THE PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 
 
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF WILLIAM I. 
 AND BISMARCK. With other Letters from and 
 to Prince Bismarck. Translated by J. A. FORD. 
 With Portrait and Facsimile Letters. In Two Vols. 
 Demy 8vo, price 205. net. 
 
 THE LOVE LETTERS OF PRINCE BIS- 
 MARCK. Edited by PRINCE HERBERT BISMARCK. 
 With Portraits. In Two Vols. Demy 8vo, price 
 2os. net. 
 
 PRINCE BISMARCK : An Historical Biography. 
 By CHARLES LOWE, M.A. With Two Portraits. 
 Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, price as. 6d. 
 
 PORTRAITS OF THE KAISER AND 
 PRINCE BISMARCK. By WILLIAM NICHOLSON. 
 Mounted, price 23. 6d. each net. 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C. 
 
THE PRIVATE LIVES 
 OF WILLIAM II. & HIS 
 
 CONSORT: A SECRET HIS- 
 TORY OF THE COURT OF BERLIN 
 
 FROM THE PAPERS AND DIARIES EXTENDING OVER A 
 PERIOD BEGINNING JUNE 1888 TO THE SPRING OF 1898 OF A 
 LADY-IN-WAITING ON HER MAJESTY THE EMPRESS-QUEEN 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY W. FISCHER 
 I 
 
 LONDON 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 1906 
 
First Edition, November 1904 
 Second Impression, December 1904 
 Third Impression, December 1904 
 Fourth Impression, April 1905 
 Fifth Impression, January 1906 
 
 reserved 
 
 This Edition enjoys copyright in all 
 countries signatory to the Berne 
 Treaty, and is not to be imported 
 into the United States of America 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Vive le roi ! " croaked the imperial standard floating 
 over the grey old Berlin Schloss when I alighted from 
 my carriage at the Court-marshal's gate to report for 
 duty on June 25, 1888, and " Long live the King ! " breathed 
 and echoed all the new brooms and old around me in the 
 antechambers, in the state and in the living and servants' 
 apartments of that immense pile. Yonder, just across 
 the Puppenbriicke, at half-mast and draped in black, were 
 seen the flags of two Queens, a widow of three and a half 
 months the one, the other had buried the noblest of 
 husbands but ten days before. Their palaces, which 
 scarcely ever possessed the brazen front of right royal 
 splendour, appeared deserted, gloomy, and melancholy 
 beyond hope as the emblem of death wafted above them ; 
 but with us the new masters all was life and excite- 
 ment. 
 
 I had seen royalty born, and had helped to distribute 
 its garter on the wedding-eve ; I had stood at its death- 
 bed, and in royal company had enjoyed the good things 
 of this world, in fact, the greater part of my life had 
 been spent at Court ; but where formerly I was welcomed 
 as a friend and companion, I was now such are the vicis- 
 situdes of life merely one of a few hundred attendants. 
 
 A lady of title and position, I had, after losing my 
 fortune, accepted their Majesties' command to join the 
 ranks of a retinue already noted for high-sounding names, 
 
 V 
 
 229860 
 
vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 and by royal warrant was appointed Hofdame to the 
 Empress ; that is, a functionary whom " the first gentle- 
 man of Europe " cleverly characterised as " making an 
 occasional one of four large hoops in a gilded coach ; a 
 maid aiding the languor of an easy party in a royal box 
 at the play ; one that goes to the theatre, to concerts, 
 and oratorios gratis, and has physicians without fees and 
 medicine without chemists' bills." Was I to be that, 
 and nothing more ? The voice of Court-marshal von 
 Liebenau, now my superior, woke me from the reverie 
 into which I had fallen. The lord steward, at that time 
 omnipotent, had settled upon my immediate employ- 
 ment. " You will for the present assume the functions 
 of both Mattresse de Maison and maid of honour," he 
 said. " It is a ticklish post, that binds one closely to 
 their Majesties' heels, inasmuch as the care of the all-highest 
 persons is given into your hands, for it has already been 
 announced that there will be no change in the intimate 
 domestic arrangements. Kaiser and Kaiserin will con- 
 tinue to occupy one bed-chamber as formerly and you 
 must superintend the body-service of both the " all- 
 highest " master and mistress ; but as your Ladyship 
 has lived in the great world, and knows more about polite 
 requirements than many a Princess, the aspect will not 
 frighten you ; for my part, I place implicit trust in your 
 acumen and judgment. Later in the day, a list of special 
 instructions will be sent to you. And now, my dear 
 Countess," concluded the courtier, rising from his arm- 
 chair, " take a bit of friendly advice before you select 
 your suite of rooms among the apartments set aside for 
 her Majesty's ladies. If you want to succeed at our 
 Court, leave all thoughts of independence, all inborn notions 
 of truthfulness and common, every-day honesty, outside 
 the palace gate ; divest yourself of personality all in- 
 
INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 dividualism save that of our masters' is odious be an 
 automaton pure and simple, smile upon her Majesty's 
 whims, do not be ruffled by a superior's insults, and if 
 at any time you must fly into a rage, retaliate upon those 
 under you." 
 
 I was about to speak, to protest, but the Court-marshal 
 anticipated me. 
 
 " I know what you want to say," he cried ; " you think 
 it mean and contemptible to let the innocent suffer for 
 their betters' wrongs, and I agree with you. But we all 
 do it, must do it ; it is a sort of lightning-rod for one's 
 ill-temper. And now, au revoir, Madame la Comiesse. 
 Once more be an automaton." With that Hen von 
 Liebenau kissed my hand, and a minute later I stood in 
 the court-yard quite beside myself with wrathful in- 
 dignation. 
 
 Nearly nine years have passed since I first cried my- 
 self to sleep in the big grey Schloss by the Spree while the 
 hot June sun was pouring into my room and all Berlin 
 discussed the Kaiser's first meeting with the Reichstag ; and 
 now that I commit to paper these memoirs of the Second 
 William's Court, let me say that in all that period I was 
 but used as a beast of burden by the great personages, 
 my masters, whom Providence sent into the world " ready 
 booted and spurred to ride," no better, no worse. 
 
 Special reasons for complaint I have none ; neither 
 will these pages wantonly afford umbrage to the exalted 
 ones of whom I write, unless, indeed, they object to truth, 
 that sentiment concerning which Dr. Johnson wrote some 
 one hundred and fifty years ago : " There is something 
 noble in publishing it, though it may condemn one's self." 
 
 I have no personal end in view with these papers ; 
 no excuses are offered for this narrative of Court life as 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 I have seen it. If in part it borders on the unexpected, by 
 upsetting established notions, and again explains certain 
 things which have become history from a standpoint totally 
 different from the one popularly accepted and believed, 
 let the reader remember that truth is stranger than fiction, 
 and that history is but a lie, to borrow a phrase from the 
 Duchess of Orleans, the sister-in-law of Louis XV., " a 
 smart woman, an audacious woman," the same who ex- 
 claimed, on hearing the false report that Frederick the 
 Great was marching upon Versailles after Rossbach : 
 " So much the better, I shall at last see a King then." 
 
 I shall give only such incidents of the lives of William II. 
 and his consort as have come under my personal observa- 
 tion, or that I know of from reliable witnesses. The story 
 of a very few incidents that occurred before the present 
 Emperor's enthronisation I shall be obliged to credit to 
 the general gossip of the palace. 
 

 THE ROYAL HOHENZOLLERNS AND THEIR 
 
 KINDRED MENTIONED IN THIS 
 
 VOLUME 
 
 FREDERICK I., first King of Prussia, 1701-1713. Before 1701 the 
 Hohenzollerns were known as Prince-Electors of Brandenburg. 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM I., 1713-1740. Father of Frederick the Great. 
 
 FREDERICK II., the Great, 1740-1786. His best-known sister was 
 the Margravine of Baireuth (died in 1757), authoress of the cele- 
 brated Memoirs. Frederick the Great was succeeded by his 
 nephew : 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM II., 1786-1797. He was the notorious bigamist 
 and debt-contractor. He was succeeded by his son : 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM III., 1797-1840. He was the husband of Queen 
 Louise, a Princess of Strelitz (died in 1810), and the father of his 
 successors : 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM IV., 1840-1861. This King became mad and 
 died childless. A daughter of his brother William (died 1846), 
 Princess Marie, married Maximilian II., King of Bavaria. Queen 
 Marie (died 1889) had two sons, Ludwig II., King of Bavaria, 
 who died insane in 1886, and the present King Otto of Bavaria, 
 who is also insane. Frederick William IV. was succeeded by his 
 brother : 
 
 WILLIAM I., King, 1861-1888. Became German Emperor in 1871. 
 The Queen and Empress of William I. was Augusta, Princess of 
 Sachsen- Weimar, and a granddaughter (on her mother's side) of 
 Czar Paul I., who died insane. William I. had a daughter, Louise, 
 now Grand Duchess of Baden, and was succeeded by his son : 
 
 FREDERICK III., March-June, 1888. The Empress and Queen, styled 
 Empress Frederick, was the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria of 
 England, and was born in 1840. Her children are : 
 
 ix 
 
x HOHENZOLLERNS AND THEIR KINDRED 
 
 WILLIAM II., born 1859, Emperor and King since June, 1888 ; Charlotte, 
 born 1860, Hereditary Princess of Sachsen-Meiningen ; Prince 
 Henry of Prussia, born 1862, married to Irene of Hesse, sister of 
 the Czarina; Victoria, born 1866, Princess of Lippe; Sophie, born 
 1870, Crown Princess of Greece; Marguerite, born 1872, Princess 
 Frederick Charles of Hesse-Cassel. William II. is married to 
 Auguste Victoria, born 1858, eldest daughter of Frederick, Duke 
 of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg. The couple has 
 seven children, six boys and one girl. 
 
