Prince Otto: A Romance

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Preface

TO

THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION

RINCE OTTO/' as my husband has said, was projected in CaUfornia^ but was not taken up seriously until the year 1883, when we were living in the little chalet, La Solitude, in Hyeres. The labour that went into the making of the book was greater than he ever expended over any other novel, either before or after. This story, fantastic and artificial to a degree, demanded a style to correspond. The high key of its beginning was difficult to maintain and proved somewhat of a strain. It was the last effort of his earlier manner. My husband often said, in later years, that he had outlived this style and would be at a loss to regain it were he to attempt another book of the same character.

Prince Otto was originally modelled on the character of his cousin, Robert Alan Stevenson, but

Copyright, 1905, by Charles Scribner*s Sons

156167 vi PREFACE

fell insensibly into what my husband conceived himself. In some respects his friends could detect a superficial resemblance, but the fundamental character of the man was not there. Otto shirked responsibility — my husband courted it. Gondremark could never have laid his hands on the reins of government in Griinewald had Robert Louis Stevenson been the reigning prince. Otto, the gentle philosopher, preferred a life of peace and comfortable domesticity. My husband, on the contrary, was of a bolder spirit, and looked upon peace and comfort as stumbling-blocks for the soul. During one of the many wars in Samoa a tala (gossiping tale) was circulated through the country, that Tusitala was acting as secret military adviser to the native army that had just suffered a defeat. When this was repeated to my husband he threw up his head and his eyes blazed. " What sort of an incompetent do the white men of Apia take me for?" he said; *' I 'm tempted to show them the kind of leader I 'd make — . Oh, if I only could ! " and he began drawing strategic plans on his writing-table to prove how easily the A'anas might have marched on to victory.

It was fortunate for the world of letters that mj husband was a semi-invalid all his life; when h read for his own pleasure, he preferred technicc

PREFACE vii

books on military tactics, the margins of which were covered with his annotations. During Lord Wolseley's Nile campaign, when he happened to be in tolerable health, he seriously contemplated the idea of going to the front as a war correspondent.

It never seemed to me that either my husband or Robert Alan Stevenson quite belonged to their century. In some indefinable way they differed in appearance from the majority of mankind as much as they differed in character. This is the only explanation I can find for the singular descriptions of my husband's habiliments that have gained general credence. He looked as though he would naturally be clad in something picturesque and unusual, having a gallant bearing with an alert grace of movement that is seldom seen except in halfcivilized countries. He used many gestures in speaking, was of a dark, ruddy complexion, and quick and fiery of temper. " Something royal, ain't it ? " was the audible comment of a negro waiter on a Newport boat. I imagine even this negro waiter had a picture in his mind of sashes and cloaks, and jewelled stilettos ; whereas the supposedly royal personage was clad in ordinary blue serge.

I have just read with amazement that " Mr. Stevenson wore skin-tight nankin pants, Wellingviii PREFACE

ton boots, a black shirt, a white sombrero, and sealskin cape fastened by a fancy brooch which hel a bunch of daffodils ! " I may have the ord( wroHg, but these were the articles enumerated, — costume that could have been worn only by maniac, and certainly not by my husband. It strange how such tales take hold of the imagin; tion and grow with the telling. Within the la; few months a man said to me, " I knew Mr. St< venson well in Manasquan. I can see him now, i my mind's eye, just as he looked in his nanki pants and red sash ! " In a recent, otherwise e:j cellent, article the author speaks of " Stevenson intolerable affectation in dress.'' There was moi excuse for the captain of a passenger ship. ** M Stevenson," he said, " came aboard my vessel i his cow-boy rig, with his long boots on ! " T\ truth being that my husband rode to the wharf c horseback in conventional riding costume.

