V
ENTERING THE WORLD
Engaged · The engagement ended · Baden · Marietta · Season in Rome · Carnival at Venice
And now I was to be taken “into the world.” Our name might have given us the right to move among the highest aristocracy, for there is doubtless not a family of the high nobility of Austria with which we were not connected by blood or by marriage. But one is ill acquainted with this high nobility if one thinks that name and kinship suffice to get one received. For this there is required (it was especially so in my youth; now they have come to be somewhat less exclusive) first and foremost the possession of sixteen great-great-grandparents; in other words, the right of admission to court. This we had not—my mother was not Geborene; besides, our means were also very modest; so it was not possible for us to attain to the first society—the société, as it styled itself—of Vienna. That stung me; oh, what a vain, superficial thing I was! To think it was essential to the happiness of life to move among the crème, and to think I was suffering an unmerited wrong by the withholding of this happiness!
Now it came to pass that one of the richest men in Vienna sued for my hand through the mediation of the author Joseph von Weilen, who used to call at our house. Mother and guardian declared themselves favorable. To be sure the suitor was not an aristocrat, and already fifty-two years old. But he was willing to surround my existence and my mother’s with the utmost splendor, villas, castles, palaces,—I was dazzled and said “yes.”
I do not attempt to put a good face on this fact. It is an ugly fact when an eighteen-year-old girl is willing to give her hand to an unloved man so much older than herself, just because he is a millionaire! to call it by its right name, it is selling herself. If I were writing a novel I should certainly not tell such a story of its heroine, if she was intended to be attractive; but what I am setting down here is the experiences of a real person, for whose actions I am not by a long way so responsible as I should be for those of a figure drawn from fancy. For the latter would be fashioned according to my own present views and feelings, while this eighteen-year-old Bertha Kinsky—though it is I myself—is nothing more than a vague picture in memory. What the original of the picture experienced is retained in bare outlines in my recollection; it has also contributed to the shaping of my present character; but what sort of character that original itself had at that time appears to me as a thing in which I have as little part as in the caprices of Cleopatra or Semiramis.
A few pictures from this engagement episode:
The presentation: Herr von Weilen brings the suitor for a morning call. Stiff conversation in the drawing-room. Each studies the other. Pleased? No, the elderly gentleman scarcely pleases me—but does not displease me. Invitation to dinner the next day; Fürstenberg also there. Still stiff. On the fourth or fifth day a letter to my mother asking for my hand. I hesitate. That same evening we were to go to a ball—my coming out. An aristocratic picnic: the crème used to appear at this ball, but not exclusively—elements of less consequence are also present. I can still see my toilet, a white dress sprinkled all over with little rosebuds. Full of joyous anticipation I entered the hall. Full of piqued disappointment I left it. I had found but few partners; I should have been left to sit out the cotillion had not a homely infantry officer, who had had his matrimonial proposals rejected in numerous quarters, taken pity on me. The aristocratic mothers sat together, my mother sat alone; the countesses stood in groups and chattered, I knew none of them; at the supper merry little coteries were formed, I was left out. On the way home I said to my mother, “Mamma, I have made up my mind now, I will accept the proposal.”
The next picture: The happy suitor, in possession of my acceptance, brings me a whole cargo of betrothal presents: a set of sapphires and a pearl necklace. He also presents to me his nearly sixteen-year-old daughter (for he was a widower), and she calls me her dear, beautiful mamma, which is great fun for me.
Next picture: A brilliant ball in the haute finance, in which we participate as affianced lovers. Now I am surrounded, and the most gorgeous young cavalry officers are paying court to me—one in particular begs permission to call at my house when I am married. Evidently he thinks an old man’s young wife may become interesting. But my fiancé is furious, and makes a scene with me because I propose to go out to supper on the uhlan’s arm. I laugh, leave my cavalier, and take the arm of the angry man.
“Oh, I’ll be good,” I say soothingly.
Still another picture: A drive about the city, three of us, my mother and the engaged couple, to look at house-furnishing goods, carriages, gowns; also a drive to the suburbs to look at the truly princely villa that was destined as a nuptial gift for me.
One picture more: An afternoon at our home. My betrothed and I are alone for the first time.
“Bertha, do you know how ravishing you are?” He puts his arm around me and presses his lips to mine. The first love-kiss that a man had given me. An old man, an unloved man.—
With a suppressed cry of disgust I tear myself free, and in me arises a passionate protest—No, never—
On the next day the presents were sent back; I broke the engagement. My people had indeed tried to remonstrate: the scandal—the breach of faith—I ought not to have said yes, I had not been compelled to, but to draw back suddenly now—I should at least think it over for a while yet—
“No, no—I cannot, cannot—I’d rather die!”
And so the letter of dismissal was sent off.
A few hours later the daughter rushed to me and wept at my feet: I must not treat her father so badly—I must revoke the cruel decision....
But there was no changing my mind now. Stubbornly I clung to my “I cannot, I cannot!”
Soon the whole episode lay behind me like a bad dream which I felt it a refreshment to have waked from. My engagement and disengagement had taken place at carnival time; in the summer I was no longer thinking of them. We spent this summer in Baden near Vienna, where my mother had bought a small villa. It was a jolly summer, full of picnics, watering-place music, and dancing parties.
