by the kaiser to close confinement in their palace under the most stringent kind of arrest, for having disobeyed his majesty’s commands with regard to the management of their household. Duke Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, the brother of the empress, has been subjected to more numerous orders of arrest by his imperial kinsman than any prince of the blood now living.
Severe as are European monarchs nowadays in punishing the disobedience of the members of their families, they do not, however, venture any longer to proceed to such extremities as the father of Frederick the Great, who when the latter was still crown prince, cast his son into prison, and ordered him to be shot, merely because he discovered that he was about to leave the kingdom without his permission for the purpose of undertaking a trip to England; and there is no doubt that the crown prince would have been put to death, and thus shared the fate of his two aids-de-camp, who were beheaded before his very eyes, in the fortress prison of Kuestrin, had it not been for the intervention of the ambassadors of Austria, Great Britain, Russia and France in behalf of his royal highness.
Yet another phase of this despotism, which the two kaisers,–namely their majesties of Germany and of Austria,–exercise over the members of their respective families, is the right which they claim to select and appoint the officers and ladies-in-waiting of every prince and princess of the blood. In order to appreciate what this means it must be explained that it is not merely contrary to etiquette, but absolutely forbidden by the rules and regulations instituted by Emperor William and his brother sovereigns, that any such princes or princesses should venture to appear anywhere in public without being escorted either by a gentleman or a lady-in-waiting. These attendants, who are, it is needless to state, of noble birth, may be said to constitute the very shadow of the personage to whose household they are attached. In fact a royal or imperial prince or princess cannot even cross the street, far less leave home for a ride, a drive, a walk, or for the purpose of paying a visit, or of doing some shopping without being escorted, if a prince, by a gentleman-in-waiting, and if a princess, by a lady-in-waiting, and possibly by a chamberlain as well.
Nor are the duties of the ladies and gentlemen-in-waiting confined to attendance upon their royal charges in public, for they form part and parcel of the royal or imperial household to which they are attached, and if they do not occupy quarters in the palace, at any rate they take all their meals there, since their duties commence in the early morning, and only cease late at night.
Now, human shadows of this kind are all very well when one is at liberty to choose them one’s self; but it is very different when one has no voice whatsoever in the matter, and when one is forced to submit to close and intimate attendance of this kind by ladies and gentlemen whom one neither likes nor trusts. In such cases as these, the gentlemen or ladies-in-waiting are apt to be regarded in the light of spies by their royal charges, and as people appointed by the sovereign to keep watch upon their actions. It is probable that no one has suffered so cruelly in this connection as the widowed Empress Frederick of Germany. Possessed of extremely liberal views in political matters–ideas which she imparted to her consort, she found herself, within a few years after her marriage, in complete opposition to Prince Bismarck. The latter regarded her as a very dangerous opponent, and responded to her openly avowed disapproval of his political methods by using his influence with her father-in-law, old Emperor William, urging him to interfere with her management of her children; and above all, to appoint as members of her household personages with whom she could have no possible sympathy, political or otherwise, and who were, in every sense of the word, devoted to the Iron Chancellor. In fact, Prince Bismarck acknowledges in his reminiscences, as published by his Boswell, Dr. Busch, that he caused the crown princess–as Empress Frederick was then–to shed many a bitter tear, by his interference, through her father-in-law, in her domestic affairs.
Bismarck made no secret of his enmity towards Empress Frederick and her husband before the latter ascended the throne, and it is on record that he even officially insisted that secrets of state should not be confided to “Unser Fritz,” for fear that the latter’s consort might communicate them to her English relatives. He even went so far as to accuse her of having, during the war of 1870, betrayed to non-German relatives Prussian military secrets, which were used by the French against her adopted country, and served to prolong the conflict. These odious charges, “_which have been abundantly disproved_” and for which “_there was not even the shadow of a foundation_,” are merely referred to here in order to show the intense bitterness of the personal animosity entertained by the chancellor towards Empress Frederick. Yet it was he, Bismarck, who, through the old emperor, had the right of selecting and nominating, not merely the instructors and attendants of her boys, but her own gentlemen and ladies-in-waiting–nay, even the physicians and surgeons to be called in cases of illness.
CHAPTER VI
It is to the part played by Prince Bismarck in selecting the attendants and tutors of the present emperor that must be ascribed the strained relations that notoriously existed between the kaiser and his mother during the few years immediately preceding and following his accession to the throne; while there is no doubt whatsoever that the last eighteen months of Emperor Frederick’s so prematurely-ended life, were saddened and embittered by the feeling that a conspiracy was on foot to prevent his succession to the throne on the ground of the incurable malady from which he was suffering–a conspiracy in which some of the principal participants were members of his household and physicians who had been forced upon him by his father at instigation of Prince Bismarck.
If I mention this, it is not so much with the idea of evoking a very painful chapter of the history of the Court Berlin, as it is for the purpose of explaining, and in a measure of excusing, the charges of unfilial conduct brought against the present emperor, and which contributed so much to his unpopularity both at home and abroad during the early years of his reign.
I have related in a previous chapter how William, while a boy, was snubbed by his parents, and treated with considerable strictness. His father, like so many good-looking giants, utterly free from affectation and pose, believed that he saw in his eldest boy a tendency to posture, a forwardness of manner, and a disposition towards pride of rank, amounting to arrogance, which it was necessary, at all costs, to repress. Prince William, therefore, was constantly receiving setbacks, often of a most humiliating character, from his parents, and I am sorry to say that this practice of regarding him as a presumptuous youth whom it was necessary to check, extended to other European courts, so that poor William can not be said to have had an altogether enjoyable time; and in this connection it is just as well to state that the Prince of Wales and his other English relatives, took their cue from his mother in their treatment of him, a circumstance which he has neither forgiven nor forgotten. Indeed the notorious absence of cordiality between the Prince of Wales and his imperial nephew of Berlin originates with the snubs which the British heir apparent, in his capacity of uncle, felt it necessary to administer to William, when the latter was a lad, and even when he had reached manhood.
Yet it would be unfair to ascribe any undue blame in the matter to the parents of Emperor William. The responsibility must rest rather with those people with whom Prince Bismarck, acting through the old emperor, surrounded the young prince. The mission of these nominees of the chancellor was to counteract the influence of the then crown prince and crown princess over their eldest son, and this was achieved by setting the boy against his parents. Every direction or command given by Frederick or by his consort to their son was made the subject of critical discussion by the personages with whom Bismarck had surrounded him, until the latter became convinced that the judgment of his parents was at fault in almost everything that could be imagined, and that all their views, political as well as social, were thoroughly out of keeping with Prussian traditions and German patriotism.
This in itself was bad enough: but what made matters infinitely worse, was that whenever William was subjected to any reproof or discipline by either his father or mother, those composing his immediate _entourage_ at once impressed upon the royal youth that he was the victim of the most gross and unpardonable injustice, that both his father and mother were inordinately jealous of his striking individuality, that the unmerited severity to which he was subjected was brought about by their consciousness that his intellect was superior to theirs, and that his ideas were too thoroughly Prussian to constitute anything but a serious danger to their English liberalism. The effect of influences such as these upon a high-spirited and impulsive youth, at the time entirely devoid of experience or of knowledge of the world, may readily be conceived. It naturally led to an increase of what his parents regarded as his presumptuousness and forwardness of manner, and consequently to a growth of their severity towards him. He, on the other hand, became more and more embittered by the unduly harsh and rather unjust treatment to which he was being subjected by both his father and his mother.
The persons in attendance on the imperial family, with the conspicuous exceptions of Count Seckendorff and Countess Hedwig Bruehl, were careful to fan the embers of bitterness rankling in the bosom of young William whenever any opportunity offered, and thus it happened that when Emperor Frederick, while still crown prince, was discovered to be suffering from that cancer of the larynx which ultimately carried him off, the relations between parents and son were so strained as to give rise to the very widespread belief that William was the ally of his father’s enemies, and a participator in the disgraceful conspiracy which ensued for the purpose of barring him from succession to the throne on the ground of his fearful malady.
As soon as the nature of the disease from which Frederick was suffering had been ascertained, his opponents, Prince Bismarck first and foremost, dug out from the most remote recesses of the family archives of the house of Hohenzollern an obsolete and forgotten law barring from the succession to the throne of Prussia any prince of the blood who was afflicted with an incurable malady. Of course, the original object of the statute in question was to enable the elimination from the line of succession of princes afflicted with hopeless insanity, or some such disease as would prevent them from administering the government, thus rendering the institution of a regency necessary. In one word, the purpose of the measure was to prevent such a situation from arising in Prussia as prevails now in Bavaria, where, since 1886 the throne has been occupied by a lunatic prince, who was incurably insane for many years before his accession to the crown, and whose dementia takes that peculiar form, which is described in the Bible as having overtaken Nebuchadnezzar. King Otto of Bavaria imagines himself to be alternately a quadruped or a bird, and when he is not browsing on leaves and grass in the gardens of his prison palace at Fuerstenried, under the impression that he is a sheep or goat, he will stand on one leg in the centre of a shallow pond, firmly convinced that he is a stork, occasionally flapping his long coat-tails in lieu of wings, and greedily attempting to devour any frogs or tadpoles that may come within his reach, unless prevented by his attendants from doing so.
There have been, alas! numerous cases of insanity in the reigning house of Prussia. Old Emperor William’s elder brother and predecessor, King Frederick-William IV., spent the last few years of his life under restraint, hopelessly insane, his brother and ultimate successor administering the government as regent. The late Princess Frederick of Prussia was afflicted like her brother, the last Duke of Anhalt-Bernburg, with a peculiar kind of lunacy which took the form of an invincible objection to clothing of any kind whatsoever; while one of her two sons, Prince Alexander, who died only a few months ago, suffered from a species of good-natured imbecility, which led him to offer his heart and his hand to every woman or young girl that he encountered, no matter what her age, or looks, or rank, sometimes making as many as thirty or forty offers of marriage in the same day! The above-mentioned law was created for the purpose of preventing a prince thus situated from ascending the throne of Prussia, but the family statutes evoked by Prince Bismarck and his followers certainly never contemplated the deprival of a prince of his hereditary rights of succession to the throne because of some physical ailment or infirmity. This would have been entirely contrary to the spirit and ethics of the monarchical system of the Old World; as will be readily seen when attention is called to the fact that both the late King of Hanover, and the present reigning Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, were absolutely and totally blind at the time they succeeded to their present thrones.
Prince Bismarck took the view, however, that the statute in question was sufficient to bar “Unser Fritz” from succeeding to his father, if it were once medically admitted that his malady was incurable, or if curable, that it was liable to permanently destroy the vocal chords, thus abolishing forever the power of speech.
Prince Bismarck declared that in a matter of such extreme importance, where the succession to the throne, and the life of the heir apparent were at stake, the surgeons and physicians should be selected by the State–that is, by himself–and that their verdict should be final. Chief among the medical experts whom he nominated for the purpose, was the celebrated German surgeon, Professor von Bergmann, who is as famed for his skill in the use of the knife as for his fondness in applying it in cases where it might possibly be dispensed with. Having convinced himself that the malady from which Crown Prince Frederick suffered was a cancer, he decreed that the only manner of saving the life of the illustrious patient was the extremely dangerous and almost certainly fatal operation of removing the entire portion of the larynx that was affected. This, as stated above, would have left the crown prince dumb for the remainder of his days, and according to the views of Prince Bismarck would have barred him from succession to the throne.
It is related in court circles at Berlin, that Professor Bergmann was on the point of operating upon the crown prince unknown to the crown princess, and under the pretext of making a very radical examination, for which anaesthetics were necessary, when, he was prevented at the very last moment by her imperial highness. It is even stated that she tore the instruments from his hands, and turned him out of the room with the most bitter and cutting reproaches. Whatever may be true in this bit of court gossip, it is certain that a fierce quarrel did take place between the crown princess and the great surgeon, and that the cause of this quarrel was the decision taken by the latter to operate upon the crown prince as the only means of saving his life.
