Memoirs of Bertha von Suttner: The Records of an Eventful Life (Vol. 1 of 2)

In May, 1885, nine years after our elopement, we returned home. Not without a pang did we say farewell to the Caucasus; we had grown very fond of the beautiful country, and our friends there also found it hard to let us go. But the delight, after such a long separation, of coming back “to our house” as a happy couple, who had proved their right to such happiness and had fought their way to a self-supporting profession,—this delight outweighed all the grief of leave-taking, and just as jubilantly as we had originally set sail from Odessa to carry our love and our passion for adventure to the legendary land of Colchis, so jubilantly did we set sail from Batum to cross the Black Sea once more: homeward—homeward!

Our first destination in Europe was Görz, the place where lay my mother’s grave. There we desired to kneel before we returned to the Suttners’ paternal house. Therefore we went directly through Vienna without pausing, and it was only when that visit of pious sorrow had been paid that we turned our faces back to the north again. Then we spent one day in Vienna with Brother Karl, whose reception of us gave a foretaste of the welcome that was awaiting us. We appointed the next day for our arrival at Harmannsdorf. Artur begged that no one should come to meet us at the station, so that he might find all his dear ones at once in the Harmannsdorf that he so loved.

So, then, at the station of Eggenburg only the family carriage was waiting for us. From Eggenburg to our destination is another three miles. Ah, that splendid drive! It was a sunny, fragrant May day; the song of larks in the air, red clover in the meadows, radiant joy in our hearts. The landscape in the distant mountain land, where, according to the myth, the earthly paradise was situated, was unquestionably grander and finer than this flat Lower-Austrian region—but this was home. A hundred sweet recollections arose in my mind, and doubtless a thousand in his; it was the abode of his youth and childhood. When we reached the place on the road where the tower of the castle becomes visible, he stretched out his left arm toward the horizon with a cry of joy, and with his right pressed me to him.

“Willkommen zu Hause, mein Weib!” he said in a tone of deep emotion. It was the only time in his life that he called me “wife”; perhaps this is why that moment, with all its blessed solemnity, has remained so clearly impressed upon my mind.

And now the arrival,—the entrance through the gate, the pause before the castle drawbridge, where the whole family was assembled,—well, we know from the Bible how it is usual to celebrate the return of the prodigal son.

The best rooms in the castle had been made ready for us, and thus I was “at home” under the roof of Harmannsdorf—a roof that was to protect our happiness for seventeen years longer.

Now began for us a new life, a family life. Harmannsdorf was occupied by the parents and the three daughters; the eldest also, married to a Count Sizzo at Trent, was with us making a visit. The oldest son, Karl, secretary in the Department of Commerce, came every Saturday, and always spent his vacation at Harmannsdorf with his beautiful wife and his twelve-year-old daughter Mizzi, who was a pupil at the Sacré Cœur Convent. As such she was very piously inclined, and made the most strenuous endeavors to convert her Uncle Artur, for whom she had conceived an ardent affection and whose ecclesiastical lukewarmness caused her great anxiety as to the salvation of his soul. The second oldest brother, Richard, lived with his family at the castle of Stockern, a mile and a half distant, and of course the intercourse between Stockern and Harmannsdorf was very lively. Of other neighbors, whom we constantly saw, those we liked best were the owners of Mühlbach, Baron and Baroness Josef Gudenus, and the castellan of Maissau, the grand master of the huntsmen, Count Traun. From Vienna often came Artur’s former schoolmates; in short, the domestic and social life left nothing to be desired in agreeableness and liveliness of intercourse. And yet we managed to save out many hours for laborious solitude. For we kept up our scientific studies, were always reading the same books together, and also writing together; not that we collaborated in authorship,—each worked independently, and we each read the other’s writings only after they had been printed,—but we wrote at the same worktable.

Even while we were in the Caucasus we had entered into correspondence with many of our contemporary authors. This correspondence was now carried on even more assiduously. My Inventarium had brought me many unknown friends in literary circles.

Thus one day we were surprised by an enthusiastic letter from Friedrich Bodenstedt. As the poet of Mirza Schaffy had himself spent many years in the Caucasus, he took a keen interest in Artur Gundaccar’s Caucasian stories. M. G. Conrad of Munich, in whose newly founded monthly magazine, Die Gesellschaft, had appeared Es Löwos and other things, had also engaged us in correspondence. Hermann Heiberg, Robert Hamerling, Count von Schack, Ludwig Büchner, Konrad Ferdinand Meyer, Karl Emil Franzos,—those are some of the names of our correspondents; also Balduin Groller, who had long exchanged letters with B. Oulot in the Zugdidi days without suspecting that this nom de plume concealed a woman, as he himself tells the story in one of his delicious feuilletons.

