48. To Marie Engels, April 14- 16
into the street, I should risk being arrested at any moment — which isn't very pleasant. For if I'm seen in the street with even one button on my uniform or one hook on my collar unfastened, any officer or N.C.O. can put me under arrest. So you see, it is quite dangerous to be a soldier, even in peacetime. One of the most delightful things is that we have to go to church every four weeks but I have always managed to dodge it, except once. You have to stand in the yard for an hour beforehand wearing your heavy decorated shako with its plumes and then when you are frozen right through, you go into the ice-cold church where you cannot even hear anything of the sermon, for the acoustics are so bad. Isn't that delightful? Write again soon.
Your brother
Friedrich
The sealing-wafer isn't one of the best.
time
48
TO MARIE ENGELS
IN MANNHEIM (1)
Dear Marie,
This tender little flower(2) which has lain in my portfolio for half a year, and which I take out now and offer to you, will, I hope, compensate for the long time which, I admit it with remorse, I have kept you waiting. Herr Hösterey delivered your little note to me safely after His High-and-Mightiness had hidden it in his trou-ser pocket from the eyes of the Austrian customs officers, for which His Supreme Highness asked my pardon, and in delightful German indeed. My conscience will not allow me to keep you waiting any longer, so I write. What about? Well, I don't know yet. That I was on parade drill this morning from 8 till half past eleven? That during this I got a very stiff telling-off from the Lieutenant-Colonel? That we have church parade next Sunday? That I have finished all my good cigars and that the beer at Wall-müller's has been very bad these last few days? That I must go out now to collect a couple of pots of ginger which I ordered for the Snethlages? Well, that's all there is to say. So — till tomorrow.
Today, Friday, April 15, I am going for a drive. The weather has greatly improved. A whole lot of carriages are lined in front of my house where they have taken up their quarters. The cabbies are usually drunk and entertain me vastly. It is very convenient for me if I ever want to take a trip in one of the cabs. I live very agreeably on the first floor, in an elegantly furnished room — the front wall of it is made up of three windows separated only by small pillars, so it is very bright and friendly.
I was interrupted yesterday when I had written this. Today I can tell you the glad news that we are probably not going on parade tomorrow because His Most Supreme Majesty, the King,a
has condescended to leave for Potsdam and Brandenburg. All of which suits me very well, for I have no desire to knock around that cursed palace yard tomorrow. Let us hope we shall have no parade at all. We now also have a most charming exercise on the Grützmacher, so called, which is a very large open space where you sink up to your knees in sand and which has the delightful peculiarity of being electric. When the 12th Guards Artillery Company, to which I belong, and which is also electric, but negative, arrives there, positive and negative electricity collide, causing confusion and chaos in the atmosphere and attracting the
Frederick William IV.— Ed.
clouds. Otherwise I cannot think how to explain why it always rains or snows when our company is on the Grützmacher. Incidentally I have now been a bombardier for four weeks, and, in case you didn't know, I wear braid and piping and a blue collar with red edgings. You won't understand all this, but it is not really necessary, as long as you know that I am a bombardier, that's enough.
You will certainly not have heard yet that Herr Liszt has been here and enchanted all the ladies by his piano playing. The Berlin ladies were so besotted by him that there was a free fight during one of his concerts for possession of a glove which he had dropped, and two sisters are now enemies for life because one of them snatched the glove from the other. Countess Schlippenbach poured the tea which the great Liszt had left in a cup into her Eau-de-Cologne bottle after she had poured the Eau-de-Cologne on to the ground. She has since sealed the bottle and placed it on top of her writing-desk to his eternal memory and feasts her eyes on it every morning, as can be seen in a cartoon which appeared about it. There never was such a scandal. The young ladies fought over him but he snubbed them frightfully, and preferred to go and drink champagne with a couple of students. But there are a couple of pictures of the great, charming, heavenly, genial, divine Liszt in every house. I will draw you (a portrait of him. Here is the man with the /^fRüÜüte
Kamchatka hair style. By the way, he must have A — nüSSlSÄ earned at least 10,000 talers here and his hotel f b jnuVoflft bill amounted to 3,000 talers — apart from what T^ M H ^ | he spent in taverns. I tell you, he's a real man. He ^ ^ ^ > < ^ \ drinks twenty cups of coffee a day, two ounces x-^*^ of coffee in every cup, and ten bottles of champagne, from which it can fairly safely be iszt
concluded that he lives in a kind of perpetual drunken haze, which may also be confirmed. He has now gone off to Russia and one wonders whether the ladies there will go as crazy too.
I must go out now, so I will close. Farewell and write soon.
Your brother Berlin 16/4, 42 Friedrich