Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880-1918

1880-1890

Ems. June 16, 1880. Wednesday.

This morning we have arrived at Ems. We are staying at the villa Monrepos which is situated on the Lahn. We traveled in sleeping cars Baby, Mamma, Marie, and Sophie in one car and Papa and I in another. We arrived here at a quarter to twelve.

Ems. June 19, 1880. Saturday.

The whole of Ems is in mirth today for the emperor is coming. The Bahnhofstrasse and the bridge by which he must pass are decorated with flags, flowers, and shields. The emperor is to arrive at a quarter past five and at five ready to go and meet him after a most awful bustle, for the flowers Mamma and Baby want to give him have not arrived, we are all ready to go and meet him. Presently I see the carriage with, mamma, papa, and baby come back: the emperor is only coming at half past six. At six, deputations of schoolchildren, masters, and men pass our door, the men and boys with flags and drums the girls with bouquets and corn flowers. Soon we also go-nurse, Sophie, and I in the mob and mama, papa, and Baby to the station. We place ourselves behind the schoolchildren who have lined up all down the way the emperor must pass. As the festive hour approaches the crowd gets greater. Soon a screech as if everybody was at least being murdered reaches our ears but it presently appears to be the emperor's train that has arrived. Now the emperor's carriage comes and a hail of bouquets come down on it probably meant to put out his eyes, next to the emperor sits Count Lehndorff. Behind him come all his suite in other carriages.

Ems. June 20, 1880. Sunday.

This morning the emperor comes on the promenade and speaks to Mamma.

Ascot, St. George's School. September 23, 1880. Thursday.

Thursday I came to school here today and I am all ready friends with some boys.

Ascot. December 2, 1880. Thursday.

This morning I put down Uffington

a peg, at breakfast. We were talking together, when Uffington says, "Who is that blunderbuss, that fat female who came to see you." "I never knew I had any blunderbusses or fat females in my family," I answer with the greatest calm. This only shows too well how I and all my family are hated here by almost everybody.

Ascot. May 23, 1881. Monday.

It is my birthday today. I was born in Paris at the corner of the rue de Luxembourg and the rue du Mont Thabor at the 3 etage in 1868 but soon after went to Hamburg. When four I went to America and stopped there till I was five then I came to England and Mamma and Papa soon after (about two years after) settled in Paris where I was during the remarkably cold winter of 1879-1880. In which the cold amounted to 24 degrees Cent. I saw the Seine frozen. Papa came to see me today and brought me a barometer and microscope.

Ascot. July 9, 1881. Saturday.

Went to a review of sixty-two thousand volunteers but the most interesting of the thing was the queen's procession. In the first carriage was the queen in black the Princess of Wales in dark blue and the crown princess of Germany in white. In the same carriage but behind the queen sat John Brown the queen's favorite servant in black and silver. Then followed some huntsmen next came another carriage with the duchesses of Teck and Connaught and two other ladies then some more huntsmen and the princesses of Hesse-Darmstadt in blue then the officers of police and last but not least the king of the Sandwich Islands in another carriage. After these carriages came a royal huntsman in gold and dark crimson then came the Prince of Wales in some dark color with the badge of the Order of the Garter (blue), riding next to the crown prince of Germany in a white uniform, then came the dukes of Teck, Connaught, and Cambridge and the Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt the husband of the late unfortunate princess Alice. A lot of others of their staff closing the procession.

Ascot. October15, 1881. Saturday.

We were to go to Hampton court, where we were to lunch with Mr. Hodgekin today but as it hailed and rained we went to London instead. In the train we thought we would have our dinner so just as we had taken out our things we arrived at a station and heard the guard crying, "All change for London," so out we had to get holding our bread in our hands but we managed to finish our dinner in the other carriage. We got to Waterloo at two o'clock whence we drove to the Savoy Theatre in a bus to see Patience a most intensely utter play in the aesthetic line. It is chiefly written in an incomprehensibly tattoo language. After the theater we walked down Piccadilly without a poppy or a lily as the people in the play did. We had chocolate grange not mange and got home at about seven thirty. I am growing intense.

Ascot. October 16, 1881. Sunday.

I am utterly consummately intense wearing sunflowers and poppies and dahlias in my buttonhole.