In my husband's early years he earned very litt money, although he had a small allowance fro: his father, — sufficient for at least a modest ware robe. It was only by exercising the closest econon: that he could save anything for an invalid frier whose need he considered greater than his owi He bought his clothes of the cheapest material, ; the cheapest shops, and wore them until they wei

PREFACE ix

so shabby that his friends, not knowing the circumstances, remonstrated, thinking that the son of a comparatively rich father should make a better appearance. When his funds were once at the lowest ebb his father presented him with a velvet smoking- jacket. It lasted a long while, and, worn on all occasions, to the scandal of the community, it saved the expense of other more conventional coats. It was while we were living in Bournemouth, in the beginning of the fashion of amateur photography, that most of the photographs of my husband were taken. At that time his health was at the worst, and his friends were eager to get some likeness of him before, as they feared, it would be too late. The hemorrhages were almost incessant, and the consequent debility made it very difficult for him to sit for a photograph. The English climate is treacherous, and even in Bournemouth we had to exercise the utmost caution in guarding the invalid from draughts and cold. The doctor would not allow my husband even to have his hair cut unless both the state of his health and the weather were propitious. The photographs mark these changes like a barometer. A likeness with long hair meant a severe illness; all those taken in Samoa, where he enjoyed the best health of his life, show him with his hair cut short. While he sat for

X PREFACE

these photographs I stood near, guarding him from fatigue or draughts as much as possible. Sometimes the unexpected opening of a door would send a chill into the room, when I would snatch anything at hand to throw about his shoulders. These details may seem trivial, as indeed they are; but my husband has been so persistently described as a poseur in dress that I thought it better to put an end to such foolish inventions.

About the time of the completion of Prince Otto, we had several visitors in the little chalet. First came Robert Alan Stevenson, whose remarkable personal attraction alone would have made every moment of his stay a delight to us both ; his talk, of a rare intelligence, witty, wise, gay, full of surprises and extravagances, did my husband more good than all the drugs in the chemist's shop. Then followed Mr. Sidney Colvin, the wise counsellor and sound critic. As these appeared singly, we managed to take them in without bursting the walls of La Solitude ; but when Mr. Charles Baxter and Mr. W. E. Henley arrived together, we were reluctantly compelled to engage sleeping-rooms for them at the hotel.

These visits would have been pleasant enough anywhere, but breaking into our secluded life as they did, and bringing the atmosphere of the out-

PREFACE xi

side world into our little hermitage, they were delightful indeed. I can remember few things more exciting than the evenings we spent • with Mr. Colvin, inventing a play to be called The Arethusa. The exhilaration of the society of Mr. Baxter and Mr. Henley led my husband, in an evil moment, to propose an expedition to Nice. There he took a cold which developed into pneumonia. He was in imminent danger for many weeks, and returned to Hyeres desperately ill.

Prince Otto, meanwhile, had started on his pilgrimage through the world of letters, not without some preliminary embarrassments. My husband was asked by Mr. Longmans to put a price on his work. With much perturbation he answered, naming a sum absurdly small. I insisted that this should be changed to a larger amount; but how earnestly I wished I had not interfered when days passed without a word in reply. My husband's mortification was acute. He said he felt like a cheat, and turned cold when he remembered that he had demanded two hundred and fifty pounds for the serial rights of a tale the publishers apparently thought worth nothing at all. He actually had the pen in his hand to write a telegram retracting the terms in his letter when a hurried note arrived from Messrs. Longmans, saying that they xii PREFACE

considered two hundred and fifty pounds a very

moderate price for the story, which should go to

press immediately.

TO

At last, after so many years, I have the pleasure of re-introducing you to Prince Otto^ whom you will remember a very little fellow, no bigger in fact than a few sheets of memoranda written for me by your kind hand. The sight of his name will carry you back to an old wooden house embowered in creepers ; a house that was far gone in the respectable stages of antiquity and seemed indissoluble from the green garden in which it stood, and that yet was a sea-traveller in its younger days, and had come round the Horn piecemeal in the belly of a ship, and might have heard the seamen stamping and shouting and the note of the boatswain's whistle. It will recall to you the nondescript inhabitants now so widely scattered : — the two horses, the dog, and the four cats, some of them still looking in your face as you read these lines ; — the poor lady, so unfortunately married to an author ; — the China boy, by this time, perhaps, baiting his line by the banks of a river in the Flowery Land ; — and in particular the Scot who was then sick apparently unto death, and whom you did so much to cheer and keep in good behaviour.

