During the first summer of their married life, the Prince and Princess set up quite a modest establishment at the Castle of Babelsberg, and this made the Princess very happy.
Seated on a declivity of a richly wooded hill, about three miles from Potsdam, and looking down upon a fine expanse of water, the little Castle of Babelsberg commands a charming view of the surrounding country. “Everything there,” wrote Queen Victoria on her first visit, “is very small, a Gothicbijou, full of furniture, and flowers (creepers), which they arrange very prettily round screens, and lamps, and pictures. There are many irregular turrets and towers and steps.”
It was at Babelsberg that the Princess Royal began to try and see something of the intellectual and artistic world of Berlin. Neither the husband nor the wife was under the dominion of the class and caste prejudices which even now are so astonishing a feature of German social life, and which were then even more powerful and far-reaching. That the Prince and Princess should appear actually to enjoy the society of mere painters and writers and scientists, whether they occupied anyofficial positions or not, seemed extraordinary and highly improper to the whole bureaucratic element of Berlin, and must, we can well imagine, have seriously offended the Prince’s father.
It is easy to be wise after the event. No one now can help seeing that it would have been the truest wisdom for the young Princess to have rigidly suppressed her natural tastes and intellectual interests, and to have led a life of the narrowly conventional character which Prussian princesses were expected to lead. But she was incapable of such self-suppression, which would have seemed to her deceitful, and the mild cautions and hints at prudence in her father’s letters were pathetically inadequate to the needs of her critical position. She was herself still quite unaware of how closely she was being watched and criticised. “I am very happy,” she told a guest at one of the Court receptions, “and I am intensely proud of belonging to this country.”
The more the Princess’s social preferences aroused the suspicion and indignation of the Court world, the more popular she became with the “intellectuals,” unfortunately not a profitable exchange for her as she was then situated. We become aware of this by a passage in theReminiscencesof Professor Schellbach, who had been mathematical tutor to Prince Frederick William. He writes:
“The first words which the Princess addressed tome with the greatest kindness were, ‘I love mathematics, physics, and chemistry.’ I was much pleased, for I saw that the Prince must have given her a pleasant account of me. Under the direction of her highly cultivated father, who had himself studied it, Princess Victoria had become acquainted with natural science, and had even received her first teaching from such famous men as Faraday and Hoffman. Our beloved Princess soon revealed her love for art and science, as well as her pleasure in setting problems of her own. Her Royal Highness at first tried to go on with her studies in physics and mathematics under my direction, but soon her artistic work took up the remainder of time which the requirements of Court life left to her.”
Early in June Prince Albert carried out his plan of visiting his daughter and son-in-law, but it was at Babelsberg, not at Coburg, as he had hoped. He was able to report to Queen Victoria: “The relation between the young people is all that can be desired. I have had long talks with them both, singly and together, which gave me the greatest satisfaction.”
Prince Albert was, however, shocked to find the King of Prussia in a terrible state:
“The King looks frightfully ill; he was very cordial and friendly, and for the half hour he stayed with us, did not once get confused, but complained greatly about his state of health. He isthin and fallen away over his whole body, with a large stomach, his face grown quite small. He made many attempts at joking in the old way, but with a voice quite broken, and features full of pain. ‘Wenn ich einmal fort bin, wieder fort bin,’ he said, grasping his forehead and striking it, ‘then the Queen must pay us a visit here, it will make me so happy.’ What he meant was, ‘Wenn ich wieder wohl bin.’ ‘It is so tedious,’ he murmured; thus it is plainly to be seen that he has not quite given up all thought of getting better. The Prince’s whole aim is to be serviceable to his brother. He still walks very lame, but looks well. I kept quietly in the house all day with Vicky, who is very sensible and good.”
The Princess had special reasons for being “sensible” at this time, for, to the great joy of the Prussian Royal family, she was enceinte.
In August Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort paid a visit of some length to their daughter. The Queen herself describes the visit as “quite private and unofficial,” although she carried in her train not only Lord Malmesbury, the Foreign Secretary in Lord Derby’s Government (which had been formed in February), but also Lord Clarendon, his predecessor, and Lord Granville, who had been Lord President of the Council in Palmerston’s Government.
Prince Albert, at any rate, did not neglect the opportunity of studying the political situation.He wrote to Stockmar a letter highly approving the Prince of Prussia’s political views, while his son-in-law he described as firm in his constitutional principles and despising the Manteuffel Ministry, the members of which he met with obvious coolness.
The Berliners gave a hearty reception to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and the Queen declared to the Burgomaster of Berlin that she felt exceedingly happy there, because she had realised with what love and devotion everyone was attached to the Royal house and to her daughter.
She was delighted with old Wrangel, whom she calls a great character. “He was full of Vicky and the marriage, and said she was an angel.” There was a great deal of sight-seeing, mitigated by charming littlegemuthlichfamily dinners, and a grand review at Potsdam.
Prince Albert’s birthday occurred during the visit, and one of the Queen’s presents to him was “a paper-weight of Balmoral granite and deer’s teeth designed by Vicky.” “Vicky gave her portrait, a small oil one by Hartmann, very like though not flattered, and a drawing by herself. There were two birthday cakes. Vicky had ordered one with as many lights as Albert numbered years, which is the Prussian custom.”
Her Majesty notes with pleasure the arrival of “our dear, excellent old friend Stockmar,” whose presence, however, by no means gave universal satisfaction. Indeed, Sir Theodore Martin saysfrankly that, although his visit was due solely to his desire to meet the Queen and Prince Consort, it was viewed with rancorous suspicion by the aristocratic party, who held in abhorrence the man whom they knew to be the great advocate for the establishment of constitutional government in Germany. He was even accused of actively intriguing for the downfall of the Manteuffel Administration, having, it was said, “brought in his pocket, all cut and dry from England, the Ministry of the new era.”
Stockmar’s views of what was needful to raise Germany to her proper place among the nations were unchanged, but age and infirmity had for some time made him a mere looker-on. Nevertheless, it is probable that neither the Queen nor Prince Albert in the least realised how inadvisable, in the interests of the Princess Royal, was the old man’s visit.
It must not, however, be thought that the Prussians were indifferent to the Princess Royal’s singular personal charm. We have a most interesting glimpse of this in a long letter written to Queen Victoria by the beautiful and brilliant Duchess of Manchester, herself a Hanoverian by birth, who afterwards married the Duke of Devonshire and for many years held a remarkable position in English society.
The Duchess relates how well the Princess Royal was looking during the manœuvres on the Rhine,and how much she seemed to be beloved, not only by all those who knew her, but also by those who had only seen and heard of her.
“The English could not help feeling proud of the way the Princess Royal was spoken of, and the high esteem she is held in. For one so young it is a most flattering position, and certainly, as the Princess’s charm of manner and her kind unaffected words had in that short time won her the hearts of all the officers and strangers present, one was not astonished at the praise the Prussians themselves bestow on her Royal Highness. The Prussian Royal Family is so large, and their opinions politically and socially sometimes so different, that it must have been very difficult indeed at first for the Princess Royal, and people therefore cannot praise enough the high principles, great discretion, sound judgment, and cleverness her Royal Highness has invariably displayed.”