 PRINCE FREDERICK LEOPOLD OF PRUSSIA is the Kaiser's cousin 
 and brother-in-law, being married to Louise Sophie, Princess 
 of Schleswig-Holstein, sister of Empress Auguste Victoria. 
 
 THE PRINCELY HOUSES OF HOHENZOLLERN (Hohenzollern-Hechingen 
 and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen), whose possessions were ceded to 
 Prussia in 1849, are ) like tne r yal l me > descended from Rudolph, 
 Graf von Zollern, but, professing the Catholic faith, have not inter- 
 married with the royal line for several centuries. Members of the 
 royal and princely lines call each other " cousins " by courtesy. 
 
 CHARLES ANTON, Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, is married to 
 Antonie, Royal Princess of Portugal. His eldest son : 
 
 THE HEREDITARY PRINCE WILLIAM, born 1864, is married to Therese, 
 Princess of the two Sicilies. Prince Charles Anton's second son : 
 
 FERDINAND, Crown Prince of Roumania, married Princess Marie of 
 Edinburgh. The Duke, her father, is now Duke of Sachsen- 
 Coburg-Gotha. A third son : 
 
 CARL ANTON, is married to Josephine, daughter of the Comte de 
 Flanders. 
 
 DUKE GUNTHER of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg is 
 the brother of Empress Auguste Victoria. Born 1863. 
 
 PRINCE CHRISTIAN, the husband of Princess Helene of Great Britain, 
 is an uncle of the Duke of Schleswig and of Empress Augusta 
 Victoria. 
 
 PRINCE CHRISTIAN'S BROTHER, FREDERICK (died July 2, 1865), married 
 Mary Lee, daughter of David Lee, of New York, November 30, 
 1864, after assuming the Austrian title of Prinz von Noer. 
 
HOHENZOLLERNS AND THEIR KINDRED xi 
 
 PRINCESS VON NOER, his widow, who, by this marriage, became the 
 aunt of the German Empress, married, on April 14, 1874, General 
 late Field- Marshal Graf von Waldersee. 
 
 DUCHESS ADELAIDE of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, 
 mother of the German Empress, is a Princess of Hohenlohe- 
 Langenburg and a cousin of Prince Hohenlohe, former Chancellor 
 of the German Empire. A-^Q- ^u* CM^W'^**" 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION ....... v 
 
 THE ROYAL HOHENZOLLERNS AND THEIR KINDRED . . i x 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Birth of the Kaiser His Health and Physical Characteristics 
 
 His fear of Malady ...... i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Private Apartments of tjieir Majesties Home Life Rela- 
 tions between the Emperor and Empress Daily Life of 
 William II . 19 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 William II. and Mr. Vanderbilt The Emperor's Study His 
 Personal Habits His Wardrobe and Toilel-Room King 
 Leopold of 'Belgium . . " *'*",!' .' . .36 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 House Regulations William II. as a Family Man William II. 
 
 and M. Herbette, the French Ambassador . . -55 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Role of the Bismarcks The Emperor and the Czar Liebenau, 
 Major-domo of the Palace The Emperor's Passion tor 
 Travel ........ 77 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PACK 
 
 The Emperor's Love of Travel (continued} -The Court of Denmark 
 William II. and Francis Joseph William II.'s Diversions 
 and Restlessness The "Song to ^Egir" The Kaiser as 
 Speech-Maker His Historical Blunders . . -93 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 The Kaiser's Amusements The Menzel Festival . . 115 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Kaiser as Financier His Niggardliness The Kaiser as 
 
 Architect The Fall of Caprivi Hohenlohe, Chancellor . 137 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Dispositions fond Affair The Kaiser and the Prussian Guards 
 
 The Guelph Fund . . . . . .161 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 The Emperor's Love of Shooting His Boon Companions . .187 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Treatment of Servants by their Majesties Imperial House- 
 keeping ........ 196 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 The Anonymous Letter Scandal The Von Kotze Affair . . 205 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Emperor's Relations with His Ministers His Egomania 
 
 Parallel between William II. and Ludwig II. of Bavaria . 227 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 The Parallel between William II. and Ludwig II. (continued} . 254 
 
CONTENTS xv 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Examples of William II.'s Egotism The Emperor and Lord 
 Lonsdale The Question of Lese-Majeste and Egomania 
 The Emperor's Love of Beautiful hands . . -279 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 The Empress ........ 310 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 The Waldersees The Empress's Favourites The Berlin Riots 
 
 The Empress Frederick ..... 324 
 
THE PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 BIRTH OF THE KAISER HIS HEALTH AND PHYSICAL 
 CHARACTERISTICS HIS FEAR OF MALADY 
 
 " Is it a fine boy? 
 
 " VICTORIA," 
 
 BUT one person, Major von Normann, of the First Guards^ 
 was present, when, on June 15, 1888, at noon, scarcely 
 an hour after the gallant Frederick had breathed his last, 
 the new lord drew the above despatch from his father's 
 papers. 
 
 " What did his Majesty say on discovering the Queen's 
 telegram ? " I asked Normann at the Emperor's funeral. 
 
 " Not a word ; yet, if possible, he turned a shade paler, 
 while his left hand convulsively closed around the hilt of 
 his sabre." 
 
 That the newly made Kaiser should invite Normann to 
 attend him in his search for state papers and other docu* 
 ments, of which the one mentioned, while not the most 
 valuable, was certainly not the least interesting, shows 
 the extent of his confidence in this man, then esteemed 
 the strictest disciplinarian of his " corps," but in no other 
 way distinguished. 
 
 His Majesty's possible assistant, who died in September, 
 1890, by his own hand, and who had probably aided in 
 
2 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 drawing up the proclamations to the army and the navy 
 of June 15, 1888, was, in July of that year, already afflicted 
 with the species of moral insanity that hastened his demise. 
 After the death of the favourite, medical experts no longer 
 hesitated to say that von Normann's famous rigour had 
 really been monomania of vanity, while his brusqueness 
 and cruelty were nothing short of impulsive madness. 
 
 Queen Victoria's telegram was dated January 28, 1859, 
 twenty -four hours after the eldest son of Prince and 
 Princess Frederick- William had seen the light. 
 
 In England, royal babes have " grand governors " and 
 " deputy governors," a wet nurse and several dry nurses, 
 a first and second " rocker," and days before the event is 
 supposed to come off the great state officials, including the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, assemble in the palace. And 
 when, at last, the royal mother is taken in labour, these 
 invited witnesses stand in an apartment adjoining the 
 lying-in-room, close to its only door, that must be ajar 
 to make the birth lawful, and all because there has been 
 some doubt about the paternity, or maternity if you prefer, 
 of certain British rulers. 
 
 How different it is with us, though our closets be no 
 less stocked with skeletons than those of the Stuarts and 
 Guelphs. The great Frederick himself, author of the 
 epigram : "If I have reason to believe that Michael 
 instead of John filled the tart, why should I blame the 
 result, and who cares whether the filling is pigeon or 
 grouse, as long as the pie is good ? " when a youth, was 
 more than once threatened with death by his royal father 
 because that gentleman failed to appreciate the maxim 
 that it is ridiculous to hunt for the sire of a prince, pro- 
 vided that prince is no blockhead. 
 
 William was born & la bourgeois, and quite economically, 
 a midwife receiving him, and a Court physician, assisted 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 3 
 
 by the then highly reputed Berlin specialist for women's 
 diseases, the late Dr. Martin, looking gravely on after the 
 manner of his kind. 
 
 In Germany, you must know, a doctor thinks it beneath 
 himself to take the child, and is supposed to act only in 
 case grave complications arise. 
 
 In the case of the Princess Frederick William of Prussia, 
 Fraulein Stahl acted as sage-femme ; she is now a motherly 
 woman, and still continues her visits to the palace ; so I 
 often had occasion to talk with her about the great event 
 of her life. 
 
 " Her poor Royal Highness," says the old Fraulein, 
 " was only two months past eighteen years at the time, 
 and very weak and nervous. You see, with her it was 
 not an ordinary case of first motherhood ; politics were 
 mixed up in it to a frightful degree, and the poor young 
 thing felt the fate of Europe trembling in her lap, as it 
 were. For our good king was as crazy as a March hare, 
 and twenty-one years had passed since a midwife was 
 called to the Prince Regent's house to bring into the world 
 little Louise, now the Grand Duchess of Baden. 
 
 *' Our work had been divided as follows : Dr. Martin 
 was to have special care of her Royal Highness, inasmuch 
 as he was treating her for a nervous malady ; the Court 
 physician had to perform the ordinary duties for the ' all- 
 highest ' patient, while I was commanded to take the child. 
 But the moment the little one was born a despairing moan 
 from the mother overthrew all these fine dispositions. 
 
 " ' The Princess is dying ' ' she is paying dearly 
 for her son,' whispered the doctors, while working with 
 blanched faces over the prostrate body. Of course, I had 
 to abandon the child momentarily to help them, and when 
 the Princess having revived after a little while I 
 knelt down before the couch on which our heir rested, 
 
4 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 imagine my fright : he had not yet uttered a cry, nor did 
 he move a muscle. * Still-born, by Heaven ! ' I thought. 
 A gesture brought Dr. Martin to my side, and together we 
 laboured over the newly born, I do not know how long, 
 exhausting successively every means ordained by medical 
 books, or practised in the nursery, to bring the child to 
 life. 
 
