A POPULAR LIFE OF BISMARCK.*
Tins book is a curious medley of authentic history, accepted anecdote, and broadly expressed hero-worship, all centring of course in the Minister President of Prussia, and all set off by a rich variety of wood-cuts,—portraits, landscapes, pictures of all sorts, — representing things real and imaginary with which Bismarck did have or might have had some actual connection. There is a picture of himself in some real, or at least possibly real, occupation, almost once in every score of pages; then there are woodcuts of ancestors, of his parents, of his sister, of his country house, of his dog, of his horse, of scenes reported to have occurred in the lives of his ancestors, of scenes supposed or known to have occurred in his own life but now delineated according to the artist's fancy, —Bismarck as a boy breaking his horse's knees, Bismarck as a student fighting a duel with a Jewish opponent, Bismarck as a Conservative deputy glowering at a Liberal majority in the White Room at Berlin, Bismarck as a courtier making his best bow to the King's brother (the present king), Bismarck ass contributor to the New Prussian News writing an article at a high desk, Bismarck taking his daily rides at Frankfort, Bismarck walking with the Emperor at Biarritz,—and a host of such fanciful popular illustrations intended to make the book as popular in Prussia as one of Dickens's novels would be here. The pictures are often clever, and never poor or coarsely executed, but of course they impart, as they were intended to do, something of a catchpenny effect to the book; and the book is written in the same popular fashion. It is full of anecdotes, not always very carefully authenticated. The style of the German is popular, the tone is of the jovial-patriotic class, and the admiration of the hero is pitched in a very high key. Yet with all this there is so much of private and really important correspondence, so much of disclosure of Bismarck's personal life and views on public affairs, so much of weighty political documents, that it is impossible to treat the book as one of little significance. Of course the communications given are all given after due deliberation. Of course, much which would modify the effect of what is given has been suppressed. Of course, it must be regarded as a merely partial account of Bismarck's career carefully adapted to familiarize -the German public with those features of his past creed and policy whicitit is most convenient for him to make known. But after making all allowance for these characteristics, it is still a book well worth study, especially as recounting those antecedents of which the present Minister of Prussia and Chancellor of the North-German Confederation is willing and anxious just now to make confession, if not to boast. Obviously as the book is intended to make Bismarck popular in Prussia (and in Prussia, as we shall presently note, rather than in Germany), and necessary as it is to bear in mind that this is the point of view from which it is written, it is not by any means such a book as our shilling volumes about Gladstone, Disraeli, and Bright,—the work of litterateurs, undertaken to satisfy an idle public curiosity about famous men. It is, at any Tate, an official publication by the Prussian Minister,—though in a work especially adapted for the reading of the multitude, —of 'those features of his private and public life by which chiefly he desires himself to be known.
There is a curious frankness about the book. We are told that Bismarck's mother belonged in a measure to what we may call the French school of Liberal Prussian illuminati, and that she tried to give her wider intellectual notions to her boys, but that they were rather driven into reaction at school by the taunts directed by some of the teachers against their order. It is confessed that at college Bismarck never attended a lecture but twice during his life, and both at Berlin and Gottingen was as wild a Bursche as either University contained, fighting some twenty duels,—not very terrible ones,— and in his very first succeeding,—an omen this surely of his political career !---only in flicking the spectacles off his opponent's eyes,— depriving them, that is, of all artistic help, but not injuring their natural powers. He seems to have had the true English student's pleasure in what is vulgarly called in schoolboy phrase " cheeking " the University authorities. At least his biographer relates that after his first wine (or beer?) party at Gottingen,—held on occasion of his return from the customary student journey to the Harz,—a bottle was flung out of the window, which led to his citation before the proper University authority. Before him Bismarck appeared in a chimney-pot hat, a variegated Berlin dressing-gown, jack-boots, and accompanied by his gigantic dog, before whom the University authority visibly quailed. This potentate not being satisfied with the simple statement of Count Bismarck to the effect that the bottle had been thrown out of the window, and had flown out accordingly, Bismarck expounded at greater length to him, and with philosophical accuracy, how he had taken the bottle in his hand, and by a movement in the muscular apparatus of the right arm had given it the requisite initial velocity which led it to describe the course of a projectile through the window. Bismarck would probably have been "sent down" rather early in his career if he had been entered at Oxford or Cambridge. There is a popular saying, says Herr Hesekiel, in the Brandenburg district where Bismarck's family has been so many centuries at home, which attributes to the Bismarcks, as the characteristic saying of the house, the phrase, "Noah lenge nicht genug,"—" Not near enough yet," and which expresses, we suppose, the popular conception of their tenacity of purpose,—that they were not tired out of any plan they had formed by a reiterated failure or a pertinacious opposition which would have disheartened most of their compeers. There is a somewhat extravagant illustration of this characteristic in Bismarck's wild, youthful days, if his biographer may be trusted. When studying law at Berlin he had been more than once disappointed by a bootmaker who did not send home his boots when they were promised. Accordingly when this next happened, a servant of the young jurist appeared at the bootmaker's at six in the morning with the simple question, "Are Here Bismarck's boots ready?" When he was told they were not, he