And the Duchess adds, on the authority of Field Marshal Wrangel, that the soldiers were particularly delighted to see the Princess on horseback and without a veil.
The Royal visit to Babelsberg came to an end all too soon, and the leave-taking was tearful and emotional in the extreme. Queen Victoria wrote with natural feeling, “All would be comparatively easy, were it not for the one thought that I cannot be with her at the very critical moment when every other mother goes to her child!”
In October of that first year of the Princess Royal’s married life, her father-in-law became permanent Regent, owing to the continued mental incapacity of King Frederick William IV. This filled the young Princess with intense satisfaction, which was increased when the new Prince Regent declared it to be his intention strictly to adhere to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution of 1850. The great bulk of the nation rallied instantly round him, and it seemed as if the gulf between the House of Hohenzollern and the people of Prussia had been suddenly bridged. The Manteuffel Ministry fell in the following month, a general election produced an enormous Liberal majority, and the hopes of the Constitutionalists ran high. The Manteuffel Ministry was succeeded by one of which Prince Charles Anthony of Hohenzollern was the President. From this time forward Prince Frederick William regularly attended the meetings of the Ministry, and Privy Councillor Brunnemann was assigned to him as a kind of secretary and channel of communication on State affairs.
The Princess Royal imprudently expressed to a gentleman of the Court her satisfaction at the change in the political situation, and her words, being repeated and exaggerated, gave great offence to the Conservative party, which was also the party of the King. The Princess’s satisfaction was of course shared by her father, who wrote to the sympathetic Stockmar a letter showing no prevision ofthat great rock of Army administration on which these high hopes were destined to be wrecked:
“The Regency seems now to have been secured for the Prince. We have only news of this at present by telegrams from our children, but are greatly delighted at this first step towards the reduction to order of a miserable chaos. Will the Prince have the courage to surround himself with honourable and patriotic men? That is the question, and what shape will the new Chamber take, and what will its influence on him be?”
On November 20, 1858, Prince and Princess Frederick William moved into the palace in Unter den Linden which was henceforth to be their residence in Berlin; and on the following day, the Princess’s eighteenth birthday, there was a kind of dedicatory service in the palace chapel, which was attended by all the members of the Royal House.
enlarge-imageHER ROYAL HIGHNESS VICTORIA, PRINCESS ROYAL 1856HER ROYAL HIGHNESSVICTORIA, PRINCESS ROYAL1856
This palace had been the scene of the happy life of the Prince’s grandfather, King Frederick William III, and of Queen Louise. The intimate and beautiful family life that had filled these rooms was the best of omens for the young pair, and the Princess Royal was delighted with her new home. But the palace required to be brought up to modern standards of comfort, and it was very difficult to have the alterations approved by the moody and violent King. What he allowed on one day he took back with hasty blame on the morrow. At last Prince Frederick William obtained the Royal assentto those alterations which were absolutely urgent, together with a grant of 350,000 thalers. Among other improvements was added an eight-cornered “Gedenkhalle” or “Memory-Hall,” in which were placed the numerous wedding presents of the young pair, and to these, from time to time, were added other rare and beautiful objects.
ONJanuary 27, 1859, Berlin was on the tip-toe of expectation. The custom is that 101 guns announce the birth of a Prince, and only twenty-one that of a Princess, and as in Prussia the Salic Law still obtains, it may easily be imagined with what anxiety the Berliners counted the successive discharges. There was indeed no need to wait for the whole tale of the 101 guns, for the firing of the twenty-second was enough to spread the glad news.
The story goes that when old Field-Marshal Wrangel, “Papa Wrangel” as the Berliners affectionately called him, left the palace, the populace crowded round him and demanded to know what he could tell them. “Children,” he answered, “all is well! It is as fine and sturdy a recruit as one could wish!”
It soon became known, however, that all had not gone well with the young mother and her child. There had been one of those unfortunate mishaps, the exact truth of which it is always so difficult to disentangle, but the following account, we believe, represents what actually happened:
It had been Queen Victoria’s wish that the Princess should be attended in her confinement by Dr. Martin, her English doctor, as well as the GermanCourt physicians. About eight o’clock in the morning of January 27, one of the latter wrote to his English colleague, asking him to come at once to the Palace. But the servant to whom the letter was entrusted, instead of taking it to Dr. Martin’s house, put it in the post, and it never reached him till the afternoon. To that fact the Princess Royal’s friends always attributed the circumstances which resulted in the weakness of the infant’s left arm. Be that as it may, both mother and baby were for a time in imminent danger. No anæsthetic was administered, and the Princess with characteristic courage looked up to her husband, who held her in his arms the whole time, and asked him to forgive her for being impatient. None of those about her thought her strength would hold out, and one of the German doctors actually said in her presence that he thought she would die, and her baby too. But at last her ordeal came to an end, and to her intense joy she was told that she had given birth to a fine healthy boy.
The news of the birth of their first grandchild was quickly flashed to the anxious parents at Windsor. “A boy,” ran the telegram, and Queen Victoria characteristically replied, “Is it a fine boy?” But it was not till the following day, so Prince Albert told Stockmar, that the courier brought “our first information of the severe suffering which poor Vicky had undergone, and of the great danger in which the child’s life had hovered for a time.” ToKing Leopold the Prince wrote, “The danger for the child and the sufferings for the mother were serious. Poor Fritz and the Prince and Princess must have undergone terrible anxiety, as they had no hope of the birth of a living child, and their joy over a strong, healthy boy is therefore all the greater.”
On the evening of the baby’s birth, the Prince Regent, also a grandfather for the first time, held a reception of which we have a vivid description from the pen of the dramatist, Gustav zu Putlitz, then a member of the Prussian Landtag, and afterwards chamberlain to Princess Frederick William. He says:
“It was like a great family festival. Everyone hurried there with congratulations, and when the young father, beaming with happiness, appeared, the rejoicings increased. This delight is shared by all classes of society, and is a testimony to the extent of the popularity of the Prince and Princess.”
Prince Frederick William received on January 29 the congratulations of the Prussian Chambers, to which he made the following reply:
“I thank you very heartily for the interest you have shown in the joyful event, which is of such consequence to my family and to the country. If God should preserve my son’s life, it shall be my chief endeavour to bring him up in the opinions and sentiments which bind me to the Fatherland. It is nearly a year to-day since I told you howdeeply moved I was by the universal sympathy which was exhibited towards me, as a young married man, by the country as a whole. This sympathy it was which made the Princess, my wife, who had left her home to come to a new Fatherland, realise those ties of affection which have now, owing to the birth of this son, become unbreakable. May God therefore bless our efforts to bring up our son to be worthy of the love which has been thus early manifested towards him. The Princess, to whom I was able to communicate your intention, desires me to express her most sincere thanks.”
The christening was fixed for March 5, but neither of the parents of the Princess could be present. “I don’t think I ever felt so bitterly disappointed,” wrote the Queen to Uncle Leopold. “It almost breaks my heart. And then it is an occasion so gratifying to both nations and brings them so much together that it is peculiarly mortifying.” However, the Queen consoled herself by doing all she could to mark the importance of the occasion. She sent a formal mission to represent her and the Prince Consort at the christening, consisting of Lord Raglan, the son of the victor of the Alma, Inkerman, and Balaclava, and Captain (afterwards Lord) de Ros, equerry to Prince Albert. They were both old friends of the Princess, to whom her father wrote:
“I was certain that the presence of Lord Raglan and Captain de Ros would give you pleasure.Ours will come when they return, and we can put questions to them. My first will be: Has the Princess gone out and does she begin to enjoy the air, to which alone she can look for regaining strength and health? Or is she in the way to grow weak and watery by being baked like a bit of pastry in hot rooms? My second: Is she grown? I will spare you my others.