[Illustration:
_THE CROWN PRINCESS AND PROFESSOR VON BERGMANN_ _After a drawing by Oreste Cortazzo_]
The crown princess thereupon summoned to her assistance Sir Morel MacKenzie, the greatest throat specialist in England, who throughout his long career was consulted by all the leading singers and orators of his day. MacKenzie came to Berlin, examined the crown prince, and utterly rejected the diagnosis of Professor Bergmann, and of the German physicians. He declared that the affection of the larynx, while cancerous, would not be bettered by using the knife, at any rate at that time, and that he believed the malady to be curable by treatment. Needless to add that his opinion was reviled in Germany as that of a charlatan, and that the Teuton specialists declared that the crown prince was doomed to certain death within six months, unless the operation was performed.
Fearing that some further attempt might be made at Berlin to operate upon her husband without her knowledge, or in spite of her opposition, the crown princess took him off to England, and from thence to the Tyrol, from which place they eventually migrated to San Remo. Meanwhile, the German newspapers, that is to say, those which were believed to be receiving their inspiration from Bismarckian sources, were filled with abuse of the crown princess, who was charged openly with being willing to sacrifice the life of her husband rather than her chances of becoming German Empress.
Meanwhile the crown prince became worse and worse, and while at San Remo had several fits of agonizing suffocation, to which he almost succumbed, and from the worst of which he was virtually saved by the late Dr. Thomas Evans, of Philadelphia, who displayed the utmost devotion and intelligence of treatment in the case of the imperial sufferer.
It was at this juncture that one of the most dramatic scenes which can be imagined took place in the antechamber of the illustrious patient. The crown princess received letters which informed her that Prince Bismarck had submitted to the old emperor, then himself near death, a decree for signature, transferring the succession of the throne from Crown Prince Frederick to the latter’s son, Prince William, a decree which, by the by, the old emperor could not bring himself to sign. Furthermore, she learnt through the same sources that one of the principal members of her household at San Remo, in fact, one of the chamberlains in attendance, was sending daily reports of the most venomous character to Berlin, and to Prince Bismarck particularly, about everything that went on around the unhappy crown prince. Not a thing was said, not a thing done, not a change for the worse or the better in the condition of the hapless crown prince, that was not instantly reported to the chancellor, in a sense most detrimental and inimical to the imperial couple at San Remo. This traitor in the camp owed his appointment to the imperial household to Prince Bismarck, but by his charming manners, his professions of loyalty and of devotion, and his denunciations of Prince Bismarck, and of the latter’s policy and ways, had completely captured the confidence of both the crown prince and crown princess.
Empress Frederick has inherited from her mother, Queen Victoria, a singularly fiery temper. Her passionate anger when she realized the base treachery to which her sick husband and herself had been subjected in their time of cruel tribulation and trouble can only be imagined by those who have the privilege of knowing her, and the scene that took place between herself and the offending chamberlain was not merely dramatical, but tragical in its fierce intensity.
It was very shortly after this that the old emperor died. If Prince Bismarck entertained any further hopes of preventing the accession of Crown Prince Frederick to the throne, they were frustrated by Prince William, who declined to be a party to any such conspiracy. Indeed, in spite of all that has been said to the contrary, I am firmly convinced that William at no time took any part, either directly or indirectly, in the Bismarckian plot to oust his so sadly afflicted father from his rights to the crown. But, on the other hand, it is certain that he was suspected by his parents and relatives of being privy to the scheme, and that he was treated with still greater hostility and lack of affection by them than previously, which naturally served to embitter him more than ever before.
Emperor Frederick’s reign lasted not quite one hundred days, and throughout that period a conflict may be said to have raged around the bedside of the dying man. Both he and his wife, aware how brief his tenure of the throne was destined to be, were bent on inaugurating some of those liberal reforms and popular measures which had been the dream of their entire married life, and which they wished to see put in force, as a lasting memorial of that monarch who figures in German history to-day as “Frederick the Noble.”
Prince Bismarck, and all the leading statesmen of Prussia, it must be admitted, ranged themselves against the imperial couple in the matter. They expressed profound pity for the dying emperor, but they denounced the empress with the utmost virulence for taking advantage, as they described it, of his condition to endow Germany with some of the most pernicious features of English political life, which, while all very well for Britons, were destined to prove disastrous in the extreme if applied to Prussia. The fiercer the opposition, the more resolute did both the emperor and empress become in their determination to attain their aim, before death once more rendered the throne vacant; and the position of William, who was now crown prince, became even more difficult than it had hitherto been. His political sympathies were, it is impossible to deny, with Prince Bismarck and his followers, and he could not with his training and with the influences by which he had been surrounded, ever since he had left school, but disapprove of the measures which his father and mother wished to adopt. This very naturally added to their distrust of him, and while they lavished every token of affection upon their other children, he was treated by them more as a political adversary and a personal foe than as a friend or a son.
At length the end came. The pitiful sufferings of “Unser Fritz,” uncomplainingly and patiently borne, were brought to a close by a death which in his case must have been a longed-for release; and within an hour afterwards, William, the present emperor, had startled his subjects and the entire civilized world, by taking an extraordinary step, which for a long time afterwards served as a theme for the denunciation of unfilial character hurled against him both in Germany and abroad; this step being the giving of an order to the effect that the guards placed at all the entrances of the Palace of Potsdam, in which his father had breathed his last, should be doubled, that a cordon of troops should be drawn around the park walls, and that no one should be allowed to enter or leave the palace without his permission.
While there is every reason to believe that this measure was suggested to him by Prince Bismarck, yet it must be admitted that it was to a certain extent justified by the circumstances. Emperor Frederick was known to have kept a most exhaustive diary throughout his entire married life, dealing day by day with all the political questions of the hour, the secrets of the Prussian State, the incidents of court life, etc., just as they occurred. From a German point of view it was a matter of the most extreme importance that this collection of diaries should not be permitted to leave Prussia, or to reach a foreign country, for it would practically have meant the placing at the mercy of a foreign land all the state secrets of Prussia during the previous thirty years. Emperor William and Prince Bismarck had both been led to believe that Empress Frederick had made arrangements to have these books conveyed to England by Sir Morel MacKenzie, whom they both disliked as much as they distrusted him. The idea that these volumes should be in the care of MacKenzie, even during the twenty-four hours journey separating Berlin from London, was to them quite intolerable.
Before many hours had elapsed, however, the measures were relaxed. It was discovered that the diaries were no longer in the palace, and that they had been taken over to England either knowingly or unknowingly by Queen Victoria on the occasion of her visit to Potsdam, when she came to bid adieu to her dying son-in-law.
Let me add that some time later, after a considerable amount of explanation and negotiation, Queen Victoria, of her own accord, returned the cases containing Emperor Frederick’s diaries to her grandson at Berlin, with the seals unbroken, taking the very sensible ground that inasmuch as there were many Prussian state secrets therein contained, their place was in the archives of the House of Hohenzollern, rather than in England.
Emperor William has never forgotten the course adopted by his grandmother in the matter, and by his manner towards her has repeatedly shown since then that he feels how greatly he can rely upon having his actions appreciated with perfect impartiality and all absence of prejudice at Windsor.
Empress Frederick was naturally deeply offended by the precautionary measures adopted by the emperor on his father’s death, and saw therein a new and most insulting indication of his unfilial conduct towards herself. Nor were the relations between the mother and the son improved, but on the contrary rather aggravated by the presence of the Prince of Wales at Berlin. The latter remained in the Prussian capital for a number of weeks after the funeral of Emperor Frederick, and the English newspapers, which had been most outspoken in their criticisms of the young emperor’s attitude towards his parents, did not hesitate to declare openly that if the prince was continuing his stay in Berlin, it was for the purpose of championing the interests of his favorite sister, and of protecting her from the insults of her son, and of the latter’s mentor and chief counsellor, Prince Bismarck.
There were all sorts of troublesome questions cropping up between the mother and the son during the first few months of her widowhood, many of which were inevitable; for certain courses of policy upon which Emperor Frederick had embarked were disapproved by the young sovereign’s constitutional advisers. Then, too, it would appear that Frederick III. had taken advantage of his brief tenure of power to unduly favor his wife and his younger children at the expense of the Hohenzollern family property in a manner that was not in consonance with the traditions of the reigning house. It was also whispered that the late emperor had lent a very large sum of money to his brother-in-law, the Prince of Wales, and it was further asserted that the then minister of the imperial household had preferred resigning his post to countenancing such a use of the money belonging to the Hohenzollern family. There was the question, moreover, of the distribution of the palaces. While William was perfectly ready to permit his mother to keep her residence at Berlin, he felt that he was entitled, as emperor and chief of the family, to the new palace of Potsdam, the finest of the lot, and the only one roomy enough for the abode of a reigning sovereign. It was, therefore, necessary that he should have possession thereof. His mother, on the other hand, took the ground that inasmuch as it had been her principal home throughout her married life, that nearly all her children had been born there, and that it was in many respects a creation of her husband’s, she ought to be allowed to retain it. Of course the emperor had his way, and this but served to increase the bitterness, particularly when he issued an order to the effect that its old name of “Neues Palais” should be restored in the place of “Friedrichskron,” which had been given to it by the widowed empress during her husband’s brief reign.
Of course all these differences of opinion between the mother and the son were carefully intensified by Prince Bismarck, and aggravated by the continued presence of the Prince of Wales, who was regarded, probably unjustly, as largely responsible for the animosity which it was claimed was entertained and manifested by the imperial widow for her son. The newspapers took sides in the matter, and the press being very active, there is every reason to believe, in view of the wide field of German and foreign journalism over which the influences of the chancellor extended at the time, that he had a finger, not alone in the denunciation on the one hand of Empress Frederick as grasping, mercenary, and too much of an Englishwoman to be a patriotic German, but likewise in the abuse of Emperor William for unfilial conduct. Every act of his that could possibly be construed as such, was painted in the blackest of colors, especially in the English press, manifestly with the idea of conveying to the kaiser the impression that the attacks originated with his English relatives, possibly with his mother herself; and I can recall seeing at the time a story to which the London papers devoted columns, and which was made the theme of editorials, the subject of which was that the emperor had sold to a carpenter the pony-carriage and pony used by his father daring the few weeks immediately preceding his death, for his drives in the palace gardens. The story related with much detail about how the pony trap was to be seen during the week in the streets of Potsdam, laden with window-sashes, etc., while on Sunday and holidays the seat where formerly the dying emperor reclined was occupied by the “Herr Tischlermeister” and his frowsy, vulgar-looking “frau.” Yet there was not a word of truth in this story. The pony-carriage used by “Unser Fritz” during the closing days of his life is preserved as a species of sacred relic in the imperial coach-house at Potsdam, while the pony leads a life of ease, idleness and equine luxury, out of regard for the fact that it had the honor of drawing the moribund monarch around the grounds of Charlottenburg and Potsdam. Inasmuch as this precious story about Emperor William’s selling the pony-carriage in question first made its appearance in a London newspaper, which, as long as Bismarck remained in office, was regarded as his particular organ in the British press, being owned by a gentleman bearing a distinctly German name, there is every reason to believe that the tale in question originated with some of the journalistic myrmidons employed by the chancellor, and that its object was to embitter William against the English, against his British kinsfolk, and, above all, against his mother.
