In the Courts of Memory, 1858-1875 Part 49

Coming away from the insidious fumes of the wine into the hot air, and leaving the dark cellars for the glaring broad daylight, made us all feel a little lightheaded. I noticed that the Archduke had to be gently and with due discretion aided up the steps.

He dropped into the first available bench and said, solemnly and with conviction: "To see this wine makes one want to taste it; to taste it makes one want to drink it; to drink it makes one want to dream."

I hope that you appreciate this profound saying; it ought not to be lost to posterity.

We left him, thinking he would prefer the society of his adjutant to ours.

I knew that I preferred mine to any one else's, and went to my room, mounting its winding staircase, which I thought wound more than was necessary. Taking guests into wine-cellars is the great joke here, and it never fails.

Every one was in exuberant spirits at dinner. I wish I could remember half of the clever things that were said. The corn came on amid screams of delight. Our hostess ate thirteen ears, which, if reduced to kernels, would have made about one ordinary ear, there was so much cob and so little corn. The Princess enjoyed them hugely.

Coffee was served on the terrace. Later we had music in the hall, and before the departure of the Archduke there was a fine display of fireworks sent off from the terrace, which must have looked splendid from a distance.

SOMMERBERG, _August, 1874._

DEAR M.,--Prince Emil Wittgenstein and his wife have a pretty villa at Walhuf, directly on the Rhine, and they invited Helen and me to dine and spend the night there. Prince Wittgenstein promised to show us some wonderful manifestations from spiritland. Helen is not a believer, neither am I, but the Prince thinks I am, and, as Helen could not leave her guests, I went alone.

The Prince wrote that he had induced, with great difficulty (and probably with a great deal of expense), the much-talked-of Miss Cook to come with her sister to pay them a visit at their villa. Miss Cook is the medium through whom the Empress Josephine and Katie King (a lady unknown to the world, except as being the daughter of a certain old sea-captain, called John King, who roamed the seas a hundred years ago and pirated) manifest themselves.

I was delighted to have this chance of seeing Miss Cook, because I had read in the English papers that she had lately been shown up as a gigantic fraud. At one of her seances in London, just as she was in the act of materializing in conjunction with the Empress Josephine, a gentleman, disregarding all rules of etiquette, sprang from the audience and seized her in his arms; but instead of melting, as a proper spirit would have done, the incensed Empress screamed and scratched and tore herself away, actually leaving bits of her raiment in his hands. This rude gentleman swears that the imperial nails seemed wholly of earthly texture, and that the scratches were as thorough and lasted as well as if made by any common mortal.

Since this incident Miss Cook had thought it wiser to retire into private life, and has secured a husband calling himself Corner. Prince Wittgenstein found her, and, wis.h.i.+ng to convert his wife, could think of no better way than to let her see Miss Cook materialize. The wife and her friend, Princess Croy, are avowed disbelievers.

Our dinner was dull beyond words. There were the Prince Nicholas-Na.s.sau and his wife; the Duke Esslingen, who is nearly blind, without a wife but with convictions; Count and Countess de Vay, and the two English ladies already mentioned. Miss Cook, _alias_ Mrs. Corner, is a washed-out blond, rather barmaidish-looking English girl of medium (oh dear! I really did not mean to) height and apparently very anemic.

After dinner we were led into the room in which the seance was to take place, and were seated round a large table, and told to hold our tongues and one another's hands; the gas was turned down to the lowest point, the lamps screwed down, and there we sat and waited and waited.

The poor host was chagrined beyond utterance; something was the matter with the magnetic current. Sometimes he would tap on the table to attract the attention of the spirit underneath, but nothing helped; the spirits were obstinate and remained silent.

I ventured to ask the Duke, by the side of whom I sat and held on to, in what manner the spirits made known their answers. He said that one knock meant "yes," no knock meant "no," and two knocks meant "doubtful." At last we heard a timid knock in the direction of Mrs. Corner. Then every one was alert. Prince Wittgenstein addressed the spot and whispered in his most seductive tones, "Dear spirit, will you not manifest yourself?" Two knocks (doubtful).

"Is the company seated right?" (Silence, meaning "no.")

"Is the company congenial?" (Silence.)