“Your description of the Prince’s kindness and loving sympathy for you makes me very happy. I love him dearly, and respect and value him, and I am glad too, for his sake, that in you and my little grandchild he has found ties of family happiness which cannot fail to give him those domestic tastes, in which alone in the long run life’s true contentment is to be found.”
The baby Prince was duly christened on March 5, when he received the names of Frederick William Victor Albert, and on the following day his parents issued a touching expression of their gratitude for the sympathy and congratulations they had received from the public. In it they pledged themselves afresh to bring up their son, with the help of God, to the honour and service of the Fatherland.
After the special envoys had returned from Berlin, the Prince writes to his daughter a letter on the duties of motherhood, which was decidedly candid for those rather prudish days:
“Lord Raglan’s and Captain de Ros’s news of you have given me great pleasure. But I gatherfrom them that you look rather languid and exhausted. Some sea air would be the right thing for you; it is what does all newly-made mothers the most good when their ‘campaign is over.’ I am, however, delighted to hear you have begun to get into the air. Now pass on as soon as possible to cold washing, shower baths, &c., so as to brace the system again, and to restore elasticity to the nerves and muscles.
“You are now eighteen years old, and you will hold your own against many a buffet in life; still, you will encounter many for which you were not prepared and which you would fain have been spared. You must arm yourself against these, like Austria against the chance of war, otherwise you will break down and drop into a sickly state, which would be disastrous to yourself, and inflict a frightful burden upon poor Fritz for life; besides which, it would unfit you for fulfilling all the duties of your station.
“In reference to having children, the French proverb says:Le premier pour la santé, le second pour la beauté, le troisième gâte tout. But England proves that the last part of the saying is not true, and health and beauty, those two great blessings, are only injured where the wife does not make zealous use of the intervals to repair the exhaustion, undoubtedly great, of the body, and to strengthen it both for what it has gone and what it has to go through, and where also the intervalsare not sufficiently long to leave the body the necessary time to recruit.”
The Princess had a favourable convalescence, during which her active mind was troubled by an article on Freemasonry. Her father, to whom of course she turned for counsel, had never consented to be initiated as a Mason, though his sons, King Edward and the Duke of Connaught, both became enthusiastic members of the craft. The Princess seems to have been troubled by the idea that her husband’s connection with the order—he had been appointed patron of the Masonic Lodges of Prussia and head of the Grand Lodge in Berlin—would in some way lessen the confidence between them. Prince Albert endeavours to reassure her with a paradox which she probably found quite unconvincing:
“I will get Alice to read to me the article about Freemasons. It is not likely to contain the whole secret. The circumstance which provokes you only into finding fault with the Order, namely that husbands dare not communicate the secret of it to their wives, is just one of its best features. Ifto be able to be silentis one of the chief virtues of the husband, then the test which puts him in opposition to that being towards whom he constantly shows the greatest weakness, is the hardest of all, and therefore the most compendious of virtues, and the wife should not only rejoice to see him capable of withstanding such a test, but should take occasionout of it to vie with him in virtue by taming the inborn curiosity which she inherits from her mother Eve. If the subject of the secret, moreover, be nothing more important than an apron, then every chance is given to virtue on both sides, without disturbing the confidence of marriage, which ought to be complete.”
The baby Prince William thrived, in spite of the defect in his left arm, which was shorter than the other. We have some entertaining glimpses of him, and of his parents’ pride in him, in the correspondence of Priscilla Lady Westmorland. A German friend of hers, a lady of high rank, wrote to Lady Westmorland when the Prince was only about a week old:
“I must tell you of my wonderful good fortune—I have actually seen this precious child in his father’s arms! You will ask me what this child of so many prayers and wishes is like. They say all babies are alike: I do not think so: this one has a beautiful complexion, pink and white, and the most lovely little hand ever seen! The nose rather large; the eyes were shut, which was as well, as the light was so strong. His happy father was holding him in his arms, and himself showed traces of all he has gone through at the time. The child was believed to be dead, so you may conceive the ecstasy of everyone at his first cry.”
Prince Frederick William was indeed, as this lady put it, beside himself with joy. He delightedin showing his baby to his friends and loyal servants, calling him “mein Junge.”
In the early summer of 1859 the Princess Royal spent a happy holiday at Osborne, and her English relatives and friends thought her extraordinarily well and happy; it was also considered that she had become much better looking. The Queen describes her as “flourishing, and so well and gay,” and as “a most charming companion,” while Prince Albert tells Stockmar that “We found Vicky very well, and looking blooming, somewhat grown, and in excellent spirits. The short stay here will certainly be beneficial both to her health and spirits.”
While the Princess was in England, she was asked by her parents if she would make private inquiries as to any German princesses who might be suited to become Princess of Wales, but the search does not seem to have been successful. It was then that Sir Augustus Paget, who had been for two years British Minister in Copenhagen, spoke to his fiancée, the Princess Royal’s lady-in-waiting, of Princess Alexandra. It was from this lady, now Walpurga Lady Paget, that Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort first heard of the beauty and many endearing graces of the Danish princess. So impressed were they by her account that it was arranged that the Princess Royal should meet Princess Alexandra informally at Strelitz, in the palace of the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg.
This meeting duly took place, and the PrincessRoyal wrote most enthusiastically of the result of their informal interview. It was directly owing to this fact that it was settled that the Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandra should meet, as if by chance, in the cathedral of Spiers with a view to making close acquaintance.
The birth of Prince William brought a considerable change in the lives of his parents. Babelsberg had become too small to make a convenient summer home, and so the King granted them the use of the New Palace at Potsdam, which is only about half an hour’s journey from Berlin.
This enormous rococo building with its two hundred rooms was erected by Frederick the Great at the end of the Seven Years’ War, in order to show his enemies that he had plenty of money still left with which to go to war again if necessary. Prince Frederick William was very fond of the New Palace, where he had himself been born, and which was full of reminders of his great namesake. Apparently the only thing he did not like about it was its name, for it will be remembered that during his brief reign he altered it to Friedrichskron.
Queen Victoria, on her visit to Babelsberg in August, 1858, had gone to see the Palace, and she describes it in her diary as “a splendid building that reminded me much of Hampton Court—the same colour, same style, same kind of garden, with splendid orange trees which in the cool calm evening sent out a delicious smell. The Garten-Saal, oneenormous hall, all in marble with incrustations of stones, opening into a splendid room or gallery, reminded me of the Salle des Glaces at Versailles. There is a theatre in the Palace, and many splendid fêtes have been given there. There are some rooms done in silver, like those at Sans Souci and Potsdam, and all in very rich Renaissance style. The millions it must have cost! But none of these palaces iswohnlich(liveable in). None like dear Babelsberg!”
