CHAPTER IXFIRST RELATIONS WITH BISMARCK

Lord Granville also wrote to Prince Albert, “One of the most graceful and touching sights ever seen was the Princess’s salute of the King.”

Lord Clarendon added in his letter to the Queen, not very prudently: “If his Majesty had the mind, the judgment, and the foresight of the Princess Royal, there would be nothing to fear, and the example and influence of Prussia would soon be marvellously developed. Lord Clarendon has had the honour to hold a very long conversation with her Royal Highness, and has been more than ever astonished at thestatesmanlikeand comprehensive views which she takes of the policy of Prussia, both internal and foreign, and of thedutiesof a Constitutional King.”

Unfortunately, Prussia was far from desiring the wife of the Heir Apparent to entertain any views, statesmanlike or other, on either domestic or foreign policy.

Lord Clarendon also told the Queen that the Princess was appreciated and beloved by all classes. Every member of the Royal Family, he said, had spoken of her to him in terms of admiration, andthrough various channels he had had opportunities of learning how strong was the feeling of educated and enlightened people towards her.

There is significance in the English statesman’s reference to “educated and enlightened” people. He must have been aware that the majority of Prussians of that day were neither educated nor enlightened in his sense of the words, and that the Princess was really only appreciated by the small intellectual group who were flattered by the recognition which she and the Crown Prince bestowed on them. But Lord Clarendon was perhaps disposed to see everythingen beau, for the Crown Princess mentions that the King and Queen showed a marked cordiality to him, contrasting with the stiff etiquette observed in their reception of the other Ambassadors.

To return to the Crown Princess’s account of the coronation. She contrives to give in comparatively few words an unforgettable picture of thecoup d’œilin the chapel—the Knights of the Black Eagle in their red velvet cloaks, the various colours of the uniforms, and the diamonds and Court dresses of the ladies, all harmonised by the sun pouring in through the high windows. The Princess says that she herself was in gold with ermine and white satin, while one of her ladies wore blue and the other red velvet. “Dearest Fritz was in a great state of emotion and excitement, as we all were.” The King looked so handsome andnoble with the crown on, and the moment when he put the crown on the Queen’s head was so touching that there was hardly a dry eye in the chapel.

The Princess’s keen sense of humour was stirred by the large assemblage of princes and other notables. “Half Europe is here, and one sees the funniest combinations in the world. It is like a happy family shut up in a cage!” and she mentions as an example the Italian Ambassador sitting close to a Cardinal. There is also a young prince of Hesse who nearly dies of fright and shyness among so many people; he at once excites the sympathy of the warm-hearted Princess, though she herself had no experience of the agonies of shyness.

But the Princess was even more diverted by a compliment which the King paid her:

“The King gave me a charming little locket for his hair, and only think—what will sound most extraordinary, absurd, and incredible to your ears—made me secondChefof the 2nd Regiment of Hussars! I laughed so much, because really I thought it was a joke—it seemed so strange for ladies; but the Regiments like particularly having ladies for theirChefs! The Queen and the Queen Dowager have Regiments, but I believe I am the first Princess on whom such an honour is conferred.”

Possibly the Princess thought at first that she was being appointed honorary cook to the regiment! In any case it is curious that she shouldnot have known of the custom of conferring such distinctions on Royal ladies, which obtains in the British Army as well as on the Continent.

We have no means of knowing how the Crown Prince and Crown Princess regarded the new King’s declaration at Königsberg—that declaration which amounted to an explicit assertion of the divine right of Kings. But in Queen Victoria’s Letters there is a curious revelation of the anxiety with which Her Majesty regarded the constant attacks of theTimeson everything German, and particularly everything Prussian. She even wrote to Lord Palmerston about it, suggesting that he might see his way to remonstrate with the conductors of the journal. “Pam” did see his way, and he got an entertaining answer from the great Delane, then at the zenith of his power, which he forwarded to her Majesty. The editor says that he would not have intruded advice on the Prussians during the splendid ceremonies of the coronation “had not the King uttered those surprising anachronisms upon the Divine Right.”

We learn from a letter written by Lord Clarendon to Queen Victoria that the Crown Princess was much alarmed at the state of affairs in Berlin at this time. The King saw democracy and revolution in every symptom of opposition to his will. His Ministers were mere clerks, content to register his decrees, and there was no one from whom he sought advice, or indeed who was capable or wouldhave the moral courage to give it. The King would never accept the consequences of representative government or allow it to be a reality, though at the same time he would always religiously keep his word and never overturn the institutions he had sworn to maintain. Such was this experienced statesman’s diagnosis of the situation, arrived at after an audience of the Crown Princess.

The Princess celebrated her twenty-first birthday on November 21, 1861. In the letter which she received from her father, almost the last which he was ever to write to her, one detects a pathetic note, as if the Prince, wearied and out of health, actually foresaw his approaching death and wished to give her his parting counsel and blessing:

“May your life, which has begun beautifully, expand still further to the good of others and the contentment of your own mind! True inward happiness is to be sought only in the internal consciousness of effort systematically directed to good and useful ends. Success indeed depends upon the blessing which the Most High sees meet to vouchsafe to our endeavours. May this success not fail you, and may your outward life leave you unhurt by the storms, to which the sad heart so often looks forward with a shrinking dread! Without the basis of health it is impossible to rear anything stable. Therefore see that you spare yourself now, so that at some future time you may be able to do more.”

The death of Prince Albert on December 14, 1861, at the age of forty-two, profoundly affected the lives of both his widow, on her now lonely throne, and his idolized daughter in Berlin. It is evident from Queen Victoria’s correspondence that she was quite unprepared. Her letters to King Leopold almost up to the last are full of the most pathetic hopefulness, and she certainly wrote in the same vein of cheery optimism to Berlin. The blow fell therefore with all the more stunning effect on both mother and daughter—indeed, it is hard to say which of the two felt more utterly crushed and broken-hearted.

The Crown Princess, as we have seen, was much more her father’s child than is usual in family life in any station. The tie between them was something deeper and stronger even than the natural affection of parent and daughter; he had sedulously formed her mind and tastes, and he had become the one counsellor to whom she felt she could ever turn in any perplexity or trouble, sure of his helpful understanding and sympathy. Very soon after her marriage, in a letter to the Prince of Wales, she dwelt on their father as the master and leader ever to be respected: “You don’t know,” she wrote, “how one longs for a word from him when one is distant.”

Nor did the Princess, like many daughters, allow her marriage to weaken this tie; indeed, the thought of the physical distance between them seemed tobring them, if possible, spiritually nearer. For her mother, the Princess felt the tenderest and most filial affection, writing to her every day, sometimes twice a day, about the little details of her personal life. But though she and her father only wrote to one another once a week, it was to him that she poured out her full self, the total of her varied interests in politics, literature, science, art, and philosophy. The citations already made in the preceding pages from the Prince’s letters to her show, not only the many fields over which their correspondence ranged, but also the singular charm of their mutual confidence. It would be difficult to find in history a more touching and beautiful example of spiritual and intellectual communion between father and daughter.

And now this great solace and stay of the Princess’s life is suddenly withdrawn from her, practically without any warning. If only she had known, even suspected, that there was danger, how she would have hurried to him! No one with any imagination and human sympathy can think of it without profound pity.

