Premonitions · Bloch’s death · The Transvaal · Stanhope on the situation · My husband’s sudden illness · Three letters · Congress in Monaco · The Oceanographic Museum · Prince Albert I · The corrective · Pierre Quillard on the Armenian horrors · The crag castle · Venetian night · The Duke of Urach · From Prince Albert’s after-dinner speech · A dedication to the German Emperor · Return home · An act of D’Estournelles’s · The first controversy before the Hague Tribunal · Opening of the Bloch Museum at Lucerne · Anti-dueling League · A letter from Prince Alfonso de Borbon · Offer for a lecture tour in the United States · Hodgson Pratt on America · Visits of Emanuel Nobel and Princess Tamara of Georgia at Harmannsdorf · Sojourn in Ellischau · A surprise · Adjournment of the Interparliamentary Conference at Vienna · The end · From the will · Provisional conclusion · What is yet to follow
The last year of him who was my all.
On New Year’s Day, 1902, all sorts of trifling annoyances happened to us.
“You will see,” said My Own, more in jest than in earnest, for he was not superstitious, “this is going to be a bad year.”
During the first week indeed came bad news, a dispatch from Warsaw,—“Johann von Bloch dead of heart disease.” Once more a mighty fellow-combatant gone from us!
The war in the Transvaal still kept on. It was now in its third year. At first the English believed that it was merely a little military promenade; and now these unending sacrifices and losses. I wrote to Philip Stanhope asking him if he could give me some information regarding the situation, and perhaps raise his voice against the continuance of the strife. He wrote back:
3 Carlton Gardens, S.W.
January 25, 1902
Dear Baroness de Suttner:
I am overwhelmed with confusion. I have been since the beginning of December in Italy, and have only recently returned for a short time to find your note of December 14 awaiting me.
I should have been pleased to contribute a few words to the publication of the Austrian Society upon the occasion of its 10th anniversary, though all such words of peace, coming from my country, would be in sad contrast with realities.
However, all great causes have dark moments to traverse, and there will again be a reaction against the militarism and the jingoism of the present age.
I hope to see you in Vienna in the autumn, and to find you in good health.
Please remember me to Baron de Suttner, and believe me
Sincerely yours
Philip Stanhope
This year the Peace Congress was to be held as early as April, and it was to meet at Monaco by invitation of Prince Albert. The neighborhood of Monte Carlo was a circumstance which caused some hesitation among many of our friends,—I did not share it,—and only after a considerable correspondence among the members of the Bern Bureau (in whose hands the organization of the Congress lies) was a majority won for the choice of Monaco. My husband and I were greatly pleased at the prospect of this trip and the visit in this paradisiac corner of the world.
My happy frame of mind was increased by the fact that my book Marthas Kinder was on the eve of appearing. The proceeds from it (my publisher, Pierson, had bought the novel with all rights, including those of translation, for an honorarium of 15,000 marks) enabled me to stave off for at least a little while longer the breaking up of our beloved Harmannsdorf, and during this time so much might happen to rescue the estate; so we looked forward with joyous hearts to the coming journey.
Only a few days before the date set for our departure, My Own was attacked by a very sudden indisposition. As he was going to get up one morning, his legs gave way. He was obliged to go back to bed, and he felt pain in his right knee. We hoped it would not amount to anything. Our trunks were already packed, the sleeping-car tickets were already bought, and our rooms in Monaco engaged. Also the lecture which I was going to deliver at a public meeting on the events of the Hague Conference was prepared and announced.
“If by day after to-morrow I am not all right again, you must go,” insisted my husband; “it is your duty.”
And so it came about. The doctor ordered that the disabled leg should be kept wrapped up and perfectly quiet. This was a great grief to us both; we had counted so much on the journey together, and the separation filled me with tribulation. Up to the last moment he hoped still to be able to go, or at least to follow me a day later, but it was not possible. I had to go to Monaco without him, yet I was not alone; my friend Countess Hedwig Pötting accompanied me. The delight in the visit there was spoiled for me by the separation from him and my anxiety about him. Every day I had a telegram from him, and besides he wrote me three letters. These letters lie in my jewel casket; they are the last which he ever wrote me. They must have a place in these memoirs:
Easter Sunday, 1902
My beloved Löwos:
I am afraid this written greeting will be all that you will get from me while you are in Monaco. How happy I should be if this very afternoon I could convince myself that I was going to be able to follow you. When I think that to-morrow you will probably be traveling without me, it makes my heart so terribly heavy! It was not good of Nemo[46] to separate us so cruelly. He might have let us enjoy this little pleasure! But I will not make your heart heavier than it is already. You must keep your head clear and be easy in mind, so as to fulfill the duty which you have no right to shun.