I was fulfilling my duty as editor of a great literary periodical. That flood of generally mediocre manuscripts, all of which demanded to be read! Occasionally, as in a big, stupid cake, a raisin here and there—the rare products of genius. Once there was a special editorial feast-day; I had found a big raisin, a work of remarkable depth and delicacy and quite incomparable grace of construction. That was a delight, a genuine intoxication; a new talent—that is certainly nothing trifling, is it? Above all things, what is the man’s name? B. Oulot—a singular name, but the world will soon get used to it. But this was not the only singularity. I take into my hand again the letter which accompanied it. Where does the man live and what else does he do? A Russian postage-stamp; the letter is dated from Zugdidi, Government of Kutais.... And there is also a request for leniency, as the work is the writer’s first. That too! I see to it at once that the honorarium shall be sent immediately, so as to keep the new contributor in good humor, and I write a letter of unreserved appreciation of this first work, with an urgent request for further articles.

These also came, and my delight and astonishment kept on increasing. They betrayed a scientific and philosophical competence equal to that of any university professor, but at the same time a grace, and a humor that triumphed over everything—no, assuredly it was not a university professor.

We got to talking together, of course through letters. We could not get to the end of all that we had to say to each other. In this exchange of ideas we discovered that we had in common so many opinions about art and life that it would have been sheer nonsense to keep bothering with society flourishes, and we began to use the “thou” like two good comrades. It was brother heart on this side, brother heart on that; but on one occasion I must have expressed myself so vigorously and so unequivocally—between comrades one is not so particular about little things—regarding some question which would have come within the purview of the as yet unpromulgated Lex Heinze, that a protest might seem proper. It followed in a very delicate, perfectly unobtrusive manner. The next letter ended with Deine ergebene—the feminine form.

I was dumfounded. So B. Oulot is a woman—who would have thought that of the man! I demanded an explanation and received one. B. Oulot was—Baroness Bertha von Suttner, born Countess Kinsky.—Well, all right then. I did not feel offended at it after that, and anyhow there was no changing it now.

This was just at the time of “the revolution in literature,” and we followed with the liveliest sympathy the phases of that revolution. Conrad, Bleibtreu, Alberti—we read all that they wrote and were amazed at their audacities. A Moderne was beginning to show its head—which, to be sure, has since been thrown on the rubbish heap by the very most modern Modernen. And in the plastic arts too the first symptoms of the Secession began to be distinguishable. Everywhere there was fermentation.—After all, there is at every period a newest thing which surprises and puzzles, is antagonized, wins, and soon becomes vieux jeu. That the present phase seems to one to be so unprecedentedly subversive of all that has been supreme, is mere illusion.

In October of this year, the first year of our return, the Congress of the Authors’ Union held its session in Berlin. In our capacity as members of the Union we were invited to be present, and we needed no second invitation.

I preserved in my diary a few pictures of this congress—the first which I had ever attended in my life—and later turned them to account in my Schriftstellerroman.

On the evening before the first business meeting, a “gathering and informal greeting of the members of the Union” took place in the Kaiserhalle.

At the entrance of the assembly hall, from which comes the loud buzz of hundreds of voices speaking at once, stands the host, that is to say, the President of the Congress, to receive the guests. That is Hermann Heiberg,—tall, fair, elegant, with nobly formed features.

The hall is packed; only with difficulty can one make one’s way from place to place. A large number of those present have already taken their seats at two or three long tables which run from one end of the hall to the other. With difficulty are places secured for us.

Hermann Heiberg introduces various colleagues to us, and these fetch still others. As often as a name celebrated in literature is mentioned, I am stirred by the same kind of joy that one feels when at a raffle a winning number is called. There is only one thing that is often bitterly disappointing,—sometimes the actuality so utterly fails to correspond to the mental picture that one has formed of the author in question. To be sure this picture was quite misty, indefinite, lineless as it were, and yet one regrets its annihilation. What, were these fragrant love-songs, these rapturous fancies, written by the brutal-looking stout man? And can it be that this awkward little bourgeois manikin is the author of those exquisitely elegant pictures of high life? What! Did that downy-bearded youth yonder who looks like a grocery clerk write those essays dripping with wisdom and experience?

