“Once more has Germany called her sons to take arms for her most sacred possessions, her honour, and her independence. A foe, whom we have not molested, begrudges us the fruits of our victories, the development of our national industries by our peaceful labour. Insulted and injured in all that is most dear to them, our German people—for they it is who are our army—have grasped their well-tried arms, and have gone forth to protect hearth, and home, and family. For months past, thousands of women and children have been deprived of their bread-winners. We cannot cure the sickness of their hearts, but at least we can try to preserve them from bodily want. During the last war, which was brought to so speedy, and so fortunate, a conclusion, Germans in every quarter of the globe responded nobly when called upon to prove their love of Fatherland by helping to relieve the suffering. Let us join hands once more, and prove that we are able and willing to succour the families of those brave men who are ready to sacrifice life and limb for us! Let us give freely, promptly, that the men who are fighting for our sacred rights may go into battle with the comforting assurance that at least the destinies of those who are dearest to them are confided to faithful hands.“Victoria Crown Princess.”
“Once more has Germany called her sons to take arms for her most sacred possessions, her honour, and her independence. A foe, whom we have not molested, begrudges us the fruits of our victories, the development of our national industries by our peaceful labour. Insulted and injured in all that is most dear to them, our German people—for they it is who are our army—have grasped their well-tried arms, and have gone forth to protect hearth, and home, and family. For months past, thousands of women and children have been deprived of their bread-winners. We cannot cure the sickness of their hearts, but at least we can try to preserve them from bodily want. During the last war, which was brought to so speedy, and so fortunate, a conclusion, Germans in every quarter of the globe responded nobly when called upon to prove their love of Fatherland by helping to relieve the suffering. Let us join hands once more, and prove that we are able and willing to succour the families of those brave men who are ready to sacrifice life and limb for us! Let us give freely, promptly, that the men who are fighting for our sacred rights may go into battle with the comforting assurance that at least the destinies of those who are dearest to them are confided to faithful hands.
“Victoria Crown Princess.”
This eloquent appeal met with the splendid responsewhich it deserved, and although practically every German Princess of the time took a more or less active part in the care of the wounded and of the families of the soldiers, it was soon realised that the Crown Princess was the master mind to whom all must look for their orders.
Queen Augusta supervised the ambulance and hospital services in Berlin, while the Crown Princess moved to Homburg and started on the organisation of a series of field-lazareths, being most efficiently helped in her labours by her sister, Princess Alice, who herself organised and actively supervised four field hospitals in Darmstadt itself.
The Crown Princess began by turning the old military barracks at Homburg into a hospital, the existing hospital being set aside for the use of wounded French prisoners. She also built at her own expense two magnificent wards, and they—doubtless partly because they were new buildings—showed far more satisfactory results in lower death-rate and shorter convalescence than did the wards in any other of the German military hospitals.
The Victoria Barrack, as the new wards were called, was built of wood on a brick foundation. In addition to the wards, the building contained a good store-room, lined with glass cupboards, in which was kept a quantity of old linen which Queen Victoria had sent for the wounded. Each ward contained twenty-four beds. A feature which theGerman doctors and nurses regarded with decidedly mixed feelings was a system of ventilation which enabled the whole building to be opened from end to end when required.
By the Crown Princess’s orders, the very simplest and plainest appliances compatible with health and comfort were used. Thus the necessary furniture was all of varnished deal. By her wish, too, a great effort was made to give a bright and homelike appearance to each ward, and this, like the special ventilation, was quite a new idea to both German patients and German doctors. In the corners of each ward stood large evergreen shrubs, and on every table were placed cut flowers in glasses. Whenever the Crown Princess received a personal gift of flowers, she immediately sent it off to the hospital, often bringing a bouquet and arranging it herself. Nothing in the Victoria Barrack was used which could conceal any dirt; for instance, the crockery was white and the glass plain.
The Crown Princess attended the military hospitals daily. She went through every ward, and spoke to every patient; and she was quite as regular in her attendance on the wards containing the French prisoners as she was on those where the German soldiers lay. In this way she came into personal association with ordinary people of a class of whom Princesses see as a rule little or nothing. With many of the soldiers who were then tended under her supervision and care she kept in touchlong after the war was ended—indeed, she was always eager to help in after life any of those whom she had known at Homburg, or who had fought under her husband’s orders.
But the Crown Princess did far more than the work associated with her name at Homburg. It was owing to her promptness and her energy that a long line of military hospitals was rapidly organised along the whole of the Rhine Valley.
At the end of the campaign of 1866 the Crown Prince and Princess had founded the National Institution for Disabled Soldiers, and by the special order of the King it was given the name of the Victoria Institution, because the Crown Princess had suggested and instigated its creation. At the close of 1871, this Institution, again at her suggestion, was placed upon a wider footing, and applied to the whole of Germany instead of only to Prussia.
There is no need here to describe the course of the war itself. A vast literature, both technical and general, has grown up round it, and there are many people by no means yet old who remember vividly that immense and sanguinary struggle. To the Crown Prince was assigned the command of the Third Army, in which nearly every State of both North and South Germany was represented, including the Bavarian Corps and the Divisions of Würtemberg and Baden. Once more the Prince proved his fitness for high command, perhaps most notably at the battle of Wörth, when his admirabledispositions and his unhesitating resolve that even the last man must if necessary be staked were the main causes of the victory. Yet the Crown Prince said to the great German writer, Freytag, who was with him in this early part of the war:
“I hate this slaughter. I have never desired the honours of war, and would gladly have left such glory to others. Nevertheless, it is my hard fate to go from battlefield to battlefield, from one war to another, before ascending the throne of my ancestors.”
Much as he hated war, the Crown Prince never hesitated, as weak commanders have always done, to pay the necessary price of victory in human lives. Among the troops, “Unser Fritz,” as they called him, quickly became extraordinarily popular—indeed, their devotion to their leader formed a strong and politically useful link between men who had actually fought against one another so recently as the Austrian War.
Throughout the campaign, the Crown Prince and Princess corresponded daily. The siege of Paris had begun on September 15, and the Crown Prince was at Versailles on his birthday, on October 18, almost the first birthday he had spent away from his wife since their marriage. When he woke in the morning he found on his table a small pocket-pistol, and a housewife, filled with articles for daily use, from the Crown Princess.
There is a very interesting glimpse of the CrownPrincess in December 1870, that is, during the middle of the war, in Prince Hohenlohe’s Memoirs. He was asked to lunch with her, and they had a long talk about public affairs. The Princess was very dissatisfied concerning the proposed Convention with Bavaria, and it seemed to the statesman that both she and Princess Alice were enthusiastic for the idea of a united Empire without any exception, and that neither sister liked the proposal of federation. The Crown Princess listened attentively, however, to Hohenlohe’s defence of the special nature and justification of the Bavarian claims, but it is evident that she agreed with her husband on the question of coercing the Bavarians, if it should be necessary.
The two sisters were together as much as was possible during those terrible months of hard work and anxiety. Princess Alice spent half of the December of 1870 in Berlin, and wrote to her mother: “It is a great comfort to be with dear Vicky. We spend the evenings alone together, talking or writing our letters. It is nearly five months since Louis left, and we lead such single existences that a sister is inexpressibly dear when all closer intercourse is so wanting!”