The Princess Royal was determined to make at any rate her own rooms in the Palacewohnlich. After the fashion of the period, she surrounded herself with portraits of her relations, and with paintings of her various beloved English homes. There were endless souvenirs of her childhood scattered about in her rooms—souvenirs of her Christmases and of birthdays, little gifts presented to her as a child and young girl by her grandmother, by her “Aunt Gloucester,” and by all those who had surrounded her during the days of her happy youth.
It is curious to reflect that, twenty years after the Princess Royal first took up her residence there, an English visitor was to write: “Without Carlyle’sFrederick the Great, Potsdam would be a collection of mere dead walls enclosing a number of costly objects. Illuminated by the book, each room, each garden wall thrills with human interest.” But when the Princess Royal first went there to make the New Palace her home for a part of eachyear, it might much more truly have been described as an arid and dusty waste, and that though it was surrounded by many waters. The gardens were very stiff, indeed ugly, but the Princess’s active, creative mind saw their possibilities, and under her fostering hand and taste they were transformed and made to yield the utmost of beauty and delight.
The New Palace henceforth became associated, in the minds of all those who were truly attached to the Princess, with all that was best and most peaceful in her life. It was there that she was able to set the example of that helpful and happy country life which she had learned to value in England, and it was not long before its simple domestic character became known far and wide, and exercised an influence the extent of which it is impossible to estimate.
The Prince and Princess had a farm at Bornstedt, not far off, and there the Prince delighted to become for the time a simple farmer, managing himself all the details of the crops and the labourers, while the Princess occupied herself with the poultry and her model dairy. It may, indeed, be doubted whether the Prince and Princess found the farm a very good investment financially, but that was of small importance compared with the spiritual refreshment which they derived from this close periodical contact with the simple, natural gifts of mother earth.
Among the neighbouring villagers, too, theyfound plenty of scope for the exercise of an intelligent philanthropy, in gradually modifying the primitive ideas then prevalent on sanitation, and in caring for the children and the old people. The Prince would himself sometimes teach in the village schools. A pretty story is told that one day, when he was questioning a class, he asked a little girl to what kingdom his watch-chain and a flower in his button-hole respectively belonged, and when she had answered correctly, he went on to ask, “To what kingdom do I belong?” and the child replied, “To the kingdom of Heaven.”
In June, 1859, the war between Austria and the allied French and Sardinian armies, culminating in the defeat of the Austrians at Solferino, brought natural anxieties to the Princess. The Prince Regent, while declaring the neutrality of Prussia, nevertheless ordered a mobilisation of the Army for the protection of Germany, and Major-General Prince Frederick William, commanding the First Infantry Brigade of Guards, was appointed to the command of the First Infantry Division of Guards. Though the Princess, thus early in her married life, showed by her quietude that she was a true soldier’s wife, it was a great relief to her when the threatened danger was over and the mobilisation rescinded on the conclusion of the Peace of Villafranca in July. Prince Frederick William’s promotion to command a division was then confirmed by his father.
The political situation, however, remained difficult, and Prince Albert and his daughter watched it with anxious concern. The following passage in a letter of his dated September is no doubt in reply to some comments of hers on the position of Prussia and Germany in view of the rising agitation for unity in Italy:
“I am for Prussia’s hegemony; stillGermanyis for me first in importance, Prussia as Prussia second. Prussia will become the chief if she stand at the head of Germany: if she merely seek to drag Germany down to herself, she will not herself ascend. She must, therefore, be magnanimous, act as one with the German nation in a self-sacrificing spirit, prove that she is not bent on aggrandisement, and then she will gain pre-eminence, and keep it,” and he goes on to point the moral in the sacrifices which Sardinia had already made for the Italian idea.
In November the Princess Royal paid a visit to England with her husband in time to celebrate the Prince of Wales’s birthday on the 9th, and Prince Albert tells Stockmar:
“We find the Princess Royal looking extremely well, and in the highest spirits, infinitely lively, loving, and mentally active. In knowledge of the world, she has made great progress.” The visit lasted till December 3, and Prince Albert wrote to the Dowager Duchess of Coburg that Prince Frederick William “has delighted us much. Vicky has developed greatly of late, and yet remains quite achild; of such indeed is the kingdom of Heaven.”
And after his daughter had gone back to Berlin, the loving father wrote to her:
“Your dear visit has left upon us the most delightful impression; you were well, full of life and freshness, and withal matured. I may therefore yield to the feeling, sweetest of all to my heart as your father, that you will be lastingly happy. In this feeling I wait without apprehension for what fate may bring.”
On this visit to England the Princess did not fail to see her old friend and ruler, Sarah Lady Lyttelton, who records:
“The dear Princess came in, habited and hatted and cockfeathered from her ride, looking very well though in averybad cold. She embraced me and received memostkindly, and took me into her magnificent sitting-room, where I spent almost an hour with her, till she had to go and change her dress for luncheon. She talked much of her baby and inquired after everybody belonging to me and seemed as happy as ever.”
THEyear 1860 was on the whole a happy one for the Princess Royal. It brought her a long visit from her parents and the birth of her eldest daughter, but on the other side of the account the relations between her two countries, England and Prussia, became perceptibly worse.
For the New Year her father sent her one of his customary letters of sagacious counsel, in which may be detected a certain note of uneasiness as to the development of his daughter’s powers of self-control:
“You enter upon the New Year with hopes, which God will surely graciously suffer to be fulfilled, but you do also with good resolutions, whose fulfilment lies within your own hand and must necessarily contribute to your success, also happiness, in this suffering and difficult world. Hold firmly by these resolutions, and evermore cherish the determination, with which comes also strength, to exercise unlimited control over yourself, that the moral law may govern and the propensity obey,—the end and aim of all education and culture, as we long ago discovered and reasoned out together.”
It is remarkable that early in this year PrinceFrederick William appears to have been for a time the centre of the hopes of the reactionary party. The Junkers actually planned to bring about the resignation of the Prince Regent, and to induce Prince Frederick William to assume the supreme power and govern without a constitution, which formed the great obstacle to their military ambitions. This scheme argued an extraordinary misapprehension, not only of Prince Frederick William’s honest, straightforward character, but also of all his political ideals. He was, especially at this period of his life, a pure Constitutionalist, with a profound admiration for the free polity of England, and it would be difficult to imagine any form of government which would have seemed both to him and to his wife more immoral, as well as more certain to entail a counter-revolution, than a military dictatorship. It is perhaps not without significance that in March a British warship was launched at Portsmouth and was namedFrederick Williamby way of compliment to the husband of the Princess Royal.
In June there was a parade at the Königsberg garrison, at which the Prince Regent said to his son, “Fritz, I appoint you to the First Infantry Regiment, the oldest Corps in the service,” and about a month afterwards the young commander was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General.
The Princess Royal’s eldest daughter was born on July 24, and was christened Victoria AugustaCharlotte, being known as Princess Charlotte till her marriage in 1878 to the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Meiningen. Queen Victoria records the news of the baby’s birth in her usual vivid style:
“Soon after we sat down to breakfast came a telegram from Fritz—Vicky had got a daughter at 8.10, and both were well! What joy! Children jumping about—everyone delighted—so thankful and relieved.”