 " When everything had been done that in decency could 
 be done," so runs her narrative, " I took that royal young- 
 ster under my left arm, and, grabbing a wet towel in my 
 right, began to belabour him in good homely fashion, 
 though the doctors groaned and everybody in the room 
 looked horrified. 
 
 " ' To the devil with etiquette,' I thought, seeing their 
 grimaces ; ' this is a matter of life or death.' So I spanked 
 away, now lighter, now harder, slap, slap, slap, until the 
 cannons announcing the birth in the Lustgarten yonder 
 had about half finished their official quota of a hundred 
 and one shots at last a faint cry broke from the young 
 one's pallid lips. 
 
 " He was alive 1 I had snatched our Prince from the 
 grave for which he seemed destined. The rest was easy 
 sailing ; the doctors again had their innings, and the 
 simple midwife was shoved aside/' this with a defiant 
 snort. 
 | u But what about the deformed hand and arm ? " 
 
 " That was discovered only the third or fourth day 
 after," replied Fraulein Stahl ; " you see, at first we were 
 all so busy putting life into the Prince, and keeping 
 it in him, that no one thought of examining his limbs. 
 Even when, on January 28, the Prince showed his son 
 to his relatives, friends, and the assembled royal and 
 princely households, no one observed that anything was 
 wrong. But on the last, or the last but one day of the 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 5 
 
 month, it was noticed that the child could not move his 
 left arm ; an investigation was made, and, in the course 
 of it, the surgeons discovered that the elbow joint was 
 dislocated. That, as your Ladyship knows, is nothing 
 serious in a healthy child. However, in the case of Prince 
 William, the surrounding soft parts were so injured, and 
 the muscles attached in such a condition, that no one 
 dared attempt to set the bone then and there, as should 
 be done in all cases." 
 
 Fraulein Stahl has often reiterated the above in the 
 course of our long official acquaintance, and always con- 
 cluded her remarks with the statement : " I am well aware 
 that the present condition of the Kaiser's arm is attributed 
 to a mistake made by the persons officiating at the ac- 
 couchement ; but," and saying this the old maid's face 
 assumes its most determined look, " if that were not a 
 falsehood agreeable to the Emperor and his mother 
 for even Dr. Hinzpeter, who knows better, repeats 
 it if that were not a lie, I say, do you suppose for one 
 moment that I should be in this palace now to cripple 
 more Hohenzollerns ? " Saying this, Fraulein Stahl used 
 to bring down her fist forcibly, and conclude : " My own 
 opinion has always -been that the child's left forearm was 
 not properly made up by nature, as, indeed, his whole 
 left side was weak, and is weak to this day. 
 
 " Besides, every one in the palace knows that, though 
 his walk is brisk, it is but his Majesty's ever alert exertion 
 that makes it so ; if, at any time, the Kaiser ceased think- 
 ing of his shortcomings for only a moment, you would 
 see his left leg drag. All his aches and pains, too, locate 
 in his left ear and the whole left side of his head. 
 Now, Frau Grcifin, remember what I told you about the 
 Princess's condition. She was agitated by fears and 
 depressed in spirits ; tremendous responsibilities weighed 
 
6 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 upon her mind. Is it to be wondered at that her child 
 was affected ? The mother, poor girl ! transfused her 
 nervous ailments into the child she was carrying, and all 
 concentrated in its left side. That the accoucheurs were, 
 of course, unable to prevent or foresee ; besides, they were, 
 as already stated, far too busy completing nature's handi- 
 work by inflating and keeping the Prince's respiratory 
 organs going, to test the inferior parts of his body sepa- 
 rately. If, on the other hand, the Prince had been a lusty 
 boy, the dislocated joint would, undoubtedly, have been 
 promptly discovered, and nothing would have stood in the 
 way of its immediate correction." 
 
 So the chances are that Queen Victoria's telegram was 
 answered in the affirmative. 
 
 I once heard the Kaiser, in conversation with her 
 Majesty, roundly abuse Dr. Hinzpeter for saying in his 
 book : " The Prussian army never admitted a young man 
 physically so little fit to become a brilliant and dashing 
 cavalry officer as William." 
 
 The criticism was passed shortly after the appearance of 
 Hinzpeter's " Kaiser William II., a Sketch from Life," in 
 the fall of 1888, and the Emperor, after warning his Frau 
 against letting the volume fall into the children's hands, 
 meaning the elder boys, continued : " Our German philo- 
 sophers never know where to stop ; whether they write 
 truth or lies, they are bound to compromise and expose 
 their friends without ever realising it." 
 
 This fateful left arm the Kaiser hugs closely to his body, 
 allowing the hand, which is not deformed, but puny like a 
 child's, to rest against his waist, or upon his hip, if on 
 horseback. Any one following the German papers will 
 probably remember that the official journals issue ballons 
 d'essai from time to time to ascertain public sentiment in 
 respect to the introduction of a belt for armv officers, an 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 7 
 
 article of accoutrement foreign to the Prussian uniform and 
 out of harmony with its general style. As the Empress 
 Eugenie re-established the crinoline in the sixties to hide 
 her interesting condition, so William wants to change 
 military dress to find a convenient resting-place for his 
 poor left hand and arm, which, being about six inches 
 shorter than the right, would attach to a belt unostenta- 
 tiously. But, alas ! the majority of officers feign to regard 
 those recurring proposals as manoeuvres of mercenary 
 army contractors, and treat them with fine scorn, so that 
 William, unwilling to own his secret reason for the innova- 
 tion sought, must go without relief. 
 
 The fingers of the crippled hand are movable, for, al- 
 though the head of the radius of the forearm does not set 
 properly into the condyles of the humerus, the limb is not 
 altogether inert. There is consequently no reason for 
 doubting the late Major von Normann's assertion that the 
 Kaiser clutched his sword with the left hand. I have 
 seen him do the same thing quite often when angry. But 
 while he can take hold of an article, he cannot for the life 
 of him lift it. For instance, he holds the reins in his left 
 hand, but is powerless to direct the horse except with his 
 right or his knees. 
 
 Without exaggeration it may be said, that, next to the 
 stricken man, the imperial valets, four of whom, two ward- 
 robemen and two Kammerdiener, are always on duty to 
 dress, undress, and re-uniform their master, suffer most on 
 account of this infirmity. One of them is the intimate of 
 her Majesty's Kammerdiener Nolte, and makes him the 
 confidant of his troubles. 
 
 " We would not mind the work in the least," I heard 
 him say once, " if the Emperor changed his uniform 
 ten, instead of three or four times per day, it's the fear 
 of injuring his lame hand that makes us nervous and 
 
8 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 gradually wears away our usefulness. And, besides, 
 we must always be prepared to forestall the collapse of 
 the ' all-highest ' master when' he balances himself on his 
 left leg, as is his wont sometimes, when he is in a hurry 
 to put on a different pair of trousers." And, after think- 
 ing awhile, the man added : " If they would only introduce 
 for all troops, horse, foot, and artillery, not excepting the 
 navy, a uniform pair of pantaloons, one-half of our cares 
 would be removed ; but this endless variety is killing us, 
 and will some day, I fear, lead to a catastrophe." 
 
 His Majesty's right hand is massive and ugly in appear- 
 ance, ugly, too, when clasping that of a friend. Before I 
 was presented to him, Court-marshal von Liebenau warned 
 me against his Royal Highness's mighty grip ; but, though 
 I went through the ordeal with teeth set, I could hardly 
 suppress an outcry. 
 
 How proud the Emperor is of his personal strength is 
 evident from the fact that he promptly adopted the simile 
 suggested to him several years ago, when a foreign corre- 
 spondent likened his fist to the " terrible right " of the 
 then champion of the world, John L. Sullivan, whereupon 
 V his sister of Meiningen, who adores strong men, remarked : 
 v " I hope Sullivan has not the bad taste to wear as many 
 Brings as my brother." 
 
 This "Weakness is, however, to some extent excusable, as 
 it is thus the Kaiser tries to hide a number of conspicuous 
 moles which disfigure his hand. In this he partly succeeds, 
 vrhile in spots the glittering diamonds and rubies only tend 
 to emphasise the blemishes. 
 
 I dare say very few people have a correct notion of the 
 Emperor's height, for, as he is seldom seen without a helmet 
 terminating in a point, the public is mystified, and even 
 close observers are apt to be deceived. In the palace this 
 question is never openly discussed, but I heard the Kaiserin 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 9 
 
 tell over-inquisitive Prince Eitel Fritz once or twice that 
 his father measured five feet eight inches. That, I am sure, 
 is a mistake ; five feet five or six inches is the highest 
 measure that even Adjutant Count Moltke, who has a 
 very sure eye in such matters, gives him. Be that as it 
 may, he cuts a respectable enough figure, holding himself 
 as straight as an arrow, his uniforms being fashioned 
 to correct the traces of embonpoint that develop from 
 time to time in spite of rigid bodily exercise incessantly 
 kept up. 
 
 The numerous newspaper persons who talk glibly about 
 the Kaiser's " cancerous " ear trouble have, I imagine, 
 information on the point that is more or less inaccessible 
 to those in daily attendance upon his Majesty, for whether 
 the dread malady, hereditary with the Hohenzollerns, has 
 settled in that organ or not, is still an open question even 
 with William's own physicians. It is not improbable. 
 
 Let us reflect a moment. It was Louise of Strelitz, 
 "sharing with Marie Antoinette the sad pre-eminence of 
 beauty and misfortune," who carried carcinoma into the 
 Prussian camp ; the English escaped that doom only 
 because economical George III. preferred Caroline of Bruns- 
 wick for his son, her dowry being larger by a few thousand 
 Thalers than the Mecklenburger's. There was method in 
 that madman's madness, beyond a doubt. 
 
