The Project Gutenberg eBook of Memories of the Kaiser's Court, by Anne Topham.

BY
ANNE TOPHAM

WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS

SEVENTH AND CHEAPER EDITION

METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MEMORIES OF THE KAISER’S COURT

CHAPTER I

ARRIVAL AT THE PRUSSIAN COURT

TOWARDS the middle of August 1902, on a very hot, dusty, suffocating day, I was travelling, the prey of various apprehensions, to the town of Homburg-vor-der-Höhe, where the Prussian Court was at that time in temporary residence.

Thither I had been summoned, to join it in the capacity of resident English teacher to the young nine-year-old Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia, only daughter of the German Emperor and Empress.

A stormy night-passage of eight hours on the North Sea, followed by a long train-journey through stifling heat lasting till five o’clock in the afternoon, naturally affects any one’s spiritual buoyancy, and it was with a distinct feeling of depression that I at last descended from the train on to the platform of Homburg station.

I confidently expected that a carriage would be waiting for me, but nothing in the least resembling a royal equipage is to be seen. There is only a row of those shabby, time-worn, open droschkies, harnessed to attenuated, weary-looking horses, which, even since the advent of the “taxi” into the social conditions of the Fatherland, still maintain a precarious, struggling existence in most German towns.{2}

I am a helpless stranger, with a very limited knowledge of the German language as applied to porters and cabmen, and consequently very much at the mercy of these functionaries.

As my luggage is plainly addressed to the “Königliches Schloss,” the group of officials who surround me, all talking together in strident tones, are most anxious that I should get there as soon as possible. I manage to convey to them my idea that a carriage will probably be coming for me soon, and after a few minutes’ interval of waiting one porter obligingly goes outside the station to look up the long street for the missing vehicle; but he returns sadly shaking his head.

“Kein Wagen,” he murmurs with an air of finality; and in spite of my misgivings they all fall upon my various possessions and put them into the oldest and most decrepit of the droschkies—the only one left—with a horse to correspond, and a driver who strikes the last note in deplorable shabbiness and stupidity. No one who has not travelled in German trains fed with German coal can appreciate the sheer discomfort and misery caused by this wretched fuel, which vomits forth clouds of thick black smoke, laden with solid, sooty particles, having a fatal affinity for the features of the passengers. I have assimilated to myself a certain amount of this invariable accompaniment of Continental travel, and am uncomfortably conscious of the fact. Neither is it thus—in a wretched droschky, with my luggage piled drunkenly around me at various untidy, ill-fitting angles—that I had dreamed of entering the precincts of royalty.

Later on I grew callous in this respect and perceived that I had been unduly sensitive over a small matter; but my feelings on this important occasion were, it must be admitted, acutely miserable. One knows instinctively that a first impression counts for a good deal.

Up the long Louisen-strasse and past the Kurhaus we rattle over the cobble-stones of past ages with which{3} so many German towns are paved, and down a side-street I catch a glimpse of a smart-looking brougham with a footman sitting beside the coachman on the box, driving quickly in the direction from which we have come. I am convinced that it is the carriage meant for me, and would like to go back again to the station; but all attempts to convey my meaning to the egregious person whose back obscures my view are unavailing. He shrugs his shoulders, whips up his horse, utters guttural incomprehensible ejaculations, and points to a large old building in front of us before whose open gates a sentry is pacing. The sentry looks surprised and hesitates, the animal in the shafts crawls through the gateway and comes to a sudden halt in the midst of a big paved courtyard, surrounded by open windows and containing in one angle a pleasant flower-garden of green turf and climbing geraniums. We are in the Royal Homburg Schloss.

A beautiful sun-bathed silence prevails everywhere. Through a gateway opposite, leading into a second courtyard, a fountain can be heard plashing gently with occasional intermittent hesitations and precipitations, while a pigeon croons slumberously at intervals on the roof. Otherwise it seems an absolutely deserted spot. There is nothing to indicate before which of the various doors, which stand half open to the light and air, I ought to be set down.

The driver assumes a round-shouldered, blinking, vacuous attitude of masterly inactivity, while his horse takes a nap after his exertions. I descend from the hateful vehicle and wonder what I ought to do next. Between heat, exasperation, and incertitude, added to the fatigues of travel, I am in a parlous condition, one fume and fret of weariness and desperation.

Presently from under the archway, interposing his bulk between me and the glancing sunlight, comes walking slowly a gentleman of stately mien, garbed in black frock-coat and tall silk hat. He wears the aspect{4} of an Ambassador, and may be one for all I know or care. I fling myself into the orbit of his path, assembling together with beating heart the few fragmentary bits of German that remain with me after the varied emotions of the day. I murmur something inarticulate and wave my hand explanatorily in the direction of the supine droschky-driver, who, surrounded by my luggage, still continues to crouch in obvious somnolence on his box.

The black-coated functionary may not be a diplomat—I subsequently find that he is a Hoffourrier, one of those pleasant minor court-officials who regulate royal journeys and the small financial housekeeping arrangements of royal households—but he has the art of seizing a situation at a glance. His eye wanders whimsically over the luggage, the slumberous droschky-driver and his horse. It strikes him, no doubt, as a humorous situation. So it would appear to me under different circumstances. He answers in polite but unintelligible German, wakens the driver, directs him to a door in a corner, and rings a bell; a rush of gaitered footmen follows; something kaleidoscopic and swift takes place; I find myself following a servant down a long, cool, bare passage decorated with old German prints—up a tiny winding staircase into a pleasant, shady room looking out over the red roofs of Homburg away towards great purple hills against a background of pale lemon-coloured sky.

The quiet, calm beauty of the outlook as seen from this high-pitched gabled corner of the quaint old Schloss falls soothingly on my tired, travel-worn soul. I sink into a funny old-fashioned chair covered with a blue spotted chintz which has been out of fashion for at least a hundred and twenty years, and contemplate the fat, plethoric, square sofa and the rest of the furniture, which is delightfully old—so old that its ugliness has mellowed into something charming and alluring. There is a big mirror fixed over a marble-topped mahogany chest of drawers in which I catch a glimpse of my{5} haggard face; there are various mahogany chairs covered with the before-mentioned blue-spotted print; there is a carpet of vivid moss-green. All is very plain and comfortable and old-world, and spotlessly clean and fresh. Flowers are on the writing-table which stands in the embrasure of the window.

Soon a pleasant chinking of china is heard outside, and a man in a flowing Russian beard parted in the middle brings in a tray with tea. He bows politely as he enters the room, the bow without which no well-trained German servant comes into the presence of those whom he serves, and deftly arranges the tea-table. He is clad in plain dark livery, such as is worn by all the Diener-schaft in the royal employment who are below the rank of footmen.

The sight of the teapot and the taste of the tea set at rest the doubts I have had whether this cheerful beverage would be one of the luxuries I should have to renounce permanently on leaving England.

“German people all drink coffee, and if they do make tea it’s like coloured water,” I had been assured many times over. That this is true still of the great mass of the people my experience in many parts of Germany has proved; but the Court buys its very excellent tea direct from a big London warehouse and brews it with due respect to its peculiar needs.

A small bedroom, in which my luggage has been deposited, leads out of the little sitting-room. It contains also the same quaint old-world furniture, together with a short, squat, solid-looking mahogany bedstead with deep wooden sides, covered with one of those big bags filled with down which take the place of an eiderdown quilt and are so typically German. One sees them hanging out of the windows for an airing every morning—at hours, it is needless to say, permitted by the police.

I wash away the dust of the journey, change and begin to unpack, wondering if my clothes are right, if{6} I ought to have had longer or shorter trains on my dresses, and wishing somebody would come along and explain to me any points that might guide my inexperienced steps.

The departing English teacher whose place I am taking has written to me a letter purporting to give advice as to wardrobe and etiquette, but she has recently become “engaged,” and except an impression that white kid gloves are a chief necessity of life at court, there is little of practical use to be gathered from the vague kindliness of her short note. She writes that there is practically no etiquette except such as can be “seen at a glance,” and leaves it at that.

A knock comes at the door; a voice, a pleasant, cheerful woman’s voice, calls my name; and with both hands outstretched in welcome enters a tall, middle-aged, smiling person, who introduces herself as the lady-in-waiting with whom I have been corresponding. She radiates kindness and sympathy, is gaiety and charm personified, knows exactly how I am feeling—how excited, dubious, tired, and worried—and she laughs it all away while she stands clasping my hand and shaking it at intervals. She is much amused at the description of my entry into the Schloss, and explains that a carriage and luggage-cart had been sent to meet me with one of the Empress’s own English-speaking footmen, so that everything might be as easy as possible; but there had been a mistake as to the time—probably on my part—and as the train was very punctual I had been there too soon.

“And now,” she concludes, “you will dine to-night with Her Majesty at half-past seven.”

“Yes,” she laughs; “it is the best opportunity, because the Emperor is away and it will be very quiet—just a few of the ladies and gentlemen of the court; and it will be quite easy, you know. Her Majesty is so kind, so sympathetic—she knows how tired you must{7} be—she will not expect you to be brilliant; but when there is a plunge to be made,” she pointed downwards as to an unfathomable abyss, “it is better to make it and get it over, isn’t it?”

“No, not to-night. She is very much excited and wanted to come and see you, but is to wait until to-morrow. She has been talking all day about your coming.”

I wonder dubiously in what aspect I present myself to the thoughts of my unknown pupil—whether pleasantly or otherwise.

On looking back, that first dinner at a royal table has in it many of the unstable elements of a dream, I might almost say of a nightmare. It passed confusedly through my mind as a series of impressions following each the other with such rapidity and lack of cohesion that only the Cubist or Futurist mind could hope to depict it adequately. An impression that my frock is not quite the right thing, that it is too English and not German enough—it was to be a “high” dress, said the Countess, as we parted, and mine was neckless while the other ladies were clothed right up to the ears and chin; further impressions that I am preternaturally dull and stupid, that the smile I attempt is obviously artificial, that I am an isolated speck of mind surrounded by an incomprehensible ocean of German babbling.

Before dinner I have been solemnly conducted by the Countess to the apartments of the Empress, wearing one long white kid glove, while the other is feverishly crumpled in my hand together with a fan, without which even in the coldest weather no properly equipped lady can, I learned, be considered fit to appear before royalty. An elderly footman shows us into a little ante-room furnished in brilliant yellow satin, and here we sit and wait, chatting in the desultory, half-hearted manner of people who expect every moment to be interrupted.{8}

It is some ten minutes or so before a door leading into an inner apartment is opened and we are ushered in.

“You will kiss Her Majesty’s hand,” whispers the Countess with a reassuring smile as she passes on in front of me.

The Empress is sitting on a sofa, with a stick beside her, for she has had the misfortune to sprain her ankle rather severely some days before, and she receives us with a pleasant, gentle smile and a look which reveals at once the fact that she herself is feeling a slight embarrassment. I suppose the Countess presents me to Her Majesty—I have no definite recollection of it—but at any rate she disappears and leaves us alone together. I bend and kiss the outstretched hand, and feel already that this is going to be quite a pleasant interview, so eminently sympathetic and kindly reassuring is the face that smiles into mine with a certain shy diffidence.

I find myself sitting in a chair talking easily and without restraint to a mother about her little daughter. It is all quite simple and straightforward. There is no longer anything to trouble or be doubtful over. We exchange views on theories of education, on a child’s small idiosyncrasies, on the difficulties of giving her enough fresh air when so many hours are taken up with study. We get absorbed in our talk, and find that we have many views in common—always a delightful discovery, whether the other person be an Empress or a charwoman. At last Her Majesty realizes that a good many hungry ladies and gentlemen are waiting not far away for her appearance and their dinner, and so at length she rises and walks through several rooms, preceded by a footman who flings open both leaves of the folding doors, till we emerge in an apartment brightly lit with many wax candles, where a subdued buzz of conversation suddenly stops and the whole company bows and curtsies at once, like a field of corn when the wind passes over it.{9}

At table I sit between a young officer in uniform and the English lady who is leaving to-morrow and to whose privileges and responsibilities I am to succeed. I learn with horror that with her departure I shall be left to grapple single-handed with whatever difficulties may arise—without any aid or advice excepting that which the “Countess,” who is continually occupied, may find time to fling to me at odd intervals of the day. The German Ober-Gouvernante, whom I had expected to find at my side with counsel and guidance, is in strict quarantine, having been in contact with some infectious illness, and will continue to be possibly contagious for the next ten days. She is being purified and disinfected somewhere with relations, and will resume her duties when the Court returns to the New Palace near Potsdam.

In the meantime I shall carry on as well as my ignorance allows the numerous duties of her position as well as my own! Perhaps it is the sympathetic pity of the kind German people in my immediate neighbourhood, their encouragement to be “firm” towards my pupil, the transparent hints that she is a remarkably difficult child to manage, and that only a person of unyielding discipline who will exact rigid and unquestioning obedience can have the least chance of coping with her extraordinary temperament, that make the true inwardness of the situation apparent.

“I rather like naughty children,” I murmur wearily, with an effort to throw off the forebodings caused by their remarks; “they have so much more character than good ones. Most people who turn out rather remarkable seem to have been distinguished in their youth for naughtiness.”

They all smile indulgently, with the air of humouring the whims of a child whose words are not to be taken seriously.

“Grown-up people can often be very annoying too,” I remark, as a further contribution to the discussion. They smile again at each other, and immediately change{10} the subject to something else quite unconnected with education, and, lapsing into German, leave me, so to speak, stranded in a backwater, where I wonder vaguely if I can possibly keep my eyes open much longer and if it will be lèse-majesté if my head suddenly sinks into my dessert plate.

Mercifully, when we rise from the table I am dismissed to much-needed repose by the Empress, and bow my way through the door out of the confused blur into which the lights and the people’s faces are beginning to merge.

I had had no sleep the previous night, having spent it tossing on the stormy waves in a state of acute misery from sea-sickness; I had travelled all day through the scorching hours, with little to eat or drink, in a train which shook and rattled and bumped as only Continental trains can; I had been anxious and harried, owing to ignorance of the language and customs and train-regulations of the country through which I was passing; I had been fretted by the droschky-driver, presented to an Empress, and had supped at the royal table in private, which is much more alarming than on a ceremonious occasion; so that it was the mere wreck and shadow of myself which, guided by the pictures, crawled half-dazed along those interminable passages.

But the morning aspect of even the most difficult situation is invariably more courageous and hopeful than that of evening. I breakfasted in the little sitting-room with my compatriot, who is absorbed in packing, and vouchsafes not one single helpful hint as to my future conduct, for which to this day I bear her somewhat of a grudge. She dismisses the whole business with the airy lightness of one whom it no longer concerns. She shows me a beautiful silver dish, a wedding present from Her Majesty, and packs it away with a smile on her face. She hums a tune while she wanders in and out from room to room, where the sunlight flickers,{11} brightening and disappearing under the light clouds that sail in the blue above.

At about half-past ten a footman comes with a summons to go downstairs, so I put on my outdoor things and follow him out into the sunny courtyard, through a big archway, and along winding sandy paths, till I reach a point where I can see the Empress sitting at a table under some big trees near what is called the “English garden"—a garden made, and still maintained much as she left it, by that daughter of George III who married a Landgraf of Hesse-Homburg.

Here it is that the Kaiser’s little daughter first comes dancing lightly into my life, to remain in it, a permanent and very delightful memory. A steep grassy bank in front descends so deeply to a tiny lake lying below that the intervening shore is hidden. Suddenly above this bank appears the sleek golden head of a small girl of nine or so, dressed in a stiff, starched, plain white sailor dress with a blue collar and a straw sailor hat.

Her mother calls to her in English, “Come here, Sissy”; and with a hop skip and jump over the intervening space she springs forward and holds out her hand to me with frank friendliness.

A few steps behind her comes another flying figure in white—her brother, Prince Joachim, the youngest of the six sons of the Kaiser; and then above the bank emerges the young officer I met at supper the night before, who is Governor to the Prince. Both children begin talking volubly in German to the Empress, the little girl, as far as my limited knowledge permits me to judge, emphatically contradicting every word her brother says. They are obviously—well, perhaps, it would be over-emphasis to call it quarrelling, but they are certainly not quite in accord. The young officer, lingering in the background—lingering in backgrounds becomes a fine art at court—gives me a meaning glance, raises his eyebrows, smiles and shakes his head with a slight shrug of his shoulders.{12}

“They are always zanking,” he says to me in his fluent but imperfect English, when, after a few minutes, the Empress departs, leaving me to the full and undisturbed enjoyment of my duties. I subsequently consult a dictionary and discover that zanken is a German verb meaning “to wrangle,” “to dispute acrimoniously.” It is a conspicuous characteristic of the children’s intercourse in those early days. Although they cannot bear to be parted from each other, they are as frankly and reciprocally rude as politicians, discovering an amazing fertility in the application of opprobrious and insulting epithets, flowers of rhetoric of which I gather a few for personal use if necessary. These storms beat with bewildering and baffling violence on my head, lacking, as I do, the knowledge of the German language necessary to make my censure more discriminating; but I note that Prince Joachim’s Governor is just as helpless as myself, though his command of the vernacular might be supposed to give him some advantage.

The next few days are busied with initiation into that mysterious inner side of court life of which the general public necessarily knows little but imagines many vain things. Chief among those early impressions is that of the Kaiser himself, whom I have not yet seen, as he is absent on one of his numerous journeys. Distilled through the alembic of his little daughter’s mind I soon perceive that the Emperor, hitherto known to me only by the medium of newspapers, which, although perhaps accurately informed as to facts, often throw a misleading light on the character and temperament of this much-discussed monarch, is not always playing the part of the frowning Imperial Personage of fierce moustaches, corrugated brow and continually-clenched mailed fist—that he frequently recedes from this warlike attitude and becomes an ordinary humorous domestic “Papa,” who makes sportive jokes with his family at the breakfast table and is even occasionally guilty of the more atrocious form of pun.{13}

This phase of “Papa’s” character is forcibly, almost painfully, brought home to me when one day his daughter, in a moment of relaxation, seeks to amuse herself by practising the schoolboy trick—she is very schoolboyish—of making with her mouth and cheek the “pop” of a champagne cork and the subsequent gurgle of the flowing wine.

“Whoever taught you these unladylike accomplishments?” I ask, in the reproving tones appropriate to an instructor of youth.

“S-s-sh! It was Papa,” she answers gleefully, repeating the offending sound with an even more perfect imitation than before; “he can do it splendidly,” and she “gurgled” with persevering industry.

It is obvious that in the intervals of inspecting regiments and making warlike speeches “Papa” unbends to a considerable extent when in the bosom of his family. But I learn with some regret that “poor Mamma” seldom has time to get a really proper breakfast, because after she has poured out “Papa’s” coffee, buttered his toast and ministered to his other wants she has only time to snatch the merest mouthful for herself before he is hurrying away to call the dogs and put on his cloak for a brisk early morning walk.

“Come on, come on,” he says, with cheerful impatience; “how you do dawdle over your food, to be sure! I’ve finished long ago,” and the whole family has to leave its meal half eaten and start on an hour’s tramp through the streets of the town or to the beautiful hills outside. It is clear that “Papa” is the dominating force of his daughter’s life. His ideas, his opinions on men and things are persistently quoted by her; trenchant, fluent criticisms on persons of world-wide fame, astonishing verdicts on men of the hour, issue from her lips in bewildering confidences.

“Papa says that Herr Muller” (the name of course is not Muller) “is a Schafs-Kopf and doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” she would say glibly of some well-known{14} politician on whose utterances the world was hanging with bated breath.

These communications are sometimes almost disconcerting. They add a burden to life, a fear lest one may betray some great political secret from sheer inadvertence. It is a relief when the Princess turns her confidences into less embarrassing channels.

The chief pets of her existence at this time are two ponies, which, together with a small victoria upholstered in pale blue satin, have been presented to her by the then reigning Sultan of Turkey, who was afterwards deposed. These two little creatures, named Ali and Aladdin, are of a pale fawn-colour, with long white silky manes and tails, and when drawing the small blue-lined victoria, which has a diminutive groom perched on a small seat behind, make an extremely exotic circus-like effect on the country roads round Homburg. The Princess always drives herself, and delights in flourishing a rather large whip, which it is necessary frequently to apply to the ponies’ fat sides, for they are of a somewhat sluggish disposition; but their appearance outside the Schloss gates is hailed with delight by the crowds who stand waiting there waving their hats and handkerchiefs on all sides.

Cronberg, the residence of the late Empress Frederick, now in the possession of her daughter the Princess Frederick Charles of Hesse, is within driving distance of Homburg. At this time the children of another sister of the Emperor are staying there—the Greek princes and princesses, whose father was then Crown Prince and is now King of Greece. As the Princess of Hesse is herself the mother of six sons, two pairs of twins among them, there is no lack of playfellows for the Princess and Prince Joachim, who frequently exchange visits with their young cousins. Cronberg is a beautiful house built in old German style, quite different from the peculiar Greco-French character of most palaces in Germany.{15}

It is pleasant to watch the cataract of white-clad children rushing in and out of the doorways, displaying that universal characteristic of their age—a desire to penetrate to unusual places, such as kitchens, cellars and attics. They have glorious games on rainy afternoons in the upper regions of the old Homburg Schloss, in whose cobwebby, dusty rooms, among old forgotten lumber, are to be found many curiously interesting things—old portraits of dead and gone Landgrafs and Landgravines, pictures of the children of the old house, attired in the cumbersome finery which in past days hampered unfortunate infancy, pieces of queer armour, ancient blunderbusses and rapiers, old moth-eaten furniture with the silk worn into rags.

I had developed an unsuspected talent in the direction of Versteckens—the ever-popular hide-and-seek—more especially in the rôle of seeker, and distributed the thrills of which the game is capable with even-handed impartiality, not forgetting that even the child of least originality, who hides in the most perfectly obvious place with large portions of his anatomy plainly visible, likes to have, so to speak, a run for his money, and enjoys the hovering discovery best when it retires baffled on the verge, and the wrong cupboard is frequently and persistently searched.

The form of the game which we played exacted that the seeker should count slowly up to a hundred with tightly shut eyes and then begin the search; but I compromised this rather wearisome method by allowing five minutes’ “law” and beginning to count at ninety. These odd five minutes were utilized to examine at ease many objects which I should otherwise never have seen; and to an accompaniment of muffled shrieks, thundering footsteps, and a passing vision of fleeting white legs, short frilly skirts, and rather smudgy princely features (for these out-of-the-way corners were a trifle dirty) I was enabled to study many quaint old steel engravings of hunting scenes which hung on{16} the walls, engravings which would make a collector’s mouth water.

I still remember the indignation with which Prince Max of Hesse made the discovery that I did not pass these intervals in a state of temporary blindness.

“You don’t keep your eyes shut all the time: you must keep them shut,” he objected. (They all spoke English and German equally well, but preferred German when talking among themselves, with the exception of the Greek children, who always spoke English.)

I have some difficulty in persuading him that I may honourably keep my eyes fixed on a picture without transgressing the rules of the game.

“Well, then you must shut your ears as well; hold your hands over them.” He is a very conscientious little boy and a past master in the matter of argument. If he had not been dragged along by my Princess there is no saying what I might have been forced to do, but she knows when she is having a good time and is no stickler for the strict observance of rules.

“Come along, Max,” she cries; “I’ve got a splendid place. Don’t begin to count yet, Topsy.” She has already found a nickname for me, and “Topsy” I remain, for the rest of my career.

On the evening of one of the days when we have been playing hide-and-seek my pupil tells me an interesting piece of news.

“Papa is coming back to-morrow morning,” she says gleefully, “and then you’ll see him. I expect you’re looking forward to it very much. I shall tell Papa all about you. You are just like all English people—very thin. Why don’t you eat more and try and get fatter?”

“I don’t want to get fat,” I reply indignantly; “and if I did, what would be the use when I have to run about all day after you children? I expect I ran at{17} least ten miles this afternoon when we were playing hide-and-seek.”

“I expect you did,” answered the Princess regretfully. “It was a splendid game, wasn’t it? Georgie hid in a bath once and Alexander turned the tap on him; but,” returning to an earlier subject, “Papa will want to know all about you, and I shall tell him you are very thin. Won’t you be very pleased to see Papa?”

I murmur something politely appropriate and noncommittal, but the fearful joy reserved for the morrow somewhat troubles my thoughts that night. Life seems already to be almost sufficiently strenuous.

CHAPTER II

HOMBURG-VOR-DER-HÖHE

IT does not take long to discover that my small charge has inherited the temperament of her race. What Carlyle calls “Hohenzollern choler,” and a certain foot-stamping manner of expressing opinion, exhibit themselves at an early stage of our acquaintance. She is a highly-strung, nervous, excitable child of generous wayward impulses, who needs an existence of calm routine for the healthy development and cultivation of her mind, but by the circumstances of her life is kept in a restless vortex of activity which places considerable difficulties in the way of her education.

She is in her tenth year when I first know her, a well-grown child of her age, with rather pale features and a lively, alert expression. She wears her fair hair cut in a straight fringe across her forehead and hanging in long “nursery ringlets” over her shoulders. These ringlets are produced, in what is naturally perfectly straight hair, by the art of her English nurse, whom I often watch with a certain fascination as she brushes{18} the shining strands round her finger, forming without any extraneous aid the most beautiful and regular curls possible.

There are but two people of whom the Princess really stands in awe. Her “Papa” of course is one, and I am not sure if her English nurse does not occupy an almost equal position with His Majesty in this respect. “Nanna” is a disciplinarian of the first water, and like other disciplinarians, brooks no interference with her own laws, which, in a court where many overlapping interests exist, is apt to breed many difficulties. She has been thirteen years in the service of the Empress, has brought up the younger children from birth, watched by them together with their mother many nights when they were ill, and practically saved the life of Prince Joachim, the youngest of the Kaiser’s six sons, by her constant and faithful care of his delicate infancy. But one by one her nurslings have been taken from her, not without a certain fierce opposition on her part. Prussian princes are given early into military hands. It is a tradition of their training, and the shrewd old nurse has a very strong opinion, shared by the Kaiserin, that an inexperienced young officer is no person to be entrusted with the superintendence of a young child’s physical and mental needs. She has battled indomitably, and often successfully, for her charges, invading even the professorial departments; and, aided and abetted by the Court doctor, who naturally considers physical before intellectual development, has often entirely routed the educational authorities, who have had to retire baffled and disconcerted.

But her triumphs were short-lived. An elaborate educational machine equipped with expert professors for every subject, with a carefully thought-out programme, in which every hour of the day is rigidly mapped out, cannot be stayed for the whims of one obstructive woman obviously prejudiced against German institutions. The frequent skirmishes had developed into{19} something of the nature of a campaign. It is not good for children to be, as they frequently are even in less illustrious circles, the centre of warring elements; so at last the inevitable happened, and with much reluctance “Nanna’s” dismissal to England, of course with an ample pension, was finally decided upon. When I first made her acquaintance in Homburg her influence was a waning one; her autocratic rule was loosening—her departure delayed only by the beneficent hand of Majesty, which shrank from the final severance from a faithful if somewhat injudicious servant.

“Nanna” subsequently asserted that I had been specially deputed as an instrument of Providence to console her during those last few weeks; and though I myself am not personally conscious of any qualifications for the office of consoler, I may at any rate lay claim to the credit of having been a very efficient safety-valve for her emotions, which poured over me in a constant flood of retrospect and admonition. She was uncompromisingly British, in spite of her thirteen years’ residence abroad. It was at once her strength and her undoing. She refused to strike her flag to any mere lady-in-waiting or German Ober-Gouvernante, and maintained an inflexible principle of behaviour in situations where the tact and pliability indispensable to diplomatic relations were most needed.

“Do you think I was going to stand her putting the thermometer in the bath-water to see how hot it was?” she asked me indignantly, referring to the absent Ober-Gouvernante; and I agreed that it was the kind of thing that no one could be expected to bear.

She was a good faithful soul, rather crabbed and cross sometimes, and she inspired in the German footmen and housemaids under her orders a good deal of respect and fear, and also, as I subsequently discovered, a certain amount of affection, such as sterling qualities will always earn for themselves somehow; and if the German associations modified nothing in her character, the same{20} cannot be said of her speech, which, while still remaining British in outward form, became in the course of years somewhat warped from its original purity.

“At Christmas,” she told me once, when showing the gifts that the Empress had made to her, “last year I became a set of teaspoons, and the year before I became a lovely silver teapot.” She had obviously confused the German word bekommen, “to get,” with the similar-sounding but different-meaning English word.

It was at a picnic that I was first presented to His Majesty the Emperor. We had all driven one afternoon in a series of carriages to a beautiful spot in the surrounding hills, where, a little way into the forest which bordered the roadside, a table on trestles was laid for tea. I had already been warned by the Princess of the impending joy.

“You’ll see Papa now, and be introduced,” she said before we started, her face glowing in sympathy with what she supposed I must be feeling. “Won’t it be lovely?”

His Majesty and the gentlemen with whom he is talking volubly when I first catch sight of him are all in uniform, which gleams brightly under the deep green of the pine trees. The German officer, it is well known, wears uniform continually, and adds greatly thereby to the colour and gaiety of the social functions in which he takes part. The Emperor sets an example also in this respect, and on the very few occasions when he appears in mufti loses a great deal of his imposing appearance. Civil dress has with him something of the baffling nature of a disguise, and the ordinary easy lounge tweed suit, which many Englishmen wear with advantage, is distinctly unflattering to him, although he looks well in a frock-coat and silk hat. But he never appears quite himself, never really fits into any but military or naval garments.

“When His Majesty has finished talking you will be{21} introduced,” said one of the ladies-in-waiting. “The Empress will present you, so do not go far away.”

So I stand waiting under the trees, watching the footmen while they place camp-stools and arrange cakes and teacups, and hearing gusts of the Emperor’s conversation, which, being carried on in German, is quite unintelligible to me, though there is one word “Kolossal” which keeps emerging frequently from the rumble of talk.

Presently the group of uniforms breaks up. His Majesty turns towards the Empress, somebody signs to me, and I step out of the shadows and come forward. “Papa’s” keen blue eyes look at me with that characteristically penetrating, alert, rather quizzical brightness which I afterwards learn to know so well. They seem almost too violent a contrast with the deep sunburn of his face. My hand is enveloped in a hearty, almost painful handshake, and I am confronted with a few short, sharp questions.

“From what part of England do I come? Have I ever been in Germany before? What do I think of Homburg? Do I speak German?”

I subsequently have the pleasure of many stimulating discussions with His Majesty, when we debate a variety of questions, from armaments to suffragettes, and are not invariably accordant in our views; but on this occasion our talk is necessarily short and perfunctory.

Presently we are all sitting at the tea-table, but the Emperor remains a little apart, continuing the conversation with his adjutants, dipping from time to time his Zwieback into his tea, as is permitted by German custom.

Ausflüge und Land-Partien—excursions and picnics—are an integral part of German existence in summer-time, and the Hof lags no whit behind in this respect. Though the Emperor detests cold, damp weather, he leads an open-air existence, and loses no opportunity of being im Freien. He breakfasts, drinks tea and eats{22} supper out in the garden whenever the weather permits; and it is probably for this reason more than any other that the principal German meal, Mittagessen, whose elaborateness does not allow it to be served al fresco, still keeps its place in the middle of the day, allowing the simpler supper to be served out of doors in the cool of the evening. It is a charming and healthy custom, this eating under the blue sky, but naturally only possible in the soft, warm Continental climate, where one misses the sharp tang in the air of our sea-girt isle.

Near Homburg lies an ancient Roman fortress, which has been excavated and restored by the Emperor. Excursions either on horseback or by carriage to the Saalburg are a great feature of the stay in Homburg, and often the whole party is permitted to excavate in likely spots for “remains.” The Empress once disinterred a very beautiful bowl, and it is no unusual thing to come across fine specimens of pottery or iron-work. Everybody is supplied with a short wooden implement for digging in the soft loam, and the royalties, including Prince Joachim and the Princess, together with the ladies and gentlemen of the party, labour industriously through a summer afternoon under the direction of Professor Jacobi, who directs the work of excavation and checks any undue exuberance in digging which might lead to disastrous results.

These digging parties, which are only indulged in on rare occasions, sometimes give scope for the exercise of a peculiarly characteristic form of German humour. Often a broken cup or vase or an ancient Roman dagger made in an excellent imitation pâté of chocolate is previously embedded in the soil, and the ardent excavator, glowing with the success of a great discovery, finds to his chagrin, on reaching home, that at the solemn washing of his find, which always takes place with great ceremony in the presence of the assembled company after supper, not only the encumbering soil but also the whole fabric of the precious antique dissolves away into{23} a hopeless ruin, at once revealing the unkind imposture. This playful joke is easily carried out, since no one is allowed to excavate excepting in carefully indicated spots.

The Emperor at his own expense has rebuilt portions of the old Roman settlement; and the newness of these buildings, the freshly-painted barrack-rooms of the old Roman militia with their Latin inscriptions over the doorways, the brightness of the small glazed bricks of which the walls are constructed, give a somewhat jarring sense of unreality to the whole Burg, and raise the question whether it is advisable or not to attempt to reconstruct the past in quite such a conscientious manner—whether the actual ruins, scanty though they may be, do not tell their tale better than these new up-to-date buildings so curiously well-equipped with modern appliances.

But the buildings have their uses quite apart from intrinsic interest, as is proved one afternoon when the children, including the “Hessians” and “Greeks,” are invited to the Saalburg by the Empress, who is herself present, and a heavy rain coming on, a sort of spurious hockey game, played with croquet mallets, is organized and pursued with the greatest vigour in the “Hall of the Centurions.” The Emperor, who is out driving somewhere in the neighbourhood, arrives with his suite during a crisis in the game, and is much amused to watch the small horde of princelings, among whom his own daughter is very conspicuous, as they chase the ball backwards and forwards, sometimes only missing his own Imperial legs by decimal fractions of inches.

Even in those first early days at Homburg it is at once noticeable what a great difference the presence of the Emperor makes in the atmosphere of the court. A certain vitality and still more a certain amount of strain become visible. Everybody is to be ready to go anywhere and do anything at a moment’s notice—to be always in the appropriate costume necessary for walking,{24} riding, or driving. His Majesty walks a great deal. Often we drive out some distance beyond Homburg among the lovely mountains and forests, and descending from our carriages tramp along at a brisk pace for several miles, when the carriages meet us, and we return. It is altogether a strenuous existence for the entourage, who must always, so to speak, be mobilized for active service, which is probably just what the Emperor wishes. From early morning till night there is hardly a moment of respite from duty, and my own day is a very crowded one, with hardly time left for the necessary frequent changes of costume, which are one of the chief burdens of existence at court.

An elaborate toilette is customary at the midday dinner—something in silk or satin, with a long train—and it must be completed by the inevitable fan and white glacé gloves, of which one is worn on the hand, the other carried.

We all assemble before dinner in a large drawing-room, where the ladies and gentlemen of the suite and any visitors who are invited stand about talking till the appearance of the Emperor and Empress. Often the Princess comes in before them with Prince Joachim. The folding-doors are thrown wide open for the entrance of Their Majesties, who always appear at different doors, the Emperor usually being last, and are announced by a footman. Everybody at once stops talking, wheels about and bows simultaneously.

One day the guests at dinner include an elderly lady and gentleman of an old-fashioned German type, who shrink into a corner and look rather clever and scientific. The Princess and Prince Joachim run up and kiss the old lady and shake hands with the old gentleman.

He is Professor von Esmarck, who, when he was a struggling young doctor, fell in love with a Princess—the aunt of the present Empress of Germany—and married her. The elderly lady with the tightly-brushed hair is his wife. They live in a pleasant little house in{25} Homburg, and always dine at the Schloss when the court is staying there.

My own experience would lead me to testify to the truth of what I have read somewhere, that the chief function of a lady-or gentleman-in-waiting is to stand in a draught and smile.

“Standing and waiting,” said my kind Countess, “that is the chief part of our lives; it makes one mentally and bodily weary till one gets used to it.”

Hand-shaking too is practised to a considerable extent. It does not seem to matter how many times people have met before in the day and shaken hands, they generally seem to like to do it again while waiting for dinner. Presumably it helps to pass the time away, and gives an excuse for walking about from group to group. My place at the oval dinner-table is at one end, between Prince Joachim’s governor and his tutor. The Emperor and Empress are seated at the sides, opposite to each other, while the guests, intermingled with court ladies and gentlemen, radiate right and left. Footmen wearing the court livery, which includes rather ill-fitting gaiters, wait behind every chair and the Emperor’s “Jäger” in green uniform attends exclusively to his master’s wants. Red and white wine and champagne are served to all the guests, but neither the Emperor nor the Empress drinks anything but fruit-juice as a beverage. William II has a horror of excessive indulgence in alcohol, and sets his face against it by both precept and example.

“You English people,” he says to me on one occasion, “you drink those awful fiery spirits—horrible stuff—whisky, brandy, what not? How can you imbibe such quantities of poisonous liquid—ruining your constitutions? Simply ruining them—whisky-and-soda everywhere—no, it’s awful: I tasted it once—like liquid fire—ugh! Your drinking habits are fearful.”

He admonishes me for our national failings with uplifted finger and serious face, and I try feebly to{26} maintain that, though in the past we have been undeniably guilty and still drink far more than is good for us, yet according to published statistics we are year by year growing more sober—that the percentage of drunkenness in the army is slowly but surely decreasing, that there are fewer crimes owing to drunkenness, and so on—but His Majesty evidently has more faith in his own observations than in any amount of statistics, and continues dubiously to shake his head and his finger at me as though I were personally responsible.

Dinner is finished in about three-quarters of an hour, and at a sign from the Empress every one rises and, the ladies preceding the gentlemen, all file slowly into the salon, where coffee is served and every one stands and drinks it. This standing about after dinner is one of the most tedious of all court duties, lasting sometimes for an hour. As the Emperor and Empress never sit down, but move from one group to another, talking to this or that guest, the rest of us prop ourselves surreptitiously against projecting pieces of furniture and try to look as happy as circumstances permit. The little Princess and Prince Joachim flit from one person to another, wrangling according to custom in subdued undertones so that “Papa” may not hear, trying to tease their mother into some concession, or whispering their experiences into the ears of one of the ladies. There is always a good deal of surreptitious stifled giggling, and it is easy to see that the waiting is an irksome restraint to their active minds.

If there are a great many important guests, the children dine alone with their governor and myself, when they are expected to speak English all the time; but they lapse into German with the greatest facility, especially when the usual zanking begins. They also every evening eat supper together, continuing cheerfully and acrimoniously their criticisms of each other’s conduct. Prince Joachim indulges in the usual cheap{27} sneers at femininity with which many schoolboys goad their sisters into revolt.

“Speak English,” commands his governor, who is anxious to improve his knowledge of that language.

“Girls,” replies the Prince, speaking with distinct and aggravating deliberation, “Girls cannot be soldiers—zey are no use at all. It is good zat we have but one girl in our family. She cannot be an officer. She cannot fight. She cannot ride——”

“Much better than you—she rides,” returns the incensed Princess. “You who fall off your horse if it gives a little jump. Pfui!” She bangs a spoon on the table to emphasize her indignation.

The Prince is delighted at the success of his efforts, and continues to jeer unmercifully.

“Girls can’t ride,” he reiterates; “zey can’t fight—zey are always crying—zey are always cross——”

“Try to say ‘they,’ not ‘zey,’ ” I interpose, hoping to divert his thoughts to other subjects.

“Joachim can’t speak English one bit,” says his sister; “he says ‘zey’ and ‘zese’ and ‘zose,’ and ‘I drink your healse.’ He is a silly boy; he can’t jump, he can’t play tennis, he can’t ride——;” and so on ad infinitum.

Twice a week after we have finished supper I take Prince Joachim away and read English with him in his room, while the Governor sits listening in a chair, his long red-striped military grey legs stretched out before him, his hands clasped on his knee, an absorbed, concentrated look in his eyes. The book chosen is Stevenson’s immortal “Treasure Island,” for the Prince has stipulated that whatever we read shall not be about Muster-Kinder, which I interpret as meaning “pattern-children,” the kind abounding in certain books, but happily seldom met with in real life. I consider it a hopeful and healthy sign in the Prince, his objection{28} to Muster-Kinder, and promise that my reading shall be blameless in this particular respect. He seems a little suspicious as we settle down and I open at the first chapter, but before many pages have been turned he is holding his breath to listen, and his verdict on my choice of a book is that it is magnificent—prachtvoll.

It may here be remarked that there are few if any original books in the German language written especially for boys, who have to content themselves with translations of Fenimore Cooper’s works, “Robinson Crusoe” and “The Swiss Family Robinson,” and of late years with the “Adventures” of the famous Sherlock Holmes, who has a great vogue upon the Continent, and whose history may be bought at almost every railway bookstall abroad.

Not only the Prince, but also the Governor, in spite of his thirty years and his military experience, immediately fall under the spell of the story, notwithstanding the many words in it of which they do not know the meaning. When the hour comes to an end and the Prince begs for an extension of his lesson, the Governor pulls out his watch and after a slight hesitation, smilingly grants another ten minutes before bed-time.

“Schnell, schnell,"—“quick, quick,” implores the Prince, and I hurry on towards the fatal Black Spot and the fate of the blind man, and am pressed to come again as soon as possible and not wait till the lesson becomes due, because they both—Prince and Governor—are so anxious to know what happens next.

At the end of the following week the court is to leave Homburg for its permanent residence—if anything so unpermanent can be so termed—in the New Palace near Potsdam, where the Ober-Gouvernante will be waiting to share my multifarious labours, and where I am assured that the regular routine—“only we never have any regular routine, it is always being broken,” sighs the Countess—at any rate an approximate routine may be confidently anticipated.{29}

I pack feverishly in the small intervals of time snatched from my other occupations, and at half-past seven one evening go down to the courtyard, where files of carriages are waiting. I am supposed to accompany the Princess to the station, but at the last moment something is changed and I am sent off with a young adjutant whose English vocabulary is very limited. We drive down the long street, packed with people waiting to see Their Majesties go by. They cheer and wave enthusiastic handkerchiefs at each carriage as it passes, and though we may not usurp the royal prerogative and bow our acknowledgments, we assume affable expressions indicative of vicarious enjoyment of their exuberant loyalty, and so arrive presently at the royal waiting-room, which is gaily decorated with flags and evergreens. A crowd of officers and adjutants are on the steps awaiting the arrival of Their Majesties, and here my Princess comes presently, having driven in with her brother.

In the waiting-room sits the venerable old Duke of Cambridge, who is staying in Homburg and has come to say “farewell” to the Emperor and Empress, whose approach is heralded by a louder burst of cheering, which swells and increases outside the station.

The royal train, painted in blue and cream-colour with gold decorations, is alongside the platform, the regulation red carpet is laid down, maids and valets peep furtively from the windows of distant compartments, footmen are hurrying to and fro, while the ladies and gentlemen of the suite continue their normal occupation of waiting, chatting to each other in the usual desultory manner. Presently Their Majesties emerge from the waiting-room and walk over the red carpet into the train, we all get in after them, and our journey begins among the frantic “hochs!” and “hurrahs!” of the crowd outside.

We in England may believe in our own loyalty, but I doubt if we can compete with a German crowd in{30} giving it expression. We are never able quite to abandon ourselves to the same unrestrained, wild enthusiasm, are always just a little too self-conscious—too afraid of being absurd. The German is untrammelled by considerations of that kind; he revels in his own emotions, encourages his wife and family to revel in theirs, waves patriotic flags on the least provocation, puts his small son of six into a complete miniature Hussar uniform, lets him swagger about in the streets wearing it, to the undiluted envy of other small boys, sings “Heil dir im Sieger-Kranz” (which goes to the same tune as “God Save the King,” and has therefore a pleasantly familiar air to British ears), and is rather proud than ashamed at being moved to tears of national pride as his Kaiser passes by. No nation is more emotionally patriotic than the German, and that patriotism finds its chief centre in the personality of their Emperor.

So that, as long as the daylight lasted, outside every little wayside station and crossing was a palpitating crowd of little girls wearing wreaths of wilted flowers on their heads, of little bare-legged boys waving Prussian flags, of perspiring officials of Vereine—any kind of Association for doing anything—in hot-looking dress-suits and tall chimney-pot hats: there they stood as they had obviously been standing for some hours, wedged together in one solid, impenetrable mass, leaning heavily upon each other in rows against the station railings, while on the platform, where no one else was allowed to intrude, the station-master, in his military-looking blue uniform, remained saluting with his hand at his red cap as the train steamed slowly by. Always the same station and the same crowd it seemed, with just a different name over the booking-office door—the same Eingang and Ausgang, the same brown, alert peasant faces gazing through the railings.

The Princess and Prince Joachim had their supper in the long dining-car of the train, together with the Governor, tutor and myself; and as they imbibed their{31} soup and ate their Kalte Schnitzel were in full view of the shouting crowd.

By means of frequent promptings they were induced to suspend the customary zanking and distribute a few bows among the people, Prince Joachim in particular distinguishing himself by an air of fine courtesy as he raised his round white sailor cap, which he flourished gracefully over his head in answer to the enthusiastic roars that swelled and died outside.

We had to hurry over our meal so as to allow of the table being re-laid for the supper of Their Majesties and the suite, so we swallowed one course after another with headlong speed, curtailing conversation to its utmost limits, and when the last mouthful was despatched the children went to say good-night to their parents while the rest of us retired to the sleeping-coupés provided for the night, although it was as yet much too early to think of going to bed.

The royal train, in which I made many journeys, is, as may be imagined, “replete with every modern convenience” of travel, but this did not prevent it oscillating, banging and shaking to an appalling extent. One was hurled backwards and forwards and jolted and jerked with every form of movement known to science. Sometimes we seemed to be moving over rippled granite, and then a horizontal spasm mixed up with weird scrunchings seized the whole train, which appeared to be having some kind of hysterical fit. Occasionally we pulled up with a jolt and jar and remained stationary for a few minutes, before resuming our shuddering, jerking journey, which stretched out every mile into a nightmare length.

