sortie of the French or some other important military operation called him to the side of the King, or alone to some post of observation.

Nearly every day the Chancellor had guests to dinner, and in this way we came to see and hear almost all the well-known and celebrated men prominently connected in the war. Favre repeatedly dined with us, reluctantly at first, “because his countrymen within the walls were starving,” but afterwards listening to wise counsel and exhortation and doing justice like the rest of us to the good things of the kitchen and cellar. Thiers, with his keen intelligent features, was on one occasion amongst the guests, and the Crown Prince once did us the honour to dine at our table, when such of the Chief’s assistants as were not previously known to him were presented. At another time Prince Albrecht was present. Of the Minister’s further guests, I will here only mention Delbrück, President of the Bundeskanzleiamt, who was frequently in Versailles for weeks at a time, the Duke of Ratibor, Prince Putbus, von Bennigsen, Simson, Bamberger, Friedenthal and von Blankenburg, the Bavarian Ministers Count Bray and von Lutz, the Würtemberg Ministers von Wächter and Mittnacht, von Roggenbach, Prince Radziwill, and finally Odo Russell, who was subsequently British Ambassador to the German Empire. When the Chief was present the conversation was always lively and varied, while it was frequently instructive as illustrating his manner of regarding men and things, or as throwing light upon certain episodes and incidents of his past life.

Madame Jesse put in an appearance a few days before our departure and, as previously observed, did not produce a good impression. She seems to have made charges against us which the French press, even papers that lay claim to some respectability, circulated with manifest pleasure. Amongst other things we are alleged to have packed up her plate and table linen. Furthermore, Count Bismarck tried to compel her to give him a valuable clock.

The first assertion was simply an absurdity, as there was no silver in the house, unless it was in a corner of the cellar which was walled up, and which—on the express directions of the Chief—was left unopened. The true story about the clock was quite different to that circulated by Madame Jesse. The article in question was the timepiece in the drawing-room with the small bronze demon. Madame Jesse offered the Chancellor this piece of furniture, which in itself was of comparatively little value, at an exorbitant price, on the assumption that he prized it as a witness to the important negotiations that had taken place in her room. I believe she asked 5,000 francs for it. But she overreached herself, and her offer was declined. “I remember,” said the Minister afterwards in Berlin, “observing at the time that possibly the impish figure on the clock, which made such faces, might be particularly dear to her as a family portrait, and that I should be sorry to deprive her of it.”