Various figures and faces attract my attention, and I ask who they are. An imposing female apparition in black toilet with transparent sleeves—an interesting face: Frau Ida Boy-Ed, the author of Männer der Zeit. A small man with long white hair and benevolently beaming eyes in a beardless face; that is Paulus Cassel, an apostle of self-sacrificing philanthropy. There, leaning against a column,—a sharp contrast to the Apostle Paulus,—a dark Mephistophelian phenomenon: it is Fritz Mauthner the satirist. Near him is a pretty, animated young woman—it is the American Sara Hutzler, whose specialty is original child-scenes; the one who afterward married the dramatist Kainz, but died within a short time.

There at last—we recognize him by his picture—is Mirza Schaffy, our dear correspondent-friend Bodenstedt. He hastens to us and sits down with us. Then follow new reminiscences of the Caucasus; it was there that the poet spent the most joyous years of his youthful activity. And he tells of Tiflis, of the forests of Mingrelia, of the roofs of the Oriental houses on which in the moonlight beautiful women play the lute and dance, and to which in the silence of the night a young German poet is summoned for a tryst; of the Platonic passion which the beautiful wife of a Russian general inspired in the same youth, and which even to-day gleams as the most magical recollection in the poems of the gray-haired man.

Not only on that evening but during the whole session of the Authors’ Congress, Friedrich Bodenstedt was our constant companion; we could not weary of telling one another of the Caucasus.

On the next day the business meetings began. It was the first session of a Union that I had ever attended. The whole affair—the green table standing on the lofty podium, the members of the directorate sitting around it, each with a pile of paper in front of him, the president in the midst—made a solemn impression on me. It aroused in my mind the comprehension of a thing which is destined to assume ever deeper and more widely inclusive dimensions in the humanity of the future; that is to say, the consciousness of solidarity. This is a consciousness which works even more efficaciously than the command “Love your neighbor as yourself”; for in the right kind of solidarity your neighbor is identical with yourself to begin with. That the interests of all are at the same time the interests of each, and vice versa, gives to each individual such a heightened feeling of existence as if he were the whole: he can no longer separate his ego from the collectivity, since this is—as the word Union signifies—one, and therefore inseparable. Of course that is only the ideal conception of a Union; in practice the thing often lacks its own life principle, unity.

This is not the place to tell of the matters dealt with and the course that the business took, although I find these stated in my notebook. Let me only sketch two or three more features of the convention.

At the Rathaus, greetings by the Bürgermeister, and addresses following. An address by Max Nordau was on the programme, but unfortunately this fell through. The Lord Mayor of Berlin, in gala attire, welcomed the guests and said all the flattering things that can be said to “the laborers of the mind,” “the bearers of civilization,” those who embody “the progress of the idea of our time” and constitute “the pride of the nation.” After the perfunctory speech of thanks for the “honor of such a reception” in “the Metropolis of the Intellect,” and the like, begin the promised addresses,—addresses in connection with which the New York Staats-Zeitung later made the remark that “the association of literary Freelunchers, instead of discussing arrangements for furthering the interests of their profession, talked about the relation of Old Fritz to German literature and about the Goethe House.”

On the sixth and last day, banquet and ball in the hall of the “Harmonie.” Again Hermann Heiberg stands at the entrance and welcomes his colleagues and numerous guests from Berlin society. The great hall, made as light as day, is speedily filled; the guests take their places at table, and when the roast comes in the toasts and speeches begin. The first speaker is Karl Emil Franzos, who in the name of the Danube states says all sorts of friendly things to the capital of the German Empire. Then Julius Wolff. The speakers mount a tribune so that they may be better heard. Among them there are women. It is incomprehensible to me ... how can one have the courage to talk so in public? A young Russian woman with a foreign accent praises ger’manische poetry. An elderly authoress also ascends the tribune. Her voice is so weak that only those quite close to her can hear what she says; although conversation is resumed throughout the hall, she goes on haranguing indefatigably in a plea—as we afterwards come to learn—for putting up a memorial tablet on the house of Gutzkow. With all zeal—especially with sweeping movements of her arms, the only part of the address that the audience can make out—she explains the imperative necessity for this memorial tablet, until some one at the foot of the tribune cries out, “It was put up long ago.”