Time seems interminably long in such circumstances, and the weary hours dragged on very slowly. An attempt at undressing forced into the foreground the question of how—in view of the difficulty of taking off clothes—one was ever likely to be in a favourable position to put them on again. Brush and comb, hairpins,{32} all went sliding gently away on to the floor; and after washing in a basin in which a miniature tempest of soap-tipped wave-crests was raging, I renounced the adventure of undressing as one needing more intrepidity than I possessed, and lay down uncomfortably in most of my clothes to wait for morning. Through the ventilator came a choking, smoke-laden odour. The pillow, covered with beautifully fine linen, on which I laid my head was hard as the nether millstone and productive of a dislocating feeling in the neck; the sheets and blankets were of the finest and best, but no one wants to go to bed in one’s garments of the day. We were due to arrive in Wildpark, the station of the New Palace, somewhere about eight o’clock—nine hours more of the terrible shaking. I lay down and turned out the electric light, and became for the rest of the night a mere oscillating body, whirled continually back and forth through space. Fortunately the dawn comes early in August, and at the first faint greyness of the atmosphere I sat up giddily and watched the flat Prussian dew-bathed landscape glide by, so different from the hilly region we had come from the night before. Somewhere about five o’clock a low tap comes to my door, and “Nanna,” with her finger on her lip, hands in a cup of tea which she has managed to produce from somewhere.

“I knew you’d not sleep much,” she whispers. “Did you ever know trains shake like this one? You’d think they’d manage to take His Majesty along at a more comfortable pace, wouldn’t you? A royal train indeed! Enough to shake you to pieces.” “Nanna” loses no opportunity of drawing comparisons to the disadvantage of the German nation, which she considers hardly worthy to be governed by the illustrious family she serves.

I drink her tea with much appreciation, and she comes and sits beside me and converses, or I might say talks—for it is more outpouring than conversation—{33}in a hoarse whisper, so that she may not disturb the gentleman who is supposed to be sleeping in the next coupé, but is probably lying awake yearning for the end of the journey.

The greyness of the fields departs, they are threaded with gleams of colour as the sun slowly penetrates the clouds; great wreaths and ragged eddies of mist begin to rise, cattle stand about half plunged in an ocean of vapour, the peasants are at work, women with red handkerchiefs tied over their heads kneel among the bright green of the potato crops; the dreary night has departed, a new day is born.

The train rattles and jerks its way along. “Nanna’s” voice continues to croon in my ear words of warning, admonishment, advice. I listen without hearing or comprehension. Her voice is as some soothing accompaniment to my thoughts, giving a pleasant sense of companionship without exacting much attention.

Somewhere about seven o’clock another soft tap is heard and the door slides back, revealing a footman with another tray of tea and Zwieback—those nice brown crunchy toast-like biscuits which pervade the Fatherland.

“You’ll have your proper breakfast when you arrive at the New Palace,” whispers “Nanna,” “but you’ll not get it much before nine. You’d better have some more.”

I accept the fresh tea with pleasure, and listen as I drink it to the movement in the corridor. There is a sliding of doors, a sound of subdued voices—everybody is getting up. Nanna disappears to dress her Princess, who has slept soundly all night—happy capacity of childhood!—and when I peep out into the corridor I see some of the ladies-in-waiting already dressed, looking rather wearily out of the window. A man comes in and makes my bed-clothes disappear in some miraculous manner, leaving behind him, instead of the two sleeping berths, in one of which I had lain awake so long, just{34} the ordinary seat of a first-class carriage, of which the upper berth now forms the padded back.

Some of the ladies kindly come and sit beside me and point out interesting objects of the landscape. The Countess is one of them, and grows quite excited when at length a round green dome is visible over some trees.

“There, there!” she cries, “that is the roof of the New Palace; we shall be there very soon—I hope you will be very happy there,” and she squeezes my hand in the kindly sympathetic, sentimental, but very delightful manner of old-fashioned Germans. She feels that it is an important day of my life, the moment when I enter what she calls the “real home” of the Emperor and Empress.

“Like Windsor to your King and Queen,” she explains, fearing that the forty castles which the Emperor possesses may create some confusion in my ideas. “Here is their real ‘home,’ you know.”

The train, which has been proceeding much more evenly since we entered the Prussian district, glides smoothly into a station, coming gently and imperceptibly to a stop. A few officers in uniform are waiting at the door of the simple, picturesque wooden Warte-Saal—which a few years later is to be replaced by a substantial stone building provided with lifts and luxurious and artistically-furnished waiting-rooms.

There is a sudden opening of carriage-doors and activity of footmen and “Jägers.” The Emperor, enveloped in a long grey cavalry cloak, strides across the platform with the Empress and his children, salutes the waiting officers, pauses for a word with each, and then drives away. A long row of carriages is in waiting. Everything seems admirably organized; no confusion, no waiting. My turn comes, and I am whirled away out of the station yard across a road where people are standing kept in order by a green-clad Gendarm, along a pleasant tree-shaded avenue, past some sentries who guard a small iron gate, over the Mopke, a big open{35} gravelled space bordered by fine buildings on each side, and past the front of the huge Palace, which reminds one a little of Versailles and is built in French Rococo style. I descend at a broad flight of stone steps, and am ushered by a pleasant-faced footman through what looks like a window, but is really a door, into a corridor, up a wooden staircase, painted white, to the apartment which is to be my future home for the next few years. It is a lofty, pleasant room, and in spite of its bare, uninhabited look, has an air of brightness and repose. The sunshine floods it with gleams of welcome; outside are trees in which the birds are singing; a little dog in the courtyard below, a quaint little beast of the dachshund breed, looks up at me as I stand at the open French windows and gives his tail a deprecatory wag. He is obviously determined to be friendly.

The New Palace has an alluring aspect. It is very palatial of course, looked at as a whole; but there is something very home-like, gracious, and friendly in this particular corner of it, in the smiling flowers which grow on each balcony, in the canary whose notes can be heard trilling from the dining-room of the Princess close at hand, in the pleasant face of a white-capped elderly housemaid, who enters with a bow and a Guten-Tag, and an expression of delight at my arrival. She comes and shakes hands, and says something congratulatory and welcoming. It is very German, and strikes one as intensely pleasant and human, this obvious kindness and goodwill. From this hour Frau Pusch—the housemaid—is the cushion and buffer of my existence, intervening between me and a harsh world. She teaches me German, mends and irons my clothes, packs and unpacks, fetches and carries, is always cheerful and smiling.{36}

CHAPTER III

THE NEW PALACE

ALTHOUGH making personal acquaintance with thirty of the numerous palaces and country-houses belonging to the Emperor, I only resided in nine, and of these the Neues Palais, or New Palace, near Potsdam easily held the first place in my affections. For one thing it bore the aspect of a permanent home, while other perhaps more beautiful royal residences partook of the nature of an hotel, in which one never quite settled down, but remained with boxes only partially unpacked, waiting for the notice of departure.

This fine Palace, situated about twenty miles from Berlin, was built in the style of Louis XV known as Rococo, on a very marshy piece of ground by Frederick the Great, that most notable Hohenzollern whose spirit still dominates the Prussian nation. Why he did not choose a better site, where good sites are so many, must always remain one of those mysteries which deepen with time.

“It was probably in a spirit of pure obstinacy,” said one German officer with whom I discussed the subject. “People said it was impossible to build a palace on such a spot, and so he set out to prove that it was not. He also wished to show that there was still money left in his coffers after the Silesian wars. But he did not really want the palace, and never lived in it for any length of time.”

It is a cheerful-looking red building, with queer dimpled monstrous cherub heads and wreaths of flowers in yellow sandstone engirdling the upper windows. On the edge of the roof and along the terrace below stand rows of pseudo-Greek sandstone statues in flowing draperies,{37} with whose features the frost often takes liberties, making necessary a yearly renovation and replacement of noses and fingers. Along the raised terraces and against the railings stand large orange-trees in tubs, which are every autumn taken up to the “Orangerie” and brought back to their places in the spring.

On one side lies the big Sand-Hof or gravelled courtyard, divided by high iron railings edged with grass and flowers from the Mopke, the fine wide space where in former days Frederick drilled his soldiers. On the other side of the Mopke stand the royal stables, the kitchens, the chapel of the Palace, and, divided by a beautiful stone arcade, the two “Communs,” in one of which is housed the Palace guard, which occupies the ground floor, while the Commandant and his family inhabit the first floor.

The Sand-Hof faces the apartments of the Emperor and Empress, which on the other side have an outlook onto the spacious garden, laid out in trim beds, with fountains on each side—a garden to look at rather than to walk in; but hidden away in corners behind big beech hedges, are other shady gardens of trees—rose-gardens, with grassy lawns, the children’s garden, one with a tea-house, where the Emperor and Empress breakfast in the summer-time with their family.

Most old palaces that I have seen are conspicuous for their splendour and still more for their inconvenience—they are structurally almost incapable of being adapted to modern requirements; and the Neues Palais is no exception to this rule, though wonders have been done in the matter of the installation of adequate heating apparatus and bathrooms. Most of this work was accomplished under the superintendence and on the initiative of the late Empress Frederick, whose practical, energetic mind seems to have grappled successfully with the great problems of plumbing and domestic efficiency which present themselves with perhaps more insistence in palaces than elsewhere.{38}

But there was no way of overcoming the difficulty caused by the lack of any passage in the wing where the apartment of the Princess was situated on the first floor—the Prinzen-Wohnung or Dwelling of the Princes as it is called. Here two magnificent salons had been transformed into bedrooms, one for the Princess, one for the Ober-Gouvernante. These were obviously originally intended for reception-rooms, having doors at each end and in the middle, and were the only means of communication between the sitting-room and dining-room, so that whoever passed from one to the other was perforce obliged to traverse the whole length of one of these rooms, unless they went downstairs and passed through the courtyard to another staircase, which was what the servants had to do in all weathers.

In a smaller but very beautiful salon forming the entrance to the Prinzen-Wohnung a cooking-stove had been placed in the massive marble fireplace for the purpose of keeping dishes warm, for all the food of the Palace is prepared in a kitchen situated in the “Communs,” a building on the far side of the Mopke communicating with the Palace by a long underground passage along which the dishes are brought.

Here it may be pointed out that all the stables, carriages, kitchens, etc., as well as the palaces themselves, are always officially styled “royal,” not “imperial,” as they belong to the Kingdom of Prussia and are not part of the appanage of the Empire.

The sitting-room I occupied first on coming to the Neues Palais remained just as it had been at the time it was built, somewhere about 1770. Its walls were covered with small irregular pieces of dark blue glass set in cement and carried up into the centre of the ceiling, in which was inserted a circle of small mirrors where at night, if one chanced to look up, one saw the lamplight reflected. Over the big marble chimneypiece, bearing the cipher of Frederick the Great, was another high mirror of the same period (Louis XV){39} with a golden-rayed sun fixed in its upper part. I never was able to learn the meaning of this sun, which was repeated in other palaces built by the famous King of Prussia.

Above the blue salon was an equally spacious bedroom situated at an angle of the palace wing with bull’s-eye windows looking north and east. It was furnished, like most German bedrooms, to serve also as a sitting-room, and contained a sofa, a large centre table, and a big escritoire, besides the necessary cupboards and wardrobes. It was heated in winter by one of those tall chocolate-coloured tiled stoves called Kachel-Ofen which are so much used in Germany. In cold weather the Ofen was lit with wood at an early hour of the morning, and was supposed, after consuming a few logs, to have absorbed enough heat for the rest of the day. Though offensive to a sense of beauty, the Kachel-Ofen may generally be trusted to keep the temperature warm at a minimum of expenditure in fuel.

“I don’t know why English people always want to look at a fire,” said one German lady, defending the superior economy and effectiveness of the national heating system. “It isn’t the look of a fire that warms you. I never felt the cold so much anywhere as in England. All that beautiful coal warming the chimney, while I sat shivering two yards away from it!”

Our life at the Neues Palais is less strenuous than at Homburg. For one thing the Ober-Gouvernante is there, a pale, dark-eyed German in whose hands, although she herself has no teaching to do, lies the chief responsibility of the education of the Princess. Then there is the tutor who gives all the German lessons. He has not been in Homburg, where there was only room to lodge the tutor of Prince Joachim.

The day of the Princess begins with breakfast at half-past seven, excepting on Sundays and at holiday times, when she takes it at nine with her parents and brother. Never was there any child who galloped through the{40} first meal of the day with such reckless rapidity. In vain did I inveigh against this habit of bolting food, and dwell on the horrors, the least of which must be an incurable red nose, which invariably lie in wait for those thoughtless persons who ignore the duty of mastication; in vain did I quote Mr. Gladstone’s dictum on the subject, which, though it amused and interested her, in no way led to her betterment.

“At fifty, nay at forty—or even sooner, Princess,” I would say, “you will be a hopeless martyr to an outraged internal system. Look at Carlyle, the man who wrote about Frederick the Great. His whole life was made bitter, the happiness of his wife destroyed, his manners and temper spoiled, just because as a little boy——”

At this point she usually flung down her knife and fork with a clatter, and, the last mouthful still unconsumed, at her accustomed whirlwind pace, quite unperturbed at what might happen at forty, departed to her mother the Empress, who always liked to see her daughter before lessons began.

At two minutes to eight she returned breathlessly—she was always breathless in those early days—to the schoolroom, a rather dull, stately apartment, with oil-paintings of Prussian Queens and Electresses of Brandenburg decorating the walls. In their stiff brocade dresses they gazed out of their gold frames with simpering fixity at the two large blackboards, the schooldesk, the lesson-and exercise-books neatly piled on the two plain deal tables.

Her footman, an elderly, conscientious, invaluable servant of boundless tact and experience, and of the greatest assistance in those difficult early days, would give a glance round to see that everything was there—clean dusters, chalk, sponge and water. The lady on duty—myself or the Ober-Gouvernante—would be installed with book or needlework in the least obtrusive corner, trying to look absolutely absorbed in her own{41} thoughts, for the tutor naturally desired and had a right to demand deep concentration on the part of his pupil and the elimination of all possibilities of distraction. So that when the location of the schoolroom had to be changed to the other side of the Hof, where the carriages arrived bringing gentlemen for audiences with the Emperor, studies were often pursued in semi-twilight, the blinds being kept permanently down to shut out as much as possible of the sights and sounds of the outside world. Sometimes a gentle knock came at the door, which opened, revealing the smilingly-apologetic face of the Empress. She would slip in and take the place of the lady and pursue her work, while listening to the lesson. These incursions of Her Majesty were not always regarded favourably by the tutor, who feared that they distracted the Princess and made her less attentive.

Some months before she reached her tenth year the little Princess had a young resident tutor, who was provided with rooms in the Palace and shared some of the duties of Prince Joachim’s governor, accompanying the two children and the lady “on duty” in their afternoon walks. Prince Joachim’s own tutor, the one who had been in Homburg, was a married Professor living in Berlin, a very clever man, who afterwards, on the Prince’s departure for Ploen, became tutor to the Princess, journeying daily backwards and forwards to Berlin.

German educational methods are astonishingly thorough, and make serious demands upon a growing child’s brain and capacity. It is difficult to know whether to condemn or admire them most. They are so thoroughly efficient—given a child who can stand the strain; but what of the thousands who cannot? I suppose every civilized nation, not excepting England, is or has been guilty in this respect; and the Germany of to-day is beginning to demand, in the interests of the health of her future citizens, some relaxation of the tremendous claims made on the growing child.{42}

Education in Germany seems to be strictly standardized. At a certain age every child, be he prince or peasant, will be in a certain class, learning certain subjects; each year he will move a grade higher, or if he does not, the whole family will feel that some dreadful irretrievable disgrace has befallen it. The mother will creep about the house sighing and swallowing her tears, the father will wear a corrugated brow and perceive looming in the distance a son who is a zwei-jähriger, that is, who must give two years instead of one to military service, since he has not passed the necessary examination which reduces the term by twelve months. This is one of the most terrible things which can happen to a German household.

Girls, though not coming quite under the same conditions, have to work just as hard as boys, and are quite as keen to be “versetzt"—to get their remove.

So those first lessons of the Princess with that energetic cheerful young tutor who had such an excellent persistent method of teaching grammar and arithmetic, those studies abhorrent to the minds of many children, were followed by me with the greatest interest.

That a child of the age of the Princess should be expected to say with scarcely a moment’s hesitation how much nineteen times eighteen make, or to multiply mentally 342 by 439, appears to the unmathematical mind almost unreasonable, yet the solution of these problems is an everyday feat in every German school. But the answers did not always follow as quickly as the tutor desired, and often the results were wrong, in which case one paralysing hour of arithmetic was followed by another.

Sometimes—with great diffidence, for it was entirely outside the range of my duties—I would suggest to the tutor that the interposition of a history or geography lesson might make a salutary change and enable the perplexed child’s brain to recover its tone. The tutor always listened very politely to my expression of opinion,{43} and, though obviously disagreeing, deferred to my desire, after carefully hinting to the Princess that it was a concession to feminine weakness of character—which made her very angry with me, and she would insist on having more arithmetic straight away.

To any one who has studied German grammar, especially those terrible prepositions which are always lying in ambush to trip up the unwary, it is not necessary to dilate on its subtle sinuosities.

One day at the end of a lesson the tutor, glowing from a vivid and rapid description and analysis of some of the more intricate German constructions, showing the malleability of the language and the tortuosity into which the pedantic mind of man, for his own base purposes, can twist it, turned to me from his pupil’s discontented, puzzled face, for corroboration of his own enthusiastic laudation.

“Nicht wahr, Meess?” he said, as he closed his book. “Is not grammar one of the most beautiful, most interesting studies to which one can devote one’s mind?”

“It is the most hateful, unnecessary thing possible,” I replied rather hastily; “we never consciously use it when we speak, we forget it as soon as we can. I detest it.”

If I had thrown one of the Dresden china vases on the mantelpiece at his head he could not have shown more surprise. First, I suppose, at my lax ideas of duty, for was I not there to uphold the pedagogic principle in season and out of season? Secondly at my attack on Grammar itself—Grammar! the chief corner-stone of the temple of Academic Knowledge—which had been born of the ages, and would persist long after we had perished from the earth.

All this was plainly to be read in the eye with which he regarded me. The silence that ensued was almost painful, the child too astonished, the tutor too nonplussed to speak.

As usual, the feminine mind made the quickest {44}self-recovery. The triumphant mien, the flush of joy, the sheer delight expressed in the attitude of the Princess as she rose up from her chair showed that she had come to a crisis in the history of her childhood. She had reached the point where teachers cease to be oracles, where they fall into their right perspective, where differences of opinion may be conceded, and where absolute right and wrong begin to disappear. In her voice was a new tone.

“Hurrah!” she shouted, with a distinct accent of revolt. “There! You see, Herr Schmidt, there are other people who can’t bear grammar. Hurrah! I’ve heard the truth about grammar at last!”

And it being the end of the lesson, the bell of release ringing at the moment a hearty peal, as though in derision of grammar, she danced a sort of Indian war-dance in exultation at its discomfiture in front of her tutor, took me by the hand, and dragged me away, leaving Herr Schmidt, who, to do him justice, was a man before he was a pedagogue, convulsed with good-natured laughter.

The Princess was not at all a docile or an industrious child; her work was careless, owing chiefly to the usual breathless rapidity with which she did everything. Her spelling was phonetic, and she was indignant at English irregularities in this respect. Still she was ambitious and fond of approval, especially from her brother Prince Oscar.

The Crown Prince and Prince Fritz were, at the time of which I write, in Bonn studying at the University, Prince Adalbert at Kiel or roaming about the world on a warship, as he had chosen the navy for a profession; and the next two brothers, Princes August-Wilhelm and Oscar, together in Ploen, where they lived in a pleasant country house with their governor and various teachers, and enjoyed the companionship of the young cadets of the aristocratic school—the Eton of Germany—which is close at hand.{45}

Morning lessons end at twelve o’clock, and then there is a short walk until it is time to dress for the one-o’clock Frühstücks-tafel, which is usually eaten in the company of the Emperor and Empress and the ladies and gentlemen of the suite.

We dine in the Apollo Saal, a wonderful room decorated with painted panels which rouse the indignation of the Ober-Gouvernante, who objects to the scanty draperies and fleshiness of the simpering nymphs and Cupids who eternally disport themselves among the never-fading garlands of flowers of the Rococo Period. She cannot reconcile them with the otherwise estimable tastes and qualities of Frederick the Great, nor realize that great minds are composed of a variety of opposing ingredients, and that even famous statesmen and warriors must occasionally relax the sternness of their mental outlook.

The menu or Speise-Karte of the royal table is invariably written in German, not French; and occasionally English dishes appear on it, their names slightly disguised—as for example “Apple-pei” or “Brot-pudding.”

Conversation at the Frühstücks-tafel or luncheon, which is really the principal meal of the day in Germany, to which business men in Berlin usually devote a couple of hours, is always very animated and amusing when the Emperor is present, as he is a noted raconteur and possesses a highly-developed sense of humour, which helps to mitigate the boredom of the ceremonies which dog his footsteps. One day he related with the greatest gusto how, on returning from a walk alone with the Empress, he was refused admission through one of the gates by the sentry stationed there—who must have been a very unobservant person, or brought up in a remote portion of the Empire where picture-postcards do not penetrate. The soldier was very apologetic, but firm, and addressed the Emperor as “Herr Lieutenant,” finally relenting when told that the “Herr Lieutenant”{46} wished to visit Herr von Scholl, a Flügel-adjutant (aide-de-camp or equerry) who lived in the Palace.

German is the language usually spoken at the Royal table, except when English-speaking visitors are present: but few of the officers or adjutants have a very extensive knowledge of any language but their own. The Boer War had at this time only just come to an end, and there was a good deal of anti-English feeling exhibited everywhere, especially in the newspapers; but at the Court itself, although the criticism of our military methods does not take, as may be expected, a very laudatory tone, there is a frank recognition of the difficulties of the situation and a genuine deprecation of the spiteful venom of the newspaper articles, which accuse English officers and soldiers of every form of ignoble conduct that it is possible for the journalistic mind to imagine.

Soon after the Germans had a native war of their own on their hands against the tribe of the Hereros in South-West Africa; and if they were spared the succession of disasters suffered by the English, they added nothing to their own military glory, and learned a great deal of the difficulties of skirmishing in an uninhabited country where none of the rules of war in which they have been trained seem to apply. Their war lasted for four years, and long before it was finished the last lingering newspaper scandal against English soldiers died away.

In one disastrous slaughter of a German detachment ambushed by natives, the only son of the captain of the Emperor’s little river-steamer perished. The poor old grief-stricken father for a long time refused to believe the news. “My son was a doctor,” he would say obstinately; “he was not a soldier. How can he be killed? Doctors are not in the fighting-line. Their place is in the rear of the troops.”

Often young officers in khaki who have volunteered for service in Süd-West-Afrika are invited to luncheon before their departure for the seat of war. They are strong, handsome, cheery young men, full of courage{47} and enthusiasm; and the Princess sighs and wishes that she too could go to the war and fight, which aspirations Prince Joachim crushes in the heavy masculine manner.

After Frühstück is finished, and we are able at last to escape from the long, tedious waiting that follows, the children go out together. Sometimes the Princess drives those wonderful Turkish ponies, which make quite a sensation in the quiet old Potsdam streets whenever they appear; while Prince Joachim has a dog-cart of his own drawn by a wise old cob called “Freier,” who continually gets the reins under his tail but stops immediately till disentangled. Twice a week the Princess rides on horseback, and after a preliminary trial with the Sattel-Meister I am pronounced competent to accompany her. She is delighted to have my society, for hitherto she has had no companion in her rides.

Close to the Neues Palais is the lovely Wildpark, a beautiful forest, traversed by sandy paths, under great avenues of spreading beech; and here, under the supervision of the Sattel-Meister, accompanied by a couple of small grooms, we indulge in many exhilarating gallops. The Princess soon develops into a practised and fearless horsewoman, with an excellent seat in the saddle and a light hand. Before long she is learning to jump logs and hedges, to the mingled horror and admiration of Her Majesty and the Court. Our gallops become lang-gestreckt. We ride a good long way in a very short time. The Sattel-Meister, who is a severe but judicious teacher, smiles amiably and proudly at us both as we pull up our sweating horses at the lodge gates of the Wildpark preparatory to the sober walk home.

Presently we are promoted to rides on the Bornstedter Feld, the big cavalry exercise ground about half a mile away, a sandy plain where we can let out our horses and settle down for a long, swinging gallop. Nothing makes the Princess so happy, so good-tempered, as these rides. They are just the outlets she needs for some of{48} her exuberant vitality. She returns from them glowing with satisfaction, and is invariably unhappy and irritable if by any chance they are stopped.

There comes a red-letter day when she is allowed to ride at half-past seven to the Bornstedter Feld to see the Emperor review a detachment of artillery bound for the Herero War. The Princess cannot sleep for joy the night before. She is almost overcome with the mingled fear and delight of riding “with Papa.” She sends to my room early next morning in case I should oversleep myself, and is ready long before the appointed time in her little blue riding-habit and straw hat. Down below in the Sand-hof the horses are waiting for the Emperor and Empress and the large suite which invariably accompanies them when they ride. Our own steeds are in a little group apart in a corner. There has been a sprinkle of rain, but the sun is now shining. We drink a cup of tea and nibble at a roll, but are too excited to eat much. It is a dubious, an apprehensive joy to ride with “Papa.” We are fearful of not acquitting ourselves with distinction. Supposing our horses do anything unexpected, anything wrong?

We go down to the Sand-Hof and mount, and ride slowly up and down waiting. The lady in attendance on the Empress is already there, and a good many adjutants, naval and military, in full-dress uniform. They all come up and make polite observations to the Princess—flattering, complimentary remarks such as elderly gentlemen are in the habit of making to little girls. There is a great clattering of swords on the flagged terrace, and presently out comes the Emperor in his gay Hussar uniform. He bows and mounts, and those on horseback have to bring their horses to the “front” as he passes. The Empress comes from another door, is quickly in the saddle, and she and the Princess join the Emperor and ride through the big gates on to the Mopke in line together. The guard stands stiffly with presented arms as the cavalcade passes over{49} the wide drive into the beautiful avenue of trees under which we pass. The attendant ladies and gentlemen have formed up into two rows behind Their Majesties, while a group of grooms and minor officials ride in the rear. It is a pretty sight, with the sunlight sending shafts of gold from the accoutrements, and lighting up the gay uniforms and trappings of the horses.

As we pass our schoolroom window I perceive the Ober-Gouvernante standing there, and it suddenly strikes me—I had quite forgotten for the time—that we are due to begin lessons at eight o’clock and it is now a quarter to. Appalling thought! Well, we shall obviously not be there. I dismiss any misgivings as I realize the rapture expressed in the Princess’s back; and when for an instant we have a chance of speech together, I carefully refrain from mentioning the tutor and the vacant schoolroom.

The line of waiting guns on the artillery field drawn by funny little rough Siberian ponies, who look very strong and unkempt and are driven by men in khaki, strike the Princess as something very unusual. From babyhood she has been familiar with troops on parade in their gayest, most expensive, least practical uniforms, or with troops at manœuvres on the march, dusty and sunburned and travel-stained; but never before has she seen men stripped of the superfluities of the barrack-room, prepared simply for the grim realities of war in a far-away country. All the beautiful reds and blues left at home, the shining guns painted khaki-colour, the men in loose almost ill-fitting garments sitting on these queer little horses. It is very unfamiliar—almost unnatural. The fine young commanding officer makes his report to the Emperor. The horses have only been a fortnight under training, but already acquit themselves well and trot and gallop past in an exemplary manner at the word of command. The little ceremony is soon over, the small group cheer their Majesties heartily, and as the Emperor departs he calls out “Adieu, Kameraden,”{50} and as with one voice they answer “Adieu, Majestät.” We leave them standing on the sky-line, brave, plucky youths burning with zeal and patriotism. They fade into the blue background; and while the Emperor and Empress prolong their ride a little farther, the Princess and I trot the nearest way home to those deserted lessons.

The gardens of the Neues Palais are separated only by a slender railing from those of the small Palace of Sans Souci, notable as the residence of Frederick the Great. On the hill behind the Palace, almost over-shadowing it, stands the famous windmill, the centre of certain legendary and probably apocryphal tales. The Palace of Sans Souci and its beautiful grounds—called the Neuer Garten—remain always open to the public, and on Sundays they are crowded with tourists and visitors from the surrounding neighbourhood. It is the day when the big fountains play, one of them decorated with flowers, seen dimly through the falling water; the day when their Majesties are sure to drive or walk through the gardens to the Garrison Church, which they usually attend in Potsdam, where Frederick the Great lies buried. Still more it is the day when with good luck the Princess may be seen driving with her Turkish ponies. For it must be realized that Germany—not possessing an early closing day or a Saturday half-holiday—spends its Sunday afternoons for all its Protestantism in the pure pursuit of pleasure. Extra trains, extra steamboats, extra trams are run, the open-air restaurants do a roaring trade, every public garden, every road is overrun with perspiring families, and with soldiers walking out with stodgy-looking maid-servants in tartan blouses and tight green cotton gloves.

On Sunday the Princess and Prince Joachim entertain their small friends to tea and supper. First of all they take them for a drive somewhere in the neighbourhood, to the huge delight of the tourists, who shriek and cheer and wave pocket-handkerchiefs and rush apoplectically,{51} with the greatest risk to their health, from remote corners of the Neuer Garten, scudding, these fat fathers and mothers, in their hot Sunday clothes along the sandy walks, yelling breathlessly to each other “Die Prinzessin! Die kleine Prinzessin. Ach! wie niedlich!” They are enraptured with the lovely ponies and the blue-lined victoria and the little fair-haired Princess, who usually has two friends stuffed tightly in besides her, while a carriage follows with some more, and Prince Joachim has his cartload of boys.

It was remarkable that, however much we attempted to let the boys play by themselves and keep the girls to purely feminine amusements, it invariably ended in the amalgamation of the two parties; that the running and jumping, the gymnastics over the parallel bars, the games of hide-and-seek were always keener and swifter when the Princess was taking part. There were few boys who could beat her at that age in running or jumping, and when the Prince’s Governor jeered at a boy for behaving like a Mädchen, it was easy to retort that one Mädchen could out-jump and out-run all his boys, and that he had better speak more respectfully in future of the sex.

CHAPTER IV

DIVERSIONS OF THE KAISER’S DAUGHTER

SHORTLY after our return to the Neues Palais a small niece of the Empress, the child of her sister the Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, came to spend a week or two with her cousin. Her visit marked the last expiring effort of the Princess to take an interest in her dolls, of which she possessed many very beautiful specimens.

But though she was an amused spectator of the{52} unflinching realism with which Princess May—an inventive child whose doll-children suffered many and varied experiences—shaped the fragments of her dream of human life, the stormy cross-channel journeys, the illnesses and cheerful funerals of her large family, it was plain to see that she was not in any sense a real partaker in the small comedies and dramas.

Live animals had always from babyhood been her great passion. On dogs and horses she lavished all the superfluous affection of her heart. Dolls had never been to her more than a transitory amusement, thrust on her by other people rather than chosen by herself. She was exceedingly hurt at receiving one the following Christmas, sent by an affectionate but injudicious aunt. It nerved her to make a clean sweep of the whole lot, and they were divided among various children’s hospitals. The Empress sighed over this further emancipation of her small daughter, but saw its inevitability.

About this time the Emperor, who was staying a few days at Cadinen, his country house in East Prussia, where he carries out farming operations on a large scale, sent the Princess a present after her own heart—a tiny dimpled pigling of tender years. From my bedroom window I suddenly caught sight of this infant swine as, looking newly scrubbed and washed, with a bit of blue ribbon tied round the tender curve of his tail, he sprinted across the Hof pursued by several footmen and the two Princesses, who had decreed that exercise must be necessary for him after his cramping railway journey in a tiny crate. Viewing his innocent infantine chubbiness as he darted between the legs of the pursuing lackeys, even the sentries on duty were forced to relax their military sternness and smile at his baby antics as he rushed about, evading capture for a time.

The Princess was charmed with “Papa’s Scherkel,” and rather annoyed at not being allowed to have him in her own rooms; but he was comfortably installed in the stable at Lindstedt, a villa belonging to the{53} Emperor standing close to the gate of the Neues Palais, where, being a pig of placid disposition, he put on flesh at a rapid rate, quickly losing the innocent gaiety of his early days, and developed weight and fatness day by day, so that towards Christmas the usual tragic fate of pigs befell him. His mistress suffered no sentimental regrets with regard to his death, eating without a qualm the savoury sausages he provided and retaining a grateful memory of the nice sum he brought her—for naturally, although she never paid for his keep, she demanded and received the sum for which the butcher purchased his remains.

“I wish Papa would give me another pig,” she has been heard to sigh when money was scarce. “He was so useful.”

The Duchess of Albany and her daughter Princess Alice (now Princess Alexander of Teck) were for a short time living in Potsdam, while the young Duke of Coburg, the son of the Duchess, was undergoing his year of military training. He afterwards went as a student to Bonn at the same time as the Crown Prince and Prince Fritz—and eventually married the eldest sister of little Princess May of Glucksburg, while her second sister, Princess Alexandra, married her cousin Prince August Wilhelm, the fourth son of the Emperor.

Princess Alice of Albany and her mother were great favourites at the Neues Palais, and frequently visited the Empress. One day they were invited to meet her at the Marmor Palais, the palace formerly occupied by Their Majesties when they were first married, before their accession to the throne. It had remained empty since that time, though now occupied when they are in Potsdam by the Crown Prince and Princess and their family of little boys.

Beautifully situated about two miles away from the Neues Palais, on the border of a lake (the Heiligen-See),{54} it was there that the Empress passed the happiest years of her married life, and that most of her children were born. She always revisited it with much pleasure mingled with many regrets.

A large party of children had been invited, as it was the Princess’s birthday; and after playing madly about in the garden, they all had tea in the big marble dining-room which overlooked the lake, where swans were sailing majestically up and down the clear blue water. After tea Princess Alice invented a delightful new game for the children. The idea was to put on the enormous felt slippers provided for the boots of the tourists who come to inspect the palace, so that they may not scratch the beautifully polished inlaid parquet floors; and when everybody had stuck their feet into these enormous over-shoes, they began skating madly after each other, headed by Princess Alice, rushing round and round the various salons which opened out of each other, so that they could keep up the race without interruption. The sight of so many rather small people with such disproportionately large feet tearing after each other at break-neck speed was irresistibly comic, and the Empress and the Duchess were convulsed with laughter. It was rather a violent game for a warm September day, but when they grew tired of it they still played, with the greatest energy, musical chairs, post, and blind man’s buff, the sun pouring gaily in at the windows all the time.

A month or so after this party took place, about the middle of November, the weather suddenly changed. It began to freeze hard, and for six weeks there was ice everywhere, and everybody was able to indulge in skating.

When the lessons were over we used to jump into a carriage with our skates and were driven to Charlotten-Hof, a small palace in the park of Sans Souci, where was a large sheet of water now converted into the most beautiful black ice. Nobody was particularly expert{55} on skates, but all were keen to learn; and the Princess and Prince Joachim, after a great many tumbles, managed to get along at a good pace, though their style was hardly of the best. The weather kept beautifully clear, with very little snow, and there were some very merry skating parties, including the late Sir Robert Collins, gentleman-in-waiting to the Duchess of Albany, a very graceful expert performer on the ice, and Lady Collins, who like the rest of us did not skate very well, but perseveringly kept on trying. The Governor of the Prince made many attempts to learn, but never got much farther than an ungainly shuffle, for which he always apologized, saying that at any rate it kept him from freezing.

Sometimes the Crown Prince would bring a few of his friends to play hockey, but as no one knew much about rules it was rather a wild and dangerous game.

The most uncomfortable moments spent on the slippery surface, however, were those when the Emperor in his warm grey cavalry cloak, surrounded by a party of adjutants and officers, was seen wending his way in our direction. Inexpert performers realized the extreme risk of trying to bow to Majesty on skates, and invariably fled to the shelter of a small island covered with bushes which was in one corner of the lake.

Misfortunes in the way of tumbles caused an unholy joy in the Emperor’s heart. It pleased him to see people lose their dignity; and on one occasion, when Princess Alice and I, skating with great dash and confidence hand-in-hand, came after a convulsive flounder to a sudden fall, the Imperial laughter floated most whole-heartedly and derisively over our prostrate bodies.

Ladders and ropes were always laid ready on the bank in case of accident; and one afternoon when Prince Oscar was with us—having come over from Ploen for a few days—he and the Princess decided to practise a little life-saving. I on my skates represented to the{56} best of my ability the victim of an ice catastrophe, lying down and clutching at the rope, which after many misdirected efforts they managed to throw in my direction; but when it came to pulling me out, although I was not in, but already on the surface of the ice, their well-meant endeavours only resulted in themselves being dragged backwards accompanied by shrieks of laughter, while I remained exactly where I had been before. Somebody must have mentioned this attempt to the Emperor, for the next day when he came to the ice he wanted to know how I liked being “rescued.”

“They didn’t rescue me one inch, Your Majesty,” I was obliged to reply; “I should have been drowned ten times over.”

He chuckled very much over this failure to pull me along, and would, I am sure, have liked to see the experiment repeated in his presence.

Another game of hockey was played one afternoon, but not this time on the ice. Five of the princes took part in it—the Crown Prince and Prince Fritz captaining their respective sides. It was a wild, weird game. The Princess after many entreaties had been allowed to play “for a short time” on Prince Fritz’s side, together with a few young officers, the French teacher of Prince Joachim, and a Kammer-Herr of Her Majesty, who thought he would like to take part in the game. He said later that it was the first and last time he ever played or desired to play hockey.

The game took place on the broad drive in front of the Palace, and the only rule which guided it was a feverish desire on everybody’s part to send the ball into the opposite goal. There was no referee, no off-side, nobody was more of a “forward” than a “back,” and anybody kept goal who happened to be near enough to it; but the play was permeated by a fine and splendid enthusiasm which atoned for many shortcomings. The{57} German sporting instinct was there sure enough, undeveloped and somewhat dormant it may be, but none the less ready to germinate under favourable conditions. Some players emerged rather battered from the fray. The French tutor had fallen and scraped his chin on the gravel, the Kammer-Herr had, as the result of a blow, a swollen knuckle which kept him company some weeks, while Prince Oscar limped slightly for the rest of the day.

One of the tiresome ceremonies incident to royal existence is the incessant turning out of the guard whenever any one of royal or princely blood emerges into view of the sentry. This became especially worrying when the children happened to wander about backwards and forwards between the two “Hofs.” One heard a clatter of bootsoles as the soldiers, perhaps in the middle of eating their soup, rushed out, seized their weapons from the rack where they stood, and formed up in line in stiff military attitudes presenting arms at the word of command. It was usual for the Governor of Prince Joachim, who was himself a Captain in the army, to give a signal to the guard that these honours were for the nonce in abeyance, or the Princess or Prince—if they remembered—might do the same.

In the first week of her visit, Princess May of Glucksburg, who was running about between the Mopke and the Kleiner Hof, noticed the unusual restlessness of the guard, who were in and out of the guard-house every five minutes or less; but it was some time before she connected their movements with herself, being absorbed in giving “Jacky,” the Princess’s dog, a ride in a small hand-cart. She had hitherto led a quiet life in the ancestral Schloss away in the country, untrammelled by guards or sentries of any kind.

When she realized that these honours were being lavished on her own small person, and that she ought to have waved her finger backwards and forwards at the soldiers in sign of dismissal, she was much abashed,{58} and as she was far too shy to shake her finger at any one, preferred to choose a more retired spot in which to play.

Besides the Turkish ponies before mentioned, the Prince and Princess possessed two very small mouse-coloured Sicilian donkeys given to them by the King of Italy, each of which drew a small Sicilian cart, painted in gay colours with scenes from the lives of the saints. These animals wore red brass-studded harness, and nodding plumes made of cock-feathers dyed crimson waved from their heads. They made a very pretty picture as they ambled one behind the other over the wide Mopke, and often when children were invited to spend the afternoon the donkey-carts were requisitioned. They were a continual source of joy to small visitors and of acute anxiety to those in charge; for in spite of their innocent looks and their small size, the donkeys were the least docile animals that could be imagined, and as the carts were rather small and top-heavy, there was constant danger of an upset. Sometimes the donkeys, after a spell of good behaviour, would start running away, or suddenly make preparations to lie down, the children falling out of the cart like a small avalanche. After the animals had taken a short rest—for nothing would make them get up before they felt inclined—they would start merrily off again, and the Governor and I, who were too heavy for the carts, had to keep on running after them, “faint yet pursuing,” be the weather as hot as it might.

The way those beasts whizzed the carts round corners on only one wheel was nothing short of phenomenal, and they possessed a diabolical strength which set at naught any efforts of the groom who was supposed to control them in case of need. One day the little terrier “Jacky” took it into his head to bite one of the donkeys, who immediately went helter-skelter over the flower-beds, dragging the empty cart behind him as well as the unlucky stable-man who happened to be holding the{59} reins and fell down at an early stage of the proceedings. Fortunately it happened in a small enclosed garden surrounded by high hedges, but it might have been a serious business if one or two soldiers had not happened to be passing and helped us to restrain the donkey, who kicked and capered and waltzed over the rose-bushes, jerking the man after him, his face cut, his clothes torn, while the iniquitous “Jacky,” delighted at the performance, raged round in a frenzy of barking, doing all he could to urge the poor terrified donkey to fresh efforts.

Happily, when the long-expected accident arrived, it happened under Her Majesty’s immediate notice, so that she was at once convinced of the danger to the children of these ill-trained little creatures, and ordered that they should never appear again. They were sent to the country and employed on the land in regular work, which was what they needed. The Princess was the one who suffered, being tipped out of the cart and sustaining a rather severe cut on her knee, involving a three days’ suspension of lessons and complete repose of the injured limb—rather a severe trial for such an active child.

In wet or frosty weather, the rides in the forest had to be given up, and we were forced to take horse-exercise in the Reit-Bahn or big covered riding-school attached to the Royal Mews or Marstall. A layer of sawdust covered the floor of the Bahn, and our Sattel-Meister, Herr Casper, professed himself delighted to have the opportunity of furthering our equestrian education. We took lessons in making “voltes” and circles at the word of command, in “passaging”; we galloped and trotted and enjoyed ourselves immensely, while the rain beat outside or the snow fell in thick flurries. The Bahn was furnished with mirrors in which we could get glimpses of ourselves as we cantered past. Sometimes the Empress and one of her ladies also rode with us. Her Majesty is very fond of horse exercise, and though not enamoured{60} of cross-country riding, still enjoys a good stretching canter.

Nowhere are there better opportunities for this than in the neighbourhood of Potsdam. Every road, with its beautiful row of trees on either hand, possesses a carefully kept sandy riding-track on one side. Then there are immense woods and the Government forest, all unenclosed, and unfenced fields where one can canter to heart’s desire along excellent riding-paths. The whole of Central Germany, more especially the Mark Brandenburg, in which Berlin and Potsdam are situated, is one vast plain of light sandy soil, made exceedingly fertile by “intensive” cultivation. Watered by the river Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, which expands into five great lakes surrounding the town, Potsdam is, as Carlyle calls it, an “intricate amphibious region,” more water than land, partaking, though a peninsula, of the nature of an island. Its inhabitants indulge largely in swimming and boating on the placid waters which run up into the streets in irregular creeks and bays. Great beds of rushes skirt the borders of the lakes, while the thick forest comes down to the water’s edge.

The town itself is picturesque and old-fashioned, with cobbled roads extremely painful to walk upon. Many of its houses were built in the time of Frederick the Great and inhabited by his marshals and generals. Its streets have a somnolent old-world air, and its society is very aristocratic and exclusive, containing as it does the cream of Prussian Junkerdom. Several younger sons of princely houses, officers in the crack regiments of the guards, live with their wives and children in Potsdam. Occasionally, on wet Sundays, some of these little princes and princesses came to spend the afternoon, and “Mimi Hohenzollern,” now married to King Manoel of Portugal, was a fairly frequent guest. One dull November Sunday evening we had an unusual number of children—about twenty—some of them quite small and rather an anxiety, for the nurses and governesses{61} who accompanied them were sent to wait downstairs, while Herr Schmidt in charge of the boys and myself in charge of the little girls were left to cope with all these rather lively young people. They played after tea at circus in the big Turn-Saal at the top of the Palace, where there was plenty of room to romp about, and were just pondering what the next game should be, when Herr Schmidt, inspired by some imp of malice, made the suggestion that they should all go to the theatre in the dark.

The private theatre of the Neues Palais, built by Frederick the Great for the representation of French plays, was situated in the farthest wing of the castle, the way to it lying through chilly, unlit, unwarmed passages. The whole horde of children—hopeful scions of princely houses whose names, though unknown in England, permeate the “Almanac de Gotha,” and occasionally emerge into prominence in connection with some royal or imperial marriage—were rushing like the Gadarene swine towards certain destruction. Those slippery marble staircases! Those shallow balustrades! The darkness and the cold! Terrible “Schnupfen"—the devastating colds with which in a steam-heated country one is eternally warring—would be the least evil that could possibly happen to them.

Herr Schmidt, like an overgrown schoolboy, was laughing gleefully at the stampede.

Fortunately they were stopped at the next staircase, where the faint gleam of a lamp served to show the black shadows of the descent, and were brought back, much disappointed, to play a “humdrum game,” as the Princess called it, of hide-and-seek.

The Emperor to his sons was stern enough, and saw that Prince Joachim was shortly despatched to join his brothers at school in Ploen, but towards his little daughter he allowed himself, perhaps unconsciously, to be somewhat lenient.

Her bright alert intelligence evidently responded{62} to something in himself; her constantly exhibited affection, her love for his society flattered him irresistibly, as they would any father in the world. He wrote long letters to her when away, sent her picture-postcards and small trifling presents from places where he was staying. Her first letter to him in English was something of an event, written with the greatest care and after much anxious consultation with me as to the intricacies of “that awful English spelling.” It received an immediate and flattering reply, also in English.

“Papa was delighted with my letter,” she said, her face glowing with happiness.