You may remember that he was full of ambitions and designs : so soon as he had his health again completely, you may remember the fortune he was to earn, the journeys he was to go upon, the delights he was to enjoy and confer, and (among other matters) the masterpiece he was to make of Prince Otto I

Well, we will not give in that we are finally beaten. We read together in those days the story of Braddock, and how, as he was carried dying from the scene of his defeat, he promised himself to do better another time : a story that will always touch a brave heart, and a dying speech worthy of a more fortunate commander. I try to be of Braddock's mind. I still mean to get my health again ; I still purpose, by hook or crook, this book or the next, to launch a mas-

XIV DKDILATIOJN

tcrpicce ; and I still intend — somehow, some time or other — to see your face and to hold your hand.

Meanwhile, this little paper traveller goes forth instead, crosses the great seas and the long plains and the dark mountains, and comes at last to your door in Monterey, charged with tender greetings. Pray you, take him in. He comes from a house where (even as in your own) there are gathered together some of the waifs of our company of Oakland; a house — for all its outlandish Gaelic name and distant station — where you are well-beloved.

Skerryvore, Bournemouth.

Book I PRINCE ERRANT

Chapter Page I In which the Prince departs on an Adventure 3

II In which the Prince plays Haroun-al-

Raschid 9

III In which the Prince comforts Age and Beauty and delivers a Lecture on Discretion in Love 24

IV In which the Prince collects Opinions by

THE Way 40

Book II * OF LOVE AND POLITICS

I What happened in the Library 61

II *' On the Court of Grunewald," being a

Portion of the Traveller's Manuscript . 77

III The Prince and the English Traveller . . 87

IV While the Prince is in the Ante-Room 98

V GONDREMARK IS IN MY LaDY'S CHAMBER . Io6

VI The Prince delivers a Lecture on Marriage,

WITH Practical Illustrations of Divorce 116

VII The Prince DISSOLVES the Council .... 129

VIII The Party of War takes Action .... 143 xvi CONTENTS

Chapter Page

IX The Price of the River Farm; in which

Vainglory goes before a Fall .... 154 X Gotthold's Revised Opinion; and the Fall

COMPLETED I7I

XI Providence Von Rosen : Act the First: she

BEGUILES THE BaRON 184

XII Providence Von Rosen: Act the Second:

SHE INFORMS THE PrINCE I94

XIII Providence Von Rosen: Act the Third:

SHE enlightens Seraphina 209

XIV Relates the Cause and Outbreak of the

Revolution 219

Book III FORTUNATE MISFORTUNE

I Princess Cinderella 237

II Treats OF A Christian Virtue 262

III Providence Von Rosen: Act the Last: in

which she gallops off 271

IV Babes in the Wood 284

Bibliographical Postscript to complete the

Story 295

Chapter I In Which The Prince Departs On An

ADVENTURE

YOU shall seek in vain upon the map of Europe for the bygone state of Griinewald. An independent principality, an infinitesimal member of the German Empire, she played, for several centuries,, her part in the discord of Europe; and, at last, in the ripeness of time and at the spiriting of several bald diplomatists, vanished like a morning ghost. Less fortunate than Poland, she left not a regret behind her; and the very memory of her boundaries has faded.

It was a patch of hilly country covered with thick wood. Many streams took their beginning in the glens of Griinewald, turning mills for the inhabitants. There was one town, Mittwalden, and many brown, wooden hamlets, climbing roof above roof, along the steep bottom of dells, and communicating by covered bridges over the larger of the torrents. The hum of watermills, the splash of running water, the clean odour of pine sawdust, the sound and the smell of the pleasant wind among the innumerable army of the mountain pines, the dropping fire of huntsmen, the dull stroke of the wood-axe, intolerable roads, fresh trout for supper in the clean bare chamber of an inn, and the song of birds and the music of the villagebells — these were the recollections of the Griinewald tourist.