It is not without significance that the mother and the eldest son have understood one another only since the dismissal from office of Prince Bismarck. From that time the relations between the two have been of the most affectionate and cordial character. Perhaps at first there was at times a little difference of opinion, owing to the difficulty experienced by a woman of the imperious character of Empress Frederick in realizing the fact that her eldest son was no longer “her boy Willie,” to be ordered about and controlled, but that he had become, not merely emancipated from her control, but her sovereign master, whose commands she is now forced to obey, and whose wishes she is obliged to consult and consider. But every year since the fall of Bismarck has had the effect of bringing the mother and the son nearer to each other.
The empress seems to have come to the conclusion that she has judged her son harshly and unjustly, prejudiced by appearances which were frequently against him; while he, on the other hand, demonstrated to Prince Bismarck that, while he was grateful to him for his services to the empire, he found difficulty in pardoning him for the advantage which he had taken of his–the emperor’s–youth and inexperience to estrange him from both his father and his mother.
If I have repeated in this chapter some history that may be regarded as ancient, since it dates back to eleven and twelve years ago, it is for the purpose of relieving Emperor William of much unmerited reproach heaped upon him, as the most unfilial of royal and imperial princes in modern times. William has a warm heart, and an affectionate disposition. He shows this in the happiness of his home life, and by the tenderness of his devotion to his wife and children. If he was for a time estranged from his parents, and in particular from his mother, it was less through any fault of his, or of theirs–I repeat it–than through the intrigues of Bismarck, and of the latter’s friends within and without the imperial household, who fondly imagined that they were serving the “vaterland” by keeping the parents and their son estranged from one another.
CHAPTER VII
Everyone, I presume, is acquainted with that old French saying, “_Dis moi qui tu hantes et je te dirai qui tu es!_” which may be rendered in English: “Tell me with whom you associate and I will tell you who you are!” While this adage is almost invariably true in the case of ordinary people, it would hardly be just to apply it where monarchs and princes of the blood are concerned. Given that every form of pleasure, of entertainment and of amusement is always within their reach, thanks to the loftiness of their station, their wealth, and facilitated furthermore by the anxiety of their courtiers both to please them and to retain their favor, they naturally soon become blase to such an extent that they become a prey to ennui–a thoroughly royal malady, from which few, if any, of the scions of the reigning houses of Europe are exempt. “Ennui,” like “chic,” is a French word difficult to translate and subject to much misinterpretation, especially in the United States, where it is practically unknown. The majority of Americans are far too busy, and are environed by too much bustle and activity to experience such a thing as ennui, and even the American leisure class, still in an embryo condition, as a rule are too new to their privileges to have that feeling. To suffer from ennui implies so deep a knowledge of life, and a corresponding satiety of its pleasures, that all the ordinary routine events of existence have no longer any power to interest the mind. Ennui is not weariness nor tediousness, as described in the dictionary; neither is it boredom, for the latter differs therefrom in its not necessarily being the outcome of a high degree of civilization, which ennui certainly is.
An untutored savage of Central Africa, or of the wilds of Australia may be bored; so are many of the ignorant houris of Oriental harems and zenanas. Nay, even an energetic business man may feel temporarily bored by enforced bodily or mental inaction, or by dreary associations; but that can scarcely be described as _ennui_, a feeling which in the true sense of the word means being thoroughly _blase_ and oppressed by moral and physical satiety. You must know everything, have tried everything, have had all your personal wishes and desires satisfied, all obstacles removed from your path, and pass your way through life with the firm conviction that there remains nothing to interest or arouse your ambition in order to be a victim of _ennui_. The greatest sufferers from this disagreeable sensation are, as I have just remarked, the royal and imperial personages of Europe, and although the emperors of Germany and Austria have the greater portion of their time taken up by the business of the State, and the administration of the government of their respective countries, yet neither of them is exempt from ennui. Indeed, there are no princes whose features betray to such an extent unmistakable evidence of ennui, as those of the imperial house of Hapsburg, while Emperor William’s choice of many of his friends is guided by the powers which they may possess to entertain him, and to deliver him in his hours of leisure from that dreaded complaint. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, and there are several of Emperor William’s cronies who owe the friendship of their sovereign to kindnesses which they rendered, and devotion which they displayed to him, in the days prior to his accession to the throne. But in the majority of instances, the sometimes strange selection of friends made by the emperor is attributable to the fact that the personages to whom he accords his favor succeed in amusing and entertaining him during the time that he is not occupied with the cares of his empire.
Conspicuous among friends of this particular character, is Baron von Kiderlen-Waechter, who holds the rank of minister plenipotentiary in the diplomatic service of Germany, and who was recently, and possibly still remains, Prussian envoy to the Court of Denmark, but who is known in the imperial circle at Berlin by the nickname of “August,” that being the “sobriquet” given to the clowns belonging to variety-shows and circuses in England, Austria, and France. In fact, he certainly occupies among William’s immediate circle of cronies and associates the position of court jester, and the emperor makes a point of taking the baron along with him whenever he goes on his annual yachting trips along the coast of Sweden and Norway. The latter is the life and soul of these imperial yachting parties, his witticisms, his antics, and, above all, his inimitable talent for mimicry keeping even the sailors of the _Hohenzollern_ in continual roars of laughter. Yet he can be grave and dignified on state occasions, and when one sees him at the Court of Berlin arrayed in full uniform, his breast covered with decorations, it is difficult to realize that this imposing-looking diplomat is the principal partner of the autocrat of Germany in such juvenile games as “Hot Cockles,” which is a very favorite game on board the _Hohenzollern_, and in which the kneeling and blindfolded victim receives a terrific spank or smack, and then has to guess, under the penalty of ridiculous forfeits, who it is that struck him!
No one would ever have dreamt of finding any fault with this intimacy between the emperor and the baron, had it not been for the fact that the latter laid himself open to charges of having taken advantage of the imperial favor won by mimicry and practical joking, to further political and personal intrigues in which he was interested. Indeed, he was repeatedly accused in the German press of being largely responsible for the manifestation of animosity between the Court of Berlin and Friedrichsrueh that characterized the last eight or nine years of the life of Prince Bismarck. The newspapers did not hesitate to assert that the baron, who had formerly been one of the confidential secretaries of the old chancellor, had deliberately fomented the irritation of the kaiser against the veteran statesman, believing that any reconciliation between the monarch and his former chancellor would entail the baron’s disgrace. Finally, the abuse of the baron in the Berlin press became so pronounced that he was virtually obliged to challenge the editor of one of the most vituperative of the metropolitan sheets, and very gallantly lodged a bullet through the shoulder of this “knight of the quill!”
For this escapade the baron was condemned to three months’ imprisonment by the courts, duelling, as has been intimated already, being forbidden by law in Germany. His incarceration in the military fortress of Ehrenbreitstein on the Rhine was absolutely unprecedented. Ambassadors and envoys have in times gone by been imprisoned by sovereigns to whose courts they were accredited, in defiance of all the laws of international right regulating the intercourse between civilized powers, but this was the first occasion of a government taking the unheard-of step of jailing one of its own envoys.
Fortunately for the baron, the King of Denmark was, before his accession to the throne, an officer of the German army, and as such was disposed to regard with the utmost leniency the offence for which his excellency was condemned to imprisonment. He realized that the baron had no alternative but to fight, his honor having been questioned by the paper whose editor he challenged. Although duelling is forbidden by the criminal law of Germany, under the penalty of imprisonment, yet, had the baron failed to fight, and taken shelter behind the law, he would not only have been compelled to resign his diplomatic office, his position at court, and his rank in the army, but he would have subjected himself to such odium as to have become to all intents and purposes a social outcast, and compelled to leave Germany.
Appreciating this, old King Christian raised no objections to the appointment of a charge d’affaires, to represent the diplomatic interests of Germany at his court, during the term of imprisonment served by the minister plenipotentiary, and from the moment when the latter completed his term, and was liberated from prison, he resumed his duties as envoy at the Court of Copenhagen, just as if nothing had happened.
Another intimate friend of the kaiser, who possesses much the same _talents de societe_ as Baron Kiderlen-Waechter, and whose position in the high favor of the kaiser has been a subject of much unfavorable comment, and even of open abuse in Berlin, is Baron Holstein, popularly known as the “_Austern-Freund”_ or “Oyster-Friend,” owing to his altogether phenomenal capacity for the absorption of bivalves, and his strongly developed fondness for good cheer! Baron Holstein, like Baron Kiderlen-Waechter, was formerly one of the confidential secretaries of Prince Bismarck, and a daily guest at his table, and was treated as a member of the old chancellor’s family for years, yet he became one of the most relentless foes of the Bismarck family as soon as the prince was dismissed from office.
Prince Bismarck was not the sort of man to submit in silence to the enmity of his former secretary, and a few years after his retirement to Friedrichsrueh he took occasion, during the course of a public discussion of the circumstances which led to the disgrace and ruin of Count Harry Arnim, for a long time German ambassador at Paris, to disclose for the first time in speech, and in print, the part which Baron Holstein had played in the affair. According to the prince, Baron Holstein, while first secretary of the German embassy at Paris, and though treated by Count Arnim as an inmate of his home, living in fact under his roof, and eating at his table, was in the habit throughout an entire year of sending secret reports to Berlin against the chief under whom he was serving–reports which subsequently furnished the basis of the charges upon which Count Arnim was tried, convicted and disgraced.
It is true that some mention was made in the Parisian and English press at the time of the Arnim trial of the questionable role which Baron Holstein had played in the affair, and there were a number of Parisian papers that did not hesitate to hold up the baron to, at any rate, French obloquy, as a man guilty of the base betrayal of the kindest and most indulgent of chiefs. The only person on that occasion who had the courage to take up the baron’s defence was M. de Blowitz, French correspondent of the London _Times_, of which he is described on the banks of the Seine, as the “ambassador,” and who possesses an immense amount of influence with the Parisian press. Blowitz’s championship of the baron’s cause was sincerely appreciated by the latter. He called upon the correspondent, thanked him effusively, and declared that it was his intervention alone that had made his stay at Paris possible.
During the conversation that followed, Blowitz opened his heart to his visitor, telling him that his own position as the Paris correspondent of the _Times_ was in danger owing to some changes in the administration of the London office. A fortnight later, Blowitz received from the managing editor of the _Times_ in London a letter sixteen pages long, addressed to Printing-House Square, and entirely written and signed by Baron Holstein. It denounced Blowitz as being one of the creatures of the late Duc Decazes, as wilfully ignoring and concealing for interested purposes of his own, a number of matters that should have found their way into the columns of the _Times_, and urging the managers of the latter to send to Paris some fitter and more impartial person, who would be better able to keep the great English newspaper _au courant_ of what was going on below as well as above the surface, than so unscrupulous a person as M. de Blowitz. This letter was dated exactly three days after the latter’s visit of gratitude to the correspondent, and the incident may be regarded as being in perfect harmony with the behavior of this favorite of the kaiser to both Count Harry Arnim and subsequently to Prince Bismarck.
The third of these cronies of the kaiser, to whom his subjects take objection on the ground that they are in the habit of using the favor shown to them by his majesty to further their own interests, and to injure those who, for one reason or another, have incurred their animosity, is Count Philip Eulenburg, who has been again and again referred to in the Berlin newspapers as “the Troubadour.” He is at the present moment German ambassador at Vienna, whence his predecessor, Prince Reuss, was ousted in spite of the eminent services of a personal character which he had rendered to the emperor, in order to make way for the count. The latter’s intimacy with his sovereign is largely due to his cleverness as a poet, a dramatist, and a composer, and while he has furnished the words to many of the musical compositions of the kaiser, William has, in turn, had much of his own poetry set to music by the count.
Philip Eulenburg has been clever enough to foster William’s very pardonable weakness as to his gifts as a musician and a poet, and being a man of the most charming manners, possessed of an unusual supply of tact, and extremely accomplished in many respects, he has acquired an extraordinary degree of influence over his sovereign. Indeed it may be doubted whether there is any member of the imperial entourage who stands as high in the good graces of the German ruler as does his ambassador to the Court of Vienna.