departed, but at ten minutes past six another servant appeared with the same inquiry, and so at precise intervals of ten minutes it went on all day, till by the evening the boots were finished and sent home. That Bismarck has real humour plenty of the letters to his sister and wife, given in this book, prove. Nothing can be better, for instance, than his description, in a letter to his sister after her marriage, of the comedy through which his father and he went in the capacity of sportsmen, when every one of the party knew perfectly well that there was no game to be found, except perhaps an old woman or two gleaning fuel. He describes how they went out habitually in heavy rain, surrounded a cover with the most elaborate preparations against the escape of the foxes; how the beaters then set up the most frightful cries as they went through the cover from one side, how his father stood without moving a finger, his gun cocked and at his shoulder ready to fire—(it seems that fox-hunting was not our English sport, but more like our pheasant or hare shooting),—occasionally whispering to Bismarck to know if he had seen anything; how he himself gravely replied, " with as natural a dash of wonder in my voice as I could manage, 'No, nothing in the world," and how they then went on to another cover, went through precisely the same ceremonial, and so on, the rain still continuing, for three or four hours, without any one of the actors, himself excepted, ever seeming to be in the least damped by the certain failure which they must have expected from the first. Again, take this sentence from another letter when he is staying at a bathing-place on the coast, Nordeney, and describing some of the figures at the table d'hote:— "Opposite me sits the old Minister —, one of those forms which appear to us in dreams when indigestion comes on in our sleep,—a fat frog without bones, who at every bite makes his mouth yawn like a carpet-bag to the very shoulders, so that I turn giddy and hold on to the edge of the table." The peremptory side of the man is delineated in more than one anecdote, and appears in almost all his letters. The following story (date 1850, when Bismarck was 35, no longer a youth), of which his biographer is evidently proud, is a good illustration of his carefully calculated and far from impulsive peremptoriness. In some one of the houses of refreshment in Berlin where Bismarck was drinking his beer in the heat of the summer, some man present uttered a gross insult (we are not told what) against some member of the Royal family. Bismarck rose, went up to the man, and shouted, Out of the house with you; if you are not gone by the time I have finished this glass of beer, I shall break it in pieces on your head." Of course a great hubbub arose, but Bismarck quite coolly went on drinking his beer till he had finished it, and then dashed his glass with such force at the head of the man who. had been guilty of the insult, that it whizzed into a multitude of pieces, and the wounded man collapsed with a shriek. On this a dead silence succeeded to the tumult, in the midst of which Bismarck asked the waiter coolly the price of the glass, paid for it, aud amidst general approbation walked coolly away,—the wounded man making no effort to detain him. The characteristic side of this story is not so much Bismarck's monarchical zeal, or even his calculated violence, as the deliberate conditions which he imposed upon himself in giving the man notice and a door of escape,—a course which in any other man would have meant a hesitating purpose, but in him meant only a habit of imposing what he thought reasonable limits even on his own most arbitrary purposes.
The book is, of course, rich in illustration of Bismarck's political development ; but of this we do not propose to say very Much here, as we wish to confine ourselves principally to the man, and touch the politician only where he illustrates the man. But even this object requires a .final word or two on his political history. His biographer tells us, and illustrates his position richly, that Bismarck's central political idea throughout has been to play personally the part of a true vassal to his feudal lord, the King of Prussia,—not excluding, of course, frank criticism of the King where he has thought the King wrong, of which we have one remarkable specimeu,—still leas excluding large designs for extending his monarch's power, but still always keeping in view that nothing can be ultimately good for Prussia, nothing good for Germany, which is not good for Prussia's King. In advising the King to refuse the German Imperial Crown, he said, in 1849, "The Frankfort Crown may be very brilliant, but the gold which gives reality to its brilliance can only be obtained by first moltiag down .the Prussian Crown, and I have no confidence that the process of melting it down in conjunction with the form of this constitution will succeed." He commented on the policy of Frederick the Great, and said it lent no authority to the dream of German unity as proposed in 1849. "I believe rather, Frederick II. would have relied on the most prominent peculiarities of Prussian nationality, and on the warlike element in it, .and not without success." He had never, he said, heard the Prussian soldier sing the popular song, "Was ist des Deutschen Vaterlaud ?" (" What is the German's Native Land ?") "The people from whom this army has gone forth, and whose truest representative the army is, . . . . has no desire to see its Prussian kingdom plunged in the putrid yeast of South German undiscipline (Zuelitlosigleeit). Prussians we are, and Prussians we will remain ; I know that in these words I make the confession of the Prussian Army, the confession of the majority of my countrymen, and I hope to God that we shall remain Prussians, long after this bit of paper has been forgotten like a withered autumn leaf." This emphasis of Bismarck's upon the army as the true representative institution of
Prussia,—this deep-rooted dread of the uumilitary spirit in Southern Germauy,—has been expressed in his latest speech in 1869 as strongly as it was expressed twenty years ago in 1849.
The leading idea of his political career has been,—to use the strong drill of the Prussian nation, under its King and chief, in order to spread the power of Prussia in Gernaany,—to prevent the merger of Prussia in Germany,—while,proutotiug the acquisition of German power by Prussia.
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