Digitised Manuscripts and Books

Baroness Vrints, sister of Count Buol, sometime Prime Minister of Austria, was the leader of Frankfort society. A tall, dark, gaunt woman with a voice like a turkey when it guggles, and a swelling in her neck like the wattle of that bird, she was inclined to assume superior airs, but she was clever amiable and hospitable. Both she and her eldest daughter Baroness Charles Bethmann were near neighbours of ours. Baron Vrints was as dull as his wife was the reverse, and on that account perhaps Baron Dörnberg was never seen out of her company, though as far as I could judge he was not particularly interesting either. Baron Dörnberg was ‘Post Master General’ of Frankfort, which in common with all the post offices in Germany then belonged to Prince Thurn and Taxis, to whom they yielded a colossal revenue.

Baroness Vrints’ unmarried daughter Nélie was the belle of the town and all the young Attachés were at her feet – none more devotedly than Mr X. of the English Legation, to whom in defiance of her Mother’s wish, she plighted her troth. The Baroness considered him too impecunious and of not sufficiently high rank to aspire to the hand of her daughter and finally forbade him the house. He subsequently became accredited as Minister to a Foreign Court, and Miss Nélie remained single for many a long year, eventually bestowing herself on a Hungarian gentleman who was not much wealthier or nobler than her former suitor. Miss Nélie had a graceful figure, golden hair, fair complexion and blue eyes; charms of which she was not unconscious. She looked, or rather imagined she looked particularly well on a horse, and my elder sister often went out riding with her, both girls being carefully dressed in the height of the then, but now obsolete fashion, which Queen Victoria’s portrait by Winterhalter has rendered historic and familiar.

I could give an account of many of the other notabilities of the day, but their fame was so transient that it would be futile to give them even a short notice. I prefer to turn at once to the distinguished strangers who passed through or stayed in the town – of whom there were many. The best known was Lady Jersey, the famous and great Lady Jersey – famous for her pride, and great for the position she occupied at home. No mother was more ambitious for the matrimonial establishment of her daughters and none was doomed to greater disappointment. Lady Clementina Villiers whose beautiful pale face and golden ringlets are immortalised in keepsakes died unmarried; and Lady Sarah, for whom Lady Jersey found a Prince - Prince Esterhazy - never obtained a secure footing among the aristocracy of Vienna who could not forgive her for being the granddaughter of a banker. To humour Lady Jersey’s aristocratic leanings my Mother invited her to a banquet at which every guest was a prince. Of princes there was no lack for as I have already said, Frankfort was surrounded by small principalities in addition to which there were many mediatised German princelings, the Wittengensteins, Leiningens, Löwensteins, Höhenlöhes, Ysenbergs and others, who often made Frankfort their home for a time or took it on the way.