Now Oskar Justinus recites a poetical toast to the women that write, and points out that even in the most ancient times there were bluestockings, for it is well known that Leda was not averse to taking a quill in her hand.

The last address is delivered by Hermann Heiberg, in bringing the banquet to an end. Raising his glass, he says: “May that be fulfilled which each one wishes in the bottom of his heart, be it right or be it—according to the world’s ideas—wrong.... The world’s ideas are often false, and what is warmly wished has a right to be granted.—So I drink to the fulfillment of our warmest wishes!”

“A strange toast,” remarked some one at the end of our table; “Heiberg seems to be talking in a fever.”

“That would be nothing to wonder at,” said my husband; “the ungrateful task of taking charge of a festival brings with it so much annoyance and worry that—as he himself told me a little while ago—it is only with quinine that he keeps himself up.... And then he is one who understands everything, forgives everything, and would be willing that everybody should have a bit of happiness, whether what they wish is right or—in the opinion of the world—wrong. I am one who have had fulfilled a warm wish which other people condemned—and it was my happiness.”

“And mine, too,” I added under my breath.

Now once more followed a long and industrious period of work in our dear Harmannsdorf. We all stayed in the country, even in winter; the palace in Vienna had been sold, for the quarry and other business transactions had turned out badly. But none of us had any yearnings for the city; the social companionship of the numerous members of the family, the sleighing parties on the snow-covered fields, mailtime with its manifold messages from the wide world, the sessions of joyous labor at our common writing-table, the reading aloud to each other of some interesting scientific book, the many little jokes and silly tricks which we still kept playing on each other,—for we remained like children,—all this filled our days so satisfactorily that we assuredly did not hanker for the pleasures of city life.

And then when spring awoke, about Easter-time, how we did enjoy finding the first violet in the sward of the park! and there followed the series of ever-increasing pleasures in the first umbels of the elder, the first call of the cuckoo, the first note of the blackbird.

“After all,” My Own remarked, “that is pleasanter to hear than the howling of the jackal. Now spring was thoroughly beautiful in the home of Medea too; but really the charm of the things which one has been accustomed to since childhood, the beauty of one’s own garden, the thousand greetings which come to one from the tones, the scents, and the colors of one’s own home, are sweeter than the most splendid impressions of travel.”

In this time I wrote my Schriftstellerroman (“Romance of an Author”) and Das Maschinenzeitalter (“The Age of Machinery”). The latter afforded me great enjoyment, for in it I threw off from my mind all that had accumulated within me of grief and exasperation at the conditions of the present, and of glowing hopes for the future so full of promise. The book was not to appear under my own name; it was signed Jemand—“Some One.” The motive for this anonymity was not cowardice, but, as it was altogether scientific and philosophical themes that were very freely treated in the Maschinenzeitalter, I was afraid that if the book were signed with a woman’s name it would not reach the readers whom I desired; for in scientific circles there is so much prejudice against the capacity of women as thinkers that a book signed with a woman’s name would simply remain unread by those for whom it was expressly designed.

When the second winter after our return from the Caucasus was coming on, we decided to see a bit of the European world. The Maschinenzeitalter was finished, and I had (not without difficulty) found a publisher for it,—Schabelitz in Switzerland. It was not to appear till spring.

We decided to spend a few weeks in Paris, which My Own had never seen. The payment for a novel sufficed to cover the expenses of the trip, and we set forth with that full sensation of enjoyment which is involved in the notion of a pleasure trip. I can still remember: deep snow was lying on the fields around Harmannsdorf, a fierce snowstorm was blowing into our faces as the sleigh took us to the station, and we rejoiced in it and laughed immoderately. If the road was drifted so as to be impassable, well, then we would start some other day; our trips in the Caucasus had accustomed us to far more serious difficulties. There we had often ridden on the edge of abysses and crossed narrow, swaying bridges; had reached ferries which the ferryman refused to take us over on account of the dangerously swollen state of the water, so that we had to seek shelter in a wooden hut, content ourselves with a meal of bread, sardines, and Kachetin wine, sleep on a bare bench,—and yet we used often to recall even these experiences as blithesome recollections.

The sleigh took us to the station without mishap; only the luggage-sled arrived too late, so we had to wait for a later train, and could not continue our journey to Paris on the same day, as we had meant to, but were obliged to spend a day in Vienna.