To find out who the uncongenial person was, every one asked, in turn, "Is it I?" until Princess Wittgenstein put the question, upon which came a vigorous single knock.

"My dear," said the Prince, "I am sorry to say it, but you must go."

So she left, nothing loath. We all thought for sure something would happen now, but nothing did.

Prince Wittgenstein commenced the same inquiries, whether the company was now congenial; but it seemed that Princess de Croy was _de trop_, and she was also obliged to leave the room. (You see, the spirits did not like to single out the hostess alone.) Now we were reduced to nine believers with moist hands.

Would the Empress not now appear? We waited long enough for her to make up her mind; but it seemed that neither her mind nor anything else was ready to be made up. The spirits were perhaps willing, but the flesh was too weak. Then Mrs. Corner remembered that at the last sitting the Empress had declared that she would never appear on German soil (her feelings having been wounded during the Franco-German War).

There still remained Katie King. We had not heard from her yet. Prince Wittgenstein addressed the table under his fingers: "Oh, dear spirits, do do something! Anything would be acceptable!" How could he or she resist such humble pleadings?

Then some one felt a cold wind pa.s.s over his face. Surely something was happening now!

"It must be Katie King about to materialize," said the hopeful Prince.

Then we saw a dim light. We strained our eyes to the utmost to discover what it was. I should have said, if I had been truthful, that to me it looked like a carefully shaded candle; but I held my tongue. The hand of my neighbor was fast becoming jelly in mine, and I would have given worlds to have got my hand out of the current; but I did not dare to interfere with it, and I continued to hold on to the jelly. Whoever was being materialized was doing it so slowly, and without any kind of system, that we hardly had the patience to sit it out. Then a tambourine walked up some one's arm, Prince Na.s.sau's spectacles were pulled off his august nose by invisible hands (of course, who else would have dared?), thus making him more near-sighted than ever. His wife's necklace of turquoises was unclasped from her neck and hooked on to the neck of the acolyte sister; but on anxious and repeated demands to have it returned, it was replaced, much to the owner's relief. Prince Wittgenstein thought it silly of her to have so little confidence. Suddenly, while necklaces were changing necks, we saw what looked like a cloud of gauze. We held our breaths, the raps under the table redoubled, and there were all sorts of by-play, such as hair-pulling and arm-pinching, but no Katie. The gauze which was going to be her gave up trying and disappeared altogether. "Never mind," said the Prince. "It does not matter [I thought so, too.] She will come to-morrow night."

This was very depressing; even Prince Wittgenstein was utterly discouraged and decided to break up the seance, and, groping his way to the nearest lamp, turned it up. We went into the other salon, where we found the two discarded ladies sitting peacefully before a samovar and playing a game of two-handed poker.

Miss Cook told Prince Wittgenstein that Katie King would probably materialize if she had the promise of getting a sapphire ring which he wore (a beautiful sapphire). Miss Cook suggested that if this ring could be hung up on a certain tree in the garden Katie King would come and get it, and would certainly materialize the next evening. Prince Wittgenstein was credulous enough to pander to this modest wish, and hung up the desired ring, hoping Katie King would return it when she was in the flesh.

But Miss Cook had a succession of fainting fits which necessitated her sudden departure for England, so we never saw Katie King, neither did Prince Wittgenstein ever get his ring back, as far as I know.

_September, 1874._

Last Tuesday we three--Count and Countess Westphal and I--left Wiesbaden, slept at Frankfort, and starting the next morning at eleven o'clock, we arrived at our destination at 5.00 P.M. We found three carriages; one for us and two for the maids and luggage. Halfway to the castle we met, driving the lightest and prettiest of basket-wagons, our host and hostess, Count and Countess W--; the latter got into the carriage with us and one of us took her place by the side of the host. We pa.s.sed through the village, which had but one street, irregular and narrow, and we were in constant danger of running over the shoals of little children who stood stupidly in the middle of it, gazing at us with open eyes and mouth.

The Schloss is a very large, square building, with rounded towers in the four corners. It has been remodeled, added to, and adorned so many times that it is difficult to tell to which style of architecture it belongs.

The chapel is in an angle and opens on to the paved courtyard.

