Songs of Toil

Front matter

CONTENTS.

Introductory Sketch

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH.

In writing of Carmen Sylva, Queen of Rumania, one does not know whether to call her poet-queen or queen-poet. Doubtless her royal position has had something to do with her fame as poet, and certainly her poetry has directed the world’s eye to that far-off throne in southern Europe. She would not, then, be what she is, we are forced to conclude, were she not both poet and queen. Queens have always been interesting in literature, even if posing only as an inspiration. They have almost invariably been “fair women.” Pictures and poems arise as we name them—Esther of Persia, Dido of Carthage, Cleopatra of Egypt, Mary of Scotland. The last is said even to have written poems herself; she certainly wrote a celebrated Latin hymn, but the poems—presumably not addressed to her cousin Elizabeth, else there would be no lack of fervor in them— do not find their place in literature. In general, royalty has inspired rather than produced literature. But with the present age this has changed. Applicable to monarchs as to men is the statement that “now-a-days every one writes books,” and no truer in one case than in the other is the wicked end of the saying, “but only fools publish them." The Queen of England publishes her journals; one of her daughters writes articles for the magazines; the King of Sweden prints sagas in verse; the Crown Prince of Austria publishes tales of travel and adventure; and even the Pope of Rome publishes to the world a collection of poems. But with all these the production of what may be kindly called literature, is pastime; to the Queen of Rumania, on the other hand, her literary work is life. How and why this is so may be learned from a brief glance at her career.

Like many of the heroines of fiction, Elizabeth, Princess of Wied and Queen of Rumania, was born of an ancient and honorable family. So far back as 1093, says Natalie Freiin von Stackelberg, in her life of Carmen Sylva, the counts of Wied were a mighty race of rulers. Their possessions on the right and left banks of the Rhine stretched as far as Eifel and the Westerwald. Their most ancient residence was the castle of Upper-Altwied; afterward for generations the family lived in the castle of Lower-Altwied; and finally in the early part of the eighteenth century the castle of Neuwied was built, and in this the Princess Elizabeth was born. The town of Neuwied is situated in one of the most beautiful sections of the Rhine country. It is a short distance below Coblenz and on the same bank as Ehrenbreitstein. The castle commands a most picturesque view of the cities and villages and mountain spurs that follow the winding course of the river.

With the fortunes of the family of Wied we are not specially concerned. The counts played their parts in the conflicts of the Middle Ages, in the Thirty Years' War, and in the Seven Years' War. In 1784 the countship of Wied was raised by Joseph II. to the dignity of a principality, but at the Congress of Vienna the semi-independence which the house had enjoyed, was taken away and the greater part of its possessions was placed under Prussian dominion.

It is of interest, however, to note that Elizabeth's family has been, to a considerable extent, a family of students, scholars, and even writers. The first distinguished scholar of the family was Maximilian, brother of Prince August and great-uncle of Elizabeth. His life was devoted to the study of natural history. During the first half of this century he travelled extensively in South and North America. His books descriptive of his journeys have been of value in their relation to the science of natural history, and his collection of specimens of mammalia, birds, fishes, reptiles, etc., has been purchased since his death by the American Museum of Natural History in Central Park, New York, where it is still exhibited under the name of "The Prince Maximilian of Wied Collection." Maximilian's sister, Louise, had special talents in music, painting and poetry. Her "Songs of the Solitary," though perhaps overpious, have a poetic quality. Prince Hermann, the father of Elizabeth, was a philosopher. The titles of his books and pamphlets are profound. For many years an invalid, he devoted himself assiduously to study and speculation, finding his sole recreation in the historical works of Mommsen, Häusser and Ranke, and in the occasional use of the brush, for which he had a natural talent. Elizabeth's mother, Maria, brought from the house of Nassau the qualities of heart that, in her child, were to find their complement in the qualities of mind bequeathed by the father. Of such stock and of such a union was Elizabeth, Princess of Wied, born.