My holiest wishes and my heart’s love accompany you on your way, my dear old Löwos, though in these circumstances it is rather a thorny way. But it ought not to be that; you must enter upon it with the joyous feeling that you are rendering a fine service and are going to render fine service yet again. So you must get all the pleasure you can out of the lovely place and the friends who all cling to you with such love and respect.
Enjoy your stay, my dearest, and then you will come back to me with all the more delight and contentment.
This is all for this time; and now I take your dear head, my Löwos, between my hands and kiss it a thousand times.
Your Own
March 31, 1902
My dear old heart’s Löwos:
Those were sad hours of loneliness and abandonment after your departure! It enabled me to realize how deep you have grown into my heart, my precious, precious pet. Now I am trying to accustom myself to the unavoidable, but reactions will be sure to return, for I miss you too deeply.
I have followed you in my thoughts on the stages of your journey. Now you are probably through breakfast and waiting for the train at the railway station.
If only days enough had gone by, so that I could say, “Day after to-morrow it will be day after to-morrow, and so on.”
I shall not be so well looked after to-day as I am by you. Maria Louise has just been in for a moment; she has taken cold, so is not exactly rosy and merry.
As soon as I have finished writing these lines I must rest awhile. Even writing takes hold of me. I will lie back and think about you. If our nerves were only receptive for telepathy we should certainly be in close contact these days! The doctor is taking his time about his morning visit to-day; but I believe the leg is somewhat better.
Farewell, my dearest, I kiss you many thousand times.
Your Own
April 2, 1902
My precious Löwos:
Ten o’clock! There you are perhaps at this very minute standing on the platform and giving your address, which is not very long. So, as far as I can follow it, I am taking part in the Congress. The newspaper reports will not give any very detailed account of it.
Yesterday Chimani[47] was here. He discovered some improvement, but there is still inflammation; therefore strict orders not to get out of bed.
I received your telegram yesterday evening about half past eight. I was beginning to be a trifle uneasy when no word came. My reply, which I intrusted to the messenger, you will not be likely to get until to-day.
It is a beautiful summer’s day—and here I am in bed! Have such a longing to get out.
Nothing interesting in the mail. Among other things a crazy letter to you from a crazy photographer in Graz. Then came a letter of twenty quarto pages from Linz and a little book which the author published ten years ago through Schabelitz. Of course I do not send you this stuff.
Thank the Hex [Countess Pötting] for her card and sisterly greeting. Kisses on thy Löwos mouth from
Thy Own
How the poor man would have enjoyed those days at Monaco! The place was all a glory of spring splendor. We had seen the Riviera before, but not at a time of such luxurious profusion of flowers.
A hall in the new building destined for the Oceanographic Museum had been cleared for the proceedings of the Congress. All the speeches and debates had a constant accompaniment of distant hammering. In the immediate neighborhood the work was at a standstill during the hours of session, but not very far away the pounding and sawing and nailing went steadily on. This seemed to disturb some of the orators; yet one of them found in it a welcome occasion for bringing out in a beautiful picture how the work in the name of which we were there assembled was also an edifice, already designed but still unfinished,—an edifice which, like this, would also arise in usefulness and beauty to the honor of the builders and to the advantage of mankind.
After the opening session, which Prince Albert had attended, all the participants stood about in the open space before the entrance to exchange greetings and to enjoy the scenes of recognition which are repeated at every Congress: “Ah, it’s you! This is fine!”
This time all addressed me with the question, “And where is the Baron?” I had to tell them about his illness, which elicited general regret. I really believe there was no one in the whole world who had ever known him, even superficially, without being drawn into sympathy with him.
The prince stood not far from me in a group, and was talking with General Türr. I was able to get a good look at him. Of rather more than medium height, of slender and supple figure, he was then at the beginning of the fifties, but not yet turning gray. He wore a closely trimmed, dark beard, and his expression was unusually melancholy. He came up to me and offered me his hand. He was delighted, he said, to see me, for he had long known of my devotion to the cause for the furtherance of which he now desired to work as energetically as he could. He remained some time in conversation with me.
“One thing occurs to me to say to you,” he remarked in the course of the conversation; “you see this work going on here,” pointing toward the Museum; “this shows the tendency of my aims and endeavors; it is intended as a corrective,”—and now he indicated the crags of Monte Carlo visible in the distance and crowned with the Casino,—“a corrective to that inheritance which is so hateful to me.”