North and east the foothills of Griinewald sank with varying profile into a vast plain. On these sides many small states bordered with the principality, Gerolstein, an extinct grand duchy, among the number. On the south it marched with the comparatively powerful kingdom of Seaboard Bohemia, celebrated for its flowers and mountain bears, and inhabited by a people of singular simplicity and tenderness of heart. Several intermarriages had, in the course of centuries, united the crowned families of Griinewald and maritime Bohemia; and the last Prince of Griinewald, whose history I purpose to relate, drew his descent through Perdita, the only daughter of King Florizel the First of Bohemia. That these intermarriages had in some degree mitigated the rough, manly stock of the first Griinewalds, was an opinion widely held within the borders of the principality. The charcoal burner, the mountain sawyer, the wielder of the broad axe among the congregated pines of

Griinewald, proud of their hard hands, proud of their shrewd ignorance and almost savage lore, looked with an unfeigned contempt on the soft character and manners of the sovereign race.

The precise year of grace in which this tale begins shall be left to the conjecture of the reader. But for the season of the year (which, in such a story, is the more important of the two) it was already so far forward in the spring, that when mountain people heard horns echoing all day about the north-west corner of the principality, they toFd themselves that Prince Otto and his hunt were up and out for the last time till the return of autumn.

At this point the borders of Griinewald descend somewhat steeply, here and there breaking into crags; and this shaggy and trackless country stands in a bold contrast to the cultivated plain below. It was traversed at that period by two roads alone. One, the imperial highway, bound to Brandenau in Gerolstein, descended the slope obliquely and by the easiest gradients. The other ran like a fillet across the very forehead of the hills, dipping into savage gorges, and wetted by the spray of tiny waterfalls. Once, it passed beside a certain tower or castle, built sheer upon the margin of a formidable cliff, and commanding a vast prospect of the skirts of Griinewald and the busy plains of Gerolstein. The Felsenburg (so this tower was called) served now as a prison, now as a hunting-seat; and for all it stood so lonesome to the naked eye, with the aid of a good glass the burghers of Brandenau could count its windows from the lime-tree terrace where they walked at night.

In the wedge of forest hillside enclosed between the roads, the horns continued all day long to scatter tumult; and at length, as the sun began to draw^ near to the horizon of the plain, a rousing triumph announced the slaughter of the quarry. The first and second huntsman had drawn somewhat aside, and from the summit of a knoll gazed down before them on the drooping shoulders of the hill and across the expanse of plain. They covered their eyes, for the sun was in their faces. The glory of its going down was somewhat pale. Through the confused tracery of many thousands of naked poplars, the smoke of so many houses, and the evening steam ascending from the fields, the sails of a windmill on a gentle eminence moved very conspicuously, like a donkey's ears. And hard by, like an open gash, the imperial highroad ran straight sunward, an artery of travel.

There is one of nature's spiritual ditties, that has not yet been set to words or human music: " The Invitation to the Road ; *' an air continually sounding in the ears of gipsies, and to whose inspiration our nomadic fathers journeyed all their days. The hour, the season, and the scene, all were in delicate accordance. The air was full of birds of passage, steering westward and northward over Griinewald, an army of specks to the uplooking eye. And below, the great practicable road was bound for the same quarter.

But to the two horsemen on the knoll this spiritual ditty was unheard. They were, indeed, in some concern of mind, scanning every fold of the subjacent forest, and betraying both anger and dismay in their impatient gestures.

" I do not see him, Kuno," said the first huntsman, " nowhere — not a trace, not a hair of the mare's tail ! No, sir, he 's off ; broke cover and got away. Why, for twopence I would hunt him with the dogs ! "

" Mayhap, he 's gone home," said Kuno, but without conviction.