On every possible opportunity the Emperor liked to have his daughter with him; would seize and carry her off, sticking her bodkin-wise in the carriage between himself and the Empress. He never troubled much if she missed a few lessons. He was no believer in higher education for women.

One afternoon, on a birthday or some other anniversary, the band of the Potsdam Guards had been ordered to perform at the Palace, and as, owing to the heavy rain, they were not able to remain outside on the terrace, they were installed in the large Marmor Saal, where they played before the Emperor and Empress.

His Majesty stood alone in front of the band for some time, moving his body and limbs in time to the music, while the Princess and Prince Joachim, at a distance of a few yards, were doing the same thing, all three wriggling the left leg in time together and looking rather like marionettes jerked by a string.

The bandmaster continued gravely to beat time, when suddenly His Majesty made a sign to one of his adjutants, who immediately handed him a conductor’s baton, and the Emperor began to assist to conduct, while the two children, each raising a forefinger, did their little best also to help.

Some members of the band looked a little surprised at having no less than four conductors and four different{63} time-beats to follow, but after a time they settled down again, and keeping their eyes firmly fixed on the music, played triumphantly to the end.

His Majesty has not a highly cultivated taste in music. He likes something military in style, with well-marked time and rhythm, and Wagner makes no appeal to his tastes.

His patronage of the art has been singularly unfortunate, and all the operatic pieces to which he has stood godfather are always played to very thin houses. He comforts himself by inveighing against the want of musical taste shown by Berlin audiences. The critics treat these pieces with contempt, ignoring their existence, and the newspapers publish a bare announcement that they have been performed, and make no further comment.

Within the last two years the Emperor has had an Opera constructed as a setting for various dances performed in Corfu by the peasants there. At great expense the Director of the Opera-House has had to send professionals to study the various dances on the spot, to copy the Corfiote costumes, and to paint the scenery of the island. But transplanted from Corfu and its picturesque surroundings to the Berlin Opera-stage, these dances appear excessively dull and meaningless, and are not in the least redeemed by the accompanying music founded on ancient Greek melodies.

This opera was played before King George and Queen Mary on the last evening of their stay in Berlin, two days after the wedding of the Emperor’s daughter.

None of the children of the Kaiser, with the exception of the Crown Prince, who learned to play the violin fairly well, have ever mastered any musical instrument. For some years the Princess made strenuous efforts to learn the piano, but in spite of her love of music she was never able to play even the simplest piece approximately correctly. Various professors of the art came and went—came with the joyous glow caused by the honour{64} of teaching royalty, only to retire baffled after a few lessons.

At last, when the Princess was about fourteen, she gave up the unequal contest, and refused to waste more time in efforts to attain the unattainable.

Occasionally she has been heard to reproach any of her companions who had no yearnings after musical instruction.

“You don’t want to learn the piano? But supposing you happen to marry a musical husband, whatever should you do if you couldn’t play to him?”

“Well, he would probably be happier if I didn’t play to him,” replied one child of conspicuous good sense.

This observation helped the Princess to realize that piano playing of the baser sort was not a necessary ingredient of happy matrimony, and she shortly afterwards renounced further ambitions in that direction.

Nor in the domain of painting and drawing, though fond of both, did she accomplish anything noteworthy, as she did not possess the necessary perseverance and patience, and was always too eager to arrive at the effect; so that her pictures, like her music, always promised something that was never realized. For outdoor sketching she professed a great affection, but it was probably the “outdoorness” more than the sketching that she really loved.

As a child, animals, particularly horses, were her great passion, and she paid many Sunday afternoon visits to Busch’s Circus in Berlin, where a large party of little boys and girls were also invited to fill up the royal box.

The Berlin populace who crowd the Circus on Sundays were delighted to see the “Kleine Prinzessin,” as they loved to call her, enjoying herself in their midst.

Tea was always served after the performance in the flower-bedecked room behind the box, where the Herr Cirkus-Direktor appeared in his dress suit to receive the thanks and congratulations of the Princess, who asked interested questions about the performing horses and{65} told him how beautifully her own little Arab mare could do the “Spanish trot.” She enjoyed these circus performances and the sawdust and smells, and the faces of the good Berliners turned as one man towards the royal box in the intervals. Then there was the return to the station through the big Sunday crowd along the Linden, where the people stood patiently waiting to see the carriages pass, waving pocket-handkerchiefs and bowing, and shouting “Hoch lebe die kleine Prinzessin,” and wearing those expansive smiles, all of the same width and pattern, to which one soon grew accustomed as part of the Sunday performance.

And if it was not the circus then it was the theatre—Wilhelm Tell or Wallenstein, or sometimes on special occasions even the Opera. It is not known at what age the Princess was first introduced to Opera, but it must have been at a very early one. She was quite an old habituée when I first knew her.

When Beerbohm Tree came with his company to Berlin for a week or ten days, to show the Germans something about stage-management, the Empress wished the Princess to see the English actor, but feared there was nothing very suitable in his répertoire. However, after carefully re-reading Richard II she decided that it was a very suitable play for stimulating historical interest, and the Princess, to her joy, accompanied Their Majesties. She was delighted with Miss Viola Tree, who, as the Queen, came riding on to the stage on a gallant white horse in gorgeous trappings—one that belonged to the royal stables and had often eaten sugar from the Princess’s hand. She saw Beerbohm Tree as Richard II dying in his dungeon, and was able next day to reproduce exactly his words, his gestures, even the peculiar characteristic tones of his voice, for she had great gifts of mimicry, and her talent ranged from the imitation of the antics of “Sally,” the pet chimpanzee of the Berlin “Zoo,” to the dignified gestures of a Julius Cæsar.{66}

Beerbohm Tree’s stay in Berlin must have been fraught to him with peculiar anxiety, for on the Sunday (when he gave two performances) all his German scene-shifters deserted him to go to the funeral of a notable Socialist, and he was left to grapple as he could with the situation. There were terribly long waits between the scenes of Antony and Cleopatra, at which Their Majesties were present, and once the curtain went up prematurely, revealing British stage-carpenters among the splendours of ancient Egypt.

The visits of the Princess to the theatre often involved the “Intendant” or Director in some anxiety, as he was asked by the Empress to select some play which would be, if not suitable, at least inoffensive: for on this point the Empress was very particular. One Director, wishing to please in this respect, had struck out of the piece the only line he could find capable of offence, but was assured by one of His Majesty’s adjutants that there was another part which he was certain ought to be slightly altered, though he couldn’t quite recollect where it came in. The unfortunate Director spent every spare moment up to the performance trying to run to ground the objectionable lines, but never was able to find them, as they did not exist, and had only been suggested to him out of “pure cussedness” by the wicked adjutant in question, who chuckled with unholy pleasure at the success of his little joke—especially when he found two of the court ladies feverishly searching the pages of their Schiller with the hope of helping the Director in his quest.

The Berlin Opera House, which stands only a few yards from the Royal Schloss, was built by Frederick the Great, and though a fine building, is hardly up-to-date in its accommodation for either performers or audience. After the terrible theatre-fire in Chicago where, for want of adequate exits, many lives were lost, very hideous iron staircases were constructed outside it by order of the Emperor; and these, while giving{67} perhaps some additional sense of security to the audience, altogether spoil the appearance of the building—which His Majesty is anxious to replace by a new one constructed on modern lines in a style of architecture suitable to its surroundings.

A Berlin Opera audience is not conspicuous for smartness, and a few years ago morning blouses and tweed skirts, with a pair of rather weary white kid gloves, were considered by the ladies as quite sufficient for the Parkett (stalls); but by dint of special orders from the Emperor and the example of a few well-known ladies a decided improvement in dress is now observable. Officers in their uniforms are plentifully besprinkled among the audience, as they can get tickets at reduced prices.

Whenever the Emperor’s presence is announced beforehand, no one is admitted who is not in evening dress. This order was for a time not strictly enforced, and a good proportion of the audience even after repeated warnings habitually ignored it; but on one occasion all whose dress did not come up to the required standard—ladies whose gown was not ausgeschnitten, men who had omitted to put on the regulation suit—were politely but firmly refused admission and advised to go home again and change! There was much anger and heart-burning, but no one now fails to obey the imperial mandate.

On the Emperor’s birthday, and when the visits of foreign potentates take place, no tickets are sold and the seats are occupied entirely by guests invited by His Majesty. A splendidly brilliant spectacle is presented on these occasions. The whole house is decorated with wreaths of flowers, the Parkett filled entirely with the gentlemen of the Diplomatic Corps, Ambassadors and envoys from the remotest parts of the world. Chinese mandarins in yellow silk robes, wearing peacocks’ feathers in their caps, Turks and Egyptians in red fezes, all mingle with the uniforms of every existing army into a wonderful mass of scintillating colour. The ladies on{68} these occasions are seated in the dress circle, in a line with the Royal Box which is crowded with princely personages.

Before the entrance of the Emperor and Empress the Intendant of the Theatre in full uniform comes to the front of the box and taps loudly three times on the floor with his wand of office, and at once that queer gabbling jargon of incoherent sound which rises from a crowd of people talking together is suddenly hushed into a complete silence, in which Their Majesties with their guests slowly advance, bow to the audience and take their places.

I invariably received a ticket for a stage box on these occasions, the best possible place for an uninterrupted view of the house.

From this point of vantage at different times I saw many notable royal personalities, among others the late King Edward with Queen Alexandra, who visited Berlin the year before the King’s death. The performance on these occasions was always short and not too absorbing, and on King Edward’s visit the spectacular play of Sardanapalus was given, which strictly speaking is hardly to be classed with opera at all, consisting as it does of a series of splendid pictures interspersed with songs. The last scene of all is a very realistic and vivid representation of the funeral pyre of Sardanapalus, whither slaves bring all the treasures of the house to be consumed by the fire, which, beginning with little licking tongues of flame, soon spreads to a wide and vivid blaze, in which Sardanapalus and all his household perish.

At the moment before the curtain finally descends the whole stage has the appearance of a glowing furnace threaded with leaping flames and rolling billows of smoke.

King Edward, being very tired with his hard day’s work in Berlin, had indulged in a short nap during the scene, and woke to consciousness at the moment of most intense conflagration, when he was for a few moments{69} much excited and alarmed, believing that the fire was real and wondering why the firemen stationed at the wings had not yet become active. With some difficulty the Empress managed to convince him that there was no danger.

CHAPTER V

CHRISTMAS AT COURT

CHRISTMAS at Court, as elsewhere, was a time of jubilant festivity preceded by long weeks of hard work and preparation. As the Princess herself remarked, “one never dare sit down and think for a minute without a piece of work in one’s hand.”

Somewhere about the middle of November, or even earlier, was the great time in Berlin for charity bazaars, which the Court ladies assiduously attended, making large purchases of clothing on behalf of Her Majesty. I often accompanied one of them to the various big shops of Berlin, and gasped at the prompt and wholesale manner of her orders—fifteen cushions and twenty-five photograph frames being selected in as many seconds, together with other objects in like proportion.

Enormous bales of goods began to arrive, and were placed in the Marmor Saal, a splendid apartment which was used on great occasions for the entertainment of royal guests, but in the weeks before Christmas took on a more homely human aspect, being piled up with warm garments of every description, heaps of toys, books, almanacks, cakes of soap, boots and shoes.

Every man, woman and child having any connection with the royal estates in Cadinen, Hubertus-stock, Rominten, Neues Palais or Berlin was remembered, and the work involved in choosing their various gifts was always personally superintended and shared by Her Majesty, the Princess and the ladies of the Court.{70} I can still feel in my nose the disagreeable tingle, analogous to a mild form of hay fever, caused by the fluffiness of those multitudinous piles of flannelette garments, thick woolly stockings and socks which I helped to sort and count. The Inspektor (agent) or clergyman of every district had to furnish a list of every family in it, with the name and age of each member of it accurately inscribed. Everybody received one garment at least, together with a toy (if a child), a book, a text, and one or two packages of Pfeffer-Kuchen. Each bundle was tied up separately with pink or blue tape, and labelled with the name of the person for whom it was intended, together with the list of gifts.

Often there were families of nine or ten children, and nearly every year one more infant was added to their list. The Empress when distributing the cakes of soap would relate how the good peasants at first preferred to keep them as souvenirs rather than use them for their legitimate purpose, bringing them out with pride to show to Her Majesty a year or so later, carefully wrapped up and put away.

One of those persons whose idea of the German Empress is that she spends her life in a series of domestic duties once sent for her acceptance a small parcel, together with the following letter:

“Most Excellent Majesty, Berlin.

“Most Gracious Empress,

“May it please your Majesty. I crave your Majesty’s patronage, hailing from the Emerald Isle: the enclose (sic) cover for painting arranging china is procurable in any shade of linen. I have the honour to remain with the profoundest veneration,

“Your Majesty’s most dutiful servant,

“James Barker (Belfast)”

The “enclose cover” was a green apron with a nice large pocket in what is called, I believe, “art shade,”{71} but as such gifts are never accepted without payment it was put on one side with the idea of being returned. Her Majesty, however, happening to need something as a protection for her dress when handling the before-mentioned fluffy garments, found that the green apron supplied a distinct want, and it was worn every day by the Empress for the next few weeks. Obviously “James Barker,” even if his literary style was not of the highest order, had an instinct for supplying the right thing at the right moment. The “Irish apron” was the subject of constant praise, and during “the wearin’ o’ the green” Her Majesty frequently expressed her appreciation of its practical utility. It was, I believe, the only apron Her Majesty ever wore.

To the Princess personally, the approach of Christmas was a serious time for many reasons, chiefly financial. Until she was seventeen she received only a personal allowance of five marks a month, out of which she was supposed to buy her own stamps and to spare a Sunday contribution towards the collection. It may perhaps be a breach of confidence to reveal that this contribution was never allowed to exceed ten pfennigs, amounting to one penny in English coin; and I can never forget the look of sorrowful indignation when I tendered to her one day in chapel, out of pure inadvertence, the smallest silver coin of German currency, a fifty-pfennig-piece, worth a little less than sixpence. She had to put it in the plate, but absolutely refused to refund me the excess value.

“How am I to buy my stamps when you are so reckless?” she demanded when outside the chapel door.

The balancing of her small accounts was always fraught with many sighs and groans.

“Always thirty-five pfennigs too little,” she would announce as she drew the final double line. She had the greatest sympathy with Mr. Micawber when we read “David Copperfield” together, and agreed heartily with his dictum that, given an income of twenty pounds{72} a year, the spending of nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence would result in happiness, but that if the expenditure reached twenty pounds and sixpence it would spell misery. So that as soon as Christmas began to loom in the distance there were many anxious consultations as to how to obtain the necessary presents for her various relations. Of course “Papa and Mamma” had to have something very special and individual worked by herself—anything bought ready-made in a shop was not to be thought of.

“Cushions and lampshades seem to be the only things one can make oneself,” said the Princess disconsolately, “and Mamma has twenty-four lampshades already and dozens and dozens of cushions. We must think of something cheap too. I’m so awfully poor.”

Year after year this problem re-emerged. Fortunately the powers that controlled the purse-strings decreed that all materials for presents should be bought out of the Princess’s own money, but that in the matter of “making up” the exchequer would provide the needful funds.

So the harassed child was forced into the manufacture of those articles which are cheap in the initial outlay but rather expensive to complete, such as slippers, worked picture-frames, cushions, and so on.

One Christmas, at an acute crisis when for some reason the list of presents expanded to twenty-eight, the advent into fashion of ribbon-work saved her from despair. She begged some odd pieces of silk and brocade from Her Majesty’s workroom for the purpose of making glove and handkerchief sachets. Ribbon-work is, as everyone knows who has done it, capable, especially the broad kind, of making the maximum of effect with the minimum of effort. So while I hastily sketched simple but pleasing designs of apple-blossom or violets on the corners of everything, the Princess sat and worked feverishly. She was an indefatigable and rapid needlewoman—perhaps a little too rapid to be very accurate—and got{73} through a tremendous amount of work, sticking to it hour after hour if the occasion demanded it and any one would read to her. To this day certain portions of “Kidnapped” or “Hereward” seem inextricably interwoven in my mind with the sound of those long-drawn gay ribbons and an intensely absorbed face surrounded by tumbled golden hair, bending in the lamplight over her self-imposed task.

Sometimes the Princess and Prince Joachim when they were sitting in the evening with the Empress would both be working at the very Christmas present destined for her, and she was therefore bound, under often-reiterated promises, to ignore what they were doing and to turn her eyes conscientiously in another direction. Her Majesty often laughingly complained of the suspicions they both harboured as to her integrity in this matter. They would erect newspaper screens around themselves and their occupations, and if the screens fell down, as frequently happened, then “Mamma” had to shut her eyes or turn away her head until they were temporarily re-erected, only to fall down again in another five minutes.

About three weeks or less before Christmas, a further inroad on our time was made by the practice of carol-singing, which took place (on account of the piano) in the salon of the Princess, leading out of that of the Ober-Gouvernante. Every one of the ladies and gentlemen of the Palace possessing the very faintest pretension to vocal ability was pressed into the service, and the unfortunate Hof-Prediger or Court Chaplain, who undertook the herculean task of training this very scratch choir to sing together in some kind of time and tune, was, especially as he was a very musical man, much to be pitied; but with unfailing good-humour he bravely battled with his task.

All the sons of the Emperor on leaving the University have homes and households of their own provided in Potsdam, where they live until they marry; and these{74} Princes, with their adjutants, were invited to come and help to swell the chorus, and, as they stayed in the Neues Palais itself during Christmas week, were, although they grew a little restive under the process, constantly summoned from their rooms for “one more practice.”

One of their adjutants was a great disappointment to us. We had built great hopes upon him, as he had declared himself capable of singing bass, but his idea was to boom out the air an octave below the treble, which was of course very unsatisfactory.

By means of ceaseless drilling and practising the Princess and Prince Joachim had been taught to sing alto; the Hof-Prediger himself sang tenor; and as the ladies managed the treble very well we had great hopes of being able to perform a capella, that is without instrumental accompaniment. But, however well we sang beforehand, at the critical moment this design had always to be abandoned. Somebody had a cold, or another was not sure of a C sharp, and most of us were frightfully nervous, so that after much discussion and wrangling we invariably fell back on the support of the piano.

These carols, Stille Nacht, Kommet ihr Kinder, and others were to be performed first before the assembled maids, footmen and Jägers who came to receive presents from Her Majesty, and afterwards before the Emperor himself, so that we naturally were anxious to acquit ourselves as well as possible.

All over Germany the Bescherung or presentation of Christmas gifts always takes place on Christmas Eve—Weihnachts Abend—usually in the evening.

To understand something of the intensity to which at Christmas the atmosphere can attain, one must be at that time in the Fatherland. A good six weeks beforehand, those who happen to be near the railway line may note the passing of luggage trains bearing nothing but small pine trees—that is to say comparatively small for many are ten or twelve feet high. They are the{75} thinnings of the big pine forests of the Thüringer-Wald, and come down daily to Berlin and the other large towns to supply the wants of the dealers in such trees. Every public square becomes a miniature pine-wood. Even the stringent police regulations are relaxed for the time. In all the broad streets are dealers in trees, sellers of toys, of Pfeffer Kuchen, of filigree ornaments, of air-ships, toy flying-machines and other Christmas luxuries.

Travellers in the train can see depending by a string from the sill of every window of those huge barrack-like flats which surround Berlin, usually hanging upside down, the Weihnachts-Baum, the tree of promise, which has to be kept in as out-of-door conditions as possible, or, being cut off at the root, it would soon become dangerously dry if it were not occasionally damped with the watering-can. It is safe to say that hardly any house in Germany, whether the inhabitants be young or old, rich or poor, is without its tiny tree at Christmas-tide. One sees them in lonely signal-boxes on the railway, in poverty-stricken cottage windows, in workshops, in barracks, in churches and chapels. There is a touching and peculiar sentiment towards Christmas inherent in every German heart, which makes the very scent of a burning pine branch, that aromatic smell which pervades the air at this season, recall the old childish days, the wonder and the glory of Weihnachts-Glanz.

So that everybody in the Neues Palais, wearing the slightly worried look peculiar to the time, strains every nerve to add his or her quota to the general Weihnachts-stimmung—or “Christmasmood.”

It is in the big Muschel-Saal that the glory and brightness concentrate. Here in this wonderful hall of shells the row of big Christmas trees is arranged—one for every child of the Emperor, one for His Majesty and the Empress, and another for the ladies-in-waiting, nine trees in all, besides two for the servants’ distribution. In addition to this every one must have a private tree. It would be a terrible thing to find a single sitting-room{76} without its little pine-tree and shining tinsel ornaments.

The Muschel-Saal occupies the centre of the Palace. On its walls are every variety of shell, arranged in fantastic patterns—roses, stars, and spirals of every kind—while the middle pillars are decorated with specimens of various beautiful stone or marble in a kind of irregular rockwork. Here are to be found large lumps of amber from the shores of the Baltic Sea (one with a fly distinctly visible far below the surface), pieces of blue lapis lazuli, green malachite, red jasper and ringed onyx, alabaster, porphyry, quartz of every shape and colour, irregular pieces all highly polished and set in cement on the massive square pillars that uphold the roof. They sparkle in a thousand colours under the wax lights of the candelabra and the twinkling tapers of the trees.

These last are decorated almost entirely by the young princes and their sister. Besides the candles they are hung with Konfekt, most delicious chocolate rings covered with “hundreds and thousands.” Sometimes the decorators take slight nibbles at broken pieces, and are sternly checked for it by the others. Then plenty of silver “lametta” and “angels’-hair,” filmy silvery threads giving an impression of hoar-frost, are added, and a Christbaum-Engel with wide-open wings or a large silver star is put at the apex of each tree, which is then firmly fixed in a large green-painted stand, specially made for its reception.

The real business of Bescherung begins already upon the day before Christmas Eve, or even sooner. The Empress rushes from one Kinder-heim to another, to hospitals and schools, putting in a few minutes here and there, always with the same ready smile for every one, the same fresh look of interest in the oft-repeated ceremony, the oft-sung carol. She never tires of giving pleasure to others, and has little time to rest. It is a very busy day, too, for the Princess, for all the morning she is busy decorating a small tree for two needy{77}

children—little girls who are chosen by the Hof-Prediger with the help of a deaconess who visits the poorer quarters of the town. These two children with their mother or an elder sister are invited to come to the Palace in the afternoon, where they are given coffee and cake in the little kitchen of the Prinzen-Wohnung. Their ages are usually between seven and nine, and they are often painfully shy, though there are brilliant exceptions whose naturalness breaks through the artificial barrier of onerous and excessive Manieren imposed on them by anxious relations imperfectly instructed in such things.

While they consume their coffee and cake, the Princess directs her footman to draw down all the blinds of the big salon, so as to shut out the two-o’clock winter daylight and create a proper background for the twinkling lights on the tree, which are all reflected from the mirrors of the room. On a table are spread out a complete suit of clothing for each child, not excepting boots and stockings, a large basket of provisions, containing among other things some of those famous German sausages, Leber-Wurst and Blut-Wurst, besides coffee, sugar, Pfeffer-Kuchen and other Christmas delicacies. There is always a large doll on each side of the table supported by the heap of clothing and staring into the middle distance with the usual doll-like look of vacuity.

The Ober-Gouvernante and one or two of the ladies of the Empress are always present, and the Princess professes to feel very nervous, though there is little sign of it in her greeting of the shy little mites, when the big doors are opened by the footmen and they creep in with their mother, almost overcome with the beauty and the wonder of it all. Hand in hand they stand in front of the tree, the light shining on their little pinched faces, and together repeat the Weihnachts-Geschichte, the Bible story of the first Christmas, which every well-brought-up German child, rich or poor, learns as soon as it can lisp. Sometimes, with much nervous twisting of clean pinafores, they even sing a carol in a breathless, desperate{78} kind of way. Everybody feels relieved when this ordeal is safely over and the childish voices with their nasal twang have ceased. Then the Princess tells them it was very nice, and taking them by the hand leads them up to the tree and shows them the shoes and stockings and dresses and dolls, while the rest of us draw aside and leave them together a little. Almost invariably the children are taken into the bedroom of the Princess to try on the new dresses to see if they fit, and presently emerge to gratify our eyes with their beauty.

After a while they depart, usually carrying the dolls and some of the clothes and provisions, but leaving the bulk of them, including the tree, to be brought next morning to the place where they live by the Commissions-Wagen of the Palace, which is always on the road to or from Potsdam in those terribly busy weeks. Different children were, of course, invited every year, and this pleasant custom continued until the Princess was seventeen years of age, when she began to share her mother’s charities. In her earlier days, the names of the children were of the greatest interest, and she was delighted with two who bore the unusual patronymic of Ballschuh.

At about eleven o’clock on the morning of Christmas Eve takes place the Bescherung for the servants of the Princess, including the grooms and stablemen. The latter come across the Mopke in their neat livery and follow the housemaids and footmen, who enter with smiling bows and range themselves round the table on which stands the tree. The blinds have again been drawn, for no Christmas Tree can do itself justice in the daylight. The little plates, eggcups and Bier-gläser, bought with the pocket money of the Princess, each bear the recipient’s name written by herself. These things have all been personally selected from the shops which, until the time she was grown up, she was allowed to visit only once a year, and the proper allocation of gifts has caused her much heart-searching. She utters{79} a sigh of relief as the last servant files out, each carrying his present with the invariably accompanying packet of Pfeffer-Kuchen.

On Christmas Eve the Emperor, as is well known, has a habit of walking abroad, his pockets, or rather those of his accompanying adjutants, full of gold and silver coin. These coins he distributes in a promiscuous manner to whomsoever he may chance to meet; it may be to a gardener, or a sentry on duty at the gates, or a little schoolboy or girl, or even an officer may be the recipient of this Christmas dole, which is always highly prized by those who chance to receive it. The sentry is prevented by the regulations from taking the coin (usually a twenty-mark piece) when on duty, so it is generally placed in the sentry-box till guard is relieved. One Christmas the Princess was walking with four of her brothers down the wide drive of the Neuer Garten, when in the distance they saw the Emperor approaching accompanied by his adjutants. Knowing the errand which had taken His Majesty abroad, Prince Fritz laughingly suggested that there might be a chance of receiving some Christmas money, so under his orders they ranged themselves in military formation beside the road, standing at the salute (at least the Princes did—the ladies merely kept “eyes front”) as the Emperor drew near. He returned the salute, but said in a gruff voice as he passed, speaking in English, “No, you won’t get anything—all labour in vain,” and gave an emphatic nod, while the would-be recipients giggled at each other and felt rather foolish.

It was always notable how many gardeners there were out on the paths, sweeping invisible leaves away on Christmas Eve; but His Majesty’s selection of a route was always unexpected, so that there was little to be gained by any attempt to guess the probable course of his wanderings.{80}

The Bescherung to the servants took place about two o’clock in the Schilder-Saal or Hall of Shields. Long tables were laid down the centre of the room, on which were arranged in due order everybody’s gifts. Two or three large Christmas trees were lighted, and in the corner stood the piano which was to reinforce our efforts at carol-singing. In poured a crowd of white-capped housemaids, green-clad Jägers, footmen, and Kammer-diener (butlers). All the ladies were assembled in décolletée evening dress, and those who had undertaken to help in singing carols were beginning to tremble, especially when the leading soprano whispered that she had a slight sore throat and couldn’t sing a note.

Then the Empress, also in evening dress, arrived with the Princess and the princes in full uniform, including, until his marriage, the Crown Prince; and the choir timidly sang the first carol, which always sounded a little thin and chirpy in that large room. It was listened to with the greatest respect, if not pleasure, and then another was sung at the request of the Empress, while everybody stood patiently waiting till it was finished. Her Majesty then walked round and showed everybody their presents, which consisted of dress-pieces, counterpanes, curtains, clocks, etc. She began with the housekeeper, and as year after year the tables were arranged in the same order, the whole ceremony, if it could be called ceremony where everything was so simple and kindly, was soon at an end, and they all trooped away with their cutlery, silver, pictures and photographs—leaving nothing behind but the bare tables with their white cloths and the Christmas trees.

Then, after a short pause, a general move was made to the apartment of the Empress, where carols were to be sung for the delectation of His Majesty. There was the last almost acrimonious dispute as to whether they should be sung with or without accompaniment, ending, as was confidently expected, in favour of the moral support afforded by the piano. One lady is warned{81} about her E, which is inclined to be a little flat, and the question hurriedly discussed as to whether somebody who has been singing seconds had not better join the trebles weakened by incipient colds. Nothing is settled when the door from the next room opens and His Majesty steps in, bows, and stands in an attitude of attention not unmixed with boredom which makes everybody’s blood run cold.

The Hof-Prediger’s face wears a look of concentrated anxiety and apprehension as he counts the first bar and plunges into the accompaniment. The top E is safely passed—not perhaps quite exact as to pitch, but not so very bad—the adjutants are booming their tenor and bass with praiseworthy conscientiousness if little skill, and we settle down to verses two and three with renewed confidence. The second high E is on the down grade, and the third one almost painful, but as soon as the last note has died away the Princess and Prince Joachim both together begin feverishly to recite the Weihnachts-Geschichte, which it is customary for every Prussian prince and princess to repeat yearly from the age of six until Confirmation.

When they have got half-way through, “Stille Nacht” is sung, and then they finish the Christmas story to the end, and a third carol is performed; all hoping that it didn’t really sound as bad as it seemed to do.

Sometimes His Majesty takes hold of a hymn-book and sings with the rest; while, since their marriage, the Crown Prince and Princess are accustomed to join in the music, and everyone feels that this attempted harmony is “sehr nett” if not particularly brilliant.

Then all file in to dinner at the impossible hour of four o’clock. It is given thus early so that the numerous guests may still be in time for their own private festivities at home. All the Emperor’s old adjutants and court officials are invited, and assemble in the big salons near the Jasper Gallery, in which dinner is served at a series of small round or oval tables. Monster carp are brought{82} round boiled in ale, looking plethoric and porpoise-like, and the meal winds up with English plum-pudding and mince-pies served with flaming brandy sauce. The German gentlemen are not at all fond of plum-pudding—they think it horrible stuff; but they like the mince-pies, especially the brandy-sauce part.

As soon as dinner is finished, the Emperor gives a signal, the doors into the Muschel-Saal are thrown open, and all walk through into the Christmas brilliancy. The whole row of lighted trees ranged the length of the immense hall shed that clear yet soft subdued light of multitudinous wax tapers which is more beautiful than any other. Electricity has been installed in the Muschel-Saal within the last few years, and much of the old glamour of the scene has departed—the candles burn palely, they have lost some of the old warmth and glow, the green of the foliage has become faded.

Round the Saal, tables are arranged as at a bazaar, and each lady has one to herself loaded with presents. The Emperor sometimes walks round and shows his own gift, usually a very beautiful fur, where it lies on each person’s table; but one of the great charms of His Majesty is that he has no stereotyped line of conduct—if he doesn’t feel like walking round and making himself agreeable he doesn’t do it. He is no slave to precedent. So then we find his present on our tables by ourselves, and go up and curtsey and thank him as opportunity offers. The Empress has always given one principal present, the nature of which each recipient has herself chosen; and in addition scatters with liberal hand small additional trifles such as work-bags, pincushions, books, small articles of jewellery. All the adjutants and generals receive something handsome and substantial: one has a Turkey rug, another a bronze bust of the Emperor, a third a pair of silver candelabra. But whatever else they get, a large plate of nuts, cakes and chocolates accompanies each table—and those gentlemen who have to return to Berlin{83} early may presently be seen, aided by footmen, pouring their nuts and gingerbread into large brown-paper bags, which they carry away under one arm, for all the world like children from a Sunday-school treat. This procession of grey-haired generals and officers in uniform going off like schoolboys with their booty seems to afford the Emperor much pleasure.

The tables of the Empress and Emperor are covered with offerings from their relatives in England and elsewhere; but the chief interest is in the presents to the Princess. When she reached her twelfth year, on her Christmas table appeared the plans of a tiny Bauern-Haus, the gift of her father. It was built the following spring in the children’s garden—a real peasant’s wooden kitchen, with a real stove and saucepans where cooking and washing may be done. It had bottle-glass windows and half-doors with bottle-glass in the upper portions. There was a larder with a buttery-hatch, and it speedily became the scene of fearsome cookery experiments involving lavish outlay in eggs and milk. Here was dispensed much hospitality to all classes of visitors.

Another Christmas she received from the Emperor a pony-cart, to replace the blue-lined Turkish victoria of the Sultan, which was now deemed too childish and theatrical in appearance. The ponies were promoted to a workmanlike little vehicle of light-coloured ash, capable of holding, at a pinch, six persons; and it remained the chief medium of transport until after the Emperor’s visit to Highcliffe, near Bournemouth, when he brought back with him a beautiful little New Forest pony and “tub,” which completely eclipsed Ali and Aladdin, who were given away to a friend in the country. Perhaps, however, the most charming of all the Christmas presents which the Emperor gave his daughter was a most beautiful little Arab mare called “Irene.” She was brought from the stables at the time of the Bescherung and led up the terrace steps into the big hall in front of the Muschel-Saal, where{84} she stood gazing round in her well-bred gentle manner at all the ladies in their evening finery and the brilliant uniforms that crowded round her. She looked at them out of her beautiful eyes with a fearless, rather disdainful, air, and the lights of the many candles shone on the satin of her bright strawberry coat—for she was a wonderfully-coloured red-roan of an unusual tone. She had all the marvellous dignity of poise and light springy footsteps of her race, and had been highly trained and schooled in the “Spanish trot,” “passaging,” and other riding-school attainments, while her action across country was, as the Princess said when someone called it poetry, “almost a love-song in sixteen verses.”

Unfortunately a year or two after her entrance into the stables she was seized with influenza, and died in spite of all efforts to save her.

Towards six o’clock the household, one by one, slips away, and leaves the Imperial Family alone to spend the rest of the evening in each other’s society. Every year from Christmas to New Year’s Day the Muschel-Saal, especially in the evenings, is the family rendezvous. As soon as it is dark the Christmas trees are lighted and tea and supper are taken under the shadow of their branches. The Emperor sits at a table writing his New Year cards or reading, sometimes aloud, sometimes to himself; everybody is busy examining and comparing presents or writing letters of thanks.

Christmas Day itself is passed very quietly, the luncheon strictly en famille, with none even of the suite present. As many as can be spared of the married servants are sent home, to be at least a part of the day with their families. Every possible consideration is shown, so that not the humblest worker is deprived of a share of leisure and opportunity to visit his friends.

One Christmas the Emperor was in a very “anecdotal” mood, and chatted for some time to his suite,{85} telling many amusing traits of the late Duke of Cambridge—“Uncle George” as he called him.

His Majesty mentioned the well-known fact that “Uncle George” was one of the hard-swearing military type, now—it is said—practically extinct, and scattered volleys of oaths abroad at the slightest excuse; but somebody having once drawn attention to the great prevalence of “language” in the army, he, quite unconscious of his own shortcomings, set himself to reform the great organization of which at that time he was Commander-in-Chief. After a long harangue to the assembled officers, plentifully belarded with oaths, he concluded by saying: “I’m damned if I’ll allow this habit of swearing to go on: who the devil ever heard me swear?”

Once he had planned to show to the German Emperor and the King of Greece, who were together in England, some pet improvements in drill which he had recently introduced, and of which he was extremely proud. After they had been feasted “right royally” at the officers’ mess, where plenty of champagne was consumed, the Royalties all mounted their horses and proceeded to Woolwich Common for the purpose of beholding the proposed exercises. But unfortunately the Duke had forgotten to take into account the fact that the day was Bank Holiday, and to his disgust and astonishment found his beloved common black with “trippers” (“fifty thousand of ’em,” sniggered the Emperor). The Duke was nearly suffocated with rage and disgust, and ordered the escort (eighteen mounted Hussars) to charge and disperse the people. The impossibility of this being, however, demonstrated, he himself proceeded on his great raw-boned charger to harangue the multitude, damning their bodies and souls with the greatest impartiality, and vainly trying to inspire them with a sense of the enormity of choosing this particular day for their sportive gambols on the Common.{86}

When he at last stopped, as the Emperor put it “for want of wind,” a dead silence fell for a moment on the astonished crowd, who were expected to melt sadly away; but suddenly a British workman standing near, equal—as British workmen generally are—to the occasion, took off his cap and waving it in the air cried out “Three cheers for ’is R’yl ‘Ighness the Dook o’ Cambridge,” which three cheers were immediately given with the greatest spontaneity and goodwill, the crowd seeming to enjoy being abused by Royalty. But, as the Duke himself afterwards sadly observed, “They didn’t budge an inch, Sire, not an inch. They stopped there all the same.” So the proposed military evolutions did not take place that day and had to be postponed to a more convenient season.

CHAPTER VI

BERLIN SCHLOSS

THE Prussian Court is awakened on New Year’s Day by the sound of trumpets blaring forth old German chorales as the band of the regiment in garrison slowly marches round the whole palace playing solemn and stately music.

The previous evening, or somewhere in the small hours, in the society of a few intimate friends, everybody has partaken of Pfanne-kuchen—a sort of round dough-nut—and Punch, a comparatively harmless German variety of that insidious beverage, but still not to be drunk lightly and unadvisedly if you would avoid a next morning’s headache.

It is customary also to send pictorial postcards inscribed with New Year greetings to all acquaintances in the palace. Footmen are constantly arriving from{87} the princes with these small offerings, which usually have some reference to the recipient’s peculiar idiosyncrasies. One New Year’s Eve, having retired earlier than the occasion warranted, I was awakened from my first pleasant dreams by an urgent rapping on the outside of the double doors which shut off my bedroom from the outside world, and a masculine voice responded to my startled inquiry, saying that he had something to deliver to me from His Majesty; so quickly rising and huddling on a dressing-gown I hastened to receive from a Jäger an envelope bearing the imperial cipher, which contained a picture-postcard of the “Hohenzollern” inscribed in his own handwriting with the New Year wishes of the Emperor.

Breakfast is a hasty and early function on the first day of the year, for at eight o’clock the royal special train containing the whole of the Imperial Family and the suite, footmen and maids in attendance, is off to Berlin for the Gratulations-Cour, when all the foreign ambassadors in their State carriages surmounted by bewigged coachmen and footmen in bright red, blue, or yellow uniforms drive from their respective Embassies to wish His Majesty the usual compliments of the season. Christmas is essentially a private family festival, but the New Year is ushered in with much public ceremony.

Joyous crowds line Unter den Linden to watch the pageant pass; all the shops are closed and an air of hilarious festivity pervades the streets. A constant stream of vehicles, many of them of the rather shabby horse-droschky type—for few residents of the German capital keep their own carriages—are converging towards the Schloss, all containing officers in full uniform, or functionaries of various departments bent on the same errand.

It is a big, square, rather ugly grey pile of buildings, the old Berlin Schloss, standing straight on to the street on all sides but one, where it is skirted by the{88} narrow river Spree. Inside is a rather gloomy, sunless courtyard, paved with cobble-stones, in the centre of which is a statue of St. George and the Dragon, the latter curling uncomfortably round the hoofs of St. George’s horse, an estimable quadruped which, instead of shying, as our ordinary experience of horses would lead us to think that it should do, gallantly aids its master’s spear-thrust by dancing a kind of tango on the dragon’s vitals.

Along one side of this courtyard, situated in the basement of the Schloss itself, close to and on a line with the Hohenzollern Treppe, the recognized door of arrival for the Empress and her children as well as for the ladies and gentlemen of the suite, are the barracks for the Schloss Guard. While the Court is in residence the guard spends its time in perpetual rushes and drummings, for no princely personage can arrive or depart without that long line of soldiers presenting arms to the throbbing drum-beat accompaniment. It sounds intermittently from early morning till late at night: the constant rapid beat of feet on the cobble-stones as the soldiers snatch their arms and fall into line, the silence, the military command, and then the long continuous rumble, while the royal or princely personage of whatever size or age, descends from his or her carriage, salutes, and disappears into the Schloss up the very plain and simple stairway leading to the apartments of the Royal Family. All coachmen when driving royalty wear a broad hatband embroidered with the Prussian Eagle—what is called a Breite-Tresse—which can be easily removed if necessary, leaving uncovered the plain silver band which denotes the presence of only obscure individuals who are spared the more onerous honours.

A deep archway leads from the large courtyard into a smaller, more secluded one, where is the entrance to the staircase which the Emperor uses. On each side of the large “Hof” are big, heavy, iron gates{89} kept by soldiers, who all day long close and open them to the passing carriages and other traffic.

On New Year’s morning the courtyard is pervaded by footmen in gay uniforms with very chilly-looking pink silk legs, who pick their way gingerly over the round cobble-stones, hastening here and there in a very busy preoccupied manner.

Before the Gratulations-Cour takes place, a service is held in the chapel of the Schloss, at which all the ambassadors, consuls and other diplomatic officials are present in uniform. They usually spend the time before the entrance of the royalties in wandering about and chatting with each other, till some one gives a warning tap on the marble floor, and the hum sinks into silence, broken by the music of the band stationed in the gallery above, for the chapel has no organ.

In the evening a special performance is given at the Opera, at which the whole Royal Family appears; and sometimes the Court returns next day to the New Palace, but more often remains in Berlin for the season, which practically begins with the Emperor’s birthday on January 27.

One quaint ceremony connected with New Year’s Day is the presentation to the Emperor, as he sits at table, of sausages and hard-boiled eggs by the “Halloren,” a guild of salt-workers living in Saxony, possessing peculiar customs, privileges and dress. It was the Princess who first introduced the “Halloren sausage” to my notice, for on the second or third day of the year, when the Court had returned to the New Palace, she burst into my room one morning with a very small sandwich—German sandwiches have bread on only one side of them—made of an extremely thin and delicate piece of pink sausage, which she presented to me with pride as a portion of her “Halloren sausage.” I was expected to eat it with great solemnity and a due appreciation of its marvellous merits, and I conscientiously tried to praise it, and declare that there was a{90} “nameless something” about the flavour which marked it out from all other sausages. I subsequently discovered that it was a rare and special and not-to-be-repeated favour to share even the smallest piece of this wonderful delicacy. Every day this sausage appeared at breakfast and the eleven-o’clock lunch, but no one was then allowed to partake of it, with the exception of the Princess herself, and when a few days later we all went to Berlin for the rest of the winter the “Halloren sausage,” now sadly shrunk, was the one piece of luggage which the Princess insisted on taking in her own charge, carrying it carefully in a small black leather bag, and refusing to trust it to her footman, who she was convinced would leave it in the train or perhaps get it crushed or lost.

Life in Berlin Schloss was very different to that in the New Palace. Every morning when lessons began again—the Christmas holidays are only ten days long in German schools—the Princess had to drive away with her lady at twenty minutes to eight to Bellevue Schloss, at the other side of the Tier-Garten, where her tutor attended from eight o’clock till twelve.

Bellevue is one of those plain, unpretentious palaces which were built in the middle of the eighteenth century, and has the advantage of a fine large garden full of grass and trees. Dotted about in the grounds are various small monuments and memorial stones inscribed with the names of dead-and-gone Princes and Princesses of the Royal House. Sometimes these stones break out into poetry of a sentimental kind, always in the French language, often celebrating the marvellous virtues of “Hélène” or “Ferdinand.” Whatever happened, the affections of this particular family—belonging, I think, to a nephew of Frederick the Great—had to find an outlet in stonework. Every possible anniversary was commemorated, and even the death of a favourite Kammer-herr was left recorded for the benefit of future generations. The ivy has{91} crept over these memorials of a bygone day, and in some cases has entirely obliterated the lettering. In others the frost and rain are by slow degrees accomplishing the same work. It is with difficulty that one can trace the crumbling letters.

In the mornings the Ober-Gouvernante took “Dienst” in Bellevue, returning at one o’clock with the Princess to the Schloss for luncheon, which was served in the tiny little dining-room of the Princess’s apartments, whose walls were made entirely of mirrors bordered by wreaths of painted flowers. At half-past two the carriage was ordered again to drive to Bellevue, where a few children were invited to spend the afternoon. That daily drive along the crowded streets was somewhat of an ordeal, for all along the route people were saluting and curtseying and rushing up in the enthusiastic German manner to wave pocket-handkerchiefs. Sometimes, if the Princess happened to be in a naughty mood and wished to converse undisturbed with her little friends, she would nod slowly backwards and forwards like a Chinese porcelain figure, regardless if any one was bowing to her or not; but as somebody usually was, it did not appear so strange as it otherwise might have done.

In Bellevue garden itself was a kind of earthwork called “Die Festung,” made by the elder Princes with the aid of their uncle Prince Henry, and this was the usual scene of the afternoon’s play.

In frosty weather part of the Park was flooded, and here the time was spent in skating and playing on the ice, but when the frost broke up again the dirt in the grounds was terrible and the walks ankle-deep in sludge.

The Emperor and Empress invariably came to the Park in the afternoons, and it was embarrassing to meet them with shoes and dress plastered with dirt; but as the children liked best to play at something which was rather dishevelling, such as dragging the{92} gardener’s cart up on to a hillock through thick bushes, or along the wettest and dirtiest paths, it was difficult to preserve that immaculate appearance which one would desire to have in the presence of royalty. An old carpenter, named Fasel, had worked for many years in Bellevue Garden, and his shop was a constant centre of interest to the Princess, who liked to have a chat with him nearly every day. He used to make the children bows and arrows and tell them long stories of his Wander-Jahre, when he was an apprentice and walked from one end of Germany to the other, working his way along into Austria.