Only the day before there had come a letter from the Princess Royal containing the intelligence that Prince Louis of Hesse was ardently desirous of paying his addresses to Princess Alice, the Princess Royal’s much-loved sister and companion of her childhood. To this Prince Albert refers in writing to his daughter:
“Only two words of hearty joy can I offer to the dear newly-made mother, and these come from an overflowing heart. The little daughter is a kindly gift from heaven, that will (as I trust) procure for you many a happy hour in the days to come. The telegraph speaks only of your doing well; may this be so in the fullest sense!
“Upon the subject of your last interesting and most important letter, I have replied to Fritz, who will communicate to you as much of my answer as is good for you under present circumstances. Alice is very grateful for your love and kindness to her, and the young man behaves in a manner truly admirable.”
A few days later the anxious father writes to the young mother one of his curious medical homilies:
“I hope you are very quiet, and keep this well in mind, that although you are well, and feel yourself well, the body has to take on a new conformation, and the nervous system a new life. Only rest of brain, heart, and body, along with good nourishment, and its assimilation by regular undisturbed digestion, can restore the animal forces. My physiological treatise should not bore you, for it is always good to keep theGREAT PRINCIPLESin view, in accordance with which we have to regulate our actions.”
But it was not all physiological treatise that was despatched from Osborne to Berlin. The Prince has an amusing reference to the busy importance with which the little Princess Beatrice, who was then three and a quarter years old, regarded the arrival of her first niece:
“The little girl must be a darling. Little maidens are much prettier than boys. I advise her to model herself after her Aunt Beatrice. That excellent lady has now not a moment to spare. ‘I have no time,’ she says, when she is asked for anything, ‘I must write letters to my niece.’
“It will make you laugh, if I tell you that I have christened a black mare Ayah (as black nurse). I lately asked the groom what was the horse’s name, which I had forgotten. ‘Haya,’ wasthe answer. ‘What?’ I asked. ‘We spell it Hay, Why, Hay.’ You should call your Westphalian nurse, ‘Hay, Why, Hay!’”
It had been arranged that the Queen and Prince Albert should pay their visit to their daughter and son-in-law at Coburg at the end of September. By a most unfortunate chance there had occurred about the middle of the month one of those “incidents” which are sometimes, when mishandled by officialdom and magnified by offended national pride, allowed to exercise an influence ludicrously disproportionate to their real triviality. The Macdonald affair, as it was called, at one moment threatened to bring about a serious breach between England and Prussia, and as it was unquestionably one of the causes of the dislike and suspicion with which the Princess Royal was to be regarded by a section of the Prussians, it is worth while to record it in some detail.
A Scottish gentleman, a certain Captain Macdonald, had a dispute about a seat in a railway carriage at Bonn. He knew no German, was ignorant of Prussian law, and very likely behaved, or was considered by the authorities to have behaved, in an autocratic manner. However that may be, he was not only ejected from the carriage but was committed to prison, where he remained from September 12 to 18. On the 18th he was tried and fined twenty thalers and costs. The English residents at Bonn warmly espoused his cause,and Captain Macdonald seems, apart from the original dispute, to have had reason to complain of violence used to him and also of his treatment while in prison. It was also particularly unfortunate that at the trial the Staatsprocurator, or public prosecutor, should have denounced the behaviour when abroad of English people generally. “The English residing and travelling,” he said, “are notorious for the rudeness, impudence, and boorish arrogance of their conduct.”
This accusation, whether well founded or not, naturally seemed to English lawyers and the English public a piece of gratuitous irrelevance, intended merely to excite prejudice against Captain Macdonald. It is impossible now to apportion the blame for the way in which the incident was allowed to embitter public opinion in both countries. The affair dragged on for months—indeed, it was not finally disposed of till the following May. There were questions in Parliament, Lord Palmerston was extremely angry, and an article in theTimesserved to pour oil on the flame.
In the circumstances the incident inevitably rather dashed the joy of the happy family party at Coburg. The Queen conferred with Lord John Russell, then Foreign Secretary, whom she had brought with her, and she alludes in her journal to “the ejection and imprisonment (unfairly, it seems) of a Captain Macdonald, and the subsequent offensive behaviour of the authorities. It has ledto ill blood, and much correspondence, but Lord John is very reasonable about it, and not inclined to do anything rash. These foreign governments are very arbitrary and violent, and our people apt to give offence, and to pay no regard to the laws of the country.”
The Queen and Prince Albert arrived at Coburg on September 25, and the Princess Royal delighted in visiting with her father the scenes of his boyhood. She went with the guns to a drive of wild boars, and almost every day there was an expedition to some interesting place in all the relief ofincognito. One day Prince Albert had a narrow escape. He was alone in an open carriage when the horses ran away. With great presence of mind, he jumped out, and happily got off with nothing worse than a few cuts and bruises. Gustav Freytag, the distinguished German novelist and dramatist, was received, and the Queen records that there was much conversation with him after dinner. As we shall see later, Freytag was admitted to the confidence of the Princess Royal and her husband, and he repaid their kindness in strange fashion.
It was on this visit that the Queen saw her eldest grandchild for the first time. Writing on September 25, she says:
“Our darling grandchild was brought. Such a little love! He came walking in at Mrs. Hobbs’s [his nurse’s] hand, in a little white dress with blackbows, and was so good. He is a fine, fat child, with a beautiful white soft skin, very fine shoulders and limbs, and a very dear face, like Vicky and Fritz, and also Louise of Baden. He has Fritz’s eyes and Vicky’s mouth, and very fair curly hair. We felt so happy to see him at last!”
This was the beginning of an enduring friendship between grandmother and grandson, and no one with any historical imagination can help recalling the last scene of that friendship, when this fine little boy, grown to be a mighty Emperor, hastened to share the grief of the English people at the death-bed of their great Queen.
The Queen was evidently much attracted by the already characteristic energy of the little Prince, for there are references to him all through her records of this visit:
“Dear little William came to me as he does every morning. He is such a darling, so intelligent.” “Dear little Wilhelm as usual with me before dinner—a darling child.” “The dear little boy is so intelligent and pretty, so good and affectionate.” “Had a last visit from dear Stockmar. Towards the end of his stay, dear little William came in and played about the room.” “The darling little boy with us for nearly an hour, running about so dearly and merrily.” “At Cologne our darling little William was brought into our carriage to bid good-bye. I felt the parting deeply.”
Prince Albert wrote to the Duchess of Kent:“Your great-grandson is a very pretty, clever child—a compound of both parents, just as it should be.”
Mrs. Georgina Hobbs, the nurse mentioned above, first went to Germany as a maid in the service of the Princess Royal on her marriage, and was afterwards promoted to be chief nurse to the Royal children. Prince William and his brother and sisters were devotedly attached to “Hobbsy,” as they called her, and it was from “Hobbsy” that they learnt English, for their parents always talked German to one another.
The Princess Royal, perhaps naturally, preferred to have her children’s nursery arranged and conducted on the English rather than on the German model, but who can doubt that in this, as in other matters of even less importance, she would have done better to have studied the susceptibilities of her adopted country? Indeed, Dr. Hinzpeter, who was afterwards appointed the tutor of her sons, bears witness that her nursery management became a great subject of gossip among the Berliners, and stories were even current of corporal punishment administered before the Court to princes with dirty faces. It is true that Dr. Hinzpeter describes these stories as mythical, but the fact that they were circulated and believed helps to account for the Princess’s growing unpopularity.