 All Queen Louise's portraits are remarkable for a scarf 
 the royal lady invariably wears under her chin ; even her 
 oldest portraits and busts exhibited in the Berlin Hohen- 
 zollern Museum, no matter whether the Queen is in Court 
 dress or ordinarily gowned, have this distinction. The 
 scarf, it is said, was worn to conceal the marks of an 
 operation necessitated by a swelling of the glands, and 
 that is undoubtedly authentic, but it is also true that in 
 this very spot the cancer that killed her, eventually de~ 
 
io PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 veloped. I have this information from descendants of old- 
 time royal servants in the employ of the late Emperor 
 William, Louise's last surviving son. The Queen died of 
 the disease at Hohenzieritz, her father's estate, in 1810. 
 
 That Emperor Frederick perished of cancer of the throat 
 even Dr. Mackenzie had to admit. Therefore, if one may 
 say so without offence, it would be in the line of natural 
 development if William II., supposing he inherited the 
 malady, were attacked by it in the neighbourhood of his 
 throat. But it must not be forgotten that cancer is thought 
 by some authorities to be untransmissible. 
 
 The only time that his Majesty's ear trouble was men- 
 tioned in the palace was, as far as I can remember, at the 
 death of Henry XI. of Reuss-Gera, son of the Hereditary 
 Prince Henry XXIV., and Princess Elise of Hohenlohe, 
 a cousin of the Empress on the mother's side. The little 
 one died November 4, 1891, of scarlet fever, we thought, 
 and the Empress remarked : " I trust the Kaiser will not 
 hear of the cause of death, for it always makes him 
 uneasy." 
 
 " Why, has his Majesty not had scarlet fever ? " I in- 
 quired, looking up from the despatch I was writing at my 
 mistress's command, and which requested the Reuss Court- 
 marshal to send more particulars. 
 
 " Of course," said the Kaiserin rather hesitatingly, " and 
 in its most malignant form, too. How could you live here 
 several years without hearing of it ? " 
 
 As her Majesty's manner convinced me that it would 
 not be agreeable to her to go into details, I curbed my 
 curiosity until some time later I met Count Seckendorf, for 
 many years chamberlain to the Empress Frederick. This 
 nobleman enjoys her Majesty's supreme confidence and 
 knows all the family secrets. 
 
 " You did well not to press this point," said the courtier, 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT ir 
 
 44 for the Kaiser would be very angry if he heard of any 
 such discussion. As a matter of fact, that scarlet-fever 
 story for it is a story is reserved for use in a contingency 
 that has not yet arisen, I am happy to say." 
 
 " You put me on the rack, Count." 
 
 " Others are there already and dare not complain," 
 replied the Kammerherr, with a short, satirical laugh not 
 devoid of a tinge of sadness " ay, on the rack of public 
 opinion, of the most cold-blooded insinuation and of direct 
 reproof. Do you remember," he continued, " when a certain 
 august person snubbed the Crown Prince's, afterward the 
 Emperor Frederick's, English physician because that gen- 
 tleman had refused to take his cue from the seditious 
 Bismarck and Junker clique when reporting upon a disease 
 that played such a part in the state tragedy, then on the 
 boards ? To-day, opposite views on the same subject are 
 trumps, and persons insisting that a specified malady goes 
 with the crown of Prussia are publicly disowned and officially 
 guillotined." 
 
 " I know, I know ; but the scarlet-fever story ? " 
 
 " As I have had the honour of already intimating : if the 
 condition of Frederick's successor becomes alarming at 
 any time in consequence of his ear trouble, your Ladyship 
 will see it in all the official papers." 
 
 It took no little persuasion to induce Graf Seckendorf to 
 satisfy my curiosity, that had increased rather than abated 
 during the last quarter of an hour. " The official com- 
 munique" he said at last, " will read something like this : 
 
 14 When his Majesty, as a young man, was stricken with 
 scarlet fever, his mother, the Empress Frederick, insisted 
 upon treating the patient after a custom prevailing in 
 some parts of England. The feverish boy was subjected 
 many times daily to ice-cold ablutions, while his body and 
 bed linen were continually changed, in consequence of 
 
12 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 which an acute cold settled in the left ear, which has ever 
 since irritated the youth and man." 
 
 "Then," concluded the Count, "will follow a learned 
 treatise showing that the Kaiser has water, not tumours, 
 on the brain." 
 
 I had to laugh at the bon mot, though immediately after- 
 ward both of us were ashamed, the one for uttering, the 
 other for applauding, so ill-natured a remark. We also 
 looked about us to see that .no one had, perchance, over- 
 heard' our conversation. 
 
 There is, I repeat it, as yet no evidence to justify the 
 worst suspicions regarding the Emperor's ear trouble, and 
 yet, harassed as he undoubtedly is by the threat of maladies 
 of the most serious character, the Emperor can scarcely be 
 blamed for taking excessive precautions against contagion. 
 That he lives the greater part of the year in the incon- 
 veniently situated Neues Palais, which, moreover, will never 
 be a thoroughly modern residence for reasons that will be 
 explained in another chapter, is mainly due to its solitary 
 position at the end of the town. At the Marble Palace, 
 where the imperial couple used to spend the summer while 
 waiting for William's patent of general and finally for the 
 crown, it was quite different. There they had neighbours, 
 one of them the Hereditary Prince of Schoenburg, chef 
 d'escadron of the Guard Hussars, who lived in a villa 
 opposite the Neuer Garten. 
 
 Coming down to breakfast on November 18, 1888, the 
 Kaiser learned that his Grace had died of diphtheria a 
 few hours before. 
 
 " Diphtheria ? " cried William, turning a shade paler 
 than is his wont in the morning " there seems to be some- 
 thing unhealthy in the air hereabouts. Let the chamberlain 
 on duty be informed that my things must be packed and 
 sent to Berlin at once." 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 13 
 
 " But the residential quarters in the (Berlin) Schloss are 
 yet far from finished," interposed Herr von Liebenau. 
 
 " Never mind, there will be some corner where I can 
 sleep and eat without running the risk of infection." And 
 seeing that the adjutant still waited, he added, anticipating 
 a question which etiquette forbade to be asked : "All my 
 things I am going to move." 
 
 That settled, his Majesty quieted down, and when, 
 shortly afterward, the Empress arrived, he simply said : 
 " Dona, I am going to Berlin and this house will see me 
 no more." Auguste Victoria was thunderstruck, but seeing 
 the husband determined, she dared not question him. So 
 their meal passed in silence, while visions of domestic 
 storms, of irreparable displeasure, even of a maitresse en 
 Hire perhaps, chased through her Majesty's brain. And 
 when, half-an-hour later, I entered her room to ask if 
 the valets might go to the bed-chamber and remove the 
 Kaiser's clothes the Empress often returns to that room 
 after breakfast, and naturally dislikes meeting men-servants 
 there I found my mistress in tears, bewailing a fate that 
 was as yet a mystery. 
 
 " Do you know why the Kaiser is going ? " she said at 
 last, after looking around to see that we were alone. The 
 confession, for such it turned out to be, evidently deeply 
 moved her Majesty, as her eyes streamed with tears. I 
 could not understand it at first. " Of course," I replied, 
 the question having been repeated, " his Majesty has 
 heard of the death across the way, and, being so near the 
 Schoenburgs, he is afraid that diphtheria might break out 
 in the palace." 
 
 A sigh of relief escaped the imperial lady. She scarcely 
 allowed me to finish. " Is the Hereditary Prince dead ? " 
 she exclaimed, with almost a joyful ring in her voice. 
 Then changing her attitude, she added : " Why have I 
 
4 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 not been informed of this ? I might have been spared an 
 unhappy half -hour, and, besides, I should have sent my 
 condolences to Princess Lucie." 
 
 William was as good as his word ; his state papers 
 published that very day were dated " Schloss, Berlin," &c. 
 and ever since the Marble Palace has ceased to figure in 
 contemporary history. 
 
 The Kaiser was right in surmising that his thousand- 
 windowed palace in the capital would afford him lodgings 
 of some sort ; but as his own apartments, as well as the 
 majority of the other suites, were undergoing alterations, 
 he was obliged to make his quarters in the so-called von 
 Kleist chambers, said to have been once inhabited by 
 Princess Amalia's first lady-in-waiting, companion and 
 confidante, the Baroness von Kleist. They are exceedingly 
 beautiful, far more so than any of the gilded modern rooms 
 that up-to-date Berlin taste has furnished, yet at the same 
 time lack even the most ordinary conveniences. 
 
 I was at the Meiningen Villa, in the Thiergarten, on 
 some business of her Majesty's, when the Princess brought 
 the news. " I have just come from my big brother " she 
 always speaks of the Kaiser thus " and what do you 
 think ? I found him installed in the Kleist apartments, 
 which the White Lady is said to haunt," she said to her 
 Hofdame, in so loud a voice that others, as well as myself, 
 could not avoid hearing it. 
 
 " ' I am glad Auguste has had her baby,' I said to the 
 Kaiser at once," continued Princess Charlotte, " for, as 
 you know, von Kleist's child born in this apartment was 
 disfigured by a terrible birth-mark on the nose, the broom 
 oi La Balayeuse" 
 
 " And who may that be, your Royal Highness ? " 
 
 " The White Lady, of course, who used to announce her 
 coming by vigorously sweeping the corridors. On that 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 15 
 
 account, Frederick the Great dubbed her ' the sweeper,' 
 or, in his beloved French, La Balayeuse. And that," con- 
 tinued the Princess, with a loud laugh, as if some hilarious 
 bon mot had just seen the light in her luminous brain 
 " that was, after all, a fitting designation, for, sub rosd, 
 the White Lady of the Hohenzollerns is no lady at all. 
 I have just inspected her favourite abode, and, I assure 
 you, there is neither a bath-tub nor a toilet to be found 
 there." 
 