In January two other festivals broke into lessons, before they were well re-started. One was the anniversary of the Accession of the Emperor—Krönungs-Tag as it is called—when there is again a series of tedious ceremonies at which the whole family is present. These begin with a service in chapel at ten o’clock in the morning, at which, until a few years ago, all the ladies were obliged to appear in Court dress with long trains, those of royal birth having theirs carried by pages in red. For these functions tickets were issued for the gallery high up in the dome of the chapel, and given to anyone connected with the Court. It was no light task first to climb up the interminable steps of the winding-stair which leads to this coign of vantage, where no seats are allowed, and when there to endure the suffocating crush and atmosphere. The humours of the crowd happily relieve to a certain extent the tedium of waiting—for the lady who has received a ticket through the agency of an Ambassador thinks that, however late she appears, she has a right to a place in the front row, while the footman’s wife, who is already there, refuses to recognize social superiority except in her own case, which allows her precedence over a mere waiting-maid. Occasionally people faint, for the heat and standing combined are trying to weak constitutions; but if one can get to the front of the{93} gallery, and is able to support the proximity of the band and the weight of the people behind who hang heavily over one’s shoulders, there is a good view to be had of the whole scene—which, however, since Court dresses were done away with by the Emperor’s order, has been shorn of much of its picturesque stateliness.

A few days afterwards comes the anniversary of His Majesty’s birthday, which is kept with great zeal and earnestness from early morning until night. It begins with congratulations at 9.30 for the household only. On tables arranged round one of the smaller salons are spread out the various gifts received from family and friends. In her childish days the Princess’s present was always a source of anxiety. Sometimes it took the form of a blotting-book, the cover worked or painted by herself, or a photograph frame, or perhaps a sketch of her own, something costing little excepting the expenditure of time and patience. The Emperor was always very pleased with his daughter’s gift—he valued it more than the silver statuettes, the oil-paintings, jewelled cigarette-cases and costly things lavished on him by the other members of his family.

On the evening of the birthday there is the usual performance at the Opera, where the audience is composed only of those officially invited, and the house is garlanded and scented. On one birthday, however, for some reason an evening concert in the Schloss itself took the place of the Opera. It was held in the beautiful Weisser Saal, and I listened to it from one of the little Loge, or boxes, of which there are two set into the wall. This occasion was especially memorable on account of two rather startling incidents which happened during the progress of the concert. Several soloists sang, and there was a large band of string and wind instruments. During the playing of an orchestral piece, a door opened in the empty musicians’ gallery, which ran across the Saal at right angles to the box where I was sitting, and I was startled to see{94} a man enter on hands and knees and creep slowly and stealthily along the floor across to the opposite side. Following him a few paces behind, in the same stealthy manner, came a fat, unwieldy woman. They were distinctly visible through the white marble balustrades as they moved slowly along, the woman getting into constant difficulties with her skirt, which much impeded her progress. Could this perhaps be the preliminary to an Anarchist bomb? was the first thought which crossed my mind. The rotundity of the woman was reassuring. She did not look to be of the stuff of which conspirators are made, but nevertheless her movements were decidedly suspicious. I touched the hand of the lady with me, who had long been attached to the Court. She had not yet seen the two grovellers on the empty gallery floor. I nodded in their direction. She started when she caught sight of them, and an angry flush of indignation overspread her face. She whispered to me that they were the wife and son of a Kastellan, one of the officials who have certain portions of the Schloss under their charge. They had chosen this extraordinary manner of seeing and hearing something of the festivities—very foolishly, as it proved, for the Emperor himself perceived them and sent to make inquiries, with the result that the unfortunate husband and father of the guilty pair as nearly as possible lost his comfortable position as Kastellan, while the son—a young man old enough to know better—was severely punished, and the wife fell into disgrace and was for a long time looked at askance by her colleagues in the castle.

At the same concert, one of the chorus-singers went out of his mind. At all State concerts there is a long interval in the middle, when the Emperor and Empress move round among the invited guests, chatting to each in turn. Not till His Majesty commands is the signal given by a gentle roll on the drum for the concert to recommence. On this occasion, after a very short{95} interval indeed, the drum was heard and everybody hurried back in some surprise to the red velvet chairs, from which they had risen to wander about and talk.

The Emperor knew that “some one had blundered,” as he had given no order to continue; but perhaps not unwilling to have the proceedings curtailed, he let the mistake pass, and shortly afterwards returned to his place beside the Empress. But the person who had given the signal was a singer of the chorus, who for some time had been giving his friends cause for uneasiness. After drumming energetically for several minutes he fled from the Schloss, pursued by one of the pink-stockinged footmen as far as the courtyard gates, where the unfortunate man escaped in the darkness into the crowd of the street.

The birthday of the Empress, which occurs in November, was always celebrated at the New Palace. The most striking among her presents were the dozen hats given by His Majesty, invariably chosen by himself. They were arranged on stands on the billiard-table of the room where the “birthday-table” was erected—a table beautifully enwreathed and garlanded by autumn leaves, intermixed with fruits, bunches of tiny red crab-apples, clusters of green and black grapes, small melons and gourds. It is a perilous business for any man to set out to buy a dozen hats for his wife without consulting her tastes and wishes on the subject, but the German Emperor is not a man to recoil from even such an enterprise. Though the hats were always very beautiful, and obviously the most expensive of their kind, they always raised, I found, certain doubts and queries in the mind of the feminine observer.

Does any woman in the world, be she ever so much an Empress, really desire to have hats thrust on her by the dozen without any “trying on” or any of that delicious hovering between two decisions which makes hat-buying so thrillingly charming—above all, without reference to the costume with which the head-gear{96} must be worn, whereof it should be the fitting corollary and completion?

The ordinary masculine mind is not sufficiently subtle to number among its greatest achievements the purchase of successful feminine millinery; even an Emperor ought to realize the limits of his sphere of activity. But William never did. Every year, year after year, there were the dozen hats, all much of the same type, all be-feathered, be-ribboned, be-decked with tulle or chiffon or embroidery, whichever happened to be uppermost in the scheme of fashion. The Emperor enjoyed being complimented on his taste. He liked to feel that great minds can stoop successfully to occupy themselves with trifles. He was delighted to see his wife looking well in one of his gifts. The hats always seemed to be holding the birthday reception; they filled the foreground to the exclusion of the other marvellous things, diamond and pearl ornaments, jewels of every description, which His Majesty also showered on the Empress with lavish hand.

On the evening of Her Majesty’s birthday a performance was usually given in the pretty little Rococo Theatre of the Palace, built by Frederick the Great. Though the piece was necessarily simple, owing to the absence of up-to-date stage-machinery and accommodation for the actors, yet the little theatre was the scene of many brilliant and pleasant gatherings.

On one occasion the King and Queen of Norway were present at a performance there, soon after their accession. They stayed some days at the New Palace, of course with their little son Olaf, a most amusing, quaint, old-fashioned little child, who charmed everybody, especially the Emperor, with whom he chatted in a confidential, fearless manner, treating His Majesty as a friend and companion, and inviting him to help in building his house of bricks. The small boy came once or twice with the Princess into her sitting-room, where he overwhelmed her with an avalanche of questions{97} regarding her canary, pursuing his investigations into the remotest details of its life and ancestry, and asking questions which no one could reasonably be expected to answer.

After the Emperor’s birthday the Season is in full swing. There are four State Balls and various “Cours” and “Levées”; but the Balls are the chief events of the season. With that thoroughness which distinguishes all he does, the Emperor does not permit any dancing at his Court which fails to come up to a certain standard of excellence. Every young débutante, every young officer anxious to dance before royalty, must first satisfy the fastidious judgment of the Court Dancing-Mistress, who holds several Tanz-Proben or trial dances in the Weisser Saal. A few years ago the Court Dancing-Mistress, Frau Wolden, now dead, was only less of a personality than His Majesty. Once indeed, in an agitated and forgetful moment, it is whispered that she sank on to the throne itself. She upheld with a stern hand the dignity of the Court, and her scathing remarks on the attitudes and steps of certain young provincials of both sexes who thought to introduce fashionable irregularities into the lancers, at once made them realize their error. What her real age was cannot with certainty be told. She owned with pride to seventy, and would lift her silk skirts and show her wonderfully fine ankles in a graceful tip-toe turn as if in derision of awkward flat-footed youth. To the day of her death she retained all her marvellous grace of movement. Twice a week she came to the Castle to give dancing lessons to Prince Joachim and the Princess. Other little boys and girls of the same age were invited to complete the class, and were drilled by the old lady in the intricacies of the minuet and gavotte, which quaint old-world dances are invariably danced at the Berlin Court Balls, and are from a spectacular point of view the most beautiful of any.

Excepting in severe winters it is rare that any sleighing{98} is possible in Berlin, but once there came a short frost accompanied by a good deal of snow, and immediately the aspect of the streets changed. All the cabs were replaced by wooden sleighs; the rather depressed-looking cabmen (it was before automobiles had taken possession of Berlin) became cheerful and picturesque in fur caps and sheepskin coats. Two light sleighs, each drawn by a couple of horses, appeared every afternoon in the courtyard of the Schloss with a musical clash and tingle of bells, and away the Princess would drive over the hard-trampled snow of the streets till the Grünewald, the beautiful forest skirting Berlin, was reached.

To keep the snow thrown up by the hoofs of the horses from falling into the sleigh, white snow-cloths with red borders were stretched from their collars and tied to each corner of the splashboard. These filled out to the wind like sails, giving the impression that the sleigh was being borne along by them. In the Grünewald were a good many other sleighs gliding along with a merry jangle. Behind, on a tiny seat, his feet on the runners, sat the Princess’s footman enveloped in a big coat with triple cape and Ohren-Klappen (ear-lappets) over his ears. Sometimes sleighs are driven from the back, or more commonly by a person inside, but these have a seat in front for the driver. It is not easy to steer a horse-sleigh round a corner, as it has a tendency to skid off sideways. At the New Palace, when a hard frost came, it was in later years no unusual thing to see the Crown Prince and Princess driving in a sleigh, followed by a string of young officers and their wives on ordinary children’s toboggans, several drawn by one horse. Occasionally one of the fair sleighers, responsive to an unexpected movement of the horse, would drop off behind, and some of the rest of the party had to come back and replace her. There could not have been much enjoyment in travelling in that way, unprotected from the cold, though doubtless the occasional bump on to the ground helped to restore the circulation.{99}

But the occasions for sleighing in the neighbourhood of Berlin are very rare indeed, as there is seldom quite enough depth of snow, so that opportunities had to be snatched or they might be gone in another hour or two. The Princess always grasped the earliest possible opportunity when sleighing was practicable, and enjoyed some delightful drives through the silent frozen solitudes beside the marshes of the Havel, whose brown sedges broke the whiteness of the shore, down by Werder (the cherry-island, where in spring the blossom of cherry-trees recalls the past winter), all along the ice-bound blue-grey river streaked with white where the blasts from the north blew the snow into long ripples, back through the unbroken purity of the lovely Wild-park with its troops of dun-brown deer moving silently under the snow-laden branches, waiting for the forester to bring their daily ration of hay and chestnuts.

But for the most part the snow comes and goes quickly, as in England, and in Berlin it is rapidly cleared from the streets and tipped into the river. Even in Belle Vue it quickly becomes black and sullied, for the railway runs through one corner of the park and the smoke of the trains plentifully besprinkles all the shrubs and bushes with smuts.

Belle Vue was sometimes the scene of the great hunt for Easter eggs, in which His Majesty himself used to take a very active part.

About twenty children were invited to partake in this festivity, and the preparations for Easter in the way of gifts seemed only a very little less than those at Christmas. The Empress usually gave every person in her service a piece of Berlin porcelain—beautiful hand-painted coffee-or tea-cups, dessert-plates, vases or candlesticks. In addition to these things, flowers arranged to look like eggs were always sent to the suite by Her Majesty, and the children invited to the Eier-Suchen, as it was called, each received a huge cardboard egg filled with toys, postcards, trinkets and bonbons, besides{100} a variety of chocolate eggs wrapped in bright-coloured papers.

All the eggs had to be looked for in various hiding-places, and each child was provided with a basket to hold what he or she found. If the weather promised to keep fine, the eggs were hidden in the garden among the bushes; but if it appeared likely to be wet, then the hunt took place in the Schloss itself. Sometimes the Emperor insisted on hiding all the eggs, as he considered that he knew the best places for them; but once he and his adjutants made an unfortunate choice of the porcelain stoves as appropriate nesting-places, with the result that the chocolate eggs melted away under the influence of the heat and betrayed their presence by long brown stalactites dripping to the floor below.

At one of these “egg-parties"—which were apt to be a little stiff at first, as the children were overawed, and probably over-admonished as to their behaviour before coming—the Emperor was much amused by a small boy of seven, the little Prince of Saxe-Altenburg, whose father has now succeeded to the principality. The little fellow arrived at Belle Vue clad in a most immaculate white sailor-suit and white linen cap, but in his earnest pursuit of eggs he thrust himself into the heart of the thickest and sootiest bushes, conscientiously penetrated the most tangled thorny shrubs, explored the coke-cellar of the greenhouse, and emerged at last with his face covered with black smears and the dazzling whiteness of his garments seriously diminished. When all the children were reassembled with their eggs, this small Prince, regardless of the smuts on his hands and nose, and perhaps a little weary of the stiff atmosphere, which prevailed in the presence of Their Majesties, with a smile, produced from his pocket a pair of motor-goggles, which he assumed with an aspect of the greatest joy, and after sweeping the assembled girls and boys with a sunshiny glance which left a ripple of laughter behind, turned his smiling face to the Emperor and grinned{101} confidingly. He effectually broke the ice, and the stiffness vanished at once. The children lapsed into naturalness, forgot that they were wearing their best frocks, and followed the still “motor-goggled” Prince in a wild chase round the bushes and flower-beds. It was he who really made the party a social success. All the children went home a little smudgy, but feeling that they had had an unusually good time.

CHAPTER VII

DONAU-ESCHINGEN AND METZ

THE time came very soon when Prince Joachim was sent away, the victim of acute home-sickness, to join his brothers in Ploen; and it was then resolved that the Princess, who felt his absence keenly, should be also provided with the necessary stimulus and society of children of her own age.

From the Augusta-Stift, an aristocratic ladies’ school in Potsdam in which the Empress was much interested, three suitable young maidens of good family were chosen.

Every morning they were fetched at half-past seven by a royal carriage and brought to the New Palace, where they shared the lessons and games of the Princess until half-past twelve, when they were reconducted to their Stift. It was fondly hoped by the ladies of the Court that this arrangement would put a stop to the constant interruption of lessons—a hope which was scarcely realized, for it made not the slightest difference.

Girls in high-class German schools lead a very different life to those in similar institutions in England. They must all wear uniform, ugly for choice; they must have their hair plaited in the tightest, most uncompromising of plaits, which is not allowed to hang down, but is pinned by multitudinous hairpins into a hard knob. Their{102} whole existence is absorbed in the acquisition of knowledge, and the exercise they take is a matter not of pleasure but of health. If they do anything naughty, or are untidy, they wear ribbon rosettes whose colours show nicely-graduated degrees of infamy, and they must weep bitterly when they don’t know their lessons, and ask forgiveness for a failure to indicate the exact position of Kamschatka. They are usually nice, happy, pleasant-mannered girls, expert at making Knixes, those quaint little German curtsies which seem to carry one back into Jane Austen’s books. They kiss the hands of their elders, and as soon as they are confirmiert and leave school, blossom out into very fashionably-dressed, handsome young women, with hair done in the latest fashion, and a decided penchant for young lieutenants. Their highest ambition is to be verlobt as soon as possible, and they never turn their thoughts again in the direction of Kamschatka or any other part of the globe existing beyond their immediate sphere of observation. They make excellently self-sacrificing wives and mothers, and help to preserve in their husbands that attitude of infallibility which is the peculiar prerogative of German mankind. They invariably converse fairly well in English and French, and are able to quote Goethe, Schiller and Shakespeare in a manner which, if a little mechanical, still gives an agreeable impression of culture and is some relief from the domestic pursuits which, after marriage, they fulfil with praiseworthy ardour. They are as opposed to the self-possessed, slangy, sporting English schoolgirl with her multifarious ambitions as can well be imagined. They never desire to go on the stage, never want a vote, and are perfectly content with the limited prospect which life offers to their sex. So in their ill-fitting black frocks, in hard, round, black straw sailor hats, with their luxuriant hair strained brutally off their foreheads into the tightest, hardest of coils, every morning came three little girls to share the studies and recreations of the Princess. There had been{103} some heart-burning among the parents of the young ladies of the Stift, as each one considered that her child had peculiar qualifications as a possible companion to royalty; but the final decision lay in the hands of the head-mistress and the tutor of the Princess, and the choice ultimately made was undoubtedly a wise one, though sometimes the more unregenerate officers of His Majesty’s suite ventured the opinion that the girls in question were “zu gut erzogen"—too well brought up—from which it may be gathered that they desired to see a little more natural, healthy naughtiness exhibited. It is, however, unreasonable to expect a child, even if endowed with gifts in this direction, not to put a good many curbs on her inclination when she is chosen to share the comparatively pleasant life at Court in exchange for that of the Stift; and as they were expressly encouraged to assert their own rights and not to let the Princess always win at the games they played—a deplorable tendency which had its root as much in the Princess’s superiority at games as in the ill-advised instructions of foolish parents—they soon discovered, as children will, a democratic level of existence which was invaluable as an educational factor. Each child, including the Princess, was called by her Christian name, and it was a matter for congratulation when one of the “Stifts-Kinder,” as they were called, was found to have an immense superiority over the Princess in the matter of evolutions on the parallel bars. This quartette of young people worked and played together amicably for some years—until, in fact, the time approached for the confirmation of the Princess, that great event in the life of a German girl which seems to make a sharp, decided finish to her childhood and flings her full-fledged into a new existence.

When the Court was staying in Berlin, the Stifts-Kinder came under a lady’s escort by train every morning from Potsdam to Berlin, where they were driven straight to Belle Vue. They had four little desks side{104} by side in one of the big empty salons there, and their cheerful faces and gay shrieks of laughter as they jumped over the flower-beds in the intervals of lessons, or in wet weather chased each other through the stately rooms with their decorous suites of brocaded furniture, added a pleasant element of youth and freshness to the old palace.

The Princess told many interesting facts about Belle Vue. Among other things, when I was admiring the blue satin curtains in one room and remarking on their newness, she said, “Yes, of course; that was because of the Shah of Persia.”

“Why?” I inquired, wondering what the Shah had to do with curtains in Belle Vue.

“Oh, don’t you know? He and his suite stayed here once, and they used to kill sheep in this room, and wiped their hands on the blue satin curtains; and they had to be replaced, of course!”

She said further that the old “Shah,” the one who threw chicken-bones and asparagus-ends over his shoulder to the servants standing behind, tried to imitate European manners and eat with a fork instead of his fingers, but being unaccustomed to the implement, compromised on Persian and European methods by picking up the meat with his fingers, sticking it on the fork, and thus conveying it to his mouth.

“When Great-Grandmamma Augusta once offered him a dish of strawberries, instead of taking a few on to his plate, he just ate them from the dish while she held it. Fancy! Great-Grandmamma Augusta—who was so particular! Everybody nearly had a fit!”

An intense interest in human nature was one of the traits which the Princess shared with her father, the Emperor. She liked, if possible, to merge herself in the crowd, to watch people going about their daily affairs, to see young people making love, old people cooking or reading the papers. She had a healthy, vital curiosity; knew all about the brothers of the Stifts-Kinder,{105} and to whom they were, or were likely to be, engaged. One particular friend among the boarders at the Stift—not one of those who came daily, but another who was frequently invited to the Palace, a very nice American girl called Yvette Borup—had a brother who accompanied Peary on his expedition to the North Pole. After coming safely through all the dangers and hardships of the Polar expedition, this brother a year or two later was unfortunately drowned in America while boating; but at the time of which I write he was absent with Peary, and there were few days when the Princess did not wonder “where Yvette’s brother had got to now.”

In the daily afternoon walks in the neighbourhood of Potsdam, after Prince Joachim had gone to Ploen and there was consequently no governor or tutor to accompany the Princess and her lady, a private detective was detailed to dog her footsteps, for there were many undesirable characters about and Her Majesty insisted that we should have some kind of escort.

These men deserved the greatest sympathy, for the Princess found it most irksome to be followed, and would take the greatest pains to “throw them off the scent.” When they began to realize their obnoxiousness to this tempestuous daughter of the Hohenzollerns it was amusing to see them unobtrusively materialize from behind a tree after she had passed by, skulking from bush to bush, withdrawing into the shadows of the houses, or pretending to be mere harmless passers-by absorbed in the study of shop-windows.

The Princess, whose sharp eye instantly detected their manœuvres, once observed: “If we had not known they were detectives we might have thought them murderers lying in wait.”

Men new to their duties would begin by showing too much zeal, and invariably found that all their instructions from head-quarters, whatever they might be, were immediately negatived and rendered of no effect,{106} for if they approached within not merely speaking, but shouting distance, they were treated with withering scorn, and the Princess would fly through the bushes on rapid, indignant feet, while the unfortunate man puffed gallantly but hopelessly in the rear.

Finally the footman was told to instruct the detectives as to the probable direction of her walks, so that they could make occasional cross-country cuts; and they quickly learned the necessity of “taking cover” and becoming merged in the surrounding landscape as soon as the keen-eyed Princess appeared in sight. They were not only absolved but strictly prohibited from bowing or saluting, and were urged to be “unmannerly rather than troublesome”; and they soon learned to carry out their duties so unobtrusively that when, as often happened, they were requisitioned for the service of the Emperor, the suite remarked on the excellent training and wonderful tact of the Geheim-Polizisten, quite unaware how much of their education had been due to a young “Backfisch” in a blue serge suit.

Royalties, especially German Royalties, spend a large portion of their existence in travelling; and it may here be noted how much the advent of the automobile has tended to simplify life at court, and to abolish those manifold small ceremonies, red carpets and constantly-bowing officials, which were formerly attendant on the shortest royal journeys. It has relieved the royalties themselves, as well as the functionaries of the Court, of an infinite multitude of tedious, tiresome, small formalities and duties, and the motor-car is now invariably used excepting for very long journeys.

Donau-Eschingen is the name of the residence of Prince Max Egon, Fürst zu Fürstenburg, with whom His Majesty stays every year for a few days to shoot capercailzie, which abound in the woods of the region bordering on the Schwarzwald. On one occasion the Empress and her daughter accompanied the Emperor, who had just returned from Norway.{107}

The train of the Empress left Berlin at eleven o’clock on Friday night, and before that the Princess had retired to bed, though it is not easy to sleep in a station among the hootings and trumpetings that accompany the comings and goings of trains. All through the night the train travelled slowly, with many jerks and stops, for it was not due to arrive until ten o’clock next morning at the place where the Emperor would join it. The route lay through the most beautiful forest scenery of the Thüringer-Wald.

At nine o’clock we breakfasted in the train with the Empress, and shortly afterwards stopped at a station surrounded by an enormous crowd. There were the usual tiers of faces pressed to the railings row above row. No ceremony was observed on this occasion. The Emperor could be seen in his green hunting-uniform crossing the line with his adjutants, and the Empress and the Princess descended to the platform to welcome him. He looked very brown and well from his long sea-voyage, and was obviously in very good spirits. After a few minutes the train started again, no luggage having been transferred, as the train that brought His Majesty had been coupled on to that of the Empress.

At one o’clock we all dined together in the restaurant car, where the ladies wore hats and simple walking-dresses, without jackets. A long table ran down the centre of the saloon, and one of the gentlemen, whose duty it was, showed us our places. The Emperor and Empress sat facing each other at the middle of each side.

There was very little room for the footmen to pass round behind the chairs, especially for those unfortunate men who, in the course of their service at court, had acquired a certain rotundity of figure; and as the train jerked and swayed along it was all that some of them could do to avoid being flung, soup and all, over the people they were serving. The consommé was handed round in little bowls with curved-in rims, but at the{108} best it was a very elusive liquid, and most of it evaded pursuit and was taken back to the kitchen.

After the soup came mutton cutlets with purée of potatoes, and this dish the Emperor ordered to be set in front of him, for he obviously objected to the possibility of having an avalanche of chops on his head. At German meals every dish, even a joint, is always offered to the guests to help themselves; there is no carving at the sideboard. The meat is previously cut up in the kitchen, and then the slices laid together again to look as though the joint were whole, so that only a fork is needed to serve oneself; but it always impressed me, especially after once seeing a servant, owing to a sudden paroxysm of the train, fling a whole leg of mutton over a lady’s shoulder into her lap, as a custom which places too much responsibility on the waiter. So the gentleman and the Empress held the plates while the Emperor slapped chops into them as fast as possible, so that they had, as he observed, “no time to grow cold,” and the dish was soon empty.

He was laughing and chatting all the time, evidently in most exuberant spirits, and introduced one gentleman to me, who had newly arrived at court, giving a short biography of his life—as for instance, “He’s been to America and got scalped there by Indians.” The gentleman in question, raising his hat, ran his hand over his smooth and hairless cranium as though in corroboration of His Majesty’s statement.

“Speaks wonderful English,” went on the Emperor—“wonderful English, all learnt in America. You can talk to him as much as you like.”

As my energies were at that time concentrated on keeping my knife and fork out of my features, I did not talk very much to the gentleman from America, though I afterwards found that he did speak very good English indeed.

The train began slowly to ascend the beautiful mountains of the Black Forest. It was the month of May,{109} and against the dark background of pine-forest ran the vivid green of the larches breaking into leaf. Little streams and waterfalls continually came into view as we rose higher and higher, and often a sudden shower fell and a rainbow spanned the valley below us. The train passed through more than thirty tunnels.

When luncheon was finished we still stayed some time at the table, and one of the generals in the Emperor’s suite who had recently begun to study the English language took the opportunity to practise what he knew of it upon me. He was a very delightful, handsome old gentleman, and had fought in the Franco-Prussian War. He told me all the books he was reading in English, and quoted sentimentally, apropos of nothing, “Let me Dream again.” I wondered where he had learned that Early-Victorian melody.

“That is all Lowther Castle,” laughed the Emperor: “started them all learning English; they’ve been taking lessons ever since.”

When they accompanied the Emperor to stay with Lord Lonsdale, all the German gentlemen found themselves so dreadfully “out of it” for want of English, that as soon as they returned to their native land they one and all, regardless of age or possible ridicule, immediately sought out a teacher and studied hard, with, at least in the case of the old general, most satisfactory results, for he was able to talk quite fluently with me. I recommended him to read “The Visits of Elizabeth,” which had just appeared in Tauchnitz, and the Emperor remarked that he had read it, and was sure it was all true, especially the part about France. He was very kind in pointing out pretty bits of scenery, and kept the table in a perpetual roar with his jokes, which he always laughed at most heartily himself.

When the train arrived at Donau-Eschingen a large party, composed of the Prince and Princess Fürstenburg with their eldest daughter, a girl about the same age as the Princess, and sundry head-foresters, Land-Rats,{110} and other officials in black coats and white ties, was on the platform to receive the Emperor and Empress.

There were five children at the Schloss, two girls and three boys, and the Princess was delighted to have so many children to talk and play with. She was always interested in new people, and never shy. She took all her meals with them and their governess and tutor, and played furious games of hide-and-seek all over the garden. Nor did she neglect to visit the stables, and tried to ride a donkey bare-backed without a bridle—a very difficult feat, as she found to her cost, for being uplifted with pride at being able to stick on for a few minutes, she rode into the front of the Schloss, where the donkey tipped her ignominiously on to the gravel before the assembled ladies and gentlemen and then raced back to the stables. Beyond a few scratches she was not much hurt.

In the district of Baden, where Donau-Eschingen is situated, and in the various valleys of the Black Forest, the peasant costumes are extremely quaint and varied, each valley being distinguished by its own particular Tracht. At the invitation of the Prince of Fürstenburg all the inhabitants of the surrounding district came to greet the Emperor and Empress. It was a most beautiful and picturesque sight, these masses of people in their many-coloured head-dresses and wonderfully embroidered bodices. Some of them had huge erections made of brilliantly coloured beads on their heads, in shape like a wedding cake, and often weighing close on twenty pounds; others wore straw hats covered with bright red or black silk pompons; while another characteristic head-dress was a sort of pointed, stiff black silk cap, from which hung long streamers of black ribbon. They had wonderfully embroidered bodices worked in silver lace, and short pleated skirts of a portentous width all round.

The Emperor and Empress and all the guests stood on the balcony after they returned from church—it was{111} of course Sunday when the fête took place—and watched the procession go by. The inhabitants of each valley walked together and carried a flag bearing the name of their particular district. The cheerful, sunburnt peasants moved slowly through the beautiful gardens, men and women, marching past in their quaint picturesque dress, which, though so crude in colour, yet blended together in a riot of delightful beauty, threading in and out in a long-drawn-out line of marvellous effect. The sun glinted from the masses of opalescent beads carried on the heads of three or four hundred sturdy maidens, or lit up the wide stretch of red pompons which cut across the procession like a field of poppies, then wandered to the bright red waistcoats worn by the men, shone on the green silk aprons or the broad cerise ribbons and the wonderfully starched and plaited white cambric sleeves.

Three of the women, each wearing a different costume, came up to the balcony and presented an address to the Empress, who talked with them in her usual kindly manner. The peasants were three women of great dignity and a certain nobility of manner, self-possessed and apparently not in the least intimidated. Probably in ordinary costume they might have created a different impression, and would have appeared commonplace and ordinary in type and feature; but the marvel of these peasant dresses is that the plain woman looks in them almost as well as the handsomest; they bestow a piquancy, an alluring attractiveness on the least prepossessing of womankind. In detail they exploit the bizarre, the unexpected, often the ludicrous, yet subtly blend into a complete and satisfactory whole, as incomprehensible as it is fascinating.

For the rest of the day the Schloss garden was crowded with groups of peasants, some of them tiny boys and girls, all anxious to see the Kaiserin, and above all “die kleine Prinzessin,” who has always kept a very special place in the hearts of the German people.{112}

A curious rumour, one of those inexplicable tales which, though totally devoid of foundation, are yet firmly accepted and become one more of those popular errors so tenaciously held, a whispered story with regard to the Princess, with which she herself is much amused, has always been current in Germany—even in the remotest corners of the Empire—to the effect that she is deaf and dumb. How this extraordinary idea arose can never be known, for at every stage of her existence the Princess has lagged noways behind other children in volubility of expression and quickness of hearing.

Once at the seaside a faithful forester, a true and loyal German subject, approached the Court physician, who was in attendance on the royal children, paddling in the “briny” a short distance away, and expressed his unmitigated sorrow at the misfortune suffered by the Imperial Family, in that their only daughter should be so deeply afflicted.

At the moment one of those healthy spells of zanking happened to take place between the Princess and her brother.

“Do you hear that?” said the genial doctor. “Can you hear your deaf-and-dumb Princess talking?” She was indeed talking in tones that carried to quite a distance. “Go a little nearer and listen.”

The man stopped a short distance away, and drank in the sounds as though they were heavenly music. The poor afflicted child of his imagination fled for ever. He turned with his face radiating joy.

“Gott sei dank!” he ejaculated. “Now I know it’s not true, but I was always afraid. People always said she was taub-stumm. Now I can tell them what fools they are. I’ve heard Her Royal Highness with my own ears.” He departed joyously to spread the glad tidings.

But many people are hard to convince. One dear old lady in Berlin whom I knew was always making{113} doubtful inquiries of me on this subject, and, like Thomas, refused to believe.

“Ach, yes!” she would say, “of course you dare not tell me the truth. You have to say that she is all right.”

“Of course,” I mocked, “it is essential for a deaf-and-dumb person to have an English teacher, isn’t it—and another one for French? She is deaf-and-dumb in three languages.”

After three days we left Donau-Eschingen for Strasburg, a very beautiful town, disfigured by a terribly ugly modern palace, which the Emperor calls the “Railway-palace,” as he considers it to be of that hideously harsh, painful form of architecture we have been accustomed to bear with, for purely utilitarian purposes. “They built it before my time,” he hastens to tell every one. “Makes me feel ill every time I see it.”

It was a huge, square gaunt building, surrounded by a palisaded garden, which contained not a solitary spot where any one could be free from the attentions of the crowd.

Whenever the Princess walked in it for a few minutes, or wanted to sit and work under a tree, the whole length of palisade, only a few yards away, became a mass of human bodies: the butcher-boy with his basket, the maidservant on her way to market, the workman with his pipe, rows upon rows of schoolboys and girls with their teachers, clerks and washerwomen, all welded themselves into a solid mass and concentrated their gaze upon one poor unfortunate child. She fled into the house for the time, and then the crowd melted away, only to re-form the moment any one reappeared. The Emperor gave orders that the palisades should be boarded up inside, but of course it was impossible to do it at once, so that all that week of lovely weather the{114} Princess had to stay indoors or content herself with drives round the town, followed by a clattering contingent of schoolboys. The people seemed to be delighted to see the Princess, and were continually waving pocket-handkerchiefs as soon as she appeared. They also greeted the Emperor and Empress with great enthusiasm when they arrived; but whether this was just the German portion of the population, who tried to cover up by their exuberant loyalty any deficiencies on the part of the French, it is hard to say.

The Princess went with her mother to visit the lovely old Cathedral of Strasburg, and saw the wonderful clock and its flapping cock and moving figures, and then drove through the old, picturesque part of the town, among queer old wooden houses with carved beams.

The Empress visited hospitals and orphanages all day, and in the evenings big, tiresome official dinners took place, at which every one looked bored. The Princess was not there, but peeped at them between the big red-velvet curtains which shut off a portion of the dining-hall.

The last day of the journey was spent at Metz, where the Emperor reviewed an army corps. Their entry into this town must have seemed strange indeed to their Majesties, accustomed as they are to smiling, shouting crowds. Here there was no welcome, no smile, not a single flag. The people who stood in the streets looked on idly, like spectators of a curious show, as the long procession of carriages with their outriders moved on, to the sound only of the rumble of their own wheels. Sometimes a lady remarked resentfully on the strange absence of enthusiasm. The names over the doors were French, the faces were French, there was an atmosphere of French hostility.

Under a little awning, in the burning sunshine, the Empress stood for two hours, smiling and bowing while the troops marched past. The Emperor was on his horse a little distance away, amidst a group of officers.{115} On the roof of a neighbouring building were gathered together the only Germans in the town. Here was a flutter of white, a shouting of Hurrah! a movement of welcome and delight, a little lonely outpost of loyalty and patriotism. The people on the roof and one or two rather dirty little boys were the only spectators present. The beautiful town went on with its own affairs while the German soldiers marched and rode past.

It seemed something of an anomaly and a mistake that these stalwart brown young men, good-tempered and patient as all German soldiers appear to be, should be living in a kind of exile within their own Empire, cordially disliked by the people among whom their lot is cast, not for any personal reason, but solely as a heritage left to them by a dead-and-gone generation. None of them were born at the time of the Franco-Prussian war, but they have their share of its aftermath. The Prussian spirit is not conciliatory. It has a knack of letting the conquered drink to the dregs the cup of humiliation; its press is bombastic, and has none of the large-minded tolerance which would enable it to appreciate the acute sufferings of a proud, humiliated people.

About five years after the end of the Boer war, a German lady who was dining at court drew me aside after dinner.

“To-day,” she said, “I have been talking to a German gentleman who has been living in your Orange River Free State, or whatever you call it; and he tells me that the Boers are quite content now to be under your Government—they do not want to change back again.”

“Oh, quite, quite certain. He knows. He is a German. They know he is a German. They tell him the truth. He says they are absolutely satisfied. Now tell me: how do you manage it? And with so few{116} soldiers, I am told—hardly any at all. How do you do it? In five years! And look at us in Elsass-Lothringen. We don’t know how to satisfy them. They will never be satisfied. We are always in fear of war. Tell us your secret.” She laid her hand on my arm and looked at me intently, as though she could surprise the secret out of me.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said lamely. “You see we’ve had a lot of practice at governing, and made an awful lot of mistakes, and we’ve learned a little by our past mistakes; I suppose that is one reason. So we know what are the kind of things that people won’t stand. And we let them a good deal alone afterwards, and play cricket and football with them and things of that kind; and we let them vote the same as the rest of us, and—er—well, we don’t treat them any differently from the rest, as far as I can make out—just let them alone to conspire or do as they like—and then if they know they can, they don’t want to. See? And then our Tommies—our soldiers—are very good too; they’re not brought up to be so patriotic as yours—so, of course, it’s less galling: they’d just as soon chum up with the enemy afterwards as not. Yours are brought up to look on him rather as a criminal, aren’t they? Not the officers, of course, but the others. They are patronizingly kind and pitying, and no one likes that, do they? You don’t want conquered people to lose their self-respect. Well, I don’t know, I’m sure——”

“Cricket and football,” the lady murmured, “and not too patriotic, and a vote, and let them conspire if they want to, and the soldiers are ‘chummy.’ Ach! We cannot do that. It is a matter of national temperament, I suppose, but it is sad, very sad. Here in five years you pacify your enemy, and in forty years we have not begun to pacify ours: it is a constant fear—a constant terror—one expects every day to hear that war has broken out. And you will not tell us your secret. How do you learn to govern like this? No,{117} it is impossible! It must be, as I said, national temperament.”

CHAPTER VIII

EDUCATION

THOSE ardent military Prussian educationalists into whose hands is given the instruction of the tender princeling usually desire to develop in their pupil characteristics approximating as nearly as possible to those of the most famous Hohenzollern of his race, Frederick the Great; and since, in their estimation, it was the harsh training of his childhood and youth which stimulated into growth the splendid qualities of his manhood, they strive to reproduce as closely as they can—of course in harmony with the more enlightened ideas of the present day—something of the same strenuous atmosphere and stern conditions which surrounded that celebrated monarch as he grew up.

The ordinary German child goes to school at a certain age, and if he is of average intelligence passes from one class to another according to the rules laid down for him, securing every year his “remove,” working steadily upward to his examination, after which he goes to the University, or if of the working classes to the earning of his daily bread until the age for military service; all is preordained, and one step leads naturally to the next. In theory this is what happens to a princeling of either sex, but the difficulties in the way are manifold and subtle; chief among them being the multiplicity of persons interested in his education, most of whom have, or think they have, paramount authority over{118} their pupil. Usually the parents of a child arrange how it shall be educated, and kings and queens are no exception to this rule, but it is the admittance of the State functionary into the business that immediately complicates matters. Perhaps nothing is worse for any young child than to perceive that there are differences of opinion about his treatment among those whom he must obey.

A young prince, having reached the age of seven, is promoted from the nursery to a room of his own, and instead of the ministrations of the faithful, crabbed, tyrannical, loving old nurse, probably of English nationality, who has washed and dressed and scolded him from birth, is given over to the care of a well-meaning but inexperienced footman and the supervision of a well-bred, well-educated, but equally inexperienced young officer, who, imbued with stern Prussian notions of discipline and a complete ignorance of childish needs, is prepared to do his duty at whatever cost and to lay the first foundations of a training which shall ultimately develop in his pupil the qualities of another Frederick the Great. It is a position requiring much tact on both sides, but who expects tact from a young officer? There is the royal mamma to be reckoned with, for she considers that she has still some rights in her infant, even if he be one day destined to wear a crown; and among various other people let us not forget the tutor, full of theories on education which he is yearning to put into practice.

The prince, then, is installed in his own apartments of the palace, where he has his bedroom, sitting-room, and schoolroom, with suitable accommodation for his governor, as the young officer who has his education in hand is officially called, his tutor and his servants. He is supposed henceforth, in the rosy dreams of the governor, to be, except at occasional meal-times and perhaps a scanty hour in the evening, entirely sequestered from his family, devoted to qualifying himself for future{119} renown in some one of the restricted careers, military for choice, open to royalty. If the prince has brothers of a suitable age they share his rooms, his governor, and his tutor, and are encouraged to share his aspirations.

The tutor draws up a portentous Stundenplan, which, copied by the footman in his intervals of leisure, is posted up in various conspicuous places, so that there is no excuse for not knowing the particular study, pause from study, walk, ride, or drill that shall be taking place at a particular hour or minute. The hitherto more or less casual education of the prince now gives way to a strictly regulated régime. He begins to follow the ordinary curriculum of the German secondary schools, and knows exactly what stage he has reached on the ladder of learning; for every child in Germany, be he prince or peasant, educated at home or at school, works to a certain universal standard which, whatever may be its drawback, establishes a curious educational bond throughout the Empire and is eminently characteristic of the nation.

The tutor, who usually resides in the royal palace, is of a type unknown in England. He is a young man, often a Kandidat for the ministry, but by no means curate-like in mind or appearance; he has passed his examination at a university (which does not necessarily imply a university education), and gained his experience of teaching in one of the Government boys’ or girls’ schools—for all State schools for girls in Germany are managed and mainly taught by men. If he has had a university education probably the only trace of it will be a disfiguring scar on his face, relic of a student’s duel, of which he will be inordinately proud; but if he is going to be a Pastor the scar will be absent, as well as the year’s military training which he would otherwise have undergone—a distinct loss for any one who has in hand a prince to educate.

A volume might be written on German tutors, more especially on those employed in royal households{120}. They are usually solemn, fleshy, conscientious young men in black frock-coats and Cylinder (top-hats), who in a few years develop an alarming embonpoint, and after finishing their work of implanting in princely minds a sufficiency of classics, history, and mathematics, retire to other spheres of labour, provided by courtly influence—spheres which they rarely consider to be worthy of the services they have rendered. They usually know nothing at all of sport, though professing to know a good deal, as in their vocabulary sport is only another name for exercise: they fondly imagine that the man who trots on horseback every morning round the Tier-Garten, especially if he wears English gaiters and carries a hunting-crop, is a sportsman, and consider any game “sporting” where there is plenty of running—even if no demand be made on the courage, decision, quickness or other mental qualifications of the players. They are unable to grasp the sporting idea, which, after attempted explanation, they believe to be a figment of the English imagination.

On the occasion of the thirteenth birthday of the Princess Victoria Louise, she invited the pupils of one of the aristocratic girls’ schools of which the Empress her mother is patroness, to have tea and games with her in the lovely Wildpark, close to the New Palace. I was asked to draw up a programme of sports for the occasion, as the games usually played on former birthdays were stigmatized by Her Royal Highness as childish and silly (“kindisch und albern”).

So a list of various obstacle and flat races was arranged, as well as potato, egg-and-spoon, and sack-races (which I own I had hesitated to introduce, fearing they were hardly fitting for the amusement of tender female German aristocracy, but, under pressure from the giver of the feast, had finally included in the programme).

A delightfully smooth grassy spot surrounded by magnificent fir-trees was the place chosen for the revels. The day was ideal for a September picnic—one of those{121} warm, mellow autumn afternoons with magic melting blue distances, when departing Summer seems to put on her loveliest attire and most attractive mood before saying her final farewell. All the mosquitoes—that plague of Potsdam in summer—had departed, the fir-trees distilled their resinous balm in the sunshine, which played in flickering light and shade on their red sienna stems and dark-green masses of foliage; the beeches were beginning to turn a tawny yellow, while there was a fresh sparkle in the air, exhilarating to the spirits and peculiarly appropriate, it was felt, to the performance of feats of skill.

Four Kremserwagen—enormous wagonettes, much in request on fête-days in Germany—brought the smiling loads of happy maidenhood, all dressed in their neat white-linen uniform dresses and sailor hats, to the appointed place. There were seventy or eighty of them altogether, besides six teachers. The proceedings began with tea, and immediately it was finished the joyous crowd of girls, reinforced by some other young princes and princesses who came accompanied by their tutors, two young men wearing orthodox top-hats and frock-coats and a general air of funereal respectability, began to play “tag,” “drop-handkerchief,” and other games which they had confidently expected as a form of diversion usual to the occasion. But they were soon stopped and told that a totally new and superior form of entertainment had been provided for them, founded on English principles, of which I was to be the organizer and exponent.

Nervous apprehension took possession of my soul as, followed by the radiantly expectant “Backfische,” I wended my way anxiously to our Sportplatz. Here the hurdles, corn-sacks, and other material had been brought from the palace stables by two respectfully-interested grooms, who fondly hoped to witness the English sports from a suitable distance, but were remorselessly sent away.

The ropes, red flags, buckets, eggs, spoons and other{122} things were regarded with excited anticipation and wonderment—especially the basket containing the prizes, which, I may as well mention here, cost individually not more than twopence each, collectively just eighteen shillings—a sum afterwards refunded to us by Her Majesty the Empress, who thought it “extremely cheap for so much joy,” providing, as it did, more than ninety prizes.

By a subtly-arranged system of handicapping and consolation races each girl, whatever her abilities in the domain of athletics, was eventually enabled to obtain one of the coveted prizes, presented, it is needless to say, at the conclusion of the proceedings by the little Princess herself, who, an ardent devotee of sport, had competed with success in many of the races, waiving, however, her right to a prize in favour of her guests.

This untried excursion into the unknown turned out a brilliant success from every point of view; the teachers, who had been formed into a Sports Committee, with quick feminine intuition had immediately grasped their duties, which they carried out with the greatest intelligence and impartiality; the girls themselves were the keenest and most enthusiastic I ever met; their achievements in the sack-race—won by the young Baroness Irma von Kramm—must have been seen to be believed (“Is this a usual English sport for ladies?” asked the head-mistress, as they hopped screaming past the winning-post); but the only rift within the lute was the attitude of the tutors, which, to say the least of it, was decidedly chilly. Perhaps they felt uncomfortable in the midst of that vortex of femeninity, or they may have been offended at not being on the Committee, or that they were not invited in their manly capacity to take the direction of affairs; be that as it may, they remained austerely aloof, only occasionally interfering when some one fell down or seemed likely to get overheated. One of more genial mood than his fellows had stood near the hurdle in the obstacle race, and on its being knocked{123}

over had proposed to substitute in its place a rope, which, as he pointed out, “could be easily lowered as each girl jumped it”; but his suggestion meeting with no approval, rather with general derision as likely to make a mock of competitors, he retired from all further active participation in our gambollings.

The sons of the Emperor were unusually fortunate in their Governor, who together with his military training possessed the broad-minded, more tolerant liberal spirit of the age, and knew when to sink the martinet in the man. He was able to realize that the formation of character is first of all a development from within, chiefly moulded by the cast of the minds that surround it—a growth of mind modified, not produced, by outward circumstances.

The Crown Prince and his brother Prince Fritz remained only for a very short time under his charge before going on to the university; but the younger Princes were in his care for some years at Ploen, where I was once invited to stay for a few weeks to give Prince Joachim lessons in English.