During the first weeks which followed the receipt of the telegram announcing his death the Crown Princess fell into a silent, listless state, only rousing herself to bursts of grief which were terrible to witness. The simple religious faith to which her mother turned could not, unfortunately, bring her the same consolation. In her extremityit was on her husband that she leaned. He was untiringly patient and tender, though it must have been most painful for him to be told that she felt as if her life was over and she could never be happy again.

It is surely true to say that in these difficult days the Crown Prince revealed the essential nobility of his character quite as much as he did in the great spectacular moments of his life—on the stricken field and in the glory of conquest. Many a husband would have shown a certain resentment at his wife’s absorption in her father, but it is clear that the Crown Prince, far from feeling any such petty jealousy, brought his wife the truest consolation by understanding and himself sharing in her sorrow. He knew what a really remarkable man Prince Albert was, he had felt the charm of his personality and of his intellectual gifts; and so we find him looking back on this bereavement, in a letter written some months later to his old tutor, M. Godet:

“Our whole life is, if such a thing be possible, increasing in happiness daily. All the tribulation, all the bitterness, of my outside life, and of what I may call my practical life, I am able to leave behind me when I reach the door which leads to my ‘home.’ We had the great grief of losing my dear father-in-law, the most intimate and tender friend of my wife, and to me a true second father. It came like a clap of thunder on our peaceful, happylife. We are now deprived of him whom we thought would help to guide us during many many years, and now the British Sovereign is bereft of her only help, while Europe is deprived of one of her most brilliant and most distinguished minds.”

It may reasonably be doubted whether to the Crown Princess the prolongation of her father’s life would have been of great service. We cannot feel at all sure that in her critical relations with Bismarck, for instance, his counsel would always have been of the safest kind. He had not brought her up to be the wife of an autocratic sovereign, still less that of the wife of an Heir Apparent; she was brought up as might have been a Prince of Wales in a constitutional country.

By an unfortunate irony of fate, all those who warmly and sincerely sympathised with the point of view of the Prince Consort, and of herself and the Crown Prince, were not Prussians; they were—in the phrase then generally used—Coburgers. This was pre-eminently the case with Stockmar, and in a less degree with Bunsen and other Liberal Germans. The mere fact that they were not Prussians discounted any value their opinions might otherwise have had, both with the then King of Prussia and with those who surrounded him.

Fortunately for the Crown Princess, the course of public events soon came to rouse her from her apathy and grief.

Early in that same December which saw thedeath of the Prince Consort, the Prussian elections had resulted in large democratic gains, thus considerably weakening the Ministry. In a memorandum addressed to the Crown Prince just before he left for England to attend the funeral of his father-in-law, Duncker prophesied the fall of the Ministry, and for the first time suggested the plan of calling Bismarck to office. In his reports during the Ministerial crisis which followed, Duncker warned both the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess of the danger of trying to govern at one time with the Liberals and at another with the Conservatives. He advocated a Ministry composed of business rather than party men, who would know how to govern as Liberals on a Conservative basis; and he again urged that Bismarck should be utilised to strengthen the Ministry.

The Crown Princess after her bereavement seemed to cling the more closely to the ties which bound her to the land of her birth and of her father’s adoption, and this, as we shall see later, provoked a good deal of criticism in Berlin. She went to England as often as she could, or perhaps it would be truer to say as often as her father-in-law could be induced to give his permission.

Her first visit after the Prince Consort’s death was in March, 1862. Princess Mary of Cambridge went to Windsor especially to see her cousin. She says: “We found her well, and better in spirits than we expected.” But it must have beena very sad and mournful time, for the Queen was “rigid as stone, the picture of desolate misery”; and everything reminded the Crown Princess of the father she had lost.

In the following May, the Crown Prince, at the special request of Queen Victoria, represented his father at the Great Exhibition of 1862, but the Crown Princess, much to her regret, could not accompany him. He had served as chairman of the committee appointed to secure an adequate representation of German arts and industries, and had thus greatly promoted the success of the enterprise.

The Crown Princess, however, went to England at the end of June to be present at the quiet wedding of her favourite sister, Princess Alice, to Prince Louis, afterwards Grand Duke of Hesse. It was solemnised at Osborne on July 1.

On August 14, 1862, a second son, Prince Henry, destined to be Germany’s Sailor Prince, was born. The choice of his name seems to have troubled his grandmother, Queen Augusta. She wrote to her son from Baden: “My dear Fritz, your first letter moved me deeply, because of your affectionate heart, and because of all the particulars it contained about our beloved Vicky. I certainly anticipated that your son would be called Albert, for that name, no matter whether it is more or less German, really ought to be handed down as a legacy from the never-to-be-forgotten grandfather—and I believe that Queen Victoria expected it too.”

As a matter of fact the baby was christened Albert William Henry, but probably what Queen Augusta meant was that he ought to have been generally known as Prince Albert instead of Prince Henry.

It might have been expected that the birth of three healthy children, two of whom were boys, would have, at least in a measure, disarmed the hostility with which the Crown Princess was regarded by a powerful section in Prussia. But these people were dissatisfied because the arrival of the children naturally strengthened the position of the Princess, and they also feared that the Princes in the direct line of succession to the throne would be brought up under English rather than Prussian influence.

There was, it must be admitted, a certain justification for the belief that the Crown Princess had never really ceased to be an Englishwoman.

In 1855 there had been presented to Prince Albert a remarkable young Englishman who was destined to play a considerable part in the life of the Crown Princess. This was Robert Morier, already well and affectionately known to Baron Stockmar, who even styled him his “adopted son.” It was natural that Prince Albert should take a warm interest in the young man who came to him with such credentials—indeed, Morier was quicklymade to understand that the Prince wished him to prepare himself in every way for diplomatic work in Germany. And in January, 1858, at the time of the Royal marriage, Prince Albert did everything in his power to have Morier appointed attaché to the British Embassy in Berlin.

Morier had another good friend in the Princess of Prussia, the Princess Royal’s mother-in-law. She had known, not only Morier but his distinguished father, for many years, and it was her personal wish, which she expressed to Lord Clarendon, that the young man should be sent to Berlin in order that he might be of use to her son and her daughter-in-law. It need hardly be said that Morier was also on intimate terms with Ernest von Stockmar, who at the same time was appointed private secretary to the Princess.

Morier obtained the appointment, and it was the beginning of a lifelong intimacy with Prince Frederick William and the Princess Royal. He became and remained one of their most trusted friends and advisers, a fact which undoubtedly injured his diplomatic career. When, many years later, it was proposed that Sir Robert Morier, as he had then become, should be appointed Ambassador in Berlin, his name was the only one which was absolutely vetoed by the then all-powerful Bismarck.

Probably because Morier had a remarkably strong and original personality, he at once aroused jealousy, dislike, and suspicion; he was even saidto influence the then dying King, as afterwards he was supposed to influence King William through Queen Augusta, and the Crown Prince through the Crown Princess.

When one now reads the very frank letters written by Morier to English relations and friends, one cannot help feeling an uncomfortable suspicion that the contents of some of them may have gone back to Germany, perhaps in exaggerated and distorted versions, in spite of the great precautions taken to keep their contents secret. One observation in one of his letters certainly leaked out—namely, that his long experience of German little statesmen had taught him that “like certain plain middle-aged women, they delight in nothing so much as to talk with pretended indignation of attacks supposed to have been made upon their virtue!” Such judgments, when barbed with a sufficient measure of truth, are apt to rankle.