On Christmas Eve there arrived at the house at Versailles where the Crown Prince was then living a huge chest, and he asked his hostess and her family to share his Christmas cake, “for,” said he, “this cake was baked by my wife, and you will muchoblige me by tasting it.” He then chatted to them about the Christmas festival in his own happy household, and translated the letters of the Crown Princess and of his two elder children. Long afterwards this lady wrote to a friend a letter which has since been published:
“In those fateful days we learnt to know the good and open heart of the late Emperor. We were fortunate indeed to be under the protection of that stately and friendly gentleman, who appeared to us, as we now think of him, to have been a good genius who warded off mischief from our household.”
The Crown Princess was accused of having interfered to prevent the bombardment of Paris. Thus Busch writes on December 24, 1870:
“Bucher told us at lunch he had heard from Berlin that the Queen and the Crown Princess had become very unpopular, owing to their intervention on behalf of Paris; and that the Princess, in the course of a conversation with Putbus, struck the table and exclaimed: ‘For all that, Paris shall not be bombarded!’”
As a matter of fact, though both Moltke and the Crown Prince considered that the right tactics would be to starve out Paris by a strict investment, the bombardment, which was urged by Bismarck for political reasons, was delayed, not by any slackness on the part of the Third Army, but simply by insufficient preparation of the siege-train in Berlin.The Crown Princess suffered bitterly from Bismarck. She knew well that he was indispensable, the man of the hour, but he would never trust her. He often held back important political news from the Crown Prince for fear it should leak out through the Crown Princess to England. In this he did her an injustice so gross that it could not be atoned for by his own tardy acknowledgment of the fact inThoughts and Remembrances.
On January 25, 1871, we learn from Busch that Bismarck said of the English who wanted to send a gunboat up the Seine to remove the English families there:
“They merely want to ascertain if we have laid down torpedoes and then to let the French ships follow them. What swine! They are full of vexation and envy because we have fought great battles here—and won them. They cannot bear to think that shabby little Prussia should prosper so. The Prussians are a people who should merely exist in order to carry on war for them in their pay. This is the view taken by all the upper classes in England. They have never been well disposed towards us, and have always done their utmost to immure us. The Crown Princess herself is an incarnation of this way of thinking. She is full of her own great condescension in marrying into our country. I remember her once telling me that two or three merchant families in Liverpool had more silver-plate than the entire Prussian nobility.‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘that is possibly true, your Royal Highness, but we value ourselves for other things besides silver.’”
After the capitulation of Sedan, the Crown Prince issued from Rheims an appeal for the wounded soldiers and the relatives of the killed and wounded. In it he spoke of his happiness in commanding in the field an army in which Prussians fought side by side with Bavarians, Würtembergers, and men of Baden, and declared that the war had created one German Army and had also unified the nation.
Later on, when the German armies sat down before Paris, the Crown Prince allotted some of the large rooms of the Palace of Versailles for a hospital, and himself supervised the arrangements. All through the war, indeed, he showed the keenest interest in the hospital service, and was constant in his visits to the wounded soldiers. Here we may trace the influence of his wife, who eagerly awaited all that he could tell her in his letters about poor men to whom her woman’s heart went out with such ardent sympathy. The Crown Prince took pains to supply the patients with interesting reading, and at his suggestion the editor of a Berlin Liberal paper sent many hundreds of copies of it daily to the military hospitals. This, however, was not approved at headquarters, and an order was actually issued by von Roon, forbidding the distribution of the paper.
Such incidents illustrate the difficulties with which both the Crown Prince and the Princess had to contend. The presence at Versailles, not only of the King and Bismarck, but of a cohort of German princes with their retinues, as well as numerous diplomatists, Ministers, and other official personages, did not make the Crown Prince’s position easier. He had been raised after the fall of Metz to the highest rank in the army, that of General Field-Marshal, the promotion being communicated to him in a letter from his father bearing grateful testimony to his brilliant successes in the field, notably the strategic advance by which he covered the left of the main army and enabled it to overcome Bazaine’s forces. But this elevation in rank does not appear to have been of much practical value to him.
Naturally both the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess took the keenest interest in the question of the Imperial title.
By the end of November, 1870, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Würtemberg, and Bavaria had all joined the North-German Confederation by treaty. Early in December, the King of Bavaria, in a letter to the King of Saxony which was really written by Bismarck, nominated the King of Prussia as Emperor of Germany, and the North-German Parliament, after voting large supplies for the continuance of the war, adopted by an overwhelming majority an address requesting the King to becomeEmperor. His brother and predecessor had refused the Imperial crown proffered him by the Frankfort Parliament, on the ground that the legal title was insufficient, but now that the dignity was tendered by the Sovereigns and the people of Germany, it was not possible for the King to refuse.
Neither the King himself, however, nor the older Prussian nobility liked the change, which, it was feared, might transform the almost parsimonious austerity of the Prussian Court into something like the pomp and extravagance with which other sovereigns had surrounded themselves. Bismarck, who considered all such matters as titles and heraldic pomp to be only important because they influence men’s minds, was disposed to agree with his Sovereign’s feelings, but it was the corner-stone of his policy to conciliate the South German States.
To the Crown Prince, on the other hand, with his strongly idealistic nature and his highly developed historical imagination, the conception of the Empire won by the sword made an irresistible appeal. He was ready to see in it a revival of the old Empire, by which the King of Prussia should be, not first among his peers, but the overlord of all Germany.
It is significant, however, that King William was proclaimed, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, not Emperor of Germany, but German Emperor. This was on January 18, 1871, the anniversary of the day on which the first King ofPrussia had crowned himself at Königsberg. The Crown Prince supervised all the arrangements for the ceremony, and it was his idea to form a kind of trophy of the colours of the regiments which had won glory at Wörth and Weissenburg, Mars-la-Tour, Gravelotte, and Sedan. Before this trophy the King pronounced the establishment of the German Empire. On the same day by Imperial rescript the new Emperor conferred on the Crown Prince and on his successors as heir apparent the title of Imperial Highness.
The preliminaries of peace were not signed till February 26, and we have, in a letter written two days later by his friend, Herr Abeken, an interesting glimpse of the feelings with which the Crown Prince regarded these great events, and also the reliance which he placed on the aid of his wife. The Crown Prince told Abeken that he was fully conscious of the tremendous responsibility now incumbent on him. It was thrice as great as that which lay on him as Crown Prince of Prussia, but he did not shrink from it. God had already given him a blessed help and support in his wife, by whose assistance he hoped to fulfil his great work.
The Crown Prince had the satisfaction of leaving behind him in France as friendly feelings towards him personally as could well be entertained by the vanquished for a victorious foe. He had distinguished himself among the German leaders by his moderation in victory, by his stern repression ofexcesses, and by his chivalrous tributes to the bravery of his enemies.
The Crown Princess, absorbed in her labours among the suffering soldiers, was scarcely aware at the time of the venomous feelings still cherished against her in Prussia, and it was with an exultant heart—as “German” as her most captious and suspicious critics could have wished—that she welcomed the conclusion of the great conflict.
Berlin was reached on March 17, 1871, though no official reception then took place, the Royal carriage in which the new Emperor and the Crown Prince were to be seen side by side, could only proceed at foot’s pace through the dense masses who crowded the streets.
Later, in response to the call of the great crowd who thronged about his palace, a window opened, and the Crown Prince was seen in the midst of his family beside the Crown Princess, with his youngest child, the little Princess who had been born at the beginning of the war in his arms.
