THE CROWN PRINCESS

“My poor, dear, persecuted daughter!”--_Queen Victoria of the Empress Frederick._

“Germany will pay dearly for the honour of having had Bismarck at her head, and for having possessed the most incapable Parliament that ever existed. The future will avenge Europe, for what now makes the glory of Prussia will be the cause of her ruin in time to come. It is not with impunity that all the vital strength of a nation is centred in one man ... although he has triumphed over six successive Parliaments by the same artifices, although he has aggrandized his country and made himself the arbiter of Europe, imposing his will on all, Prince Bismarck has at the same time prepared the fall and annihilation of his country.”--_‘Society in Berlin.’ By Count Paul Vasili._ 1885.

There has, perhaps, never lived a ruling sovereign about whom some marriage secret has not been related, and during the preparations for the Jubilee such a story was unearthed about Prince Albert,--who was in effect a ruling sovereign--was given publicity in the _New York World_ and copied into some English newspapers. Such stories were told about George II, George III, George IV, William IV and nearly all the different members of the different royal generations; so if Albert did not suffer in exactly good company, there were at least people of equal rank who shared his misfortune.

The story was to the effect that in a little back street of New York a certain Mrs. Kent kept a shop, and that she was actually Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, and in this wise: In 1839, while wandering about the Continent, Albert of Coburg had fallen in love with and married a Countess von Reuss, member of a well-known German family, and then in the autumn of that year came the Queen’s intimation to Albert that she thought their union would be a wise and happy event. The Countess von Reuss bore Albert a daughter on November 8, 1840, and on the 21st of the same month the Princess Royal was born. Upon this the deserted countess promised to efface herself on condition that the children should be changed, her child taking the position of Albert’s eldest daughter, while Victoria’s child was to be given over to the care of the Countess. After much persuasion the reluctant prince agreed, the exchange was secretly made, and the English princess grew up abroad. Her life was one of vicissitude. She married but got a divorce from her husband, went to America under the name of Mrs. Kent, came back and lived in Paris, whence she wrote to Victoria for money, John Brown being sent over there to see her and arrange matters. When last heard of, that is at the Jubilee, she was keeping this shop in New York.

It was so absurd a story that no one heeded it, especially as with the repetition of it apologetic explanations were published to the effect that early in the century the Duke of Kent had for a time settled down with some lady, who was generally known as Mrs. Kent, and of whom this person of New York was a descendant.

Those of us who know the late portraits of the Empress and compare them with those of the Queen, could have no doubt that they were mother and daughter, though in her little volume, _Recollections of a Royal Parish_, Patricia Lindsay says, “She always seemed to me very unlike her brothers and sisters in appearance; the type of face was different, and though not handsome in feature was highly intelligent and in youth very winning ... inheriting, in the Queen’s opinion, much of her father’s nature and talent.”

This description, somewhat invidious in form, does not mean that the brothers and sisters were not clever, for though the Princess was extremely clever--in a different way from her father, for while he was academic she was creative--she yet was in some ways extremely stupid. In her tactlessness and indifference to public opinion and the feelings of those she disliked, she was very much like her mother, though, on the other hand, that which was obstinacy in the Queen developed as spirit with her, and she was entirely free from the weakness of self-commiseration which was so marked a feature of Victoria’s middle life. Albert Edward was in many ways far more clever than his eldest sister, and though he did not distinguish himself with the paint-brush and the chisel, or in scientific and diplomatic arguments, his judgment upon all the essentials of his state and position was impeccable. The public is already beginning to see that Edward VII is by far the greatest person that his family, either on the Guelphic or the Wettin side, has yet produced.

The _New York World_ story does, however, bring to mind the rumours which spread about early in the married life of Albert and Victoria of a strange foreign lady seeking the former at Buckingham Palace, of a lady starting from the Continent to find him, and being intercepted and sent back before she could get here, and subsequently of a mad woman who tried to annoy him with her delusions.