The “Schloss” where the Princes lived was a large, bright, pleasant country-house standing in pretty but not large grounds, bordered by forest, on the edge of the beautiful Ploener See. From the neighbouring Kadetten-Schule, where the boys undergo a semi-military training, four to six cadets were chosen to share the lessons and amusements of the Princes, always returning to the Schule to sleep.

Ploen is a very small, primitive town, so small that I made the mistake of calling it a “village” and was severely reprimanded by Prince Joachim for my blunder. It had just one long straggling street, with a few shops, and at the end close to the lake stood the Kadetten-Schule, which had formerly been the residence of the old Danish Kings, some of whose bodies lay in the crypt of the little chapel adjoining—a dismal place, full of sarcophagi huddled together in mouldering oblivion.{124}

As the boys were occupied all morning with their other studies, I, who was lodged in the Prinzen-Villa under the fostering care of the wife of the private detective, had nothing to do till one o’clock; and the Governor kindly allowed me to ride one of his two horses every morning—fine big cavalry chargers, which fled away with me in a light-hearted manner over the tree-shaded roads and fields, evidently pleased at my light weight and determined that I should have a good time. I had been allowed to bring my side-saddle from the New Palace: “the very first time,” the Master of the Horse assured me, “that such a privilege had ever been granted to any lady at court.” He jokingly said he hoped it would not establish a precedent, and I said I hoped it would. The stable authorities were always very amiable and courteous, and anxious to gratify my taste for riding.

These morning excursions allowed me to explore a great deal of the neighbourhood, which I should otherwise have been unable to see. All this district of Holstein is rather flat, but beautifully wooded, with many lakes which add a wistful calm beauty to the sleepy landscape. There is something reminiscent of England in the farm-houses and the hedgerows, which are never seen in Brandenburg, where the fields are unfenced.

At one o’clock I was at the Schloss for luncheon, where I had to talk English with the Prince and his cadets—charming boys, some of whom I had met in Potsdam, where they lived. None of the tutors knew any English, though one of them had evidently learned some from a book which professed—without fulfilling its profession—to teach “without a teacher.”

After luncheon the boys, including the Prince, who was then about fifteen, all went with me down to the “island” which lay in the lake, and where farming operations on a small scale were carried on.

A long narrow road led to the island, which was really{125} a peninsula, and there everybody, including the Prince and myself, engaged in the occupation—it being the season of potato harvest—of digging potatoes out of the ground and gathering them into heaps. The coachman and footman and a young officer, a sort of deputy-governor, all assisted in this work. Some geese came along and gobbled up the stray small potatoes we threw in their direction, and the sun, reflected from the lake in front, shone brightly on us as we toiled, girt round with potato-sacks to keep our clothes clean. This participation in agricultural pursuits is a part of the training devised by the Governor, but, as he himself was not an agriculturist, I doubt whether it was really as beneficial as it might have been. The propagation and development of seeds, the rearing of young animals, and the study of their wants, would, I think, have been less monotonous than this incessant potato gathering, which we pursued nearly every afternoon while I was there.

At five, when the afternoon train to Kiel was seen in the distance, we took off our sack-aprons and went home to tea, and I was free for an hour or so, when I gave an English lesson to the whole class of boys, which nearly always also included their Governor and the officer from the Schule who was teaching them English, a very pleasant, kind young man, who sat humbly (metaphorically speaking) at my feet and was anxious to learn all he could. They had been reading Dickens’ “Christmas Carol"—everybody in Germany reads Dickens, and gets quite a wrong idea of present-day English life from his books—but I produced Conan Doyle’s “Adventures of Brigadier Gerard,” as being in my opinion more suitable for boys, as well as more colloquial and military in tone. I never had a class which hung so much on my words before. As they all spoke with a very bad accent, I read to them myself, so that they could hear English, and then we discussed the story and the meaning of obscure words and phrases. They{126} were very alert and intelligent, and soon became deeply absorbed in the “Brigadier.”

Sometimes in the mornings after my ride I would walk with the officer who taught English and converse with him, so that he might have the benefit of my accent; and once he took me to the Schule and installed me in his class, to hear how he instructed his thirty boys there. He was a most intelligent teacher, and spoke very correct English. It amused me to hear some of the pupils reciting “Rule Britannia” out of their English Reading-Books. It sounded like a derisive challenge as they declaimed the poem with that clear, distinct utterance specially cultivated in all German schools. I could with difficulty keep from smiling to hear a young German piping its bombastic lines:

while Kiel, with its rapidly increasing war-fleet, lay only an hour’s journey away.

But they were very pleasant and kindly, all those German officers; they showed me their class-rooms, their gymnasium, everything that they thought could interest me. If they knew only two words of English they said those two; but as I was by that time a fairly fluent speaker of German, we were able to exchange views without any difficulty. That rather hard, harsh, overbearing Prussian spirit that one meets in Berlin here seemed softened and humanized, and the atmosphere of the place was not so rigid and mechanical as military institutions are apt to be. It is true that the boys, whenever addressed, instantly fell into those stiff, wooden military attitudes which are a little disconcerting to unaccustomed people, squaring their shoulders, putting their heels together and lifting up their chins; but when one got used to it it was not so noticeable.{127}

The general impression gained from the military ideal as applied to education in Germany is that, while excellently thorough and practical, it yet ignores too much those other world-forces due to science, invention and discovery, which day by day are changing the conditions of life among the nations—that it cherishes a spirit more suitable to past ages than to present progress. It seems to breed up a class of men who are earnest, loyal, and self-sacrificing, but express extremely narrow views, who see and judge everything from a purely military, autocratic standpoint, and are quite unable to sympathize with or understand the aspirations of the normal human being towards personal initiative and liberty of action.

Crushed as a nation a hundred years since, under the great Napoleon, the members of this military caste are still ruled by the fear of despotism from without, and ignore the despotism within of their own creation, still fight ideas with physical force, hold the uniform as sacrosanct, are overbearing, touchy, often (with, of course, many exceptions) insufferably vain and spiteful. They realize most emphatically that they are the masters, not the servants, of the German people; they are a class aloof, apart, a class wielding tremendous social and political power. Sometimes it seems almost a pity that Carlyle rediscovered the virtues of that “iracund Hohenzollern” Frederick William I. So many latter-day Prussians, without possessing his sturdy virtues, seem to model their conduct on his, and try to impress the world by the more disagreeable, rather than the more praiseworthy traits of his vivid forceful personality.{128}

CHAPTER IX

THE BAUERN-HAUS AND SCHRIPPEN-FEST

THE Bauern-Haus or peasant cottage which the Emperor gave to his daughter at Christmas was built and ready for occupation by the time she returned to the New Palace in the spring. It was solemnly inaugurated, being unlocked by the Emperor and presented by him to the Princess, who was overjoyed at having a place where she could cook and wash clothes to her heart’s content; for, like most people of royal birth, she was attracted chiefly towards those occupations in which she was least likely ever to be engaged.

Before the advent of the Bauern-Haus we had made toffee on a doll’s stove in a doll’s saucepan, but the brocaded chairs and sofas of the rooms of the Prinzen-Wohnung were an unsuitable background for tentative culinary efforts, and the Princess sensibly remarked that grown-up people had not dolls’ appetites and she wanted to cook something for “Papa.”

It is true that, having a cold, he had partaken of the toffee (which turned out rather soft) with much appreciation, but we were eager to prove ourselves capable of higher achievements.

All the dolls’ crockery-ware, saucepans and frying-pans were taken over to the Haus, which was built in one of the side gardens a little distance from the Palace.

The first time we indulged there in an orgie of cooking, the Princess, wishing to play the part properly, donned an embroidered peasant’s dress which had been presented to her by the good Bauern-Volk who came to Donau-Eschingen. We met the guard on our way to the garden. They were dreadfully nonplussed when{129} they first caught sight of her in this costume, not being sure if it really was the Princess or not, but finally decided to render the customary honours. The wearer of the dress had thrown herself so entirely into the part of Bauern-frau that this obvious anachronism annoyed her extremely. She found the costume, moreover, rather tight and hot, and not very practical for beating eggs in, and therefore decided not to wear it again when she really wanted to work.

As I was the only lady in the Palace having the faintest theoretical or practical idea of the art of cooking, I was chosen to guide the children in their first attempts. Two footmen preceded us, carrying firewood, matches and coal, with which they were to start the little tiled stove, while half a dozen children followed with flour, eggs, butter, milk, and other materials, all of which had been commandeered from the royal kitchens.

The stoutest heart might have quailed, the best cook in the world might have trembled, at the enterprise I had undertaken. To cook, or rather to teach a lot of riotous, screaming children to cook—on a stove whose capacities were not yet known, in a kitchen supplied chiefly with inadequate and doll-like utensils—a sort of combined tea and supper to which an Emperor and Empress and goodness knew how many more people had been hospitably, but I could not but feel recklessly, invited!

It was very hot. Mosquitoes swarmed everywhere. The chimney smoked relentlessly till one of the footmen discovered a damper. The wood was wet. There was no water, no knives and forks, and we had forgotten the salt; but the affair had to be a success, and we set out perseveringly to carry it through.

The Princess had decided that we would have pancakes for tea—the usual English kind made with eggs and milk—and the six children were accordingly sent outside on to the veranda to beat eggs, while I tried{130} to review my forces and collect a few ideas—a dreadful business with a swarm of children, asking questions in the rather loud-voiced German way, running up to show their eggs, or spilling them on the floor, while not a single cup or saucer was as yet in its place.

By some miraculous means we managed to ice a cake with chocolate—a sheer tour-de-force of inventive genius, for I had never done such a thing before in my life. We cut quantities of very thin bread and butter, at which one of the footmen displayed unsuspected dexterity. The much-beaten eggs duly mixed with flour and milk made excellent pancakes. Each child had “tasted” of them liberally, pronouncing them “Grossartig! Prachtvoll!”

All too soon the Emperor and Empress were seen wending their way in our direction, accompanied, to the Princess’s great indignation, by two adjutants.

“I never invited the gentlemen,” she said in tones of annoyance; “there won’t be half enough pancakes to go round.”

I remained discreetly in the background in the kitchen, concentrating my mind on frying. The tea was good because it was just freshly made, and the pancakes for the same reason, hot from the fire and spared the usual long journey down the tunnel from the Palace kitchens, were, in spite of the inadequate doll’s plates on which they had perforce to be served, crisp and toothsome.

The Emperor ate with the greatest appetite and appreciation, praising his daughter’s cooking, and obviously believing, in the usual facile masculine way, that she had suddenly acquired this difficult art. I heard her holding forth on the necessity of beating the eggs severely for ten minutes at least (she did not mention those which had escaped from the basin to the ground) and talking at large with the air of a person who had plumbed all the depths of culinary difficulties.

“Yes, of course they stick to the pan if you don’t{131} put lots of butter—lots and lots.” We had indeed used several pounds.

I think His Majesty accounted for four pancakes and then concentrated on chocolate cake and bread-and-butter, after which the Empress noticed my absence, and I was compelled reluctantly to appear—very red-faced and greasy—and modestly accept the Imperial congratulations on my successful efforts. Room was made for me to sit down with the rest, and the chocolate cake was warmly recommended to my attention.

I respectfully but firmly pointed out that not a single German lady inhabiting the palace confessed to any culinary knowledge whatever. They had all been approached on the subject, and their ideas were found hazy and vague in the extreme. Not one had been in a position to help in that strenuous afternoon’s work. (His Majesty is subject to the illusion that all German women are extremely domesticated.) The Emperor’s blue eyes twinkled.

“Ah, ah!” he laughed, “the British ‘Dreadnought’ again to the fore.”

That was his favourite name for me. It had been bestowed on the birthday of the Princess—the only one of those anniversaries on which the Emperor was present, for he was usually away at the autumn manœuvres on that date (September 13), but this one year he happened to be at home. Although as a rule only one of the three ladies of the Princess, German, French, or English, accompanied her to the Frühstücks-tafel, on this occasion in honour of the day all were invited, and as we followed her into the dining-room an adjutant remarked in the Emperor’s hearing upon Prinzessin’s Geschwader (Princess’s Squadron), referring to ourselves.

This epithet as applied to the trio amused His Majesty greatly, and he tried during the meal to fit us all three{132} with appropriate nautical names, one—the German Ober-Gouvernante—being called the “tug,” Mademoiselle the “torpedo-boat,” while amid the hilarity of the assembled company he decided that “Dreadnought” was the term which best applied to me; and although the two other ladies escaped any further reference to their supposed prototypes, I was not so fortunate, for the name “Dreadnought” stuck to me thenceforth. When I appeared in a new hat or dress His Majesty would whimsically remark, “Here comes the Dreadnought in a new coat of paint,” or some equally embarrassing observation. Perhaps I was considered to be uncompromisingly British, or representative of my nation, but when the Princess curled her arm round my neck and murmured, “Good old Dreadnought!” I did not mind the epithet so much, and grew in time to like it.

It was at the same Frühstücks-tafel that we three ladies for the first and only time in our lives had the privilege of “taking wine” with His Majesty. Usually on birthdays and anniversaries of various kinds it is a custom at court to stand up and clink glasses together before drinking, but this is not often done when the Emperor is present. He sometimes “drinks wine” with any particular gentleman whom he wishes to honour, who stands up, takes his full glass in his hand, bows to the Emperor, and empties it at a draught before sitting down again. I had never seen a lady invited to “take wine” with His Majesty, and believed it to be a privilege reserved for the sterner sex; but while I was chatting to an officer at table, the one on the other side, he who had called us a Geschwader, touched my arm and whispered “His Majesty wishes to drink wine with you. Aufgestanden und Ausgetrunken! (standing, and no heel-taps!)”

The Emperor was smiling in my direction, glass in hand; so I stood up at once with my champagne glass filled to the brim (fortunately I habitually replenished{133} it with water every time I drank) and was able to toss it off very creditably, thanks to the adjutant’s kindly hint and the comparative innocuousness of the beverage. His Majesty also “took wine,” of course, with the other ladies of the Geschwader.

The Bauern-Haus remained for several years a centre of joyous-hearted hospitality and reckless and extravagant cookery. Once the two cousins of the Princess came over from Glienicke to help to prepare supper, accompanied by a French governess and an elegantly-attired tutor in a top-hat and frock-coat. There was no place in our cookery scheme into which the tutor fitted. So we sent him and the French lady to walk about the gardens together, while the children, in a glow of enthusiasm, sat down to peel potatoes for an Irish stew. Prince Leopold (the cousin) insisted—in spite of advice to the contrary—in also trying to peel the onions; but after weeping copious tears over the first one, allowed somebody else to finish. Besides the stew, we had chops, poached eggs, pancakes, and lemonade.

The Empress, in a very light, elegant toilette, arrived at an acute stage of activity, when every child was running, shrieking, clattering glasses, or spilling water, while the sputter of chops and pancakes and the reek of their frying filled the small kitchen to repletion.

Fortunately we had long since been supplied with full-sized cooking utensils and the doll-things had been scrapped.

A heavy thunderstorm once threatened at the very moment when the supper had reached the culminating point of perfection. We had fried our pancakes (they were a favourite dish and always appeared on the menu) to the accompaniment of rumbles of thunder and blue flashes of lightning, but the Princess ignored the gathering storm, absorbed in the mixing of her batter and the smoothness of her potato purée. As I emerged in a decidedly heated state from the kitchen, I caught a mental picture, which still remains in my memory, of{134} a protesting footman standing on the veranda pointing to the darkened heavens, and of the Princess with a fork in her hand, which she flourished in one hand towards the sky (like another Ajax defying the lightning), while she emphatically refused to return to the house before supper was eaten.

“Our beautiful supper,” she said: “no, I won’t go in. The storm’s nothing. It’s going over.” Crashes of thunder punctuated the sentence.

A harassed Ober-Gouvernante appeared round the bushes and commanded our instant return to the palace; but after several minutes of heated discussion the storm actually did pass over, and our supper was eaten to the sound of its faint rumbling retreat towards the river.

Another time we ventured to make vanilla-ice, and sent to the kitchen for the ice-machine. As we were mixing the milk and eggs and vanilla flavouring, four white-capped cooks in their spotless kitchen livery were seen dragging along some sort of wheeled vehicle on which reposed the heavy ice-machine, which we found to our astonishment to be an apparatus almost as large as a piano.

It was lifted down—as a matter of fact I think two cooks might have managed it—and the guests took turns at the handle with such goodwill that unfortunately we rather overdid it, and the iced custard became of such a hard rock-like consistency that we had to thaw it a little before it was fit to eat. But it was pronounced “quite delicious,” and we were sorry we had not made a larger quantity.

Pfingsten, as Whitsuntide is called in Germany, is celebrated by many pleasant customs. It is the season when all the village people place big boughs of young larch on each side of the doorway to welcome the returning spring. Every street breaks out into a sudden growth of unaccustomed greenery, and in the churches young larch trees cut from the hill-side are placed on each side of the altar.{135}

In the New Palace the garrison celebrated Whit Monday by the Schrippen-Fest, a dinner instituted by Frederick the Great for their benefit. All the previous week the soldiers might have been seen busily at work in their spare time making the long green garlands of pine and fir twigs with which every good German loves to give outward expression of his inward joy. They erected round the arcade of the “Communs” plank tables and benches covered with a wooden roof upheld by posts round which the garlands were entwined. Early on the morning of Whit Monday big copper cauldrons containing beef, prunes and rice, were set boiling out of doors.

Originally the feast had begun in a small way by the distribution to the soldiers of Schrippen, or small loaves of white bread, but in the course of years it had developed into a substantial meal.

To the Schrippen-Fest the whole Diplomatic Corps and many officers and ladies are invited, and there is a gay assemblage of people at the military service for the garrison, which takes place out of doors, under the trees at one end of the palace. After it is finished the Emperor and Empress, with their family and guests, go to partake of the feast with the soldiers. They do not as a rule sit down, but eat their meat and prunes standing. All the ladies in their trained silk dresses, the ambassadors, generals, and adjutants in their uniforms, are served with a plateful of boiled beef, and eat it wherever they can find elbow-room. When Their Majesties have finished, they walk, followed by the assembled company, down between the tables, inspecting the soldiers and asking them questions. “Where do you come from? How long have you served? Have you had a good dinner?” seem to be the stock questions, varied by inquiries as to name, father’s business, and any other queries that seem to fit the occasion.

Here it may be remarked that the Emperor and his family possess in an unusual degree what Kipling calls{136} the “common touch.” They know how to talk to poor men, working men, without any shadow of that patronizing affability often mistakenly employed by one class when trying to be nice to another which is not on the same social plane.

An absolutely frank and unreserved interest in other people’s affairs is implied in their conversation, an obvious desire really to know something of the conditions of other people’s lives. It is not perfunctory, though it easily, perhaps, might become so, especially in view of the thousands of soldiers and other people to whom the Emperor talks in the course of a year. The Princess herself from childhood always had the happy knack of choosing the right thing to say to the poorest children she met. She always wanted to know their names, how many brothers and sisters they had, what class they were in at school, and what they were going to be when they grew up. One small boy confessed once to a desire to be a “chimney sweep.” Never was she at a loss for something appropriate to say to the most cross-grained and morose of her fellow-mortals; she never appeared to be shy, but, apparently quite at her ease herself, made every one else feel the same. She was not a devoted student of books, but possessed initiative and, as far as her experience went, correct judgment—two invaluable qualities where princes are concerned.

About a mile from the New Palace lived the only unmarried sister of the Empress, the Princess Féodora of Schleswig-Holstein, a woman of many intellectual gifts and a very striking and interesting personality, possessing great influence over the children of her sister, who spent much time in “Tante Féo’s” beloved society. Her ideas were very democratic. She detested the atmosphere of courts and all the restrictions and ceremonies incident to court existence. She was a very clever artist, and author of several books dealing with the life of the peasantry and showing a marvellous insight into their methods of thought.{137}

Her home was for some years in a large farmhouse belonging to the Crown known as “Bornstedter Gut,” lived in for some time by the Emperor and Empress Frederick. The ground-floor was inhabited by the bailiff and his family. The rest of the house belonged to the Princess, to whom it had been lent by her brother-in-law the German Emperor, with whom she was a great favourite, in spite of the fact that on nearly every possible subject their views clashed uncompromisingly. She furnished it all according to her own taste, doing her shopping in Berlin like any ordinary Bürger-frau among the crowd of other buyers. She loved the realities of life, and refused to have things made easier for her because she was the sister of the Empress. Only seven years older than her eldest nephew, the Crown Prince, she was from childhood the delightful play-fellow of the children of the Empress and of her other sisters, Princess Frederick Leopold of Prussia and the Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein.

I first saw her at Bornstedt, where I had come to fetch my little Princess, who had been spending the afternoon with her aunt. The carriage I was in drove past a big farmyard, where waggon-horses were being harnessed, up to the door of a big stone house pleasantly shaded by chestnut trees. As I got out of the carriage a sudden irruption of screaming children, boys and girls of all ages in a state of extreme heat and untidiness, among whom I recognized my Princess, burst from the dark doorway of a cow-house, and trampling and stumbling over heaps of farmyard litter, fled with shrieks up a perpendicular ladder into a hay-loft. They were followed at a short interval by a lady clad in a tweed skirt, a striped blouse and a Panama hat, who likewise flew up the ladder with remarkable agility and disappeared. Uproarious screams were presently heard issuing from the loft. They were evidently playing Versteckens, and my coachman confided to me that the lady of the ladder was Princess Féodora herself.{138}

The Princess disliked the ordinary court circle, with its cramped, narrow views, and loved to surround herself with clever, unconventional people, whatever their rank in life. With her it was a positive obsession that all her royal nephews and nieces should know life as it really was, not as seen blurred and transformed through a court atmosphere, with the hideous, ugly realities of existence hidden away and covered up. She taught them many perhaps disagreeable truths about themselves, which they would have heard from no one else. The trend of modern thought and contemporary politics both found in her an earnest and intelligent student. With poverty, with humble folk, she had an intense sympathy, a passionate tenderness for all simple struggling existences.

Although possessing a conspicuous sense of humour, in her books she wrote only of the sombre side of life, the bare starving sand-dunes of her native Holstein, the resinous breath of its pine-woods, the chill sad beat on the shore of its grey sea-waves. She depicted the strenuous toil, the unrelieved labour, the sordid existence and struggles of the peasantry.

“The only truths in life,” she makes one of her characters say, “are founded upon Work. Everything else is false.”

In “Tante Féo’s” company the little Princess had the privilege of seeing the first aeroplane flight of her life made by Orville Wright, who had installed himself and his machine on the Bornstedter Feld, where he was instructing the German officers in the art of flying.

One day at the end of September 1909 came a telephone message from one of the Princes in Potsdam, saying that Orville Wright was flying on the “Feld.” Without delay two “autos” were ordered by Her Majesty, one for herself and her sister and the Princess, the other for the suite; and the palace buzzed like a hive while footmen flew about summoning the ladies to get ready at once. The two professors who ought to have been instructing{139} the Princess in literature and history were sent off to the scene of action in a carriage (a propitiatory proceeding suggested, I believe, by the Princess herself, who never failed to display a certain diplomatic tact), while Mademoiselle and I huddled on our outdoor things and tied motor-veils with tremblingly excited fingers. It was de rigueur to get excited over flying, and nothing annoyed the Princess more than an attitude of philosophic calm.

We picked up Prince August Wilhelm and Prince George of Greece on the way, and sped onwards to the big cavalry-exercise ground, over which the cars bumped at a furious pace. When we arrived, however, there was no sign of Mr. Wright. A gentleman appeared, who announced with a pronounced American accent that all flying was finished for that day, as the police had gone home again and there was no one to keep the crowd from straying on to the ground. But Her Majesty particularly wished Princess Féo to see a flight, as she was going away the same evening, and there was a discussion as to whether soldiers should be summoned from the adjacent barracks to keep the course. The American gentleman seemed to think that would make no difference to Mr. Wright, but at last a man was sent to his tent to announce Her Majesty’s arrival, and presently he came along buttoning up his leather jacket as he walked—a quiet, taciturn individual who spoke in rather a soft, gentle voice when he spoke at all, which was not often.

Some policemen on bicycles had materialized out of the surrounding landscape, and began to drive the crowd back to the road, where they were kept penned up by the arm of the law while we stood in the middle of the field to watch the flight.

A few days later the Emperor himself went with the Empress and Princess to see Wright fly. It was the middle of October, when the days are getting short, and there had been some delay in starting, so{140} that as the cars tore on to the Feld the sun was setting in great clouds of scarlet and purple, and night fast approaching. Wright was waiting beside his machine, and after a word with the Emperor put on his jacket and goggles, and in a few seconds the motor began to hum steadily, the propellers whizzed round, and the huge machine moved along smoothly and swiftly up into the darkening heavens. Its wide-spread planes showed blackly for a moment against the intense sunset background, then it went droning round the immense space, rising higher and higher towards the stars, which were now shining brightly in the deep blue of the sky. For nearly half an hour, away above our heads, the machine circled and dived and rose again, humming smoothly and sleepily in the distance, then coming nearer with a threatening murmur, to rise and disappear again into the darkness, reappearing presently like a gigantic moth. At last it descended, dropping lightly within a few feet of us. The crowd on the edge of the field cheered heartily.

The Emperor and Empress congratulated Wright, and there was a great explanation of “how it was done,” though most of the officers found a difficulty in understanding the American accent. Presently a signed photograph of the Emperor, which one of the adjutants had been carrying, was produced and given to Wright by His Majesty; and then a lady who had been modestly hovering in the background—Miss Katherine Wright, the aeronaut’s sister—was called up and presented, and she took charge of the photograph and made delightful American remarks about it. By this time it was absolutely dark, but the powerful acetylene lights of the three cars illuminated the scene. The Emperor could not tear himself away from the aeroplane, the first he had yet seen; and while he was still asking questions I talked with Miss Wright, an extremely charming woman, who said that this was probably her brother’s last flight on German soil. They had already stayed a day longer{141} than intended, so that he might fly before the Emperor, before departing for Paris and London en route for America.

For a long time in Germany the airships—the “Zeppelins” as they are popularly called—occupied the popular imagination much more than the flying-machines with which the Germans have recently won such distinction. Once in the earlier years of Zeppelin’s monster air-craft a message came to the court that he was flying from Frankfort to Berlin, which he would reach somewhere about five o’clock that afternoon. There was the usual hurrying to and fro. The Emperor, Empress, Princess and suite hurled themselves into motor-cars and hurried towards Berlin, but after waiting several hours on the Tempelhofer Feld, with nothing to eat and not much to do, they returned without a glimpse of any airship, as the rumours of its coming had been entirely unfounded.

However, later on in the year Zeppelin announced his intention to bring his airship to Berlin.

On the day fixed all the shops were closed at noon, and the whole population turned out and walked up and down the street with their eyes fixed heavenwards towards the lovely blue sky, for the weather was superb.

Every lady or gentleman having any connection with the court was invited by ticket either to the Tempelhofer Feld, at which the airship was to descend, or to the roof of the Schloss itself, as the Zeppelin was to manœuvre round the building. But towards noon, just as all the excursion trains from the country had brought in the surrounding inhabitants to swell the already dense crowd of sky-gazers, a special edition of the newspapers was issued announcing an injury to the airship which prevented further flight. So every one went sadly home again.

The next day, Sunday, news came that the defect had been repaired and that the airship with Count Zeppelin on board would appear about noon. This{142} change of plan was rather inconvenient for several reasons, for there was a newly restored church to be dedicated in the presence of the Emperor and Empress and the chief military authorities. A gentleman in attendance said that never before had he seen such an obviously distracted congregation at any church function. The long-drawn-out service, the long-winded address (German sermons are of the old-fashioned type and usually last at least an hour) were listened to with hardly concealed impatience and lack of interest; and the clergy themselves seemed to keep one ear turned towards that heaven to which they were directing their audience, in apprehension of hearing before they had finished their discourse that mighty droning which would proclaim Zeppelin’s arrival.

From the windows of the Schloss, overlooking the courtyard, it was usual to see the adjutants who had accompanied His Majesty descend from their cars with dignity—that dignity appropriate to a not-too-pronounced embonpoint—salute the guard with grave courtesy and deliberation, and then retire without undue haste from the public view. But on this occasion they tumbled out of the cars and rushed up the steps like schoolboys, colliding as they ran with the footmen and Burschen who came running with their flat undress caps to exchange for the spiked head-gear they had worn in church.

It is a popular myth that the German is phlegmatic. He is nothing of the kind. He is extraordinarily excitable on occasion. He gets out of temper, shouts and wrings his hands in moments of stress, and sheds tears easily. His feelings are on the surface. His military calm is acquired. He abandons it and becomes almost hysterical when something touches his heart and imagination.

The advent of Zeppelin in his airship was the culminating act of a great national triumph. The indomitable old man, who had worked so long and so{143} pluckily at his herculean task, was at last to receive some of the homage due to his tenacity and self-sacrifice. So no wonder the people thronged the streets and crowded the housetops.

The fashionable crowd ascended to the roof of the Schloss by devious ways, through little dark sculleries, up queer steep steps and ladders, past funny little apartments smelling strongly of cheese and garlic, where the families of some of the servants live tucked away in a corner of the big building, out on to the copper-covered roof along narrow plank paths, made primarily for the use of the sentries who must nightly patrol these upper regions. Some of them have inscribed verses on the walls, conveying discontent at the atmospheric conditions prevailing there on winter nights.

The sky above was gloriously blue, and as far as the eye could reach, on every one of the many flat roofs in the vicinity were masses of people assembled—not, as is usually the case, a mere fringe of daring spirits leaning over the parapet to view something below, but crowds spread over the whole surface. Each man, woman and child held a fluttering flag, which they waved tempestuously as an outlet for overflowing emotions. One could almost see the palpitating heart-beat of the nation.

At last, after an hour or two of waiting, an electric thrill ran through the elevated crowd. Some one had caught sight of the airship. By degrees every one found it—a tiny cigar-shaped speck, hardly visible against the deep blue distance. A wave of cheering swelled and ebbed and died away. The speck grew gradually larger. Cheers in the distant part of the city reached us in ever-increasing volume. The droning of the engines was plainly audible. Presently the “dirigible” could be seen over the Brandenburger Tor. Still more frantic cheers arose from the crowded streets, the packed windows and roofs. The great machine swung steadily up Unter den Linden and sailed magnificently round and round the Schloss, while the waves{144} of cheering were crested with a white fluttering of handkerchiefs like a storm-tossed sea. Again and again the “Zeppelin” made its stately circuit of the royal castle, then slowly turned and headed for the Tempelhofer Feld, where the Emperor and Empress with their family and all the greatest men in Germany were waiting to congratulate the splendid old veteran.

CHAPTER X

ROYAL WEDDINGS

ROYAL betrothals and weddings have within the last few years been of frequent occurrence at the Prussian Court. Many people seem doubtful as to whether these marriages were the result of political arrangement or of the mutual attraction which is the chief factor in such affairs where humbler folk are concerned. Of my own personal knowledge I am able to affirm that politics and worldly considerations have had nothing to say in the matter.

German royalties are peculiarly fortunate in having an unusually wide range of choice. The Fatherland is rich in numerous prolific princely families, quite unremarkable for wealth or extent of territory—some indeed are conspicuously poverty-stricken—but all of them classed as ebenbürtig, that is equal in birth, to royalty, and therefore the female members are eligible as brides for the occupiers of the most powerful thrones. The Empire has long been the happy hunting-ground for would-be bridegrooms.

The first royal Verlobung which took place within range of my cognizance was that of the young Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, son of the Duchess of Albany, who was staying in Berlin Schloss at the same time as{145} the two nieces of the Empress, the Princesses Victoria and Alexandra of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg—two bright, pretty, fair-haired girls who had come to spend the season at Berlin with their aunt.

“Dick and Charlie are engaged,” she said, skipping about all over the room. “Isn’t it nice? Just think! Dick and Charlie!”

“Dick” was the pet name of the Princess Victoria, the eldest of five sisters.

I expressed my astonishment and pleasure at the news, and the Princess gave me several reasons why she was not so surprised as some people, although I am convinced that she really had known very little beforehand. But at any rate she thought it most interesting that they should become engaged “in Mamma’s sitting-room.”

The following September the Crown Prince announced, in a series of laconic telegrams to his friends, his own engagement to the young Duchess Cécile of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

“We are engaged.—William and Cécile,” was the message sent by the happy Braut-paar.

The Crown Prince had from early youth been frequently in love with various pretty young girls within the range of his acquaintanceship. But these harmless little love-affairs, so frank, so delightfully obvious, and so soon dispersed into thin air by the advent of some new and equally ineligible charmer, culminated at last in his meeting with the young Duchess Cécile, a dark-eyed, clear-complexioned, tall, slim maiden, just out of the schoolroom.

Any one seeing the happy pair together need not have troubled to ask if they were in love with each other. It was palpably the case, and they had not the least desire to conceal the fact. When the young Braut came to stay at the Neues Palais after her engagement, a very{146} small party—just the ladies-in-waiting and the two young Princesses—were dining together in the Apollo-Saal, for the Emperor and Empress were absent for the day. Suddenly a great clattering was heard outside the window overlooking the terrace, and the Crown Prince appeared on horseback, having ridden up the stone steps. His young Braut was charmed at his daring, and they sat down at table side by side, obviously absorbed in each other, while the ladies talked about the weather and tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. They were as genuinely and whole-heartedly attracted, as palpably all-in-all to each other, as the poorest young couple who bravely face the world together. Nothing but personal liking entered into their marriage.

It is a pity that people are so sceptical as to any royal alliance being founded on any other than political considerations. Yet politics are rarely either forwarded or hindered nowadays by matrimonial arrangements; and if propinquity, as most people believe, is the chief factor in bringing about the usual love-affair, then it is obviously most natural for a prince to be attracted towards the pretty girl—for many princesses are remarkably pretty—whom he meets on equal terms, with whom there is no consciousness of difference of rank, the girl who has been brought up in the same atmosphere as himself, with whom familiarity has bred a certain contempt for court ceremonies and court traditions, who is related, perhaps, like himself, to various crowned heads whom they both call “Uncle,” one with whom he has a common ground of interest, bonds of relationship and mutual knowledge.

As soon as the announcement of this engagement became public, the postcard shops of Berlin, whose name is legion, became mere picture-galleries for the illustration of every possible moment of the life and movements of the young couple. A whole army of photographers must have been employed to lie in wait and photograph them under almost every conceivable circumstance of{147} their lives. Certainly German royalties are very good-natured in this respect.

First there was the official photograph of the Braut-Paar sitting hand-in-hand, as is the orthodox photographic pose in Germany for all newly engaged couples. Then there was a card called “The First Congratulations”: rows and rows of little schoolboys and girls of Schwerin, each with a bouquet of wilted flowers in the hand, and the girls with wreaths entwined in their hair, presented in turn their offerings to the smiling young Duchess, while the Crown Prince stood by, helping things along to the best of his ability. “The First Drive” pictured them both in a sort of dog-cart, duly chaperoned, taking the air together, and there were dozens more cards portraying them at tennis, drinking tea in the garden, or nursing the dogs. One felt that one knew how every moment of their time was employed.

Although they were engaged in the month of September, their marriage did not take place until the beginning of the following June. Ordinary weddings usually mean a time of considerable stress to every one concerned, but they are epochs of honeyed leisure as compared with the multiple ceremonies attendant on royal functions of the same kind.

For weeks beforehand no one dared to let their thoughts wander from the impending event. A few days before the State entry of the bride into the town, we all had to leave the New Palace and migrate to Berlin.

A State entry means, for the bride, not only an entry in State carriages but in State attire, wearing semievening dress and a long train.

The day before it took place the bride arrived with her mother, the Duchess Anastasia, and took up her residence for the night in Belle Vue, which was outside the city boundary. The next day, which turned out remarkably hot, almost too hot to be agreeable, all Berlin was astir early, and the streets were lavishly{148} bewreathed and beflagged. Along the route large wooden stands had been erected, for as far as the populace is concerned the entry is the only part of the State ceremony which they can enjoy, as the wedding itself takes place privately in the Chapel of the Schloss.

So the good people of Berlin are astir betimes, and take their places along the Tier-Garten, or as near as they can to the Brandenburger Tor, at a very early hour, quite regardless of the fact that the procession will not start before three. But they know there will be plenty to be seen. Royal carriages, carrying notable personalities, will pass to and fro, and the Emperor and Empress, the “little Princess” and her brothers, will doubtless be in evidence. So they stand from hour to hour waiting patiently in the heat. In the stables great activity prevails. The eight fine black horses which draw the bride’s State carriage have been daily exercised together, wearing the heavy red brass-studded harness. The coach itself is made almost entirely of glass in the upper panels, and is most beautifully painted and decorated. Three gorgeously-clad footmen cling behind it, and two equally gorgeous pages hold a seemingly precarious and uncomfortable footing behind the coachman’s box, crowded up between it and the curvature of the coach itself in a very complicated and mysterious manner. The ponderous vehicle swings heavily from side to side, and has a peculiar cross-Channel motion.

Its progress down towards Belle Vue is watched by crowds of delighted spectators. The sight of its eight slowly-pacing horses, each wearing wonderful plumes of ostrich feathers, and led at a foot’s pace by grooms in red coats encrusted with gold lace, fill the crowd with joyful ecstasy. They forget the heat and thirst and the long hours they have already waited.

All the master-butchers of Berlin are very active and not a little apprehensive, for it is an old-established privilege of their guild to ride, in top-hats and frock-coats, at the head of the bride’s procession, and they are{149} divided between the fearful joy and doubtful pleasure of the enterprise. They have been diligently pursuing equestrian exercise for the last few weeks. Many who never made acquaintance with a saddle before—except in the form of mutton—have been learning, at the nearest “Tattersall,” some of the elementary mysteries of horsemanship. Quiet, staid horses of mature years have suddenly risen in price, and horse-dealers have reaped a rich harvest from certain ancient but good-looking crocks which know how to walk with an air of magnificence.

All these black-coated gentry assemble at the entrance to Belle Vue. They are in the happy position of seeing to advantage all that goes on. They may not look quite as smart as the mounted Uhlans of the escort, but they add a quaint, homely German touch to the picture which is very agreeable.

Only State carriages are allowed to drive, as they do on this occasion, along the gravelled centre of the avenue of lime-trees on Unter den Linden. All the Stall-Meisters, Sattel-Meisters, Wagen-Meisters and other stable functionaries are assembled in Belle Vue Garden, while the Master of the Horse in his plumed cocked hat casts an eye over the horses and hopes that those well-trained quadrupeds will not be stirred out of their usual calm by the unaccustomed character of the day’s proceedings.

From the Schloss there is an excellent view of the long procession as it at last comes slowly up the Linden. It stops at the Brandenburger Tor, where the Bürger-Meister—the Lord Mayor of Berlin—has the pleasing duty of making a speech of welcome to the bride, who is expected to make a short speech in reply. A bouquet is also presented by one of a galaxy of palpitating white-clad maidens, and, headed by the black-coated butchers, amid the fluttering pennons of the Uhlans the big coach swings slowly on its way, the bride smiling and bowing incessantly. Never was anyone more joyously responsive{150} than the future Crown-Princess, who possesses in a high degree that capacity for appearing pleased and amused which is so invaluable to royalties. She probably does not know how to look bored. The world is to her an intensely amusing, interesting place. That day she drove triumphantly into the hearts of the people, where she has remained enthroned ever since—a stimulating, charming presence.

Besides the bride, the coach contained the Empress and the Mistress of the Robes, and when it turned at last from the shouting, waving populace into the courtyard of the Schloss, the butchers having previously ridden in at one gate and out again at the other, the Emperor, who had driven up earlier from Belle Vue, was standing at the entrance to welcome his future daughter-in-law, while the bridegroom waited at the head of his regiment, which formed the guard of honour for the occasion.

The wedding itself took place three days later, at five o’clock in the afternoon. Those people who were not invited to be present at the wedding ceremony in the chapel itself received invitations to the Bilder Galerie or Picture Gallery, through which the wedding procession must pass.

It is a very mixed assembly, for all having any connection with the bride or bridegroom, professors, school friends, teachers, footmen or their families, fellow students, all receive tickets. They must appear in evening dress, and some very strange costumes are seen among the ladies. One I remember, an obviously home-made and inartistic affair, was trimmed with real water-lilies, which in the heat had turned a dismal brown, and long before the procession drew near were depressingly dying on the ample bosom of the lady who wore them. Everybody had to stand all the time, and footmen holding scarlet cords kept back the crowd as well as they could from encroaching on the space left in the centre. There was a much better view here of the procession{151} than in the chapel itself, especially for the front rank of spectators, among whom I was luckily placed. In the second row was a very stout woman, who leaned frankly upon me for support, and tried unblushingly but unsuccessfully to push her way to the front. When frustrated in this manœuvre, she complained loudly of my disobligingness, and said that she had received her entrance card from an Ober-Kastellan, and that she could not understand how I could therefore expect her to remain in the second row. I had to lean back on to her to prevent myself being pushed on to the red carpet, and she again became tearfully indignant, not to say unpleasant; but fortunately the procession began to arrive and saved any further trouble.

It was headed by two heralds in tabards, and by twelve pages in red, and then came the bride in a dress of silver tissue led by the bridegroom in uniform. She had on her head the small jewelled crown which every Prussian bride wears on her wedding day, and her train was carried by four young ladies. The Empress followed with the bride’s brother, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and the Emperor with the bride’s mother, the Grand Duchess Anastasia. They were followed by a crowd of other royalties walking, as is the custom, hand-in-hand, sometimes one Prince conducting two Princesses, or one Princess being conducted by two Princes. They all looked very much amused at themselves, and those who happened to know me grinned delightedly and nodded as they passed. Prince Arthur of Connaught was there, and the very tall Duchess of Aosta, who walked with a tiny little Japanese gentleman. The Princess, who walked with Prince Joachim, made very friendly demonstrations as she went by, and choked with laughter when I responded by a very deep curtsy.

When the last of the procession had vanished we were all driven out at once, and an army of housemaids with brooms entered and began to sweep up the dirt and litter which the people had left behind. It was strange{152} that on the most ceremonious occasions, when people were waiting round red carpets to welcome royal guests, or ambassadors weighed down with state secrets were on the point of getting into their carriages after audiences with the Emperor, always a print-gowned housemaid with a broom made a jarring appearance, wielding her implement coolly in the midst of state functionaries as though sweeping were the most important business of life. Sometimes she had scarcely disappeared before royalty itself emerged.

The Lutheran wedding-service is very simple. It begins with the long address of the clergyman to the bridal couple, admonishing them as to their duties to each other and the world at large. As everybody stands the whole time—for no chairs are admitted into the chapel, excepting one or two for specially exalted guests—this address is apt to appear longer than it really is. Each lady is in Court dress, wearing the regulation veil and long, heavy train which she must hold on her arm during the service, as it is not to be displayed until the Defilir-Cour which follows immediately afterwards. From the chapel the newly-married pair walk into the adjacent Weisser-Saal, where with the Emperor and Empress they stand to receive the congratulations of the invited guests, who pass quickly before them bowing, the ladies with their trains spread out. When the bride and bridegroom have made several hundred bows and the Cour is at an end, an adjournment is made to dinner, which is laid in several different rooms at small round tables, excepting the one where the royalties sit, which is fairly large. Here more quaint ceremonies take place. The Prince Fürstenberg as Marshal of the Court serves the Emperor with soup, and the other royal guests are also waited on by pages and gentlemen of birth, who take the dishes from the footmen. The Lord-High-Steward or Truchsess pours out the wine, and in the middle of the dinner the Emperor proposes the health of the newly-married pair.{153}

The dinner, in spite of the attendant ceremonies, is not allowed to be too prolonged, for the great climax of these stately formalities still remains to be performed—the most beautiful, but perhaps for the hard-worked bridal pair also the most tiring of all—the famous Torch Dance, seen nowhere but at the Prussian Court, and when once seen, never to be forgotten.

The wedding procession returns to the beautiful Weisser Saal, where a regimental band, usually that of the Garde du Corps, is stationed in the gallery. Here, at a signal from an official, the music begins: slow stately marches are played, old-world tunes that seem an echo of past times. The royal ladies are all seated with their parti-coloured trains, which seem somehow to be the chief feature of all state functions, spread out in front of them—while rows of red-clad pages stand behind their chairs waiting to advance when the time arrives.

From the side entrance of the Saal, stepping in time to the music, enters the Marshal of the Court carrying his wand of office, preceding a double row of twenty-four pages who bear large torches. In stately rhythm they move once round the room, when the Marshal stops, and bows to the bride and bridegroom, who at once descend from the slightly-raised platform where they sit, and hand-in-hand, preceded by the torch-bearers, with four ladies carrying the bride’s train, the group moves round the Hall in time to the music. I have seen this ceremony four times, at as many royal weddings, and cannot express its wonderful fascination, its mixture of poetry and romance, its glamour of colour, its irresistible charm to the beholder. There is the lulling monotony of sound, the flicker and smoke of the torches, the brilliant blending of many tones, the dignified movement of the dancers, the crowd of seated royalties opposite the crowd of standing courtiers. It takes on something of the aspect of a fairy tale, is reminiscent of “Cinderella” or of a half-forgotten ballad of bygone days.

The bride and bridegroom having made their tour of{154} the room once alone, return and separate, the bride now taking out the Emperor and her own nearest male relative, while the bridegroom leads out his mother and that of the bride, and they again march slowly round the room. All the ladies’ trains, excepting those of the bride and the Empress, are carried by four pages, the two exceptions by four ladies who themselves wear trains. And so round after round bride and bridegroom return and hand out the rest of the Princes and Princesses in turn.

In order to hasten matters, towards the end three or four of the younger ones are linked together on either hand, and a chain of happy, smiling youth treads the last stately measure round the Hall.

The Torch Dance finishes, and the torch-bearers wend their way out, followed by the long glittering procession, away to the private apartments. The ceremonies are at an end. It is nine o’clock, and presently, if you listen, you may hear the cheers of the people in the street greeting the bridal couple as they drive quickly through the summer darkness on their way to the station.