I especially recollect among the transactions the indignant and pathetic protest of the Frenchman, Pierre Quillard, against the atrocious massacres being perpetrated on the Armenians at that time, and unfortunately still going on. Thus our Congresses definitely assumed the burden of furnishing a forum for the complaints and for the defense of all the persecuted,—a service which the governments, relying on the principle of nonintervention, still refuse to undertake.
In the course of the day we members of the Congress inspected the castle which is the home of the Prince of Monaco, and which rises high above the crags. It is an antiquated edifice with battlements, outside stairways, and porticoes. In the cloistered private garden there is an endless profusion of flowers. Palms as high as a house stand there on rocky ground, to which every atom of soil had to be carried. The state rooms we saw for the first time in the evening, when they were all ablaze with light, at a gala reception given in honor of the Congress; the officials of Nice were also invited. Especially imposing is the throne room, although the throne of such a tiny kingdom is not imposing. My attention was attracted in this room to a kind of tower of flowers reaching to the ceiling. I was told that this was the throne, with its seat, its steps, and its baldachin, all masked by this gigantic screen of flowers.
A second festivity was arranged by the city for our benefit. It was a kind of “Venetian Night.” All the ships and boats in the harbor and all the houses along the bay were illuminated, Bengal fires were blazing on the mountains, there were torchlight processions and bands of music. The entire population, strangers visiting the resort, the citizens of Monaco, laboring men, and peasants from the regions round about took part in the gayeties. Tents were pitched on the heights for the Congressists and the prince, and from here there was a fine prospect of the whole region bathed in light. I sat in the prince’s tent, between him and his cousin, the Duke of Urach. The latter, an officer in the German army, talked with me on the subject of the Congress. He granted that war would sometime be overcome by civilization, but before that day, he thought, many economic and perhaps also social battles would be fought out with weapons.
“What was discussed in the session this afternoon?” Prince Albert asked me.
“Propaganda,” I replied.
“Look at this picture and listen to this babel of voices; all the people have learned to-day that there is an active peace movement; that is a propaganda,” said the prince.
He presided at the final banquet. He sat between Madame Séverine and me. On this occasion he told me much about his labors and his plans. His book, La carrière d’un navigateur, had recently been published; he proposed to send it to me, and told me that I should find in it the whole story of his studies and his—soul!
When it came to the toasts he arose and delivered the first speech:
“It fills me with pride and joy” (these were almost the identical words of his exordium) “to take a place in the peace movement; for the scientific work to which my life is devoted requires for its development the victory of the peace work, the victory over the cruel inheritance of primitive barbarism, the victory over the warlike spirit which poisons the fruits of civilization.”
Not in after-dinner speeches alone—which vanish like the foam on the lifted glass—did Prince Albert utter such opinions, but also in the dedication of his book, “A Seaman’s Career,”[48] he says:
I dedicate the German version of this book to his Majesty Emperor William II, who is the patron of labor and science, and is thus preparing for the realization of the noblest desire of human consciousness, namely the union of all civilizing forces for the purpose of bringing about the reign of an inviolable peace.
Later I saw the Emperor’s manuscript reply, in which, in a page-and-a-half quarto, he thanks his cher cousin for the dedication, and in perfect agreement with his ideas repeats the words therein referring to the peace cause.
Although the dispatches that I got every day from Harmannsdorf were encouraging, I was feverishly impatient to be at home again. Great was the joy of being reunited. During our twenty-six years of married life this was the first time we had ever been separated for more than a day or two. We had said good-by in tears; in tears I threw my arms again around my dear one’s neck. And alas! he had not yet recovered; he was still obliged to lie in bed. His illness, so the doctor said, had been an attack of periostitis, and he was bidden to be very careful for some time to come. When he got up the first time he suffered severely from palpitation of the heart; and this was of frequent recurrence. Under the twelfth of April I find in my diary for the first time the anxious exclamation, “Palpitation again—oh, that is a serious malady.... Organic disorder—I am deeply worried.”
After some time there was an improvement and my anxieties were allayed.
The Transvaal war showed no sign of coming to an end; to be sure peace negotiations had already been broached, but no armistice was declared at the same time; on the contrary, English reënforcements were shipped anew to Africa. This caused the London Times to express great satisfaction. Oh, these war-inciting editorial patriots! The neutral powers were not to be induced to offer mediation. Surely one must not hamper the arm of a fighter! But as far as affording assistance to the fighter by lending money or furnishing horses,—enormous transports of horses were leaving Fiume for the English,—that the neutrals permit themselves to do. Les affaires sont les affaires!
Article 27 of the Hague Convention was forgotten. Moreover the Hague Tribunal—the poor new-born infant—seemed condemned to die for lack of sustenance. Then suddenly came a controversy which was submitted to the tribunal—an old quarrel between the United States and Mexico regarding Church property. President Roosevelt brought the matter before the Hague Tribunal.
