THE SAME TO THE SAME.

Petersburg, 9th Dec., 1860.

I take it for granted that you are already in Berlin, as I do not know what you could do in the long evenings at Kröchlendorf, although they are not so long as here, where lights are now brought punctually at three o’clock, to see to read and write. On some of our foggy days it is hardly possible, despite of the double windows and distance from the cold, to enter upon such pursuits after noon. But I can not say that my evenings or nights are too long; my anger at the swift progress of time is as great in the evening when I go to bed, or in the morning when I rise. I have just now a great deal to do; we are not at all social—my means do not permit it. I catch cold in other people’s houses, and generally an ambassador with 30,000 thalers salary is condemned to great economy. I receive visitors at dinner, i.e., I give them according to fortune de pot, but no evening parties. Evening parties, theatres, and so forth, are interdicted by the mourning carriages; coachmen, jägers, are all dressed in black. I have been out hunting once, but found the wolves wiser than the huntsmen; I was glad, however, to be able to do so once more. The cold is not very intense; three, five, seven, seldom eleven degrees of frost; there has been good sledging for some weeks.

I am in the midst of Christmas plagues, and find nothing for Johanna that is not too dear. Please buy her some twelve or twenty pearls at Friedberg’s, suitable for her necklace, i.e. for the largest; say about 300 thalers. I should also like some picture-books, in Schneider’s Library; if you are unable to get them, ask —— to do so. I should like “Düsseldorf Magazines” of last year, “Düsseldorf Art Albums” of last and this year, München Fliegender Blätter of last year, and München Bilderbogen of this year and the last; also Kladderdatsch Almanac, and such nonsense.

Please get all this as soon as you can, and send it me by the aid of Harry with the next dispatch-bag—also the pearls, so that they may be here by Christmas; a courier will probably start before then. Put a few boxes of confections with them, but not too many, for the children are in a customary state of digestion without them.

The death of old Bellin makes a breach at Schönhausen, and puts me into some doubt as to my arrangements there. I do not know whether the widow will remain in the mansion, or whether she will prefer her little cottage—the ice-house—which the old man arranged for her. The garden I shall have to resign to the farmer, but will reserve a right of resumption by a notice from year to year, should I return thither. The accounts I must give to my attorney; I do not know any one there.

THE SAME TO THE SAME.

Petersburg, 26 (14) March, 1861.

I first congratulate you on my birthday; this disinterested step, however, is not the only reason of the unusual appearance of an autograph letter from me. You know that on the 11th April the basis of my domestic bliss was born; it is not, however, as well known to you that I signified my delight at the return of this day last year by the present of a pair of earrings, brilliants, purchased of Wagner Unter von Linden, and that they have recently disappeared from the possession of the charming owner, and have probably been stolen. In order to soften the sorrow of this loss, I should be glad to receive by the 11th—there is sure to be a courier or some other traveller before that time—a pair of similar decorations of the conjugal earshells. Wagner will know about what they were and cost; if possible I should like them similar; a simple setting like your own, and they may be a little dearer than those of last year. The equality of my budget can not be maintained, whether the deficit be a hundred thalers more or less. I must await the restoration of my finances, when I take wife and children to Pomerania, and send the horses to grass in Ingermanland in the summer. Experience alone can tell how great the saving will be by such an operation. Should it prove insufficient, I shall next year leave my very pleasant house, and put myself on a Saxo-Bavaro-Würtemberg footing, until my salary is raised, or the leisure of private life is restored me. Otherwise I have grown friendly with the existence here, do not find the winter so bad as I thought, and require no change in my position, until, if it be God’s will, I can sit down in peace at Schönhausen or Reinfeld, to have my coffin made without undue haste. The ambition to be a minister dies away nowadays from a multitude of causes, not all fitted for epistolary communication; in Paris or in London I should live less pleasantly than here, and have no more to say; and a removal is half a death. The protection of two hundred thousand vagabondizing Prussians, one-third of whom live in Russia, and two-thirds of whom visit it annually, gives me enough to do not to get bored. My wife and children endure the climate very well; there is a certain number of people with whom I associate; now and then I shoot a bear or an elk, the latter some two hundred versts hence; there is charming sledging; high society—whose daily visits are without the slightest advantage for the royal service—I avoid, because I can not sleep if I go to bed so late. It is impossible to appear much before eleven; most people come after twelve, and about two go to a second soirée of supper-eating folks. This I am unable yet to endure, and perhaps never shall again, and I am not angry at it, as the ennui of a rout is more intense here than anywhere else, because one has too few circumstances of life and interests in common. Johanna goes out often, and answers without annoyance all questions about my health, as the necessary manure on the unfertile soil of conversation. I wish Johanna, for economical reasons, would go to Germany as soon as possible, but she will not! I mean to Pomerania, and I would follow her as soon and for as long as I can get leave of absence. I will take the waters somewhere, and then above all take a sea-bath, to get rid again of this intolerable tenderness of skin. There is nothing heard from and seen of ——; couriers seem to have left off travelling. For months I have had no express dispatches from the Ministry, and what come by post are tiresome. Farewell, dear heart; greet Oscar. The Neva still bears carriages of every kind, although we have had a thaw for weeks, so that no sledges can pass in the city, and carriages are daily broken in the deep fissures in the ice which covers the pavements; it is like driving over a frozen ploughed field. You, no doubt, have green leaves about you.

