Aunt Mary wrote to me about the same time. (This happens to be the only letter of hers which I have kept.)
“My dear child—This has been a fatiguing winter campaign! I shall be not a little glad when Rosa and Lilly have found partners. Found they have, plenty of them; for, as you know, each has refused in the course of the carnival half-a-dozen offers, not counting the perennial Conrad. Now the same drudgery is to begin again at Marienbad. I should like to have gone to Grumitz to spend some time, above all things, or to you; and instead of this I am obliged to play over again the tiresome and thankless part of chaperon to these pleasure-seeking girls.
“I am very glad to hear that you are quite well again. Now that the danger is over, I may say that we were in great trouble—your husband used for some time to write us such despairing letters—every moment he was in fear of seeing you die. But let us thank God that it was not destined so to be. The novena which I kept at the Ursulines for your recovery also, perhaps, helped to preserve you. The Almighty designed to spare you for your little Rudi. Kiss the dear little boy and tell him to keep hard at his learning. I send him with this a couple of little books, The Pious Child and His Guardian Angel, a charming story, and Our Country’s Heroes, a collection of war-sketches for boys. A taste for such things cannot be instilled too early into the young. Your brother Otto, for instance, was not five years old when I used to tell him about Alexander the Great, and Caesar, and other famous conquerors; and it is a real pleasure to see what a spirit he has now for everything heroic.
“I have heard that you prefer to remain for the summer in the neighbourhood of Vienna, instead of going to Grumitz. You are quite wrong there. The air of Grumitz would suit you much better than that dusty Hietzing; and poor papa will be quite bored all alone. Probably it is on your husband’s account that you will not go away; but it seems to me that the duty of a daughter also should not be quite neglected. Tilling, too, could surely come to Grumitz for a day sometimes. To be so very much together is not altogether good for married folks—trust to my experience of life. I have noticed that the best marriages are those in which the couple are not always sitting prosing together, but allow each other a little latitude. Now, goodbye; spare yourself—so as not to get a relapse—and think again about Hietzing. May heaven preserve you and your Rudi. This is the constant prayer of your affectionate
This letter of my aunt made me reflect again that there was a “political situation.” During all this time I had not troubled myself about anything of the sort. I had, it is true, read a good deal both before and after my illness, as usual, daily and weekly papers, reviews and books, but the leading articles in the journals remained unnoticed, since I no longer debated with myself the anxious question: “War or no war?”; the chatter about home and foreign politics possessed no interest for me. The postscript of the letter quoted above looked serious, and it occurred to me to look up what I had neglected and inform myself about our present position.
“What does Aunt Mary mean by her expression ‘threatening’? you least arrogant among the Prussians,” I asked my husband, as I gave him the letter to read. “Is there then a political situation at the present time?”
“There is one, as there is weather, always—more’s the pity—and one is also as changeable and treacherous as the other.”
“Well, tell me then. Are they talking still about these complicated duchies? Have they not done with them yet?”
“They are talking about them more than ever. They have not done with them in the least. The Schleswig-Holsteiners have now a great fancy to get free of the Prussians—the ‘arrogant’ Prussians we are called in the latest form of speech. ‘Sooner Danish than Prussian,’ say they, repeating a signal given them by the central states. Do you know that the hackneyed ‘Meerumschlungen’ song is now sung with this variation:—
“ ‘Schleswig-Holstein stammverwandt Schmeisst die Preussen aus dem Land’?”7
“And what has happened to the Augustenburg? Have they got him then? O do not tell me, Frederick, do not tell me that they have not got him! It was on account of this, the only rightful heir, for whom the poor countries oppressed by the Danes were longing so, that the whole war had to be waged which might have cost me you! Leave me then at least the consolation that this indispensable Augustenburg has been reinstated in his rights, and is reigning over the undivided duchies. I take my stand on this word ‘undivided.’ It is an old historical right, which has been assured to them for several centuries, and the foundation of which I had trouble enough in investigating.”
“It is going badly with your historical rights, my poor Martha,” said Frederick laughing. “No one says anything at all about Augustenburg now, except himself in his protests and manifestoes.”
From this time I began again to look into the political complications, and found out as follows: Absolutely