I knew that our friend D’Estournelles, who had taken upon himself the task of preventing the work at The Hague from dying of asphyxiation, had undertaken a journey to America, where he was making a lecture tour. I suspected that he had not been without influence in bringing about the trial of the Church-property question before the tribunal. And, in fact, this was the case; two documents furnish proof of it. First, the following letter from D’Estournelles in reply to one expressing my conjecture that he had been concerned in the matter. Here is his letter:
September 5, 1902
Dear Friend:
You have guessed it; my object in going to the United States was in large measure to show President Roosevelt the great part he might play in world politics, now that the liberal spirit in Europe had foregone its chance. I told him the whole story and he understood it.
I said: “You are a danger or a hope for the world, according as you advance toward conquest or arbitration, toward violence or justice. It is believed that you are inclined to the side of violence; prove the contrary.”
“How?”
“By giving life to the Hague Court.”
And that is what the President has done. I have waited until the Court assembled before mentioning what I did. It is now in session. That is a great point, and we must praise Roosevelt, first because he deserves it, and secondly that he may find imitators.
The affectionate friend of you both
D’Estournelles
The second document is an extract from a report made by the French embassy at Washington to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Paris. I received an authentic copy of this extract. It reads:
Washington, Embassy of the French Republic
April 7, 1902
Sir:
We must tell the truth, and render to each what is due. When, nearly two months ago, I presented M. d’Estournelles to President Roosevelt, our fellow-countryman spoke to him with much enthusiasm about the Conference at the Hague; he held up before his eyes the glory with which Mr. Roosevelt would cover his incumbency if he would open the Arbitral Tribunal for any question, no matter how insignificant, and thus give an example to the world. President Roosevelt was struck with M. d’Estournelles’s language, and yesterday I was confidentially informed by him that on the very next day after the latter’s visit he charged Mr. Hay to find some matter to submit to the permanent judges of The Hague.
(Signed) Jules Cambon
To the Minister of Foreign Affairs
And thus through the devotion of a single person, supported by the energy of a powerful ally, that machine was set in motion. A proof was given to the world that it could perform its functions. Of course the opponents objected that it was nothing but a quite insignificant case which was submitted—as if insignificant cases had not many times led to war. Not the case but the method is what counts.
My husband had so far recovered that we were able to go to Switzerland together to attend the opening of the Bloch Museum. The preliminary arrangements had been well advanced during the founder’s lifetime, but it took his widow’s entire energy, her entire capacity for sacrifice, and her extraordinary activity to finish the work. What the six-volume work “War” relates and proves with the printed word, the Lucerne War and Peace Museum reiterates with its weapons, its models, its pictures, and its charts.
The opening festival and the events of the succeeding days took the form of a small Peace Congress; for Madame von Bloch had invited a great number of influential personages belonging to the movement to come to Lucerne as her guests. And thus at this festival the whole company met again,—Frédéric Passy, W. T. Stead, Gaston Moch, General Türr, Madame Séverine, Dr. Richter (the veteran chairman of the German Peace Society), Professor Wilhelm Förster, Moneta, D’Estournelles, and many others.
War is the duel of the nations; the duel is war between two individuals. Now a movement had been started against the primitive custom of dueling so firmly intrenched in the continental countries, though England long ago got rid of it. Prince Löwenstein and Prince Alfonso de Borbon were at the head of this movement. The latter especially showed a tireless zeal. I wrote him at this time of my intention to bring the objects of the anti-dueling league up for discussion at the next meeting of the Union. The prince replied:
Ebenzweier, August 12, 1902
Madam:
I thank you heartily for your kind letter of July 22 and the prospectus of your Vienna Conference. I hope the Conference may be followed by the best results. You are working, madam, with admirable devotion to your cause. I shall be very glad to see our anti-dueling movement once more approved by your assembly, as it was last year by the one at Glasgow.
With the highest regard, I remain
Yours faithfully
Alfonso de Borbon y Austria-Este
A manager made me an offer to arrange a tour through the United States for readings from my works. I declined; My Own’s uncertain state of health would have been a sufficient excuse for refusing the offer. I had no very clear conception of America, but I have a letter from Hodgson Pratt which he wrote after making a flying trip across “the great pond,” and in which he says, among other things:
... But my visit to the States convinced me that the great treaty would come! I returned quite infatuated with the Yankees,—improved Englishmen I call them,—so bright, so clear in thought and word, so resolute, so animated, so strong! It was almost a new revelation to hear and see those dear younger cousins. They have our British solidity, but with a youthfulness we have lost. I never spent six months of such enthusiasm.
