other, a very tall man, swung along with a sombrero on his head and a heavy stick in his hand. I was near enough to hear them talk. The dandy was intent on persuading his companion. 'Ah, Dick,' he began, 'delicacies escape you men of huge appetite; you miss the deathless charm of the androgyne: the figure of the girl of thirteen with sex unexpressed as yet, slim as a boy with breasts scarcely outlined, and narrow hips; but unlike a boy, Dick; no lines or ugly muscles, the knees also are small; everything rounded to rhythmic loveliness-the most seductive creature in all God's world.'
'You make me tired, Lytton,' cried the big man in a deep tone, 'you cotquean, you! Your over-sweet description only shows me that you have never tried the blue-bottomed monkey!'
'First-rate,' cried Burton laughing to me, 'you have hit off Lytton to the soul, which probably means that my portrait, too, is life-like.'
From that hour on the ice was broken between us and we became friends, and I soon found Burton, as Cameron had said, determined unconditionally to forgive all injuries, one of the noblest spirits I have met in this earthly pilgrimage!
It was Burton who discovered the source of the Nile, for on that memorable journey of '58 Speke was merely his lieutenant; and when they reached Ujiji, on the eastern side of Lake Tanganyika, Burton was the first to proclaim the obvious fact; yet when Speke returned to England and claimed the honor of the discovery, Burton said nothing about the matter; there was in him at all times a real generosity.
Who can forget the verse in which he embodied his stalwart creed?
Do what thy manhood bids thee do,
From none but self expect applause:
He noblest lives and noblest dies
Who makes and keeps his self-made laws.
When Burton died, Swinburne wrote for me a long elegy on him in the Saturday Review, which ends with this couplet that appealed to me intensely.
The royal heart we mourn, the faultless friend Burton-a name that lives till fame be dead.
Like Burton, Bismarck, too, had intimate little messages for me. On the occasion of his seventy-second birthday he said a thing that brought him close to me, for it has been my experience all through my life. 'Out of the eight thousand letters of sympathy,' he said, 'that I have received, a quarter came from women-that pleased me greatly: I regard it as a good sign, for it is my experience that one doesn't reach the female sympathy as easily as the male; besides, women have never liked me: I don't know why; perhaps I couldn't speak nicely enough to them.' Yet, if gossip is to be believed, he was more than nice to Pauline Lucca-the great Jewish singer — when she visited Berlin once.
Bismarck made an extraordinary impression on me. I always see him as I saw him first in the Reichstag: he would often sit for hours without speaking or suddenly get up in the middle of a debate and go out, and one felt at once that the Chamber had become common; vitality, distinction, any possibility of the extraordinary had gone out of the atmosphere.
One day, I shall never forget it, though it must be now nearly fifty years ago, he had been baited in the House, and at length, some socialist, I think it was little fiery Bebel, used the word wagt (dare) about his reticence. 'The Imperial Chancellor does not tell us whether the edict has come from himself or from the Emperor, er wagt es nicht zu sagen,' he added. (He dares not speak out.) Bismarck started up, his three hairs bristling on his bald head, and stalked out towards his persecutor. 'Who says wagt to Bismarck?' he jerked out with intense passion. The whole House broke into applause, while the little socialist fairly cowered on his seat as the great man continued. 'You can either take it that the project came from His Majesty, the Emperor, and was approved by his Chancellor, or that the project came from the Chancellor and was approved by His Majesty, the Emperor. And whichever you fancy the more probable, you can make it square with what you think is constitutional, exactly as it suits you: wie Sie wollen.' The contempt of the corps-student for the little Jew raged in the disdain of voice and manner and words. He strode back to his place and went right on out of the House.
This scene taught me that Bismarck was the most impressive person I had seen up to that time-impressive, of course, chiefly for his courage, but also for his insight. Bit by bit I came to see that he was altogether unscrupulous, determined to make Germany the first country in Europe.
If Ms voice had been as impressive as his great frame and imperious manner, he would have been simply overwhelming! As it was, it was impossible to be in his presence and hear him speak without being impressed by his greatness of character.
The only time I met Bismarck to speak to was an event in my life. We had a literary society in Gottingen, his old university. The house he had lived in was shown on the edge of the ramparts; as a corps-student he had fought half a dozen duels, and all successful, thanks chiefly to his great height and length of reach. For some reason or other, the civic authorities in my time passed a law shutting up all drinking places, and all Kneipen even (the places where students drank) at one o'clock in the morning. The corps-students objected to this, defied the civic ordinance, and soldiers were ordered out to close the drinking places. At once the corps-students sent a deputation to the Chancellor to beg him to defend their liberties.
Hearing of this, I called on the literary society to do likewise, pointed out that we didn't drink or make night hideous for quiet citizens in the morning hours, and finally three of us were selected to go to Berlin and call upon Bismarck, and see if we could not win him to the cause of freedom. Next day, my friend, von H-, and a man whose name I've completely forgotten, and myself started for Berlin. Von H-, we agreed, was to be the spokesman, and he recited to us an excellent speech.
All went happily at first: I drafted a letter to Prince Bismarck, begging him to hear us for a few minutes as students of his old university. We got a letter from his secretary: the Chancellor would see us at eleven next morning in the Wilhelm Strasse. Needless to say, we were punctual, but when the door opened and Bismarck rose before us at his desk, the courage of my companions oozed away: they both stood bowing like automata with heels together, for all the world as if they had hinges in their backs.
'Begin!' I whispered to von H-, but he bowed again and again, and said nothing. I saw I'd have to speak or be shamed, so I stepped forward and simply said that we had come as members of a literary society; we were not idlers, but students, intent on improving ourselves: we didn't drink or annoy peaceable citizens by howling songs in the small hours, so we hoped he'd order the civic authorities in Gottingen to leave us alone. The closing time seems reasonable,' Bismarck replied curtly.
'Why shouldn't we talk all night, so long as we don't annoy anyone?' I countered.
'You come into the category of student societies (Verbindungeri),' he said.
'It's difficult to differentiate.'
'Good laws shouldn't oppress the well-behaved,' I objected. 'I'm sure there's a student behind the Chancellor!'
'Richtig!' he exclaimed, his face lighting up. 'But,' the thought came: 'the well-behaved don't feel laws as oppressive. You can surely say all you have to say before one o'clock in the morning!'
'Why shouldn't we talk all night if we want to and don't annoy others? As a student Prince Bismarck would not like to have been coerced by soldiers, and we were told that we should be shot down like dogs if we resisted.'
'Richtig!' he barked again. 'The soldiers had their orders-scharf geladen!'
'It's mere despotism,' I cried, 'indefensible and intolerable tyranny; the Gessler hat sort of thing.' He shrugged his shoulders, smiling, and I turned, bowing, and went to the door, for I feared that I had been too bold, while my companions went on bowing like wooden automata. At the door Bismarck called me back: 'Are you a German?' he asked.
'An American,' I replied.
'So…' he interjected, smiling as if at length he understood my boldness. 'So!
The Declaration of Independence stops at the frontier,' and he laughed genially.
When we got outside, my companions congratulated me; but I turned angrily on Von H-: 'Had you told me you were going to say nothing, I'd have prepared something: as it was, I was beaten!'
'I would never have believed it,' said Von H-, 'but I could not have spoken to save my life; the discipline, the pigtail nature- zopfwesen-of us Germans since Frederick the Great has got into our blood! But you did splendidly.'
'I did very badly,' I said.