Our sojourn in Paris proved to be very pleasurable. We sauntered on the boulevards and in the Champs-Élysées; we drove in the Bois; we were assiduous attendants at the theaters great and little; we visited the museums; we made excursions to Versailles, Saint-Cloud, and Sèvres; and we took in all the other similar diversions that every visitor to Paris feels he must enjoy.

I wrote a note to Alfred Nobel, with whom I had all along kept in touch by correspondence,—perhaps in the eleven years eleven letters had passed between us,—to acquaint him with our presence in Paris. He came without delay to look us up. I found him unchanged, except that he had grown somewhat gray, but he was more deeply than ever immersed in his labors and inventions. My Own took a keen interest in his chemical investigations, which he explained in detail with the help of his crucibles and other apparatus when, a few days later, having invited us to dinner, he did the honors of his house and his laboratory. He still lived very much aloof from the world; the only house which he frequently visited was Madame Juliette Adam’s, and he took us there.

The author of Païenne and editor of the Nouvelle Revue lived in her own house in the street named after her the Rue Juliette Lambert. As every one knows, Madame Adam was a great patriote, which at that epoch signified a representative of the idea of revanche. And I can remember that in our very first call she steered the conversation into a political channel. But just then was one of the moments when it was generally believed that the war of revenge, predicted for sixteen years, was coming. Herr von Bismarck was in want of a military law valid for seven years, and in the German parliament the method of “War in Sight” was employed as is usual on such occasions. The recipe is a sure one: with a view to this all military demands are readily granted. Furthermore, the Schnäbele incident on the frontier happened, and on the horizon, slowly mounting, appeared General Boulanger’s black horse. What an outpouring of amateur political opinion there was! Wherever one went this question was asked, Will it break out? In the newspapers, and still more in the air, there was the anticipation of some great event. In the Chat noir, that famous artists’ Gschnas-Café (the ancestor of all the cabarets that now flood the world), Caran d’Ache was conducting his magic lantern “L’Épopée,” Napoleonic war scenes, and cela fait vibrer la fibre patriotique. Madame Adam also vibrated.

And she invited us in a most friendly way to a great evening reception which was to take place at her house within a few days. Of that soirée I have preserved a rather lively recollection.

The little house in the Rue Juliette Lambert was filled with guests from the first landing of the staircase to the farthest corner of the salon. On the threshold of the salon door stood Madame Adam, an imposing and captivating figure. She wore a dark-red velvet gown with long train, diamonds on the bosom, and diamonds in her white hair massed high. Her face under this white hair looked still youthful,—somewhat in the style of Marie Geistinger as la belle Hélène. Of course, as the duty of a hostess required, she gave each person a gracious word with a gracious smile.

“Ah, dear baron,” she said to my husband, “I am so much attracted toward you because the country which you describe so excellently in your books, the semibarbarous Caucasus, is so fascinating to me.”

Certainly, it was well known how much everything Russian fascinated Madame Adam, the glorifier of Aksákof and of General Skóbelef. “How can a woman ever busy herself so much with politics?” was my thought at that time. “How much that is disagreeable, and sometimes ridiculous, she brings upon herself by that! And how can one bother herself with editing a review into the bargain?”

Many distinguished men—artists, authors, politicians—were gathered in Madame Adam’s salons, and many pretty women. Madame Napoleon Ney was pointed out to us as one of the most famous beauties of Parisian society. Unfortunately, one could not make the acquaintance of all the interesting persons present; the throng was so dense that one had to stay in his corner and be contented with talking to a few in his own vicinity. And for the most part one had to be still and listen, for—as was the custom in Paris—the guests were served with all sorts of artistic delectations: a pianist played Hungarian melodies; an author of great promise, but as yet unknown, read a few short stories; and Mademoiselle Brandés, at that time not yet engaged at the Théâtre Français, declaimed a poem. But even here, amid this artistic and social gayety, the dark word “War” was buzzing through the room; here and there the names of Bismarck and Moltke and Schnäbele were heard, and prophecies that next spring it surely would come to something were boldly uttered, but without detracting from the spirit of cheerfulness that prevailed; these vaticinations probably aroused fine hopes in the hostess, enthusiastic for her country’s glory as she was. I was no longer so indifferent in the presence of these things as I had been during my youth. I already hated war fervently, and this frivolous trifling with the possibility of it seemed to me as lacking in conscience as in common sense.