It must not be thought for a moment that Morier was incorrect in his official relations in Berlin, but his remarkable ability and strength of character gave importance to his known Liberal and Constitutional sympathies. Had he been a diplomatist of merely ordinary qualifications, there would have been hardly need to mention him at all, but as a matter of fact he was an important factor in the complex situation of the Crown Prince and Crown Princess at this period.

A passage in Theodor von Bernhardi’s diary,written in November, 1862, exhibits the feeling in Berlin aroused by the Crown Princess’s visits to England:

“Conversation with Frau Duncker. I showed myself very impatient and discontented over the repeated long visits the Crown Princess made to England. ‘She has nothing to do there and nothing to seek,’ I exclaimed. Frau Duncker replied: ‘The Crown Princess has her own views and her own will; her views and resolutions are very quickly formed—but when formed, there is nothing to be done against them.’ Further conversation showed me that the Crown Princess cannot distinguish between our Three-thaler Diets and the English Parliament; that she thinks everything here must be just as in England; the Government must ever be by majority, the Ministry always chosen by the majority—that she tries to force these views on her husband, and that Max Duncker fights against it as much as he can. Max Duncker let me see that he is ever trying to set this young couple by the ears; their ideas cannot be acted upon here.”

The formation in the spring of a new Prussian Cabinet composed entirely of Conservatives placed the Crown Prince in a considerable difficulty, because he had openly given his support to the late Liberal Ministry. Duncker’s advice to him was that he should absent himself for a time, and that he should thereafter be present at the Ministerial councilswithout himself taking part in the discussions. This advice was accepted, and when the Ministry endeavoured to remove Duncker to an appointment at Bonn University, the Crown Prince prevented it by emphatically declaring that he did not wish to lose his counsellor.

The events which followed,—the crisis on the subject of military reforms, and the accession of Bismarck to office,—were regarded by the Crown Prince with something like dismay, but he was disarmed by the King’s threats of abdication. The Crown Princess’s secretary, the younger Stockmar, in particular, strongly urged that the Crown Prince should not intervene, as it was essential that he should preserve his position removed from party strife.

The Crown Prince saw the wisdom of this advice, and on October 15, 1862, he started with his wife on a long visit to Italy. As the guests of the Prince of Wales, they joined the English Royal YachtOsborneat Marseilles, and went to Sicily and the coast of Africa, including Tunis, where they visited the Bey at his castle, and the ruins of Carthage. At Naples the Crown Princess enjoyed herself particularly, sketching and taking long walks and excursions in all the delights ofincognito. November 21, the Princess’s twenty-second birthday, was spent by her in Rome, where the party made a long stay. After visiting other Italian cities, they returned to Berlin by way ofTrieste and Vienna, having been away altogether rather more than three months.

It was this tour which laid the foundation of the great love for Italy and for Italian art which henceforth was a marked characteristic of the Crown Princess.

In the December of 1862 the Crown Prince and Princess made a short stay in Vienna. The American historian, Motley, was visiting Austria at the time, and it was characteristic of the Princess that the only person, outside the Imperial family, whom she desired to see was this brilliant writer. He gives a charming account of the interview in a letter to his mother:

“She is ratherpetite, has a fresh young face with pretty features, fine teeth, and a frank and agreeable smile and an interested, earnest and intelligent manner. Nothing could be simpler or more natural than her style, which I should say was the perfection of good breeding.”

The Crown Princess told Mr. Motley that she had been reading Froude with great admiration, and she was surprised to find that, though Motley admired Froude and had a high opinion of him as an historian, he had been by no means converted to Froude’s view of Henry VIII. The Princess was evidently disposed to admire that polygamous party, and was also a great admirer of Queen Elizabeth. The Princess also spoke of Carlyle’sFrederick the Great, which she had justread, but we are not told whether she agreed with Motley’s view that Carlyle was a most immoral writer, owing to his exaggerated reverence for brute force, so often confounded by him with wisdom and genius.

AFTERthe death of Prince Albert, the relations between the Crown Princess and Bismarck become of absorbing interest to the student both of politics and of human nature.

Bismarck seems to have first met Prince Albert in the summer of 1855, when Queen Victoria and the Prince paid their state visit to Paris. In hisReminiscences, Bismarck says that in the Prince’s manner to him there was a kind of “malevolent curiosity,” and he convinced himself—not so much at the time as from subsequent events—that the Prince regarded him as a reactionary party man, who took up sides for Russia in order to further an Absolutist and “Junker” policy. Bismarck goes on to say that it was not to be wondered at that this view of the Prince’s and of the then partisans of the Duke of Coburg descended to the Prince’s daughter.

“Even soon after her arrival in Germany, in February, 1858, I became convinced, through members of the Royal House and from my own observations, that the Princess was prejudiced against me personally. The fact did not surprise me so much as the form in which her prejudiceagainst me had been expressed in the narrow family circle—‘she did not trust me.’ I was prepared for antipathy on account of my alleged anti-English feelings and by reason of my refusal to obey English influences; but, from a conversation which I had with the Princess after the war of 1866, while sitting next to her at table, I was obliged to conclude that she had subsequently allowed herself to be influenced in her judgment of my character by further-reaching calumnies.

“I was ambitious, she said, in a half-jesting tone, to be a king or at least president of a republic. I replied in the same semi-jocular tone that I was personally spoilt for a Republican; that I had grown up in the Royalist traditions of the family, and had need of a monarchical institution for my earthly well-being: I thanked God, however, I was not destined to live like a king, constantly on show, but to be until death the king’s faithful subject. I added that no guarantee could, however, be given that this conviction of mine would be universally inherited, and this not because Royalists would give out, but because perhaps kings might. ‘Pour faire un civet, il faut un liévre, et pour faire une monarchie, il faut un roi.’ I could not answer for it that, for want of such, the next generation might not be Republican. I further remarked that, in thus expressing myself, I was not free from anxiety at the idea of a change in the occupancy of the throne without a transference of the monarchicaltraditions to the successor. But the Princess avoided every serious turn and kept up the jocular tone, as amiable and entertaining as ever; she rather gave me the impression that she wished to tease a political opponent.

“During the first years of my Ministry, I frequently remarked in the course of similar conversation that the Princess took pleasure in provoking my patriotic susceptibility by playful criticism of persons and matters.”

In this passage we have evidently a perfectly frank expression of Bismarck’s real feeling, and it gives an extraordinarily vivid picture of these two remarkable personalities, facing one another with watchful, guarded, measuring glance, like two duellists awaiting the signal for combat.

That Bismarck to a great extent misunderstood the Princess is plain enough, and indeed it would have been extraordinary if he had understood her, so different was she from any normal type of German lady. But there is abundant evidence that he did not underrate her intellectual ability, though it must have been a perpetual astonishment to him to find such mental powers in a woman, and there were even moments when the aims of the two, generally so wide apart, seemed actually to converge. It is curious to speculate how different the course of history might have been if the Princess had added to her other qualities that tact, prudence, and power of judging human character,which were surely alone wanting to make her one of the most remarkable women who have ever held her exalted rank.