 Although the Empress knew of the objectionable features 
 of her husband's temporary abode (if she had not, her 
 fond sister-in-law's witticism would have enlightened her, 
 for, whenever her Royal Highness makes a joke, Auguste 
 Victoria is informed of it by Charlotte's friends almost as 
 promptly as by her enemies), she insisted upon following 
 William within twice twenty-four hours. But the Emperor, 
 pretending to be very busy with his speech for the open- 
 ing of the Reichstag on November 22, would not see her 
 until the following day. Now everybody knows that 
 speeches from the throne are composed by the Chancellor, 
 in this case by Prince Bismarck hence it was clear that 
 William had some other reason for absenting himself. As 
 a matter of fact, he had heard that Fraulein von Gersdorff, 
 a Lady of the Court, was suffering from a sore throat, and 
 though her quarters were not in the Marble Palace, but 
 in the gentlewomen's pavilion, situated in the park, he 
 evidently feared that her Majesty might have come in con- 
 tact with her. And not until he was reassured by myself 
 he obtained the information in a very diplomatic fashion, 
 I must say did he emerge from his seclusion. 
 
 After I had withdrawn, Court-marshal von Liebenau 
 was summoned. 
 
 " No more cases of diphtheria in Potsdam, I hope ? " 
 said the Kaiser, in his most imperious style. 
 
i6 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 " None that I know of, your Majesty." 
 
 " That you know of ? My dear sir, that means either 
 that you are out of touch with your department or that 
 cases of illness are secreted. At any rate, you will be 
 good enough to telegraph to the Marble Palace that all 
 persons of the suite, or in the royal service, who show 
 any signs of throat trouble must be removed to a hospital 
 at once, without the slightest delay. These are my strictest 
 orders." 
 
 One of the Empress's favourite wardrobewomen, Frau 
 Schnase, fell a victim to William's relentless anxiety on 
 that occasion. Not being on duty for several days, she 
 had remained in Potsdam, and, by the Court physician's 
 advice, had taken a perspiratory treatment to reduce a 
 swelling of the glands, very common among certain classes 
 in Germany, so that at n o'clock that night she was in 
 the midst of a healthy sweat and sound sleep, when the 
 Major-domo awakened her to say that by " all-highest 
 order " she must leave immediately. 
 
 Protest being out of the question, a closed carriage 
 was procured, and the shivering patient was rolled off to 
 the nearest hospital through the wintry streets. 
 
 " No room," reported the night-watch, when the driver 
 summoned him. 
 
 " But she is one of her Majesty's personal attendants." 
 
 Of course that made a difference, and, after some more 
 discussion, Frau Schnase was given a cot in the pauper's 
 ward, third class, next to one in which a poor creature 
 was just receiving extreme unction. 
 
 The Queen's wardrobewoman was a healthy girl, and 
 recovered not only from the horrors of her unusual ex- 
 perience, but likewise from an illness she caught while 
 exposed to the deadly exhalations of the sorry environment 
 forced upon her. After a month or so, she was back at 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 17 
 
 the Schloss ; but, daring to complain of the treatment 
 that had been meted out to her, such biting sarcasm and 
 contempt were heaped upon poor Schnase that she preferred 
 to resign. 
 
 With our knowledge of the Kaiser's peculiar predisposi- 
 tion to diseases of the throat, this care exercised to guard 
 against infection would seem quite proper, though ex- 
 cessively hard on others, had it not, in the course of years, 
 become a mania. Assuredly, no one blamed his Majesty 
 for postponing the Wiirtemberg manoeuvres in the summer 
 of 1893, when cholera was raging ; in those days all the 
 royal servants were treated to unsugared tea as the stand- 
 ing beverage, which caused not a little indignation in the 
 palace, the flunkies and maids insisting that the Emperor 
 should make the tea palatable, if he forbade them to drink 
 anything else ; but it is quite another thing when the 
 Kaiser refuses to confer with state officials because some 
 member of their family might be indisposed. Interests of 
 state are liable to suffer seriously through hallucinations 
 of that sort, and if it were not for the love I bear my 
 country, I might cite instances of international importance 
 showing errors and inexcusable lapses for which this strange 
 fancy is responsible. 
 
 The Empress, who faithfully copies all her husband's 
 fads, either because she admires them or because she fears 
 his displeasure, is as bad as he. Her Majesty frequently 
 causes the discharge of servants for neglecting to report 
 some trifling sickness in the family ; and members of the 
 royal household not living in the castle can enjoy a holi- 
 day at any time by simply furnishing a doctor's certificate 
 stating that somebody with whom they are domiciled in 
 the city is ill. This applies to the Kaiser's adjutant- 
 generals, as well as to the chamberlains, equerries, ladies 
 of the palace, gamekeepers, coachmen, cooks, and scullions. 
 
 B 
 
i8 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 
 
 More than once have I seen his Majesty abruptly start 
 away from a person with whom he happened to be con- 
 versing at a reception or ball, leaving the unhappy lady 
 or gentleman speechless and crushed, because of an inno- 
 cent admission that a son or a daughter, or perhaps an 
 uncle, had the measles or a cold. At the very mention 
 of the fact the war-lord fled like a lion hearing a 
 cock crow. 
 
 Once I found Frau von Kotze in tears behind some 
 shrub in the White Hall, while all around her dancing was 
 going on. " What is the matter with you ? " I inquired ; 
 " can I be of service to you ? " 
 
 " No, thank you, Countess," she sobbed ; " but to 
 think that he said that to me ! " 
 
 " Who is he, and what did he say ? " 
 
 " The Kaiser, of course ! When he heard that 
 my boy was ill, he remarked, turning on his heel : 
 ' How dare you come to my house under such circum- 
 stances ? ' " 
 
 That, needless to say, happened before the anonymous 
 letter scandal, and at the time when Frau von Kotze 
 prided herself upon her particularly friendly relations 
 with his Majesty. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PRIVATE APARTMENTS OF THEIR MAJESTIES HOME 
 LIFE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS 
 DAILY LIFE OF WILLIAM II. 
 
 THEIR Majesties' bedroom opens, by a richly ornamented 
 folding-door, into the Kaiserin's study on the second floor 
 of the Neues Palais, and is connected with the toilet and 
 bath closets belonging to the respective suites. It has 
 two high windows, and is lofty and spacious, but sadly 
 lacks the harmony in colour and general furnishings that 
 is the main charm of a really beautiful apartment, such 
 as this is intended to be. Indeed, the Kaiserin tired of 
 it long ago, and would gladly exchange its treasures, one 
 and all, for new things, though the room was fitted up 
 entirely after her own suggestion. What first upset the 
 Empress was the graceful and exquisite style of Neu- 
 Glienecke, the property of her brother-in-law and sister, 
 Prince and Princess Frederick Leopold of Prussia, the 
 richest of the Hohenzollerns. This castle, situated near 
 Potsdam, was rebuilt soon after William's accession to the 
 throne. Having thoroughly redecorated and refitted the 
 palace in the latest and most sumptuous manner, their 
 Royal Highnesses gave a house-warming in the summer of 
 1891. From this her Majesty returned in high dudgeon, 
 and, on entering her own bedroom, where I was busy 
 arranging some flowers, she exclaimed : " How poor it 'all 
 looks ! If one judged mine and Louise's positions from 
 our surroundings, I might be taken for a mere appanaged 
 
20 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 princess, while my sister would easily pass for the Kaiserin. 
 She has everything of the latest the German Empress 
 must content herself with the remnants of centuries scattered 
 among Berlin-made show-pieces." 
 
 Kings, after all, are but men, and the Glienecke house- 
 warming cost William exactly 80,000 marks, though the 
 Kaiserin would fain have seen him expend ten times that 
 amount. As it was, he consented to the renewal of the bed- 
 room hangings and upholstery, which are of the heaviest 
 damask, the groundwork being a peculiar sandy grey with 
 large yellow flowers in bold relief, a pattern and material 
 that connoisseurs intuitively associate with the graceful 
 and superb age of Louis XIV. or XV. The original was, 
 in fact, a present of Madame Pompadour to the great 
 Frederick, for at one period of their lives they were on 
 friendly terms. Of course, by the time it passed into 
 William's hands it had faded ; but in the mellowness of 
 age it was still exceedingly beautiful, far more so than 
 the new draperies. 
 
 But those old silks, that in their early days probably 
 witnessed the jealous quarrels between the Margravine of 
 Bayreuth and her doltish husband, and heard Queen Ulrique 
 (of Sweden) recount to Princess Amalia her disputes with 
 those " contumacious senators of hers," who once de- 
 manded sight and count of the crown jewels : " There 
 they are, view them, count them, lock them up ; never 
 more will I wear one of them," said her proud Majesty, 
 but those old silks were no more beautiful with 
 the charm historic associations lend to things than the 
 Elizabethan bed that stood, until the summer of 1892, in 
 the alcove nearest the door. 
 
 A right royal couch was that in which, during the first 
 years of their reign, the Emperor and Empress slept 
 magnificent and stately, a fitting companion-piece, with its 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 21 
 
 canopy and curtains, to that world-famed four-poster, the 
 Bed of Ware, which could be enclosed on all sides by 
 tapestries, and whereto the King and Queen retired in 
 full sight of all their retainers lying around on the straw- 
 covered floor with doublets and petticoats for pillows, and 
 " full of good wine each mother's son and daughter of 
 them." 
 