After they are gone, there remains only one small ceremony, which is often very unceremonious—the scramble of the courtiers for the so-called Garter of the Bride. Hundreds of pieces of white satin ribbon marked with her cipher are distributed by the Mistress of the Ceremonies, and for a few moments pandemonium seems to reign. At the last wedding I was flung bodily into the arms of a Kammer-Herr, a gold-laced official of great dignity; and some of the royalties returning to their apartments were plunged into the vortex of the struggle and severely hustled and pushed about before a passage could be made for them. The distributing lady was then kindly but firmly requested to pursue her avocations in a side corridor farther away.

The wedding of the Emperor’s second son, Prince Fritz, to the Duchess Sophie Charlotte of Oldenburg{155} took place in February, on the same day as the celebration of the Silver Wedding of Their Majesties, who on this occasion walked hand in hand in the bridal procession, the Empress wearing a wreath of silver myrtle as well as a beautiful diamond tiara given to her by her husband.

This Silver Wedding was, of course, the occasion of many spontaneous tributes of affection towards Their Majesties; and the Court Chaplain—he who attempted to guide our Christmas carols—being an indefatigable man, had determined that this notable day ought to be ushered in by an aubade, an early-morning song, to be performed by the Court ladies and gentlemen outside the bedroom door of the Emperor and Empress. It was to be sacred in character; but, instead of taking some old-established favourite, he was moved to ask a musical friend to write something special to fit the occasion. Like most “specially-written” melodies, it was rather uninspired, but by dint of constant practice at most inconvenient times we got a more or less hazy idea of it, and hoped that it would make a deep impression.

I think we were all a little resentful at having to rise so early on what we knew would be a long, fatiguing day. The poor Court Chaplain, who had to come over from Potsdam, must have started in the chilly darkness of the winter morning. I myself, unaccustomed to rising quite so early, fell asleep again after being awakened, and had to dress in feverish haste and rush downstairs without any breakfast. We were gathered, a group of rather sleepy, not conspicuously good-tempered people, at the entrance to the narrow corridor leading to the private apartments, where we waited an unconscionable time, growing every moment more nervous, and studying the little ill-written scraps of music-paper on which we had jotted down, somewhat undecipherably, our several parts. Everybody inquired of his neighbour what we were waiting for, but no one seemed to know, excepting the leading soprano, who{156} frowned angrily when we whispered and put her finger reprovingly on her lips.

We were obviously much in the way of certain Jägers and footmen, who were passing up and down with garments and boots; and at last some of us grew restive and threatened to depart.

At that moment a Jäger, who had cast disapproving glances at us as he passed to and fro, came and told us that His Majesty had left his room and was not likely to return, whereupon we felt much disappointment, but subsequently congratulated ourselves on the happy chance that had led the Emperor away—for our attempt at harmony turned out a most dismal failure, owing to the chief soprano getting nervous and starting on an absolutely false note. No less than three beginnings were necessary before we got really “off,” and the suppressed titterings of the bridegroom, Prince Fritz, who had joined his mother, were plainly audible. Happily we finished better than we began—which is not saying much—and the Empress thanked us in her usual pleasant, kindly manner, and then hurried off after the Emperor to breakfast. It was rather hard on the poor Court Chaplain, who had risen early and taken so much trouble to reap so little satisfaction; and when I found on return to my own room that my breakfast (which I had not touched) had been taken away and eaten by the woman who waited on me, I felt that the day had not begun as auspiciously as might have been wished.

The Crown Prince and Princess after their marriage lived at the Marmor Palais, and here all their children were born. The arrival of their first little boy, Prince Wilhelm, was an exciting day for the whole of Germany. The great event happened about eight o’clock one morning, and by eleven picture-postcards were on sale in which the Crown Princess, naïvely represented in evening dress, was depicted holding in her arms one of those dreadful abominations called a Steck-Kissen, a{157} sort of flat pillow much used in the Fatherland, on which was fastened with blue ribbons, something in the manner habitual among Indian squaws, a solid-looking infant purporting to be the newly-born Prince.

This same child on the same blue-ribboned Steck-Kissen was also represented on another postcard lying on the knees of the Emperor, who was smiling into the middle-distance. It bore the inscription “The First Grandchild”; but as His Majesty was at the time cruising off Kiel in the Hohenzollern, he never saw his first grandchild until six weeks after it was born. But manufacturers are not disturbed by minor details of this nature, and the cards, however unveracious, doubtless supplied a popular demand.

Later on the Emperor mentioned at table that, owing to the forgetfulness of the young officer charged with the forwarding on board of his mails, the telegrams informing him of the happy event did not reach him for a good many hours after they arrived in Kiel; and it was from a congratulatory message handed on board from the Sultan of Turkey that His Majesty first heard that he was a grandfather.

The fact that the Empress was a grandmother and she herself an aunt made the Princess very thoughtful for a time. She indulged for some time in long fits of silence, pondering this new development. A few days after her nephew came into the world, as we were driving in the Wildpark together, she remarked with a certain wistful wonder, “This time last week I was not yet an aunt, and Mamma was not a grandmother. Poor Mamma!”

The christening was of great interest to her, because the youngest Hohenzollern Princess is always chosen to carry the infant to the font. She practised this ceremony a few times with a cushion, to which was pinned a long table-cloth to present the white satin train which babes of the Hohenzollern race wear at the ceremony. This train is embroidered with the name of every prince or{158} princess who has worn it; and a new strip has to be added for every christening, so that the imagination refuses to consider the length to which it must inevitably extend in the course of ages. It is carried by four ladies of noble birth, and is actually fastened, not to the infant itself, but to the white satin cushion on which the child is laid.

Royal christenings are usually celebrated in the long Jasper Gallery in the New Palace, a magnificent apartment which, owing to its length, was the favourite scene of indoor sports for the Princess and her friends when wet weather prevented their indulgence outside. Only the week after the christening sack-races were held in the stately apartment, and the mirrors which had lately reflected the stately tread, the brilliant uniforms, and the trailing dresses of courtiers, now duplicated and reduplicated a seemingly endless procession of wildly-hopping maidens with jerking pigtails, who, shrieking with laughter and accompanied by many tumbles, bumped along over the marble pavement to the goal. The seventy-five Stifts-Kinder had been invited to the palace; but the afternoon turned out hopelessly wet, so that the “Gymkhana” which had been planned had necessarily to take place indoors or not at all, and the Jasper Gallery proved itself an excellent place for egg-and-spoon races as well as for the needle-threading and bun-eating competitions.

A few rooms near the Gallery had been once occupied by Frederick the Great. One of them still contained his harpsichord, and in another, row upon row, were left the books he loved—all in French, not a single German one amongst them. Sometimes the children would storm violently through these older rooms, where all was left as much as possible undisturbed, just as they had been when used by Frederick. They wakened up for a few moments the sleepy, stifled atmosphere of the shut-up apartments, the faded green silk curtains waved and trembled as they passed boisterously onward;{159} once I saw the yellow parchment label bearing the old King’s handwriting drop from the back of a book in the glass case, shaken from its timid, precarious hold by the rush of active young feet. They were eerie places, where one did not care to linger long alone when the shadows of night were falling. It was so easy to imagine a bent old figure, in a crushed-looking cocked hat, in rusty knee-boots, in a blue-lapelled riding-coat, peering round the corner to see who was disturbing the silences, watching the flight of that impetuous child of his house as her laugh echoed back towards the deserted rooms where the air had for a moment been startled into movement by the tones of her gay voice and the sound of her footsteps on the polished floor.

CHAPTER XI

WILHELMSHÖHE

THE most agreeably situated of all the various dwelling-places occupied in the course of the year by the Emperor William and his family is without doubt the splendid palace of Wilhelmshöhe, standing on the hillside amid beautifully wooded scenery within two miles of the town of Cassel, which can be seen from its upper windows, sheltered snugly in a long depression of hills, its red roofs lying warm across the soft blueness of the distant mountains behind.

The Court stays here every year during August, when the damp heat of the New Palace, which lies so low, becomes too suffocatingly unbearable. The Emperor in Wilhelmshöhe changes his uniform every afternoon for an ordinary flannel or tweed suit, and wearing a Panama hat, tramps energetically among the woods and hills, working off a little of the adipose tissue which, in spite{160} of his activities, has in the last year or two made some slight encroachment on his straight, lithe figure. He has a horror of growing stout, and keeps the enemy at bay with characteristic pertinacity.

Once at a fancy-dress ball given by Prince Adalbert, his sailor-son at Kiel, the Emperor came to it, unknown to the guests, wearing the dress of his own ancestor the Great Elector, a full-bottomed flowing wig and the long coat and breeches appropriate to the period. During the first part of the ball the dancers were masked, and the Emperor was talking with a lady who, believing him to be the Crown Prince, whom she knew very well, said to him archly:

“Your Imperial Highness is splendidly disguised. How did you make yourself appear so stout? A little cushion stuffed inside somewhere, I suppose?”

His Majesty told this story against himself several times, especially when the lady, who previous to her marriage was attached to the service of the Empress, happened to be present. He would roll his eyes in pretended anger while he said:

“Of course there was no cushion—there was only me; but I believe she said it on purpose. She knew who it was all the time.”

It was a toilsome business to tramp so many miles in the hot sun, and though the Empress herself was at that time a good walker, she had hard work to keep up with her energetic husband, while the Princess frankly confessed that she was half dead after one of “Papa’s” brisk constitutionals. Elderly Germans, especially at Court, do not walk much habitually. They occasionally take exercise of the kind as a “cure,” making it into something of a solemn, ponderous rite, strolling along under the forest trees hat in hand, with frequent pauses to look at the scenery; but this is not what the Emperor understands by walking.

Every Sunday morning the ladies and gentlemen of the suite used to assemble before church time on the{161} terrace opposite the great statue (copied from the Farnese Hercules) which stands away at the top of the hill crowning the artificial rock terraces, caves and cascades made by a former Landgraf of Hesse-Cassel. This statue is so large that a man can stand inside the club upon which Hercules leans. The weather was always judged (or misjudged) according to whether Herkules loomed near or retired into the background. After standing a little, and chatting in the usual desultory way of people who meet often and rarely have new experiences to confide, the Empress and Princess would appear, followed by the Emperor.

On my first visit to Wilhelmshöhe, as we wended our way to the little chapel in one wing of the Palace, the Emperor said that he hoped I would “sing in a loud, deep voice” in church, because the singing was usually very bad. I commented on the slowness of German hymn-singing, and His Majesty told me how surprised he was once, when visiting at Windsor “with Grandmamma” a year or two before she died, to hear the organ burst out suddenly into the Austrian National Anthem, not knowing that it had been adopted as an English hymn-tune.

The way to the chapel was through a long matted corridor hung with queer old-fashioned paintings of distorted-looking animals.

Just before the door of the royal pew hung on each side of the wall two pictures of ferocious cows whose eyes followed with a threatening glare as people went in or out of chapel. Underneath the cows was placed the alms-dish for the contributions of Their Majesties and the Court.

The Emperor and Empress occupied two special gilt and red-velvet chairs, and the Court ordinary cane-bottomed ones—also gilt—which made a great scraping on the floor as we rose to pray or sat down to sing according to the usual German custom.

The congregation consisted chiefly of a few officers{162} and foresters with their wives and children, and a well-meaning choir sang timidly in the gallery up above.

The dining-room and neighbouring salons in Wilhelmshöhe were beautifully furnished in Empire style and in late Louis Quinze. The fine view from the windows, away over the undulating hills beyond Cassel, helped to beguile the rather wearisome standing about and half-hearted after-dinner conversation. One of the old generals who wanted to improve his English always came ponderously in my direction if he saw me glancing at some of the English fashion-papers lying on the table, as he declared himself deeply interested in “ladies’ toilettes.” I was always rather apprehensive when he turned over the leaves, looking at them carefully through his eyeglass, and when he got to the hair “transformations” usually thought it best to retire before he reached pages of a still more intimate nature.

Jerome Bonaparte inhabited Wilhemshöhe for seven years when he was King of Westphalia, and introduced all the Empire sofas and chairs. The salon of the Princess was a delightful room with a parquet floor, panelled and painted white, and the mahogany furniture was upholstered in a most beautiful tone of striped yellow satin. Leading from it was the breakfast-room, with striped red-stain wall-coverings hung with pictures of the children of the House of Hesse-Cassel, to whom the Schloss belonged before they lost it by fighting against Prussia in the war of 1866. These unfortunate infants of two or three years were dressed in stuffy, heavy, thickly-embroidered garments of black and red velvet, and wore stiffly-starched, scratchy-looking ruffs round their poor little chubby necks.

In Wilhelmshöhe Schloss Napoleon III. was lodged after being taken prisoner by the Germans. In the Empress’s sitting-room is the writing-table he used, with the hole burnt in it where he always laid his cigar.

Not far from Wilhelmshöhe, just a pleasant drive of an hour or so, past yellowing cornfields, under rows of{163} apple and cherry trees, lay Wilhelmsthal, a charming country-house lying in a tiny hamlet far from a railway station, also built by an Elector of Hesse and inhabited by the before-mentioned King Jerome. This delightful little summer Schloss has hardly been touched in its arrangements since the Great Napoleon’s brother left it. All the beds remain with the French eagle spreading its wings above the green silk curtains; the Dresden china figures he looked at every day still occupy their places on the shelves; the china timepiece that struck the hour yet stands beside his bed, though it has long ago ceased to measure time. The tourist can lean out of the windows of his bedroom and see the carp, descendants of those he used to feed, or perhaps the very same fish, swimming about in the pond a little distance away. It is a place where time seems to have stood still for the last hundred years.

The Emperor in Wilhelmshöhe liked to ride at about seven o’clock in the morning, while it was still comparatively cool. He was almost invariably accompanied by the Empress, as well as by any other members of his family who happened to be staying at the castle.

It was a pretty sight to watch the procession of horses coming two by two from the stables across the road, each horse led by a groom, while two Sattel Meisters in cocked hats and much embroidered uniforms walked behind them, all being under the command of two officers, the Emperor’s Leib-Stall-Meister and that of the Empress.

A former Master of the Horse to His Majesty, Baron von Holzing-Berstett, was one of the judges at the International Horse Show at Olympia a few years ago.

All the tourists from the hotel opposite used to assemble outside the Schloss gates, under the stern control of two gendarmes, who kept them penned on one side of the road.

The horses were halted in the shadow near the big pillared portico of the Schloss, and as soon as the attendant{164} gentlemen and ladies emerged, were brought up and walked round the terrace by the grooms till a start was made. As a rule the Emperor and Empress were very punctual, and nothing annoyed His Majesty more than to be kept waiting. A lady always rode in attendance on the Empress, but as one of those who could ride—only two out of the four were able to do so—was usually absent on her holidays at this time, I often was called upon to supply the place of the absent Hof-Dame. The Princess, when her lessons began again, had to ride at five in the evening instead of seven, so I very frequently managed two rides a day, and even sometimes three. Often I was summoned in the early morning from my repose by a breathless footman.

“Will gnädiges Fräulein please get up at once to ride with Her Majesty? The Countess has a cold. In five minutes the horses will be round.”

So that I became an expert in quick dressing, and generally managed to be ready in time.

The Emperor’s suite was always fairly large, and as each of his sons when he accompanied his father had also his attendant gentleman, often consisted of sixteen or seventeen persons, without counting the officials and grooms.

His Majesty in Wilhelmshöhe nearly always wore the comfortable green Jäger uniform in which to ride, whereas in Neues Palais he almost invariably rode in Hussar uniform. We usually moved off from the Terrace in three or four rows, one behind the other, and the clatter of hoofs was like that of a troop of cavalry. The morning air from the mountains came in gusts fresh and sparkling like wine. As soon as His Majesty appeared round the curve of the drive, the sentry flung open the little iron gate leading on to the road, and the rows of people outside immediately produced and waved their clean pocket-handkerchiefs, which at once aroused apprehensions in the breast of the timid equestrian somewhat doubtful of his own{165} powers. The horses of the Emperor and Empress were, of course, specially trained to ignore these loyal demonstrations, but those of the suite, especially if newly introduced into the stable, sometimes exhibited symptoms of surprise.

Practically only one good riding road exists in the neighbourhood of Wilhelmshöhe, but this is a very delightful one, through the lovely wooded grounds outside the park up into the forest on the mountain slopes, and then across a beautiful stretch of grass along the brow of the hills with a wide view on all sides. As soon as they reached the softer ground in the forest the Emperor and Empress would start off at a brisk stretching canter, followed by the rest of the party. After a night’s rain it was not agreeable to ride in the second and third row, for the dirt cast up by the horses’ hoofs was rather adhesive, not like the hard clean sand of Potsdam, which fell off again as soon as dry. For several miles the canter would be kept up, and then the horses were breathed a little and trotted homewards again. Very often the Empress finished her ride at the big statue of Hercules, where carriages were waiting and grooms to take the horses home.

One day the Princess had ridden alone with me, and we were returning from the “Hercules” together in an automobile. The road down the steep hillside towards the castle is cut in a series of zigzags with very sharp turns, and at the first of these, the chauffeur failing to turn early enough, the car as nearly as possible toppled over the edge, its front wheels being just on the verge when he was able to stop. Another inch would have sent it over, crashing down among the trees. The Princess said afterwards that it was “a thrilling moment,” and I agreed that it was one of those deeply interesting intervals of time which make one feel keenly alive. She did not move or say a word as we hung, but gripped her riding-whip rather hard, and only when the big car slowly backed and turned into a safer position{166} gave a long deep sigh of relief. She rather enjoyed novel sensations, and especially gloried in the description of her own emotions at the critical moment. Like the fat boy in “Pickwick” she wanted to make “your blood run cold” with the narration of hairbreadth escapes and dangerous situations.

When the afternoons were too hot to walk, His Majesty almost invariably played lawn-tennis. Grass courts are non-existent in Germany—at least they are used only by those people who do not take lawn-tennis seriously; and all good courts are made of a kind of concrete first used at Homburg, the composition of which is supposed to be a secret. It is an excellent preparation, possessing a certain elasticity approximating to turf, and has the advantage of drying quickly. Even if turf lawns could be grown as they are in England—and I have never met with any that remotely resembled their close, fine texture—the heavy thunderstorms which prevail in that district during the hot weather would frequently make it impossible to use them.

His Majesty plays lawn-tennis in rather crude-looking shirts and ties, and usually wears a Panama hat. Unlike most men, he looks perhaps less well in such a “get-up” than in anything else. Young officers from the neighbouring barracks are often sent for to join in a set, and the Ober-Gouvernante, who was an expert player, often had to upset all her arrangements for the afternoon on being requested to play with His Majesty. As the Princess grew older she became quite a respectable player, and all the young princes, especially the Crown Prince and Prince Adalbert, were good at the game, which is exceedingly popular in Germany.

In the evenings, when it grew rather cooler, a picnic supper was often eaten in some spot among the hills. Sometimes we drove there in carriages, and it was the pride of the Master of the Horse to turn out four or five four-in-hands, which made a great sensation among{167} the tourists as they emerged from the gates of the Schloss.

The Royal Stables possessed some very fine black Mecklenburg horses which were used on these occasions, but the all-conquering automobile has lately been preferred by His Majesty, who likes to get quickly over the ground, and also to go farther afield than horses can take him.

Those suppers in the hills were very amusing, especially if, as often happened, the Emperor decided that he and the Empress should do some of the cooking. In spite of all assertions to the contrary, the Empress knows nothing whatever about cooking, although a good part of the civilized world pictures her as daily bending over saucepans and mixing ingredients for puddings. The nearest approach to the culinary art which she has ever practised was dexterously “tossing” a pancake, which she did very neatly, and was exceedingly gratified by the applause of the surrounding ladies, one of whom dropped hers on to the ground. It happened, of course, at one of these picnics, which are accompanied by portable stoves and several cooks with the necessary implements and materials of their trade. Some of the gentlemen of the suite, those imbued with the old Prussian spirit of economy which believes in limiting avenues of expenditure, often expressed impatience and disapproval of these suppers.

“Now look!” said one of them to me: “there are four carts for the kitchens alone—horses, coachmen, grooms; think of the work all this has caused these poor cooks"—he glanced at four white-clad individuals who were peaceably pursuing their avocations under the shade of a tree, and appeared to be quite as happy as the rest of us.

“I think they really enjoy it,” I said deprecatingly; “of course it is a trouble—picnics usually are; but there are plenty of horses in the stables—they may as well come out here as not.”{168}

“Ah, it is a different spirit,” he said sadly. “My father used to tell me how simply the Old Emperor William lived. Never took more than one adjutant with him, not this crowd"—and he waved his hand at the row of gentlemen whose gaze was concentrated on the Emperor engaged in concocting some kind of a strawberry Bowle. “Never used more than one carriage if he could help it, at most two. Look at that procession"—and his gaze wandered dubiously to the long line of vehicles which stood in the shade a little way down the hill. We could hear the clink of bits and the stamp of the waiting horses.

“The Old Emperor William,” I ventured, “was King of Prussia for a good while before he became German Emperor; he could not change his habits later on. Besides, everybody lives more extravagantly now; even the working classes——”

He groaned and shook his head, and murmured something which sounded disapproving and prophetic of disaster.

One day at dinner in Wilhelmshöhe one of the guests was a water-finder, and when, as usual, we all went out on the terrace, he produced his rod, a ramshackle affair like a piece of iron wire, and we were all invited to try our skill. Many of the gentlemen were frankly sceptical, and the only one of them with whom the rod made any definite movement was the worst unbeliever of them all.

The Emperor was very annoyed at their unbelief, and said that he was going to send the gentleman with the divining-rod to South Africa, where he would be able to discover not only springs of water, but diamonds and gold. His Majesty had recently been gratified by the fresh discovery of small diamonds in German-African territory, and exhibited with great glee his cigarette-case in which they had been mounted. He explained to us all that they had been found, not, as is usual,{169} embedded in blue clay, but lying on the surface loose in the sand, and that one of the German workers on the new railway had gathered up a handful in a few minutes. He also gave it as his opinion that they had blown along from some as yet undiscovered mine somewhere in the hills.

I suggested in a whisper to the Princess, who was very triumphant over these German diamonds, that they had probably blown over the frontier from British territory, and she immediately communicated this theory of mine to her father.

“No, no!” roared the Emperor in pretended anger. “Blew over from British territory indeed! nothing of the kind!” He scowled portentously and—as was his habit—shook a monitory finger in my direction.

When the Court returned to Neues Palais from Wilhelmshöhe after the Emperor returned from the great autumn manœuvres, as long as the fine weather lasted—and the autumn in Potsdam is wonderfully beautiful—he would make excursions on his little river steamer the Alexandria along the beautiful chain of lakes which is one of the great charms of that district.

The private landing-stage had been built by His Majesty of wood in quaint Norwegian style, with two large waiting-rooms and a wide balcony overlooking the water. Ranged on shelves round the rooms was every variety of Norwegian bowl; some brightly-painted red ones with dragon beak and tail, others very beautifully carved in Norwegian patterns. They had most of them been brought back from Norway by the Emperor himself. The chairs were of the uncompromisingly hard Norwegian peasant type, made entirely of wood and without any attempt at adaptation to human contours. The sailors who manned the Alexandria were some of the crew of the Hohenzollern, and looked very smart in their white-duck uniforms.

As a rule we went in the steamer to the Pfauen-Insel or Isle of Peacocks, where was a very queer little{170} Schloss, built to resemble an imitation ruin, though the imitation was very badly done. It had been a favourite resort of Queen Louise of Prussia and her husband, and in the cupboards upstairs were still to be found some most extraordinary-looking old bonnets of hers of the coal-scuttle type. Not far from the Schloss was a Rutsch-Bahn or toboggan slide, which the Princess liked immensely, and always insisted that I should join her in one of the dreadful “rushes,” which were accomplished in little boxes something like sleighs, with room for two people inside and one man outside, who had to stand on the runners and push off from the top. We went down at a tremendous pace, finally landing on the grass at the bottom, where we bumped terrifically till the impetus was spent. The man behind always had to lean over the inside occupants and grasp at two handles in front of the car.

In a sheltered angle of the Schloss itself the supper-table was spread by the footmen with the cold viands which had been brought from the New Palace. All round lay the shining water, and there was a constant rustling and whispering of the reeds as they bowed and curtsied to the night wind. Sometimes on the warm September evenings the Emperor would remain a long time at table talking and smoking by the light of candles, enclosed in tall glass chimneys to protect them from the draught. No one was permitted to smoke excepting His Majesty—chiefly, I believe, because the Empress has a very strong dislike to the odour of tobacco.

Usually the “visitors’ book” of the Schloss was produced some time during the evening, and every one present signed it. It contained many interesting signatures of long-dead-and-gone celebrities, and the firm, clear writing of the Emperor and Empress Frederick occurred frequently, as well as that of the “Old Emperor” and Bismarck.

If during the cruise the weather turned colder, the supper was taken to the landing-stage—the Matrosen{171} Station, as it was called—and eaten there in the Norwegian rooms, the guests sitting uncomfortably on the Norwegian chairs. No opportunity of eating out of doors was ever lost, and when time did not allow of an excursion, supper was served on the terrace just outside the windows of the palace, where the orange trees scented the air, and the mosquitoes were kept at bay by braziers of charcoal on which juniper berries were burned.

Sometimes, instead of going by water to Pfauen-Insel, the court drove in carriages to Sacrow, a small Schloss uninhabited except by the Kastellan and his wife, situated in a lovely tangled wilderness of garden overlooking the water. To get to the other side it was necessary to use the ferry, and when the Princess crossed it in the afternoon with her ponies, she would assist the ferryman to warp his craft over the river. Once when we went to Sacrow with an automobile, the shirt-sleeved waiter from the adjacent restaurant, the blue-jerseyed man in charge of the ferry and the Princess worked all in a row, walking slowly along the rope, gravely performing their task together, while the two chauffeurs in their elegant royal livery regarded this pleasantly democratic picture with hardly concealed surprise and amusement.

The woods round Sacrow were the most beautiful of any in the neighbourhood, threaded with sandy paths which skirted the water side. In one part were the kennels of the Königliche Meute or royal pack of hounds, which we visited once or twice in the summer-time before the hunting began.

During the autumn and winter these hounds hunted two or three times a week at Döberitz after wild boar, carted from one of the Emperor’s neighbouring forests. The meets were attended almost exclusively by the officers of the regiments stationed in Potsdam, and very often by the Emperor. The Empress, although very fond of riding, was not at all keen on hunting, and rarely appeared except on St. Hubert’s Day, which is a very{172} ceremonial occasion, the horses being decorated with green ribbons, and every one riding in pink with chimney-pot hat, whereas on ordinary occasions the round velvet hunting-cap and black coat may be worn.

The Emperor invariably gives a hunting dinner on the evening of this day, when all the gentlemen invited appear in pink, each one wearing in the buttonhole of his coat the spray of oak-leaves which is the trophy presented to everybody “in at the death.” When the Emperor is present at a hunt, he himself distributes the bunches of oak-leaves; otherwise it is one of the duties of the M.F.H.

The riding-horses of His Majesty are mostly big-boned weight-carriers of English or Irish breed, trained in the royal stables for six months or so before being ridden by the Emperor.

Those of the Empress are in charge of a second official, who is responsible for their good behaviour.

Once, as Their Majesties rode together in the early morning in the neighbourhood of Potsdam, the horse of the Empress stumbled and fell, turning a complete somersault and throwing its rider on to her head, fortunately without serious injury, thanks to the hard straw hat she was wearing.

It is a very dreadful business for an Empress to fall from her horse, even when she receives no particular harm. It usually happens before a crowd of people, some of whom are necessarily held responsible for the accident; and on this occasion one or two of the officials became hysterical and shed tears, while the Emperor, under the stress of the incident, used some rather sharp and very excusable words of censure. The adjutants scattered themselves wildly over the surface of the earth in search of a doctor, while Princes Oskar and Joachim, who were also riding with their parents, did the same.

Prince Oskar discovered no doctor, but did manage to find a droschky with a miserable-looking horse and a very dirty, unkempt driver, who was sitting peacefully{173} dreaming on his box in front of a house, waiting for his “fare,” a young officer, to come out. Prince Oskar immediately ordered him to come and drive Her Majesty home, but the droschky-driver demurred, saying he was already engaged and could not leave his fare in the lurch. The Prince insisted, but the faithful cabman, perhaps doubtful of the bona fides of the affair, still refused the proffered honour of driving the Empress home; so finally the Prince drew his sword and bade him in the name of military authority (paramount in Germany) to proceed with him at once to the indicated spot, bringing his droschky with him. So grumbling loudly all the way, the disgusted Jehu did as he was bid, obviously still convinced that he was the victim of some practical joke, and presently found himself the centre of a brilliant but agitated circle of people, all talking and suggesting different things.

Her Majesty, who protested at being treated as an injured person, as she felt perfectly well except for the momentary alarm, would have much preferred to remount her horse and ride home quietly without so much unnecessary fuss; but had perforce to get into the evil-smelling, dirty vehicle with her lady-in-waiting, and escorted by her two sons and one or two crestfallen officials, arrived home, where a very frightened young military doctor, who had been somehow unearthed from a neighbouring barracks, thought after a short examination that it was advisable for the Empress to keep her bed. He was then dismissed with appropriate thanks, and the Court doctor, who had been summoned from Berlin, immediately ordered Her Majesty to get up and go about as usual. The flutter in the Palace that day was indescribable, and one of the strangest things was the absolute divergence of opinion among the spectators of the accident. No two of them agreed as to the exact manner in which it took place, and the discussions about unimportant details grew almost acrimonious.

The droschky-driver reaped most advantage from the{174} occurrence, and still relates to an admiring Potsdam the part he played in extricating Her Majesty from a serious dilemma.

CHAPTER XII

CADINEN

CADINEN (pronounced Cadeenen) and its glories were, for the first few months of our acquaintance, a frequent topic of the Princess’s conversation, so that it was with very lively interest that I found myself in the month of June of the following year journeying towards its promised felicities. We were travelling all night in the special train, which carried the usual portentous amount of luggage, besides three tutors, one doctor, a lady-in-waiting, myself, and various footmen and maids. In addition to Prince Joachim and his sister, their two young cousins, Princes Max and Fritz of Hesse, whose acquaintance I had made in Homburg, were also going with us.

Her Majesty was to come to Cadinen later, when the Kieler Woche was over, bringing with her Prince Oskar and Prince August Wilhelm from Ploen.

His Majesty never came at the same time as his family, for the simple reason that there was then no room for himself and his numerous suite: even on ordinary occasions it was a very tight fit for everybody.

Once, with a sudden determination to see how the Empress was getting on, the Emperor made a descent of three or four days, announcing his coming only a few hours beforehand. A kind of general shuffle of apartments had to be made instantly, everybody packing up their things and squeezing themselves into little out-of-the-way holes and corners. Every house in the village having a decent spare room was requisitioned, but only{175} two were available, the rest being impossible; and somebody suggested a tent on the lawn, but unfortunately there were no tents.

Most of His Majesty’s adjutants had to use the train, shunted on to a siding, as an hotel, sleeping and dressing there in much discomfort; for it is one thing to live simply, divested of life’s superfluities, and quite another to retain a courtier-like appearance in the midst of an absolute dearth of means to that end.

“We have only accommodation for a tooth-brush and a cake of soap, yet must change into four different costumes every day,” complained one unfortunate Kammer-Herr.

Fortunately it only lasted for four days, and then the Emperor and his suite departed to more comfortable and roomy quarters.

But on our first visit we had the house to ourselves and plenty of space in which to move about.

The journey from Berlin is long and slow, and appears interminable. The train passed through very flat, uninteresting country, especially during the last few miles, where the railway approaches the Frisches Haff, that curious bay formed by the waters of the sluggish Vistula, separated from the Gulf of Danzig by a thin strip of sand which stretches some hundred miles along the coast.

Cadinen is about ten miles from Elbing, which is reached from there by a train which puffs leisurely up and down the single branch line at long intervals of the day. The station platform at this little village, when I first knew it, was practically non-existent. One descended from the blue-and-gold royal train right on to the meadow. Great purple columbines, yellow and blue lupines, seemed to be almost growing over the line itself. No road was visible excepting a sandy cart-track, full of ruts, where three or four of the royal carriages, looking entirely out of place, were waiting to take us up to the Schloss. One felt that a farm-cart{176} drawn by a yoke of oxen would have been more appropriate.

We bumped towards the Schloss, the coachman wisely eschewing the track and driving over the meadow itself, past a Zigelei (tile-factory) belonging to the Emperor, and up a shady lane of ancient and weathered oaks, till we came to one of those stucco, villa-like country-houses usual in the Fatherland, which makes it easy to understand why the Germans fall into raptures over ours in England.

It stood, with a small interval of untidy lawn, close to the road and opposite the village green and duck-pond, around which other houses were clustered. At the back was what is called a park in Germany, but the term has no relation to the English idea of a park, and means simply an extensive garden and orchard. A lovely avenue of chestnut trees was the chief beauty of the garden. They unfortunately grew close up to the house, and made some of the bedrooms so dark that on dull days one could not read or write without a lamp on the writing-table, which was very inconvenient, especially as our rooms had to serve as combined sitting-and bed-rooms.

The Empress and the Princess had with them all their servants, including housemaids, from the New Palace, but peasant-women of the neighbourhood waited upon the suite—clean, strong, healthy-looking people who usually worked barefoot in the fields for a wage of threepence or fourpence a day, but at the advent of the court were thrust into print gowns and boots, and, wearing little flat caps on their heads, pervaded the house, smiling broadly. They spoke with an engaging West-Prussian accent, and only came for an hour or two in the mornings, and again in the afternoons for another short spell of work. In the intervals they went back to their occupations in the fields, for the Inspektor did not approve of their absence just at the busy harvest time. They were all of them Catholics, for the Reformation{177} never penetrated to that district, and among them is much Polish blood.

In the rather untidy but pleasant Schloss garden was an ornamental pond, from which arose at every moment of the day and night, never ceasing, never changing, a pitiful moaning cry, which speedily got on to everybody’s nerves, and was possibly the reason why all the grown-up people felt rather snappy and cross during the first few days. It had somewhat the effect on one’s mind of a squeaking slate-pencil, and speedily became intolerable, for it penetrated the house, and nowhere was there a refuge from the nerve-rending noise.

It was the cry of the Unken, a peculiarly loathsome kind of frog which inhabited the pond, where large green frogs whose note was a comparatively cheerful kind of cackle lived in harmony with these almost invisible but painfully audible pests.

The term Unken-ruf (Unken-cry) is used in Germany to express any persistently ominous prediction, and is a very expressive term, for there are few things more depressing to the spirits than the call of these tiny black creatures.

Rendered desperate, however, by our sufferings, the little Hessian princes produced a butterfly net and managed after some trouble to catch a good many of the Unken, which floated on the top of the pond, and were practically invisible except for a tiny green spot which projected over each eye. The princes speedily became very expert at locating them, and enjoyed excellent sport every day after dinner, catching over a hundred in two or three days. The horrid, slimy, glutinous things—which the Princess handled without any qualms—were a bright flame-colour underneath and deep black above. They were carefully transferred in a water-can to the Haff, which was not far away, and every one felt much benefited by their change of quarters.

The chief charm of Cadinen was its idyllic simplicity. There were no tourists, no “respectable” people, just{178} simple workers in the fields and crowds of barefooted, sunburnt children. Pigs, sheep, and chickens pervaded the place, all of them belonging to His Majesty, who had purchased the whole estate just as it stood and proceeded with characteristic energy to improve it. Gradually he changed the prevailing simplicity of everything, and built new stables as well as a large automobile garage, containing ample accommodation for grooms and chauffeurs. He pulled down the old picturesque houses, where the children and pigs and chickens had lived together in happy amity, and erected some very pretty gabled cottages, the plans of which had been sent to him from England—charming cottages, with roses climbing over the door and wire netting round the grass plot to keep out the hens, not forgetting a nice convenient pigsty at the back—but the barefooted peasant women with the handkerchiefs tied over their heads never looked very much at home in them, and were always sighing after the old, dirty, insanitary houses around whose memory their heart-fibres still clung.

The Emperor was very angry and impatient one day with a woman who expressed some of this regret, and told her she was ungrateful; yet it was obviously not ingratitude that prompted her to speak, but rather a wistful retrospect, a sorrowful longing for the scenes associated with all the joys she had ever known. Even the duck-pond, that enchanted spot where the Princess from her window watched every evening the farm horses as they waded in and drank delicately just in the yellow and scarlet glory of the sunset, where the herd of cows came and stood in the water, switching their tails and taking long, deliberate draughts every evening after milking-time—all was done away with, the pond filled up, the green levelled and kept smoothly rolled. No children or dogs played on it any more, the horses and cattle went another way home, and sentries, those adjutants of royalty, were posted where erstwhile the geese had waddled across the grass.{179}

Fortunately it was some time before all these improvements were made. No sentries marred those early years in Cadinen. Only one or two green Gendarms wandered about the place or sat somnolently in the sunshine. The clink of the blacksmith’s shop penetrated the open windows of the schoolroom as the Princess read with her tutor. The blacksmith was a most delightful man, who had been at sea and travelled far afield, and was still young and handsome, with a pleasant-faced wife and two little children, one of whom, Lenchen, squinted most frightfully, but was a great friend of the Princess.

“Every year it seems to me that Lenchen squints worse,” she would sigh after the first interview; “but perhaps it is because I haven’t seen her for so long. She is going to be operated on next winter. She would be quite pretty if her eyes were right.”

A village forge has been from time immemorial an irresistible attraction to children, and it was surprising how all roads in Cadinen seemed somehow to lead past the blacksmith’s, who was always either fitting shoes on horses, or mending a ploughshare, or doing something interesting of that kind.

“So useful,” said the Princess as she gazed—“so much better than learning the date of the Silesian Wars, isn’t it?”

A tiny chapel, capable of holding about twenty people, had been built on the top of a very steep hill in the “park.” Every Sunday morning we toiled pantingly up to Gottes-Dienst. A stalwart clergyman came over from Elbing to hold the service, and always stood at the door of the church and shook hands with each worshipper, saying, “God greet you.” He seemed almost a size too large for the chapel, so tall and broad was he. From the doorway was a wide view over the Haff, which was always muddy in colour except at sunrise, when it was blue, and at sunset, when it turned yellow and pink{180} and sometimes blood-red; but beyond it there was always a clear strip of deeper blue—the waters of the Baltic, or Ost-See (East Sea) as it is called in Germany. We grew to know the Haff very well, for every afternoon the children were taken across it in a little steamer to bathe at a tiny place called Kahlberg, which lay on the farther shore.

This small steamer, called the Radaune, was hired from somebody in Danzig for a few weeks every summer, and manned by three mariners whom the children considered with much reason to be the cleverest and most delightful men they had ever met. One named Vigand was captain and steersman, another attended to the machinery, and a third just hovered generally around, fetching out camp-stools and answering questions, at which he showed himself most fluent and explanatory.

Prince Joachim, under Vigand’s strict tuition, took lessons in steering; and the duties of the man at the engine were not so arduous but that he found time to pop his head up on deck and join in the conversation for several minutes at a time.

The doctor and both the tutors, two maids and two footmen, also two dogs, always accompanied us; for we took tea on to the shore as well as bath towels and changes of dry garments, as the Princess had a knack of falling into a wave fully dressed, so that one had to be prepared for emergencies.

The Haff itself was a greasy, oily, rather smelly stretch of water in the hot weather—so stagnant that a small weed grew on its surface—but it suffered occasional violent storms, which dispelled the oily greasiness but tossed the tiny steamer up and down in a manner most disagreeable to indifferent sailors. Fortunately it only took half an hour to get to the opposite side, but even that was too long for some people, and they succumbed to the horrors of sea-sickness almost in sight of port.

Arrived on the other side, we had, until a small pier was built, to get into a boat and row to shore, then walk{181} over a strip of sand, which took perhaps seven or eight minutes, and there on the other side lay the sand-dunes with the beautiful clean Baltic Sea dimpling in a curve of white foam.

In the distance away to the left could be seen the houses and “pensions” of the tiny fishing village of Kahlberg, to which visitors came in the season. The far end of the shore was strictly reserved for the use of the royal children, so that they were able to enjoy themselves without restriction.

It was perhaps the most uninteresting bit of coast to be found anywhere. The Baltic is practically tideless, and the shore has no rocks to break the long monotony of sand which stretches away for a hundred miles eastward. The sun blazed down fiercely with the usual untempered glare of seaside places; nowhere was there the least shelter from the intense heat; but the Princess and her brother and cousins thought it the loveliest spot on earth, for it was the only seaside place they knew. They paddled in the waves and dug sand castles, and, after great discussions and consultations with the doctor, were at last allowed to bathe, which filled them all to the brim with happiness.

Five minutes was the absolute limit of time allowed for us to disport ourselves in the water, and the lady-in-waiting stood watch in hand on the shore and called “Time’s up—come out,” at the end of what seemed a mere flash of seconds.

“Why, we haven’t had time to get our bathing-dresses wet,” the Princess would remonstrate, and then would commence a heated argument to the effect that the Countess must have misread the time. This lady, in a position somewhat analogous to that of an unfortunate hen who sees her ducklings in the water, would stand on the shore gesticulating, commanding, imploring with ever-increasing vehemence, while the Princess, secure in her impregnable position, and fully alive to the advantages of lengthened discussion, would duck under{182} the water and emerge splutteringly to shriek, “One minute more, dear Countess, one minute more: I know your watch is fast—you said so this morning,” and she would plunge under again, while the outraged Countess, angered by this illogical reasoning, would threaten to stop the bathing altogether; and at last, by the most circuitous route, the dripping Princess would emerge.

This scene was enacted almost daily, even when the doctor conceded ten minutes in the ocean instead of five. Often, when the Princess was enjoying herself exceedingly, she would plunge under as soon as the Countess opened her mouth to speak and make a tremendous noise and splashing. Once I heard her shriek “Our future lies on the water,” as a wave swallowed her up and nothing but a row of pink toes remained visible.

After bathing we had tea, which was always brought to the shore in stone screw-topped bottles and drunk out of silver tumblers. After tea everybody looked for Bernstein or amber—for the coast of the Baltic is the only place in Europe where it is found, and Danzig is famous as a centre for very beautiful artistic specimens of cups and vases ornamented with pieces of this stone.

When it was time to return to the steamer on the far side of the sand-dunes, a long row of spectators, many of them with cameras, was always waiting to see us embark; and often a somewhat shy, reluctant child, propelled forward by some invisible agency in the rear, would present the Princess with a rose or a bunch of flowers.

The joy with which all the children met Vigand and the other members of the crew after their short separation was very touching. The engine-man exhibited the versatility of his accomplishments, and a talent for domesticity, by drying all the soaked garments, especially stockings, of which the consumption was large, in the mysterious region down below.

Prince Joachim’s steering was occasionally somewhat{183} erratic, but improved day by day, until he was able to take us into haven and bring up alongside the pier in a most masterly manner.

When the Empress and the two older princes arrived, they also accompanied us to Kahlberg, and were introduced to Vigand and the rest of the crew with great joy, as these heroes had been described in detail to Her Majesty long before she saw them, and their manifold virtues and talents dinned incessantly into her ears.

The Princess became at this time frequently reminiscent of a week she had once passed on her mother’s yacht, the Iduna. The chief personality on board appeared to be the English cook, who hailed, I believe, from Brighton, and always addressed Her Majesty as “mum.” His culinary talents excited the rapture of the Princess, who went into ecstasies over his porridge and curries and other toothsome dishes. One of his brothers was steward on board and waited at table, and had the peculiarity of invariably stubbing his toe against the raised threshold of the dining saloon whenever he came in or out, flying, so to speak, headlong into the saloon or alley-way. But the cook’s talents were so pronounced that the Empress asked him for various English recipes, which I was called upon to translate into German—a very difficult task for any one unacquainted with the technical terms of German cookery.

Sometimes the Princess would drive in her pony-cart along the road in the direction of Frauenburg, famous as the dwelling-place of Copernicus. These drives were not an undiluted joy to her, for the small bare-legged peasant children insisted on presenting flowers all along the route, which meant pulling up the ponies every five minutes to avoid driving over some staggering infant of tender years who, escorted by an elder sister, clasping in its grubby little paw some herbage torn from the nearest hedge, would precipitate itself recklessly into the path of the carriage. The flowers, generally intermixed with bunches of over-ripe wild{184} strawberries had all to be taken into the carriage, and exuded their green sap and berry-juice liberally on to the cushions and the dresses of the occupants.

Frauenburg was a quaint old town, the capital of the great Prussian diocese of Ermland, formerly under the jurisdiction of the Teutonic Knights, who possessed large territories in that neighbourhood. In 1309 the executive officers of this great order of fighting monks established themselves in the castle of Marienburg, a few miles beyond Elbing, which the Emperor has recently restored to its old glory, having entirely rebuilt it, as far as possible, in exact accordance with the former building, which had almost crumbled to decay.

Cadinen often suffered from severe thunderstorms, which came on with great suddenness. One day, when for some reason we did not go to Kahlberg, the children and their teachers went in two open carriages for a long drive. Prince Joachim, who was an ardent whip, drove one of them, and we were getting along very merrily, several miles away from home, when suddenly heavy drops began to fall, and the thunder rumbled threateningly. Fortunately a big Garten-Restaurant with ample stabling accommodation was close at hand, so we immediately drove into the yard, and the carriages and horses were just put under shelter as the rain came tumbling down in torrents. We all sat in a sort of covered glass veranda and played games for an hour, when, the weather having cleared up, we started off again. To the great joy of the children, almost as soon as the horses’ heads turned homewards, two closed royal carriages were perceived hastening in our direction, obviously bringing succour for half-drowned persons, for they were piled up inside with cloaks and rugs of every description. The consternation written legibly on the faces of the coachmen made the whole crew of children burst into irrepressible laughter, it pictured so visibly the agitation of mind into which the entire Schloss had been thrown.{185}

“Yes,” remarked the Princess callously, “as soon as the storm came on I could see the Countess wringing her hands and putting us to bed and the doctor coming to feel our pulses.”

