But the event that marked the time and gave supreme significance to it was the dismissal of Bismarck. His fall in 1890 shook the world. For nearly thirty years, from 1862 on, Bismarck had dominated Europe. Few remember his beginnings, though he himself has told how.
When I first came into office, the king showed me his written abdication. I had first of all to re-establish the royal power, for it was shaken and shattered. I was successful. Yet I am not an absolutist. There is always danger in one-man government. Parliamentary opinion and a free press are necessary to a satisfactory monarchial system…
Universal suffrage was the spirit of the Frankfort Parliament. I adopted it in the Constitution of the North German Confederation and afterwards of the Empire, because it was necessary to counteract the Austrian influence, and it was my aim, therefore, to satisfy all classes.
Bismarck's judgments of his imperial masters are curiously characteristic: while in their service, he spoke well of them. On his tomb Bismarck directed that there should appear these words:
Here rests Prince Bismarck
Born 1st April, 1815
Died — A faithful German Servant of Emperor William the First
He wrote: 'The old Emperor William was not a great statesman but a man of sound judgment and a perfect gentleman. He was true to those who worked with him. I was deeply attached to him. The Emperor Frederick, too, was a noble man-a sharp sword, so to speak, with a short blade.' But after Bismarck died in 1898 and his Memoirs by Busch were published, we got the other side. As he said himself: 'I lack altogether the bump of veneration for my fellow men.' And so we find what Bismarck really thought of Emperor William the First: 'When anything important was going on, he usually began by taking the wrong road, but in the end he always allowed himself to be put straight again… His knowledge of affairs was limited and he was slow in comprehending anything new.'
Bismarck found it hard to conceal his contempt for the Crown Prince Frederick. It even comes out in spiteful little outbursts such as this: 'The Crown Prince, like all mediocrities, likes copying, and other occupations of the same sort, such as sealing letters, etc.'
And finally Bismarck's opinion of the Kaiser who dismissed him was written in vitriol even before the final break:
I cannot stand him (Wilhelm the Second) much longer. He wants even to know whom I see, and has spies set to watch those who come in and go out of my office… It comes of an overestimate of himself, and of his inexperience of affairs, that can lead to no good. He is much too conceited: he is simply longing with his whole heart to be rid of me. in order that he may govern alone (with his own genius), and be able to cover himself with glory. He does not want the old mentor any longer, but only docile tools. But I cannot make genuflections nor crouch under the table like a dog. He wants to break with Russia, and yet he has not the courage to demand the increase of the army from the Liberals in the Reichstag.
It is interesting to read that in a letter to the Chancellor, the Crown Prince Frederick at Portofino described his eldest son as 'inexperienced, extremely boastful and self-conceited.'
Bismarck's opinions of his masters are to my mind not only self-revealing but true, and his contemptuous condemnation of Wilhelm the Second has been justified by the result.
Like most of the leading men of the nineteenth century, like Tennyson and Hugo, Gladstone, Salisbury and Parnell, Bismarck was a convinced believer, not only in God and divine providence, but also in a life after death; he even believed in apparitions, ghosts, and supernatural signs.
In 1866, just before the war between Prussia and Austria, Bismarck, according to Busch, had been exceedingly cast down: when he was shot at five times and wasn't even grazed, he took it as a sign of divine approbation and was immediately lifted into the happiest humor.
One must think of what Bismarck accomplished even though handicapped by brainless masters! In 1866 he beat Austria and made Prussia the first military power in Europe. He welded many German states into one on the anvil of war, and after 1870 he developed the industries of his people in the most unexpected and successful ways. I have already related how he had profited by the socialist teachings of Lassalle, how in fifty ways he had fostered industry so that every one felt an added incentive to labor and a sure understanding that an extra effort would lead on to fortune. Considering that he was born and bred an outrageous individualist in an aristocratic tradition and yet created a new record as a social reformer, one can only wonder at the profound morality which led him always towards justice. He knew instinctively, as Lincoln knew, that 'labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration.'