WHENthe great struggle was over at last and peace was declared, the Crown Princess had a pleasant opportunity of exercising the generosity and delicacy which formed perhaps the most notable part of her many-sided and impulsive character.
M. Thiers had sent to Berlin as French Ambassador the Comte de Gontaut Biron. Although allied by birth to several great German families, M. de Gontaut, as he was generally styled, found his position in Berlin a very painful one. France lay in the dust at the feet of the only real conqueror she had ever known. The whole of the huge war indemnity had not yet been paid off, and French territory was not yet free from the foot of the invader. There were also all kinds of comparatively unimportant, yet vexatious and annoying, outstanding points which still awaited settlement, and till these were arranged Germany refused to give up certain prisoners confined in German fortresses.
Moreover, Bismarck, though outwardly conciliatory and courteous, did not seek to spare the French Ambassador as a more generous and sensitive foe would have done. M. de Gontaut was actuallyexpected to be present at each of the splendid Court and military fêtes which were then being given to celebrate the foundation of the new German Empire for the victorious return of the Prussian Army to the capital.
From the very beginning of his difficult task, the Ambassador found firm and kind friends in the Crown Prince and Princess. On the occasion of his first audience the Crown Princess came forward with kindly, eager words, telling him that she and her husband had just read with the greatest pleasure the memoirs of his grandmother, that Duchess de Gontaut who, as Gouvernante of the Royal children, played so great a part in the Revolution, and later, in the Restoration. The Princess went on to speak of her intense satisfaction and relief at the declaration of peace and she concluded with the words: “We know that you have made a great sacrifice in coming to Berlin; and we will do everything in our power to make your task less painful.”
When M. de Gontaut was later joined by his daughter, the Crown Princess did all she could to make the daily life of this young French lady as agreeable as was possible in the circumstances, and in this she had the warm sympathy and assistance of the Empress Augusta, who, as we know, had many old and affectionate links with the Legitimist world to which the Ambassador belonged.
The Crown Princess’s youngest child, who afterwardsmarried Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse, was born on April 22, 1872, and was christened Margaret Beatrice Feodora—Margaret after the Queen of Italy, whom the child’s parents both regarded with warm affection.
Queen Margherita came to Berlin for the ceremony, and a great fête was given at the New Palace. It was more like an English garden party than anything previously known at the Prussian Court, but the Crown Princess had a way of making her own precedents. She caused invitations to be sent, not only to the nobility and the hosts of officials who had a prescriptive right to be present at such a function, but also to persons who were merely distinguished for their literary, artistic, or scientific achievements.
The months which followed ushered in a peaceful period of happiness and rest for the Princess. Her magnificent work during the war had won her warm friends and admirers in every class, but of more moment to her than her own personal popularity was that enjoyed by the Crown Prince, whose relations with the military party now became much pleasanter in consequence of his achievements in the field and the enthusiastic devotion felt for him throughout the army.
Unfortunately for the Crown Prince and Princess, Bismarck’s position had been even more radically transformed by the war, and the Minister’s domination over his already aging sovereign grewmore and more obvious. It was an open secret that the Emperor and his heir differed on many important questions, and the gulf between them was sedulously widened by Bismarck’s jealous prejudice against the Crown Prince. Incidents that would have been in ordinary circumstances too slight to mention now revealed, even to strangers, the friction which was symptomatic of deeper disagreement.
The Crown Prince, as we have seen, set much store by the new Imperial honours which the war had brought to his House, and he was always very punctilious in speaking of his father as “Emperor” and of his mother as “Empress.” The Emperor, however, habitually still spoke of himself as “King” and of the Empress as “Queen.” The story goes that on one occasion the Emperor, addressing some lady in the presence of his son, observed that it was extraordinarily mild for the time of year, and that “the Queen” had brought him some spring flowers which she had picked out of doors that morning. The Crown Prince answered, “Yes, so the Empress told me.” “I did not know you had already seen the Queen to-day,” remarked his father.
The experiences she had just gone through had shown the Crown Princess the inadequacy of the existing hospital organisation in Germany. From her point of view, and from that of the English ladies who had rendered her such great assistance in creating—it was nothing less—the Army NursingService, a more scientific training for nurses was evidently the first necessity; and in securing this she was particularly helped by Miss Lees, afterwards Mrs. Dacre Craven, who had been a friend and associate of Miss Nightingale.
In 1867 the Crown Princess had drawn up a memorandum in which she laid it down that the best nurses would prove to be those who would combine the obedience of the Catholic Sisterhoods with a more scientific and comprehensive training. The Kaiserwerth Institution, where Florence Nightingale had gained valuable experience, did not give a sufficiently scientific education, and she came to the conclusion that a nursing school must be established in Berlin, where ladies, who should be given a distinguishing dress and badge, should be trained. The outbreak of the war of 1870 interrupted this scheme, but now that the pressing emergency was over, the Princess returned to her old scheme, the fundamental principle of which was that it should be carried out by educated and refined gentlewomen, preferably orphans. They were to have a three years’ theoretical and practical course, followed by a course of monthly nursing, and were to pass an examination to test their proficiency.
In the face of strong opposition, both on the part of the medical profession and of the middle classes in Germany, the Princess organised this society of trained lady nurses, who tended the sickpoor in their own homes. The society began in a very quiet, humble way, but now you could not find a German, man or woman, who would not admit that this was a splendid addition to the philanthropic institutions of the country. The Princess also founded a society for sending the sick children of poor parents out of the larger towns into the country or to the seaside.
It need hardly be pointed out that in each of these cases the Crown Princess copied peculiarly British institutions, and this no doubt was partly why they aroused such indignant opposition.
All through her life one of the Princess’s mental peculiarities was that of thinking it impossible that any reasoning human being could object to anything that was obviously in itself a good and wise measure. To oppose a scheme simply because the idea of it had first originated in England or in France was something that she could not understand, so far removed was she from certain littlenesses of human nature, as well as from the dominion of national and racial prejudice.
The Crown Princess, and in this also she was warmly supported by her husband’s approval and sympathy, wished the new Empire to bestow more recognition on those Germans who had attained distinction in the arts of peace rather than of war. Encouraged by the knowledge that her work during the country’s wars had at last won a measure of national understanding and gratitude, she againdid every thing in her power to break down the old Prussian Court barrier between the “born” and the “not born.” But, as might have been predicted, the Princess’s efforts were fairly successful as regards the latter, though not as regards the former.
To German women of all classes, the Princess’s interest in science seemed both eccentric and unfeminine. She had attended, when still a very young woman, some lectures given in Berlin by the great chemist, Hoffmann, who dedicated to her, in later years, his book,Remembrances of Past Friends—a compliment which pleased and touched her very much.
Her practical love of art was also regarded as uncalled for in a Royal lady and indeed unnatural in the mother of a large young family. She had a studio built in the palace, where she worked under the teaching of Professor Hagen, and she also studied under von Angeli. She was fond of visiting the studios of Berlin painters, particularly of the two Begas, of Oscar the painter, and Reinhold the sculptor, where she sometimes made studies as a student, and where she sometimes was herself the study. She and her husband were always great friends of the various artists. Among the names that recur constantly in this connection are those of Anton von Werner, to one of whose children the Crown Prince was godfather, and Georg Bleibtreu.