 How the Kaiser liked this old bed, with its heraldic 
 designs, and upholstered side-pieces, whereon he could 
 sit comfortably, smoking a cigarette and reading a novel 
 by the light of the single wax candle standing on a little 
 table near his end of the couch ! But, lo I " those 
 Frederick Leopolds " acquired modern English bedsteads, 
 and, woman-like, Auguste Victoria would not allow her 
 sister to eclipse her in being up to date. 
 
 So one fine day the lying-in beds were ordered home 
 from Charlottenburg castle, their usual storage-place, and, 
 the antique couch being sent upstairs, these things of brass 
 and the mode were put up near the windows, to the intense 
 alarm of the physicians, who feared they had made another 
 miscalculation, and of relatives and friends who anticipated 
 a catastrophe like that following the Pasewalk review, 
 mentioned elsewhere. Of course, it was a false alarm, 
 and our pretty Princess Louise was " regularly born " on 
 September 13, 1892. 
 
 That the Emperor, at the bottom of his heart, has his 
 doubts as to the propriety of using a common factory- 
 made bedstead as the cradle of kings, is evident from the 
 fact that for some time these brass affairs had to be re- 
 moved every morning, while in their place the Elizabethan 
 couch was set up ; but the order, which evoked no end of 
 dissatisfaction among the servants, gradually fell into 
 disuse, and nowadays the triumph of brass over stately 
 splendour is complete in the bedroom, at least. 
 
22 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 As every domestic arrangement in the palace is fashioned 
 with a view to insure the preservation of the Kaiser's 
 health, the doors and windows near the imperial bed are 
 doubly screened by heavy curtains, summer and winter ; 
 for the faintest possibility of draughts is dreaded, and 
 even the down quilts and blankets are so fastened at the 
 bottom and sides that their Majesties must needs crawl 
 into bed one leg at a time, there being only a breadth of 
 about twenty inches left open. 
 
 The Hohenzollern household has never enjoyed a reputa- 
 tion for more than superficial opulence, and the paucity of its 
 linen has often been the subject of ill-natured comment at 
 other courts a state of affairs which the present Emperor's 
 English mother tried to correct by large purchases during 
 the reign of ninety-nine days ; but when, after Frederick's 
 death, trouble arose as to who was to pay the bills for these 
 extravagances Court-marshal von Liebenau designated 
 them so in his junker-like contempt for English notions of 
 nicety her Majesty removed most of the newly acquired 
 house-linen, and her successors, in consequence, often ex- 
 perience the chagrin of sleeping between sheets only partly 
 fresh, especially in winter, when there are difficulties about 
 drying liner. To be sure, Auguste Victoria has laid down 
 a rule, stipulating that the royal couch be furnished with 
 clean linen every day in the year ; but as there is only a 
 very limited stock to draw from, it happens sometimes 
 that only one clean sheet is obtainable, and, in that case, 
 the upper sheet of the two used on the previous night is 
 taken for the under. Whenever that happens, her Majesty 
 is exceedingly anxious that the Kaiser should not find it 
 out, for, as may be well imagined, such evidence of 
 penury would be likely to jar on his notions of divine 
 appointment. If one thinks oneself little short of Deity, 
 it must be exceedingly embarrassing to discover that 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 23 
 
 one's linen chest affords only a single sheet at certain 
 seasons. 
 
 While the room contains some exquisite pieces of fur- 
 niture, it can, as stated, scarcely be considered in good 
 taste. The lounge and some armchairs are covered in red, 
 while two sofas are of the colour of the wall-hangings and 
 draperies. Then there are wicker chairs with silk cushions 
 covered with muslin, a crystal chandelier and bronze cande- 
 labra, a blue carpet, and vases and flower-pots of different 
 styles, painted or majolica ware, besides Japanese tables, 
 bamboo chairs, and masterpieces of Boule and marqueterie 
 a " regular second-hand dealer's shop," as the Empress's 
 mother, the Dowager Duchess of Schleswig, once said in 
 one of her bright moments. 
 
 The wicker chairs, by the way, have a history. In 
 September, 1894, when the Kaiser was absent at the 
 manoeuvres with the King of Saxony, her Majesty, to 
 kill time, which never hangs more heavily upon her hands 
 than when her lord is away from home, conceived the idea 
 of painting the basket settees a bright lilac. It was to 
 be a surprise for William upon his return. 
 
 " Before we go to bed, I will ask the Kaiser to sit down 
 in his favourite seat for a moment, and then I will sud- 
 denly turn up the lamps, exhibiting my work. Won't he 
 be pleased ? " her Majesty had remarked to Fraulein von 
 Gersdorff. 
 
 The latter acquiesced, as a matter of course, and both 
 ladies started in upon the task at once, spoiling many 
 pairs of gloves, besides their dresses and a carpet worth a 
 whole regiment of wicker chairs. But this mattered little, 
 seeing that, after several tins of mixed paint and a bottle 
 of turpentine had been consumed, the chef-d'oeuvre was com- 
 plete. It was the day before William was expected back. 
 
 " But will they be dry in time ? " asked a Lady of 
 
24 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 the Court, Grafin Keller, when all the ladies of her Majesty 
 had been called together to view this first attempt at 
 household decoration. 
 
 " Certainly," said the Kaiserin, with a laugh ; " Kam- 
 merdiener Luck made inquiries for me at the paint shop, 
 and I followed the directions to the letter." 
 
 Next evening their Majesties retired in high glee, being 
 well satisfied at their reunion, and the Empress's little 
 programme seems to have worked to perfection till but 
 let her Majesty tell her own story. 
 
 " No sooner were the lights turned on," reported Auguste 
 Victoria to her first Lady, Countess Brockdorff, the fol- 
 lowing day, " and while I myself was settling down in 
 the second chair, when I saw the Emperor start up half 
 surprised, half angry, with his hands and other portions 
 of his body thickly besmeared with pigment that, I 
 felt to my horror, also adhered to my body. With the 
 Kaiser, you know, cleanliness is almost a passion, and 
 his repugnance to coming into contact with anything 
 like wet paint is so great that he cannot help losing his 
 temper. 
 
 " ' My dear,' he said, ' this is a sorry joke.' And 
 neither explanations nor excuses were of the slightest 
 avail. 
 
 " ' Ring for turpentine.' That is all he would say. 
 
 " I awakened Haake, and told her to order Madame 
 von Larisch to send up a bottle of the stuff ; but, need- 
 less to say, she had none on hand. Then the Emperor 
 demanded that one of the body gendarmes ride into town 
 and fetch a bottle. Like a simpleton, he awakened the 
 apothecary, only to be told that he must go to a drug 
 store. Drug stores, as you know, have no night-bells, 
 and are not obliged to serve customers after the ordinary 
 closing time. It took the gendarme a full hour to get 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 25 
 
 what he wanted, and even then he was obliged to invoke 
 aid from a military patrol. 
 
 " The next thirty or forty minutes I spent in cleansing 
 my lord's legs, arms, and hands, and afterward poor 
 Haake had to do the same for me. It was the most 
 miserable night I ever experienced." 
 
 While, as stated, this imperial bedroom is remarkable 
 neither for great splendour nor simplicity we expect to 
 encounter the one or the other extreme in such a place 
 it is not without psychological interest. There is the 
 Emperor's night table, for instance, whose upper drawer, 
 at night always half open, contains a self-cocking revolver, 
 fully loaded. 
 
 If one reflects how unfamiliar such displays are to 
 women in Germany they do not in the least mind sabres 
 or guns the Empress's alarm at this thing of ivory, steel, 
 and silver may be imagined. Often how she has pleaded 
 with William to discard the weapon, but the Kaiser insists 
 upon having it near him. " If Alexander of Bulgaria 
 had slept with a pistol, he might have founded a 
 dynasty and perhaps be still alive," is one of his argu- 
 ments a queer one, to say the least. As a matter of 
 fact, the sister of one of the conspirators who conducted 
 him to Reni, August 21, 1886, kept Alexander company 
 during the eventful night when abdication was forced 
 upon him, and this young lady was, under the circum- 
 stances, certainly better protection than any number of 
 weapons. A revolver might have been brushed aside ; with 
 a girl, vigorously taking her lover's part, it was not so 
 easy a matter. 
 
 Another gruesome object in the room is the so-called 
 Sterbekommode, an old mahogany chest of drawers, the 
 top of which is loaded with emblems of death and sorrow* 
 In the centre stands a large engraving, in a brown 
 
26 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 carved frame, representing our Saviour with the Crown of 
 Thorns, his eyes looking heavenward, while at the sides 
 are placed portraits of the Emperors William I. and 
 Frederick III., of the late Empress Augusta, and Ludwig 
 of Bavaria, all clad in shrouds. These pictures were made 
 especially for his Majesty, and are not procurable any- 
 where. Strange to say, this morbid memento mori has to 
 be set up in every imperial residence where the Court stops 
 for any length of time. It is carted from Potsdam to 
 Berlin, from there to Wilhelmshoehe, to Kiel, to Hubertus- 
 stock, to the yacht Hohemollern, and to the Rominten 
 hunting-box. 
 
 The Kaiser is a good husband, and is adored by his wife. 
 That Auguste Victoria's love for him is only equalled by 
 her fear of him is perhaps not his fault. He was heir to 
 a mighty crown when he married her she, the daughter of 
 a penniless pretender who had to sign away his hereditary 
 rights to the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein before the 
 engagement was ratified by the old Kaiser, and Prussia 
 granted him the indemnity of 15,000 per year, on which 
 the family is now struggling along. 
 