BISMARCK TO OSCAR VON ARNIM.

Reinfeld, 16th August, 1861.

I have just received the news of the terrible misfortune which has befallen you and Malwine. My first thought was to come to you instanter, but I had overestimated my strength. The cure has commenced, and the thought to break it off suddenly was so definitely contradicted, that I determined to let Johanna travel alone. Such a blow is beyond the power of human consolation; and yet it is a natural desire to be near those whom one loves, in sorrow, and to join in their lamentations. It is all we can do. A greater sorrow could scarcely have befallen you—to lose so charming and joyfully growing child in this way, and with it to bury all the hopes which were to become the joys of your old age. As to this, mourning can not depart from you as long as you live in this world. This I feel with you in deeply painful sympathy. We are without counsel, and helpless in the mighty hand of God—in so far as He will not help us—and can do nothing but bow in humility under His behest. He can take away from us all that He gave us, and leave us entirely desolate; and our mourning over this would be the more bitter the more we rise against the Omnipotent will in anger and opposition. Do not mingle bitterness and murmuring with your just sorrow, but remember that you still have a son and daughter left you, and that you must regard yourself as blest with them, and even with the feeling of having possessed a beloved child for fifteen years, in comparison with the many who have never had children and known paternal joys. I will not burden you with weak grounds for comfort, but assure you in these lines that as a friend and brother I feel your sorrow as my own, and am cut to the heart by it. How do all the little cares and troubles which beset our daily lives vanish beside the iron advent of real misfortunes! And I feel the recollections of all complaints and desires, by which I have forgotten how many blessings God gives us, and how much danger surrounds us without touching us, as so many reproofs. We should not depend on this world, and come to regard it as our home. Another twenty or thirty years, under the most favorable circumstances, and we shall both have passed from the sorrows of this world; our children will have arrived at our present position, and will find with astonishment that the life so freshly begun is going down hill. Were it all over with us so, it would not be worth while dressing and undressing. Do not you remember the words of a Stolpmünder fellow-traveller? The thought that death is but the passage to another life may perhaps diminish your sorrow but little, but you might believe that your beloved son would have been a faithful and true companion for the time you have yet to live here, and would have continued your memory. The circle of those whom we love grows narrower and receives no increase until we have grandchildren. At our years we make no new connections which can replace those who have died away. Let us therefore hold each other closer in affection, until death parts us also, as your son is now parted from us. Who can tell how soon! Will you not come with Malle to Stolpmünde, and live quietly with us for a few weeks or days? In any case I shall come in three or four weeks to you to Kröchlendorf, or wherever you may be. I greet my beloved Malle from my heart. May God grant her, as also yourself, strength to endure and patient resignation!

BISMARCK TO HIS SISTER.

Petersburg, 17 (5) Jan., 1862.