The New Palace in Berlin was nicknamed “The Palace of the Medicis,” because of the enthusiasticencouragement which its owners always gave to what they believed to be genius, or even talent. The Crown Princess not only entertained persons of distinction in art and literature, but, what was less easily forgiven her, any foreign scientists and artists of eminence who came to Berlin, were eagerly invited by her, generally to informal tea-parties.
But in time even the Princess realised that it was hopeless to try to blend the two elements. Unfortunately, she never took the trouble to hide her preference for people who interested and amused her to those who were merely “hoffahige.” The Prussian nobility were amazed and affronted that a Prussian princess should esteem so lightly the possession of numerous quarterings, and it was a bitter grievance that their future sovereign and his consort actually preferred the society of painters and musicians and similar persons whom they regarded as nobodies.
At the same time, she was always on cordial and pleasant terms with diplomatists, who as a rule combine the advantages of good birth with intelligence and culture and the most delightful of professions. For many years of her life her greatest personal friends were Lord Ampthill (at the time Lord Odo Russell) and his wife, a daughter of that Lord Clarendon who had expressed so high an admiration of the Princess Royal’s mental gifts.
But perhaps the Crown Princess most surprisedand offended her husband’s future subjects by her pro-Jewish attitude. In this she showed extraordinary courage and breadth of view. For example, she accepted the patronage of the Auerbach schools for the education of Jewish orphans, and that at a time when the whole of Berlin, from the great official world to the humblest tradesman, was taking part in the Judenhetze.
The Crown Princess was indeed, as we have seen, extremely broad-minded in matters of religion. She heartily despised the type of mind which attacks Jews as Jews, or Catholics as Catholics. She showed this in March, 1873, when she spoke strongly to Prince Hohenlohe about the hostile policy the Prussian Government was then pursuing towards his church. She observed that in her opinion those called upon to govern should influence the education of the people, as that of itself would make them independent of the hierarchy, and she added: “I count upon the intelligence of the people; that is the great power.” But Hohenlohe drily answered: “A much greater power is human stupidity, of which we must take account in our calculations before everything.”
What we should call the middle classes were incensed by certain other activities of the future Empress. From the very first the Crown Princess had been ardently desirous of improving the position of the women of her adopted country. But the German woman of that day was quite contentwith the place she then held, both in the public esteem and in the consideration of her menfolk; the fact that in youth she was surrounded with an atmosphere of sentimental adoration made up, in her opinion, for the way she was treated in old age and in middle age.
Even so, the efforts made by the Crown Princess in time bore fruit. They comprised the Victoria Lyceum, founded in June, 1869, but placed—and here one reluctantly perceives a certain want of tact on the part of the foundress—under the direction of an English lady. There were also, under the special patronage of the Crown Princess, Fraulein Letze’s school for girls of the upper classes, and the Letteverein. Other educational establishments which owed much to her sympathy and direct encouragement were the Victoria and Frederick William Institute, and the Pestalozzi-Froebel House, and these are only a few of the educational establishments in which she took an active and personal interest. Perhaps the most admirable of them all was the Victoria Fortbildung-schule, which gave girls the means of continuing their education after they had left school.
In another matter concerning the education of women the Crown Princess was violently opposed to German public opinion. She was a firm believer in the value of gymnastic exercises and outdoor games for girls, and that at a time when they were practically unknown in Prussia. The firstlawn-tennis net ever seen in Germany was put up in the grounds of the New Palace at Potsdam, and she was unceasing in her efforts to introduce gymnasiums into girls’ schools.
In the winter of 1872, the Crown Prince fell ill of an internal inflammation, and though the critical period was soon over, he took a long time to recover his strength. Margaretha von Poschinger reproduces in her life of him an extraordinary utterance said by theRheinische Kurierto have been made by the Crown Prince to his wife at this time:
“The doctors say that my illness is dangerous. As my father is old, and Prince William is still a minor, you may not improbably be called upon to act temporarily as Regent. You must promise me to do nothing without Prince Bismarck, whose policy has lifted our House to a power and greatness of which we could not have dreamed.”
The interest of this is considerable if we could be sure that it was authentic, and not simply what the newspaper wished the public to believe that the Crown Prince had said. It may well be that Bismarck, who was in the habit of providing for every contingency, was alarmed by the Crown Prince’s illness, and desired to consolidate his own position in the event of the Crown Princess becoming Regent.
After a long convalescence at Wiesbaden the Crown Prince returned with his wife to Berlin in the spring of 1873. In the summer they went toVienna for the International Exhibition, and while there they called, quite without ceremony, on von Angeli, the painter. The Crown Princess invited him to come to Potsdam to paint her husband’s portrait; he accepted the commission, and it was the beginning of a long friendship.
Von Angeli speaks with enthusiasm of the simple and charming home life of the Crown Prince and Princess, who often entertained him. He notes that, while there was much talk of a literary, artistic, and scientific kind, politics and military matters were never referred to. For the Crown Princess the painter had the highest admiration—indeed, he says she was gifted with every adornment of mind and heart. She made such progress in painting that von Angeli declares himself proud to call himself her instructor. The Crown Prince took a keen interest in his wife’s success, and was himself encouraged to begin working, both in charcoal and in colour.
As regarded the relations between England and Germany, the Crown Princess had an increasingly difficult part to play during the years that immediately succeeded the war. France and Germany—the former with far more reason—both considered that they had been badly treated by Great Britain during the conflict. Prince Bismarck either was, or pretended to be, watchful and apprehensive of the state of feeling in France, and Moltke, following his lead, spoke at a State banquetas if war might again be forced on Germany by France.
Urged, as Bismarck and his friends believed, by the Crown Princess, but really by the advice of Lord Granville, Queen Victoria, in 1874, made a personal appeal to the German Emperor. In her letter, after observing that England’s sympathies would be with Germany in any difference with France, she added the significant qualification, “unless there was an appearance on the part of Germany of an intention to avail herself of her greatly superior force to crush a beaten foe.”
In reviewing the life of the Empress Frederick as a whole, it must never be forgotten that the Emperor William was not expected to reach, as in fact he did, an extraordinary old age. After the Franco-Prussian War, everyone of any intelligence, from Bismarck downwards, attached great importance to the Crown Princess’s views and feelings; they believed that she had established a commanding influence over her husband, and that the moment he succeeded to the throne she would be the real ruler. Accordingly, the further intervention of Queen Victoria in 1875, when a German attack on France appeared imminent, was the crowning offence of the “British petticoats.”
Queen Victoria, as is well known, wrote a personal letter to the Tsar, who responded by going himself to Berlin. The “British petticoats,” it is true, had resented what appeared to be the act ofaggression of France before the falsification of the Ems despatch had been revealed, but they were angered by Bismarck’s conspiracy with Russia in denouncing the Black Sea Treaty; and his opposition to a law of Ministerial responsibility, which might have given the new Empire a constitutional basis, showed the impossibility of any real political sympathy between the Minister and the Princess who had been trained in the school of Prince Albert.