A little circle of society was formed, including a few elegant and pretty young girls and numerous young gentlemen, mostly officers, and also the indispensable mothers; we met daily—often three times a day, at noon in the park during the music, in the afternoon walking to the Helenental, and again in the evening (if there was not a réunion) at the home of one family or another, or at the evening music in the park. I had formed an especially intimate friendship with a girl of my own age, by name Marietta, Marchesa Saibante. She was a striking sight: a tall and rotund figure (at that time angular thinness was not yet stylish), raven-black hair and eyes, dazzling teeth, very red lips and very red cheeks—but withal a snub nose and coarse features in general.
Marietta’s mother, a Baroness Scheibler by birth, had been married to an Italian, Marchese Saibante, and was a widow of many years’ standing. She had only this single daughter, and worshiped her. With the two lived also an unmarried sister of the Marchesa, and this Aunt Helene, as she was called, worshiped Marietta still more. The two middle-aged ladies (what a pity there is no German word for the expressively descriptive English “middle-aged”) did not let their favorite get a step away from their immediate presence. They were living in very modest circumstances, but were rather prideful, since they were related to all the illustrious families of the aristocracy. A deceased third sister had been married to a Prince Auersperg. They had also a rich uncle, Field Marshal Count Wratislav, who cherished a particular affection for Helene. This uncle was constantly being spoken of. Very often, too, mention was made of a cousin with the proud name Rohan (Roi ne puis, prince ne daigne, Rohan je suis). Cousin Rohan was spoken of only incidentally—not pretentiously,—“I have a cousin who is a Princess Rohan,”—but there were told anecdotes and facts that were in themselves worth speaking of, and that only happened by chance to be connected with Cousin Rohan. Query: do not most people have among their kinsfolk and friends, or even mere acquaintances, a person who is in a higher position then theirs, whom they regard as their “Cousin Rohan” and utilize for the apparently unintentional embellishment of their conversation?
That summer Elvira celebrated her marriage with Doris in See. Marietta and I figured as bridesmaids. While the breakfast was still going on the young couple left Baden for Pola, where the newly married ensign’s ship was lying at anchor.
Now I was thrown altogether on Marietta. It was a strong contrast. After my cousin,—the poetess, the scholar,—the Rohan’s cousin, who was a worldling through and through, with nothing else in her head but the enjoyments and glitter of social life. She had tasted of them, despite her limited circumstances; for she had spent a whole carnival in Prague, and had there, under the ægis of the Auerspergs, the Wratislavs, and the Rohans, danced at twenty balls and flirted (without results) with many an épouseur. Now in Baden it was dancing and coquetting again; Marietta and I were the belles of the season. These entertainments were now “the important thing.”—As if the world had been created for no other purpose than to be our place of amusement.
The following winter we (that is, my mother and brother and I) spent in Rome. It had come about thus. The just-dethroned Queen of Naples, with her suite, had spent this summer at the Weilburg in Baden as guests of Archduke Albrecht. The historic tragedy that had preceded, the defense and loss of Gaeta, had made but little impression on me; I only listened with interest to the stories that were told of it by the queen’s chief steward, an old principe, who often visited us. It was he who depicted to us the life of foreigners in Italy, especially in Rome, so temptingly, and urged us so strenuously to come there next winter that we let ourselves be prevailed upon. The prospect took my fancy greatly. Yet, to my shame, I must avow that what attracted me was not eternal Rome with the magic of its historic memories, but the portrayals of Roman society life. And it remained so during our stay. What made most impression on me there—what was to me “the important thing”—was not the Vatican and Castel Sant’Angelo and the Forum, but the Monte Pincio with its elegant Corso, the Teatro Costanza with its opera season consisting of two alternating operas (one of them Il Trovatore), and the balls and soirées that we attended in the palaces of the Roman magnates or in the drawing-rooms of the colonies of foreigners. I did not bring away deep impressions in any respect from that stay in Rome; it was reserved to a time many years later for me to take in, with some comprehension, the enchantment which this classic soil must exert upon any half-way receptive mind.
Our friend of Baden days, the Neapolitan principe, once invited us to an excursion to his home city, and took us from there to Pompeii, the Blue Grotto, and the marvelous Capo di Monte, where he owned a villa—but it was rather dilapidated, as was he himself for that matter. When he came out next with a proposal of marriage, at the close of the season when we were already packed up for our journey, I said “no” without hesitation. I would not conjure down upon myself a second time the fate which I had newly escaped—that of becoming the wife of an unloved old man. Oh yes, if my suitor’s twenty-five-year-old son, the black-eyed Duca di ..., who quite pleased me, had appeared as suitor, I do not know—but he did not take it into his head; I think he was more inclined to feel an antipathy to me, for he must have seen into his father’s plans, and a second marriage on the father’s part would presumably have been extremely unwelcome to the son. Not till afterward did we learn that in our circle it had been generally assumed that the elderly principe, who loaded us with attentions, had even in Baden been my unacknowledged fiancé.