The greatest injustice which Bismarck did the Princess lay in his suspicion—to use a mild term—of her German patriotism. The Prince Consort had consistently pursued the ideal of a union of the German States under the leadership of Prussia as the champion of German Liberalism. Such a new-born Germany might, or might not, have become the ally of England, but the Prince Consort must certainly be acquitted of any Machiavellian designs for the benefit of his adopted country; the supreme end he had in view was undoubtedly the happiness and greatness of Germany, and both his wife and his daughter knew and shared his aims.

From 1858 to 1861 the Prince Consort’s influence in Prussian politics may almost be described as paramount; but the happy relations between England and Prussia were broken, partly by the inability of King William to share the liberalism of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, which seemed to him positively anti-monarchical, partly by anti-Prussian feeling in England, and partly by the claim of the Prussian Liberals to dictate to the Crown on the question of army reorganisation.

Prince Albert did not live to see how completely his hopes had been shattered, and his premature death deprived his daughter of his counsel at the very moment when Bismarck came into office in thefull tide of Russophil reaction and Anglophobia.

It is difficult to realise, in view of later events, how strong was the distrust which Bismarck inspired at the beginning of his accession to power. It was known that he desired an alliance with Napoleon III, and it was even believed that he would be capable of ceding German territory to France.

The trend of popular opinion was significantly shown on March 17, 1863, when the fiftieth anniversary of the Proclamation “To my People” was celebrated, and the foundation-stone of a memorial to Frederick William III was laid in Berlin.

Nothing that the authorities could do to give distinction to the occasion was omitted. The Crown Prince, who had just been appointed to a high post on the staff, commanded the military parade, and was present with his father at the festivities in honour of the survivors of the War of Liberation and the Knights of the Iron Cross. The citizens of Berlin, however, were conspicuous by their absence, and the popular feeling was expressed by the great writer, Freytag, who said in an article in a Liberal newspaper: “All good Prussians will pass this day quietly, seriously, and will consider the means by which they may best preserve the illustrious House of Hohenzollern for the future welfare of the State.”

The first real efforts made by Bismarck to alienate the King from the Crown Prince and Princess date from the year 1863, just when thePrincess was beginning to recover her spirits and normal state of mental health.

“Every kind of calumny was spread,” wrote Morier, “respecting the persons supposed to be the Prince’s friends. Spies were placed over him in the shape of aides-de-camp and chamberlains; conversations were distorted and imagined, till the Dantzig episode brought matters to a climax, and very nearly led to the transfer of the Prince to a fortress.”

This episode, a speech delivered by the Crown Prince at Dantzig, possessed all the importance that Morier attributes to it, and it must be admitted that it was in the circumstances a highly imprudent utterance, for it dragged the differences between the Crown Prince and his father into the light of day.

The speech was delivered to the municipality of Dantzig on June 5, 1863. In it the Crown Prince referred to the variance which had occurred between the Government and the people, by which he meant a new ordinance restricting the freedom of the Press. This variance, he said, had occasioned him no small degree of surprise; and he added:

“Of the proceedings which have brought it about I know nothing. I was absent. I have had no part in the deliberations which have produced this result.”

Although the Crown Prince went on to paytribute to the noble and fatherly intentions and magnanimous sentiments of the King, nevertheless the speech naturally created a great sensation, not only in Germany, but in other countries too. A correspondence followed between the Prince and his father, in which the former, while asking pardon for his action, offered to resign all his offices. Bismarck professes to have himself succeeded in making peace between the two, quoting to the King the text: “Deal tenderly with the boy Absalom,” and urging that it was not advisable to make his Heir Apparent a martyr.

Bismarck’s own account of the circumstances which led up to the speech is significant for its emphasis on the dates. He says that the Royal ordinance on the subject of the Press appeared on June 1; that on June 2 the Crown Princess followed the Prince to Graudenz; and that on June 4 the Prince wrote to the King expressing disapproval of the decree, complaining that he had not been summoned to the councils in which the step had been discussed, and enlarging on his view of his position as Heir Apparent. This obviously suggests, without exactly saying so in plain words, that the Crown Prince’s speech on June 5 was inspired by his wife. But behind both the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess, Bismarck thought that he detected the hand of Morier. And yet it is on record that Morier had not seen the Crown Prince or had any kind of communication with him at the time,before, or after, the Dantzig episode; in fact, it is quite clear, from letters Morier wrote to Ernest von Stockmar, that both he and his German correspondent sincerely regretted the Crown Prince’s action.

The Crown Princess, however, seemed doomed to be associated with this unlucky speech. Not long after the affair was apparently settled, a remarkable and obviously inspired statement appeared in theTimesto the following effect:

“While travelling on military duty the Prince allowed himself to assume an attitude antagonistic to the policy of the Sovereign, and to call in question his measures. The least that he could do to atone for this grave offence was to retract his statements. This the King demanded of him by letter, adding that, if he refused, he would be deprived of his honours and offices. The Prince, in concert, it is said, with her Royal Highness the Princess, met this demand with a firm answer. He refused to retract anything, offered to resign his honours and commands, and craved leave to withdraw with his wife and family to some place where he would be free from suspicion of the least connection with the affairs of State.

“This letter is described as a remarkable performance, and it is added that the Prince is to be congratulated on having a consort who not only shares his liberal views, but is also able to render him so much assistance in a momentous and criticaljuncture. It is not easy to conceive a more difficult position than that of the princely pair placed, without a single adviser, between a self-willed Sovereign and a mischievous Cabinet on the one hand, and an incensed people on the other.”

Naturally this version of the affair, with its open reference to the influence of the Crown Princess, aroused fresh excitement. Ernest von Stockmar, the private secretary of the Crown Princess, was said to have communicated the substance of the statement to theTimes. Who really did so has never been revealed.

The unfortunate Stockmar, in any case, knew nothing of the matter; he would have given much to find out who was responsible. Indeed, this new complication to an already painful and suspicious affair so distressed Stockmar that he fell ill, and had to resign his position as secretary to the Crown Princess. This was for her a real misfortune, as even the most spiteful and prejudiced of her critics could not accuse the old Baron’s son and pupil of being anything but a sound and patriotic German.

Bismarck was good enough to accept the Crown Prince’s assertion that the statement was inserted in theTimesentirely without his cognizance, and he thought it was inspired by Geffcken; in fact, he attributed it to the same quarter to which, as he believed, the Crown Prince owed the bent of his political views, namely, the school of writers who extolled the English constitution as a model to beimitated by other nations, without thoroughly comprehending it.

What wonder, then, observed Bismarck, that the Crown Princess and her mother overlooked that peculiar character of the Prussian State which renders its administration by means of shifting Parliamentary groups a sheer impossibility? The party of progress were then daily anticipating victory in their struggle with prerogative, and naturally took every opportunity to place the situation “in the light best calculated to influence female minds.”

In the following August, Bismarck says, the Crown Prince visited him at Gastein, and there, “less under the sway of English influences,” “used the unreserved language of one who sees that he has done wrong and seeks to excuse himself on the score of the influences under which he had lain.”