At this period Prince Albert was seriously disturbed by the attacks which theTimeswas constantlymaking on Prussia and everything Prussian. In an article in theSaturday Review, recommended by him to his daughter, it was said: “The only reason theTimesever gives for its dislike of Prussia, is that the Prussian and English Courts are connected by personal ties, and that British independence demands that everything proceeding from the Court should be watched with the most jealous suspicion.”
The Prince was honestly indifferent to the insinuations against himself by which these attacks were frequently pointed, but he was reasonably anxious about the bad effect they would have in Germany. Writing to his daughter on October 24, after his return to England, he refers to the Macdonald affair, which had already become acute:
“What abominable articles theTimeshas against Prussia! That of yesterday upon Warsaw and Schleinitz is positively too wicked. It is the Bonn story which continues to operate, and a total estrangement between the two countries may ensue, if a newspaper war be kept up for some time between the two nations. Feelings, and not arguments, constitute the basis for actions. An embitterment of feeling between England and Prussia would be a great misfortune, and yet they are content in Berlin to make no move in the Bonn affair.”
It was only too true that the Prussian Government was in no hurry to settle the Macdonaldaffair. The bitterness which it engendered did not die out till long after its formal termination in May of the following year, and undoubtedly it contributed far more than was suspected at the time to increase the delicacy and difficulty of the Princess Royal’s position. It was actually thought in Germany that she inspired the attacks in the British Press. “This attitude of the English newspapers preys upon the Princess Royal’s spirits and materially affects her position in Prussia,” so wrote Lord Clarendon.
This autumn and winter Prince Albert, in spite of many political and other anxieties and a sharp attack of illness, faithfully continued to instruct his daughter in the art of government.
It does not seem ever to have crossed his mind that such instruction, though admirable in itself, was ill-advised in view of his pupil’s position. The ideal woman in Prussia was then, and still is to a large extent, one who, conscious of her intellectual inferiority, contents herself with managing her household and children. If this view obtained with regard to women in private stations, much more was it considered to be the duty of princesses of the Royal House to abstain from any active interest in public affairs. But either Prince Albert did not appreciate this, or it is possible that he thought his daughter to be freed by her exceptional ability from the ordinary restrictions and limitations of her rank. There is yet a third possibility—that he did not altogether trust his son-in-law’s political judgment, and was anxious to give him, in the troublous times that seemed impending, an help-meet who could influence him in the right, that is in the Coburg, direction. Whatever may have been the reason, the Prince certainly continued to the end of his life to cultivate his daughter’s knowledge and grasp of public affairs.
In December, 1860, the Prince Consort received from Berlin a memorandum upon the advantages of a law of Ministerial responsibility. Its object was to remove the apprehensions entertained in high quarters at the Prussian Court as to the expediency of a measure of this kind. This memorandum was the work of the Princess Royal, and it is easy to imagine what a storm of indignation would have arisen in Prussia if by any accident or indiscretion the knowledge that the Princess had written such a paper had leaked out.
Still, it was undoubtedly an able piece of work. Sir Theodore Martin says that it would have been remarkable as the work of an experienced statesman; and, as the fruit of the liberal political views in which the Prince had been at pains to train its author, it must have filled his mind with the happiest auguries for her fulfilment of the great career which lay before her. “It would have delighted your heart to read it,” were his words in writing to Baron Stockmar.
To his daughter he sent a long and flatteringreply beginning: “It is remarkably clear and complete, and does you the greatest credit. I agree with every word of it, and feel sure it must convince everyone who is open to conviction from sound logic, and prepared to follow what sound logic dictates.”
This pathetic faith in the potency of logic in political affairs is hard to reconcile with the Prince Consort’s earlier and sounder dictum that feelings, not arguments, constitute the basis for actions. It is evident from the rest of the letter that the Princess had laid it down that the responsibility of his advisers does not in fact impair the monarch’s dignity and importance, but is really for him the best of safeguards. She had gone on to discuss the proposition that the patriarchal relation in which the monarchs of old were supposed to stand towards their people was preferable to the constitutional system which interposes the Minister between the sovereign and his subjects. Her father’s comments on this would have seemed to many Prussians most heretical doctrine to be imparted to their future Queen.
The patriarchal relation, he says, is pretty much like the idyllic life of the Arcadian shepherds—a figure of speech, and not much more. It was the fashionable phrase of an historical transition-period. Monarchy in the days of Attila, of Charlemagne, of the Hohenstaufen, of the Austrian Emperors, of Louis XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV,&c., was as little like a patriarchal relation as anything could be. On the contrary it was sovereignty based upon spoliation, war, murder, oppression, and massacre. That relation was sedulously developed in the small German States, whose rulers were little more than great landed proprietors, during a short period in the eighteenth century, and was cherished out of a sentimental feeling. It then gave way before the Voltairean philosophy during the reigns of Frederick II, Joseph II, Louis XVI, &c., was turned topsy-turvy by the French Revolution, and finally extinguished in the military despotism of Napoleon.
The Prince went on to say that in the great war of liberation the people and their princes stood by one another in struggling for the establishment of civic freedom, first against the foreign oppressor, and then as citizens in their own country; and the treaties of 1815, as well as the appeal to the people in 1813, decreed constitutional government in every country. The charter was granted in France, and special constitutions were promised in all the States; even to Poland the promise of one was made, although there, as well as in Prussia and Austria, that promise was not kept. Then came the Holy Alliance and introduced reaction into Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, by dint of sword and Congress (in 1817-1823). Once more the patriarchal relation was fostered withthe sentimentalism of the Kotzebue school, and the betrayed peoples were required to become good children, because the Princes styled themselves good fathers! The July Revolution, and all that has taken place since then, sufficiently demonstrate that the peoples neither will nor can play the part of children.
As for the personal government of absolute Sovereigns, Prince Albert declared that to be a pure illusion. Nowhere does history present us with such cases of government by Ministers and favourites as in the most absolute monarchies, because nowhere can the Minister play so safe a game. A Court cabal is the only thing he has to fear, and he is well skilled in the ways by which this is to be strangled. History is full of examples. Recent instances have occurred where the personal discredit into which the Sovereign has fallen makes the maintenance of the monarchy, not as a form of government, but as an effective State machine, all but impossible. When, as in the case of the King of Naples, this result has arisen, all that people are able to say in defence is, “He was surrounded by a bad set, he was badly advised, he did not know the state the country was in.” To what purpose, then, is personal government, if a man in his own person knows nothing and learns nothing?
The Sovereign should give himself no trouble, said the Prince in conclusion, about details, butexercise a broad and general supervision, and see to the settlement of the principles on which action is to be based. This he can, nay, must do, where he has responsible Ministers, who are under the necessity of obtaining his sanction to the system which they pursue and intend to uphold in Parliament. This the personally ruling Sovereign cannot do, because he is smothered in details, does not see the wood for the trees, and has no occasion to come to an agreement with his Ministers about principles and systems, which to both him and them can only appear to be a great burden and superfluous nuisance.