Almost from the beginning the eldest princess’s life had held the element of strife; she adored her father, and always ranged herself by his side in any difference between him and her mother; and even to the Queen she never failed from her youth up to say what she thought on any subject of dispute, such as the favour shown to John Brown, or to the Battenbergs.

Her life in Prussia was an unending struggle with Bismarck, for, as has been said, that statesman abhorred all royal women, fearing their influence, and he was not sparing of brutal criticism, for which he secured publication in the Press of many countries, attacking in turn the old Empress, Empress Augusta and the Crown Princess. This struggle culminated in 1887 and 1888 with the illness of the Crown Prince Frederick, and the proposed marriage of his daughter Victoria to Alexander of Battenberg, matters which absorbed Queen Victoria’s thoughts.

It was obvious to all that the old Emperor William could not live long, and Bismarck looked forward with unconcealed repulsion to the reign of Frederick, with whose enlightened views he had no sympathy; and when he knew that the heir was suffering from a disease in the throat, he hailed it as a means of deliverance from a dangerous situation. He knew that various Hohenzollerns had suffered from cancer, and suspecting that this dread disease had once more appeared, he at once studied the possibility of passing over the, to him, obnoxious generation. Prince William, susceptible to theories of force, was in his hands; for years the Chancellor had been training him in his system of warfare, aggression and greed of power and land. He had also been training him into opposition against his parents, and whole-hearted concord with himself. He regarded William as his puppet, and thought that if only Frederick could be eliminated his own further reign over Prussia would be assured.

Would William I outlive his son? He hoped so, but he dared not leave it to chance. So he discovered an old Hohenzollern law, said to apply only to insanity, and twisted it into one making a mortal malady a bar to the succession. He insisted upon the surgeons and physicians to the Prince being appointed by the State, that is to say by himself, and ruled that their verdict should be final. The chief of these was Professor von Bergmann, a skilful surgeon who loved using the knife, whether necessary or not.

By the spring of 1887 the disease had become serious, and the Princess had found out that a peculiarly odious form of espionage was being exercised in her home by people installed by Bismarck. There were spies, sycophants and scandal-mongers among her servants, and lies and half-truths, to the injury of the Crown Prince, were disseminated until Berlin became a veritable whispering gallery.

Bismarck had more than one string to his bow; he caused a meeting with the Emperor of the Crown Prince and Prince William, at which the future situation was discussed. No one knows what happened, but the story went that Frederick decided to waive his right of succession in favour of his son. It was further added that Bismarck had secured a written promise to that effect, but he was never able to produce such a document. Yet so public had the matter become that the young prince was openly believed to be a party to a conspiracy to deprive his father of the Crown.

The doctors declared, and rightly, that the Crown Prince was afflicted with cancer, and von Bergmann said the only chance of saving him was that a dangerous and almost certainly fatal operation should be performed, that is to say that the affected portion of the larynx should be removed. This would at best have caused dumbness, and thus in either case the Prince would, according to the Chancellor’s ruling, be unfit to reign.

It is needless to say that the Princess was entirely opposed to the operation, so von Bergmann decided that he must make a further examination, which would necessitate the use of anæsthetics. It was whispered in Court circles that he was really in the act of beginning the actual operation when the Crown Princess, suspecting his aim, tore the instruments out of his hands and turned him out of the room. A picture of the event painted later by Oreste Cortazzo showed her kicking the door open for the discomfited doctor’s exit, he holding his face as though it had been struck.

Through this dreadful time of trial the Crown Princess was in constant communication with her mother, and Dr. Morell Mackenzie was sent to Berlin, through Victoria’s influence and with the acquiescence of the German doctors, who did not like the stories that were current. His verdict was that the throat was cancerous, but that in his opinion it might be cured by other means than the knife. Upon this a violent storm arose, the one side saying that the Crown Prince must die in six months if not operated upon, and the other that he would die at once if the operation took place.

