XXXIII
LETTERS FROM ALFRED NOBEL
I kept up a regular correspondence with Alfred Nobel. I will quote here some of his letters[35]:
Dear Baroness:
If I have not replied sooner to your kind and courteous letter, it is because I was in hopes of bringing you my answer de vive-voix, my respects de vif-cœur.
Here I am in Vienna, but you are not, and I am told that you do not often come. On the other hand, if I should go to Harmannsdorf I should be greatly afraid of causing you trouble, and in this respect I am as timid as the most sensitive woman.
How happy I am to know that you are happy and contented, back at last in a land which you love, and rested from struggles of which my sympathy can measure the extent.
What shall I tell you of myself—a shipwreck of youth, of joy, of hope? An empty heart, whose inventory is a white—or gray—page.
Pray remember me cordially to your husband, and accept, dear Madame, the assurance of my best sentiments founded on profound respect and genuine devotion.
A. Nobel
Vienna, Hôtel Imperial, August 17, 1885.
The visit at Harmannsdorf was nevertheless paid. In the year 1887 we had seen Nobel again in Paris, and the following letter shows that we were urging him to visit us in our own home:
The proof that there is no justice in this world is that you take me, I am sure, for an ill-bred man and an ingrate. And yet there is no truth in it, for ever since I had the pleasure of seeing you at my house I have been anxiously watching for the moment of leisure that should permit me to go and shake hands with two friends. But if you could see, only for a day or two, the life I am leading, you would realize how impossible it is to make the two ends meet. For a week past, with my trunk packed, I have not been able to get away; and yet my visit to Manchester is urgent. But at this moment all the dynamiteurs in the world—the dynamiteurs are the directors and managers of the dynamite companies—have conspired to come here and bother me with their affairs,—conventions, plans, deceptions, etc., and I am ardently wishing that a new Mephisto would come to enrich hell with these evil-doers.
A thousand friendly things—never friendly enough for you—and the assurance of my good will.
A. Nobel
Paris, January 22, 1888
The following letter is the answer to mine in which I wrote that I had been told at a florist’s that he was married and that the presence of a Madame Nobel had been announced in Nice. I asked whether I might congratulate him. He wrote back:
Dear Baroness and Friend:
What an ingrate this old Nobel is, but in appearance only, for the friendship which he feels for you only increases, and the nearer he approaches the final nothingness the more he values the few persons—men or women—who show him a little genuine interest.
Could you have really believed that I was married, and married without informing you? That would have been a double crime against friendship and against courtesy. The bear has not as yet got so far as that.
In making me married, the florist was using flowery language. As for Madame Nobel of Nice, it was in all probability my sister-in-law. That is how the secret and mysterious marriage is explained. Everything does in the end get explained in this world below, except the magnetism of the heart, to which this same world is indebted for its existing and living. Now this magnetism is just what I must be lacking in, since there is no Madame Nobel and since in my case the dust that is thrown in the eyes is inadequately replaced by gunpowder.
You see there is no jeune femme adorée—I am quoting word for word—and I shall not find in that direction a remedy against my nervosité anormale—once more a literal quotation—or against my gloomy ideas. A few delicious days at Harmannsdorf might perhaps cure me, and if I have not as yet replied to your arch-amiable and friendly call of hospitality, that comes from a multitude of reasons which I will explain to you by word of mouth.
Whatever happens, it is absolutely necessary that I should come soon to see you, for if not, who knows if I ever have this pleasure and consolation. Fate, alas! is unwilling to be converted into an insurance company; and yet we would offer her very tempting premiums.
I beg of you, assure your husband of my best sentiments; as for yourself, it is idle to reaffirm to you my affectionate and fraternal devotion.
A. Nobel
Paris, November 6, 1888.
On December, 10, 1889, my husband’s oldest brother Karl died. As Nobel, during his last stay at Vienna, had become acquainted with Karl and his wife, I informed him of the bereavement. Nobel wrote:
Copenhagen, December 19, 1889
Dear Baroness and Friend:
On receipt of your brief note of the 10/12 I addressed to the Baronne Charles de Suttner the expression of my condolence. Will you be the intermediary of my lively sympathy for your husband and your relatives?
I also have sad news to announce. I am just here from Stockholm, where I have been to conduct to her last home my poor dear mother, who loved me as people do not love nowadays, when feverish life serves as a check on sentiment.
I press your two hands—the little hands of a dear, kind sister who wishes me well just as I wish her and hers well.
A. Nobel
My appeal in the Neue Freie Presse of September 9, 1891, was partially reproduced in the Paris newspapers, and editorially commented on. Nobel wrote to me regarding this:
My dear Friend:
Delighted I am to see that your eloquent pleading against that horror of horrors—war—has found its way into the French Press. But I fear that out of French readers ninety-nine in a hundred are chauvinistically mad. The government here are almost in their senses; the people, on the contrary, are getting success- and vanity-drunken. A pleasant kind of intoxication, much less deleterious unless it leads to war, than spirits of wine or morphium.
And your pen—whither is it wandering now? After writing with the blood of martyrs of war, will it show us the prospect of a future fairy-land or the less utopian picture of the thinkers’ common-wealth? My sympathies are in that direction, but my thoughts are mostly wandering towards another common-wealth, where silenced souls are misery-proof.
With kindest regards ever yours
A. Nobel
Paris, September 14, 1891
After the Austrian Peace Society had been founded and the Roman Congress was in prospect, I informed my friend about it and asked him for a contribution to the treasury of the Union; here is his reply
53 Avenue Malakoff, October 31, 1891
Dear Baroness and Friend:
I do not see very clearly what great expenses either the Peace League or the Peace Congress can have to bear. Nevertheless I am quite ready to make a pecuniary contribution to its work, and I hasten to send you for this object a check, inclosed herewith, for £80 sterling.
What you need to get, I think, is not the money but the programme. Wishes alone do not assure peace. The like may be said of big dinners with big speeches. One ought to be able to present well-minded governments with an acceptable plan. To demand disarmament is almost to make one’s self ridiculous without profiting any one. To demand the immediate establishment of a court of arbitration is to come into collision with a thousand prejudices and to make every ambitious man an obstructer. To succeed, one ought to be content with more modest beginnings, and do as they do in England with legislative projects whose success is dubious. In such cases they content themselves with passing a temporary law, limited in duration to two years or even to one year. I do not think there would be found many governments that would refuse to take into consideration such a modest proposition, provided it were supported by statesmen of note.
Would it be too much to ask, for example, that for one year the European governments should engage to refer to a tribunal formed for this purpose any difference arising between them; or if they should refuse to take this step, to defer every act of hostility until the expiration of the period stipulated?
This would be apparently little, but it is just by being content with little that one arrives at great results. A year is such a small period of time in the lives of nations, and the most blustering minister will tell himself that it is not worth while to break by force a convention of such short duration. And at the expiration of that period all the states will make haste to renew their peace compact for another year. Thus, without a shock and almost without realizing the fact, they will come to a period of prolonged peace.
Then only will it be of any use to think of proceeding little by little to that disarmament which all good men and almost all governments desire.
And suppose that in spite of everything a quarrel should break out between two governments, do you not think that nine times out of ten they would calm down during the obligatory armistice which they would have to respect?
Believe, dear Baroness, in my affectionate sentiments,
A. Nobel