When I first read this letter, dated in 1897, it did not mean much to me. But since I myself have been in America I understand Hodgson Pratt’s words, and I subscribe to every one of them. Yes, “clear and strong, resolute and animated,” they certainly are; yes, “a revelation,”—so appeared to me, too, that new young world!
In the summer of 1902 we received several interesting visits at Harmannsdorf; I mean visits from abroad, for with our friends of the neighborhood there was always continual going back and forth. The visitors to whom I refer came from St. Petersburg and the Caucasus.
First Emanuel Nobel, my departed friend Alfred Nobel’s nephew. I found that Emanuel had many traits of resemblance to Alfred,—the same seriousness, the same depth, the same broad, democratic ideas. In his outward semblance, also, and in his voice the nephew reminded me of the uncle. Emanuel is unmarried. The rumor that he was to marry his friend Minister Witte’s sister proved to be false; he lives in absolute devotion to his brother’s numerous family. He is at the head of the greatest naphtha business in the world. Fourteen vessels carry its products on the seas. Twice a year he journeys to Baku, where his most productive oil wells flow. When, a few years later, during the Russo-Japanese war, those oil wells were set on fire and blazed up into the skies like pillars of flame, his losses must have been immense.
The second visit from abroad was from the Princess Tamara of Georgia and her two daughters. They stayed two days at Harmannsdorf, and we indulged in endless reminiscences of the old times in the Caucasus. That beloved, beautiful country, too, was to endure the most atrocious sufferings from that miserable war.
During August of that year my husband and I accepted an invitation from Count Heinrich Taaffe (son of the former Austrian Prime Minister) and his charming wife to visit them at Castle Ellischau in northern Bohemia, where we spent a very delightful week.
A beautiful surprise was sprung upon me there. One evening about nine o’clock, as we sat after dinner on the balcony, from which there is a wide prospect of wooded mountains outlined on the horizon, suddenly on a summit against the dark sky the word “Pax” stood out in giant letters of flame. At the same time, from the distance, little lights, glimmering ever more numerous and ever nearer, approached the castle through the shrubbery. It was a torchlight procession. A throng of people came up, a band of music began to play, and finally the whole procession halted on the open place below the balcony. A man stepped forward—he was the school-teacher—and delivered an address in Bohemian, in which the word “peace” frequently occurred. I had to make a reply, also in Bohemian, my host whispering the words to me, for I do not know my native tongue. To be sure the Kinskys are a Czechish family, but in my childhood the Czechish national consciousness had not awakened, and as I grew older I was no longer receptive to it, having attained the European consciousness. But I was none the less pleased with the schoolmaster’s discourse. The village people—those also from neighboring villages—stayed about for a long time; the musicians played a polka and the young people danced. My husband and I were heartily delighted with the clever little festival. Never did a more grateful fireworks audience utter its “ah!” than we at the moment when the lofty “Pax” illumined the evening sky.
Fortunate will be our descendants for whom this word shall gleam on the political horizon, not as a fleeting pyrotechnical display but as an unalterable token.
In September the Interparliamentary Conference was to have been held in Vienna. Baron Pirquet was at the head of the organization committee. The preparations were under way, the programme had been sent out, the opening day was appointed, when, just on the eve of it, a circular was dispatched stating that on account of unforeseen technical difficulties the Conference would have to be given up and postponed until the following year. Baron Pirquet confidentially informed me that the difficulties were not technical but political. This was a hard blow to him.
I also was painfully affected by the circumstance, but at this time I had quite different troubles. While at Ellischau, even while at Lucerne, My Own had often complained of pain, and many of our friends later told me that they had been shocked at his appearance.
A long, long illness began. First—but no. I will not here relate the story of this tragic time—not here. In Briefe an einen Toten (“Letters to One Dead”) I have related to the beloved Shade everything,—how he and how I suffered, and how he died.
December 10, 1902, was the day of his death. Up to the ninth I confided to my diary all the phases of my anxiety and my hope, my despondency and my despair. It is astounding how much like a friend such a book becomes to one—how one can tell it all one’s thoughts and complaints, how one can shed over it the tears that one must hide from others, particularly from a dear one who is ill. But on the tenth of December I could write no more, and not for a long time afterward.
Much later I came back to this trusty confidant and made a large cross on the last written leaf. On the new page I wrote:
December 29. Here yawns a terrible hiatus in this book. The most awful days of my life, henceforth to be lonely, so inexpressibly lonely....
On the tenth, after an hour of agony, and after he had called me by name, M