So the Princess brought him to England--incidentally to make a lasting impression upon the public by his gallant bearing--and later took him to the Tyrol and San Remo. It was not until Emperor William died in March 1888, his last words being “dear Fritz,” that the royal couple returned to the Charlottenberg, Berlin.

Of the awful nightmare of persecution which followed, every sort of mental annoyance being inflicted upon the new but dying Kaiser, there is no room here to write, but it is said that every one was in terror when William came to see his father lest he should suggest that he became Regent. And when Frederick died in June, after a reign of ninety-nine days, Prince William at once showed his true character. He was

After a painting by Winterhalter]

present at the last moments in the New Palace, Potsdam, to which his father had been moved, and as soon as the Emperor had drawn his last breath he ordered the guard to be doubled round the palace, and no one to be allowed to leave or enter. He then declared that all the property of those within, his mother, sisters and attendants, was confiscated for the time, and he personally “went through” their bedrooms, boudoirs, cupboards, desks, strong boxes, jewel boxes and every other receptacle for clothes, articles or papers. He told his mother’s officials and servants that now he was master, and only his orders were to be obeyed. He tore up the list of persons who might be admitted to look for the last time on the dead emperor, which the Empress Frederick had given to her chamberlain, and substituted an order for the admission of high army officers. In fact, he heaped insults upon his dead father and his living mother. When the Empress Frederick left her home three months later for good, she is reported to have said good-bye to her officials and servants with these words, “If you ever want to see your old mistress again you must come to Berlin, where I will make you welcome. May palsy strike my foot if ever I thrust it over this threshold again!” She is said never again to have entered the palace in which most of her womanhood had been passed.

Thus did William help to build up a bitter enmity between himself and the royal family of England.

The reason for his search of his mother’s home was that his father was said to have kept a detailed diary, one volume of which proved conclusively that the whole German Emperor idea originated with and was planned by Frederick. As Bismarck had arrogated to himself all the credit for this, he was keenly anxious that the diary should never be given to the world, and had instilled into his pupil the necessity of confiscating all the volumes for fear of State secrets being revealed. None of them was found, however, and one story went that Queen Victoria had carried them, knowingly or otherwise, to England with her after she had visited her daughter at Potsdam in April 1888; another was to the effect that Sir Morell Mackenzie had brought them to England.

However, the particular 1870-71 volume had been put into the hands of Dr. Geffcken, a friend of Frederick’s, who published it in a newspaper inimical to Bismarck, whereupon the latter brought all his Press influence into play by confiscating the offending paper, having abusive articles published about the dead Kaiser, saying that he was but a nonentity, who could never be trusted with knowledge of State affairs as he would reveal them to England, and that if the diary was genuine he was a traitor to Germany. Geffcken was seized and imprisoned, but when he was tried by the Imperial Court of Judicature at Leipsic on a charge of high treason he was pronounced innocent, which was the second blow received by Bismarck in the new reign. Through all this the young Kaiser William by his studied silence showed that he did not disapprove of this attack on his father.

There is a story that among the Queen’s possessions after her return from Germany the other volumes of the diary were found, and that a year later she sent them back to William, with their seals unbroken, an act which earned for her her grandson’s gratitude, and made him revise his determination never to visit England.

After Kaiser Frederick’s death William must have felt his relations with his mother’s country to be seriously strained, and, according to his character, put the whole burden of fault upon England. The Prince of Wales was in Berlin in June and remained there for some time, deputed by the Queen to guard his sister’s interests, and protect her from the insults of her son and Bismarck. It was to the latter’s interest to keep the young Kaiser apart from his mother and her family, and to gain this end he once more resorted to the Press, causing articles “made in Germany” to be inserted in some of the English papers--he boasted of having captured three of the most important--in which William was painted in the blackest colours; while in Germany he had other articles given to the curious world, full of bitter denunciations of the Empress Frederick and the Prince of Wales, and to cap the affair further inserted in the German papers anonymous denunciations of the scandalous things said by the English Press. It is almost incredible, but it is all to be read in the books upon Bismarck, especially in those by his servant Busch, _Some Secret Pages of His History_, and others. A country which could produce a powerful man like Bismarck and a subservient tool like Busch, congratulating themselves and each other with pride over their want of honour, was, in spite of its apparent strength, even then on the road to failure. It was Busch who noted on June 16--

