Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/222

 Battenberg, and the other the Grand Duke Sergius of Russia. Queen Victoria herself, with the Prince and Princess of Wales, was to be present at the ceremony, and the Times wanted to have a special account of the whole affair. So off I started from Berlin, and reached Darmstadt just in time to join the four o'clock table-d'hôte dinner at the sleepy little old 'Traube' (Grape) inn, opposite the Schloss.

"On the doorstep of the inn my heart warmed at the sight of a figure who wore the garb of an English clergyman, while I could note that he, too, eyed me with evident curiosity. I concluded that he must be there in some official capacity, and that he might perhaps be useful to me in the execution of my mission. What was my delight to find myself placed beside this interesting cleric at the dinner-table!

"A newspaper correspondent can never afford to stand on ceremony with the people he comes across, and so we had hardly finished our soup before I had revealed my professional identity to my neighbour. He reciprocated by disclosing himself to be the Rev. T. Teignmouth Shore, of Berkeley Chapel, Mayfair, who had been religious instructor of the children of the Prince and Princess of Wales. It was through his Marlborough House connexion that he had become favourably known at Darmstadt, and thus received a special invitation to the ceremony which I had been sent to describe. That was how I met my literary fate at the table-d'hôte of the 'Traube,' where, in addition to being an orthodox theologian, my new clerical friend soon showed himself to be an excellent judge of Rhenish.

"After that we continued to correspond; and that same autumn—being most intelligently interested in military matters, more so than any man of his cloth I ever met—Mr. Shore came to Berlin, and accompanied me to the Army manœuvres. Soon after returning to London he wrote to me on behalf of Cassell's, asking whether I would undertake for them a work about Germany, similar to that of Mackenzie Wallace on Russia. I suppose I must have demurred to the proposal, as being less congenial to me than a regular Life of Bismarck, which I was already meditating. Anyhow, after some little correspondence my counter-suggestion was adopted, and before the year was out I had signed an agreement to write a biography of Prince Bismarck in one volume (demy octavo) of not less than 500 pages, for which I was to receive the handsome honorarium of £500, or £1 per page of about 300 words.

"One clause in our agreement stipulated that the complete