From Rome we returned to Baden, where the life of last year’s season was repeated; and in the following winter, 1864, we went to Venice to go “into the world” again there.
Venice! Thee too, marvelously charming, death-pale queen of the lagoons, I learned only in much later years to understand and love. Totally insensible to her beauty I was not, to be sure, even at that time; but yet “the important thing” to me was social life. It did my heart good to be again in the vicinity of my beloved cousin Elvira. Her husband was now stationed at Venice, and the couple were living there quite secluded, but in the profoundest domestic happiness. Only two things disturbed this happiness: first, the young husband’s prospective early return to sea service, which threatened them with a year’s separation, and secondly Elvira’s unsettled health; she coughed much, and was often seized with the fear that she was consumptive. Those who surrounded her, and the physician too, would talk her out of this fear, and then she would once more give herself up to the full gladness of living.
I, meanwhile, was reveling in the enjoyment of the Venetian carnival. Venice was at that time an Austrian city, and society life moved in Austrian circles. The houses which we frequented were those of the Austrian governor, the Austrian consul, and sundry Austrian aristocrats. A rich English family named Greaves, adorned by a beautiful daughter, also kept open house, but the Italian families were hostile and held aloof.
Our life ran this course: at noon a military band played in the Piazza di San Marco, and there—just as we used to do in the Kurpark at Baden—we promenaded up and down, accompanied by whatever gallants were at hand—mostly navy officers—and continued the conversations of last night’s ball. If it rained, we sat in the cafés under the Procuratie and had our social intercourse there. At five in the afternoon we called on each other, and every evening we met at private balls or soirées. A great fancy-dress ball was given, and once—I think it was in the Wimpffen house—there was an exhibition of amateur theatricals, and living pictures with them.
The toilets that I wore on these three occasions I can still see in my memory. I do not intend to describe them, but only to show by this confession what it is that makes so deep an impression on a silly girl’s mind—and, withal, I was not even one of the silliest. They made much of my intellect—they made much of me in every way that season at Venice, so that I felt myself one of their queens. An agreeable feeling, at all events. It went to my head violently, and I took advantage of this agreeable self-sufficiency to send some suitors off with vigorous refusals. This brought upon me worldly-wise reproaches from my people; but how well it is for me that I did this, for otherwise I should be to-day the wife of some admiral or commodore, and should not have possessed that husband whose possession was my life’s consecration, nor should I have come into touch with the peace movement, in which my activities and endeavors have received their most fervid inspiration.
One may be disposed to stigmatize as frivolity the type of character exhibited by a young female who is wholly taken up with social enjoyments, who does not concern herself about the events that move the world, but who does bestow on her own toilets, worn at festal occasions, such intense attention that after forty years the memory is not yet extinct. Well, I would ask an old, ever-so-efficient general if he does not remember the clink of the saber dragging behind him when he went out for the first time after he received his commission; I would ask the most learned professor of the political sciences if he cannot still see before his eyes the color of the ribbon which he wore on his student cap.
But in these things—ball bouquet, lieutenant’s saber, students’ society colors—there lies something additional, quite other than what they are; the fragrance and clink and gleam is of the symbol; they are admission cards to the advertised great festival, winning tickets for the hoped chief prizes of the great lottery,—the Future.
Ball triumphs—I can still remember what intensified feelings of intoxication they bring with them. I say intensified, for youth in happy and care-free circumstances is in itself an intoxication. One need not be “frivolous” by a long way—in the sense of superficial and brainless—if one then plunges with a certain passionate fullness of satisfaction in the flood of social amusements; there is vibrating a peculiar electric fluid full of invisible sparks which mean to discharge themselves as happiness or as love—or at least as joy. And the warmer a girl’s emotional life is, the more her mind has been fed on poetic diet, the more proudly she feels that she has treasures of happiness to bestow, the more devoted love she feels the force within her capable of, so much the more sensitive is she to the mysterious crackle of those sparks. He who does not hear the crackle, to whose head the intoxicating foam is not rising, through whom the passionate hopes of happiness are not glowing,—well, he does find the whole business flat and vapid, and charges the young fools who are giving themselves up to all this with being superficial.
But after a few seasons a sobering-down comes to everybody. One who lets himself be forever satisfied with social festivities, even when the first flush of youth is past and the promises have not been fulfilled, who does not then recognize “the important thing” in other aims, in new duties, in serious activity, is indeed irredeemably frivolous.
Besides, I was talking of the feelings of our young girls in society at the time of my youth. To-day everything has changed greatly. The girl fresh from a good school no longer, as at that time, finds in the ball her highest joy and her only opportunity for fulfilling her vocation, a happy conquest. Dancing is being displaced by sport, and of callings that are open to women there are more every day. Society life itself has grown more tedious too: the young men shun the ballrooms; the seasons do not last so long that people get better and better acquainted and so enjoy each other’s company more and more; neither in winter in the city nor in summer at the watering-place does society meet for the whole season—they fly from place to place, from the mountains to the sea, from the northern city to the South, from Scheveningen to St. Moritz, from the Pyrenees to Egypt, up to the not distant time when from the Isle of Wight they will make excursions to the fashionable Japanese baths.