This attitude, however, if it was ever really adopted, was certainly short-lived. A fresh difference broke out between the Crown Prince and the King on the subject of the former’s attendance at Cabinet Councils, and on this point the Crown Prince undoubtedly held firm. Bismarck prints his marginal notes on a memorandum sent by the Crown Prince to his father. In these notes the whole constitutional position of the Crown Prince is discussed, but we are here only concerned with the following references to the Crown Princess:

“Especially necessary is it that the intermediaryadvisers, with whose aid alone his Royal Highness can be authorised to busy himself with the consideration of pending affairs of State, should be adherents, not of the Opposition, but of the Government, or at least impartial critics without intimate relations with the Opposition in the Diet or the Press. The question of discretion is that which presents most difficulty, especially in regard to our foreign relations, and must continue to do so until his Royal Highness, and her Royal Highness the Crown Princess, have fully realised that in ruling Houses the nearest of kin may yet be aliens, and of necessity, and as in duty bound, represent other interests than the Prussian. It is hard that a frontier line should also be the line of demarcation between the interests of mother and daughter, of brother and sister; but to forget the fact is always perilous to the State.”

In the autumn of 1863 Queen Victoria was staying at Coburg. She sent for Morier and had a long talk with him on the growing difficulties which seemed to encompass the Crown Prince and Princess. The fact that Morier ventured to hint that any appearance of interference on the part of England would be very prejudicial to the interests of their Royal Highnesses, and that a suspicion that the Crown Prince was being prompted from over the water would materially diminish in the eyes of the Liberal party the value of his opposition, shows that there was something, even then, to besaid for the feeling which Bismarck so sedulously fostered.

During the summer of 1863, the Crown Princess accompanied her husband on a long tour of military inspections in the provinces of Prussia and Pomerania, and her Royal Highness performed the ceremony of naming a warship, theVineta, at Dantzig.

This tour caused a good deal of discomfort to the Crown Prince and Princess, for in most of the towns they visited the municipal authorities ostentatiously refrained from celebrating the occasion; on the other hand, the populace as a rule received the Royal pair with abundant loyalty.

We have a curious glimpse of the sort of impression made in East Prussia by the Crown Princess in a private letter written by a member of the Progressive party, who afterwards became a confidential friend of the Crown Prince. This gentleman says that everyone was pleased with the Crown Princess, for she showed that she had a mind of her own. She informed a certain official that she read theVolkszeitung, theNational-zeitung, and theTimesevery day, and that she agreed entirely with those newspapers—in the circumstances an amazingly imprudent statement. It was, indeed, such a shock to the official that it reduced him to blank silence.

The breach between the Crown and Parliament was not the only question with which Prussia wastroubled at this time. The summer of 1863 was also marked by the attempt of Austria to take the solution of the German question into her own hands by initiating a scheme for reforming the Federal Constitution.

The Emperor Francis Joseph invited the Princes and the free cities of Germany to a conference at Frankfort to discuss the reorganisation of the Germanic Confederation. King William was inclined to accept this proposal, but Bismarck held other views; and a further invitation from the Emperor that the King should send the Crown Prince to the Congress of Princes, was also declined.

Nevertheless the Congress was held, and there was also held a sort of family gathering of what Bismarck would have designated “the Coburgers” at Coburg. Queen Victoria was there, and in August the Crown Princess joined her, quickly followed by the Crown Prince.

Lord Granville, who was a close observer of the complicated intrigues of the Congress, wrote to Lord Stanley of Alderley: “The Princess Royal is very Prussian on this Confederation question.”

The Crown Prince’s views on the subject were expressed in a letter which he sent to his wife’s uncle, Duke Ernest, early in September. From this letter it seems clear that, whereas at first he had been inclined to favour the Austrian move, he altered his views when Austria showed her hand by demanding from the Congress a simple vote ofassent or dissent to her project of reform. He mentioned that he had asked the King for permission to be absent from the meetings of the Cabinet, and indeed he paid with his family a long visit to Italy.

From Italy the Crown Prince and Princess proceeded to England, and that, with visits to Brussels and Karlsruhe, took up the rest of the year.

It must not, however, be thought that during this absence from Germany the Crown Prince and Princess ceased to take an interest in politics; on the contrary, they followed with the closest attention, what was indeed a serious constitutional crisis in the autumn of 1863.

In October, after they had started for Italy, the Crown Prince wrote to Bismarck:

“I hope that, to use your own words, your efforts in the present difficult position of the constitutional life of our country may be successful, and may accomplish that which you yourself describe as the urgent and essential understanding with the national representatives. I am following the course of events with the deepest interest.”

The constitutional crisis turned on the rejection, by the Upper House and the Crown, of the Budget which had been adopted by the Lower House. The King, as advised by Bismarck, was for governing without a constitution, but the Crown Prince, with his strong predisposition in favour of the English constitutional system, which had by this timebeen developed by Queen Victoria, could not help regarding his father’s attitude as jeopardising the security of the Crown.

The Crown Prince’s position was particularly difficult because he was appealed to by all parties—by the Liberals, who looked forward to the day when he would be King of Prussia as perhaps not very far distant; and by the Conservatives, who adjured him to support the Government on dynastic grounds.

Of the two parties, the Liberals appeared to have the best of it, for the prolonged absence of the Crown Prince and Crown Princess was naturally interpreted in Germany as indicating, if not their sympathy with the Liberal party, at any rate their dislike of the existing Government.

But events were shaping themselves in such a way that the Dantzig affair, with all that had led up to it and had followed it, was soon to be forgotten in a crisis of much greater moment, and one which brought to the Crown Prince his baptism of fire.

It was during the visit of the Crown Prince and his family to England that King Frederick VII of Denmark, the last of his dynasty, died, and the question of the succession to the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein immediately became acute.

PALMERSTONis reported to have said on one occasion, that there had been only three men in Europe who really understood the Schleswig-Holstein question. One of them was himself—and he had forgotten it; the second man was dead; and the third was in a mad-house.

But the members of the Royal Houses of England, Prussia, and Denmark considered that, without being either jurists or diplomatists by profession, they understood the question quite well enough to take different sides with ardent enthusiasm. The question came, in fact, like a dividing sword, and not for the first time it brought war in its train between Prussia and Denmark. The British Royal family was placed by its intimate ties with both combatants—the Prince of Wales had married Princess Alexandra of Denmark in March, 1863—in a position of peculiar delicacy, which was not rendered easier by the fact that public opinion in England warmly espoused the cause of Denmark.

If it was not easy for Queen Victoria and her advisers to steer a prudent course, the position of the Crown Princess in Berlin was even more difficult. She met the crisis with her customary courage, and she applied to its solution the teachingsof that constitutional liberalism which she had imbibed from her father.

The Princess felt very strongly that the honour as well as the interest of Prussia—or perhaps one should say her interest as well as her honour—required the nation to play an unselfish part, and to seek indemnity in the moral prestige to be derived from the settlement of this ancient racial feud. As future Queen of Prussia, the Princess wished to see the interests of the Crown identified with the constitutional rights of the people; she desired to see the inhabitants of the duchies once more contented, loyal subjects of Duke Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein. It was not her fault, nor was it within her knowledge, that the solution which Bismarck even then contemplated, and which he was ultimately able to carry out, belonged to a wholly different order of ideas.