The consequence of Queen Victoria’s successful intervention was indeed far-reaching. The ten years which followed were probably the most anxious of Bismarck’s whole life. France, by the prompt payment of the Indemnity and in other ways, had shown a most disquieting power of revival after the war. In addition, the understanding with Russia, which was the pivot of Bismarck’s foreign policy, having been broken in his hands, he was obliged to recast his policy from the foundations; and, though he succeeded in his immediate aims of separating England and France on the one hand, and France and Russia on the other, his resentment against the Crown Princess and her mother as the origin of all his troubles burned all the more fiercely.
enlarge-imageFREDERICK WILLIAM CROWN PRINCE OF PRUSSIA AFTER THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WARFREDERICK WILLIAMCROWN PRINCE OF PRUSSIAAFTER THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR
After each quarrel—for quarrels there were—between the all-powerful Minister and his future sovereign, a peace, or rather a truce, was generally patched up, and Bismarck would be invited to somekind of festivity at the Crown Prince’s palace. A shrewd observer has recorded that on such occasions his manner to the Crown Princess was always courteous, but to the Crown Prince he was often curt to the verge of insolence.
So intense was the feeling aroused among Bismarck and his followers, that the Crown Prince and Princess found life in Berlin almost intolerable, and they began spending a considerable portion of each year abroad.
The many philanthropic, social, and political interests of the Crown Princess were never allowed to interfere with her family life and duties. Very soon after the war, both she and the Crown Prince began to give much anxious thought to the education and training of their eldest son. We have a significant glimpse of how the question moved the conscientious father in a passage in the Crown Prince’s diary written on January 27, 1871, while he was still in the field:
“To-day is my son William’s thirteenth birthday. It is enough to frighten one to think what hopes already fill the head of this boy, and how we are responsible for the direction which we may give to his education; this education encounters so many difficulties owing to family considerations and the circumstances of the Berlin Court.”
The Crown Princess was the victim of much malevolent and ignorant criticism when it was realised that the old traditions were to be brokenin some important particulars. The civil element was to be at least of equal importance as the military in the training of Prince William, and he and Prince Henry were sent to the ordinary “gymnasium,” or public school as we should call it, at Cassel, a little town in the old Duchy of Hesse, which the parents deliberately chose because it was some distance from Berlin. The sanction of the Emperor William had to be obtained for this plan, and though he gave it there can be little doubt that he really disapproved.
This “magnanimous resolve, heretofore unexampled in the annals of our reigning families,” was indeed regarded with mixed feelings by the country generally. It was not, as was supposed by many, an English idea to send their heir to the throne to an ordinary school. The Prince of Wales had not been educated at all on those lines, and there was certainly no precedent in the Royal House of Prussia. The plan was not without risks, but on the whole it succeeded admirably. By the special wish of the parents, the two princes were treated just like other boys; they were addressed as “you,” and were called “Prince William” and “Prince Henry.” “No one,” said an English newspaper correspondent, “seeing these two simple, kindly-looking lads in their plain military frocks, sitting on a form at the Cassel Gymnasium among the other pupils, would have guessed that they were the two young Imperial Princes.”
The Princes had one privilege accorded them; they lived with their tutor, Dr. Hinzpeter, but this circumstance certainly did nothing to reconcile Bismarck to the plan.
Bismarck gives a significant account of his meeting with Hinzpeter at a time when public opinion was busy with the Polish question, and the Alvensleben Convention aroused the indignation of the Liberals in the Diet. Hinzpeter was introduced to Bismarck at a gathering at the Crown Prince’s. “As he was in daily communication with the Royalties, and gave himself out to be a man of Conservative opinions, I ventured upon a conversation with him, in which I set forth my views of the Polish question, in the expectation that he would now and again find opportunity of giving expression to it.” Some days later Hinzpeter wrote to Bismarck that the Crown Princess had asked to know the subject of their long conversation. He had recounted it all to her, and had then reduced it to writing, and he sent Bismarck the memorandum with the request that he would examine it, and make any needful corrections. This was really courting a snub, which Bismarck hastened to administer, flatly refusing Hinzpeter’s request.
The Princess’s English ideas prevailed in the physical education of her children, and in her care to occupy them with such innocent pursuits as gardening. But the mother’s desire that her eldest son should not be too much under the glamour ofmilitary glory was defeated, partly by the boy’s own firmness of character, partly by the events of history. The three great wars which culminated in the foundation of the German Empire—the Danish, the Austrian, and the French—covered the period of his boyhood, and his earliest recollections of his father were of a great soldier going forth to win the laurels of victory over the successive enemies of his country. The young prince in fact spent most of his impressionable years in the full influence of that hero-worship for Frederick the Great which formed the strongest link between the father and the son, though it is plain that each admired his great forebear for different reasons.
INthe January of 1874 the Crown Princess went to Russia to be present at the marriage of her brother, the Duke of Edinburgh, with the Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna. Unlike most Royal personages, many of whom regard such functions as weddings as duties to be endured, the Crown Princess thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The Emperor Alexander was charmed with her cleverness and enthusiasm, and gave her a ruby bracelet, which she was fond of wearing to the end of her life.
The Princess had the pleasure of entertaining the Prince and Princess of Wales on their way home from St. Petersburg. It was the first time the Princess of Wales had appeared at the Prussian Court since the War of the Duchies, and her wonderful beauty and charm of manner greatly impressed all those who were brought in contact with her.
The Crown Princess gave a splendid fancy dress ball at the New Palace in February, 1874. To some who were present it recalled the costume ball given by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Buckingham Palace nearly thirty years before. The Crown Princess, who was devoted to Italyand to Italian art, decided that the entertainment should be known as the Venetian Fête. She herself wore a replica of the dress in which Leonora Conzaga was painted by Titian. Later there was painted by von Angeli a portrait of the Crown Princess in this dress.
The Crown Prince and Princess spent the spring of 1875 in Italy, including a long stay in Venice. There they entertained the painter Anton von Werner, who has left an enthusiastic account of their visit.
He records that the Princess drew and painted with real industry, now sketching the unequalled treasures of the past, now studying the effects of light or shade on the canals or in the square of St. Mark’s. The painter was astonished, not only at the Princess’s powers of technique, but also at her artistic sympathy and feeling. She seemed to know intuitively what would make a fine sketch. On the evening of her departure, he says, this artist Princess carried away with her an unforgettable picture. The Grand Canal was covered with a fleet of gondolas, each lighted with torches, while the full moon shed her radiance over the noble palaces and the Rialto Bridge.
Von Werner adds that the Princess, in spite of the many claims on her time, had since that time persevered in all her artistic studies, and he particularly mentions von Angeli, Wilberg, Lutteroth and Albert Hertel, as painters who helped and inspiredher. She did life-sized portraits of her children, Prince William and the Hereditary Princess of Saxe-Meiningen, in addition to numerous pencil and water-colour sketches of really remarkable artistic merit.
In the October of that year the Crown Prince, in a long letter to his old friend, Prince Charles of Roumania, mentions that the Princess is more industrious and successful than ever in painting and drawing, and does marvels in the way of portraits. He also describes how his wife led her Hussar regiment past the King. She did it, he says, magnificently, and looked extremely well in her simple yet becoming uniform.
The Crown Princess was of great assistance to her husband in his scheme of adding a Royal Mausoleum to the Berlin Cathedral, which should be a kind of Pantheon of the House of Hohenzollern. There were to be statues of all the Electoral Princes and Kings, with inscriptions relating the history and exploits of each. This involved a great deal of historical research, of which the Princess took her share, as also in the composition of the more detailed historical memoirs or character sketches of his ancestors to which the Crown Prince also devoted himself.
A visit to Scheveningen in 1876 enabled the Crown Princess to study, much to her delight, the historical and artistic treasures of the old cities of Holland.