Naturally both Countess and doctor were much relieved that their precautions had been unnecessary, and we were praised for being “so sensible” as to take refuge in the restaurant; but it was a very lucky chance that we happened to be near one, as in that lonely region they were but sparsely distributed, and we might have gone many miles before finding another.

The Emperor, among other properties on the estate, became owner of a Zigelei or tile-factory, of which there are many hundreds along this coast, which possesses a peculiar variety of clay, very suitable for the manufacture of bricks and tiles. The old Cathedral of Frauenburg, of which Copernicus, though he was never a priest, was canon, is built entirely of brick, for there is no stone in the neighbourhood. The Emperor’s factory has in the last few years begun the experimental manufacture of the finer kinds of porcelain, and produces year by year many artistic objects which are sold in Berlin.

During the many wet days of our stay in Cadinen, the children found great occupation in modelling various articles out of the prepared clay, which were afterwards sent to the factory to be burned. Some little fern-pots and vases, the product of her amateur efforts, were regarded with great pride by the Princess.

The Emperor took the greatest interest in his factory, and never failed to visit it as often as he could do so, inspecting and criticizing every department. He has built delightful houses and cottages for the heads of departments and the workers. Some people scoff at it as a piece of costly, needless extravagance, and object to the Emperor’s competition with other factories. It is run chiefly, however, as a practical scientific experiment, and although a good deal of cheap pottery is{186} made and sold to the general public at current market prices, it aims at artistic development as well as the invention and discovery of colours and new glazes. From his travels the Emperor is always bringing here some piece of antique porcelain, Italian, Greek or Roman, which may suggest something new in form or colouring. He is so keen himself that he is bound to inspire keenness in others.

Once or twice I have been round the factory with the Emperor and Empress, who would stay there for an hour or two sometimes on their way to or from Rominten. His Majesty always took the whole of his suite with him, and liked them to be as interested as himself. On one occasion, from the heaped shelves of the warehouses he hurled—there is no other word which quite expresses it—terra-cotta busts of himself and large vases and other pottery of the same material at the members of the suite. My share of the spoil was a bust of himself and two flower-vases. We all emerged carrying our property, and the officers in uniform looked rather comical with large terra-cotta plaques under each arm or cradling a bust carefully against the shoulder.

In fine weather the Princess sometimes rode in the forest, but during the second and third year of her visit to Cadinen she devoted herself entirely to bathing and did not ride as well. As, however, there were twenty riding-horses available, I always got up at half-past five, and rode alone with a Sattel-Meister through the beautiful forest, which was of quite a different nature to that of Potsdam. It had a wild delightful freshness, with dimpling brooks appearing out of the greenery; great rocks and boulders stood at the turn of every path, with ferns growing from their crevices. The roads were not so good as those to which we had been accustomed, as they were full of tenacious and slippery beds of clay, and quite dangerous after rain, as were the fourteen little wooden bridges which crossed the wimpling stream which meandered aimlessly but beautifully through the{187} trees. But when it was impossible to ride in the forest, there were the cornfields, and the stubble-fields from which the oats had been cleared were magnificent for a good stretching gallop. Those early rides lengthened the day a good deal.

At five o’clock the Lampier, the old man who trimmed the lamps and cleaned the shoes, would knock softly at my door according to orders. I would rouse up hastily and dress, and then creep warily past the rooms where every one slept, and down the back staircase into the yard, where, in the morning sunshine, the wrinkled old Hühner-frau was feeding her flock of ducks and chickens; then, slipping like a conspirator through the wet bushes into the stable-yard round the corner, I would come upon the smiling Sattel-Meister in his neat uniform, standing beside two horses held by stable-boys. We would bow to each other in ceremonious German fashion, mount, and away into the glory of the dewy morning; for however wet and stormy the after part of the day might be, the mornings were always fair and smiling.

Curtains of filmy cobwebs, threaded with beadlets of dew, spanned every twig, while gorgeous beds of lupines ranging from white through pale and deep heliotrope to dark purple, great upstanding masses of campanulas, tall yellow foxgloves, and other flowers unknown to me bordered the field paths through which we rode. The shimmering yellow of the bearded rye, the darker reddish-brown of the wheat, rippled like a sea by the breath of morning, the vivid emerald of the potato fields, the glorious chrome and sulphur of the yellow lupines grown as cattle fodder, mingled with the subtle green of the forest trees, and the long-drawn-out blue thread of the distant Baltic, all dappled and gleaming in the dawn, blended together in a riot of luminous colour.

The peasant women working in bands of twenty or thirty among the potatoes would lift up their friendly brown faces, and wave a hand and smile as we galloped{188} past. Occasionally we came unexpectedly on one of them kneeling before a tiny wooden shrine almost hidden in the standing corn.

The last Sunday of our stay in Cadinen was always devoted to the Kinder-Fest, or treat for the school-children, given by the Empress.

The youth of the village was scrubbed and washed and starched and ironed to a pitch of painful perfection, but none of the children wore anything in the shape of finery, and nobody thought of curling or waving their abundant locks for the occasion. The girls’ tight pigtails were tied, if anything, a trifle tighter, while the boys’ heads were cropped almost to the bone. The most conspicuous change in their attire was the presence of shoes and stockings, which obviously severely handicapped their activities. All the light-footed boys and girls, who usually skipped untrammelled down the grassy lanes, became slow-footed, slouching, awkward louts, moving with a stiff propriety which was as much the effect of footgear as of respect for royalty.

The festivities began by coffee and cake at three o’clock, for tea is unknown in that district. The cake was a kind of bread with currants stuck in it at long intervals, and the coffee, which we will hope was not as strong as it looked, was imbibed by infants of the tenderest age, babes in arms sipping it eagerly from their mothers’ cups apparently without any evil effects.

The Empress and the Princes and Princess waited on the small sunburnt guests, and saw that they were well supplied, and after tea was finished games were played.

“The very stupidest games I ever saw,” said the Princess, who preferred something more exciting than “Here we go round the Mulberry-Bush,” or its German equivalent. So she immediately organized sack-races among the boys, helping to tuck the small urchins into their sacks, and instructing them how to hop along, cheering on the blacksmith’s son, whom she obviously desired to see the winner.{189}

All the mothers, most of whom appeared to be employed at the Schloss as housemaids, clustered round in their clean print dresses, watching the sports with the deepest interest; while the green-clad foresters, the Inspektor and his family, the fishermen from the Haff, also stood in a respectful semicircle, gravely and seriously absorbed in the sack-races.

At half-past six the Fest was finished, and everybody dispersed homewards; but at the Schloss the children often continued the Fest on their own account. On one occasion, after supper, Prince Joachim, having by some mysterious means discovered that one of the footmen as well as a cook were performers on the harmonica, a sort of improved accordion, proposed that they should be sent for and an impromptu dance held on the lawn.

The cook arrived first in his white cap and apron, looking rather embarrassed at being called upon to perform before royalty. He made a deep bow to Her Majesty, and was then conducted by the young Princes to the garden seat and requested to begin at once, so he flung himself with the ardour of a true musician into a waltz, and they all skipped merrily round upon the grass. Presently a rather fat red-faced footman arrived with a second harmonica, bowed, and took his place beside the cook, and the two went hard at it, the cook playing the air while the footman made the accompanying harmonies. Occasional discords arose, whereupon they regarded each other sternly, each tacitly accusing the other; but it never disturbed the rhythm, and the dancers hopped energetically round in spite of the heat and their hard day’s work.

The cook, possessing an artistic soul, always waved his head in time to the music, gazing upwards to the stars; but the fat footman, being a man of another temperament, sat stolidly, moving nothing but his fingers.

Bed-time for the children was long passed when the musicians were reluctantly dismissed with the warm{190} thanks of the Empress, and cook and footman retired in a series of graceful bows to their respective spheres.

The last day of Cadinen comes. The luggage has been packed and carried downstairs and loaded into carts by a quarter-section of soldiers sent over from Elbing for the purpose. The brown-faced youths penetrate every room, grinning amiably, and shoulder everything they can find, while harassed footmen rush about with lists in their hands, which they consult hurriedly.

The train is waiting, the Land-Rat is waiting, the Inspektor, the Zigelei-Direktor, In the dusk, as we drive down to the station, beyond which glimmers the long line of the Haff, we pass rows of workpeople, who timidly wave hats and aprons as Her Majesty goes by.

We are quickly in the train, and stand at the windows, waving our hands vigorously as it moves off. The fields fade away into the distance, the blue cornflowers on the edge of the railway banks nod farewell, a solitary stork can be seen wending his way homewards on wide-sweeping wings. The darkness falls and blots it out. When the dawn comes we are nearing Potsdam once more, and on the whole rather glad to be back again, for, as the Princess says, “Cadinen’s very nice, but ‘there’s no place like home,’ is there?”

CHAPTER XIII

ROMINTEN

ROMINTEN, the Emperor’s favourite shooting domain, lies far away in East Prussia, on the very frontier of the Russian Empire. For the first few years of my life in Germany it existed merely as a name.

Every autumn towards the end of November came to the New Palace great loads of antlers labelled “Rominter{191} Heide,” magnificent outspreading trophies of His Majesty’s gun.

Then one day the Princess announced, to the consternation of her governesses, aghast at the possibility of further interruptions to her education, that “Papa” was building a new wing to the Jagdhaus, so that “Mamma” and she herself might join him there.

“Won’t it be lovely?” she said with sparkling eyes, and danced about the room in a manner expressive of the deepest delight.

“When you are grown up and done with lessons, Princess,” suggested the Ober-Gouvernante.

“Not a bit when I am grown up, but now this very autumn. Papa says so; the house is getting on splendidly. It will all be ready by September.”

If “Papa” said a thing would happen, it naturally did, let who might disapprove; so that a few weeks later the Princess in her brand-new hunting-dress, accompanied by a blackboard, a desk, a large chest of school-books, a tutor and myself, went off in the highest spirits to join Their Majesties’ special train at Berlin.

The Emperor and Empress were already in the train when their daughter arrived, and there was a very large suite with them, including Prince Philip Eulenburg, who a year or two later fell into disgrace, and from being the most trusted, most sought-after of all the Emperor’s friends, was banished entirely from Court and seen no more.

The Empress was attended by one only of her ladies—the youngest of the four resident Hof-Damen, who would be on duty the whole time; but as in Rominten there are no ceremonious occasions and no constant changes of costume—one of the chief burdens of Court life—the duties of the lady-and gentleman-in-waiting are comparatively light.

We had a very merry supper in the train, the Emperor being in an extremely happy, not to say hilarious mood, his face constantly crinkled with laughter. He told{192} one small anecdote after another, some of them almost childish, but irresistibly comic when accompanied by his infectious laugh. One was of a child at a Volks-Schule who wrote an essay on the Lion as follows: “The Lion is a fearful beast with four legs and a tail. He has a still more terrible wife called the Tiger.”

The royal hunt uniform, which is only worn by those in the royal service or by persons to whom the Emperor grants permission, is extremely picturesque, being of a soft olive-green, with high tanned-leather boots and a belt round the waist from which is suspended the Hirschfänger or short hunting-knife. In the soft green hat, turned up at both sides, is generally fastened either the tail-feathers of the capercailzie, or the beard of a gemsbock, which sticks up like a shaving-brush at the back.

At supper everybody was wearing ordinary costume, but they all assembled at breakfast next morning after their night in the train in complete hunting-dress, even to the footmen who waited at table. Although I possessed no uniform, unwilling to be a jarring note in the hunting-harmony, I had provided myself with a suitable green Sports-Kostüm, while the Princess had a regulation green Letevka (Norfolk jacket) and hunting-knife all complete.

The train passed through the station of Cadinen, but it was a further journey of eight hours to reach Gross-Rominten, distant some seven or eight miles from the hunting-lodge itself.

The usual rows of flower-crowned school-children lined the path and threw flowers into the carriages and automobiles. All the population of the country-side had, of course, turned out to see Their Majesties, and through a flutter of handkerchiefs and waving of hats the procession of carriages passed, presently entering the great 90,000-acre forest.

Formerly the village where the Emperor has built himself a house was called Teer-bude, which might be translated Tarbooth. It was a poor place, inhabited by{193} people who made a spare living by distilling tar from the pine-trees; and although the forest belonged to the Crown it had not been properly developed and was in a somewhat neglected condition.

A little stream called the Rominte ran through the district, so the Emperor changed the name of the place to Rominten, and with characteristic energy and determination set himself to build and improve.

His frequent visits to Norway had given him a love for the houses there, built of pine logs; and having all the necessary material at hand, he determined to build in the Norwegian style of architecture.

The road to this Jagd-Schloss lay through long vistas of pines, which grow here to an enormous height—though a few years ago the devastations of a caterpillar called die Nonne (the Nun) had destroyed a great many of the trees and made fearful havoc. The road wound past places where whole plantations had perished and all the young trees were “in mourning"—that is to say, they each had bands of tar-smeared paper round their trunks to prevent the inroads of the insidious enemy. The Emperor tried to persuade one lady that these black bands had been put on the trees because an Ober-Förster was dead; but being of a sceptical turn of mind, and knowing a little about forestry, she accepted the Imperial explanation with some reserve.

At the entrance to the village of Rominten itself, young pine trees cut from the woods had been set at intervals along the road and triumphal garlands of pine-branches stretched across it. Before the entrance to the Schloss were ranged lines of sturdy woodmen and foresters in their smart uniforms of soft olive-green, holding torches in their hands, for the night falls early in this region and the immense trees growing so close to the house intercept a good deal of light. In the inner gravelled space between the two parts into which the Schloss is divided were waiting the head-foresters, gentlemen of education and culture, who are trained{194} for some years in the excellent schools of forestry which are to be found in Germany.

Baron Speck von Sternburg, whose brother was at that time German Ambassador in Washington, was also there to meet Their Majesties. He is the Head Administrator of the whole forest, lives and moves among it from year to year, and knows every stag almost that roams its immense solitudes. He is responsible for the Emperor’s sport, makes all preliminary arrangements, knows by heart the habits, almost the thoughts of the deer, and can tell at what particular moment they will come out to browse on the open meadows that are to be found dotted about like small green islands in the vast ocean of trees.

All the head foresters’ houses are in telephonic communication with the Schloss itself, so that they can send word at once of any animal paying an unexpected visit, as sometimes wolves and elk have been known to wander over the Russian frontier close by.

The Emperor, almost before he has well descended from his carriage, plunges at once into hunting-talk with Herr von Sternburg, while the Empress and the Princess, after greetings and introductions, enter the house to explore their new habitation. The Schloss is really two houses, built entirely of pine logs, connected by an overhead gallery supported on massive pine stems as thick as the masts of a ship. In every room the walls consist of the bare logs, which have been trimmed into a slightly oval form and then laid one on the top of the other, the whole being smoothly varnished. Tables and chairs are made of the same wood, and the green carpets of a moss-like pattern carry on the woodland suggestion.

The roof is deep and low, and the upper story has a gallery running its length, which overshadows the windows of the lower rooms, making them rather dark. The fireplaces and chimneys are made of unglazed red brick, and the fire of logs is built on a wide flat hearth,{195} raised a little above the floor level. They too are, of course, also Norwegian in character, running up in a Gothic pinnacled form. All is very simple and solidly, almost ruggedly, built. The log walls have one drawback. Smells and sounds penetrate their crevices very easily. If the footman in the basement indulges in a cigar, the Empress in her sitting-room upstairs is instantly aware of it.

The dining-room, which is in the part of the house occupied by the Emperor, is a fine building with a high-pitched roof of massive beams, from which hang many splendid trophies of the chase, fallen to His Majesty’s gun. There is a long wide window to the left, two large brick fireplaces at the end, a sideboard with a buttery-hatch into the kitchen, and wooden chairs surrounding the massive table which are quite penitential in their hardness; yet, since Majesty sits on them without any ameliorating interposition of cushions, no one dare complain. In a few days’ time they become more endurable.

The Emperor once overheard some comment of mine relative to their unyieldingness.

“What’s the matter with the chairs?” he says sharply, bulging his eyes at me in the usual Imperial manner. “Don’t you like them?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” I reply meekly, “I think they are beautiful chairs, but somewhat—er—harsh—on first acquaintance.”

“Harsh!” he laughs derisively—“I hope they are. Time you came here and learned to do without cushions. Here we live hardily.” He laughs like a delighted schoolboy, and asks every day afterwards if the chairs are getting a little softer.

Certain friends of His Majesty came every year with him to Rominten. First and foremost among them all was that Prince Philip Eulenburg before mentioned, a pale, grey-haired, somewhat weary-looking man with a pallid, fleeting smile, something of a visionary, with a{196} nature attracted to music and art, as well as towards all that is strange or abnormal in life. He was a born raconteur, like the Emperor, but told his tales in a quiet, soft, subtle voice, with a grave face and a certain fascinating charm of manner. One could easily understand how the robust personality of the Emperor, so frank, so generous, so open-hearted, was attracted to the somewhat reserved, mysterious, gentle nature of this brilliant man, who yearly entertained His Majesty at his own home, Schloss Liebenberg, and was the repository of his thoughts and aspirations.

He, however, disappeared. Rominten knew him no more. Yet probably no one was more missed than he whose name was never afterwards mentioned there. I can still see his pale face emerge from behind the red curtains of the gallery when he came to the tea-table of the Empress and sat down to entertain us with his store of literary and artistic reminiscences. He had the look even then of an ill man, whose nerves are not in the best condition, who is pursued by some haunting spectre, some fear from which he cannot escape.

Another man of a different type who came yearly was Prince Dohna of Schlobitten, a tall elderly gentleman who was a mighty hunter, and knew all about deer and their habits. We ladies were much indebted to him for instruction in the proper terms of venery—for, as the Princess forcibly impressed on us, it was quite impossible when at Rominten to speak of any part of an animal by its usual name, everything having a special and peculiar designation. “Nose, eyes, ears and tail” were shocking to the ear, and no longer to be tolerated, suffering a change into something technical and sporting. The “ears” of the hare, for example, had to be called its “spoons,” and the feet of the deer became “runners"—I think—but it may have been something else.

One notable visitor came once to Rominten for a short stay of an hour or two on his way back to Russia from America—a rather stern, silent, harassed-looking{197} man with peasant-features, who moved wearily and with an air of abstraction beside the Emperor as they walked up and down on the gravelled space before the Jagd-Haus. It was Herr Witte, the Russian statesman, soon to become Count Witte, on his way home after negotiating terms of peace between his country and Japan. At table he sat eating soup somewhat nervously, with the air of a man in a dream, listening politely to the Emperor’s talk, replying in monosyllables, but conversing with no one else. He was obviously tired and apprehensive.

Soon after dinner we saw his carriage departing for the station. He would be in Russia before nightfall.

Every morning in the early darkness somewhere between five and six, or it may have been even earlier, the panting of a motor-car could be heard outside, and presently it departed, bearing away the Emperor and his loader to some remote corner of the forest where a lordly stag had been marked as coming in the early mornings to browse.

At eight the Princess and I breakfasted alone in the little corridor outside Her Majesty’s sitting-room upstairs. Often we made for ourselves beautiful buttered toast at the big fire which blazed on the hearth; and once the Princess, who always had a fine feminine instinct for that sort of thing, took a large succulent plateful of this delicacy downstairs to His Majesty, who happened for a wonder to be at home for breakfast at the appointed hour. This was a thing which very seldom happened—for, as a rule, we from our window could see the hungry courtiers waiting about the courtyard for the Emperor’s return, which was naturally apt to be rather uncertain as to time, sometimes being postponed till eleven.

Rominten was the only place where Their Majesties breakfasted with the suite. Usually it was a meal taken strictly en famille and at a very rapid pace.

The Emperor appreciated the Princess’s buttered toast{198} so much that the Empress directed that some should be sent up every morning. Now buttered toast is quite unknown in the Fatherland excepting perhaps in large and fashionable hotels where international customs prevail. Rather leathery dry toast is served at tea; but when the royal command for buttered toast reached the kitchen through the medium of the footman it created nothing short of consternation. A flurried lackey came hastening up to me begging for some slight hints as to how it should be made. I foresaw that any instructions I might give when they reached the cook distilled through the footman’s mind would be vague and unsatisfactory. Nevertheless I did my best; but the Empress told me afterwards that the toast was quite uneatable—a result which rather gratified the Princess, who liked to believe that she was the only person capable of making toast for “Papa.”

The lessons with the tutor lasted from half-past eight until twelve o’clock, when a short walk with the Empress was taken, weather permitting. After luncheon, if the stag or stags slain by the Emperor had arrived, we all assembled under the dining-room window for the ceremony of “the Strecke.” The stags were laid on the small lawn beneath the windows, and three of the Jägers of His Majesty blew on hunting-horns the old hunting-call of the “Ha-la-li,” denoting to all who hear the success of the sportsman.

Somewhere between three and four the Emperor in his hunting cart would start off again to shoot, the Empress and suite waiting for his departure and shouting “Waidmann’s Heil” as he drove away. Then Her Majesty, with the Princess and the rest of us, would also climb into other yellow-varnished hunting-carts and drive in another direction, to try and get a glimpse of the stags browsing. Our conversation had to be rather suppressed, for fear of alarming the deer in their “sylvan solitudes,” and we usually descended from the carts to walk to one of the numerous “pulpits” as they{199} were called—small raised platforms screened by a frame of pine twigs, from which the Emperor sometimes shot—although, as a rule, they were used for purposes of observation only, and the shooting was done from behind another screen down below.

It was always a little tantalizing going to see the deer feed, because very often they didn’t appear. The stairs up to the pulpits creaked and groaned as any one rather weighty went up them, and the rest regarded the guilty one with annoyed looks and said “S’sh”; but the more silent and stealthy we were the less the stags showed themselves. When they did, stepping out proudly from the dark shadows of the trees, it was a very fine sight. The deer on the Rominter Heide are remarkable for their splendid antlers, and there are few things more gracefully beautiful than the manner in which a stag carries his splendid wide-spreading ornaments, especially when running with the speed of the wind among the forest trees.

Baron Speck von Sternburg lived in a large house in a corner of the forest where it opened out into a meadow near a village called Sittkehmen. He had three or four children, and his charming wife, herself the daughter of an officer of the Forest Department, was quite as keen, and possessed nearly as much knowledge of woodcraft as her husband.

Once when the Empress had been with the Princess into the village visiting some of the cottages, as we came back to the Schloss, hurrying a little for fear of being late for our one-o’clock dinner, we were met in the drive by an excited footman, who said that an Elch—which I took to mean a moose or elk—had been seen by the Baroness in the forest, that the Kaiser had ordered out all the automobiles and carriages, and that every available person was to serve as beater, Her Majesty and the Princess and the ladies being specially invited in that capacity.

Everybody flew in and out of the Schloss fetching{200} walking-sticks and cloaks, and in a few seconds the first automobile, containing the Emperor and Empress, the Princess and the two ladies, the Emperor’s loader with the heavy sporting rifles being outside with the chauffeur, started off in pursuit of this animal, which, not having a proper sense of political boundaries, had wandered over from Russia in the night. We only hoped it had not wandered back again, but I had a sneaking sort of feeling down in my heart that I should be almost glad if it had done so.

The car flew along, the Emperor talking volubly about the Elch and its habits and his hopes of slaying the confiding creature; and at last we were deposited about eight miles from home on a rather squelchy, marshy piece of ground, where we were met by Baron von Sternburg and commanded to follow him in perfect silence, the Emperor meantime going on in the car in a different direction. After a long damp walk we were all posted at intervals of about a hundred yards along a thick alley of pines, with whispered instructions to stay where we were and prevent the quarry from breaking through, although we all had grave doubts as to our ability to prevent any animal as large as a moose from doing anything it felt inclined. I went up to the gentleman on my left and whisperingly asked what methods I must employ supposing the mighty beast suddenly appeared in front of me, and he indicated a feeble waggling of the hands as being likely to turn it back in the direction of the Emperor’s rifle.

I cannot say if we should have been able to intimidate the moose by means of this manœuvre if it had really appeared; at any rate we were not put to the test, for after having waited for an hour or two, growing minute by minute more ravenously hungry, while the water penetrated into our boot-soles, it became evident that the sagacious animal must have returned to his native wilds, and we returned sadly to our long-delayed, somewhat over-cooked dinner, where we found the unfortunate{201} tutor of the Princess, who had been waiting for his food without any of the alleviating excitement of the chase from one o’clock until three, which was the hour when we at last sat down to our long-delayed meal.

Once on our way from Rominten back to Berlin we had a rather disagreeable adventure in Königsberg, where the Emperor stayed for a few hours for the purpose of dining at the officers’ mess of one of the Grenadier regiments stationed there.

We had started from Rominten very early in the morning, and the Princess, rather unluckily as it turned out, was still wearing her green hunting uniform, although the rest of the party had reverted to the usual less conspicuous costume of ordinary wear. The Emperor and his suite were to stop at Königsberg, while the Empress and her daughter, with the ladies, Prince Eulenburg and the gentleman-in-waiting, Count Carmer, after a short wait of half an hour to let the express pass before us to Berlin, would proceed onwards to Cadinen, there to await the arrival of His Majesty towards evening.

We had all descended on to the red-carpeted platform to witness the reception of the Emperor, and had seen him drive away amidst the cheers of an immense crowd waiting outside the station, when, to our surprise, the Princess begged her mother to fill up the intervening twenty minutes left to us by “a short walk,” as she was very tired of being in the train. Her Majesty too appeared to think that it would make an agreeable diversion, and though somebody suggested the difficulty of moving about in such a crowd as would probably be gathered together, yet, the Princess being very urgent, the expedition was undertaken.

We moved across the space in front of the station, which had been kept clear by the police, in full view of the enormous mass of people gathered there, the young Princess in her green uniform being a very conspicuous object. A pleasant elderly officer was to escort us on{202} what the Empress called our “little stroll through the town,” though that was hardly perhaps the appropriate expression.

Full of apprehension, which was amply justified by our subsequent adventures, we walked over the empty space, the Empress chatting to the officer, while the rest of us looked at each other, trying to think that what we foresaw must happen would perhaps not be so inevitable after all. The people began to cheer wildly as soon as they realized that the Empress was before them, for her name naturally had not been included in the programme of the day’s ceremonies; and as soon as we emerged from the emptiness into the crowd itself, we all realized at once the imprudence of the step taken, and the danger involved, not only to ourselves, but also to the unwieldy mass of humanity.

Most of the extra policemen drafted into the town had naturally been placed on the streets along the route where the Emperor would pass, and as we had directed our steps to a more secluded thoroughfare, there were none to be seen anywhere, with the exception of those near the station.

The enormous crowd seemed to break up at once with a yelp of astonished joy, and to fling itself with that blindly loyal ardour so characteristic of the nation upon our small group.

“Let us get back to the station,” implored the Empress, who saw at once the danger of advancing into that yelling, shouting, scampering, excited mass.

It was wonderful to see the orderly, apparently disciplined crowd of a moment before, which had settled down peaceably to wait for the Emperor’s return, suddenly disintegrate into a wildly-running horde, to watch the policemen, voluble and excited, and absolutely nonplussed at the unexpected turn of events, swept like leaves before the wind. Their shouts, blows and expostulations were powerless to stem that torrent of irresistible humanity. The shriek of their voices betrayed{203} a fearful anxiety and powerlessness, which sounded ominously in our ears.

We all wanted to return to the station—even the Princess was obviously ready to renounce her “little walk” through the town—but a glance behind showed its impossibility. All we could do was to keep on, the officer pointing out a side-street which he thought led back to the station in another direction.

He kept on continually shouting vain appeals to the crowd, which became every moment denser, ruder and dirtier. It was the hour when the workshops and factories vomited forth their occupants for Mittagessen, so that it soon became a crowd composed largely of Socialists and Jewish Poles, who congregate in Königsberg. Unfortunately we took a wrong turning, and our road led through some of the worst quarters of the town.

The cheering and hurrahing soon ceased, but the shouting and yelling went on; we were the centre of a dirty, frowsy mob, who smelt abominably, and treated our small group as though we were a show of some kind out for their amusement. The officer again appealed to the better feelings of the people, and begged the dirty children to remember what they had been taught in school, but they only laughed and darted in and out and laid their filthy hands on the dress of the Empress.

In my younger more unregenerate days I had learned from a schoolboy brother a certain sudden grip at the back of the neck or collar which we often employed in any slight dispute. Our nurses and governesses always characterized it as “most unladylike,” which no doubt it was, but none the less effective; and as these horrible children grew bolder and more repulsive, and tried to dart between the Empress and the Princess, I found this old “choker,” as we had called it, very useful in intercepting them. As a yelling boy bumped along, he was suddenly “brought up short” in mid career{204} and by a grip at the nape of his neck flung back among his comrades, helping to put them also into momentary confusion. Even this slight check was a great help, and although it was warm work for such a hot day, I continued unweariedly, with a certain sporting pleasure which struck me at the time as amusing, to capture one filthy youngster after another and fling him violently back into the roadway. The officer still shouted after policemen, and presently I became aware of one walking beside me, who was also aiding in the good work of “chucking out.” I think he had caught the idea from me. At any rate we toiled in tacit good-fellowship side by side for some time. Then at last a few more policemen were picked up and we got into a rather more respectable neighbourhood; but the crowd was still frightfully dense, and the policemen banged and thrust unmercifully. Sometimes quite innocent, unsuspecting people just coming out of their own doorways were taken by the shoulders and whirled back into their homes again, wondering, I am sure, if dynamite or an earthquake had struck them.

At last we came again in view of the station, and a mass of policemen took us in charge, still rather nervous—the policemen I mean—and very irritated with the crowd and perhaps a little with us.

The time for the train to start was overdue. We scrambled in hurriedly, but the Empress wished to show the accompanying officer some recognition of the strenuous activity he had displayed on her behalf. The gentleman-in-waiting hastily produced a case full of those royal-monogrammed-scarfpins, studs, and brooches, which are part of the travelling equipment of every court. The officer received a tie-pin, and one of the police-officers some studs, thrust into his hands almost as the train moved off, and we were left to review and discuss the experiences of the last half-hour.

“Never, no, never in the whole course of my experience,” declared the Empress, “was I in such a{205} fearful crowd. I really began to think that we never should emerge alive. It was too horrible.”

She shuddered and was obviously unstrung. As for the Princess, she was unusually pale and subdued, and it was a long time before she again proposed “a tiny walk” in a strange town.

In the next morning’s Königsberg Times was a paragraph in the news column to the effect that the Empress and Princess, with a small following, had walked “ungezwungen” (freely) through the town for a short time. Obviously the reporter had not been in the thick of the crowd.

CHAPTER XIV

THE KAISER AND KAISERIN

THE key to a man’s actions must always be found in his personal character. Two men saying exactly the same thing do not mean the same thing, but through the medium of speech are expressing their own individualities, prejudices, illusions, their outlook on the world.

The German Emperor, explained, interpreted, misinterpreted, by his own actions perhaps as much as by the many persons who, after a few hours’ conversation with him, imagine that they, and they only, have had a real soul-revelation from this frankly-unreserved, many-sided monarch, might say with Emerson, “To be great is to be misunderstood.” It is not at all unlikely that he does not particularly want to be understood—that he hardly understands himself. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

The Emperor’s conversation at its best has a certain quality of intoxication—is provocative of thought and wit. Men have been seen, grave American professors{206} and others of that type not easily thrown off their mental balance, to retire from talk with His Majesty with the somewhat dazedly ecstatic look of people who have indulged in champagne; then they go home, and under the influence of this interview write eulogistic, apologetic character-sketches of the Emperor.

It may be asked how does he appear in the intimacies of private life, to the inner circle of his Court, to those who see him in unguarded moments? Men often change for the better, or sometimes for the worse, when they retire from the public eye. But the Emperor is much the same everywhere, he has no special reserves of character for domestic consumption only.

At home he inspires much the same charm that he does abroad, and sometimes the same irritation. Unexpected people, whimsical people, are necessarily alternately irritating and charming just as their moods happen to please or displease the circle of people whom they affect. He is a man who is bound to get somewhat on the nerves of those who surround him, to make his service laborious to his servants, his secretaries, his courtiers, who live in a state of continual apprehension, fearing that they may not be ready for some sudden call, some unanticipated duty. There is no more alert place in the world than the Prussian Court.

“We are like the Israelites at the Passover,” grumbled one lady: “we must always have our loins girt, our shoes on our feet—shoes suitable for any and every occasion, fit for walking on palace floors or down muddy roads—our staff in our hand; nobody dare relax and settle down to be comfortable.”

The Emperor disapproves of people who want to settle down and be comfortable. In a jolly, good-humoured but none the less autocratic kind of way, he sets everybody doing something. He likes to keep things moving, has no desire for the humdrum, the usual, the everlasting sameness of things.

No one who knows the Emperor intimately can fail{207} to see how early English influences have helped to mould his character, how intensely he loves and admires English life as apart from English politics, for which he has a perplexed, irritated wonderment and contempt.

“Not one of your Ministers,” he said to me on one occasion, “can tell how many ships of the line you have in your navy. I can tell him—he can’t tell me. And your Minister of War can’t even ride: I offered him a mount and every opportunity to see the manœuvres—‘Thanks very much for your Majesty’s gracious offer—Sorry can’t accept it—I’m no horseman unfortunately.’ A Minister of War!—and can’t ride! Unthinkable!” He gave his short, sharp laugh.

When some years ago he for a few weeks occupied Highcliffe Castle, near Bournemouth—a proceeding which very much annoyed a section of his subjects, who considered that Germany possessed just as many “eligible residences” for the purposes of a “cure” as did England, of whom those Germans who know least of her are naturally most suspicious—his letters to Her Majesty, portions of which she occasionally read aloud at supper, showed how absolutely he enjoyed that peaceful, comfortable, untrammelled, simple country-house life: how the beautiful gardens—there are no beautiful gardens in Germany—the product of years of thought and labour, a growth of the ages, imbued as they are with the glamour and mystery of the past, appealed to the artistic side of his soul; how “thoroughly at home"—his own expression—he felt there, how rested and refreshed in body and soul.

He wanted the Empress, if only for a week, to come and join him, so that she might share something of his delight and pleasure in the old house, in its wealth of memories, its many treasures of art and historical relics; but there was the difficulty of accommodating the suite, the ladies and gentlemen, the maids and footmen, with{208} which royalty can never dispense, however simple in its own personal needs it may be.

So the plan fell through—the time was too short to arrange matters; but the Emperor in his letters described in minutest detail everything that happened there—his delight in the pretty English children he met, his pleasure in the tea he gave to the boys and girls on the estate, his astonishment at their well-dressed appearance, their reserved, composed manners, at the way in which they sang grace, at the clergyman who controlled the proceedings and knew how to box and play cricket. It is quite impossible to imagine a German Pastor who can play cricket, and as for boxing ...!

“Poor Papa!” said the Princess, “he is quite broken-hearted at leaving his dear Highcliffe.”

Any one living in the atmosphere of German palaces can understand this regret. It is conceded that no one in the world can create like the English that delightful surrounding of freedom and comfort, of cultured, artistic luxury combined with a certain strenuous out-of-door life. The palaces inhabited by the Emperor are huge, magnificent buildings, expensively and uncomfortably constructed; and Germany has too recently been engaged in the stern business of war, her faculties are still too absorbed in the great question of defence, to be able to afford the leisure to accumulate those relics and treasures of past ages which are the charm of England.

“Ah, you have never had a Napoleon to plunder and burn your country houses,” sighed the Emperor, almost apologetically, once, when talking of his English visit: “your Reynoldses and Gainsboroughs, where would they have been if Napoleon’s Marshals or his soldiers had seen them? Perhaps burnt or destroyed, or sent to the Louvre. Think what it must mean to the children of a house to live with one of those pictures, to absorb it unconsciously into their mentalities; they must grow up with a love of beautiful things—they cannot{209} help it. We have nothing of the kind; our houses were stripped and burnt.”

I suggested something about Cromwell and the way his gentle Ironsides in their zeal smashed up the beautiful sculptures of our cathedrals and stabled their horses in the naves. “Though the horses did less damage than the men,” I conceded.

“Ah, Cromwell!” he replied: “Cromwell did nothing in comparison with Napoleon; besides, that was much further back—long ago—Gainsborough and Reynolds not yet born. All our art treasures were absolutely destroyed, burnt, by Napoleon. Art and War cannot live side by side. We have had too much fighting, and now must recreate, rebuild almost from the beginning.”

“Yes, it is lucky for us that we live on an island, and that the French fleet met its Trafalgar,” I said. “Nelson saved our art-treasures for us, I suppose.”

“I expect he did,” returned His Majesty, nodding his head emphatically. “So you recognize that, do you?” and he turned away laughing and still nodding vigorously, thinking, I am sure, a good deal about Nelson and the fleet.

Nobody has ever accused the Emperor of being a diplomatist. He himself believes that he is very astute and can see farther than most men. He is, so to speak, a little blinded by his own brilliancy, by the versatility of his own powers, which are apt to lead him astray. He has never acquired the broad, tolerant outlook of a man who tries to view things from another’s standpoint. He has, in fact, only one point of view—his own—and a certain superficiality characterizes his thought. He has a marvellous memory for facts, deduces hasty inferences, is too prompt in decision, relies perhaps too entirely on his own judgment and his own personal desires and experiences; he does not, in fact, give himself time and opportunity to think things out, to weigh consequences, and he has, unfortunately, few really great minds around him. Conscientious,{210} hard-working men in plenty, but the man of imagination, of original conception, of new ideas—and there are many such men in Germany—does not seem to be admitted to his councils. A great statesman is not at hand just now—one who can impress his thought on the Emperor’s receptive mind and guide his activities, the wonderful forces of his mind, into the best avenues for their development.

In spite of his belief in the special mission of the Hohenzollern family to carry out Divine purposes, an idea not uncorroborated by the course of history, he is in every respect more democratic than his Court. The magic “von” has, under his influence, lost some of its prestige. He has bestowed the coveted syllable on certain people whom he desired to see at Court, and invited to his table many men not enjoying the prepositional advantage. One of them, Herr Ballin, the head and inspiration of the Hamburg-America Line of Steamships, a self-made man with Jewish blood in his veins, was even asked to Rominten, where only the elect expect to meet each other. Not only that—to him was conceded a rare and much-coveted privilege: he was allowed to go stag-hunting, and, worse still, bagged three fine specimens, one of them a stag-royal.

What made this still more galling to the blue-blooded entourage was that a special friend of the Kaiser, a dear, delightful, charming old gentleman whom everybody liked, had been accorded a similar favour, but came back time after time without wearing the coveted spray of oak-leaves in the back of his hat, the leaves whose absence is so painfully eloquent of failure.

A universal groan used to go up from the lingerers in the courtyard as the yellow Jagd-Wagen appeared in sight and still no “Spruch” was visible to the anxious watchers.

“There, the General has again had no luck!” they would remark; and it became quite monotonous to see the General depart, all smiles, in his green uniform amid{211} a chorus of “Waidmann’s Heil,” and watch his return sadly and slowly in the dusk of evening.

The Emperor likes to be identified with successful people of every class, to feel that he has contributed something to their success, to indicate to them further channels of improvement. There are probably few successful artists, architects, engineers, or shipbuilders who have not been at some time indebted to the Emperor for many professional suggestions. It is a matter of common knowledge that all architectural plans for Government buildings, post offices, railway stations, barracks, etc., are invariably submitted to His Majesty—a censorship productive of many terrors and much apprehension in the official mind, for the question of expense is ignored and the Imperial blue pencil strikes out perhaps the toil of months, substituting something maybe less adequate to the intended purpose. Yet, on the whole, this autocratic method has been productive of much good: it has saved the nation from the frightful utilitarian atrocities of the inartistic Town Council, whose hideous square piles of bricks lie like a nightmare on the public conscience. If the Emperor often misses the best, his taste is at any rate on a sufficiently high level of excellence, and it improves with advancing years.

Among the many artists, some good, many of mediocre talents, to whom he has given his patronage, the famous László has painted the most successful portraits of the Kaiser and Kaiserin, and their daughter. Perhaps the most charming of all is that of the young Princess with her hair falling over her shoulders and her hands full of flowers. She and Herr László were very great friends, and it was amusing to hear the Princess attempt to talk about Art—for, to tell the truth, her efforts at drawing had, at that period, not advanced very far. László wished very much to see her productions, and she one day brought him a few rather smudgy charcoal sketches which many people had pronounced “quite nice.” László, however, left her no illusions on the subject. He{212} looked at them and smiled, and laid them down and said, “Well, shall we get on with our picture now?”

The Princess once gave him a doll dressed in Rococo costume, and he painted its portrait in oils and sent it to her on her birthday. It is now one of her most cherished possessions. László’s portrait of Her Majesty was an excellent likeness, and conveyed that air of stately dignity and placid calm so characteristic of the Empress, one which no other of her portraits possesses. Besides these three royal sitters the Crown Prince and Princess too were sketched in oils, and the resulting likeness of the Crown Prince was extraordinarily clever, conveying the curious cat-like, rather mesmeric look of his eyes. It was almost too good a likeness, and many people disliked it extremely—it was so unlike the rather quiet, absorbed expression that most artists give to His Imperial Highness.

To see the Emperor with children is always amusing. His own, with the exception of his little daughter, he has kept as they grew up sternly to their duties, first as schoolboys, then later on as officers in the army. Only of his little girl—now a little girl no longer—has he been heard to relate infantine anecdotes, to tell of her tiny imperious ways and childish wilfulness. But none of them, though they all adored “Papa,” were ever familiar with him. They all were brought up to believe him the most wonderful person in the world, but in that they were not so very different from a good many other children. To see the Emperor with his grandsons is perhaps one of the pleasantest sights in the world; to hear them explain their picture-books to Gross-Papa, to watch them gravely saluting each other when they meet in uniform, or to see the four small boys in white sailor-suits stooping in turn to kiss His Majesty’s hand. They are on the very best of terms, for Gross-Papa has a wonderful knack of finding his way to childish hearts.

The Kinderheim at Rominten is a kind of crèche, established by the Empress for the tiny children, where,{213} when their mothers are working in the fields, they can be cared for by a trained deaconess, who is also the depositary of sundry medical stores supplied by Her Majesty for the use of the villagers.

Every year, on the Sunday before the departure of Their Majesties from Rominten, a small festivity taking the form of a children’s tea is given here by the Emperor and Empress, and His Majesty may be seen in his green uniform, distributing hunks of cake to each sunburnt child; and when their wants are temporarily satisfied, nothing pleases him better than to thrust huge slabs of sticky currant buns into the unwilling hands of the attendant ladies and gentlemen, who, receiving the unwelcome gift with a forced smile, take an early opportunity of surreptitiously slipping it back into the tray whence it was taken.

On the occasion of one of these teas a small boy of six, thirsting for notoriety, barred the Emperor’s path at the moment when he was on the point of leaving the feast to step into the hunting-cart waiting outside with keeper and guns to take him to a part of the forest some miles away, where a lordly “eighteen-ender” was wont to browse at sunset.

This child, who possessed a phenomenal memory, burst into the recital of a poem, to which the Emperor, expecting every line to be the last, lent at first a sufficiently attentive ear; but as time went on, the poetic effusion, which described with unnecessary wealth of detail the events of the recently celebrated Silver Wedding of Their Majesties, seemed to expand its scope and gather strength and volume with each succeeding verse, while the Empress, aware of the portentous length of this rhyming masterpiece, tried to stem the flood of poetry by suggesting that the rest might be said another time.

But the sturdy young peasant, completely absorbed in his task, continued relentlessly, in his broad East-Prussian accent, his eyes faithfully fixed on the toes of{214} the Emperor’s boots. His Majesty, like the Wedding-Guest, “could not choose but hear,” and if he did not listen like a three-years child, at any rate bore manfully with the ceaseless monotone. At last it suddenly descended two tones, stopped, and with a wooden bow the young reciter concluded his stupendous effort, and his Imperial auditor, throwing thanks and praise over his shoulder, went off to deal with the stag, while the small boy retired shamefacedly into the crowd covered with glory and stuffed with cake.

The indefatigable deaconess had trained ten small boys to form a guard of honour and to present arms and go through certain military exercises whenever Royalty appeared, one tiny fellow performing laboriously on a very inadequate drum the while. When the Emperor came in sight they always went through all these evolutions, Präsentirt das Gewehr, Gewehr ab, and so on, the small Unter-Offizier, aged seven, giving his orders with the greatest coolness and precision.

The German Empress has always played a somewhat subordinate rôle, but it is unnecessary to deduce from this obvious fact the idea that she is a nonentity or a mere Haus-frau, because Her Majesty is nothing of the kind, but a woman with wide interests, who from morning till night is occupied with social schemes for the betterment of the people.

Of her it may be said, as Thackeray wrote of Lady Castlewood, “It is this lady’s disposition to think kindnesses, and devise silent bounties, and to scheme benevolence for those about her.... To be doing good for some one else is the life of most good women. They are exuberant of kindness, as it were, and must impart it to some one else.”

And if kindness is the most conspicuous trait in the Empress’s character, it is a kindness directed into many useful public channels, finding an outlet in worthy objects, in social service, and much arduous work for the help and uplifting of mankind.{215}

It is safe to say that perhaps no other woman in the world would have been so admirably suited to the Emperor’s varying moods, to his suddenness, his volcanic outbursts of energy. In the presence of her husband she is self-sacrificing, self-effacing, but when apart from him shows plenty of initiative and self-confidence.

For the first twenty years of her married life she was occupied in the care of her children, but by no means entirely absorbed by them, for she has always been deeply interested in problems of poverty and disease, and in the nurture of children, and has thrown all her influence in the scale against that excessive exploitation of the childish brain against which modern scientists are now upraising their voices. She is not at all pleased when poor little nervous children are thrust forward to recite poetry to her; she much prefers a bunch of flowers and something frankly childish, like the greeting of the small maiden who, having totally forgotten the speech she was to make, and finding the Empress so different from what she expected, just said shortly, employing to the horror of her parents the familiar Du:

“You’re the Empress, aren’t you? I’m Anna Kruger. Here, these flowers are for you.” And the unabashed infant thrust her flowers into the hand of the Empress, turned her back and toddled off.

