Digitised Manuscripts and Books

My Mother gave many entertainments at the Grünebourg – breakfasts, dinners, dances – and received there many of the foreign notabilities who were passing through Frankfort. Of these I may mention three: first, Lord Landsdowne, the grandfather of the present Secretary for War. I can recollect seeing him at breakfast, a small, unpretentious, middle-aged man, for whose benefit the table was covered with fancy bread and tea-cakes of every conceivable kind, for which he was known to have a special liking. The second was Lady Douro, the present Dowager Duchess of Wellington, then in the heyday of her youth and beauty, but her statuesque charms completely overawed me. The third was Prince Lichnowsky, one of the best looking and most popular men of the day, who soon afterwards met with a tragic end. He was riding out with the Austrian General App just as the Revolution of ’48 had broken out, and they fell in with a band of insurgents. The General was shot dead on the spot but poor Lichnowsky was dragged from his horse, beaten with clubs and terribly mutilated. He was taken to the house of Baroness Moritz Bethmann where he died in great agony.

The Revolution at Frankfort was a short-lived episode of three days, which we spent at the Grünebourg, without being in the least molested; and but for the information we received we might have been in blissful ignorance of the wild proceedings in our immediate neighbourhood. My Father was in Vienna at the time but my Mother was with us. Fearing that my Great-Uncle Anselm might have come to harm she went alone into the town, made her way past the barricades to his house, and finding him safe and sound, quietly walked home again.

I need not concern myself in these pages with the political events of ’48, which belong to history. It is well known that a German Parliament was convened at Frankfort, and was opened on the 18th of May under the presidency of Baron Gagern; that the Archduke John was appointed Reichsverweser – Viceroy of the Realm – and made his official entrance into the town on July 11th. We witnessed the pageant from my Great-uncle’s house in the Zeil and were much impressed by the fine marching order and the white uniforms of the Austrian soldiers, who wore sprigs of evergreen in their shakos as an emblem of peace. The Archduke had married morganatically an Austrian postmaster’s daughter, whom the Emperor of Austria created Countess Meran. They had an only son – Count Meran – with whom I formed a kind of friendship. We had the same cut of features and the same figure, and when years later I went to live in Vienna I was constantly mistaken for him. In shops I was addressed by his name, and at the play his friends came into my box expecting to meet him. He married an Austrian lady and died soon after. President Gagern had a daughter with whom we became acquainted, but I know nothing of her later career, or whether she is still in the land of the living.