I wished last night to go shooting some fifteen miles hence on the road to ——, where some wild quadrupeds, already purchased by me, are awaiting me. I therefore wrote in great haste all that to-day’s courier was to take with him. Brotherly love in this case, however, would have suffered. Then it grew so cold again that the nocturnal sledging would have put my nose in a dilemma, and the chase would have been cruel for the beaters. I therefore gave it up, and won a little time to write you a few loving words—especially to thank you for your excellent purchases and letters. The dress is everywhere admired; and in the little brooch also your good taste has evinced itself. Christmas, with God’s grace, has passed away from us in quietness and content, and Marie is making satisfactory progress. It would, therefore, be unthankful to complain of the cold, which has remained fixed at 18° to 28° with a persistency remarkable even for Russia, which would give 22° to 32° for the little hills to the south-west, where I usually shoot. For fourteen days the temperature has never been less than 18°. Usually, it is seldom longer than thirty hours consecutively over 20°. The houses are so frozen that no fires are of any use. To-day it is 24° at the window in the sun; a bright sun and blue sky. You write in your last letter of imprudent words spoken by ——, in Berlin. Tact he has not, and never will have; but that he is intentionally my enemy I do not consider. Nor does any thing take place here that every body might not know. If I were disposed to continue my career, it might perhaps be the very best thing if a great deal were heard to my disadvantage, for then I should, at least, get back to Frankfurt; or if I were very idle and pretentious for eight years, that would do. This is far too late a thing for me; I shall therefore continue to do my duty. Since my illness I have become so mentally weak, that the energy for exciting circumstances is deficient. Three years ago, I might still have been a useful minister, but now I regard myself, mentally, as a sick circus-rider. I must remain in the service some years, if ever I am to see it. In three years the Kniephof lease will be out, in four years that of Schönhausen: until then I should not know exactly where to live, if I resigned. The present revision of posts leaves me out in the cold. I have a superstitious dread of expressing any wish about it, and afterwards to regret it by experience. I should go to Paris or London without sorrow, without joy, or remain here, as God and His Majesty please; the cabbage will grow no fatter for our policy, nor for me, whichever should happen. Johanna wishes for Paris, because she thinks the climate would suit the children better. Sickness happens everywhere, and so does misfortune; with God’s help, one gets over them, or one bends in resignation to His will; locality has nothing to do with it. To —— I concede any post; he has the material. I should be ungrateful to God and man, were I to declare I am badly off here, and anxious for a change; but for the Ministry I have an absolute fear, as against a cold bath. I would rather go to one of those vacant posts, or back to Frankfurt, even to Berne, where I lived very well. If I am to leave here, I should like to hear of it soon. On the 1 (13) February I must declare whether I retain my house, must, en cas que si, stipulate for buildings and repairs; expensive horses and other matters would have to be purchased, which requires months here, and causes a loss or saving of thousands. To move in winter is scarcely possible. After some interruptions, I read my letter again, and it makes a melancholy impression; unjustly so, for I am neither discontented nor tired of life, and, after careful consideration, have discovered no wish unfulfilled, except that it should be 10° less cold, and that I should have paid some fifty visits which press upon me. Modest wishes! I hear that I am expected in the winter to the Diet. I do not think of coming to Berlin without special orders from the King, unless in summer, upon leave. Johanna and the children will, I think, go to Germany in about four months. I shall follow, if God will, in some four or six weeks, and shall return about as much sooner. By reason of the cold, the children have not been out of the house for nearly three weeks. All Russian mothers observe this rule so soon as it is more than 10°; it must therefore be a matter of experience, although I go to 15°, but no farther. Despite this want of air, they look very well, notwithstanding matters of diet—which is constitutional—and their Christmas feastings. Marie has become a sensible little person, but is still quite a child, which I am glad to see. By my side lies Varnhagen’s Diary. I can not understand the expenditure of moral indignation with which this needy mirror of the times, from 1836 to 1845, has been condemned. There are vulgarities enough in it, but people conversed in that manner in those days, and worse; it is drawn from life. V. is vain and malicious, but who is not? It is merely a question how life has ripened the nature of one or another with worm-holes, sunshine or wet weather, bitter, sweet, or rotten. During the whole time at my command, there has been humbug of all sorts; so I have written away up to two o’clock, and at three the messenger must be on the railway.

THE SAME TO THE SAME.

Petersburg, 7th March, 1862.

I make use of an English courier to send you a greeting of a few lines; a groan at all the illness with which God afflicts us. We have had scarcely a day all this winter on which we were all well in the house. Johanna has a cough just now, which quite exhausts her, so that she must not go out; Bill is in bed with fever, pains in body and throat—the physician can not tell us yet what will come of it; our new governess scarcely hopes to see Germany again. She has been lying prostrate for weeks, daily weaker and more helpless; the doctor thinks probably galloping consumption will be the end of it. I am only well when out shooting; directly I enter a ball-room or a theatre I catch cold, and neither eat nor sleep. As soon as the climate is milder I shall send them, stock, block, and barrel, to Reinfeld. The indifference with which I contemplate a transfer is much diminished by these facts: I should scarcely have the courage to face next winter here. Johanna will scarcely be persuaded to allow me to return hither by myself. If I am not transferred I shall perhaps seek a longer leave of absence. I have recently had a letter from ——; he believes he is intended to be sent here, but would rather go to Paris; he thinks me intended for London, and I have somewhat familiarized myself with the thought. Letters from the Prince spoke of ——’s resignation and my succession; I do not think this is the intention, but should decline were it so. Independently of political exigencies, I do not feel myself well enough for so much excitement and labor. This feeling also causes me some thought; if I were offered Paris, London is quieter; were it not for climate and my children’s health, I should doubtless prefer to remain here. Berne is also a fixed idea of mine; tiresome places in pretty neighborhoods suit old people, but there is no sporting there, as I do not care for climbing after chamois.