Each year the emperor makes a point of spending a week at Liebenberg, the country-seat of the count, and it has long been a matter of comment that these visits are invariably signalized by the inauguration of some political or administrative move on the part of the kaiser. It was, indeed, at Liebenberg that the emperor decided upon the dismissal from the chancellorship of General Count Caprivi, who had been unfortunate enough to incur the enmity of the Eulenburgs.
Count Philip, who possesses a fine voice, and who during the annual yachting trip of the emperor on board the _Hohenzollern_, is accustomed to sing duets with the monarch, and to play the latter’s accompaniments, is not, as is generally supposed, the brother, but merely the cousin of Botho, Augustus, and the late Count Wend Eulenburg. His career was almost wrecked at its very outset by an incident which developed into an international question. While stationed as a young sub-lieutenant of cavalry at Bonn, he was one day inadvertently jostled in the street by a gray-haired and rather portly stranger, whom he at once addressed in the most insulting manner. Upon the stranger responding in kind, the count drew his sabre and cut the man down, inflicting upon him such a wound that he expired a short time afterwards at the hospital. There it was discovered that he was one Ott, a Frenchman, and one of the chefs of Queen Victoria, momentarily detached from his duties at Windsor Castle, in order to attend her majesty’s second son, the Duke of Edinburgh,–now the reigning sovereign of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,–during his stay on the continent. Both the queen and Prince Alfred were indignant at the outrage, which was made the subject of an acrimonious correspondence between the English, French and Prussian Governments, the result being that Count Philip was sentenced to pay heavy damages to the widow and to the orphaned children of his victim, and to undergo a year’s imprisonment in a fortress.
He only joined the diplomatic profession in 1881, when he was appointed as third secretary to the German embassy at Paris, and he occupied very inferior roles in the diplomatic service of his country until the accession to the throne of his friend and patron, Emperor William, who promoted him a few weeks later, at one bound, from the post of second secretary of the legation at Munich to the rank of Prussian minister-plenipotentiary at Aldenberg, whence he was transferred a year later to Stuttgart, then, to The Hague, and then back to Munich, as chief of the legation, which post he retained until his nomination in 1892 to the German ambassadorship at Vienna, that is to say, to the blue ribbon of the diplomatic service of the kaiser.
He is generally regarded as destined in course of time to become chancellor of the empire, in spite of the human blood with which his hands are stained.
Both the court and the public object far less to the intimacy that exists between Count Augustus Eulenburg and his imperial friend, for Augustus, who is the grand master of the imperial household and the chief executive dignitary of the court, has been the closest associate of William since the latter’s earliest boyhood. He was one of those officials whom Prince Bismarck forced upon the then crown prince and crown princess, in order to keep watch over their actions and to counteract their influence on their eldest son. It was he, Count Augustus, who acted as the comforter of William whenever he was subjected to reproof or to disciplinary measures by his father or mother; who invariably espoused the lad’s cause, and who contributed more than anyone else to convince William that he was a victim of the most cruel and unmerited form of parental severity and persecution. He constituted himself the mentor and the guide of the prince, initiated him into all the intricacies of the imperial court, as well as into the secrets of its most prominent members. In one word, he rendered himself so indispensable to the prince, that as soon as the latter succeeded to the throne he at once appointed Count Augustus Eulenburg to the grand mastership of the court and household.
To what extent Emperor and Empress Frederick were aware of the spirit characterizing the count’s relations with their eldest son, it is difficult to say, but there is no doubt that during the last two or three years of Emperor Frederick’s life, the position of Augustus in the household of “Unser Fritz” was vastly improved and facilitated by the sensational quarrels of his elder brother, Count Botho Eulenburg, the celebrated statesman, with Prince Bismarck, for both Frederick and his wife, from, that time forth, ceased to look upon Augustus as a creature and a spy of the chancellor.
How great was the intimacy between William and the count, may be gathered from the fact that Augustus was the invariable and sole companion of the emperor in that species of Haroun-al-Raschid nocturnal expeditions which his majesty was wont to undertake in the slums of his capital, for the purpose of learning what his people were saying about him. At that time, his features were far less familiar to the public than they are to-day, and by giving his moustache a different twist, and his hair another turn, he experienced no difficulty in disguising himself. The adventures which he met with during the course of these nightly prowls in the company of Count Augustus are numerous enough to fill a book. Still, while they furnished plenty of amusement, excitement, and experiences not altogether unpleasant, they involved his majesty, on one or two occasions, in so much personal danger, that the count, realizing the responsibility which would rest upon his shoulders in the eyes not merely of the nation, but of the entire world, if anything untoward happened to the monarch, induced him, though with difficulty, to abandon this species of pastime so dear to crowned heads.
Let me add that it was on the occasion of one of these expeditions that the emperor met with a very severe injury to his hand. There is an old established usage in Berlin, on New Year’s eve, which prescribed that any man appearing in the street in a high or stiff hat should be incontinently bonneted, that is to say, have his hat crushed down over his eyes and ears by a blow of the fist. Emperor William, who is somewhat fond of rough horse-play, used to delight in this form of amusement, and on the first New Year’s eve after his accession to the throne, he sallied forth with Augustus Eulenburg in search of adventures. Catching sight of a portly citizen of mature years walking along under the shadows of the trees that line the magnificent avenue known as “Unter den Linden,” he immediately proceeded to crush the high silk hat which the man wore by a tremendous blow from his imperial fist! He was unable, however, to refrain from a cry of pain, and his companion the count, on seeing that his sovereign’s hand was drenched with blood, at once summoned the two detectives who were following discreetly in the rear, and caused them to arrest the citizen. The man on being searched at the palace police station, was found to be a merchant of high standing, who, determined to get even with the practical jokers from whose brutality he himself had suffered on previous New Year’s eves, had devised a sort of thick leather hat-lining, armed with long and sharp prongs, pointed outward like the quills of a porcupine. The emperor, on smashing the hat, naturally had his hand dreadfully lacerated. The citizen was kept under arrest for twenty-four hours, during which the question was discussed as to whether he should be prosecuted and punished for inflicting personal injury upon the sovereign, or not. Finally, William himself, with that good sense which so often characterizes him, gave orders for his liberation, on the ground that he could not possibly have dreamt that he would be bonneted by his sovereign, that he was, therefore, quite innocent of any intention to inflict injury upon the person of the emperor, and that he, William, had, after all, got nothing but what he deserved for playing such a prank. Moreover, in order to show the citizen that he bore him no grudge, he sent him, by way of consolation for his arrest and the destruction of his hat, a portrait bearing the autograph signature of the kaiser, as well as the words: “In memory of _Sylvester-nacht_.”–New Year’s eve is sacred to Saint Sylvester.
Count Botho Eulenburg, the elder brother of Augustus, has repeatedly held the offices of cabinet minister and Premier of Prussia. He happened to be at the head of the Department of the Interior at the time when the attempts were made by Nobiling to assassinate old Emperor William, and ever since that time has been the sworn foe of socialism, and identified with everything that is reactionary and despotic in Prussian legislation. His influence with the emperor is very great, and there is no doubt that he has contributed in a great measure to the somewhat extravagant views which the kaiser entertains with regard to the Divine Rights of monarchs, and especially concerning their responsibility, not towards their people alone, but also towards the Almighty.
Count Botho’s quarrel with Prince Bismarck, originated in the following manner. The count, in accordance with a decision reached at a cabinet meeting, spoke as Minister of the Interior in the Prussian Diet in favor of placing the communal councils under the provincial board, instead of under the central government. He had no sooner sat down than a member arose and said that he was instructed by the Prime Minister, Prince Bismarck, to disavow the view taken by the Minister of the Interior. This extraordinary action of the prince was due to the fact that he had suddenly decided upon coquetting with the Liberals, for the sake of obtaining their support upon the subject of another of his little inaugurations. Count Botho immediately sent in his resignation, and did not resume office until after the disgrace of Prince Bismarck. Previous to this quarrel, however, as I have already stated, the most intimate relations had subsisted between the Eulenburgs and the Bismarcks. Indeed, Countess Marie, only daughter of Prince Bismarck, was at one time betrothed to Wend, the youngest of the three Eulenburg brothers. Three days before the day fixed for the wedding, the young man was suddenly seized with typhus, and forty-eight hours later succumbed to this awful disease. Countess Marie, it may be added, subsequently married Count Rantzau, after having been between times engaged to Baron Eisendecker, once German envoy at Washington, and now the kaiser’s adviser in yachting matters, whom she jilted in consequence of differences of religious opinion.
So much for the Eulenburgs, who may be said to constitute the most influential family at the Court of Berlin, and without a description of whom no history of the life and surroundings of Emperor William could possibly be regarded as complete.
Other cronies of the kaiser, who are less influential in a political sense, and, therefore, less obnoxious to the people, are Counts Douglas, Count Dohna, and Count Goertz. Public attention, however, has often been drawn to the friendship of the kaiser for the Dohnas by the frequency of the imperial visit with which Count Richard Dohna is honored at his superb old chateau of Schlobitten, and likewise by reason of the fact that on two occasions William almost lost his life through carriage accidents which he sustained while out driving with the count.
[Illustration: _THE RUNAWAY AT PROECKELWITZ_ _After a drawing by Oreste Cortazzo_]
The Dohnas are one of the most ancient houses of the old German nobility, and Schlobitten, with its grand old park, shaded by glorious trees, has been in the possession of the family since the fourteenth century. The castle, as now arranged, is only two hundred years old, having been reconstructed on the site, and with the ruins, of an ancient monastery and dwelling. The name of Dohna is recorded in the most important pages of Prussian history. Statesmen, generals, and in particular, confidants and cronies of their successive rulers have borne that name, and there is not a king who has reigned over Prussia, and previous to that an elector who has ruled over Brandenburg, who has not stayed at the castle of Schlobitten and occupied the antiquated four-poster bed, in which the present emperor sleeps whenever he makes a visit there.
Count Richard Dohna is a great breeder of blooded horses, a magnificent whip, and the accidents which happened to the kaiser, while out driving with him, were merely due to the fact that in each case the horses were too young, and not sufficiently broken in. On one occasion, the drag was upset into a ditch not far from Schlobitten, the kaiser and the count being severely bruised and shaken up; while at another time a splendid team got beyond the control of the count, smashed harnesses and pole, and dashed helter-skelter into the little town of Proeckelwitz, where they were fortunately stopped without further mishap.
The intimacy of the kaiser with the Dohna family serves to recall the fact that there was a daughter of this house, Countess Anna Dohna, who claimed to have become the wife of the late Emperor William. She lived for a time in London, Geneva, and then in New York, and was wont to style herself Countess Dohna-Brandenburg, having added the name of Brandenburg to that of Dohna by reason of this alleged marriage.
While in New York she lived in a large house in Lexington Avenue, which she furnished handsomely, and she never seemed to be in want of money. According to her own story she met the late Emperor William in 1825, during the lifetime of his father, King Frederick-William III., when she was sixteen years of age. After several clandestine meetings, she claimed that they were married late one night at Clegnitz, in Silesia, by a young country parson. The latter did not know the prince, who gave the name of William Count Brandenburg, and his occupation as that of an officer of the Royal Guards. The marriage certificate was duly made out, and then her husband told her that it would be expedient to keep their union secret for a time. To this she reluctantly assented.
When at length, urged by her entreaties, her husband revealed their marriage to his father, King Frederick-William III., he flew into a terrible rage, forced him to sign a renunciation of the countess’s hand, and she was conveyed to a small castle near Koenigsberg, in East-Prussia, where she was kept a close prisoner for years. In 1837, always according to her story, she succeeded in escaping, and crossing the Polish frontier reached Warsaw, where in the following year she was recognized at a state performance of the opera given by Czar Nicholas, in honor of the King of Prussia and Prince William, who were visiting the Russian Court.