His fall was treated excellently in the English press. Punch had a famous cartoon on it entitled, 'Dropping the Pilot.'
But Bismarck was not so great a man, in my opinion, as Sir Richard Burton: in force of character, in daring and in strength, they were not unlike; but Burton had a wider intelligence, a larger mind, and a richer generosity and kindliness of nature.
To me the difference between the fates of Bismarck and Burton gives rise to many reflections. For thirty years Bismarck had supreme power and made Germany the first state in Europe — I had almost said in the world; but England denied Burton almost everything. Although he had served the foreign office with extraordinary ability, they refused him even the usual retiring pension.
In my last visit to him in Trieste, I couldn't help asking him how it came about, why the English authorities were so down on him, and he said smiling, 'You will laugh if I tell you. I think I blundered in my first talk with Lord Salisbury.
He called me 'Burton'; his familiarity encouraged me, and I spoke to him as 'Salisbury.' I saw him wince, and he went back immediately to 'Mr. Burton,' but out of cheek or perversity I kept up the 'Salisbury.' He was so ignorant; he didn't know where Mombassa was; and the idea that I had brought back treaties handing over the whole of Central Africa to Britain merely filled him with dismay. He kept repeating, 'dreadful responsibility — dreadful'; he was in reality, I believe, a very nice old lady.' I could not help laughing.
Burton's judgment of Lord Salisbury was justified to me later in a peculiar way. One evening Teresa, Lady Shrewsbury, after meeting me somewhere at dinner, offered to take me home in her brougham. I thanked her warmly, for she was always interesting, knew everybody, and had a real salon in London.
Arthur Balfour had been one of the chief personages at the dinner. I asked her what she thought of him. 'I know him very slightly,' she replied, 'but think him very distinguished-looking.'
'I'm afraid,' I said, 'that his outward is the best part of him.' 'Strange,' she said, 'that reminds me that once, driving like this a few years ago with Lady Salisbury, I asked her what she thought of her husband's good- looking nephew. 'Oh, my dear,' she replied, 'he's nothing for us women: I don't believe he has any more temperament than my poor old Bob!''
So Lord Salisbury was judged by his wife very much as Sir Richard Burton had judged him.
When Burton showed me his translation of The Arabian Nights and I saw that he had described every sort of sensuality with the crudest words, I got frightened for him; still, I told him that I would help him so far as I could and put myself at his disposal. I would have liked him to modify some of the bestialities; however, as I have said elsewhere, it wasn't my business to condemn a great man but to help him; and I am proud of the fact that partly through my help he made ten thousand pounds out of the venture. No one could be with Burton for an hour without feeling his extraordinary force of character and the imperial keenness of his intelligence. If England had treated him as she should, he would have given her a glorious empire, the whole central plateau of Africa from the Cape to Cairo, without a war, and no one would be astonished now that I should compare him with Bismarck; but England couldn't use her greatest man of action!
I have never told how we came to know each other intimately. Captain Lovett Cameron, his lieutenant on several of his African journeys, had introduced me to him; but I was awkward and self-conscious and made some conventional foolish remark that caused Burton to turn from me contemptuously. I confessed my fault to Cameron afterwards, who insisted that the faux pas could easily be repaired. 'You've no idea how generouskind Dick is; as soon as he gets to know you, he'll cotton to you,' and he fixed a meeting for the morrow in Pall Mall at one of the clubs.
I thought over the meeting and arranged what I'd say. It had suddenly come into my head that Burton knew Lord Lytton and that they were friends. As soon as the three of us met next day, I shot off my bolt. 'The other morning,' I began, 'I walked down Pall Mall just behind two men curiously differentiated in clothes and in person; the one was a little dandy, high heels, yellow kid gloves, tall hat, rouged cheeks-he evidently wore corsets too; the