How these doctrines would have been regarded by probably the majority of Prussians appears from another letter which the Prince wrote a fortnight later. His daughter had sent him an article from the ConservativeKreuz-Zeitung, and on it he comments:
“The article expresses in plain terms the view thatMonarchyas an institution has for that party a value only so long as it is based upon arbitrary will; and so these people arrive at precisely the same confession of faith as the Red democrats, by reason of which a Republic is certain to prove neither more nor less than an arbitrary despotism. Freedom and order, which are set up as political antitheses, are, on the contrary, in fact, synonymous, and the necessary consequences oflegality. ‘The majesty of the law’ is an idea which uponthe Continent is not yet comprehended, probably because people cannot realise to themselves a dead thing as the supreme power, and seek forpersonalpower in government or people. And yet virtue and morality are also dead things, which nevertheless have a prerogative and a vocation to govern living men—divine laws, upon which our human laws ought to be moulded.”
Christmas brought the customary exchange of loving gifts. Prince Louis of Hesse, now the betrothed of Princess Alice, joined the family circle in England, and Prince Albert writes to his daughter in Berlin:
“Oh! if you, with Fritz and the children, were only with us! Louis was an accession. He is a very dear good fellow, who pleases us better and better daily. In my abstraction I call him ‘Fritz.’Your Fritzmust not take it amiss, for it is only the personification of a beloved, newly-bestowed, full-grown son.
“But to return to the dear Christmas festival! Your gifts which were there have caused the highest delight, and those we have yet to expect will be looked for with impatience. To the latter belong Wilhelm’s bust, Fritz’s boar’s head—for which in the meantime I beg you will give the lucky huntsman my hearty thanks. Wilhelm shall be placed in the light you wish when he issues (I hope unbroken) from his dusty box. The album, which arrived yesterday morning, is veryprecious to us, as it enables us to live altogether beside you—in imagination.
“Prejudice walking to and fro in flesh and blood is my horror, and, alas, a phenomenon so common; and people plume themselves so much upon their prejudices, as signs of decision of character and greatness of mind, nay of true patriotism; and all the while they are simply the product of narrowness of intellect and narrowness of heart.”
ONJanuary 2, 1861, died the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV, and his brother, the Prince Regent, succeeded as William I. Prince Frederick William became Crown Prince of Prussia, and henceforth the Princess Royal was called, both in England and in Germany, the Crown Princess.
In theLetters of Queen Victoriathere is a most impressive account, written by the Princess Royal, and there published for the first time, of the death of the King of Prussia. The event moved her the more deeply because, not only was she present at the death-bed, but it was really her first sight of death.
The King had been ailing so long that those about him had ceased to be specially anxious. On Monday evening, December 31, the Prince and Princess Frederick William were sitting at tea with the Prince Regent and the Princess of Prussia, when there was brought bad news from San Souci, but still nothing to make them particularly uneasy. In the middle of the night, or rather early next morning, they were called up with the intelligence that all hope for the King had been abandoned.
Without waiting for any kind of carriage, although,as the Princess notes, there were twelve degrees of cold Réaumur, she and Prince Frederick William hurried on foot to the Prince of Prussia’s palace. From thence they went in a special train to Potsdam. There they found the King dying, and the members of the Royal family standing round watching the death struggle. The painful scene went on till five the next afternoon, when Prince Frederick William wisely sent the Princess off to bed. At one o’clock in the morning of January 2 they were again called, with the news that the King had not many minutes more to live.
The letter in which all these facts are recorded is a remarkable composition, especially when it is remembered that the writer was only twenty. We may be sure that any thought of literary effect was far from her, and yet no one, reading it now after the lapse of so many years, can be insensible to the poignancy of this simple, unstudied, almost artless description of the scene in the death-chamber—the dim lamp; the silence broken only by the crackling of the fire and the death-rattle; the Queen, Elizabeth, continually wiping the perspiration from the dying man’s forehead.
But the letter also shows how really noble was the new Crown Princess’s outlook on life. She speaks with the warmest affection of her parents-in-law: “May God bless and preserve them, and may theirs be a long and happy reign,” and she goes on to describe the King as he lay dead, peacefuland quiet like a sleeping child. She could hardly bring herself to believe that this was really death, “that which I had so often shuddered at and felt afraid of”; there was nothing dreadful or appalling, only a heavenly calm and peace.
The Crown Princess also speaks with deep feeling for the Queen Dowager, who had never really liked her, and who, as we know, had been in sympathy so pro-Russian all through the Crimean War. But this grief brought the two together as perhaps nothing else could have done, and the Princess says: “She was so kind to me, kinder than she has ever been yet, and said I was like her own child and a comfort to her.”
Prince Albert was evidently greatly moved by his daughter’s letter. In his reply he reminds her that in one of the most impressive experiences of life she was now older than himself. “The more frequently you look upon the body, the stronger will be your conviction that yonder casing is not theman, yea, that it is scarcely conceivable how it can have been. In seeing and observing the approach of death, as you have been called upon to do, you have become older in experience than myself. I have never seen anyone die.” To Stockmar the Prince wrote that “The Princess, now Crown Princess, has in the late trying time at Berlin again behaved quite admirably, and receives on all sides the most entire recognition.”
That same eventful January of 1861, the Princesslost two firm and loyal friends in Lord and Lady Bloomfield. She parted with them with great regret, and presented to Lady Bloomfield a bust of little Prince William done by herself.
At that time it must indeed have seemed to the Crown Princess as if all her own and her husband’s hopes and aspirations for a full and useful public life were about to be amply fulfilled. The new King had not only always been an affectionate father to his only son and heir, but he had also been marked among the princes of his time for his liberal opinions and English sympathies.
The third anniversary of the Crown Princess’s marriage came very soon after the death of the old King, and writing on that day to her mother she said: “Every time our dear wedding day returns I feel so happy and thankful—and live every moment of that blessed and never-to-be-forgotten day over again in thought. I love to dwell on every minute of the day; not a hope has been disappointed, not an expectation that has not been realised, and much more—that few can say—and Iamthankful as I ought to be.”
Soon after the accession of William I, Herr Max Duncker was formally attached to the Crown Prince as a channel of communication in State matters. Duncker had been Professor of History at the Universities of Halle and Tübingen, and had also obtained some practical experience ofpolitics as a member of the Frankfort and Erfurt Diet, and as a Prussian deputy. He had indeed been chosen by Stockmar for the position of confidential adviser to the Prince, with whom and with the Princess he was already in favour; and he saw in his new post an opportunity of sowing seed which might one day spring up and bear fruit an hundred-fold.
In March the death of the Duchess of Kent deprived the Crown Princess of a grandmother to whom she had been very warmly attached, and with whom was associated all the events of her happy childhood and girlhood.
On receiving the unexpected news, for the Duchess of Kent had only been really ill a few hours, the Princess started for England, not entirely with the approval of her father-in-law. The Prince Consort, who in this matter of his daughter’s relations to her father-in-law always showed exceptional tact, wrote and thanked the King: “Her stay here has been a great comfort and delight to us in our sorrow and bereavement, and we are truly grateful for it.”