It will be remembered that the Crown Princess, many years before, had had scruples about her husband’s association with Freemasonry. She was perhaps reassured by a speech which he delivered in July, 1876, when Prince Frederick of the Netherlands celebrated his sixtieth anniversary as Grand Master. Freemasonry, he declared, aimed at love, freedom, and tolerance, without regard to national divisions, and he hoped it might be victorious in the struggle for intellect and liberty. This speech is particularly interesting because, only two years before, the Crown Prince had resigned his office in Grand Lodge in Berlin owing to the opposition he encountered in striving to carry out certain reforms in the craft.
1877 was an eventful year in the Prussian Imperial family. In February, Prince William received his commission in the Foot Guards; Princess Charlotte was betrothed to the Hereditary Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Meiningen; and Prince Henry made his formal entry into the Navy.
In April of this year it became known that Bismarck had made one of his not infrequent threats to resign, and Bucher wrote to Busch to tell him the news: “It is not a question of leave of absence,” he said, “but a peremptory demand to be allowed to retire. The reason: Augusta, who influences her aging consort, and conspires with Victoria (the Crown Princess).”
The year 1878 opened brightly for the Crown Princess, for in February her eldest daughter, Princess Charlotte, was married to Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Meiningen. Prince Bismarck, however, excused himself from appearing at the ceremony on the pretext of ill-health.
It was at this marriage, the first of the Crown Princess’s family weddings, that her brother, the Duke of Connaught, made the acquaintance of his future wife.
In the month of May came the attempted assassination of the Emperor by a youth called Hodel. The Emperor then had a marvellous escape, but on June 2, which happened to be a Sunday, the aged Sovereign was driving down Unter den Linden when, from an upper window of an inn called “The Three Ravens,” Nobeling, a Socialist, fired two charges of buckshot into the Emperor’s head and shoulders. Violent hæmorrhage set in, and for some hours it was said, first, that he was dead, and secondly, that if not dead he could not survive the day.
The Crown Prince and Princess were then in England, and the news reached them at Hatfield, where they were staying with Lord and Lady Salisbury. Within a very short time of the receipt of the telegram, they started for Berlin, finding on their arrival that the Emperor had recovered sufficiently to sign an order conferring the Regency on the Crown Prince.
The Regency was hardly more than titular, for the old Emperor stipulated that his son was only to “represent” him, and that the government was to be carried on as before in accordance with the Emperor’s known views. As to that, Bismarck had his own ideas, and he succeeded in overcoming the Crown Prince’s natural hesitation at accepting such a position.
Nevertheless, it was an extraordinarily sudden and dramatic change in the whole position of the Crown Prince and Princess. In the first place it absolutely put an end to the plan, which had been seriously discussed and on the whole approved by Bismarck, that the Crown Prince should become Governor-General or Lieutenant-Governor of Alsace-Lorraine. Obviously this scheme was no longer practical. The Emperor was old and his wound was serious; the accession of his son seemed imminent.
It is curious to recall that, so far back as January, 1862, Queen Augusta, speaking to Prince Hohenlohe, had observed: “The King and I are old people: we can hardly hope to do more than work for the future. But I wish we could look forward to a happier state of things for our son.” She was destined to live thirty years longer, and to survive the son to whom she ever proved herself a loyal and devoted mother, while her husband, whom even then she described as old, was destined to live more than another quarter of a century—almost as long, in fact, as the son who succeeded him for so tragically brief a reign.
But now, in 1878, it seemed as if the Crown Prince, even in the unlikely event of his father’s recovery from his wound, must become virtual ruler of the German Empire.
A very few days, however, made it clear that Bismarck was determined to allow the new Regent as little authority as possible beyond that conferred by the signing of State documents, and that he was to have no practical influence on foreign politics. But fortune, then as always, seemed to single out Bismarck for special favour, for in the all-important matter of Russo-German relations the Crown Prince was far easier to manage, in so far as any management of him was necessary, than the old Emperor, who was fondly attached to his nephew, the Tsar Alexander II.
Those months, during which the Crown Prince exercised in theory a power which he certainly did not possess in reality, were among the most trying of all the trying months the Crown Princess ever passed through, the more so that the Berlin Congress, which she and the Prince had gone to England to avoid, opened on June 13. Among those who sojourned in Berlin during those eventful days, and whose presence must have been a pleasure to the Princess, were Lord and Lady Salisbury.
But during the Congress the Crown Prince and Princess kept rigidly apart from even its socialfunctions, the only exception being that the Crown Prince gave an official dinner in the King’s name to the plenipotentiaries. The Crown Princess stayed out at Potsdam, while the Empress refused to appear in any official way; she treated her son entirely as if he were already Emperor.
Most serious was the sharp division caused between the father and son by the decisions of the Congress. The Crown Prince, who had a life long dislike and suspicion of Russia and of Russian state-craft, was supposed to have favoured England, and the old Emperor, to the very end of his life, considered that Germany had not done as well at the Congress as she should have done. He ascribed the fact—probably most unfairly—to the Crown Prince instead of to Bismarck.
Meanwhile, all kinds of gossip were rife as to the Crown Princess’s efforts to influence her husband, for by the public at large the Regent was regarded as all-powerful.
To give an example of how the Princess was misunderstood and misjudged; when Hodel attacked the Emperor, the latter declared that he did not wish the full severity of the law to be exercised. But when Nobeling’s far more serious attempt at assassination followed, public opinion demanded that Hodel should be condemned to death. The Crown Prince, as Regent, had to sign the death warrant, and it became known that he had told a personal friend how very painful it wasto him to sign it. It was widely believed that this over-scrupulousness, for so the good Berliners considered it, was due to the influence of the Crown Princess; yet as a matter of fact she had been, from the first, of opinion that Hodel, who had certainly meant to kill his Sovereign, should be executed.
In spite, however, of Bismarck’s determination to make him a cypher, the Crown Prince did not allow himself to be put wholly in the background. To the Minister’s great annoyance, he opened a personal correspondence with the new Pope, Leo XIII, in the hope of putting an end to the Kulturkampf. Though at the time it did not seem as though the Prince had succeeded, it laid the foundations for the ultimate solution of the problem.
The Regent also appointed a certain Dr. Friedberg, a distinguished Jewish jurist, who belonged to the Liberal party, to a very high judicial post. Curiously enough, this was the only appointment the Crown Prince made which was not afterwards revoked. The Emperor William I retained Friedberg, but refused to bestow on him the Black Eagle even after he had served for nine years in office. Ten years later, when the Emperor Frederick was on his way home from San Remo after his father’s death, he received a Ministerial delegation at Leipzig, and, on seeing Friedberg, he took the Black Eagle from his own neck and placed it about that of his old friend.
By the end of the year, the Emperor was quitehimself again. On a certain memorable evening in December, he appeared at the Opera and was the object of an extraordinary popular demonstration. The next day he wrote an open letter to the Crown Prince, thanking him in the warmest terms for the way in which he had fulfilled his duties as Regent.
It was rumoured at the time—it is difficult to know with what truth—that the Crown Princess would have liked, after the recovery of her father-in-law, that a special post should be created for her husband. But, on his side, the Crown Prince said to an English friend that he had no wish to find himself the fifth wheel of the coach, and that he hated having only a semblance of authority.