She was arrested at the theatre, and on the following morning conveyed to Eastern Russia, where she was kept under strict surveillance until the death of Frederick-William III., in 1840, led to her release. She was then permitted to return to Prussia, and the new king, Frederick-William IV., offered to compromise the matter with her. This she refused to do. Her father’s death placed her in possession of a large fortune, and she spent several years in travelling.
In 1848 she intended to appeal to the Prussian National Assembly for justice, but the police got wind of it, and she was interned in her chateau in Silesia. On William becoming King of Prussia, she was given the alternative of leaving the country or of becoming an inmate of a lunatic asylum, so she transferred her abode to Paris, and after living for awhile in London and Geneva, came to New York in 1876.
The truth of this story having been questioned, it may be mentioned that the Prussian _Staats Anzeiger_, or official Berlin Gazette, of June 4, 1829, contains the following royal decree:
“By order of his majesty the king, Anna Countess Dohna having claimed to be the wife of Prince William of Prussia, I hereby decree that such a union if it ever took place, be null and void.
“FREDERICK WILLIAM, Rex.
“ANTHONY VON ALTENSTEIN,
“Secretary of State.”
I have seen it mentioned both in German and foreign publications that the three Counts of Brandenburg, two of them distinguished generals, and the third for many years Prussian envoy at Brussels, were the issue of the union of Countess Anna Dohna and old Emperor William of Germany. But this is not true; for their father, a famous premier and soldier, of whom a fine statue exists at Berlin, was the son of King Frederick-William II. of Prussia, and his morganatic wife, the Countess of Dohenhoff.
With regard to Count Douglas, I may state that the kaiser’s intimacy with him dates back to many years prior to his accession to the throne. Like his twin brother, Count Louis Douglas, the Swedish statesman, who until a few weeks ago occupied the post of minister of foreign affairs at Stockholm, Count Willie Douglas may be said to have royal blood in his veins, for his father, old Count Douglas, now dead, married the morganatic daughter of a royal princess of the reigning house of Baden. On the old count’s death, William, the elder of the twins, inherited his mother’s vast property, while Louis, the younger, took possession of his father’s estates in Sweden.
William was educated in Germany, is an officer of the Prussian army, as well as a member of the Prussian House of Lords: Louis was brought up in Sweden, entered the Swedish army, became chamberlain to the Crown Prince of Sweden, married the daughter of Count Ehrensward, late minister of foreign affairs at Stockholm, and eventually succeeded to his father-in-law’s post at the head of Sweden’s foreign office. Like his twin brother in Prussia, he is exceedingly conservative, imbued with the necessity of retaining the old feudal prerogatives, and of placing every obstacle in the way of the rising tide of democracy. Indeed, whatever influence he exercises over the King and Crown Prince of Sweden, is as reactionary as any influence which his German brother may be said to enjoy over the kaiser.
The Douglas twins are descended from the great Scotch family of Douglas, and are therefore allied to the Duke of Hamilton and the Marquis of Queensberry. Their ancestors emigrated to Prussia from Scotland at the time of the Thirty Years’ War, fought under Gustavus-Adolphus, and afterwards returned with him to Sweden, where they became members of the Swedish nobility. Count Willie, like his brother, displays all the hereditary traits of the Scotch house that bears his name, having the peculiar jaw, falling underlip, and dark complexion of the celebrated “Black Douglas.” Yet neither of the twins speaks a word of English, nor has ever visited the land of his sire, though they bear the Douglas motto of “Do or Die.” Count Willie has few British sympathies, but some British tastes, being famous as a four-in-hand whip, and as a magnificent shot. He is also very hospitable, and entertains at Berlin in a right royal fashion, his wealth, derived from the mines which he owns in the Hartz Mountains, enabling him to do so without hesitation on the score of expense.
It is no secret that Emperor William has, on two or three occasions, offered a cabinet office to his friend William Douglas, who has, however, invariably declined it, much to the relief of those who are convinced that the same peculiar moral and psychological affinity exists between the Douglas twins as that attributed to the Corsican brothers. It would have been, they declare, a dangerous experiment to have had one of them directing the foreign policy of Germany, and the other that of the kingdoms of Sweden and Norway.
It may interest my American readers to add that a few years ago Count Willie Douglas was the defendant in an extraordinary lawsuit at Berlin which had an American end to it. It seems that some thirty years ago a man of the name of Brandt died in the United States, leaving a fortune of several millions of dollars. Having no near relatives in America, the lawyers advertised for any heirs that he might have left behind him in Germany. The father of Count Douglas was at the time burgomaster of the little town of Aschersleben, and one day some of the inhabitants of the place bearing the name of Brandt placed a lot of papers in his hands, asking him to glance over them, and to see whether there was any truth in the statement that they were heirs to an immense fortune in America. The old count, in his capacity of burgomaster, declared that the affair looked to him very questionable, that he believed it was a mere swindle, and that there was surely nothing in it for them. Whether he returned to them the papers or not, is unknown, but he declared to the day of his death that he had restored them, whereas the Brandts of Aschersleben swear that he did not. Eventually, they brought suit against his son, not merely for the recovery of the documents, but likewise for the fortune, actually alleging that the latter had been appropriated by old Count Douglas, with the connivance of the late Prince Bismarck, who had received a large share of the plunder. It is scarcely necessary to state that they were non-suited.
Emperor William’s intimacy with Count and Countess Goertz may be said to be a sort of inherited friendship, the count’s father, president of the Hessian House of Lords, and his consort, a princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein, having been the most intimate friends of Emperor and Empress Frederick, whose acquaintance they made through the late Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Hesse. In order to show the affectionate relations existing between the parents of the kaiser and those of the present head of the ancient and illustrious house of Goertz, it is merely necessary to state that Professor Hintzpeter, who for a number of years directed the education of Emperor William and his brother Henry, and who, as their old tutor, retains much influence over both the imperial brothers, was selected by Emperor and Empress Frederick for the purpose, on the personal recommendation of the late Count and Countess Goertz, in whose family he had resided for a number of years as tutor to their son.
In fact, the present Count Goertz, who is some eight or nine years the senior of the emperor, can boast, like the latter, of having been a pupil of old Hintzpeter, who in some respects is the German counterpart of the late Czar Alexander’s tutor, M. Pobietnotzoff. That William shares the confidence placed by his parents in the Goertz family is shown by the fact that when he found it necessary, at one time, to obtain the services of a tutor for one of his young relatives, in a case, it must be added, of particular delicacy, he at once nominated to the post Professor Krenge, who at the time was tutoring the sons of the present Count Goertz. Countess Goertz is a woman of great beauty, which she may be said to have inherited from her mother, the so-celebrated Countess of Villeneuve, wife to the Brazilian envoy to the Court of Brussels, and renowned throughout Europe on account of her loveliness.
Although the admiration which the kaiser displays for the fascinating countess is of the most undisguised character, it fails to excite the jealousy either of his consort or the count, and the relations between the empress and the countess are so close that the former has been known to lend to her friend articles of jewelry, and even of dress, for use at fancy dress balls and elsewhere. The emperor and the count are also as united and unrestrained with each other as two men can be who have the same tastes, who have been intimately acquainted since childhood, and whose parents have been close friends before them. It is doubtful whether William ever enjoys himself so much, or feels so thoroughly at home, as when visiting the Goertzes at Schlitz. There his days are spent in shooting and hunting with the count, and the evenings in composing new melodies, and setting songs to music with the countess. The emperor’s children and the young Goertzes are bound by equal ties of affection, and are old-time playmates, so that there seems every likelihood of this friendship between the Hohenzollerns and the former reigning sovereign house of Goertz being continued in the third generation.
No account of the emperor’s private life can be properly written without including a brief sketch of General Count von Hahnke, and of Baron von Lucanus. The former is the chief of the military cabinet of the emperor, and the other is at the head of his civil cabinet, that is to say, he occupies the post of principal private secretary. Both of them accompany the emperor wherever he goes, and in fact constitute his very shadow, enjoying by reason of their proximity to the sovereign, and by their close association with him, a far greater degree of power and influence than any cabinet minister.
Baron Lucanus is an extremely good-looking man, whose popular nickname at Berlin, namely, “the emperor’s Blackie Man,” is in nowise due to any swarthiness of complexion, but to the fact that among the great dignitaries in attendance on the emperor, he is the only one in civilian attire, while moreover he is invariably selected by the sovereign to convey to any cabinet minister, whose resignation is required, the imperial intimation “_that he has ceased to please_.”
It was Baron von Lucanus who communicated to Prince Bismarck the emperor’s request and subsequent peremptory command for the surrender of the chancellorship of the empire, and it was he, too, who was sent to ask Bismarck’s successor, General Count Caprivi, for his resignation; in fact, there has not been a single ministerial head to fall during the last ten years–and they have been very numerous during the present reign–where Herr von Lucanus has not been the imperial emissary of these evil tidings. This is so well known in Berlin that the moment the baron is seen to be calling at the residence of any distinguished statesman who happens to be in office, it is at once taken for granted that the axe has once more fallen, and that it is another case of a ministerial downfall.
The Berliners declare that Emperor William pitches upon Lucanus for these particular jobs in consequence of his being the son of a Halberstadt druggist, and as such, more likely to be proficient in the art of sugar-coating the bitter pills than any mere military officer! He owes his patent of nobility to the late Emperor Frederick, who entertained a very high opinion of his intelligence, and it is worthy of note that he first came to the fore in the entourage of the emperor when Prince Bismarck’s power as chancellor commenced to wane. He is a man of about fifty, and served for a quarter of a century in the Department of Public Worship. It was, however, as an expert in art matters, and as an intelligent assistant in the organization of the Imperial Museum of Science and Art at Berlin, that he first attracted the notice and good-will of the late emperor, and particularly of the Empress Frederick.
His military colleague, General Count von Hahnke, although a charming man, is, nevertheless, one of the most bitterly-hated officers of the German army; this is due to the fact that he has virtually usurped the prerogatives and the power of the minister of war, who has been reduced to a mere instrument of his wishes. This is not altogether the fault of the general, for the emperor insists on retaining absolute control of the army in his own hands, and of exercising its command in every particular, no appointment being made without his initiative and sanction, while everything is done through Count Hahnke as supreme head of the military cabinet of his majesty.
A few years ago the general lost his son under singularly tragical and somewhat mysterious circumstances. The misfortune occurred during one of the annual yachting trips of the kaiser, young Hahnke being a lieutenant on board the yacht. According to the official version, the young officer met with his death while coasting down a mountain road at one of the Norwegian ports at which the yacht had touched, his bicycle getting beyond his control, and precipitating itself with its rider over a low stone parapet into a fierce torrent hundreds of feet below. The emperor happened at the time to have a bruise on the face, caused by a block and tackle swinging against him during a squall, while on deck, and on the strength of this temporary disfigurement, a story most painful to the emperor was circulated to the effect that his black eye was due to a blow from young Hahnke, who resented some indignity in connection with the practical jokes and rough horse-play so frequent on board the _Hohenzollern_ during the emperor’s annual holiday. It was added that the young officer had been given by military and naval etiquette the alternative of blowing out his brains, or of taking his life in some other way, as the only means of saving his name from disgrace and his honor from loss; and a certain degree of color was given to the tale by the fact that it was published at full length in a London society newspaper, at the very time when its proprietor and editor was sojourning at Marienbad with the Prince of Wales, and in daily intercourse with the British heir apparent, who was naturally supposed to know the truth about young Hahnke’s death. Perhaps the most striking and convincing evidence of the absurd fabrication of this story, which has given much sorrow, both to the emperor and empress, is to be found in the fact that the young officer’s father remained at the head of the emperor’s military cabinet, and has never abandoned, even temporarily, his service near the kaiser; this the general would certainly not have done had William been in any sense of the word responsible for the death of his boy. In fact it was the kindly and tactful sympathy of both the emperor and the empress that enabled the bereaved father to bear his loss with fortitude, and his gratitude for the kindness shown to him by his sovereign is of a deep and undying quality.
