The Life of Bismarck, Private and Political. George Hesekiel
but from that very cause operated unfavorably in the management of the estates. The conduct of agriculture suffered under numerous and costly institutions and experiments, reducing the family income to a considerable extent, especially as the brilliant winter establishment in Berlin, and the summer visits to watering-places, demanded extensive resources. She evidently sought at a very early age to awaken ambition in her sons; it was particularly her desire that the younger son, Otto, should devote himself to a diplomatic career, for which she considered him especially fitted, while the elder brother was from the first destined for the commission of Provincial Councillor (Landrath). Both these aspirations were fulfilled, but not in their mother’s lifetime; she had long died when her younger son entered on diplomatic life, but her maternal instinct is honored by her early perception of the path by which Bismarck was to attain the highest distinction. How often must Bismarck have thought of his mother’s heartfelt wish, in his position as ambassador in Frankfort, Petersburg, and Paris! How frequently his earliest friends must have exclaimed, “Bismarck! had your mother only survived to see this!”
In contradistinction to the wise, ambitious, but somewhat haughty mother, his father, a handsome, personable, and cheerful man, full of humor and wit, rather represented the heart and mind, without very great claims to strong intellect, or even knowledge. Strangely enough, the cultivated and literary Charles Alexander von Bismarck, transformed from a diplomatist into a cavalry officer by the command of the Great Frederick, educated his four sons for the army.
This cavalier, of French sentiments, who subscribed to Parisian journals, still preserved at Schönhausen—a custom not usual with the aristocracy of the Marks—and who lived with great simplicity, but drank wine, and ate off silver plate—brought up his sons like centaurs, and his greatest pride was in the excellence of their horsemanship.
Bismarck’s father entered the Body-guard (white and blue), the commander of which was also a Bismarck, and, as he often told his sons in later times, “measured out the corn every morning at four o’clock to the men for five long years.” He loved a country life, grew wearied in Berlin, especially when he had grown somewhat deaf, but, with chivalrous devotion to his lady wife, conformed to her wishes on this point.
Madame von Bismarck, besides esteeming the company of talented persons and scholars, was devoted to chess, of which she was a complete mistress; but her husband’s amusement was the chase to the end of his life. How strangely the old gentleman pursued this pastime we learn from a letter of Bismarck’s to his newly-married sister, in the latter part of 1844; very characteristic of the relations maintained by the son and brother.
Now you have departed, I have naturally found the house very lonely. I have sat by the stove smoking and contemplating how unnatural and selfish it is in girls who have brothers, and those bachelors, to go and recklessly marry, and act as if they only were in the world to follow their own sweet wills; a selfish principle from which I feel that our family, and myself in proper person, are fortunately free. After perceiving the fruitlessness of these reflections, I arose from the green leather chair in which you used to sit kissing and whispering with Miss and Oscar, and plunged wildly into the elections, which convinced me that five votes were mine for life or death, and two had somewhat lukewarmly supported me; while Krug received four, sixteen to eighteen voted for Arnim, and twelve to fifteen for Alvensleben. I therefore thought it best to retire altogether. Since then I have lived here with father; reading, smoking, walking, helping him to eat lampreys, and joining in a farce called fox-hunting. We go out in the pouring rain, or at six degrees of frost, accompanied by Ihle, Bellin, and Charles, surround an old bush in a sportsmanlike way, silent as the grave, as the wind blows through the cover, where we are all fully convinced—even perhaps my father—that the only game consists of a few old women gathering faggots—and not another living thing. Then Ihle, Charles, and a couple of hounds, making the strangest and most prodigious noise, particularly Ihle, burst into the thicket, my father standing perfectly stock still, with his rifle just as if he fully expected some beast, until Ihle comes out, shouting “hu! la! la! fuss! hey! hey!” in the queerest shrieks. Then my father asks me, in the coolest manner, if I have not seen something; and I reply, with most natural air of astonishment, nothing in the world! Then, growling at the rain, we start for another bush, where Ihle is sure we shall find, and play the farce over again. This goes on for three or four hours, without my father, Ihle, and Fingal exhibiting the least symptom of being tired. Besides this, we visit the orangery twice a day, and the sheep-pens once, consult the four thermometers in the parlor every hour, mark the weather-glass, and since bright weather has set in have brought all the clocks so exactly with the sun, that the clock in the library is only one stroke behind all the rest. Charles V. was a silly fellow! You can understand that, with such a multitude of things to do, we have no time to visit parsons; as they have no votes at the elections, I did not go at all—impossible. Bellin has been for these three days full of a journey to Stendal he made, and about the coach which he did not catch. The Elbe is frozen, wind S. E. E., the last new thermometer from Berlin marks 8° (27° Fahr.) barometer rising 28.8 in. I just mention this to show you how you might write more homely particulars to father in your letters, as they amuse him hugely—who has been to see you and Curts, whom you visit, what you have had for dinner, how the horses are, and the servants quarrel, whether the doors crack, and the windows are tight—in short, trifles, facts! Mark me, too, that he detests the name papa—avis au lecteur! Antonie wrote him a very pretty letter on his birthday, and sent him a green purse, at which papa was deeply moved, and replied in two pages! The Rohrs have lately passed through here without showing themselves; they baited at the Inn at Hohen-Göhren for two hours, and sat, wife and children and all, with ten smoking countrymen, in the taproom! Bellin declared they were angry with us; this is very sad and deeply affects me! Our father sends best love, and will soon follow me to Pomerania—he thinks about Christmas. There is a café dansant to-morrow at Genthin; I shall look in, to fire away at the old Landrath, and take my leave of the circle for at least four months. I have seen Miss——; she has moments when she is exceedingly pretty, but she will lose her complexion very soon. I was in love with her for twenty-four hours. Greet Oscar heartily from me, and farewell, my angel; don’t hang up your bride’s rank by the tail, and remember me to Curts. If you are not at A. by the eighth—I’ll!—but enough of that. Entirely your own “forever,”
Bismarck.
Otto von Bismarck, on his sixteenth birthday, as his brother had been before him, was confirmed at Berlin, in the Trinity Church by Schleiermacher, at the Easter of 1830. The same year he went to board with Professor Prévost, the father of Hofrath Prévost, now an official in the Foreign Office under Bismarck; and as the house was very remote from the Frederick William Gymnasium in the Königs Strasse, he quitted it for the Berlin Gymnasium, Zum Grauen Kloster. Bismarck, after a year, passed from Professor Prévost to Dr. Bonnell, afterwards director of the Frederick-Werder Gymnasium, then at the Grauen Kloster, but who had not long before been Bismarck’s teacher at the Frederick William. Bismarck remained with him until, at Easter, 1832, he quitted the Kloster after his examination, to study law.
This is an outline of Bismarck’s life in his boyhood and school-days; let us endeavor to form some picture of the lad and youth, from the reports of his tutors and contemporaries.
We see Junker Otto leaving his father’s house at a very early age, as did his brother. The reasons for this we can not assign, but no doubt they were well meant, although scarcely wise. Bismarck used subsequently himself to say that his early departure from the paternal roof was any thing but advantageous to him. Perhaps his mother was afraid he might get too early spoilt; for with his gay nature and constant friendliness, the little boy early won all hearts. He was especially spoilt by his father, and by Lotte Schmeling, his mother’s maid, and his own nurse.
At the boarding-school of Plamann in Berlin, whither he was next brought, he did not get on at all well. This then very renowned institution had adopted the thorough system of old Jahn, and carried out the theory of “hardening up,” then fashionable, by starving, exposure, and so forth—not without carrying it to extremes in