“I wrote to Bucher a few lines expressing the satisfaction I felt that we were relieved of that incubus, the Emperor Frederick, and that his place was now to be taken by a disciple and admirer of the Chief.”

All these things taken into account, Albert Edward had no very easy time in Berlin, especially as no love was lost between him and his nephew. As boy and youth William had been arrogant and ill-mannered, and his uncle had duly snubbed him; as the years passed the English prince had seen far more deeply into the nature of the German emperor and into his plans than the latter liked. He knew the sinister hopes and ambitions of the young man’s mind, and, while not interfering with him, set himself to gain friends among the nations for Great Britain. It is to him that we owe the beginning of the great change in our relations with France, for he loved the French capital as much as he shrank from the pomposities of Berlin. But this preference and his friendliness with other European powers raised unmitigated spite and anger which, being cleverly worked by the German Press, has led to their present-day stories of how King Edward of England tried to set an iron wall around the Fatherland.

For several years after 1888 the Prince of Wales and the Kaiser scarcely spoke to each other, but Queen Victoria could not so show her displeasure, nor did she wish to do so. William was her eldest grandchild, and had been much loved, and she was ready to accept what extenuation could be found for his conduct; he was not all she wished, but he would make Prussia strong, hold fast to the united Germany and be a great European power. So, angry as she was at his treatment of his mother, she yet felt grief that he assumed a personally hostile attitude to herself. It was not until the autumn of 1899 that, annoyed at the snubs which Russia dealt him and already contemplating the rupture with Bismarck, William paid his first visit to England as ruler of Germany. Victoria was delighted and showed him every mark of honour that was possible. William on his side was as eager for friendship, and so began a period of peaceful feeling between the two countries which was strengthened by the fall of Bismarck the next year.

It is necessary to go back in time, for there was another dispute in 1887 and the following year which had for its parties Queen Victoria and her daughter, the Crown Princess, on the one hand, and Bismarck and Prince William on the other. This was over Alexander of Battenberg, and the wonder was that the Crown Princess should have championed one of that family. However, her excuse was that her daughter Victoria was very much in love and had won her consent.

This daughter, Victoria, was said to be the least attractive and least popular of the Prussian royal children, but at her cousin’s wedding at Darmstadt--the Hesse-Battenberg marriage--she had fallen in love with Alexander Battenberg, then Prince of Bulgaria, who was regarded as the most handsome and fascinating man in Europe. His Bulgarian throne had collapsed in 1886, and he, without position or fortune, went to live in Darmstadt, his one ambition being to return to his position in the Prussian army. Then came the chance of marrying into the Prussian royal family, and though he must have been ready to seize it with delight, there must also have been some strong misgivings mixed with his emotion.

Queen Victoria accepted the idea eagerly, for, as has been said, she loved a romance, and she also had a strong partiality for the Battenbergs. Bismarck, to whom neither reasons appealed, was dead against such a match, and with some cause, but he was wrong in regarding the Queen’s approval of it simply as a diplomatic attempt to spite Russia by making Prussia pick up the man whom Russia had cast down from the Bulgarian throne. However, that was the attitude he took, adding that Victoria was trying to injure Prussia by causing a rupture with the power which he had so long wooed.