During that visit to England which was so suddenly interrupted by Nobeling’s attempt on the Emperor, Mr. Goschen, the statesman whom Lord Randolph Churchill afterwards “forgot” at the time of his dramatic resignation, was asked to arrange a meeting between the Crown Prince and Princess and George Eliot. The novelist thus describes the party in a letter to a friend:
“The Royalties did themselves much credit. The Crown Prince is really a grand-looking man, whose name you would ask for with expectation if you imagined him no royalty. He is like a grand antique bust—cordial and simple in manners withal, shaking hands, and insisting that I should let him know when next we came to Berlin, justas if he had been a Professor Gruppe, livingau troisième.Sheis equally good-natured and unpretending, liking best to talk of nursing soldiers, and of what her father’s estate was in literature. We had a picked party to dinner—the Dean of Westminster, the Bishop of Peterborough, Lord and Lady Ripon, Dr. Lyon Playfair, Kinglake, Froude, Mrs. Ponsonby (Lord Grey’s granddaughter), and two or three more ‘illustrations’; then a small detachment coming in after dinner. It was really an interesting occasion.”
This was the kind of party which the Crown Princess thoroughly enjoyed, though even then her shyness always struck those who met her for the first time. On this occasion she opened her conversation with George Eliot by saying, “You know my sister Louise?”—and George Eliot’s comment is “just as any other slightly embarrassed mortal might have done.”
On December 14, the anniversary of the Prince Consort’s death, the Crown Princess suffered another, and a hardly less terrible bereavement.
Her beloved sister, Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, after losing one child from diphtheria and devotedly nursing her husband and her other children, herself fell a victim to the malady, the treatment of which was not then so well understood as it is now. The sisters had been fondly attached to one another from childhood, and after Princess Alice’s marriage the tie wasdrawn even closer. They had been inseparable during the Franco-Prussian War, and for many years the happiest days spent each year by the Crown Princess were those when she was able to pay a flying visit to the Grand Duchess, or when the Grand Duchess was able to spend a few days at Berlin or Potsdam.
But there was yet another and an even more bitter sorrow in store for the Crown Princess. In March, 1879, her third son, Prince Waldemar, died in his eleventh year. He was a clever, affectionate, merry-hearted boy, and would have been his mother’s favourite child, if she had allowed herself to make differences between her children. Like the Princess herself, he had been intellectually far in advance of his years, and he had had as tutor a distinguished professor, Herr Delbrück, who succeeded Treitschke in the Chair of History at the Berlin University, and afterwards played a considerable part in German thought and even in German politics.
It is shocking to have to record an example of the prejudice which was even then still felt in certain circles in Germany against the bereaved Crown Princess. A minister of the sect who called themselves the Orthodox Protestants, when he heard of the death of the young Prince, observed that he hoped it was a trial sent by God to humiliate her hard heart. This monstrous utterance must have found its way into print, or to the earsof some singularly ill-advised human being, for the Princess came to know of it, and in her then state of anguish it gave her more pain than perhaps even the minister himself would have wished to inflict.
It was natural that the mother’s heart should at this moment turn with keen anxiety to her son, Prince Henry, who was then serving abroad in a German warship. She imagined him in the midst of all sorts of perils, and she begged the Emperor to allow him to return home at once. But the Sovereign, though expressing kindly sympathy, was obliged, in view of the rigid rules of the service, to refuse her petition, and the Princess had to bear as best she could this addition to her burden.
At this time the Crown Princess’s relations with Bismarck had undergone some improvement. On February 23, 1879, Bismarck gave to Busch a most unflattering picture of the old Emperor, but he described the Crown Princess as unaffected and sincere, like her husband, “which her mother-in-law is not.” He observed that it was only family considerations (the Coburger and the Augustenburger more than the uncle in Hanover) that made the Crown Princess troublesome, formerly more so than at present. “But she is honourable and has no pretensions.”
It was thought that the Crown Princess was sadly in need of mental change and refreshment after the two terrible blows which had deprived her of her child and of her sister. She, therefore,went to stay in Romeincognitoduring the April of 1880, being only attended by a lady-in-waiting and her “chambellan.” To those of her English friends whom she happened to meet she spoke constantly of her dead son, saying that he had been the most promising of her children, and that she felt as if she could never be resigned to her loss. In answer to a kindly suggestion that she had so many duties to perform that she would soon be taken out of herself, she said: “Ah, yes, there is much to do and one cannot sit down with one’s sorrow, but the mother who has lost her child carries a heavy heart all her life.”
During her stay in Rome, the Princess spent almost the whole of each day in the picture galleries, and in the evening she generally dined with some of her English friends and members of the diplomatic corps. As was always her wont, she managed to see all the more interesting strangers who were just then in Rome, many being asked to meet her at the British Embassy. One night, when Lady Paget asked her whom she would like to meet, she answered instantly: “Cardinal Howard and Mr. Story” (the American sculptor). The Princess, however, could not stay as long in Rome as she would have liked, for she had to hurry back to be present at the Emperor’s golden wedding festivities.
Fortunately for the Crown Princess, there came other thoughts to distract her from her grief.She welcomed her first grandchild, the Hereditary Princess of Saxe-Meiningen giving birth to a daughter, and in April, 1880, her eldest son Prince William was betrothed to Princess Victoria of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Augustenburg, an alliance entirely approved by his parents. The Crown Prince, in a letter to Prince Charles of Roumania, said that it was really a love-match, and that the young Princess possessed remarkable gifts of heart, mind, and character, as well as a certain gracious dignity. It was also felt that the marriage would be a sort of compensation to the Augustenburg family for the loss of the Elbe Duchies.
In September, 1880, the Crown Princess had the joy of welcoming back Prince Henry from his voyage round the world, and the marriage of Prince William took place in February, 1881, amid universal rejoicings.
The Crown Princess’s influence on the artistic life of Germany was shown by a little incident connected with her eldest son’s marriage. On the occasion of the wedding the town of Berlin decorated the streets in a particularly original and beautiful way, and other Prussian towns gave the young people as a wedding present a really artistic table service. The Crown Prince exclaimed: “And whom have we to thank that such things can be done by us in Germany to-day? Not least my wife!”
In the following March, when the Crown Prince was in Russia attending the funeral of Alexander II, who had been assassinated by Nihilists, the Princess received an anonymous threatening letter, informing her that her husband would also fall a victim to the Nihilists in the next few hours. She was in a dreadful state of agitation until reassuring telegrams arrived.
A son was born to Prince and Princess William on May 6, 1882, and the old Emperor William telegraphed to the Crown Prince: “Praise and thanks to God! Four generations of Kings living! What a rare event! May God shield the mother and child!”
In November of the same year, the Crown Princess had a curious conversation with Prince Hohenlohe, who thus records it:
“It may be that Christian consolation does not suffice one, but it is better to keep this to oneself and think it over. Plato’s dialogues and the ancient tragedies she finds very consolatory. Much that she said was true. But she is too incautious and hasty in her verdicts upon things which are, after all, worthy of reverence.”
THECrown Prince and Princess now looked forward to celebrating their silver wedding on January 25, 1883.
The festivities were rather dashed by the sudden death, only four days before, of Prince Charles of Prussia, the Emperor’s brother. The old Prince had never liked his English niece, and it was whispered in the diplomatic world that he had much preferred to die before rather than after the celebrations in which she was to be so conspicuous a figure!