It is necessary, in a brief retrospect, to show how this question of the duchies had become like an open sore, poisoning the relations between Denmark and Prussia. Perhaps the most fertile cause of trouble lay in the fact that Schleswig and Holstein, though grouped together by historical circumstances, were each very different in the character of its population and their real or supposed rights.

We need not go back further than 1846, when King Christian of Denmark declared the right of the Crown to Schleswig-Holstein. His son andsuccessor, Frederick VII, on his accession in January, 1848, proclaimed a new constitution uniting the duchies more closely with Denmark. This step caused an insurrection and the foundation of a provisional government. Prussia thereupon came to the help of the duchies and defeated the Danes near Dannawerke. After a fruitless attempt at intervention by the Powers, hostilities were renewed, and in April, 1849, the Danes were victorious over the Holsteiners and Germans. There was further fighting and further diplomacy, until in July, 1850, the integrity of Denmark was guaranteed by England, France, Prussia, and Sweden. This was quickly followed by the defeat of the Schleswig-Holsteiners by the Danes at the battle of Idstedt. Early in the following year the Stadholders of Schleswig-Holstein issued a proclamation placing the rights of the country under the protection of the Germanic Confederation.

This led to the Treaty of London of 1852, by which the possession of the duchies was assured to Denmark conditionally on the preservation of their independence and the rights of the German population in them. Now, Holstein belonged to the Germanic Confederation, but the treaty stipulated that Schleswig was not to be separated from Holstein, though it was a point of honour with Denmark not to give up Schleswig.

The natural successor of King Frederick VII in the duchies was his kinsman, Duke Christianof Sonderburg-Augustenburg, who, in May, 1852, resigned his hereditary claim in return for a sum of two and a half million thalers. This settlement might have been excellent but for two facts—first that it had not received the assent of the Germanic Confederation; and secondly, that Duke Christian’s two sons violently objected to it—indeed, the elder son, the Hereditary Prince Frederick, made a formal declaration of his rights of succession. Moreover, it must be admitted that Denmark showed a cynical disregard of the conditions in the Treaty of London respecting the independence of the duchies and the rights of their German population. The Schleswig Assembly complained and protested, and even petitioned the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, who actually promised aid to the duchies.

At last the crisis came in March, 1863, when the King of Denmark granted to Holstein a new and independent constitution, but annexed Schleswig which did not belong to the Germanic Confederation. Thereupon the Confederation invited Denmark to withdraw this constitution. So far from doing so, however, the Danish Parliament proceeded to ratify it only two days before the death of King Frederick VII, whose successor, King Christian IX, was forced on his accession, owing to a menacing uprising of popular feeling in Denmark, to sign the new constitution annexing Schleswig.

enlarge-imageHER ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCESS FREDERICK WILLIAM OF PRUSSIA MARRIED JANUARY 25, 1858HER ROYAL HIGHNESSPRINCESS FREDERICK WILLIAM OF PRUSSIAMARRIED JANUARY 25, 1858

The glove was thus thrown down for Germany to pick up; the Hereditary Prince Frederick assumed by proclamation the government of the duchies, and appealed to the Germanic Confederation for the support of his rights. The majority of the German Governments sided with him, especially the Grand Duke Frederick of Baden, brother-in-law of the Crown Prince; while the Lower House in Prussia declared by a large majority that the honour and interest of Germany demanded the recognition and active support of the Hereditary Prince. It will be evident from what has been said above that Prussia had plausible and even sound reasons for her intervention, the chief of which was the popular feeling prevailing in Schleswig.

Now, it so happened that the Crown Prince and Princess had a strong personal as well as political interest in the question of duchies. The Crown Prince and the Hereditary Prince Frederick were old friends. They had first met as fellow-students at the University of Bonn. The Hereditary Prince had afterwards served in the First Regiment of the Prussian Guards, he had been often at the Prussian Court, and the Crown Prince was the godfather of one of his children. Naturally, therefore, the Crown Prince and Princess were favourable to his claims.

There is now no doubt that Bismarck had some time before resolved in principle on the annexationof the duchies, but of course he did not show his hand until it suited him, and above all he studiously concealed his plans from the Crown Prince. Indeed, the Crown Prince’s personal relations with Bismarck were at this time practically suspended, if only because he happened at the time to be in England, where, however, the prevailing sympathy with Denmark did not influence him or the Crown Princess. In a letter written to Duncker from Windsor in December the Prince says that he has “daily defended the cause of my dear friend Duke Frederick, well backed up by my wife, who exhibits warm and absolutely German feelings in a most moving degree.”

The Crown Prince and Princess would certainly have recoiled with horror from Bismarck’s secret design of annexing the duchies. How little they understood the Minister’s plans is curiously shown in the letter of the Crown Prince just referred to. He took the view that Prussia ought at once to occupy the duchies in order to establish the Hereditary Prince there. Bismarck, he says, hated the Augustenburg family and considered the national aspirations of Germany as revolutionary, desiring on the contrary to maintain the Treaty of London and strengthen Denmark. The Crown Prince in fact thought that Bismarck had been too late, and that his policy was opposed to the proper assertion of Prussia’s position.

Events now moved fast. The troops of theGermanic Confederation expelled the Danish troops from Holstein, and the Hereditary Prince was proclaimed throughout the duchy. The Augustenburg party, who were aware of the hostility of Bismarck to their candidate, endeavoured to win over the King of Prussia through the medium of the Crown Prince; but ultimately, aided no doubt by certain imprudences on the part of the Hereditary Prince, Bismarck had his way. Both Austria and Prussia separated from the majority of the Diet, demanding that the King of Denmark should annul the new constitution annexing Schleswig, already mentioned, and announced that they would jointly manage the affairs of the two duchies.

In January, 1864, Austria and Prussia issued an ultimatum to Denmark, and in February began the war, which was somewhat euphemistically described as “undertaken by Austria and Prussia to protect the ancient rights of the German province of Schleswig-Holstein, in danger of extinction from Denmark.”

It was considered essential in Berlin that a Prussian officer should be in command of the allied troops, and this could only be effected by calling on the venerable Field-Marshal von Wrangel, as he alone was of superior rank to the officer at the head of the Austrian forces.

Von Wrangel, therefore, although he was much too old and eccentric for such responsibility, took the supreme command in right of his rank, but theCrown Prince was attached to his staff, with the understanding that he was to prevent the aged Field-Marshal from coming to any unfortunate decisions. Events showed that this was extremely necessary—indeed, nothing could have been more useful than the Crown Prince’s tact in dealing with the rivalries among the divisional commanders, and also in altering the extraordinary, and sometimes positively insane, orders given by von Wrangel himself. As a rule the Crown Prince was able to persuade the old man to make the necessary alterations, but there were occasions on which he was compelled, on his own responsibility, either to suppress an order altogether or in some other way to prevent it from being carried out.

The English Royal family were deeply divided in their sympathies in this war, but the Crown Princess, as her husband had written to Duncker, was wholly German in her feelings. She wrote to her uncle in Coburn: “For the first time in my life I regret not being a young man and not to be able to take the field against the Danes,” and there is reason to believe that it was her influence which decided Queen Victoria to restrain the bellicose Palmerston, who would have liked England to support Denmark by force of arms.