The matter dragged through some contentious months, and in April 1888 the Chancellor thus delivered himself to Busch--

“The old Queen is fond of matchmaking--like all old women--and she may have selected Prince Alexander for her granddaughter because he is a brother to her son-in-law, the husband of her favourite daughter Beatrice. But obviously her main objects are political--a permanent estrangement between ourselves and Russia--and if she should come here for the Princess’s birthday there would be the greatest danger that she would get her way. In family matters she is not accustomed to contradiction, and would immediately bring the parson with her in her travelling bag and the bridegroom in her trunk, and the marriage would come off at once.”

He declared, concerning the suffering Emperor Frederick, “They (the Empress and her daughter Victoria) actually ill-treated, abused and martyred him when he declined (to consent to the marriage). He is glad that I have come to his assistance, as she (the Empress) is too much for him in argument.” Dr. Mackenzie, who also was at Charlottenburg at the time, remarked of it, “I cannot say that this discussion produced much effect on the Emperor.”

Bismarck gave Busch instructions to write an article for the _Grenzboten_, with the title “Foreign Influence in the Empire,” setting forth his views on the suggested marriage and attacking the Empress as tyrannizing over her husband, and a few days later expressed in the _Berlinger Boersen Zeitung_ his abhorrence of the _Grenzboten_ article.

The old Emperor William had been as much against the marriage as his Chancellor, but after his death Queen Victoria suggested that the wedding should take place at Windsor, and that the new Battenberg couple should live “elsewhere than in Germany.” The trousseau was ready, the day fixed and almost arrived, when Alexander, who had probably realized that he would never again sup with Prussian officers, or indeed enter Prussia, and who had also most probably received a strong hint from his prospective brother-in-law, decided that the world was _not_ well lost for love, and wrote to the Crown Princess saying that he had come to the conclusion that he could only marry if he had the consent of Prince William. There may have been other influences at work to cause the writing of this letter, for Victoria, who had been in Florence in March, and gone thence in April to Charlottenburg, met Bismarck there. Busch tells in his diary what happened.

“_April 28._--This afternoon met Bucher. He said, smiling, ‘I have just heard a surprising piece of news. Grandmamma behaved quite sensibly at Charlottenburg. She declared the attitude of the Chief in the Battenberg marriage scheme to be quite correct, and urged her daughter to change her ways. Of course it was very nice of her not to forget her own country, and to wish to benefit it when it was possible for her to do so, but she needed the attachment of the Germans, and should endeavour to secure it; and finally she brought about a reconciliation between Prince William and his mother.’

“I asked, ‘Have you that on good authority?’

“‘On very good authority.’

“‘Well, that is satisfactory ... we do not hate Victoria on account of her extraction, but because she feels as an Englishwoman, and wishes to promote English interests at our expense, and because she despises us Germans.’”

When the Queen went to Charlottenburg this April, 1888, the Crown Princess showed some of that tactlessness which so much annoyed the Berliners, for, wanting to refurnish the rooms destined for her mother, she sent to England for all that she needed, and, further, had English workmen sent over to do the decoration. It was naturally deeply resented, and it was feared that some hostile demonstration might be made against Victoria. This did not happen, but Prince William behaved so coldly to his grandmother that she could plainly see the attitude of him and his friends.

Yet the Germans should not have been so much hurt, for they had little courtesy, as was shown once when the Crown Princess said of a dog, “Ah, he is a bad dog, he bit a child,” and the prompt response was, “Nein Kaiserliche Hoheit, ein erwachsenes Mädchen!”

As for the principals in this marriage question, the young Princess Victoria married Prince Adolphus of Schaumberg-Lippe, and in 1889 Prince Alexander married when at Nice an actress, Mlle. Losinger, the daughter of the valet and the cook of the old Austrian General Faviani. Later the Prince abandoned both title and status in favour of the title of Count Hartenau, became a colonel in an Austrian regiment, and died as major-general in command of a brigade at Gratz in 1893.

Queen Victoria heard of his marriage with sorrow rather than with anger, merely saying with a sigh, “Perhaps they loved one another.”