Ascot. July 27, 1882. Thursday.

I received about the worst news I could have received today. The head has received a letter from Papa saying that I must leave this school this term and go to some Gymnasium or something like it in Baden. I wish I could stop here for at least another term, or any time, because I can by no means relish the prospect before me. I am very sorry at having to leave this place.

Adolf Kessler did not want his son to forget his German heritage, so he sent Harry to his alma mater, the Johanneum, a well-known Gymnasium, or elite German high school, in Hamburg, where he boarded at the home of a Pastor Blümer.

Hamburg. January 23, 1886. Saturday.

Papa came. He arrived from Leipzig this morning. He was out here at about eleven thirty with Aunt Lulu and without much beating the bush we went to the heart of the subject at once. Papa put the question of my future pretty plainly. Now I had been for days and for weeks I may say for months thinking and thinking and turning the thing this way and that without coming to a decision, and as I had from the very first foreseen, my ultimate answer was the work of a moment, what I had been brooding over for six months was decided in my mind at last in as many seconds: I first hesitatingly and then after watching the effect pretty positively said I wanted to study.6 So Papa went down to Pastor B. and after almost an hour and a half conference, during which I read Mamma's new article in the Figaro and talked with Aunt Lulu, I was called down and told that I was anyhow to stop till Michaelmas. I am satisfied at this and we must then of course have to come to a final decision.

Hamburg. January 31, 1886. Sunday.

Everybody and everything full of Bismarck's great speeches on the Polish question. I can hardly sympathize with him on this point, although I would not join the opposition in Parliament. But I must say I think it rather hard for some unfortunate people because they are Poles, although they have committed no earthly wrong except having gone on speaking Polish when their masters were speaking German, eo ipso to have no right to stop in Germany. It is very like the repeat of the Edict of Nantes or the expulsion of the Salzburg Protestants and I do not think it will do much more good. Such a strong measure is I think only justified in cases where everything else has failed, in Ireland for example. There I should hardly be opposed to the measure. But really to eject thousands of industrious farmers and tradesmen when no danger is impending is to my mind very much like despotism and will probably do more harm than good. On the other hand I think it wrong to go on caviling at Bismarck for having taken this measure and I have still less sympathy with Windthorst than with Bismarck.

Hamburg. February 13, 1886. Saturday.

Row in London on Monday. Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Regent-Street, South-Audley-Street, etc., sacked by the mob, people in the streets robbed of their valuables, carriages broken, shops wrecked. Damage about 100,000 pounds and all this in broad daylight by about five thousand people in the face of the police, and the soldiers in the barracks. It really sounds incredible. Why on earth were not the horse guards commanded to charge and disperse the mob if need be with their swords; really when it comes to saving the richest part of London from all the horrors of a pillage nothing is too severe. However there being a nice, comfortable, sleepy, liberal, Gladstonian government nothing has been done and not even the ringleaders as much as arrested. The worst is not even the lost and destroyed property, but that now the scum of the population has seen that if it only assembles in sufficient numbers it can take whatever and as much as it likes, it will most certainly take or make the opportunity oftener of helping itself. The consequences of the inaction in London are already being felt in the form of rows in Leicester and Birmingham where the strikers have simply demolished the factories. God knows what will happen next. The French Revolution merely began by a mob and a pillage.

This week I have read Jefferson's Byron, "Childe Harold," Macaulay's Byron and some more of his essays, a little of Pickwick, a little of Voltaire, besides working a good deal in Greek and Latin.

Hamburg. March 30, 1886. Tuesday.

News better. Although the strike has spread and is still spreading in Belgium, the worst seems to be past and the troops are apparently slowly but surely getting the better of the rebels. But the signs of the times are bad. Before the first French Revolution the marquesses and abbés talked incessantly about bettering the situation of the tiers état, and now the tiers état talks a good deal about bettering the situation of the working men. If the better classes do not look sharp and really do something we will wake up one morning and find ourselves in the midst of the wreck of social order as the marquesses one fine day woke up and found themselves in the midst

of the wreck of the old aristocracy. It seems to me we are now since 1789 going through the same sort of process of regeneration the Roman world went through between 300 and 500. It is only...