CHAPTER VIII
Great is the contrast between the Court of Berlin to-day and the aspect which it presented during the closing years of the reign of old Emperor William, and were any of the latter’s familiars to return to the place where so much of their existence had been spent, they would indeed find themselves amidst strange surroundings and strange faces. In those days, grey and white hair were the rule rather than the exception. To-day the contrary is the case, and not merely do the dignitaries of the court and of the army belong to a younger generation, but also the members of the imperial circle, that is to say, the princes and princesses of the blood, with whom the emperor and empress associate as kinsfolk and near relatives.
The few older members of the reigning house of Prussia who survive–the contemporaries of the grandfather and father of William II.–find the atmosphere of the court so different from what they have been accustomed to in the past, so out of keeping with their ideas–in one word, feel themselves so little at home there, that they prefer to stay away as much as they can. Thus Prince Albert of Prussia, one of the grandest looking soldiers of the imperial army, and certainly one of the most gigantic in stature, divides his time between Brunswick, where he holds a court of his own as regent, and England, where he is accustomed to spend his holidays. The widowed Princess Frederick-Charles lives nearly all the year round in Italy with her chamberlain, Baron Wangenheim, whom she is understood to have morganatically married, and in whose company she occasionally visits the pope, a circumstance which has led to the rumor that she has joined the Church of Rome. The widowed Empress Frederick is either at her lovely castle of Kronberg, near Homburg, which is stocked from garret to cellar with those art treasures of which she is one of the finest _connaisseuses_ in Europe, or else is traveling about in Italy, Austria or England. Indeed the only contemporary of the old Emperor who still remains at Berlin, and who is occasionally to be seen at court, giving one the impression of a spectre of the past, is Prince George, who bears a startling resemblance to the old kaiser particularly when arrayed in uniform.
While slightly eccentric, he is remarkably accomplished, and has not only written a number of German plays over the pen-name of “George Conrad,” which have been successfully staged in Germany, but is even the author of a drama written in the purest and most exquisitely correct French, sparkling with Parisian wit and brilliancy, which has had long runs in many theatres without either the actors or the public being aware that it was from the pen of a prince of Prussia.
Until the war of 1870, Prince George was on terms of the utmost intimacy with the de Goncourts, the Dumases, de Girardin, and all the principal literary lights of France, with whom he was wont to foregather on a footing of artistic equality each year at Ems, a German watering-place much frequented by the French prior to the great struggle of 1870; of course, since that time his intercourse with French people has been much more restricted, and through a feeling of delicacy and tact, with which he is not usually credited, he has refrained from visiting Paris, or even from setting his foot on French territory since the war. This, however, has not prevented him from keeping himself _au courant_ of every literary and dramatic event that takes place on the banks of the Seine, and a French academician of my acquaintance who was presented to him last summer at Ems, and who spent several days there in his company, could not sufficiently express his amazement, not merely at the extraordinary purity of the prince’s French, but likewise at the amazing manner in which he seems to have kept track of everything that has happened at Paris in the world of letters and art, as well as of the French idioms, figures of speech, and even witticisms of the present day.
The delicacy which Prince George manifests with regard to the French people, and his fear lest his admiration for them should be misinterpreted, is largely due to the treatment that he received at the hands of Empress Eugenie at Carlsbad, in 1874 or 1875. Having been a frequent and welcome guest at the Tuileries during the reign of Napoleon III., the prince, when he found that the widowed empress had arrived at Carlsbad, and had taken up her residence at the very hotel at which he was staying, naturally considered that he could not do otherwise than take some notice of her presence; if he affected to ignore her, he would have exposed himself to the reproach of gross discourtesy; at the same time he felt that any public form of attention might prove unwelcome to her, and might possibly serve to impair her son’s prospects of recovering his father’s throne; so he contented himself with sending her every day magnificent baskets of flowers, and with bowing to her with the utmost deference, but without attempting to accost her when he met her in the gardens or park. He likewise caused it to be intimated to her secretary, M. Pietri, that if at any moment she felt disposed to accord him an audience, he would be only too glad of the opportunity to “lay his homage at the feet of her majesty.” That was all. Yet such as it was, the empress managed to turn it to political account, for she suddenly left Carlsbad, making it known throughout France, by means of the press, that she had been compelled to quit the baths, and to interrupt the cure, in consequence of the undesirable attentions which Prince George of Prussia persisted in forcing upon her. Naturally, the newspapers made the most of her story, and were filled with denunciations and abuse of the prince, some of the sheets asserting, by way of explanation of his conduct, that he was mentally unbalanced, his mother having been an acknowledged lunatic, and his brother. Prince Alexander, an imbecile. Nothing can be further from the truth. It cannot be denied that he has a few harmless and kindly eccentricities which would attract no attention whatever in an ordinary septuagenarian, but which excite comment merely by reason of his rank as a prince of the blood. He is a gentle, brilliantly accomplished, chivalrous old fellow, without an enemy in the world, and is a great favorite with the emperor’s children, who will deeply miss him when he passes over to the majority, and is laid to rest in the family vault of the house of Hohenzollern.
With this exception, the princes and princesses of the blood of the Court of Berlin are all of much the same age as the emperor. They comprise Prince Henry, his only brother, who is due home from China in the spring of 1900, and his consort, Princess Irene of Hesse, sister of the young czarina. Then there is Prince Frederick-Leopold, the extremely wealthy son of Prussia’s celebrated cavalry general, Prince Frederick-Charles, to whom belonged the credit of taking the French stronghold of Metz, in the war of 1870. He is married to a younger sister of the empress, and is, therefore, not only the cousin, but likewise the brother-in-law of the kaiser.
Prince Adolph, of Schaumburg-Lippe, although nominally stationed at Bonn, is also accustomed to spend the entire season at Berlin, with his wife, Princess Victoria of Prussia, a sister of the kaiser. The latter is credited with the intention of investing Prince Adolph with the regency of Brunswick, should it be vacated by Prince Albert, or else of appointing him Viceroy of Alsace-Lorraine. Princess Aribert of Anhalt and her husband, too, are very conspicuous figures in the imperial circle, the princess being a special favorite of the kaiser. She is his first cousin, being the offspring of Queen Victoria’s daughter Helena, who married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, the guardian of the present empress, who spent much of her girlhood in England with Prince and Princess Christian, so that her friendship with Princess Aribert may be said to date from childhood. Duke Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, the only brother of the empress, has quieted down to a great extent since his marriage a year ago to Princess Dorothy of Coburg, and inasmuch as his eighteen-year-old wife appears to be supremely happy, there is every reason to believe that he has demonstrated the truth of the good old adage, according to which “reformed rakes make the best husbands!” The only daughter of the King of Wurtemberg has made her home at Potsdam and at Berlin since her marriage to the Prince of Wied, and as she is not only the cousin, but likewise the most intimate friend of the young Queen of Holland, the kaiser finds considerable political advantage in lavishing tokens of his affection and regard upon both her and her husband.
Another young couple belonging to the Court of Berlin are Prince and Princess William of Hohenzollern. The princess is a daughter of the Sicilian branch of the house of Bourbon, while her husband is the eldest son of that Leopold of Hohenzollern, on account of whose election to the throne of Spain in 1870, France embarked upon her disastrous war with Germany. Young Prince William of Hohenzollern, it may be added, figured for a time as Crown Prince of Roumania, and as heir to the throne of his uncle, King Charles; but after living for some time at Bucharest, he came to the conclusion that life in Roumania as crown prince was infinitely less agreeable than that of a scion of the house of Hohenzollern at Berlin, so he renounced his rights to the Roumanian throne, and came back to Berlin to live.
His younger brother, Charles of Hohenzollern, divides his time between Berlin and Potsdam; he is married to Princess Josephine of Belgium, daughter of that Count of Flanders, who is brother and next heir to King Leopold. Besides these, there are Prince and Princess Albert of Saxe-Altenburg, and several other young couples belonging to the junior sovereign houses of the German empire, who prefer to make their home at Berlin, and at Potsdam, rather than in the smaller and infinitely less brilliant capitals of their respective countries. Moreover, it has now become the fashion among the various non-Prussian rulers of the German Confederation, to send the junior members of their families–the young men–to Berlin for a time, in order to complete their military education under the eyes of the kaiser, and to be in touch with that general staff which is virtually the Supreme Council of War of the German army.
It is for this reason that Prince Louis of Bavaria, although he notoriously dislikes the kaiser and resents his assumption of superiority, claiming that the members of the Wittelsbach family are not the vassals, but the allies of the emperor, nevertheless has sent first his eldest son, and then each of his younger ones in turn, to spend a year or two at the Court of Berlin, under the immediate direction and eye of the kaiser. Prince Louis was particularly anxious that his eldest son, Rupert, as future King of Bavaria, should get in touch with the emperor, and become thoroughly acquainted, not only with Prussian methods, but also with the leading statesmen and generals, and with the trend of political aims and aspirations at Berlin. The example of Prince Louis has been followed by all the other petty German sovereigns, so that there are always about a score of non-Prussian but German young princes of the blood, giving life and gayety to the Courts of Berlin, and Potsdam, and taking a leading part in Berlin society.
Among the princes there is none, however, who possesses so striking an individuality as William’s only brother, Henry. His assignment to the command of the German naval forces in the far Orient a couple of years ago, created much comment and speculation, being construed by many, both in Germany and abroad, as a banishment resulting from the kaiser’s jealousy and dislike of the very popular Sailor Prince. I do not believe for one moment that this supposed jealousy exists, although everything that can possibly be conceived has been done, unintentionally and intentionally, to create it, in a manner which I will describe a little further on.
The reason of Prince Henry’s being sent to the far Orient was of a twofold character. In the first place, the Chinese Empire seemed to be on the eve of a break-up, and each of the various Great Powers of Europe, was exerting its utmost energies to secure the lion’s share in the game of grab in progress at Pekin. Scions of European royalty who visit China and Japan are few and far between, and the emperor very naturally thought that the presence of Prince Henry at the head of the German naval forces in Chinese waters–a prince who in addition to being the kaiser’s only brother, is brother-in-law to the Russian czar, and a grandson of the Queen of England,–would have the effect of giving to the cause of Germany in the Orient an importance and a prestige which would atone for the inferiority of its naval strength in that part of the globe. Then, too, the emperor is generally believed to have foreseen the conflict between Spain and the United States, and to have known beforehand of the intention of the latter to make a dash upon Manila, in order to secure possession of the rich and fertile Philippine archipelago at the first outbreak of hostilities. Germany’s navy is of such relatively recent origin that its flag-officers are far from possessing either the spirit of resource, or the cleverness and diplomacy for which the commanding generals of the German army are so distinguished. They are men who, officially, intellectually, and socially, are of an inferior calibre, the majority of them being of plebeian birth. The emperor held, therefore, that it was all-important that Germany’s squadron in the far Orient should be, at that particular juncture, under the command of an officer such as Prince Henry, who, by reason of his royal rank and his intimate knowledge of his brother’s views and wishes, would have the necessary boldness, tact, and presence of mind to know exactly how to deal with any crisis that might arise.