 The consciousness of this humiliating bargain on the 
 one hand, and of William's overpowering egotism on the 
 other, have sufficed to make a wife, constitutionally not 
 without energy, like wax in his hand. 
 
 Sitting one night in the Royal box at the Opera House 
 with Duke Gunther of Schleswig, I heard him laugh im- 
 moderately at the remark of a stage hero, who, being asked : 
 " Do you ever quarrel ? " briskly replied : " No, not if I 
 have my own way." 
 
 " It reminds me so much of my beloved brother-in-law 
 and sister," said his Highness ; " they never fight, because 
 he sees to it that his slightest whims are obeyed, nay, 
 more, anticipated." 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 27 
 
 That fits the case exactly : William for ever enforcing 
 his own will, his notions, his idiosyncrasies, and downright 
 crazes by sheer force of sublime egomania ; the Kaiserin 
 perpetually in a flutter to carry out his demands and make 
 everybody else dance to the imperial piper's tune ! Only 
 in one respect does he consult her Majesty's wishes with- 
 out reference to his own inclination ; namely, by hardly 
 ever absenting himself from the marriage-bed when at home. 
 
 A rough estimate, gathered from the Kaiser's printed 
 calendars that are published for the benefit of court officials, 
 body-servants, and newspapers, and minutely set forth 
 how and where his Majesty spends his time, or is supposed 
 to spend it, would seem to indicate that in the course of 
 a year he is home about one hundred days that is, for 
 one hundred days he lives with her Majesty under the 
 same roof ; but this circumstance does not in any way 
 indicate that their Majesties take their meals together, or 
 even see each other daily, except in bed and at breakfast. 
 I clip at random one of those daily programmes : 
 
 9.15 A.M. Report by the chief of the military cabinet. 
 
 10.30 A.M. Report by the Chancellor. 
 
 12.30 P.M. Audience to newly appointed army officers. 
 Luncheon on the train. 
 
 2 P.M. Departure for hunt at Count Finkenstein's. At 
 midnight, return to the Neues Palais. 
 
 Or take another day : 
 
 9 A.M. Review of the Regiment on the Born- 
 
 stedter Feld. 
 
 1.30 P.M. Luncheon in the mess-room. 
 
 6 P.M. Dinner with the officers of the Garde du Corps. 
 Hour of return not stated. 
 
 The reader perceives an interval of several hours between 
 luncheon and dinner, which might be devoted to wife and 
 children ; but it must not be forgotten that a person so 
 
28 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 continually on the move as the Emperor needs a corre- 
 sponding amount of rest, repose, and freshening up, even 
 though in the bright lexicon of William there may be no 
 such word as knocking off. Unofficially, the Kaiser retires 
 to his dressing-room after luncheon, goes to his little 
 bachelor bed, sleeps an hour and a half, and then jumps 
 into a hot bath, followed by an ablution of cold sea-water. 
 That, of course, puts new vigour into him, and makes him 
 ready for the evening's campaign, but his family see him 
 not in the interim. 
 
 Though William never pays the slightest attention to 
 time-tables, a special train being good enough for him at 
 any season, he is enough of a Potsdamer to return home at 
 midnight when the Court is established in the Neues Palais. 
 Naturally, nobody, who is anybody, is astir at that hour, 
 but that does not prevent him from making as much noise 
 as if it were noon : clatter of wheels and hoofs, horses 
 driven at breakneck speed, sentinels shouting and striking 
 their fire-arms on the pavement, seneschal, adjutants, 
 porters, secretaries, footmen, and valets standing at atten- 
 tion, or flying hither and thither, and all candles and lamps 
 in the passage-ways and rooms blazing forth. Perish the 
 sleep of retainers when the lord is awake ! 
 
 These midnight specials are bad enough ; but when the 
 fleet-footed four-in-hand is pressed into service for journeys 
 to and from Berlin, her Majesty's eyes grow red with 
 weeping, and her maids wish themselves far away ; for, 
 as to home-coming, the quartet of Hungarian greys is 
 even less reliable than the railway, while starting-hour and 
 chance stops on the way are alike mysteries. Ah ! to be 
 German Empress is not all that it may seem by any 
 means. 
 
 But the worst of it is when the calendar reads : " His 
 Majesty intends to spend the night at the Berlin Schloss." 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 29 
 
 True, that big pile has no Palais Netherland connected 
 with it by a covered archway as the palace Unter den 
 Linden where William's grandfather dwelt in his salad 
 days, the old man used this convenience for nocturnal 
 poaching trips on strange preserves acclimated in the 
 Netherland mansion ; but the Schloss is so large, has so 
 many entrances, and there are so many people living in it, 
 that the arrival of a lady more or less would not evoke the 
 slightest comment among the sentinels and doorkeepers. 
 \Vhat opportunities ! WTiat food for jealous reilection ! 
 
 Whether William is away for a couple of days, or a 
 week, or a month, he never writes to the Kaiserin, either 
 directly or in answer to letters received from her. His 
 adjutants, or other officers on duty, must attend to this 
 as to every other item of correspondence, and such enter- 
 taining news as : " His Majesty arrived, or departed, 
 safely ; glorious reception ; " or, " His Majesty shot so 
 many hares, stuck a prodigious number of pigs, or killed 
 so many deer or buck ; weather such and such " signed, 
 House-marshal von Lyncker, or Master of the Hounds 
 often form the only link between the imperial minds for 
 many weeks. Always of tantalising uniformity, the scanti- 
 ness of these messages is indeed strange, considering that 
 they are sent toll-free. 
 
 But if the Empress has to be satisfied with meagre 
 tidings of her lord, the Kaiser gets along on even less home 
 intelligence. Though her Majesty writes by every mail, 
 it would never do to lose precious minutes that might be 
 spent in amusement or sight-seeing by opening his wife's 
 letters, the more so when one is sure they contain only 
 nothingnesses (for items of interest must be telegraphed) ; 
 but, at the same time, ignorance of any of the petty in- 
 formation forwarded with such touching regularity might 
 cause vexation and suspicion. So the Emperor diversifies 
 
30 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 the return trips from his jaunts by carefully studying all 
 the missives received from Auguste Victoria day by day 
 not an original method among husbands, I surmise. 
 I A continuous source of amusement to his Majesty are 
 the minute accounts of his daily labours in the vineyard of 
 state-craft, and of almost any other vocation imaginable, pub- 
 lished in books, magazines, pamphlets, and newspapers with 
 a minuteness of detail and conceived in a know-all vein 
 of assurance, interlarded with " deepest " and " highest " 
 admiration, that make them soul-stirring and pathetic. 
 
 These descriptions of what is indescribable (for the 
 greater part of the labours ascribed to his Majesty are 
 creations of the authors' fancies) commenced to pour in 
 on us almost with the beginning of the present reign ; but 
 the Kaiser's speech to the municipal council of Berlin, 
 on October 27, 1888, when he protested against the imputa- 
 tion that he travelled around for the fun of the thing, gave 
 it its real momentum. 
 
 " I have placed my health and all my bodily resources 
 in jeopardy to serve the cause of peace and to promote 
 the Fatherland's prosperity by visiting allies and friends 
 in all parts of the world," he cried ; and German opinion, 
 always ready to be corrected, at once changed its sing- 
 song of the Kaiser-on-the-tramp into that of the Kaiser-at- 
 work ; and ever since have sycophants and mere imitators 
 pronounced William a veritable perpetual motion of useful 
 activity. 
 
 I do not propose to weary the reader by attempting a 
 detailed account of the Kaiser's employments of when 
 he deigns to get up and when he " graciously " retires ; 
 works at governing, and governs the work of others ; 
 listens to reports and asserts himself ; fences, rides, drives, 
 and what not. These are matters for the official chronicler 
 to record, and the reader will find them nicely done up 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 31 
 
 parcels, bound with black, white, and red ribbons, in 
 Mr. Bigelow's various accounts of the Kaiser's life as the 
 Kaiser sees it that life which is but a " whirligig of hard 
 labour for the good of the people and for the peace of 
 Europe," or else an attempt to square accounts with the 
 Supreme Creator. The Kaiser imagines he is going through 
 one of these high-minded performances continuously, 
 whether he draws plans for an impossible battle-ship, or 
 part of the civil list, whether he risks his bones in a Troika 
 driven by a German, who knows no more about handling 
 three Asiatic stallions l than I do about cutting diamonds, 
 or reads a speech from the throne : it is all fish in the net 
 of imperial aggrandisement thrown out at random to en- 
 twine loyal minds at home and abroad people who think 
 it an honour to be dazzled by princes, and "wink quite 
 honestly at royal radiance." 
 
 The underlying idea of Bigelow's and kindred efforts is 
 to keep up the myth of incessant service rendered to the 
 crown, a martyrdom of work broken occasionally by a 
 stroke of genius, such as writing a novel, painting a land- 
 scape, conceiving a series of allegorical pictures, composing 
 music, or inventing this, that, or the other thing. 
 
 I do not deny that the Emperor performs these 
 various tasks after a fashion that will be explained in 
 another place ; but I gainsay the Herculean nature im- 
 puted to most of them, and, furthermore, distinctly reject 
 the idea that they are undertaken to alleviate a mind 
 staggering under the weight of responsibilities and burdened 
 by excessive desk-work. We can well imagine Frederick II. 
 ordering a flute concert to be improvised after a day's 
 bloody work in the field, or following a disgusting parley 
 
 1 The Russian coachman whom Czar Alexander sent along when he pre- 
 sented the Kaiser with the famous vehicle, in the summer of 1890, was dismissed 
 because he had the hardihood to ask 200 marks salary per month, and the 
 native succeeding him promptly wrecked the Troika. 
 