The year of her birth was 1843, the month December, and the day 29. Her childhood was just what would be expected from her inheritances, and the method, manner and circumstances of life at Neuwied and Monrepos, the family's summer-house. Her bringing up was superintended by her mother, acting under the advice of the Prince, her husband, and assisted by the same governess who had had charge of her own education. This governess had a rare fund of fairy tales and legends stored away in her memory, which were doubtless the first stimulant applied to the young Elizabeth's imaginative powers. She was an original child. And yet in many respects she was like all children. She had a passion for dolls, which she called her children. When she first met strangers her invariable question was, "Have you also children?" We learn in the poem entitled " ," page —, which is tenderly and pathetically autobiographic, that this question of the child is still the question of the Queen. Stories of the little princess's generosity are told by Natalie von Stackelberg, to whom I must acknowledge my indebtedness for all anecdotes not otherwise credited. When the merest child she was filled with compassion for the poor. One day her mother gave her a quantity of new woolen cloth, greatly to Elizabeth's delight, "for now," she said, "I can give all my dresses to the poor." "But," said the mother, "would it not be better to give the cloth to the poor, to whom your white dresses would be of little use?" The princess, who was by no means a goody-goody child, and had a will of her own, comprehended, nevertheless, her mother's question, and with her little brother at once set forth to carry the cloth to a poor woman.

Many of the stories of Elizabeth's youthful years have become household tales, and scarcely need to be told again. All who know anything of her childhood will remember how she played truant, not by staying away from school, but by going to school one day. She had always, during the beautiful summer-days at Monrepos, had a great desire to attend school with the village children. Permission had been denied her until one morning she rushed in upon her mother, who was absorbed in household duties, and begged to be allowed to go to school with the farm children. Without comprehending the question the mother nodded her consent, and away ran the little princess. She arrived at the school while the singing lesson was in progress and at once took her place beside the other children, greatly to the satisfaction of the school-master, who was flattered by her presence. He had no mark of reproof for her when she raised her voice to such a pitch as to drown the voices of all the other children. Not so, however, with the child who stood next to her, and who thought it unbecoming to sing so loud. This youngster clapped her hand over the princess's mouth by way of rebuke, and to show that the other children, if they did not have equal voices, had at least equal rights. In the meantime the absence of the princess had been noticed at the palace, and after a vain search the servants were put on the right track and found and carried the child home in disgrace. This story ought to end here; for we are sorry to learn that the democratic enthusiasm of the child was punished by imprisonment for the remainder of the day.

Elizabeth's interest in poetry was excited at an extremely early age. There is no doubt but that she felt the influence of the poets with whom, in company with her parents, she frequently came in contact. During a brief residence in Bonn they were visited almost daily by Ernst Moritz Arndt, the poet, who, with the eight year-old princess on his knee, would recite his patriotic poems till the child's cheek flushed and her heart beat with excitement. Among their other frequent visitors were Lessing, Bunsen, Neukomm and others distinguished in literature. But not only was she privileged to hear poetry; she was compelled to learn it. Every Sunday morning she and her little brothers were obliged to recite poems to their father and mother. By the time the princess was nine years old, she could commit a poem of almost any length to memory, provided only it were not in the Alexandrine meter, which was to her an abomination. At this time also she began to write occasional verses herself. When scarcely fourteen she had plotted dramas and dreadful tragedies. The more horrible these latter were, the better she liked them. Though she read early and late only the most beautiful poems, her fantasy produced only the most terrible ideas. This constant contrast in absorption and production had its effect upon her moods, which were alternately gay and melancholy. "I cannot help myself," she was wont to confess mentally; "I cannot be gentle; I must rage. I would thank these mortals from the bottom of my heart, if they only had patience with me. It would not be so bad if I could but open the safety-valve and let the poetry come." When, later in life, there was cause for the deepest woe and melancholy, this safety-valve opened of itself.