" Home ! " sneered the other. " I give him twelve days to get home. No, it 's begun again ; it 's as it was three years ago, before he married; a disgrace ! Hereditary prince, hereditary fool ! There goes the government over the borders on a grey mare. What 's that ? No, nothing — no, I tell you, on my word, I set more store by a good gelding or an English dog. That for your Otto ! "

" He 's not my Otto,'' growled Kuno.

" Then I don't know whose he is," was the retort.

** You would put your hand in the fire for him to-morrow," said Kuno, facing round.

** Me ! " cried the huntsman. " I would see him hanged ! I 'm a Griinew^ald patriot — enrolled, and have my medal, too; and I would help a prince! I 'm for liberty and Gondremark." •

" Well, it 's all one," said Kuno. " If anybody said what you said, you would have his blood, and you know it."

" You have him on the brain," retorted his companion. " There he goes ! " he cried, the next moment.

And sure enough, about a mile down the mountain, a rider on a white horse was seen to flit rapidly across a heathy open and vanish among the trees on the farther side.

" In ten minutes he '11 be over the border into Gerolstein," said Kuno. " It 's past cure."

" Well, if he founders that mjre, I '11 never forgive him," added the other, gathering his reins.

And as they turned down from the knoll to rejoin tlieir comrades, the sun dipped and disappeared, and the woods fell instantly into the gravity and greyness of the early night.

Chapter II In Which The Prince Plays Haroun-al

RASCHID

THE night fell upon the Prince while he was threading green tracks in the lower valleys of the wood; and though the stars came out overhead and displayed the interminable order of the pine-tree pyramids, regular and dark like cypresses, their light was of small service to a traveller in such lonely paths, and from thenceforth he rode at random. The austere face of nature, the uncertain issue of his course, the open sky and the free air, delighted him like wine ; and the hoarse chafing of a river on his left sounded in his ears agreeably.

It was past eight at night before his toil was rewarded and he issued at last out of the forest on the firm white highroad. It lay down-hill before him, with a sweeping eastward trend, faintly bright between the thickets; and Otto paused and gazed upon it. So it ran, league after league, still joining others, to the farthest ends of Europe, there skirting the sea-surge, here gleaming in the lights lo PRINCE OTTO

of cities ; and the innumerable army of tramps and travellers moved upon it in all lands as by a common impulse, and were now in all places drawing near to the inn door and the night's rest. The pictures swarmed and vanished in his brain ; a surge of temptation, a beat of all his blood, went over him, to set spur to the mare and to go on into the unknown for ever. And then it passed away; hunger and fatigue, and that habit of middling actions which we call common-sense, resumed their empire ; and in that changed mood, his eye lighted upon two bright windows on his left hand, between the road and river.

He turned off by a by-road, and in a few minutes he was knocking with his whip on the door of a large farmhouse, and a chorus of dogs from the farmyard were making angry answer. A very tall, old, white-headed man came, shading a candle, at the summons. He had been of great strength in his time, and of a handsome countenance; but now he was fallen away, his teeth were quite gone, and his voice when he spoke was broken and falsetto.

" You will pardon me," said Otto. " I am a traveller and have entirely lost my way."

'' Sir," said the old man, in a very stately, shaky manner, " you are at the River Farm, and I am Killian Gottesheim, at your disposal. We are here,

PRINCE OTTO II

sir, at about an equal distance from Mittwalden in Griinewald and Brandenau in Gerolstein: six leagues to either, and the road excellent ; but there is not a wine bush, not a carter's alehouse, anywhere between. You will have to accept my hospitality for the night; rough hospitality, to which I make you freely welcome; for, sir," he added with a bow, " it is God who sends the guest."

" Amen. • And I most heartily thank you," replied Otto, bowing in his turn.

" Fritz," said the old man, turning towards the interior, "lead round this gentleman's horse; and you, sir, condescend to enter."