It was a great joy to us to meet in Paris a friend from the Caucasus, Princess Tamara of Georgia. The beautiful young widow had been established in the French capital for a year with her two half-grown girls; she lived in a fascinatingly furnished mansion in the Elysée quarter. We were very frequently invited to her functions, and always found a large company there, Russians for the most part. General Baron Frederiks, who afterward became, and is still, chief master of ceremonies to the Tsar, was a friend of the house.

We cultivated literary society extensively. A Dr. Löwenthal, who had written to me on account of my Inventarium einer Seele when we were still in the Caucasus, and with whom, after an ardent exchange of ideas, we two had become close friends, made us acquainted with Max Nordau. The greatly celebrated author of “Conventional Lies,” although then only thirty-eight, had very thick snow-white hair, which was very effective with his black beard, black eyes, and interesting face. There were some unforgettable hours which we four spent in conversation about God’s magnificent world and the conventional, lie-ridden world of humanity.

In the Buloz house, where we attended a ball a few days after the Adam soirée, there was not so strong a flavor of politics as in the home of the Nouvelle revue; here homage was paid to only two things, the Revue des deux mondes and the Académie Française. The Buloz house had the reputation of being a center of the literary and intellectual life of Paris. On Madame Buloz’s Tuesdays half of the Forty Immortals were to be found there, and of course all the collaborators of the Revue, from which the Academy so often draws its recruits. The solid old palais in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, with its ground floor devoted to the offices of the monthly, and its big reception rooms on the floor above, had a grave and dignified air. The furnishings of the salon were of rich and substantial plainness. The tone all through the house was rather stiff, puristic, erudite—in short, academic. The same tone, you know, that permeates the so often uncut pages of the articles in the old Revue. The married life of the husband and wife seemed to be exemplary. M. Buloz, a man of serious and steady look, and at the same time amiable, of about forty, with full red beard trimmed to a point—liking best of all to talk about his Revue, the conduct of which cost him much labor, for he read every line of the manuscripts that were sent in, and sternly repelled any encroachment of frivolous realism—who could have suspected at that time that a few years later he would be compelled to part from his Revue, and that under such frivolous circumstances as he would never have permitted one of his colleagues to incorporate in a novel? Most surprising and startling for the whole serious milieu came the sudden discovery that M. Buloz had wasted nearly all his property, besides incurring a million in debts,—all for a woman. A separation resulted—whether Madame Buloz got one or whether she pardoned him I do not know—but a separation from his Revue, the proud paternal inheritance. He was forced to leave the management; and the monthly, which ever since its foundation, for more than a half century, had borne the name of Charles Buloz, both father and son, came out with the name of Brunetière.

Since then the undertaking has fallen off in circulation; various new monthlies have come into existence to enter into active rivalry with this great-grandmother of reviews. At that time it was in full flower; it had a circulation of 25,000 copies and brought its stockholders large and ever-increasing dividends. At that ball M. Buloz told me that his father had for thirty years published the magazine under a deficit; then suddenly came the change—the Revue was read all over the world and its owners became millionaires.

“You see, gracious lady,” added M. Buloz jestingly, “if a periodical has been kept up for a time, it can expect further duration and some profit; only the first thirty years are rather hard sailing.”

The connections which we formed at the Buloz house brought us into relations with various members of the Academy. I remember one evening which we spent with Victor Cherbuliez and when we met Ernest Renan. It was but a small circle of people that was grouped around the fireplace there, and the result was a genuine causerie, such as cannot be had in reception rooms filled with hundreds of people. There were present M. and Mme. Cherbuliez and their daughter; M. and Mme. Renan; M. de Rothan, a former diplomat and author of highly valued political articles and contemporaneous reminiscences, especially regarding Alsace-Lorraine; his wife; and lastly, Ludovic Halévy, the latest of the Academicians. The merry blasphemer of the Grecian Olympus,—for with the aid of the equally merry Meilhac he had exposed Jupiter, Juno, Venus, and Mars to Offenbach’s musical mockery,—the creator of Madame Cardinal, mistress of the household, and her daughters who “went on the boards,” was sparkling with wit in his conversation too. As a novelist, however, he was also successful in striking the serious strings; remember his novel L’Abbé Constantin, with its tinge of sentimentality and its harmlessness for boarding-school misses. And by no means did he fail to make the famous patriot fiber vibrate; he became the historian of the invasion of 1871, and celebrated the military glory and the heroic misfortunes of the conquered.