Preparations for commemorating the anniversary with due honour had been made for fully a year before, and money was being collected for various presentations, when it was intimated that the Crown Prince and Princess wished the subscriptions to be devoted to public and philanthropic objects. This made a great impression, and the central committee raised the large sum of £42,000, mostly in quite small contributions. It was presented to the Prince and Princess on February 16, with the request that it should be used for charitable purposes chosen by their Imperial Highnesses.
The money was accordingly distributed among the various charities with which the Crown Princeand Princess were connected, and some of which they had themselves founded—such as the workmen’s colonies for reclaiming the unemployed and finding temporary occupation for them; institutions for the technical and practical education of working men in their leisure hours; the promotion of health in the home; the Victoria School for the training of nurses; and the Victoria Foundation for the training of young girls in domestic and industrial work. The city of Berlin had a separate fund, which reached the round sum of £10,000, and of this £5900 was spent on building a nursing institute.
The death of Prince Charles caused the postponement of the festivities to the end of February, when they were held in what we should call “full State.” The Prince of Wales represented Queen Victoria, and the Emperor Francis Joseph also sent his heir apparent.
The principal ceremony was both impressive and artistic, and there we can trace the influence of the Crown Princess. It consisted in a representation of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, arranged by the artists of Berlin. The Crown Prince, in the uniform of the Queen’s Cuirassiers, and the Crown Princess in white satin and silver lace, led the magnificent procession, in which all the Royal personages took part. After the Crown Prince and Princess had taken their seats between the Emperor and Empress, a dramatic representation ofthe Court of Charles the Bold, of Burgundy, with its picturesque troubadours, was given, followed by the Elizabethan Pageant. Then came what was perhaps the most interesting scene of all—a large assemblage dressed to represent the great painters of the Renaissance in Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, who advanced, one by one, and did obeisance to the Crown Prince and Princess as patrons of the arts.
In May, 1883, the Princess paid a private visit to Paris. She only stayed three days, but during those three days undertook more intelligent sight-seeing than most women of her then age would have found possible. She was entertained at luncheon by Lord Lyons, and at dinner at Saint Germain by Prince Hohenlohe, who in his diary rather ungraciously observes: “Royal excursions with Royal personages are not exactly among the pleasant things of life.”
During this visit the Princess said to a French friend that one of the lives she would have liked to lead would have been that of a little bourgeoise of the Rue Saint Denis, going on high-days and holidays to the Théâtre Français.
The Crown Princess was now able to carry out her cherished project of building an English church dedicated to St. George in Berlin, largely with the £5700 which was contributed in England for the silver wedding celebrations. The wisdom of this employment of the money subscribed may perhapsbe doubted, for it can only have confirmed the idea prevailing in some quarters that the Princess remained, and would always remain, an Englishwoman in all her feelings and sympathies. However, the laying of the foundation-stone, which the Crown Princess performed herself in the spring of 1884, was carried out with considerable ceremony.
The Crown Prince made a speech on the occasion, in which he recalled that King Frederick William IV had assigned one of the rooms in the palace of Monbijou to the use of the English congregation, and that the King’s brother, the then Emperor, actuated by the same feelings, had granted the land on which the church was to be built. The Crown Princess took the keenest interest in the building, and followed the carrying out of the architect’s plans in every detail.
After the death of Field-Marshal Baron von Manteuffel, Stadhalter of Alsace-Lorraine, it was suggested that the Crown Prince might be his successor, but the old Emperor refused to consider the notion, while being willing to consider the appointment of the young Prince William. It is said that the Crown Princess herself went to her father-in-law and begged him not to put so great an affront on her husband. The post was, therefore, conferred on Prince Hohenlohe.
In the November of 1885, Matthew Arnold paid a visit to Germany in order to obtain informationas to the German system of education. The Crown Princess was keenly interested in the inquiries he was making. With her usual energy, she went to considerable personal trouble in order to help him, and she arranged, among other things, that Mr. Arnold should make a short stay on Count Redern’s property, in the Mark of Brandenburg.
In one of his letters Arnold gives a charming account of a soirée at the New Palace: “The Crown Princess came round the circle, and I kissed her hand, as everyone here does when she holds it out. She talked to me a long time, and said I must come and see her quietly, comfortably.” A few days later he dined at the palace, the only other guest being Hoffmann, the great chemist. Arnold sat next the Crown Princess, who “talked I may say all dinner. She is very able and well-informed.”
A day or two later came a message asking him to tea with the Crown Princess: “She was full of the Eastern question, as all of them here are; it is of so much importance to them. She talked, too, about Bismarck, Lord Ampthill, the Emperor, the Empress, the Queen, the Church, English politics, the German nation, everything and everybody indeed, except the Crown Prince and herself.”
Mr. Arnold was very anxious to meet “the great Reichs-Kanzler” himself, but this was not easy, as the great man was reputed to be almost inaccessible:but the Crown Princess herself wrote and asked Bismarck to receive her compatriot.
Matthew Arnold was struck by the lack in Berlin of what certainly exists in London and Paris, namely, an agreeable, cultivated society consisting mainly of upper middle-class elements. He observed that in Berlin there was, in addition to the Court, only groups of functionaries, of soldiers, and of professors.
As may be gathered from much that has already appeared in this volume, the Crown Princess was ever pathetically anxious that England and Germany should be on the most friendly terms of confidence and affection. Consequently she went through some days of considerable anxiety, in the spring and early summer of 1884, over the “inciden” of Angra Pequena. When Lord Granville decided to recognise German sovereignty in this territory, the Crown Princess was quite as pleased in her way as Bismarck was. Lord Ampthill, in a letter to Lord Granville, observes: “The Crown Princess, who dined with us last night, was beyond measure happy at the general contentment and altered tone of the Press.”
This Lord Ampthill, the Lord Odo Russell of former days, was a valued friend of the Crown Princess. She was always, naturally, on terms of friendship with her mother’s representative in Berlin, but Lord Ampthill’s appointment had given her special satisfaction. The Ambassador’s prematuredeath in 1884 was a great grief to the Princess, and the day after his death the Crown Prince himself came to the villa, where Lord and Lady Ampthill had lived near Sans Souci, to lay a wreath on the coffin.
The health of the old Emperor now began to give occasion for anxiety. He had been born on March 22, 1797, and when he reached his eighty-seventh birthday in 1884, it seemed as if his course was almost run. In the circumstances the Crown Prince and Princess could scarcely help anticipating the time when, as it then seemed, the great powers and responsibilities of the throne would be theirs. But it is certainly true to say that the feeling of duty was paramount in their minds, and that nothing was further from their thoughts than to covet the Imperial purple for its own sake. They regarded it as the symbol of all that they were determined to do for the welfare and happiness of the people.
Even if they had been blind to the apparently immediate consequences of the old Emperor’s failing health, they would have been enlightened by the altered demeanour of Prince Bismarck. He showed clear signs of a desire to cultivate better relations with the Heir Apparent and his family, and he even attended an evening party given by the Crown Princess on the occasion of her birthday.
Not long afterwards, early in 1885, the CrownPrince sounded Bismarck as to whether, in the event of the Emperor’s death, he would remain in office. The astute Chancellor said that he would, subject to two conditions, namely, that there should be no foreign influences in State policy, and that there should be no Parliamentary government; it is said that the Crown Prince assented with an eloquent gesture.