The problem of the Schleswig-Holstein duchies and the unfortunate Macdonald affair combined to draw England and Prussia still further apart. It is true that the latter was formally settled in May, but the bad feeling it created was not appeased. Lord Palmerston said in the House that the conduct of the Prussian Government had beena blunder as well as a crime, while the Prussian Foreign Minister (Baron von Schleinitz), then on the eve of his retirement, retaliated with a stiff rejoinder.
A leading article in theTimes, backing up Palmerston’s view, is described by Prince Albert, in a letter to Berlin, as “studiedly insulting.” At the same time the Prince saw clearly that Schleinitz had made a mistake in mixing up the Macdonald affair withla haute politique. “In Germany the idea of the State in the abstract is a thing divine; here it means the freedom of the individual citizen.” And he goes on to say that the feeling in England ought to teach Prussia that mere talk will not do.
“Prussia has been always talking of being the only natural and real ally of England, but since 1815 she has taken no part in any European question. Prussia sets up a claim to stand at the head of Germany, but she is not German in her conduct. The Zollverein was the only really German action to which she can point. She leads Germany, not upon the path of liberty and constitutional development, which Germany (Prussia included) requires and desires. I can imagine that with the high military pretensions to which she has laid claim for the last forty-five years, she suffers under an oppressive consciousness that her army is the only one which during this long period has not been called into action. I repeat, however, that a large,liberal, generous policy is the preliminary condition for an alliance with England, for hegemony in Germany, and for her military renown.”
enlarge-imageHIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE FREDERICK WILLIAM OF PRUSSIA PAINTED AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE, JUNE 1857, BY WINTERHALTERHIS ROYAL HIGHNESSPRINCE FREDERICK WILLIAM OF PRUSSIAPAINTED AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE, JUNE 1857, BY WINTERHALTER
These were the views with which the Crown Princess was steadily indoctrinated. It is possible that she found them a little too cool and impartially objective for her patriotism, but if so, there is no trace of such disagreement in Prince Albert’s correspondence.
It was fortunate that Prussian opinion was at this time distracted by the thought of the coming coronation of the new King. The ceremony raised certain questions which, though nominally concerned with mere ceremonial, possessed in reality considerable importance from a constitutional point of view. The principal question was whether the oath of allegiance traditionally taken by the estates of the realm was consistent with the new constitutional law desired by the King. Apparently the King wished the oath to be taken, but was dissuaded by his Ministers, and it was decided that his Majesty should simply be crowned at Königsberg in the presence of the Landtag.
In July, 1861, the Crown Prince, who had gone with the Crown Princess to pay a visit to Queen Victoria, wrote from Osborne a long and remarkable letter to his father, a passage in which shows how constantly he consulted his wife on questions of high politics.
The Crown Prince begs the King not to regardthe coronation with repugnance on account of the omission of the oath of allegiance. He describes the act of assuming the crown as a despotic act, and as solemn proof that the crown is not conferred by any earthly power, in spite of the prerogatives abandoned in 1848. He goes on to argue that the ceremony will compel the Great Powers to show deference to Prussia by sending ambassadors, and that therefore it ought to take place in Berlin. In this way it would exhibit the development of Prussia. Frederick I, by being crowned at Königsberg, marked the beginning of a new era for the State, but now a coronation at Berlin would mark the new future which opened out for Prussia as the defender of the united German territories. The Crown Prince advised that the King and Queen should go to Königsberg before the coronation in Berlin, either to receive the oath of allegiance or to hold a great reception, and then he goes on:
“I have ventured, dear father, to express my opinion quite frankly, though you may perhaps be surprised by my strong inclination for the coronation ceremony. The fact is simply that I have often calmly discussed this with Vicky as the only desirable conclusion, when I saw the increasing difficulties arising in your mind with reference to the oath of allegiance.”
These opinions of the Crown Prince’s, in which his wife evidently concurred, would hardly havebeen approved by Prince Albert. They show the future Emperor Frederick in a new light—no longer as the liberal constitutionalist, the firm admirer of England’s free polity, but as the champion of the divine right of the Hohenzollerns, with a splendid vision of a united Germany under the military protection of Prussia. At the same time there is that qualifying sentence in which the Crown Prince refers to the plan of a coronation at Berlin almost as if he and his wife had been driven to recommend it as the only solution of the King’s difficulties regarding the oath of allegiance.
The whole question becomes the more interesting in the light of a remarkable piece of dynastic history which was revealed for the first time at the jubilee celebrations of the Emperor William II in June, 1913, in an address by Professor Hintze at the Berlin University. It seems that his Imperial Majesty was informed, before his father’s death in 1888, that upon that event a sealed document of high importance would be placed in his hands. When he read it, he found that it was the political testament of his great-uncle, King Frederick William IV of Prussia, brother of the Emperor who made united Germany.
As its name implies, the paper contained King Frederick William’s advice to his successors on the Throne of Prussia. Part at least of these counsels was deemed to be possibly so seductive to Sovereigns of a certain temperament that the EmperorWilliam II felt it his duty to commit the whole paper to the flames. The Royal testator, who inherited from his mother, Queen Louise, an exceedingly exalted idea of the rights of the Crown, recommended his successors to revoke the written Constitution which he himself had granted his people. But he had a high sense of the obligations of his kingly word and of his Royal oath, and accordingly he advised any of them who might take the step to take it before he had sworn to observe the Constitution at his coronation.
The Emperors William I and Frederick III seem to have been content with ignoring the testament. It was left for their successor, William II, fearful lest it might one day tempt some “young and inexperienced ruler” into dangerous paths, to destroy it. His apprehensions were curiously strong. He felt, he told Professor Hintz, as if he had a barrel of gunpowder in his house, and he knew no peace until he had got rid of the terrible document.
We need not discuss here whether these apprehensions were well founded. What is of the highest interest is the knowledge, thus come to light after so many years, of this extraordinary political testament. It had unquestionably been read at this time, July, 1861, by the new King William I, and it is equally certain that it had not then been read by the Crown Prince and Crown Princess. Probably the knowledge of the documentwould have modified the views expressed in the Crown Prince’s letter from Osborne. In any case, it seems so far to have influenced the new King that he rejected his son’s advice and adhered to his decision in favour of a coronation at Königsberg, which duly took place there with all suitable pomp on October 18.
Among the very few published letters of the Crown Princess is one which she wrote to her mother describing the ceremony. She modestly declares herself “a very bad hand at descriptions,” but no one who reads the letter now would possibly agree with that. On the contrary, she shows the same remarkably vivid and picturesque power of narration of which we had an example in her account of the death-bed of King Frederick William IV.
The fact that the day chosen for the coronation was her husband’s birthday gave the Crown Princess great pleasure, as also that an English artist, Mr. George Housman Thomas, was commissioned to paint a picture entitled “Homage of the Princess Royal at the Coronation of the King of Prussia.”
Lord Clarendon, who was the British Special Ambassador on the occasion, writing to Queen Victoria on the day after the coronation, observed that “thegreat feature of the ceremony was the manner in which the Princess Royal did homage to the King. Lord Clarendon is at a loss for words to describe to your Majesty the exquisitegrace and the intense emotion with which her Royal Highness gave effect to her feelings on the occasion. Many an older as well as younger man than Lord Clarendon, who had not his interest in the Princess Royal, were quite as unable as himself to repress their emotion at that which was so touching, because so unaffected and sincere.”