So it came about that when the conversation that evening touched upon the predominant question of the day—the threatening war-cloud—Halévy welcomed, with some pathos, the possibly approaching day of requital.

Renan excitedly took the other side. He did not conceal his horror for national massacres in general, but as a thinker he was especially pained by the hostility between his nation and “the nation of thinkers.” He acknowledged that he had learned much from German philosophy, and spoke with the greatest respect of its representatives in both older and later times.

I had expected that Renan should be ugly in his outward appearance, for that was notorious; but this expectation fell below the reality: short, stout, sallow, with a broad, beardless face, reminding one of Grützner’s monks, a monstrous bald cranium,—with these qualities, the author of the Vie de Jésus gave me at first glance the impression that he was the ugliest man I had seen in my life. Ten minutes after he had begun to speak, this impression was effaced. Not only tolerable did he seem to me, but possessed of a genuine charm.

Another charmer whose acquaintance we made in Paris was Alphonse Daudet. In his case the power of the intellect, the fiery, easy discourse, were accompanied by an externally beautiful appearance. With his flashing black eyes, his thick curling hair, his mobile, aristocratic features, Alphonse Daudet could not have helped pleasing every one even if he had not been Alphonse Daudet. His wife—who was more of a collaborator to him than the world suspects, though his grateful testimony to the fact was public and plain-spoken—was likewise a very attractive personality. I often called there on her day at home. The man of the house was not present on these occasions, but stayed shut up in his workroom. It was in this that he used to receive us and fascinate us with his gift of fiery conversation.

In the spring of 1887 we returned home from Paris enriched with many experiences and impressions. One thing especially I had learned there, which had a decisive influence on my after life and work. In a conversation about war and peace—a theme which was already mightily filling my soul—our friend Dr. Wilhelm Löwenthal informed us that there existed in London an “International Peace and Arbitration Association,” the aim of which was to bring about, by creating and organizing public opinion, the establishment of an international court of appeal which should take the place of armed force in settling disputes between nations.

“What! Madrid had such a girl, and I learn it for the first time to-day!” cries Don Carlos, when, in the scene with the Princess Eboli, she discloses her soul to him. Just so I felt. What? such a league existed,—the idea of justice between nations, the struggle to do away with war, had assumed form and life? The news electrified me. Dr. Löwenthal had to give me on the spot all the details about the formation of the Association, its aim, its methods, and the persons who were associated with it. What I learned was as follows:

The name of the founder and president of the Association was Hodgson Pratt. The Duke of Westminster, the Earl of Ripon, the Bishop of Durham, and others were among its directors. Its headquarters were in London.

Hodgson Pratt, a man of lofty ethical and philanthropical principles, had, within a few years, journeyed over the Continent for the purpose of calling into existence branches of his society. Since then there were in Stuttgart a “Württembergischer Verein,” Fr. von Hellwald, president; in Berlin a provisional committee, Professor Virchow, president; in Milan a “Unione lombarda per la pace,” Professor Vigano, president (after him, Teodoro Moneta); in Rome an “Associazione per l’arbitrio e la pace,” Ruggero Bonghi, Minister of Instruction, president. Others in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

The appeal which the London society had adopted as the basis of its propaganda, a copy of which Dr. Löwenthal handed me, contained the following introduction:

Lately a member of the English ministry declared that England’s greatest interest is peace. Could not the same thing be said of every civilized country?

The international political conditions in the civilized world when contemplated arouse no less astonishment than reflection.

On the one hand men of every rank and of all shades of opinion desire progress, the common advantage and happiness of mankind; and the object of all the endeavors of the men of science, the enlightened writers and thinkers, culminates in the accomplishment of this progress and well-being.

On the other hand, in opposition to these endeavors, the fruits of industry and diligence are constantly sacrificed in behalf of military objects, and this sacrifice serves to delay and hinder all progress.

Has the time not arrived, at the close of the Nineteenth Century, for all men to consult together and get into agreement to put an end to this folly, this terrible plague which can be avoided only through a common understanding and endeavor?

But how arrive at this result? Through the irresistible power of widely directed and energetically organized public opinion.