Otto entered a chamber occupying the greater part of the ground-floor of the building. It had probably once been divided; for the farther end was raised by a long step above the nearer, and the blazing fire and the white supper-table seemed to stand upon a dais. All around were dark, brassmounted cabinets and cupboards ; dark shelves carrying ancient country crockery; guns and antlers and broadside ballads on the wall ; a tall old clock with roses on the dial; and down in one corner the comfortable promise of a wine barrel. It was homely, elegant, and quaint.

A powerful youth hurried out to attend on the grey mare; and when Mr. Killian Gottesheim had presented him to his daughter Ottilia, Otto followed to the stable as became, not perhaps the Prince, but the good horseman. When he returned, a smoking omelette and some slices of home-cured ham were waiting him; these were followed by a ragout and a cheese ; and it was not until his guest had entirely satisfied his hunger, and the whole party drew about the fire over the wine jug, that Killian Gottesheim's elaborate courtesy permitted him to address a question to the Prince.

** You have perhaps ridden far, sir?" he inquired.

** I have, as you say, ridden far," replied Otto; " and, as you have seen, I was prepared to do justice to your daughter's cookery."

** Possibly, sir, from the direction of Brandenau?" continued Killian.

"Precisely; and I should have slept to-night, had I not wandered, in Mittwalden," answered the Prince, weaving in a patch of truth, according to the habit of all liars.

"Business leads you to Mittwalden?" was the next question.

" Mere curiosity," said Otto. " I have never yet visited the principality of Griinewald."

" A pleasant state, sir," piped the old man, nodding, " a very pleasant state, and a fine race, both pines and people. We reckon ourselves part Griinewalders here, lying so near the borders; and the river there is all good Griinewald water, every drop of it. Yes, sir, a fine state. A man of Griinewald now will swing me an axe over his head that many a man of Gerolstein could hardly lift; and the pines, why, deary me, there must be more pines in that little state, sir, than people in this whole big world. 'T is twenty years now since I crossed the marshes, for we grow home-keepers in old age ; but I mind it as if it was yesterday. Up and down, the road keeps right on from here to Mittwalden; and nothing all the way but the good green pine-trees, big and little, and water power! water power at every step, sir. We once sold a bit of forest, up there beside the highroad; and the sight of minted money that we got for it, has set me ciphering ever since what all the pines in Griinewald would amount to."

"I suppose you see nothing of the Prince?" inquired Otto.

" No," said the young man, speaking for the first time, " nor want to." '

" Why so ? is he so much disliked ? " asked Otto.

" Not what you might call disliked," replied the old gentleman, " but despised, sir."

" Indeed," said the Prince, somewhat faintly.

"Yes, sir, despised," nodded Killian, filling a long pipe, "and, to my way of thinking, justly despised. Here is a man with great opportunities, and what does he do with them ? He hunts, and he dresses very prettily — which is a thing to be ashamed of in a man — and he acts plays ; and if he does aught else, the news of it has not come here."

" Yet these are all innocent," said Otto. " What would you have him do — make war?"

" No, sir," replied the old man. ** But here it is; I have been fifty years upon this River Farm, and wrought in it, day in, day out ; I have ploughed and sowed and reaped, and risen early, and waked late; and this is the upshot: that all these years it has supported me and my family; and been the best friend that ever I had, set aside my wife; and now, when my time comes, I leave it a better farm than when I found it. So it is, if a man works hearty in the order of nature, he gets bread and he receives comfort, and whatever he touches breeds. And it humbly appears to me, if that Prince was to labour on his throne, as I have laboured and wrought in my farm, he would find both an increase and a blessing."

" I believe with you, sir," Otto said ; " and yet the parallel is inexact. For the farmer's life is natural and simple; but the prince's is both artificial and complicated. It is easy to do right in the one, and exceedingly difficult not to do wrong in the other. If your crop is blighted, you can take off your bonnet and say, * God's will be done ' ; but if the prince meets with a reverse, he may have to blame himself for the attempt. And perhaps, if all the kings in Europe were to confine themselves to innocent amusement, the subjects would be the better off."