I am perfectly aware that there is a disposition in the United States to blame Prince Henry for the bad feeling which was caused by the attitude of the German warships at Manila during the few months that followed the great American naval victory gained under the guns of that city, but the trouble was due to the Prussian rear-admiral, Diederichs, who, to use the expressive phrase of the English captain, Sir Edward Chichester, in endeavoring to excuse him in the eyes of Admiral Dewey, “had no sea-manners,” and there is no doubt that had Prince Henry been at Manila, instead of Diederichs, at that moment, there would have been no friction whatsoever, either between the naval commanders, or subsequently between the two nations, for Prince Henry possesses precisely those qualities which would have resulted in feelings of good-will and friendship with Admiral Dewey. He is modest, honest, broad-minded, speaks English perfectly, and is entirely free from any affectation or pose. He is a man, indeed, who has so many qualities in common with Dewey that it is impossible that they should not have understood each other, and under the circumstances it is most unfortunate that the prince happened to be in the northernmost portion of the China seas at the very time that the battle of Manila was fought. It may be remembered that matters went on very much more smoothly between the Germans and the Americans at Manila after the withdrawal of Admiral Diederichs.
There was another very important reason for sending Prince Henry to Manila; he is, of all the members of his house, the one most strongly imbued with liberal and progressive ideas in political affairs. In fact, he seems to have inherited all those political views of his father, Emperor Frederick, which were a source of so much concern and apprehension to the late Prince Bismarck. To tell the truth, the political views and aspirations of Henry are diametrically opposed to those of his elder brother, a circumstance which does not, however, in any way impair the affection existing between the two.
At the time when he sent off Prince Henry to China, the kaiser was far from well, and was suffering more than usually from the painful malady of the ear already referred to, and which is identical with the disease which first of all wrecked the mind and then killed his grand-uncle, King Frederick William IV. Added to this, he is firmly imbued with the idea that he is destined to meet with a sudden death at the hands of an assassin, a conviction which never leaves him, and which is perhaps responsible for that species of stern and even aggressive air with which he, gazes at the cheering crowds when he rides home at the head of his troops through the streets of Berlin or of Potsdam after a day spent in military manoeuvres on the great plains of Tempelhof.
If any of my readers feel disposed to condemn him for this apprehension,–it would be unjust to style it fear,–let them try to imagine how they themselves would feel if they knew that there were scores of desperate men and women who had sworn to take their lives by means of bullets or explosive bombs, fired or hurled from the centre of some dense crowd, which would destroy the life of the victim of such an outrage without a moment’s warning, or without being able to even so much as raise a hand in self-defense.
Now at the time when Prince Henry sailed for China, the young crown prince was sixteen years of age; that is to say, he lacked two years of the attainment of his majority. Had anything untoward happened to the kaiser during the minority of the crown prince, Prince Henry would, according to the laws of the house of Hohenzollern and of the Prussian constitution, have been appointed as regent until his nephew came of age. Prince Henry’s right to the regency, as nearest male relative, was one of which he could not be deprived, save by altogether exceptional and questionable methods, which both policy and fraternal affection forbade the emperor to employ. Yet he realized that were Henry to be entrusted with the regency he would change in the most radical fashion the course of the ship of state; would introduce measures dear to the late Emperor Frederick, but to which he, the kaiser, was unalterably opposed, and would, in short, undo everything that he himself had done; so that when eventually the crown prince came of age there would be no longer any possibility of his continuing his father’s policy, a policy which the emperor has been at great pains to inculcate into his boy.
With Prince Henry at the Antipodes, there was an excuse for vesting the regency either in the harmless hands of Frederick-Leopold, or in those of Prince Albert, whose ideas on the subject of government are to a great extent in keeping with those of the kaiser. That was one of the reasons why Henry was sent off to China, and any doubt upon the subject will be removed by remembering the fact that his sojourn in the far East will terminate with the eighteenth birthday,–the coming of age–of his nephew, the young crown prince.
That such real and lasting affection should subsist between William and Henry is indeed surprising, and speaks volumes for the warm-heartedness, and I might almost say magnanimity of the kaiser’s character. For everything that could possibly have contributed to render him jealous of his brother, has been done, as I remarked above.
Henry was always favored at the expense of William by his father and mother, as well as by the entire imperial family. In fact, the late emperor gave a striking expression of his preference for his younger son, when at the time of the prince’s marriage to Princess Irene of Hesse, he pressed into Henry’s hand a slip of paper–he could not speak any longer, owing to the awful malady which carried him off,–on which he had written, “_You at least have never given me a moment’s sorrow, and will make as good a husband as you have been a loving son_;” and when soon after this Emperor Frederick breathed his last, it was found that he had left the major part of his fortune either to Henry directly, or to Empress Frederick, in trust for this, his favorite son.
This privileged position in the affection of his parents, aye, and it may be added in the hearts of the German people, is due in a large measure to Prince Henry’s education. He was brought up, so to speak, at sea, and the moral profession is of all others the one which calls forth all the best qualities of a man, develops manliness, and diminishes pride and affectation. Before he was twenty years of age, he had twice circumnavigated the globe, visiting every corner of the earth, and carrying the flag of Germany into regions where it had never been seen before. This in itself was sufficient to interest Germans in the young prince, the first of his house to seek adventures in such far distant climes; and this healthy, manly, interesting mode of life was compared to his advantage with the somewhat dissipated existence of a young army officer, which his elder brother, prior to his marriage, indulged in at Berlin.
Occasionally, stories reached the public through the press of feats of gallantry performed by the royal sailor, such as the plunging overboard once in a squall, and at another time in shark-infested waters, to save drowning sailors; while every incident which thus became known concerning the young prince served to confirm his countrymen in the belief that he was endowed in an altogether exceptional degree with those qualities which we are so fond of ascribing to “those who go down to the sea in ships.” These long sea voyages had, moreover, the effect of keeping him clear of all those court and political intrigues with which Emperor William was surrounded, as if with a very network, prior to his accession to the throne; intrigues, I may add, which since William became emperor, have been devoted to many a futile endeavor designed to create mischief between the two brothers. It is probable that they will have less effect than ever from henceforth, since William, now that his eldest boy has attained his majority, will have no longer any reason to apprehend the possibility of Henry’s undoing, in the capacity of regent, all the work that he, the kaiser, has accomplished during the eleven years of his reign; indeed, now that this danger is eliminated, the two brothers are likely to become more intimate than ever, and the Court of Berlin will probably see much more of the sailor prince than heretofore. Henry is the very life of his brother’s court, as he is not only extremely fond of making fun, even at the expense sometimes of his majesty, especially about the excessively earnest attitude which the emperor assumes, with regard to the most trivial questions. Absolutely unconventional, save on his own quarter-deck, he carries about with him an atmosphere of brightness and breeziness which is almost as infectious and as bracing as a whiff of sea air.
For all his love of skylarking, and the freedom of his manners, his name has never been associated with any questionable story, save by the gutter element of the Parisian press, which endeavored to drag him into the Dreyfus case by declaring that Germany’s strange attitude in the affair was due to the alleged knowledge the French War Department of terrible immorality proved to have been committed by Prince Henry during frequent secret visits to Paris. Of course there is not a word of truth in these contemptible stories, and the prince’s reputation as a perfect husband and a healthy-minded gentleman, stands high, even in Berlin, where people are overfond of scandalous gossip. Certainly there are plenty of stories current about the pranks that he has played, but these are all of an innocent and boyish character. The prince creates the impression of the most complete wholesomeness; his six feet of well set up manhood, his bright eyes and clear, tanned skin, seem the outward and visible sign of a thoroughly clean and sound mind; common sense, frankness, fearlessness, dignity and kindness, are written in his every feature in a way that reminds people vividly of his lamented father; while the easy movements of an athletic body, always apparently in the pink of condition, are evidently allied to the smooth serenity of a mind confident in itself, but modest with the humility of knowledge.
After having said so much that is pleasant of the prince, I must, in pursuance of my determination to give the shadows as well as the lights of my portraits, admit that there are two particulars in which Prince Henry cannot be said to shine. One of these is public speaking, and the other is shooting; he is as unfortunate in the one respect as in the other.
His only public utterance of any importance was made at the time of his departure for China, when he addressed the emperor in such extravagant terms, referring to his “consecrated majesty,” and so on, that it created mingled feelings of amazement and amusement from one end of the civilized world to the other! There has always been an impression in my mind that there was in this extraordinary speech just a suspicion of a disposition to guy his brother: for not only were the terms that he used entirely foreign to his character,–their _outre_ tenor bordering on the ridiculous,–but it is impossible for anyone who has ever heard him chaffing his seasick brother while out yachting, putting his head in at the cabin door every now and again, and calling out, “Well, Willie, how do you feel now, and what has become of your imperial dignity?” to believe that he was really serious when he so solemnly ascribed divine attributes to this selfsame Willie.
I heard that after the prince’s arrival in China, where banquets were given in his honor by the German and English leading colonists, he was repeatedly asked to make a few remarks in reply to the toasts drunk in his honor, but that on each occasion he politely informed his hosts that he would see them in Jericho before he got on his feet to address them. “Only once in my life,” he was wont to say, “did I make a speech, and I shall never hear the end of that to the close of my days!” A little later on, when the Shanghai correspondent of the London _Times_ was presented to him, he himself referred to this most celebrated and oft-quoted speech by inquiring good-humoredly, and withal plaintively, “By the way, don’t you think your newspapers have roasted me enough about it?”
With regard to his shooting, there is no scion of royalty who has been the cause of more gun accidents than the prince. He had not attained his majority before he managed, while shooting in the game preserves of his uncle, the Grand Duke of Baden, to wound a gamekeeper so severely that the man was crippled for life, and has since been in the receipt of a generous pension from the prince. Then in Corfu, while clambering up a steep hill, he had the misfortune to unintentionally discharge his gun, the lead lodging in a Greek gentleman who was following a few feet behind him and grievously injuring him; while at a later period he succeeded in inflicting serious damage upon a Turkish dignitary appointed by the Sultan to attend him during his shooting trips in Syria. It is of him, too, that is related the story of how, when asked as a youth of twenty, by Queen Victoria, during one of his stays at Balmoral, what sport he had had while out deer stalking, he replied proudly: “Well, grandma, I did not succeed in killing a stag, but I hit quite a number.” It is recorded that there was a painful silence after this remark, and that the prince was not again urged to go out deer stalking during his stay at Balmoral!
Princess Henry is probably the least favored, both as to beauty and brilliancy of intellect, of the daughters of the late Grand Duke of Hesse, and of his consort, Princess Alice, second daughter of Queen Victoria. Her three sisters, the Grand Duchess Sergius of Russia, Princess Louis of Battenberg, and the young czarina, are renowned for their loveliness and their cleverness, the latter inherited from their talented mother; whereas Princess Irene and her brother, the reigning Grand Duke of Hesse, take far more after their father. Princess Irene was born in 1866, during the Seven Weeks’ War, when her father was called upon to fight his own brothers in the Prussian army, and his brother-in-law, the late Emperor Frederick, then Crown Prince of Prussia. Her baptismal sponsors were the officers and men belonging to the two cavalry regiments under her father’s special command during that war:–there is no other princess in Europe who has ever had two entire regiments of cavalry for godfathers! The name of Irene was bestowed upon her by way of gratitude for the restoration of peace, and she used always to be known in her young days at Darmstadt as the “Friedenskind,” or “child of peace.” After her mother’s death from diphtheria, it was the latter’s eldest sister, the now widowed Empress Frederick, who endeavored, as far as possible, to look after the children, and it was perhaps this that led to Prince Henry’s falling in love with his cousin. The match was strongly opposed by Prince Bismarck, partly upon the ground of the close relationship of the parties, but mainly on account of his hatred for the reigning house of Hesse. But when Prince Henry declared that he would remain single all his life unless he were allowed to marry Princess Irene, consent was given, and the wedding took place at Charlottenburg in the presence of the dying Emperor Frederick, this being the last public ceremony at which he was present. One of the saddest of sights, indeed, was that presented by “Unser Fritz,” almost too weak to stand, giving his voiceless blessing after the ceremony to his favorite son, and to his new daughter-in-law, who, having been born in a time of war and misery, was entering upon her new life as a wife at a time when the whole nation was once more sorrowing. While Princess Irene is perhaps less attractive than her sisters, she is more interested in philanthropic movements than any other member of her family, and at Kiel, where she makes her home, she is greatly liked, especially by the poor. She is a magnificent equestrienne, and a very clever shot, being infinitely more successful in this respect than her husband, who is so devoted to her that he bears this superiority with the greatest equanimity.