The means for attaining this propaganda and this organization is to be found in the formation of a great league, with branches in all European cities.

The appeal goes on to explain what the league was to aim at and what were to be its methods.

On my return I found awaiting me the proof sheets of my book Das Maschinenzeitalter (“The Age of Machinery”). I added in the chapter entitled “Zukunftsausblicke” (“Glimpses into the Future”) an account of the London League. Just as I had previously known nothing about it, I took it for granted that my readers also were unacquainted with this phenomenon of the times. For in that thing called “Publicity,” the endeavors of a few hundred men—even of a few thousand—disappear like so many drops of carmine in an arm of the sea.

When the book came out, shortly afterward, I had the satisfaction that not a single one of the very numerous critics who devoted whole columns to their reviews of it ever suspected that “Jemand”—Some One—could possibly belong to “the weak-minded sex.” Doctor Moritz Necker, the well-known literary editor of the Vienna Tagblatt, in writing to me about another matter, mentioned that he had recently been reading an anonymous book called Das Maschinenzeitalter; in his mind there was no doubt that the author was Max Nordau. Cherbuliez was of the same opinion, and in a sixteen-page article in the Revue des deux mondes designated Max Nordau as the author of the work he was reviewing. Max Nordau met this with a published declaration that he did not know the book, and that he was in the habit of signing what he wrote.

For some time I had been in correspondence with the philosopher Bartholomäus von Carneri, to whom, after reading his Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus (“Morality and Darwinism”), I had written a letter expressing my admiration; he had replied that he knew and prized my Inventarium, and a regular correspondence had ensued. I had not revealed to him anything about my anonymous book; I was all the more pleasingly surprised when in the newspaper report of the parliamentary proceedings I found a speech of Carneri’s, delivered in the Austrian Reichsrat the day before, in which he mentioned Das Maschinenzeitalter. Thereupon I asked him what kind of a book it was, and who was the author. To this he replied that the author was not named, but he had guessed who it was—Karl Vogt; he had instantly recognized him by his style. Many, however, believed that he himself, Carneri, had written the book. Then I confessed to him that I was the guilty one, but begged him to keep the secret, and this he agreed to do.

At the beginning of the next autumn we had gone to Vienna for a fortnight, as we often did. At the hotel at which we put up we learned that the member of the Reichsrat from Styria, B. von Carneri, was in the same house. The prospect of becoming personally acquainted with my famous correspondent was extremely tempting to me, and we sent in our names to him. The savant received us with alacrity. An old man, a sick man,—almost a cripple,—and yet what gayety and freshness! Carneri had never been well in his life. His head was all the time bent over to his right shoulder, he could walk only with difficulty, and since his early youth he had not spent a day without agonizing pain. And he called himself a happy man; he not only called himself so, he was. His intellectual labors, his political activities, the possession of a beloved daughter and a beloved son-in-law, the high regard which he had won in the learned world and among his parliamentary associates, may well have been the basis of his enjoyment of life; but the real secret was doubtless that he not only dealt in philosophy but actually was a philosopher, that is to say, a man who can pass beyond the miseries of life and thankfully enjoy its beauty.

We spent some exhilarating hours in Carneri’s company; all the themes which we had broached in our correspondence were discussed, and the friendship which had begun through our letters was only confirmed by this personal association. That same evening we met again. When the member from Marburg-an-der-Drau stayed in Vienna during the sessions of the parliament, he was accustomed to take his supper at a certain long table in the hotel dining-room, and at that table a number of his colleagues and other prominent personages from the political, literary, and learned circles of Vienna used to gather. The “Carneri table” at the Hotel Meissl was a sort of salon of wit and talent. That evening we also took our places at this table, and listened with interest to the lively conversation, the center of which was our friend Carneri, at whose right hand I sat. I can remember one episode. My neighbor on the right suddenly spoke past me to my neighbor on the left, and said to him:

“Say, I have bought the book you quoted in your speech lately. Do you still not know who ‘Jemand’ is?”

“No, I have not a suspicion,” replied Carneri, and exchanged a smiling glance with me. “And what do you say to it?”

My right-hand neighbor began a long dissertation on Das Maschinenzeitalter, and another man who had also read it joined in the conversation. What was said I no longer recall; I only know that it was not disagreeable to me, but amused me immensely, especially when I threw in the remark, “I shall have to get that myself,” and some one cried, “Oh, that is not a book for ladies!”