At fifteen years of age Elizabeth settled down to study in earnest. Her governess was replaced by a tutor, who was an excellent English scholar. All the lessons were conducted in English. She studied English history, arithmetic and geometry, and translated into English, Italian and Latin, reading in the latter Horace, Ovid and a part of Cicero. She had lessons in natural philosophy from the father of an intimate friend. A Parisienne instructed her in French, and read with her in the evening the chronicles and memoirs of Froissart, Joinville, St. Simon and others, and the dramas of Molière, Racine and Corneille. To her mother she read aloud the German classics and Schiller's "Thirty-Years' War." Lessing's " " she read to her again and again. In one summer she read Becker's History of the World from first page to last, and did the same with Gibbon's history. She read daily three newspapers, and devoted herself to politics. She studied with interest and enthusiasm, but as she said herself, she would throw history or grammar, for which she had a passion, into the corner if she could put her hand upon a tale or legend. She came upon Elizabeth Wetherell's "The Wide, Wide World," and read it time after time with devouring interest. Like many another school-girl, she buried the book under her Ovid translations, and stole from Duty in order that she might give to Pleasure. No one will begrudge her the mild excitement when he learns that until her nineteenth year she was never allowed to look into a novel of any kind. Even then she was only permitted to read "Ivanhoe" and Freytag's " " in the evening after her cup of tea. This was a rather serious life for a girl of Elizabeth's temperament, but fortunately she was able to find poetic diversion even in the midst of such tasks. She found it in the life at Monrepos. This beautiful summer home is high upon one of the hills composing the range of the Westerwald Mountains. It commands a more extensive view than the castle at Neuwied, and at the same time it includes within its horizon all the points of beauty that can be seen from the castle in the town, upon which it looks down. The glory of Monrepos lies in the forest that stretches away from it in mile after mile of grateful shade. "Here the princess Elizabeth was in her element," says her biographer; "here were forest and freedom." She roamed careless and gay, with Nature for her only companion. She listened to the voices of Nature, to the singing of the birds, to the rustling of the leaves, to the rippling of the Wiedbach, and to the moaning of the tree-tops; and she whispered the secrets of her heart to her voiceful and sympathetic companion. She whispered in song, the first songs of a young poet-life. She roamed and sang, and the people called her the Forest-Rose Princess. From her sixteenth year she began to copy her poems regularly in a book, whose existence she confessed to no one. She wrote simply and naturally, with never a rule to follow but the notes of a bird or the beatings of her heart. Until she was thirty years old she knew absolutely nothing of the art of poetical composition.

She was not happy away from her forest home. When seventeen, she made a visit to Berlin, and she filled her journal with home-sick verses and songs of melancholy. She longed for the breath of the forest and the sight of the Rhine. But this visit is remenbered less for these youthful verses than for an accident or incident that befell the Princess. It was nothing serious, nothing more than falling down the stairs of the palace into the arms of the prince who was one day to become her husband. The story seems to be founded only on a kind of gossipy tradition, bu there is a flavor of romance about it that has led the superstitious, viewing the incident from this side of the marriage, to believe that the union was fated to occur from the day Elizabeth fell into the arms of Prince Charles of Hohenzollern on the palace stair.

In February of 1862, when the princess was eighteen years old, her younger brother, Prince Otto, died, after a long period of invalidism. The parents were grateful that their son's suffering was at an end, but the death was a great sorrow to Elizabeth. The palace seemed hollow and deserted, and even when she sought the mountain heights she could not get above the heaviness of her heart. For a few months she held a little school among some poor children, and found diversion in her zeal as teacher. To them she devoted three hours a day; she read to her invalid father another three hours; and for four or five hours she devoted herself to the piano. But when the winter came on, Prince Hermann's state of health required a change of climate. They went to Baden-Baden, and for a time Elizabeth enjoyed the gayeties of life; but while there she received the news of the death of her dearest friend, Marie von Bibra. This death set the sorrowing muse to work again, and many a mourning song was the result. In the autumn of 1863, however, the sorrow was again dispelled by the pleasures of travel. She was invited to accompany the Grand Duchess Helene of Russia, a relative of her mother's, in a visit to Switzerland. So happy was their life together at Ouchy, on Lake Geneva, that the Grand Duchess invited the young Princess to return to St. Petersburg with her. There she studied the Russian language, read, and took music lessons, first of Rubinstein, and later of Clara Schumann. While on this visit, her father died after years of suffering. But Elizabeth, who was just recovering from a severe illness contracted in St. Petersburg, did not return at once to Neuwied. In June of 1864, however, she was with her mother again in Monrepos, which now became their home for both winter and summer.

From 1864 until 1868, Elizabeth's life was uneventful except for several journeys in her own country, trips to Paris and Sweden, and an extended visit in Italy. It was while in Naples that the Princess came to the conclusion, as the natural result of her studies and sympathies, that she was by nature fitted and by heart inclined to become a teacher. She was then twenty-four years old. She wrote to her mother that she was determined, if she did not marry, to prepare for the teacher's examination. She was willing, however, patiently to bide her time. But she did not tarry that suitors might make their bows before her. She would have none of them. One day some friends who were discussing matrimonial projects with her, said they would like to see her on a throne. "The only throne that would allure me," she jokingly replied, "would be the Rumanian; for there would still be a chance there to accomplish something." In the light of subsequent facts this joke about a throne that did not then exist must be considered little less than marvellous, and it is not only the superstitious who wag their heads when they come to this point of the story of Carmen Sylva's life, and mutter their proverbs about true words and jests.

