Blood and Iron Part 44

-- Letters, telegrams, felicitations in the form of magnificently embossed diplomas, continue to come, day after day; Bismarck is given the freedom of cities; he is enrolled among engineers, carpenters, brewers, s.h.i.+p-masters, tailors; each guild demands that the Iron Chancellor's name head the list of honorary officers of the Grand Lodge.

In one year the record shows 650,000 letters and 10,000 telegrams; and among these are begging letters asking a total of $2,500,000!

-- Bismarck often grows tired of seeing visitors; he has built himself a secret spiral staircase, hidden in an unexpected place; and uses it against unwelcome callers.

Now and then, when his health permits, he is at his editorial work again, laboriously issuing his proclamations to the German people; he writes with a quill pen, and for a blotter prefers the old-time box of blue sand.

For scribbling hasty notes, he prefers huge lead pencils, such as he favored in parliamentary days; pencils 15 inches long, similar to those used by German carpenters.

He sits at an immense oak table, and his chair seems uncomfortable; it has no back.

At his side is his porcelain tobacco jar, two feet tall, and on the stand are innumerable pipes, which in turn are filled and smoked, all day long. He holds a sort of tobacco parliament every day. Visitors must smoke a pipe or cigars, drink wine, meet the dogs, and hear the old man inveigh against these degenerate times.

-- Those big Ulmar dogs are always around him. At meal times, no matter how fas.h.i.+onable the company, Bismarck pauses at the end of the dinner to throw "Sultana" or "Cyrus" a biscuit!

Sometimes he wears his Cuira.s.sier's uniform, this broad-shouldered giant with the thick neck and the grizzled mustache; his eyes glower under his thick white brows, and in the depths of his faded blue eyes is the old look of determination.

The old man's face is ashen grey, but he still has the stamp of immense dignity, a colossal personality, unquestionably representing the first public man of his time.

Folks bow to him, and he is master to the end; men are his servants, not his companions.

-- He is always very deliberate; he has a peculiar way of stopping in the middle of a sentence to seek out in a moment of silence the exact word he needs.

-- In the morning, he usually takes a stroll with his big dogs. It was a shock when "Old William" died, and the Emperor then gave Bismarck "Cyrus"; the Prince also had "Rebecca" and "Sultana."

The Ulmar dogs, following the old giant, resemble tigers in their powerful slouching gait.

At night they sleep in his bedroom.

69

Bismarck refuses to pa.s.s under the yoke--the octogenarian's last struggle of ambition.

-- He has his superst.i.tions to the end; about the number 13, about the number 7; and he believes that the moon has power to make human hair grow. "It is best," he says, "not to make scoff of such matters."

-- Sometimes he goes over his orders of honor, forty-eight in all, and of great distinction; also, his learned degrees. University of Halle made him Doctor of Philosophy; Erlangen, Doctor of Law; Tuebingen, Doctor of Political Science; Giessen, Doctor of Theology, and Jena, Six-fold Doctor, that is to say Doctor of Medicine; and Goettingen, Doctor of Law.

-- They bring him a joint of wild boar, shot in Varzin forest, and he has a feast. His fondness for game he never gives up. Also, to the last he has his champagne. After the Franco-Prussian war Bismarck refused to drink German champagne, and told the Emperor, quite plainly, "Your Majesty, my patriotism stops with my stomach; I simply must stick to French champagnes."

-- He tells how he used to drink Affenthaler and Merkgraefler, years before at Frankfort; these were first-rate, at one florin a bottle, or wholesale, the old man explains; by the 100 liters, only 14 kreutzers (8 cents) a bottle.

-- "Red wine is for children, champagne for ladies, and schnapps for generals," is one of his drinking mottoes, but he tells that he himself prefers his old-line invention, the Bismarck champagne and porter, a most powerful decoction, putting ordinary mortals under the table very early in the evening--but not the Iron Chancellor, not at all!

-- He recalls amusing stories of his ancestors. "One ancestor put pigs'

ears in pea soup and made a gastronomic hit."

-- Bismarck's eyes water one day and he explains, "The wine my ancestors drank to excess comes back in punishment for their sins."

-- What do you think? Bismarck's old enemy, Herr von Sybel, the eminent author of the ponderous "History of Prussia," called today, and Bismarck was glad to see Sybel, and they chatted a long time. As he and Sybel talked of history, Bismarck had moments when he held himself the one authentic builder of the German Empire.

-- Gradually, he came to think that he alone of his own unaided might did the work.

-- Last scene of all in this great drama of Bismarck! The octogenarian, in his downfall, is bitterly storming against his enemies.

Consistent to the end, he never weakened. He did not pa.s.s under the yoke of defeat by revealing any of those soft virtues that writers who make a wax doll of this mighty man would have us believe.

He raged and stormed impotently in his retirement at Friedrichsruh, and by every loud and insulting means in his power--by voice, pen, by special interviews, in his private letters, in his telegraphic dispatches, in his talks with the old friends or new callers, and to the last scratch of his Memoirs--Bismarck remains unrepentant, turbulent, to the end fighting bitterly against the Fate to which he could not and would not submit.

Temperamentally and psychologically, it was impossible for him to act in any way other than that in which he did act--even as you, in your own life, are true to yourself in storm and suns.h.i.+ne, following some unformulated but idiomatic law of your being.

Bismarck believed himself a chosen instrument in the hands of G.o.d and tenaciously clung to the dominant idea that the Bismarck work comprised all the raw materials of German history, affecting the German Empire.

70

His face is ashen, his grizzled mustache, eyebrows and hair white as the driven snow.

-- On the whole, the old man is interested in events not in persons; he does not keep track of individuals; but he studies their work and its effects.

So, in his retirement he talks of big events, mostly; all the while suffers from fits of depression and exhibits a growing moroseness, a peculiar characteristic of highly developed German character.

He calls for Kant, Hegel, Christ; and reads them, deeply. He likes Hegel's idea that the history of the world shows "rational order,"

conceals a "manifest destiny."

-- But the old man's one consolation is the Book of Job.

He lays awake o' nights, unable to sleep, he says, "and it seems as though there were a mountain on my chest."

-- He does not think much of Gladstone's "Home Rule" ideas; this "let the people" rule is bad business, is the old man's comment.

-- He is invited out a great deal, but always makes the same excuse, "I do not sleep well anywhere except in my own four-post bed. My traveling days are over, thank you."

-- One day in the park, the ladies kissed his hand, but he replied by kissing their cheeks, and he made a little speech as though he were in parliament.

-- He studies the thick walls of Schoenhausen mansion and examines the old French cannon of '71 scattered around the yard, as souvenirs.

-- He superintends the planting of trees; and rules over his estate with all the old family dignity and unshaken firmness of soul. He asks his secretary to count the telegrams that came this past year and in round numbers there are 10,000. The old man takes a notion to send each inquirer after his health a Bismarck autograph. So each day, from April to August, he spends part of his time writing over and over in great scrawling letters, at the bottom of a printed card of thanks, the huge signature, "Bismarck."

-- Little things are beginning to bother the old man. He comes in today from a short walk and says he hates crows, because they are the enemy of the singing birds.

-- Neuralgia is tormenting him, day and night, and he is very irritable.