Our first evening was spent quietly making acquaintance with the other guests. The next morning we lunched at eleven o'clock, the gentlemen in knickerbockers and shooting attire, the ladies in sensible gowns of light material over silk petticoats. Simplicity is the order of the day. Our lunch consists of many courses, and we might have lingered for hours if the sight of the postman coming up the avenue had not given us the excuse to leave the table and devote ourselves to our correspondence, which had to be done in double-quick time, as the postman only waited a short fifteen minutes, long enough to imbibe the welcome cup of coffee or the gla.s.s of beer which he found waiting him in the kitchen. The Countess, although the mother of a young man twenty-four years of age, has a pink- and-white complexion and a fine, statuesque figure. She is a Russian lady by birth, and does a lot of kissing, as seems to be the custom in Russia.

She told me that when a gentleman of a certain position kisses your hand you must kiss his forehead.

"Isn't this rather cruel toward the ladies?" I said.

"Why," she asked, "do you think it is cruel?"

"Ladies sometimes have on gloves when they give their hands to be kissed, whereas there are some foreheads which ought to have gloves on before they are kissed."

The young Count, when he returned from the races at Wiesbaden, brought with him a young American who had been presented to him by a friend of his, who said that Mr. Brent, of Colorado (that was his name), was very "original" and _ausserordenlich charmant_. And he was both charming and (especially) original; but not the type one meets in society.

He was a big, tall, splendidly built fellow with the sweetest face and the liquidest blue eyes one can imagine. He had a soft, melodious voice and the most fascinating manner, in spite of his far-Western language. Every one liked him; my American heart warmed to him instantly, and even the austere _grande dame_, our hostess, was visibly captivated, and the prim German governess drank in every word he said, intending, no doubt, to improve her English, which otherwise she never got a chance to speak.

The two young men arrived yesterday just in time for tea. When the Countess asked him, in her most velvety tones, "Do you take sugar, Mr.

Brent?" "Yes, ma'am, I do--three lumps, and if it's beety I take four." (I trembled! What would he say next?) "I've got a real sweet tooth," he said, with an alluring smile, to which we all succ.u.mbed. The governess, remembering what hers had been before acquiring her expensive false set, probably wondered how teeth could ever be sweet.

While dressing for dinner I shuddered at the thought of what his dinner toilet might be; but I cannot say how relieved I was when I saw him appear (he was the last to appear) dressed in perfect evening dress, in the latest fas.h.i.+on, except his tie, which was of white satin and very badly tied. The salon in which we met before dinner is a real museum of rare pictures, old furniture, and curiosities. The walls are hung with old Italian faences and porcelains. A huge buffet, reaching to the ceiling, is filled with Venetian goblets and majolica vases.

A vast chimneypiece, under which one can stand with ease, is ornamented with a fine iron bas-relief of the family arms, and a ponderous pair of andirons which support a heavy iron bar big enough to roast a wild boar on. Count G---- called Mr. Brent's attention to it, and Mr. Brent said, pleasantly, "I suppose this is where the ancestors toasted their patriarchal toes."

At dinner he sat next to the governess, and I could see her trying to digest his "original" language; and I was near enough to overhear some of their conversation. For instance, she asked him what his occupation was in his native land. "Oh," he said, "I do a little of everything, mostly farming. I've paddled my own canoe since I was a small kid."

"Is there much water in your country-place?" she inquired.

"Don't you mean country? Well, yes, we have quite a few pailfuls over there, and we don't have to pull a string to let our waterfalls down."

My neighbor must have thought me very inattentive; but I felt that I could not lose a word of Mr. Brent's conversation. The vestibule (or "Halle," as they called it), where we went after dinner, used to be occupied by the _Corps du Garde._ It had vaulted ceilings and great oak beams, and was filled with hunting implements of all ages arranged in groups on the walls very artistically; there were cross-bows, fencing-swords, masks, guns (old and new), pistols, etc. Mr. Brent was very much impressed by this collection, gazed at the specimens with sparkling admiration, and remarked to the governess, who was always at his elbow, "I never saw such a lot of things [meaning the weapons] outside of a s.h.i.+ndy."

"What is a s.h.i.+ndy?" inquired the governess, always anxious to improve her knowledge of the language.

"Why, don't you know what a s.h.i.+ndy is? No? Well, it's a free fight, where you kill promiscuous."