Rumania was only a principality subject to the Sublime Porte, when in 1866 Prince Charles of Hohenzollern was placed at the head of the state, with the title of Prince Charles I. of Rumania. He had distinguished himself in the Austro-Prussian war, that grew out of the Schleswig-Holstein conflict; and even before that General von Moltke had said, "The young Prince of Hohenzollern is destined to play a rôle in life and to let himself be heard from." He had not been long in Rumania when he made up his mind that the country needed a princess as much as it had needed a prince, and as quickly he made up his mind that he would offer his heart to Elizabeth of Wied, whom he remembered to have met in Berlin, and with whom his sister had kept up an active correspondence. The Prince confessed the desire of his heart to Elizabeth's mother, who undertook to assist him in his suit, or rather, in true German fashion, to conduct it for him. A rendezvous that should appear accidental was arranged at Cologne, and there, in October of 1869, Prince Charles and Princess Elizabeth met, fell in love, and became engaged all in the space of an afternoon. The engagement was a short one of necessity, and on the 15th of November the marriage was celebrated in Neuwied with such pomp and circumstance as the quiet Rhenish town had never seen before. But it was all as nothing compared with the splendor of the reception in Rumania, and of the marriage ceremony according to the rites of the Greek Church.

After her marriage, Elizabeth devoted herself at once to the study of the institutions of the country and of the language of the people, which, being a Latin and not a Slavic language, was easily acquired by her in consequence of her knowledge both of Latin and Italian. In September of 1870, the Princess became the mother of a daughter. For four years only did this child live, but those four years were the happiest Elizabeth had known since her own childhood. The full, warm love of her nature she bestowed upon her little Marie. The child was one of hundreds of children to succumb to what seemed a plague of diphtheria, typhoid and scarlet fevers, which raged in Bucharest during the winter of 1873 and 1874. Until April Marie withstood the diseases, but then scarlet fever, followed by diphtheria attacked her, and the slender body of the child had to yield. The deathbed scene was woefully pathetic. The mother watched hopeless and helpless above Marie till the last. The little one in her delirium started from her trundle-bed and would not lie down. "Oh, no, no!" she said in terror, "if I lie down I shall fall asleep and never wake up any more." And again she exclaimed: "I want to go to Sinaia, and drink of the water of Pelesch." But when a glass was reached out to her, she shook her head and said, in English, "All is finished," and shortly after passed away in her English nurse's arms. The mother stood there immovable, without a tear and without a complaint; she said, simply and reverently, "The good Lord loved my child more than I, and has taken her to him. I thank God he gave her to me."

This loss was to Elizabeth like the end of life. She had, as we have seen, met death before. First her brother, then her father, and one friend and relative after another had been taken from her. Her sorrow in each case was keen; but now it was dull and heavy, and harder and enduring. It permeated her life; and yet she did not wholly give up to it. It broadened her sympathies and increased her benevolences, and, indeed, widened the scope of her life, and made her the "little mother" of her people. To them she had devoted herself from the first. She had found that the jesting words of her maidenhood were true indeed: here, in Rumania, there was still a chance to accomplish something. Her first work had been for the school-children. A poor-union was established to provide proper books for the education of the children. The Princess found that there were absolutely no school-books or popular works in the Rumanian language, and she set about translating at once the best French books for children. Her object was less to interest the young than to develop a strong national character, which she well knew could not exist without the basis of language. In other ways, too, she sought to strengthen Rumanian nationality. She encouraged the use of the national costume, and made the wearing of it obligatory at the public charity balls in Bucharest. She established a school of embroidery, which is one of the national industries, and a union called "Concordia," whose purpose is to further the development of all national industries. She founded also an asylum for orphans and waifs, in which between four and five hundred girls from five to twenty years of age are housed and educated in the practical affairs of life. We are told that the reputation of this home is so exceptional and wide-spread that the young men of Rumania think themselves lucky if they can choose a wife from among the industrious girls in the "Asyle Hélène." To sum up in the words of Miss Zimmern, "She founded schools, hospitals, soup-kitchens, convalescent homes, cooking-schools, and crèches; she encouraged popular lectures; she inculcated respect for sanitary laws, most needful in an eastern land; she founded art galleries and art schools." Some of her charitable enterprises, not here enumerated, were described to me in a recent letter from the Queen's private secretary, Mr. Robert Scheffer, to whom I am indebted for many suggestions and kindnesses. Concluding his description, he says: "But as the Queen does not like her charitable works to be known, I shall only add that the quantity of good done by her Majesty in private is incalculable, and not one-tenth of it is known by the public."