In these circumstances it seems all the more monstrous that Bismarck’s friends actually charged the Crown Princess with betraying the secrets of the Prussian Government to the English Ministers.Her complaints to the King only received as answer that the whole thing was nonsense, and that she should not treat it seriously. But the fact that the slanderers were never punished caused these calumnies to be long repeated, and even in part believed.

By the side of the Crown Prince and Princess there stood, in Bismarck’s estimation, Queen Augusta, who had ever been the energetic champion of the Coburg doctrine of a liberated and united Germany under the leadership of Prussia. In his profound disbelief in Liberalism, Bismarck played the obvious game of raising the cry of foreign dictation. By means of his instruments in the Press and elsewhere, he set himself to exhibit England as at all times seeking to influence Germany for her own ends and often against German interests, for promoting her own security and the extension of her power, “lately through women, daughters and friends of Queen Victoria.”

This campaign was only too successful, and it must soon have become obvious, both to Queen Victoria and to her daughter, that the unification of Germany by means of Prussian Liberalism was not in the range of practical politics. At the same time Bismarck risked a great deal. Nothing would have more completely upset his plans than a war with England over the duchies, and, as we have said, he was saved from that danger largely owing to the fact that Queen Victoria was influencedby the Crown Princess to withstand the chauvinism of her Ministers.

Throughout the campaign of 1864, the Crown Prince won the deep affection of the troops, not only by himself sharing their hardships, but also by his constant kindness and care for their comfort. Though he showed himself a true soldier and even a strategist of no small ability, the Crown Prince had no illusions about the horrors of war, which he now saw for the first time. He was deeply moved by the terrible sights he witnessed on the field of battle and in the hospitals. After the victory at Düppel in April, he would have been glad if an armistice had been concluded, and he wrote to Duncker: “You will understand how heavily my long absence weighs on me, for you know what a happy home I have waiting for me.”

He had not long to wait, however, for on May 18 the supreme command was transferred from Field-Marshal von Wrangel to Prince Frederick Charles, the “Red Prince,” and so the Crown Prince’s mission came to an end. He joined the Crown Princess at Hamburg. She had originally meant to proceed as far as Schleswig in order to do what she could for the wounded in the hospitals, but, in obedience to urgent advice, she did not go further than Hamburg. The Crown Prince’s journey thither, covered with all the laurels of successful warfare, was a triumphal progress.

As this campaign was the Crown Prince’s baptism of fire, so to the Crown Princess it was a revelation and a call to action. On the occasion of the King of Prussia’s birthday in March, the Crown Prince and Princess had presented him with a sum of money as the nucleus of a fund for helping the families of soldiers who had fallen or been disabled in war, and on the eve of the battle of Düppel the Crown Prince drew up an appeal on behalf of this institution, which afterwards bore his name.

But the war with Denmark revealed an even greater need than that of the care of the soldiers’ wives and families. The Crown Princess saw with surprise and horror that the medical service of the troops in the field was practically non-existent. She remembered the achievements of Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, and, though she was at the time herself more or less disabled, she undertook the heavy task of organising some sort of an army nursing corps. For this work, so appropriate for a soldier’s wife, she was admirably fitted. Indeed, the War of the Duchies gave the Princess for the first time real scope for the exercise of her remarkable powers of organisation.

The Crown Princess, however, does not seem to have grown more prudent as time went on. There is a curious revelation in Bernhardi’s diary in May, 1864, of her unfortunate habit of praising Englandto the disadvantage of Prussia. Says Bernhardi:

“After dinner conversation with the Crown Princess. She asked after England; supposed that I had enjoyed England very much; once there, one always longed to go back. I said: ‘Yes, life is full in England.’ She said with a very peculiar expression: ‘Yes, one misses that here.’ I thought to myself, however, that only the material interests are greater and more far-reaching than with us; in many ways life is richer here than there.”

Fighting, with intervals of diplomatic action, went on after the Crown Prince’s return from the front, until peace was signed at Vienna on October 30. By this instrument the King of Denmark surrendered the duchies to the allies, and agreed to a rectification of the frontier and the payment of a considerable war indemnity. It was understood that Schleswig and Holstein were to be made independent, but differences of opinion arose between Austria and Prussia on this point, which led ultimately to the dissolution of the Germanic Confederation and the Austro-Prussian war of 1866.

Delightful glimpses of the family life led in the summer of 1864 by the Crown Prince and Princess, and of her musical, literary, and artistic tastes, are given in letters written by Gustav Putlitz, the dramatist, to his wife. Putlitz was at this time chamberlain to the Crown Princess. His letters are too long and detailed to be quoted in full, but the following extracts will give a good idea of howdeeply impressed this distinguished writer was with the vivid, eager personality of the Princess:

“June 26.—I passed a most delightful hour yesterday in this way. As I was going through the drawing-room, I found the Crown Princess with Countess Hedwig Brühl, the former looking for the words of a song of Goethe’s, which she remembered in part, while Hedwig played the air. I found the song in Goethe for them. Thereupon we had a most interesting conversation about books. The Crown Princess is wonderfully well read; she has absolutely read everything, and knows it all more or less by heart. She showed us a reproduction of a drawing she had done in aid of the Crown Prince’s Fund. It is a memorial of the victory at Düppel, and represents four soldiers, each belonging to a different arm of the service. The first is shown before the attack in the morning; the second is waving the flag at noon; the third, wounded, is listening to a hymn in the afternoon; while the fourth, victorious with a laurel wreath, stands in the evening at an open grave. The last is extremely natural and impressive, without any sentimentality. The conception shows real genius, and it is carried out most artistically. This youthful princess is more cultivated than any other woman I know of her age, and she has such charming manners, which put people entirely at their ease in spite of etiquette. She is not allowed to ride, and so she is accustomed to drive out dailyfor several hours, and practises pistol-shooting. In fact she possesses a wonderful mental and physical energy.”

“June 27(after dinner).—This morning the Crown Princess sent for me in the garden. I do not know what she is not devoted to—art, music, literature, the army, the navy, hunting, riding. On leaving she went down the mountain on foot, and I went with her through woods soaked with rain. She took out of her pocket the last issue of theGrenzboten, and gave it to me. It is amazing that she remembers everything she reads, and she debates history like a historian, with admirable judgment and firmness. After dinner she sang English and Spanish songs with a charming voice and correct expression.”

“June 29.—After breakfast we went for a four hours’ drive. The Crown Princess wanted every variety of wild flower we could find, and she knew the Latin, English, and German names of each kind. Every time we stopped she got out of the carriage and picked a flower which her sharp eye had detected, and which was not in the bouquet.”

The party moved to Stettin, and Putlitz describes how the Crown Princess beguiled the journey with a constant stream of brilliant conversation on politics, literature, and art, as well as on more frivolous subjects.

When they arrived at headquarters and found the Crown Prince, she saw that everything wasin disorder, and immediately, with characteristic energy, she began directing the rearrangement of furniture and the hanging of pictures. She herself was going on to Potsdam, but she was determined that her husband should be as comfortable as possible at Stettin. Says Putlitz:

“Furniture was put in its place, pictures were hung, wall-paper selected—all the things having been brought from Berlin. Afterwards we went all over the house with the architect, and the Crown Princess issued her orders in the most practical and business-like way. Then we drove out and bought more furniture, and the things required for the Prince’s washstand and writing-table. All the things were suitable, and chosen with care. We had an interesting conversation about English literature and drama. I am kept in perpetual astonishment by her natural behaviour, so many-sided, and full of judgment and sense.”