Although Prince Frederick-Leopold has certainly relieved himself from any imputation of effeminacy by the conspicuous part he took in the long-distance rides between Berlin and Vienna, and by his magnificent horsemanship, yet he does not convey to people the impression of manliness that constitutes so distinguishing a characteristic of his cousins, Prince Henry and the kaiser. He is lacking alike in virility and intellect, and seems to have no other aim and aspiration in life than to live up to his name and reputation as the leader of masculine fashion or “Gigerl Koenig,” which may be rendered into English as “king of the dudes.” They say at the Court of Berlin that he is so particular about the fit of his clothes that he will never remain seated for more than five minutes at a time, not even when traveling, for fear of spoiling the crease in his trousers or of making them baggy at the knees! He does not attempt to disguise the fact that the faultlessness of his coats or of his uniforms is an object of paramount importance. These are, however, very harmless weaknesses, which are more than atoned for by the fact that he is an excellent father and husband, but the obstinacy of his temper and his vagaries as a leader of masculine fashion at Berlin have often been a source of impatience and irritation to the kaiser. It is only just to lay stress on his excellence both as a husband and a father, as all sorts of stories have been circulated, not merely in the foreign press, but also in the German newspapers, charging him with intemperance and with brutality towards his wife, who is a younger sister of the empress, such as to necessitate the intervention of the kaiser.
These stories are pure calumnies, and originate in a confusion between the prince and his father, the celebrated cavalry general. The latter, popularly known as the “Red Prince,” was the commander to whom Metz capitulated in 1870, and was not only noted for his hard drinking, but likewise for his rough usage of his amiable and formerly lovely consort when he was in his cups. He is credited with having frequently beaten her, either with his fist or with his riding whip, when crazed with drink; and it is no secret that she left him on three occasions with the avowed intention of securing a separation and even divorce, and was only persuaded to return to her husband by the entreaties of the old emperor.
Of course all this was a matter of court gossip at the time, and three or four years ago the stories formerly current concerning the father, who has been dead for more than a decade, were revived with regard to his son, for no other reason than that the prince had quite frequently rendered himself subject to disciplinary measures by the kaiser. If the latter has, however, ordered him to remain under arrest in his palace at various times, it has not been as a punishment for having horsewhipped his wife when drunk, as some foreign illustrated papers would have the world believe, but only because the prince had been guilty of some neglect in military duty, or had disobeyed the wishes of the emperor in connection with the management of his household.
Thus, some two or three winters ago, Princess Frederick-Leopold was almost drowned while out skating near Potsdam; she broke through the ice, was completely unconscious when miraculously rescued by four peasants who happened to be in the neighborhood, and was only brought back to life with the utmost difficulty. The emperor and empress were naturally much concerned and distressed by this accident; but William’s sympathy changed into very serious anger when he learnt that the princess had remained so long under the ice and had been dependent on the courage and bravery of the peasants who rescued her, only because neither her husband nor any of the gentlemen of his household had been in attendance upon her. In fact, she was quite alone with a lady-in-waiting, who lost her head, and was completely unable to offer any assistance when the mishap occurred. The emperor also discovered that on the previous day the princess had, without any escort whatsoever, skated alone all the way from Potsdam to Brandenburg and back, a remarkable feat, calling for much endurance and attended by no little danger. Now, as I have already stated, it is contrary to the rules of court etiquette and usage for any prince or princess of the blood to leave their residence, unattended, and it was on account of the infraction of this regulation that the kaiser sentenced both the prince and his consort to several weeks’ arrest in their palace. It was this circumstance that gave rise to the ridiculous and sensational tale of the prince having been punished by the emperor in consequence of the latter having caught him in the act of beating the princess while in a fit of drunken fury.
Prince Frederick-Leopold is a great traveller, and has not only spent a considerable time in India as the guest of his brother-in-law, the Duke of Connaught, when the latter was in military command at Bombay, but, moreover, he has visited China and Japan, and devoted several months to a tour in the United States, which was wound up by some rather exciting events at Coney Island before his return home to Berlin.
[Illustration: _SCENE IN DUKE ERNEST GUNTHER’S QUARTERS_ _After a drawing by Oreste Cortazzo_]
Of the bachelorhood days of the kaiser’s other brother-in-law, Duke Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, already mentioned several times in these pages, especially in connection with the anonymous letter scandal, the least said the better. A hard-drinking, dissipated, and somewhat coarse-mannered cavalry officer, he has often been a source of perpetual anger to the kaiser and of distress to his sister, the excellent empress. He managed to get his name involved in all sorts of unsavory speculations on the stock exchange and in gambling scandals, invariably, it is true, as a victim; while at least three foreign footlight favorites were expelled from Germany by the police on account of the scandals created by his association with them. On one occasion, he even had the audacity to appear at Charlottenburg with a notorious American “_demi-mondaine_” seated beside him on the box of his drag, although his sister, the empress, was present at the races, as well as a large number of ladies of the court and many great dignitaries. Seeing the servants of his coach arrayed in the familiar liveries of his house, they all naturally imagined that the lady beside the duke was one of his sisters, either Princess Frederick-Leopold or Princess Fedora, and accorded to her the homage which would have belonged by right to either of these two princesses, but which was totally misplaced when conceded to a woman of such unenviable notoriety as the fair stranger who sat beside the duke. Needless to add that the emperor was furious when he heard of the affair, and after giving orders for the immediate expulsion of the woman, directed the prince to leave Berlin, and to remain at his castle of Prinkenau until he had expiated his gross and flagrant breach of the proprieties.
Duke Ernest-Gunther was a suitor for the hand of quite a large number of princesses, and among those to whom he proposed were the daughters of the Prince of Wales and of the latter’s brother, the Duke of Coburg, his suit being rejected with touching unanimity in each instance, in consequence of his unenviable reputation. Yet strangely enough, as stated previously, he seems to have developed into an exemplary husband, although his marriage was contracted under circumstances which, verged on a tragedy; for his wife, a mere seventeen-year-old girl, just issuing from the school-room when he made an offer for her hand, was literally flung into his arms by both her parents, who were determined to separate from each other, and who had been informed by Emperor Francis-Joseph of Austria, and by King Leopold of Belgium, that no such step could be tolerated until after the marriage of little Princess “Dolly,” the only daughter of this ill-matched couple. The betrothal took place in due course at Vienna. But before the marriage could follow, the young girl’s mother, namely, Princess Louise of Coburg and of Belgium, deliberately eloped from the Austrian capital with her husband’s chamberlain, the Hungarian Count Keglewitch; and what was worse, took her daughter with her. The trio fled to Nice, where they were visited by King Leopold, who after endeavoring in vain to persuade the princess to return to her husband at Vienna, discarded her in hot anger, declaring that she was no longer his daughter!
The next act in the drama was a challenge issued by Prince Philip of Coburg against Count Keglewitch, who left Nice for the encounter: the duel was fought in the army riding-school at Vienna, the commander of the metropolitan garrison and the minister of war acting as seconds to Prince Philip, although duelling is strictly forbidden by law in Austria, as it is in Germany. Prince Philip received a painful wound in the hand, and the count forthwith left to rejoin the princess at Nice. The publicity given to this duel had the unfortunate result, however, of calling attention to the presence of poor little Princess Dorothy at Nice with her misguided mother and the count, and the princess having been warned by the Austrian authorities and the French police that her daughter would be taken from her by force unless she relinquished her hold upon the child, she sent her back to Vienna, whence the girl was immediately dispatched to Dresden and placed under the care of the mother and the unmarried sister of the German empress, with whom she remained until her marriage.
Shortly after her departure from Nice, her mother was forced to take flight in consequence of the persecution to which she was subjected by her creditors; and with a shamelessness that can only be explained on the score of an unbalanced mind, she deliberately returned to Austria with her lover, and coolly took up her residence at his castle near Agram, where the count actually made preparations for a siege, in order to resist by force any attempt on the part of the authorities to take the princess from him.
Ultimately, both were captured by strategy, and while the princess was conveyed under police escort to Vienna, and lodged at the request of her husband in a lunatic asylum, on the sworn statements of two court physicians concerning her insanity, the count was placed under close arrest at Agram on the charge of grossly immoral conduct, unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. Before he had been very long in the military prison, this charge was changed to one of forgery; for it was discovered that there were notes in circulation at Vienna and Paris to the extent of more than a million dollars, which the count had negotiated, and which bore the forged signature of Princess Louise’s sister, the widowed Crown Princess Stephanie of Austria.
The count of course denied that he had forged the signature, but as the fact remains that he negotiated the notes, and that Princess Louise, who, failing himself, can alone have been the culprit, is officially declared insane, and legally irresponsible, he has had to bear the brunt of the affair, and is now, after having undergone the terrible ceremony of military degradation, working out a sentence of five years’ penal servitude in a fortress; doubtless comparing his fate with that of the celebrated Baron Trench, who was imprisoned for years in the dungeons of Spandau, and of Magdeburg, for having compromised the fair name of the sister of Frederick the Great by indiscreet attentions.
Princess Louise is now under strict restraint in an asylum for the insane near Dresden, and inasmuch as both her father, King Leopold of the Belgians, and her husband, have declined to pay any of her debts, public sales of her belongings, even of her dresses and her under-garments, were permitted to take place at Vienna and at Nice for the benefit of her creditors. It is only fair to the unfortunate princess to state that her entire married life has been one of uninterrupted misery, owing to the brutality and drunken habits of her husband, who is noted as one of the most dissolute princes in all Europe. In fact if court gossip at Berlin and Vienna is to be believed, the princess first became enamored of Count Keglewitch when the latter, in attendance on the princely couple as their chamberlain, interfered one day to protect her from the blows of her husband.
It was amidst circumstances such as these that Princess Dorothy was married to Duke Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, neither her father nor her mother being present at her marriage; the reigning Duke of Coburg, as chief of the Coburg family figuring in the place of her parents, and giving her away at the altar. That with such a father, such a mother, and with a husband of such a past reputation for dissipation and wildness, the little princess should have found happiness in marriage, is, to say the least, surprising. But the duke seems devoted to his little wife, while she on her side is completely wrapped up in her husband, and thinks him perfect, in every way.
Yet another brother-in-law of the kaiser who is a conspicuous figure at the Court of Berlin, is Prince Adolphus of Schaumburg-Lippe, married to Princess Victoria, the least attractive and least popular of William’s sisters. After several flirtations of a rather sensational character with young Count Andrassy, and several other gay diplomats and noblemen, which were a source of amusement to the court, although of great concern to her mother, she ultimately fell in love with Prince Alexander of Battenburg, who at the time had just been forced to abandon the throne of Bulgaria, and who was certainly one of the handsomest and most fascinating of European princes. The prince, who was at the time, to put matters plainly, out of a job, being without fortune or future, was persuaded by his relatives, notably by his brother Henry, who had married Princess Beatrice of England, to apply for her hand; this he did, on the understanding that his marriage to her would facilitate his restoration to the German army, from which he had resigned on ascending the throne of Bulgaria; for as