All the public hospitals of Berlin are under the direct superintendence and control of the Empress, who, as the wife of an autocratic monarch, possesses much more direct authority than most Queen-consorts. Her interest in them is practical and thorough. She allows no alteration in construction, no building to be done, without going into the domestic side of the project. She knows where cupboards are necessary, where doors will save needless footsteps to and fro; she realizes the needs of women, too apt to be ignored where men alone arrange their treatment. She is indefatigable in trying to spread knowledge of the care of children among poor women, often so deplorably ignorant of what they most need to{216} know. She detests the German method of placing men almost entirely in charge of girls’ schools; she has fought with some success against this masculine assumption of authority, nowhere carried so far as in the Fatherland, where little girls may be daily seen taking their walks in Berlin under the charge of a solemn young man in spectacles.

The Empress is tall and well-made, and her hair turned white at a very early age—chiefly, say those people who have an explanation for everything, because of her grief that her only daughter was born deaf and dumb! This popular myth has naturally fitted in nicely with the white hair, so that it is almost a pity that it has no thread of truth upon which to hang. In any case, the white hair is very becoming to the statuesque dignity of the Empress, who grows year by year more impressive, more stately.

Her Majesty’s chief recreation, the one in which she most delights, is riding. Every day, if possible, she takes a brisk canter of an hour or two. She also plays a good deal of lawn-tennis—although during the last year her health has not permitted her to indulge quite so often in this game.

Her reading consists largely of historical memoirs, which interest her deeply; but she has not a mind quickly receptive of new ideas—would perhaps be a little narrowly intolerant if she were not prevented by her essential kindness of heart. Her chief talent has always been the creation of an atmosphere of home for her husband and children, no light task amid the rigid officialism of a court. She has been heard to relate how once, when not feeling very well, she sent to the kitchen for some tea at the unorthodox hour of ten o’clock at night, and was told that to carry out such an order was impossible; there was no provision for making tea at ten, only at five or in the morning from eight to nine. So the Empress went without her tea. The next morning the Haus-Marshall requested Her Majesty in{217} future, whenever she might need tea at ten o’clock, to give orders for it before five, because all the cooks went home at that hour. The Empress at once took steps to enable herself or any one else in the palace to obtain tea at any hour they might need it.

She is an industrious needlewoman, and very much dislikes to sit and talk without having some work to do, declaring that constant occupation of the fingers is very restful to the nerves; and when the old Court doctor remonstrates that she never allows herself to rest, smiles and shakes her head at him and says quietly, “Oh, you men do not understand.”

The Emperor of late years always lies down and rests for an hour or two in the afternoon, but no efforts have ever been successful in making Her Majesty do the same. Up early in the mornings to ride with her husband, walking with him before breakfast, standing more or less all day, and often up to a very late hour of the evening especially in the season, it is surprising how the Empress has been able always to fulfil without fail her varied duties, often at the expense of much bodily weariness and effort.

Once at Königsberg, where the Imperial couple had come for some special festivities, after a day and a night’s travelling in the train, she found herself so utterly overcome with fatigue that at three o’clock in the afternoon she felt that unless she obtained some rest before night she must inevitably break down, for a large dinner was to take place in the evening with a reception to follow. But all round the old Königsberg Schloss was gathered an enthusiastic crowd cheering and calling for the Empress, who at last went out on to the balcony, and, holding up her hand for silence, addressed them to the following effect:

“Good people,—I thank you for your kind reception, but for the next two hours it is necessary for me to have some rest, so I ask you to go away and leave me in peace until five, when you may come again.” She then retired,{218} and the people melted away, and for a space there was silence.

When Her Majesty cruises in her yacht, the Iduna, off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein, and lies up in port for the night, every patriotic soul within a radius of thirty miles is smitten with the selfsame idea—to come and serenade Her Majesty till the small hours with the selfsame song, “Schleswig-Holstein sea-engirdled.”

“Mamma and I are perfectly sick of that song,” said the Princess. “People came and rowed round the Iduna and yelled it into the port-holes while we were dressing and while we dined, and when we came on deck there it was again, and when one lot had finished another lot came and began all over again. It was truly awful.”

In Germany everybody yearns to sing before Royalty. In Wilhelmshöhe one enterprising lady who, as one of the princes remarked, “thought more of her voice than it deserved,” hid herself behind a bush in the public part of the park, and when Her Majesty came walking unsuspectingly in that direction to enjoy the cool evening hour in company with her children, the lady burst into impassioned song and shook out of herself torrents of trills and elaborate shakes into the darkness.

The evenings at Neues Palais in the winter-time were usually very quiet. After supper the Empress and her ladies with their needlework would sit round the big table of one of the salons, while the Emperor looked at the English papers spread about, or, as often happened, read extracts from them aloud. He usually wore glasses when reading, and was very fond of Punch, especially of the political cartoons, in which he so frequently figured under the guise of a sea-serpent, an organ-grinder, or his imperial self, with exaggerated moustaches and portentous frown. I always tried to hide Punch when it was my turn downstairs. His Majesty liked to thrust these embarrassing pictures under my nose.

“What d’you think of that?” he would say. “Nice,{219} isn’t it? Good likeness, eh?” It was often difficult to find a suitable answer on the spur of the moment.

Somewhere about ten o’clock the Empress would rise and depart, followed by the ladies, who all turned and made a curtsy to the Emperor as they went past, he regarding them with a rather mocking, quizzical gaze. When the Emperor was away, the ladies often dined upstairs in the apartment of the Empress, and sat afterwards in her private salon, one of the loveliest rooms in the Palace, all pale yellow satin and silver mouldings.

Until his marriage the Crown Prince was a very frequent visitor at the New Palace, usually staying there at Christmas and other times of festivity. He is the only one of the princes enjoying the title of Imperial Highness, his brothers and sister being only Royal Highnesses.

At the time of the death of the Emperor Frederick and his father’s accession to the throne as William II. the young prince was only seven years old.

So that no invidious distinction could be made between himself and his brothers, the title of Crown Prince was not used until he was eighteen years of age, and the little boy was so unconscious of his right to the title that when he heard that one of the officers had been promoted, and was asked to guess what he had now become, he said with a delighted smile, “Perhaps he’s been made Crown Prince.”

He is, as every one knows, a young man who has devoted much time to sport, and, like his father, has many spheres of activity, having written a book, visited India, and made some good and a few unwise speeches. He is an ardent soldier and a typical Hohenzollern, with supreme confidence in the star of his family, and earnestly desires to live his life in his own way, to move with the times, to be a child of his century; and it is probable that with a little more experience of life, especially perhaps of that discipline of sorrow which initiates most men into a new sphere of thought, he will develop into{220} the man the world hopes to see in him—something steadfast and strong, and perhaps a little more silent. At present he is very good-natured, very kind, very crude in his ideas, very young for his age, very self-confident and rather selfish, as the modern type of young man is apt to be. He is popular in Potsdam, where he picks up little boys for rides on his charger as he comes home from drill, flings gold pieces abroad to poverty-stricken people, gives lifts in his motor-car to weary men on the road. He has all that facile, democratic, easy generosity which wins popularity, and possesses great charm of manner together with a hatred of coercion and restraint. Probably some recent outbreaks have been due to a desire to show his independence of mind, a yearning to cast off conventional shackles and to say what he thinks.

He still has a good deal of the schoolboy in his composition, although since his marriage he has given up his favourite pastime of sliding down staircase banisters.

But it is not so long since, when he and his family were living in the Stadt-Schloss at Potsdam, one wet day when entertainment was hard to find, he had the happy idea of amusing his children by taking their tiny Shetland pony upstairs to the nursery.

The pony had first to be fetched by the Crown Prince and his adjutant from the stables of the Marmor Palais, and was with difficulty dragged and pushed into the automobile, where, in a state of abject terror, it protested all the way against its abduction.

When they arrived at the Stadt-Schloss the pony was led or rather hauled bodily up the stairs, and was so unnerved by its experiences that its behaviour on arriving in the nursery scared the little princes into tears, and they begged for the pony to be taken away again, howling without intermission until the poor animal was, with difficulty, removed.{221}

CHAPTER XV

CONCLUSION

THE Emperor William has a great horror of every possible kind of infection, especially of the ordinary cold.

Unhappy officials summoned to Court while suffering from this minor ailment may be seen using surreptitious pocket-handkerchiefs behind the kindly shelter of a palm, or slipping through the window on to the terrace to indulge in the inevitable sneeze out of range of His Majesty’s observation.

Whenever the Emperor himself catches the complaint he at once retires to bed till the worst is over, and all engagements are cancelled until he is well again.

“Go to bed and perspire” (only he uses a more forcible Anglo-Saxon word) is the advice he gives and follows.

Upon the shoulders of his medical attendants, two in number, rests the responsibility of safeguarding the Emperor as much as possible from every source of infection.

How many panic-stricken exits from one palace to another do I remember! Flights at an hour’s notice from measles, chicken-pox, or scarlet fever, sometimes only to meet an equally dire disease already installed before us.

On one occasion the Court had just returned from Berlin after the season, and had settled down comfortably at the New Palace, when some tiresome child in the Communs opposite was found to be suffering from measles, and we were all (with the exception of the Emperor, fortunately absent for two days) hurried off to the Marmor Palais, which happened to be totally{222} unfurnished, all its chairs and tables having been warehoused for the winter and not yet replaced.

We wandered about the garden there, watching the arrival of the vans, which had been hastily summoned together, and now slowly and at long intervals disgorged their contents at every door.

The rooms allotted to the ladies were in a little Dutch cottage in the garden, and contained only a few clothes-pegs, on which to hang hats and coats. By slow degrees washstands, chairs, wardrobes, kept slowly filtering in—though many of us had to wash our hands at the tap in the passage before going to dine with the Empress.

Somewhere about ten o’clock at night the beds began to arrive, and for the next few days existence partook largely of the disjointed, uncertain, intermittent nature of a picnic. Except for the moral support afforded by the white kid gloves and fan, to which we clung convulsively through that long chaos, we should with difficulty have been able to preserve the decent atmosphere proper to a court.

Another sudden exodus occurred once, when the whole Court, including the Emperor, were for the first time installed for the winter in Belle Vue, with its charming garden, which had been recommended by the doctors as a salutary change from the Schloss in the Lust-Garten, which possesses only a few sooty trees on a grass plot two yards square.

Everybody was delighted with the innovation, and the last dresses were being hung in the wardrobes, the finishing touches given to the delightfully quaint, sunny little freshly-painted rooms overlooking the green Tier-Garten, when a rumour ran shuddering through the palace. We were to pack up at once and return to the gloomy old Schloss at the other end of the town. Prince Oskar, just returned from Italy, had developed chicken-pox—that very catching illness—and was to remain in Belle Vue with his adjutant and servants, while the rest of us migrated elsewhere.{223}

So all the luggage had to be re-packed, and before evening we had retired from the chicken-pox, only to find that after all it had come with us—for the young Princess Alexandra of Schleswig-Holstein, who was staying at the Court, and had just become engaged to her cousin Prince August Wilhelm, the Emperor’s fourth son, fell ill of the complaint almost immediately; but we remained where we were and did not travel farther.

Their Majesties were due to pay a visit to England in a few days’ time, and many telegrams passed between the two countries, the Prussian Court fearing to bring the chicken-pox with them, while the English one implored them to come all the same, as nobody there was the least afraid of it. The upshot was that the visit was paid, the Germans spending an apprehensive week in England, always on the alert for symptoms which happily never appeared.

Some time afterwards, the Empress in discussing this outbreak of chicken-pox remarked that she had not been at all anxious about any one but the Emperor. It was entirely for his sake that the doctors had thought it well to move from Belle Vue.

“No, not at all,” vehemently spoke His Majesty, who happened to overhear what his wife said. “I had chicken-pox long ago when I was a boy. I wasn’t at all afraid of it.”

“But, Wilhelm!” said the astonished Empress, “I never knew. Why didn’t you say so then?”

“Nobody asked me,” said the Emperor grimly; “the doctors ordered us off, and there was the end of it. They never told me that it was on my account. I thought that you were afraid of it.”

This is the kind of thing that is apt to occur when people try to be a little too tactful.

“I don’t know,” said the Princess, “why we fly about so much trying to run away from various diseases; we must be always meeting and swallowing microbes.”

In Berlin during the wet weather the Emperor with{224} difficulty can get the exercise he needs. He has had a covered tennis-court built in the grounds of Mon-Bijou Schloss, a short five minutes’ walk from the palace on the Lust-Garten; and here, when the weather continued persistently rainy, His Majesty, in a frightfully overheated building, would play with any young officers who were fairly expert at the game. None of them appeared to enjoy the honour very much. The oppressive atmosphere, combined with the nervous apprehension natural to the occasion—the fear lest an unlucky ball, with the hideous perversity of inanimate dumb things, might perhaps rebound with force against the sacred person of His Majesty or, as sometimes happened, fall into the midst of the tea-table presided over by the Empress—paralyzed the hand of even the least imaginative lieutenant.

“I feel all unstrung and frightened,” confided one of these unfortunate youths to me. “Supposing I happened to give His Majesty a black eye?”

“No, I know that, but still I’m always thinking it might happen; and you know Von Braun’s ball went bang into the Empress’s teacup and flung the tea all over her gown. His mother was in tears when she heard of it.”

As an alternative to indoor tennis, of which he speedily grows tired, the Emperor rides on rainy afternoons in the fine large Reit-Bahn or riding-school of the royal stables, where one of the regimental bands is stationed in the gallery, and plays the latest operatic music as His Majesty and the adjutants canter round.

To the despair of the Master of the Horse he insists on having the Reit-Bahn also artificially heated.

“The whole stable will be coughing to-morrow,” groan the unhappy officials as they ponder on the evil effects upon the horses of the warm atmosphere. But the Emperor likes to feel that he is “getting rid,” he says, “of a little bit of myself.”{225}

Once, as the riders were trotting round the Bahn, smoke was observed to be issuing from the coat-tails of one of the adjutants, who was carrying a box of matches in his pocket. This small incident amused the Emperor and restored his good-humour, always a little affected by bad weather. At supper he told the tale with all the dramatic exaggerations in which his soul delights, describing the young officer’s plight as “painful in the extreme.”

Nothing pleases the Emperor more than to “chaff” his intimate friends about their private weaknesses. At Rominten he would tell interminable adventures of Admiral von Hollman—“Männchen,” as he used to call him—all hinging on this gallant old officer’s knack of losing his umbrella and his luggage.

“He usually arrives at a state reception without a helmet, or something of that kind. Left it on the steamer or in the train; took it off to have a nap, and then forgot all about it,—and as for umbrellas! He buys them now by the gross. Finds it cheaper!”

“Yes, yes,” he says dubiously: “umbrellas! they are—they are—a little evasive. I think of them all the time, and then—in a moment—they are gone. It is marvellous, Your Majesty, marvellous how they disappear.”

“Last Christmas,” says the Emperor, speaking to the table at large, “the Empress gives him a beautiful new silk umbrella, with his name and address on it in large letters. What is the result? He sets off home taking his umbrella with him. How far do you think?” The Emperor thumps the table to emphasize the astonishing absent-mindedness of the admiral. “Why, he actually leaves it in the carriage that takes him to the station—leaves it in the carriage—loses it in the first half-hour of possession.”

“Found again!” shouts the Emperor, bursting into a roar of laughter. “Yes, you found it waiting for you on the doorstep when you got home, didn’t you?”

Some one had seen the forsaken umbrella and given it to a footman travelling to Berlin by the same train, who had left it at the Admiral’s house.

The Emperor always talks with great energy, and has a habit of thrusting his face forward and wagging his finger when he wishes to be emphatic. He has a very hearty, infectious laugh, and often stamps violently with one foot to show his appreciation of a joke. His characteristic attitude and manner of rocking incessantly from one leg to another and nodding his head as he talks make it easy to identify him in a crowd.

Sometimes he falls into Napoleonic attitudes, and occasionally attempts to pinch the ear of a particular friend.

On his face, whether grave or gay, stands out prominently the scar on his left cheek, made by the madman who once threw at him a piece of an iron bar. It is not a long scar nor very disfiguring, but the wound must have been fairly deep. An inch higher it might have done terrible mischief. It was dangerously near one of those bright blue, restless, twinkling eyes.

Sometimes, but not frequently, the Emperor talks of his mother, always in terms of affectionate pride and appreciation. Once at supper, discussing books, especially the books one loved as a child, His Majesty mentioned “Frank Fairlegh” as among the chief favourites of his youth.

“I always read it aloud to Mamma while she was painting,” he said, “and I shall never forget how we laughed over it together. Mamma laughed so much that she couldn’t go on painting when I read that part—you remember where George Lawless keeps jumping over a chair to work off the nervous excitement while{227} he waits for an answer to his proposal of marriage——” and the Emperor describes to the assembled adjutants and ladies some of the humorous incidents of the book.

The late Empress Frederick has left her mark everywhere in the New Palace. One of the gentlemen who had belonged to her household remarked that she was never idle, but every evening after dinner would sit with her writing-pad on her knee planning out on paper some scheme, charitable or otherwise, which at the moment occupied her attention.

“Sometimes,” he said, “she would discuss with me some alteration or improvement till perhaps twelve o’clock at night, and in the morning at seven I would receive from her a written statement, with all the details and directions worked out—all in her own writing. She must have written it after I left.”

The gardens and grounds of the Palace were enlarged and beautified under her directions, and the grass under the trees planted with all kinds of wild flowers—campanulas, forget-me-nots, hepaticas and primroses, which still flourish profusely. They are called “Empress Frederick’s flowers” to this day by the gardeners.

On the wall of my sitting-room at the New Palace was a strange-looking memorial made in chocolate-painted wood, commemorating the death of her little son Prince Sigismund, who died at two years of age. There was the date of his birth and death, and a sort of bracket which held two ugly flower vases. The whole erection was in the worst possible artistic taste, a blot on the room and an eyesore. It also served to perpetuate the name of Sterbe-Zimmer or Death-room, always used by the housemaids in reference to this apartment, which was otherwise as gay and sunny as any in the Palace.

The Emperor is not unfailingly humorous and good-tempered, but has his human moments of irritability, and if he is angry or dissatisfied with anybody they are not long kept in doubt on the subject. Occasionally, like other people, he is unreasonable and expects impossibilities,{228} but on the other hand, when his anger has passed, he is always willing to modify a hasty decision.

Once he went from New Palace to Berlin for one night, and the stable authorities did not think it necessary to take over the saddle-horses for that short period, so that when the next morning the Emperor gave orders for his horses to be ready in an hour’s time the adjutants felt uncomfortably anxious. They gave the order, and prayed Providence to interpose with a thunderstorm, but the weather remained unusually calm and beautiful. By great good luck, a horse-box was standing at the Wildpark station, close to the New Palace, and the horses and grooms were crammed into it and taken by special train to Berlin, the journey occupying half an hour. The Emperor had to complain that morning of the unusual slowness of his Jägers in helping him to dress, of their inability to find his favourite riding-whip, of the deliberation with which they brought him what he needed.

“Are you all asleep this morning?” he demanded, unconscious of the deep-laid motive pervading this sluggishness.

One of the adjutants, of a resourceful turn of mind, bethought him of some plans for new barracks which His Majesty had not yet examined, and he managed to interpose these plans at the moment when the Emperor was about to descend the staircase to the courtyard, in which as yet no welcome clatter of hoofs was to be heard.

But at last the horses arrived, not conspicuously unpunctual. They had trotted rather more quickly than usual from the station along the Linden, but the Master of the Horse had saved his reputation for being “always on the spot when wanted.”

It is not a bed of roses to be Master of the Horse to the German Emperor. When the horses of the state carriage in which were seated Queen Alexandra and the Empress of Germany, frightened by the guns of the{229} salute, refused to draw any farther, and threw the whole procession into momentary confusion, it was the unfortunate Master who had to bear the brunt of the blame. He was presented by the Kaiser to King Edward, whom he already knew, with the accompanying phrase “Here’s the man who made such a fearful bungle (hat sich blamirt) with his horses.”

Evidently the Emperor thinks it better to go straight to the point, and that a lingering agony is worse than prompt dispatch.

One of his characteristics is that he can explain everything to everybody; but there is one exception—the suffragettes. He has never been able to explain them. They baffle him entirely. At first he thought they were just disappointed spinsters, but in view of the number of married women in their ranks he was obliged to abandon this idea. Since then he has been groping in vain after a satisfactory solution.

Some of them have been on board the Hohenzollern—not uninvited ones, of course—but a few of the charming English and American ladies who come to Kiel for the yacht-racing, who have sat on his decks and drank his tea, have shocked His Majesty by revealing themselves as sympathizers with the feminist suffrage movement. The Emperor becomes inarticulate at such moments. He wants to know “what in heaven women want with a vote?”

“We are coming to Germany soon, Your Majesty,” smiled one fair lady, with the intrepidity of her sex; “we are going to help on the movement here.”

“Here! There is no movement here, and if you begin burning houses and horsewhipping people in Germany, what do you think the police will do? They won’t send you flowers and newspapers and let you go free two days afterwards. We deal with people differently here, I can tell you.”

It is of no use to explain to His Majesty the difference between militant and non-militant suffragists. This{230} is a distinction too subtle for his mind, which sees them all tarred with the same brush, a menace to the peace of mankind, a clamorous nuisance, and a disturber of settled convictions and ideas.

“Women should stay at home and look after their children,” is his last word on the subject; and if some one points out the flaws in this remedy, as for instance the thousands of women who have no children either of their own or some one else’s to see after, he takes refuge in ridicule. He is quite sure that a vote is a desperately bad thing for women.

However, he allows women to be colonels, honorary colonels, in his army. The Empress, the Crown Princess, Princess Fritz, Princess August Wilhelm, and his young daughter each have their regiments, at the head of which on Parade days they ride in full uniform—though a long riding skirt is perhaps the least practical military garment that can be imagined.

The young Princess Victoria Louise, now the Duchess of Brunswick, received her colonelcy when only seventeen, a few days after her Confirmation, which was the formal ending of her schooldays—the day when German girlhood of whatever class renounces its childhood for ever.

“Confirmation!” said one rather “grumpy” gentleman of the court, a man of occasional cynical humour: “what does Confirmation mean? Why, for the boys it means henceforth permission to smoke cigarettes; for the girls, freedom to go to balls and parties—that’s what Confirmation means in Germany.”

At the Prussian Court it signifies something rather strenuous, and all Hohenzollern Princes and Princesses are strictly prepared for it some months beforehand by the Court Chaplain. It is considered to be a very solemn moment of their lives, and at the ceremony each one of them must read aloud before the assembled congregation a Glaubens-Bekenntniss or Confession of Faith, a declaration of their religious belief, written by themselves, together with their views of what that belief implies as{231} to the guidance of their future lives. It is a very impressive, almost a painful ceremony, this effort of these unformed boys and girls to give expression to their idea of how to shape their future worthily.

The day before the Confirmation, the candidate is examined in religious knowledge by the Chaplain, the Emperor and Empress being the only other persons present.

All the near relatives come to the ceremony; and one very notable old lady was conspicuous at the confirmation of the Princess. This was the venerable widowed Grand-Duchess Louise of Baden—“Aunty Baden,” as she is known in the family.

Daughter of the old Emperor, sister of the Emperor Frederick, mother of the present Queen of Sweden, this grey-haired, straight-backed old lady is a true Hohenzollern in character, of decided opinions and a restless, energetic mind. She still pays frequent visits to Berlin, occupying a suite of rooms in the palace of her late father overlooking the Linden, where the blind of one window remains permanently drawn, reminding the passer-by of the old monarch who daily stood there—as he once laughingly remarked, “because ‘Cook’ says I am there and we mustn’t disappoint the tourists"—to salute the Castle guard as it passed up to its barracks.

“Aunty Baden” has no pity for modern nerves and modern fatigue. She belongs to the old school, to an age of tough fibre. At the opening of the Kaiser-Frederick-Museum, when a statue to the Emperor Frederick was also unveiled, this indomitable old lady examined everything with a fresh, vital curiosity which baffled fatigue, insisted on penetrating into every room, and studying the remotest Greco-Assyrian sculptures with the liveliest interest. Hardly a single scarab or the smallest picture escaped her notice.

When the Empress suggested that it was getting late, and that the crowd of Princes and Princesses{232} who had assisted at the ceremony were very tired and hungry, she only turned with renewed zest to an adjoining gallery.

“Oh, here are a quantity of beautiful things! We must look at these before we go! See how interesting!”

Everybody else was bored to extinction and fainting for lack of sustenance, the time for luncheon being long passed; but the old lady continually made new discoveries, and was with the greatest difficulty at last induced by the Emperor to return to the Schloss.

On the Confirmation-Day of the Princess the Grand-Duchess appeared in the Friedens-Kirche—the Church of Peace, built in the lovely gardens of Sans Souci, where the Emperor and Empress Frederick lie buried—leaning on the arm of her nephew the Emperor William, who treats her always with the greatest devotion and respect.

She had laid aside the black dress she usually wears, and appeared clothed completely in creamy white, a long white veil falling behind almost to the hem of her dress.

All the old teachers and servants who had ever been connected in the slightest degree with the Princess were invited to the church. The old Sattel-Meister—long retired from service—who first placed her on her pony, her former tutors and governesses, as well as the Stifts-Kinder, grown up now and done with black uniforms and tight hair for ever—all were there.

The Lutheran service is extremely simple, and the Chaplain’s address and the reading of the “Confession” occupied the chief part of the time. In an hour it was over.

The Emperor was extremely pleased with the way in which his daughter acquitted herself.

“She is a chip of the old block, isn’t she?” he said proudly, talking about the way in which she read her Glaubens-Bekenntniss. “It was like a Kavallerie-Attacke"—the military comparison did not appear to{233}

strike him as out of place—“so direct and forcible; couldn’t have been better.”

Perhaps the Emperor’s martial comment was caused by his knowledge that in four days’ time he proposed to make his daughter Colonel of the Second Hussars, stationed at Danzig, the regiment of which his mother, the Empress Frederick, had also been colonel. On the birthday of the Empress, October 22, the news was announced.

A rumour of the event had taken wind, but the strictest secrecy was enjoined, and the necessary saddlery and, still more important, the necessary feminine uniform had been all prepared, the latter without any “trying on.”

It took three maids, several ladies, and at the last moment the patient ministrations and advice of the Emperor’s Leib-Jäger, to get the Princess satisfactorily into that uniform.

It was fearfully tight under the arms and round the neck, and the new patent-leather boots pinched horribly, so that the radiant glow of satisfaction in the glory and honour of wearing it was tinctured with some pain and discomfort, for the day was unusually warm, almost oppressive, and the heavy cloth loaded with astrachan, the hot fur cap with its skull and cross-bones (the emblem which gives the regiment its name, the Toten-Kopf or Death’s-Head Hussars) combined with the cumbersome habit-skirt, weighted the Princess almost beyond endurance.

All the officers of the regiment had travelled from distant Danzig, a twelve hours’ journey, to be presented to their new colonel; and the Empress’s birthday table, with the usual dozen of new hats, received hardly any attention at all, every one being absorbed in the “new recruit” to His Majesty’s forces.

“She will ride at the head of the first regiment that invades England,” said the Emperor gaily to me.

“Yes, I hope so. Then we shall be delighted to see it,” was the only possible answer I could find.{234}

“Oh yes! You will receive her with open arms, no doubt,” he laughed, but looked as though he were not quite sure of the matter.

But when his daughter the following year accompanied her parents to England for the unveiling of the Queen Victoria Memorial, although she did not arrive at the head of her regiment, she nevertheless managed to subjugate and be subjugated by that portion of England which came within her sphere of influence.

Her impressions of her week in London, a city she had expected to find wrapt in impenetrable fog, but which remained, with the exception of a few showers, bathed in sunshine all the time of her visit, were joyous in the extreme.

The soldiers, especially the Highlanders walking with that peculiarly characteristic, proud, delightful swagger, the rhythmic swing of their kilts, the skirl of their bagpipes, thrilled her with delight.

“Your soldiers are wonderful,” she said; “I never thought they were like that. Every private walks like an officer.”

She thought the “Military Tournament” the most delightful entertainment she had ever seen, and was intensely amused at “Arthur’s Arabs,” the soldiers of the regiment of Prince Arthur of Connaught, who, disguised in burnous and appropriate head-gear and jabbering a jargon of their own invention, interspersed with weird shrieks and gestures, imposed themselves on a portion of the unsuspecting British public as “the real article” from somewhere in the neighbourhood of Algiers, and accomplished their tent-pegging to the accompaniment of blood-curdling and ear-piercing yells.

When the Emperor and Empress went with the King and Queen to spend the afternoon at Windsor Castle, King George sent all the German servants and footmen, under the guidance of some of his own English servants, to see this same Military Tournament, at which they were much delighted—for, as a rule, it is very difficult{235} for people in attendance on travelling royalties to get any but a very cursory glimpse of the countries where they are staying. They returned glowing with enthusiasm and full of interest in what they had seen.

“So etwas haben wir nicht in Deutschland” (We have nothing like that in Germany), said one Diener to me with a certain quaint surprise; “it is very amusing, very interesting; but what is the use of it? We should not let our army waste its time dancing quadrilles with four-horse guns.”

I explained to the best of my ability that the tournament was a charitable affair and helped to get money for soldiers’ orphans, also that the gun evolutions were really only a modification of real military tactics. He seemed hardly convinced, however, and, in spite of his loudly expressed pleasure in the spectacle, still continued doubtful as to its relative utility.

If one may judge from the occasional bits of gossip which float upwards from “below stairs,” rather humorous situations sometimes arise between the servants of royalty belonging to different nationalities. When King George and Queen Mary paid their last visit to Berlin, on the occasion of the marriage of the Emperor’s daughter, two English waiting-maids were taken for a drive in Potsdam by a kindly German maid anxious to show some polite attention to the visitors. She, however, complained bitterly on her return of the severely patriotic attitude of the two British ladies, who, whatever they were shown, compared it detrimentally to something else in England; and when the German pointed out, as a possible object of interest, the large hangar built for the accommodation of Zeppelin’s air-ship, ostentatiously turned away their heads and looked in another direction, finding nothing more gracious to say than that they were “very pleased that the air-ship had descended by mistake into French territory!” Happily such rigidly uncompromising souls are rarely found at Court.{236}

From her earliest years, projects for the marriage of the Kaiser’s daughter had been continually discussed, and as she grew older every eligible prince in Europe—with the exception of the one she eventually married—was cited as a possible husband. The Kings of Spain and Portugal were for some time hot favourites; and when the former young monarch, before his marriage, paid a visit of several days to the New Palace, all the newspapers, taking no account of differences of age and religion, were naturally quite certain that they had run to ground the future bridegroom of the Princess, then only fourteen years of age.

The King was, in spite of the fact that he has no pretensions to beauty, an extremely attractive personality, and he and the Princess were the best of friends, having a similarity of tastes in jokes and a mutual passion for horses. When the King shot his first stag in the Wildpark he gallantly presented her with his Spruch or trophy of leaves, which remained as an ornament of her sitting-room until the announcement of his engagement to Princess Ena of Battenberg, when the Spruch, which had been disintegrating leaf by leaf, finally disappeared.

Of all possible marriages, that which the Kaiser’s daughter eventually made was the last that any one would have dared to prophesy, so utterly improbable did it appear. The Duke of Cumberland, father of the bridegroom, had from childhood been the implacable enemy of the Prussian Royal House and Government. All attempts of the Emperor to bring about a reconciliation had failed.

With almost monotonous regularity the newspapers would announce from time to time the approaching meeting of the Emperor with the Duke, and with equal certainty a paragraph would appear next day announcing the latter’s departure from the scene of the projected rendezvous “a few hours before His Majesty’s arrival.” The name of “The Vanishing Duke” became peculiarly{237} appropriate, and the feud appeared to have settled down into that hopeless state where every effort at reconciliation has been exhausted, and nothing remains to be done.

Many brilliant statesmen and crowned heads had to retire baffled after frequent praiseworthy but ineffective efforts, until at last those two great factors in the affairs of the world, Death and Love, intervened.

The Duke’s eldest son, travelling in his motor-car through Germany on his way to the funeral of his uncle the King of Denmark, met his death by an accident in a lonely part of the road, lay for a time unrecognized, and then, his identity becoming known, the Emperor sent off his son, Prince Eitel Fritz, with instructions to render all possible help in the distressing circumstances. The body of the young prince for two nights remained in the little village church near the place where the accident happened, guarded by Prussian soldiers and the two sons of the Kaiser—for the Crown Prince, whose wife’s brother is married to a daughter of the Duke, was also sent by the Emperor to do what he could to soften the sad tragedy. They watched all night by the coffin and escorted it on its way to burial.

A few weeks afterwards, Ernest Augustus, the second son of the Duke, by his brother’s death become heir to the family feud, came on his father’s behalf to thank the Emperor for his sympathy and aid in their sorrow. For the first time in their lives he and the Kaiser’s daughter met, spent an hour or so in each other’s company, and then, his mission fulfilled, he departed again. But a new element had been introduced into the quarrel: so strong was the mutual attraction felt by the two young people for each other that, in spite of the short time of their meeting, in spite of the tremendous prejudices and difficulties in the way, they at last wore down the opposition and conquered the accumulated hate of years. What the most practised diplomats failed to achieve, this boy and girl accomplished, and at last, through{238} many troubles, delays, and vexations, won their way to their hearts’ desire.

On the evening of the wedding of the Princess with Prince Ernest of Cumberland, now Duke of Brunswick, at the beginning of the historic Torch Dance which concludes the ceremonies, the radiant bride, taking her father by one hand and the Duke of Cumberland by the other, walked between them round the hall to the sound of the stately bridal music.

It was a happy symbol, the erstwhile enemies linked together by the Kaiser’s daughter, a visible sign of the alleviation, if not quite the ending, of a situation which had for long years galled and irritated the German people.

Now, with the departure of his youngest child, the last one left at home, the private life of the Kaiser’s Court has grown in these later days somewhat still and a trifle lonely. There is as yet no little girl among the children of the Crown Prince to take even partially the place of the one who has gone away, the one who was her father’s particular companion and pride.

“It is really quite sad,” wrote recently a lady of the Court, “to see all those apartments deserted and locked up, the curtains drawn across the windows, no movement or life where formerly there was so much. Christmas was strange indeed without our Princess. We all felt it like a shadow over the festivities. We seemed to feel that we were getting old.”

And the Emperor, who in his private friendships has undergone many disappointments and disillusions, becomes increasingly conscious of the soul solitude brought by advancing years.

Yet, though suffering from occasional moods of depression, he faces the future with confidence in the destiny of his house.

“If” holds first place. A copy hangs above his writing-table; he quotes it frequently to his sons, and translates it into terse and expressive German for the benefit of his adjutants. It embodies his own experience of Life, crystallizes his own aspirations. He too has always been anxious

INDEX

Adalbert, Prince, of Prussia, 44;
his fancy-dress ball, 160
Africa, German, 46, 168
Albany, Duchess of, 53
Alexander of Teck, Princess, 53, 55
Alexandra, Queen, 68, 228
Alexandria, the Emperor’s river-steamer, 169
Amber, 76, 182
Aosta, Duchess of, 151
Apollo-Saal, 45
Aubade of court ladies and gentlemen, 155
Augusta-Stift, 101
Augusta Victoria, German Empress, adventure in Königsberg, 201;
appearance, personal, 216;
audience, 8;
birthday, 95;
Christmas gifts, 69, 76;
cruise on the Iduna, 183, 218;
fall from horse, 172;
Irish apron, 70;
interest in social schemes, 214;
recreations, 216;
speech at Königsberg, 217;
treats to school-children, 188, 213;
unmarried sister, 136
August Wilhelm, Prince, of Prussia, 44

Baden, Louise, Grand Duchess of, 231
Ballin, head of Hamburg-America line of steamships, 210
Balls, State, 97;
fancy-dress, 160
Baltic Sea, 181
Bauern Haus, 83, 128
Bernstein, 76, 182
Bescherung, 74, 80
Bilder-Galerie, 150
Bismarck, Prince, 170
Black Forest, 108
Boer War, 46
Bonaparte, Jerome, King of Westphalia, 162
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 208
Books for boys in Germany, 28
Bornstedter-Feld, 47
Bornstedter-Gut, 137
Brandenburger-Tor, 148
Bride’s garter, 154
Brunswick, Duke of, 238
Butchers of Berlin escort royal brides, 148

Cadinen, 174
Cambridge, Duke of, 29, 85
Carol-singing, 73
Cassel, 159
Cécile, Crown Princess of Germany, 145, 156
Chapel at Wilhelmshöhe, 161
—— gallery, Berlin, 92
Chicken-pox, 223
Chocolate antiques, 22
Circus, Busch’s, 64
“Communs,” 38
Concert, State, 93
Connaught, Prince Arthur of, 151, 234
Copernicus, 183, 185
Corfu, 63
Cromwell, 209
Cronberg, 14
Cumberland, Duke of, 236

Danzig, 180
—— Gulf of, 175
Defilir-Cour, 152{242}
Diamonds, German, 168
Divining-rod, 168
Dohna of Schlobitten, Prince, 196
Droschky-driver, 172

Easter eggs, 99
Edward VII, King, 68, 229
Elbing, 175
Elk, 194, 199
Ena, Princess of Battenberg, 236
Esmarck, Professor von, 24
Eulenburg, Prince Philip, 195

Féodora of Schleswig-Holstein, Princess, 136
Ferry, Sacrow, 171
Feud between Guelph and Hohenzollern, 236
Forest, Rominten, 194
Frauenburg, 183, 185
Frederick, Prince, of Prussia (Prince “Fritz”), playing hockey, 56;
wedding, 154
Frederick Charles of Hesse, Princess, 14
Frederick, Empress, her practical mind, 37;
reading with her son, 226;
power of work, 227;
flowers and memorial to Prince Sigismund, ib.
Frederick the Great, Sans Souci, 50;
his harpsichord and books in the New Palace, 158
Frederick William, German Crown Prince, plays hockey, 55;
at Ploen, 123;
his engagement, 145;
his marriage, 147;
his firstborn, 156;
his tastes and character, 219
Frisches Haff, 175, 179
Frühstücks-tafel, 45
Fürstenburg, Max Egon, Prince of, 106

Gainsborough, 209
Gallery, Jasper, 158
Gallery, Picture, 150
Garde du Corps, 153
Geheim-Polizisten, 106
George, Crown Prince of Greece, 14
George V, King of England, 63
Gottes-Dienst, 179
Gratulations-Cour, 87

Ha-la-li, 198
“Halloren,” sausage of the, 89
Hamburg-America Line, 210
Hercules, statue of, 161
Herero War, 46, 48
Hesse-Homburg, Landgraf of, 11
Highcliffe Castle, 207
Hohenzollern, 229
Hollmann, Admiral von, 225
Hunt dinner, 172
Hunt uniform, 192

Iduna, 183
Intendant, worries of Theatre, 66

Joachim, Prince, of Prussia, youngest son of the Kaiser, 11, 18, 31

Kachel-Ofen, 39
Kahlberg, 181
Kiel, 160, 229
Kinder-Fest, 188
Kinder-Heim, 212
Königsberg, 201, 217
Krönungs-Tag, 92

Lakes, chain of, Potsdam, 169
László, Philip von, his portraits, 211
Liebenberg, Schloss, 196
Lonsdale, Lord, 109
Louise, Queen, of Prussia, 170
Lowther Castle, 109
Loyalty, German, 29

Marienburg, 184
Marmor-Palais, 53, 156
Marmor-Saal, 62
Marshal of the Court, 152
Mary, Queen, of England, 63
Master of the Horse, 228
Matrosen-Station, 170
Mecklenburg horses, 167
Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Duchess Cécile of, 145
Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Grand Duke of, 151
Military Tournament, 234
Muschel-Saal, 75
Museum, Kaiser Friedrich, 231

Napoleon I., 208
Napoleon III., 162{243}
Nelson, 209
Neuer Garten, 50
New Year’s Eve, 86
Norway, King of, 96
Norway, Olaf, Crown Prince of, 96
Norwegian landing-stage, 169

Oldenburg, Duchess Sophie Charlotte of, 154
Opera House, 66
Oscar, Prince, of Prussia, 55, 172, 174

Peasant-women as housemaids, 176
Pfauen-Insel, 169
Photographs, 146
Ploen, 61, 123
Policemen and mob, 202, 204
Portrait-painting, 211
Portugal, King of, 236
Portugal, Queen Augusta Victoria of, 60
Procession of peasants at Donau-Eschingen, 110
“Pulpits” in the forest, 198

Radaune, the, 180
“Railway Palace,” 113
Reit-Bahn, 59
Residences, royal, 36;
Belle Vue, 90, 222;
Berlin Schloss, 87;
Cadinen, 174;
Homburg, 3, 17;
Mon Biou, 224;
New Palace, 36;
Rominten, 190;
Sacrow, 171;
Sans Souci, 50;
Strasburg Schloss, 113;
Wilhelmshöhe, 159;
Wilhelmsthal, 162
Riding in Cadinen, 186
Rococo Period, 45
Roman fortress, Homburg, 22
Rominte, 193
“Rule Britannia” in a German school, 126
Rutsch-Bahn, 170

Saalburg, 22
Sand-Hof, 48
Sans Souci, 50
“Sardanapalus,” 68
Saxe-Altenburg, Prince of, 100
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of, 144
Schilder-Saal, 80
Schleswig-Holstein, Duchess of, 51
Schrippen-Fest, 135
Shah of Persia, 104
“Sherlock Holmes,” 28
Sigismund, Prince, of Prussia, son of the Empress Frederick, 227
Skating, 54
Sleighing, 97
Spain, King Alfonso of, 236
Speck von Sternburg, Baron, 194
Speise-Karte, 45
Stifts-Kinder, 103
Strasburg, 113
“Strecke,” the, 198
Supper in royal train, 31, 191

Tanz-Proben, 97
Teutonic Knights, 184
Theatre of Frederick the Great, 61
Thunderstorms in Cadinen, 184
Thüringer-Wald, 107
Tie-pin and studs, 204
Tile-factory, 185
Torch Dance, 153
Trafalgar, 209
“Treasure Island,” 27
Tree, Beerbohm, 65
Tree, Viola, 65
Trippers, fifty thousand, 85
Truchsess, 152
Turkey, Sultan of, 157
Turn Saal, 61
Tutors, 119
Twins, 14

Unken, 177
Unter den Linden, 87

Victoria Louise, Princess, of Prussia, 1;
art and Herr von László, 211;
birthday party, 120;
confirmation, 230, 232;
cookery, 129;
dancing-mistress, 97;
donkeys, 58;
letters to her father, 62;
piano-playing, 63;
pig, 52;
ponies given by the Sultan, 14;
riding, 47;
toast for “Papa,” 197;
sack races, 120
Victoria Memorial, Queen, 234
Vistula, 175

Waiting-maids, patriotic, 235
Weddings, royal, 144{244}
Weisser-Saal, 93, 97, 152
Werder, 99
Whitsuntide at the Prussian Court, 135
Wildpark, 47
William I., German Emperor, 168, 170
William II., German Emperor: afternoon siesta, 217;
al fresco meals, 170, 171;
anecdotal moods, 84, 225;
anniversary of accession, 92;
birthday, 93;
Cadinen, 174;
carol-singing, 80;
censorship of architectural plans, 211;
chicken-pox, 222;
children’s guard of honour, 214;
conducting the band, 62;
dancing at court, 97;
diamond cigarette-case, 168;
duties of women, views on, 230;
evenings at home, 218;
excursions on river-steamer at Potsdam, 169;
family life, 13;
fancy-dress ball at Kiel, 160;
farming operations, 52;
hiding Easter eggs, 100;
horror of alcohol, 25;
hunt dinner, 172;
hunt uniform, 192;
hymn-singing, 161;
inspection of troops for South-West Africa, 48;
interest in aviation, 139, 141;
in human nature, 104, 135;
László, 211;
musical tastes, 63;
moose hunt, 199;
New Year cards, 86;
Norwegian hunting-lodge, 193;
picnics, 21, 166;
Punch, 218;
rebuilding the Saalburg, 23;
review at Metz, 114;
on Bornstedter Feld, 48;
rides in Wilhelmshöhe, 165;
safety-staircases for opera-house, 66;
silver wedding, 155, 213;
suffragettes, 229;
talk with soldiers, 135;
tea and Zwieback, 21;
tennis, 166;
tile-factory, 185;
umbrella of the admiral, 225;
visit to Highcliffe, 83, 207;
visit to Königsberg, 201;
Waidmann’s Heil, 198, 211;
Windsor, 161, 234;
women and votes, 229;
women-colonels, 230, 233
Witte, Count, 196
Woolwich Common, 85
Wright, Orville, 138

Zeppelin, Count, 141, 235
Zigelei, 185

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This Book was First Published	August	25th 1914
Second Edition	September	14th 1914
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Fourth Edition	October	23rd 1914
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Sixth Edition	February	1st 1915

The German Emperor in English Admiral’s Uniform
(Photo, E. Bieber, Berlin.)	FRONTISPIECE
	FACING PAGE
The Kaiser’s Daughter, Princess Victoria Louise (now Duchess of Brunswick) at the Age of Nine	12
(Photo, T. H. Voigt, Homburg.)

The Emperor and Empress with Members of their Family, taken at the New Palace, Wildpark	44
(Photo, Selle and Kuntze, Potsdam.)

The Kaiser and his Two Eldest Grandsons, Princes Wilhelm and Louis Ferdinand of Prussia	76
(Photo, Selle and Kuntze, Potsdam.)

The Crown Prince and his Heir, Prince Wilhelm	122
(Photo, Selle and Kuntze, Potsdam.)

The Kaiser and his Eldest Grandson	136
(Photo, Selle and Kuntze, Potsdam.)

The Emperor’s Daughter, taken on the Day when she was Made Colonel of the “Death’s Head” Hussars	232
(Photo, A. Topham.)

The Duke and Duchess of Brunswick	238
(Photo, T. H. Voigt, Frankfort.)

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