When they arrived at the New Palace, Putlitz happened to say that he had never seen more of it than the room where people wrote their names in the visitors’ book. At once the Princess showed him all over it.

He draws a charming picture of a tea-party at the Palace. The young mistress, wearing a simple black woollen dress, sat at a spinning-wheel, and as she span she sang snatches of all kinds of songs, accompanied by one of her ladies. Not far off, a chamberlain was reading poems byGeibel, or prompting others by Goethe and Heine which were recited by the Princess.

Putlitz cannot help recalling historical memories of the palace which was built by Frederick the Great in ridicule of Austria and France; which had seen the curious entertainments of his successor; had been decorated by Frederick William III in the stiff fashion of his day; had been opened by Frederick William IV to an intellectual and artistic audience at representations ofAntigoneandA Midsummer Night’s Dream; “and was now the home of modern cultivation freed from formality.”

The Princess, indeed, wanted a sort of history of the New Palace to be written, and she consulted Putlitz about it. A few days later they discussed Frederick William III and Queen Louise, how the latter was always idealised, and how the former had become popular in spite of his roughness.

In his delightful book,My Reminiscences, Lord Ronald Gower gives a most interesting account of a visit which he paid in this summer of 1864 to the Crown Prince and Princess, “two of the kindest and most amiable of Royalties,” as he calls them. They met Lord Ronald and his mother at the station, in defiance of Royal etiquette, and took them off to the New Palace:

“We dined at twoP. M.and we had to dress in our evening things for this repast. It took place upstairs in a corner room, with the walls of blue silk, fringed with gold lace. The Princess verysmart, in a magenta-coloured gown with pearls and lace. The Crown Prince in his plain uniform, with only a star or two, which he always wears. ‘It is a custom,’ he said, ‘and looks so very officered.’ After dinner we went to the Crown Princess’s sitting-room; the furniture there is covered with Gobelins tapestry—a gift of the Empress Eugénie.”

Here Lord Ronald found some of the Princess’s own paintings, including those lately finished, representing Prussian soldiers, his account of which it may be interesting to compare with that of Putlitz:

“One of these paintings was of a warrior holding a flag, inscribedEs lebe der König. The second a soldier looking upward. He has been wounded, and he wears a bandage across his brow; a sunset sky for a background. This is inscribedNun danket alle Gott. The third is another soldier looking down on a newly-made grave. Of these three I thought the second by far the best. There was another painting, also by the Princess, representing the Entombment.”

The visitors were taken out driving: “We could judge of the popularity of our hosts, for everyone that we passed stopped to bow to them, and those who were in carriages stood up in them to salute as the Prince and Princess passed by.”

The arrangements about meals seem extraordinary to modern taste. Lord Ronald says:

“Tea was served at ten in the evening in one of the rooms on the ground floor of the Palace. They call it the Apollo Room, I believe. It was a curious meal, beginning with tea and cake, followed by meat, veal, and jellies, and two plates of sour cream. For this repast one was not expected to don one’s evening apparel a second time.”

The visitors breakfasted upstairs with the Crown Prince and Princess and their children, in a room lined with pale blue silk framed in silver—not, perhaps, the best possible background for “the Princess in her favourite pink-coloured dress.” Then, “the Princess showed us her private garden, and here she picked a clove, which she gave me with her own little hand.”

Lord Ronald mentions the children with approval, but Putlitz, whose visit was much longer, got to know them really well:

“July 2.—The Royal children are very charming and well trained. The Crown Princess is strict with them, which is very praiseworthy in so young a mother, who is relieved by her rank of the duty of taking an active part in their education, for which she has not the time. People will indeed be surprised at this talented and cultured nature, when once her will has full scope.”

The children on their side seem to have taken to Putlitz with enthusiasm. He gave the boys rides on his head, and he records with pride that “they came running from quite a long way offwhen they caught sight of me.” He also records an accident—little Prince William being thrown from his pony—which must have reminded the mother of that day at Windsor when she was so distressed at a similar though more dangerous mishap to her brother, the Prince of Wales.

One morning after breakfast, says Putlitz, he met the Crown Prince and Princess on the terrace, “both full of almost infantile gaiety.” Soon afterwards the children appeared. Prince William was riding his pony, when his hat fell off and hit the pony between its ears; the animal reared, and the Prince was thrown off on his back. Both parents remained quite calm, and apparently took no notice; whereupon the Prince mounted again and went on riding. It is not difficult to imagine the mother’s pang of terror beneath that outward calmness. Well may Putlitz praise the sensible upbringing of the children, which made them perfectly natural, well-behaved, and obedient.

But it is the remarkable personality of the Crown Princess which chiefly interests this literary man turned courtier. One moment she is instructing him to write to a poet and thank him for a copy of verses; at another she is arranging a picnic party in her own little garden near the Palace. Someone, generally Putlitz himself, reads aloud after tea, and if the poem or story is pathetic the Crown Princess is moved to tears. At other times they have music, generally glees, followed by good talkon literature or on contemporary politics and personages, about whom both the Crown Prince and the Princess speak with a candour which astonishes Putlitz. He cannot praise enough this delightfully informal, unaffected, and yet exquisitely cultivated and intellectual family life:

“Here one feels absolutely secure from intrigue, and only meets with frankness and clear intelligence. All evil designs must necessarily fail in the end before such qualities.”

The dramatist felt also the great charm of the Crown Prince’s personality. He says that the two natures of husband and wife are each a perfect complement of the other, and each exercises on the other an unmistakably happy influence. It is at the same time significant that, while emphasizing the perfect harmony of the marriage, he does not hesitate to say that the Crown Prince, notwithstanding the more brilliant qualities of the Princess, still preserves his simple and natural attitude and his undeniable influence.

And when the time comes to say good-bye, Putlitz sums up his experiences to his wife: “I have been entertained by a most highly dowered Princess and a most marvellous woman, full of intellect, energy, culture, kindness, and benevolence.”

On September 11, 1864, a third son was born, Prince Sigismund. This little Prince was destined to have but a brief life. He was born the child of peace, the Emperor Francis Joseph becominghis godfather, but he died almost on the very day that Prussia drew the sword against Austria in the war of 1866.

That same autumn the Crown Princess paid her first visit to Darmstadt, to stay with her best loved sister, Princess Alice. The latter wrote to Queen Victoria a charming account of the visit, in which she said: “I always admire Vicky’s understanding and brightness each time I see her again. She is so well, and in such good looks as I have not seen her for long. The baby is a love and is very pretty.”

In October the Crown Prince and Princess, with their four children, started for La Farraz, in Switzerland. They left immediately after the birthday of the Crown Prince, which day was also that of the baptism of Prince Sigismund. The Prince wrote just before leaving Potsdam to an intimate friend:

“The older I grow, the more I come to know of human beings, the more I thank God for having given me a wife like mine. What happiness it is to leave behind one all one’s anxieties and all the troubles of this life, to be alone with those we love! I trust that God will preserve our peace and domestic happiness. I ask for nothing else.”

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