All this work, which she had begun while "Itty," as her little daughter was endearingly called, was still alive, the childless mother found a sweet solace in the days of her great sorrow. A still greater comfort, however, was found in an appeal to that talent which had been hers from childhood, but which had never been cultivated. No one dreamed that the Princess Elizabeth was a poet. But one day a native poet named Alexandri called upon her in Bucharest, and she said to him: "I would like to make a confession to you, but I have not the courage for it." After a long silence, however, and amid many blushes, she added: "I, too, make verses." At Alexandri's request she produced some of her songs, and the poet was warm in his praise of them. He urged her to continue writing, and indited many poems to her himself, which she translated from the Rumanian tongue into German. While at work upon these translations, she wrote:

"The greatest possible change has come over my poet-life. I had no idea that poetizing is an art, or that one must learn how to be a poet. I had supposed that to learn to make poems would be like a man teaching a bird to sing. Verses and rhymes flowed from my pen more easily than prose. I feared, as soon as I attempted to bind myself to rules and methods, I should forfeit my talent as punishment of my empty conceit. In the terrible pain of the spring of 1874, songs were no longer a relief. Only the strain of exhausting toil could deaden it. And so I took to translating."

She applied herself diligently to this work, and said soon after that she had learned more by translating than in any other way. She showed her work to another poet of local fame, whose advice and assistance she received. In the following summer, with her mother, she paid a visit to England, and spent two days with Max Müller at Oxford. She had with her a little book in the form of a missal, which she had prepared for her mother, and which she called "My Journey through the World: a collection of Rhymes and Verses, dedicated to the Mother Heart." The book contained the poems that she had composed from her sixteenth to her thirtieth year., Scarcely one of these was known to her mother. Charles Kingsley was present when she surprised her mother with the gift. Elizabeth showed to them the four lines in which she prayed God to preserve her child from unhappiness, want, and sin; and as she pronounced the last line: " ," Kingsley's eyes filled with tears, and the mother wept for joy and pain.

In January, 1875, Elizabeth wrote: "I am not translating at all now, because I write so much myself." Her poetic activity was at its height when she was visiting Sinaia. This beautiful region was to Bucharest what Monrepos had been to Neuwied. Here again she found freedom and the forest. The beautiful stream of Pelesch dances down the rough side of the mountains and winds into the valley of Sinaia. It is shaded by primeval forests in which the nightingales sing and the wild-flowers bloom. There the sad mother-heart found rest even while her mind was inspired to activity. In this region of beautiful wildness she laid the cornerstone of her summer-house in August of 1875, and the dancing stream, for whose water her child called in its last delirium, gave its name to the castle whose towers rise among the trees of the forest. The princess watched the progress of the structure with the greatest possible interest, and with no little sympathy for the workmen whose polyglot of tongues—no less than twelve in number—made the silences about the forest and the quarries ring with strange sounds. Had she not watched the toilers in the quarry near by, from which all the material for the castle was taken, she probabably would never have written the touching song of " ," page 142.

It was at the end of this summer that Elizabeth wrote the libretto for an operetta performed during the following winter in Bucharest. The work was a poetical adaptation of an old Rumanian legend.

When the princess had been working at her poetry zealously for more than two years, at such times and hours as freedom from official life permitted, and just at the time when she had sufficient material to lead her to think of publishing her work to the world, the Turko-Russian war broke out, and Rumania became the battle-ground of a terrible conflict. That was not a time for poetry, except of the heroic order. The poetry of words was forgotten in the poetry of deeds. Prince Charles of necessity took Russia's side, and became a gallant leader against the Turkish crescent. Princess Elizabeth followed the army, and sought to temper the misery of the battle-field. She was the Florence Nightingale of the war. Her people called her "the mother of the wounded." Childless, she was always a mother. She moved from bed to bed in the hospitals, and spoke words of comfort, nay almost of healing. She was worshipped by every sufferer. At the close of the war a marble statue was raised to her by the wives of the officers of the Rumanian army as a memorial of the merciful part played by her on the battle-field. Following the war there was a rearrangement of boundary and territory between Russia and Rumania, which was ratified by the treaty of Berlin, which, at the same time, recognized the independence of Rumania as a kingdom, though providing that certain conditions should be fulfilled. These were carried out, and in March, 1881, Prince Charles issued his royal proclamation. On the 22d of May he was crowned with a diadem made from cannon captured at Plevna, where he distinguished himself, as did his people, for bravery. At the same time a golden crown was placed upon the head of "the mother of the wounded." The ceremony was carried out with true royal magnificence, and the day and night were given up to festivities and rejoicing.