32 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 with his brother-counterfeiters. 1 Napoleon, flying from 
 victory to victory in Italy, needed nothing so much 
 as his courtesan-like Josephine ; but these were men of 
 consummate brain-power, men who, after tiring out twenty 
 geniuses a day, needed but the tonic of sweet melodies, 
 or an heure du berger, to be ready for another siege of 
 labour. 
 
 William is not made of the clay of the philosopher of 
 Sans Souci, nor of that of the lion of St. Helena, be he 
 ever so clever a masquer ader in the lion's skin. At school 
 and at college the highest degree attained by him was 
 satisfactory " ; another pupil, being no more satisfac- 
 tory, would probably have been called incompetent. His 
 attempt at handling large masses of troops, in the presence 
 of the Emperor of Austria and the King of Saxony, in 
 Silesia, September, 1890, led to disaster, while Count 
 Waldersee preferred to resign as chief of the General Staff 
 rather than permit the Emperor to meddle with his de- 
 partment and " periodically " discharge batteries of well- 
 meant ignorance at him, as the General told Bismarck 
 during a visit to Friedrichsruhe shortly after assuming 
 command of the Ninth Corps. 
 
 " My indefatigability," " my prowess," are perpetual 
 themes with the Kaiser, and " You should have seen von 
 Hiilsen or von Kessel (both adjutants) puff and gasp after 
 our half-hour's fencing, while I was as fresh as if I had 
 just stepped from my bath," is one of his favourite boasts. 
 He omits, however, to state, that, while wearing a linen 
 jacket himself, these functionaries are encased in their 
 stiff-collared, long-f rocked uniforms, weighted down by 
 
 1 During the Seven Years' War, Frederick II., assuming the royal privilege 
 of raising the revenue, resorted to the coinage of millions of Thalers of about half 
 the value of the standard coin ; these he imprinted with the effigies of the Prince 
 of Bernburg and the King of Poland, and forced their circulation among the 
 people of the subjugated districts. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 33 
 
 silver tassels and braids, and with a heavy sabre at their 
 side, labouring, moreover, under the difficulty of having to 
 court defeat, for it would not only be imprudent, but even 
 dangerous, to forestall William's exultations. No wonder 
 the gentlemen lose their breath. 
 
 As Caligula wished that the Roman people had but 
 one neck that he might cut it off, so the Kaiser would like 
 to see the entire military force of the Fatherland personi- 
 fied in one being, that he might practise on it as on a lay 
 figure march, turn about face, take the ditch, prostrate 
 yourself, stand on your head but, considering that the 
 Reichstag has a voice in the matter of public expenditure, 
 his Majesty must be content to keep but two adjutants 
 continuously employed. These gentlemen, together with 
 the members of the military household, including repre- 
 sentatives of all arms and of the navy, rarely leave the 
 Kaiser's presence. Their office adjoins his Majesty's study 
 on one side, and is connected with the orderlies' room on 
 the other, wherever the Court is established. 
 
 Nearer to the Kaiser than all these faithful servants 
 are his two Dachshunds, called Teckels, biting, snarling 
 little brutes with jaws measuring half the length of their 
 smooth bodies, and a corresponding penchant for people's 
 calves, skirts, and petticoats. Except to the bedroom, 
 from which they are excluded out of respect for the 
 Empress's legs, these pets follow his Majesty everywhere, 
 and when they make inroads on folks' flesh and blood, 
 or clothes, William, who protects and coddles them, thinks 
 it huge fun. 
 
 Whether the cunning Teckels know their imperial 
 patron's overpowering position, I cannot say ; but it looks 
 almost like it, for, in the exuberance of their mischievous 
 spirits, even the little propriety pounded into them in 
 their earliest youth is now neglected, and Court-marshal 
 
 c 
 
34 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 von Eulenburg, whose pleasant duty it is to make both 
 ends meet in the royal menage, has his hands full covering 
 up the damage to furniture, decorations, and bric-a-brac 
 in the Teckels' path, or to such articles as they are able 
 to reach by high vaults and other caprioles that the Kaiser 
 has taught them. 
 
 " Why don't you poison the beasts ? " once said Eulen- 
 burg's colleague, pious Baron von Mirbach, who is on the 
 Empress's staff, when his Excellency had wearied him with 
 a jeremiad about the Dachshunds' wickedness. 
 
 " I have thought of that myself, and would gladly 
 go to this extremity, seeing that it meets with your most 
 Christian approval, if I were sure that there would be no 
 successors. But his Majesty might take it into his head 
 to surround himself with Danish hounds, like Bismarck, 
 and then none of us would be safe." 
 
 A very funny incident in connection with the Teckels 
 happened in the winter of 1893, at the Berlin Schloss, 
 when a select company, in which ladies in grand toilet 
 predominated, had assembled at 1.15 P.M., in the Pillar 
 Room, to await their Majesties' coming, in order to form 
 the usual procession to the dining-hall, where a ceremoni- 
 ous breakfast awaited us. 
 
 As is customary, her Majesty's Dames du jour, Countess 
 Keller and Fraulein von Gersdorff, stood a little ahead of 
 the rest, facing the door through which her Majesty was 
 to enter, and, the august hosts being expected at any 
 moment, everybody was on the alert. 
 
 Suddenly the portals opened bowings and scrapings, 
 and most submissive salutations but, lo ! only the Dachs- 
 hunds rushed in. 
 
 " Peste ! " said Herr von Egloffstein, who stood at my 
 side ; while Prince Frederick Leopold, coming in just then, 
 remarked : "I would give anything to have on jack-boots 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 35 
 
 and spurs ! Wouldn't I whisk them off, or at least one 
 of the litter, through the window ! " 
 
 The Teckels, on their part, had no sooner caught sight 
 of the silk stockings of the courtiers, than they began to 
 bark menacingly, causing these worthies, who ten seconds 
 before had paraded their calves with much gusto, to with- 
 draw behind the ladies they were to escort. But these 
 precautionary measures w^"e seemingly superfluous, as the 
 Kaiser's pets showed no particular desire for a bite that 
 afternoon. Instead, each separately squatted down before 
 Mesdames von Keller and von Gersdorff, and conducted 
 himself in the most reprehensible fashion. Perfidious 
 Teckels! all the floggings and nose-rubbings the fancier 
 had applied for that very thing were forgotten, and, worst 
 of all, the Kaiser, her Majesty upon his arm, and, like her, 
 en grande tenue, entered at that very moment ; so with- 
 drawal on the part of Keller and Gersdorff was out of the 
 question. On the contrary, the unhappy ladies were obliged 
 to bow low, bending from the waist at an angle of forty-five 
 degrees, while the Teckels, much relieved, clambered up his 
 Majesty's hussar boots, wagging their funny tails. 
 
 " Oh ! you bad boys ! " cried the Kaiser, having taken 
 in the situation at a glance ; "if you do that again, I will 
 have you birched yes, indeed I will," he added, seeing 
 ironic smiles all around. Then he had a fit of laughter 
 that made him hold his sides, and which resounded through 
 the hall. He even sought to inveigle the Empress into 
 joining in his merriment ; but her Majesty ignored him, 
 and, blushing deeply, drew her consort out of the room. 
 
 The Teckels remained in the Pillar Hall while we break- 
 fasted, and amused themselves by tearing into little pieces 
 a beautiful fan which Countess Piickler, nee Countess von 
 der Schulenburg, who was one of the Empress's ladies 
 before her marriage, had left behind. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 WILLIAM II. AND MR. VANDERBILT THE EMPEROR'S STUDY 
 HIS PERSONAL HABITS HIS WARDROBE AND TOILET- 
 ROOMKING LEOPOLD OF BELGIUM. 
 
 ONLY during the absence of their Majesties are visitors 
 admitted to the Neues Palais a rule from which there is 
 absolutely no appeal. Even Mr. William K. Vanderbilt, 
 whom the Emperor personally regards as the very nchest 
 man in the world the Kaiser has not a great head for 
 figures, as already shown even Mr. Vanderbilt, I say, was 
 on one occasion turned away from our gate like a beggar, 
 or some Hungry Joe of the road. It happened in October, 
 1891, and made quite a stir in the palace. 
 
 Mr. Vanderbilt, it appears, had driven to the castle over 
 the royal highway, and his coach was about to enter one 
 of the outer gates, when the sentinel stationed there, 
 observing the lack of a known and so-called " courtly ' 
 livery on the part of the driver and footman, stopped the 
 horses and demanded a card of admission. 
 
 "This is his Majesty's friend," said Jacques Hartog, 
 Mr. Vanderbilt's courier, with an air of magnificent assur- 
 ance, but the soldier only stared the harder. 
 
 " Your pass, Herr ! " repeated the infantryman. 
 
 " You don't understand things. This is Mr. Vanderbilt, 
 the American millionaire ! " Hartog was pleading now. 
 
 As the word "American" struck the sentinel's long 
 ears, he raised his gun, for his lieutenant had taught 
 him' that the United States is "one of those confounded 
 
 36 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 37 
 
 republics," totally devoid of a king, or princes, or even a 
 respectable standing army. 
 
 " Kutscher" he commanded, in his most pompous voice, 
 and apparently unmindful of Hartog's very existence 
 " Kutscher, right about face, forward march ! March, I 
 say, and march, a third time, or I will shoot ! " 
 
 The guardsman kept his gun levelled on the intruders 
 until the coach containing the lord of twice as many good, 
 round dollars as the Emperor has subjects vanished behind 
 a cloud of fine white dust, and there is no telling what would 
 have happened if Hartog, who has a well-established repu- 
 tation for pugnaciousness and obstinacy, had endeavoured 
 to run the blockade in order to please his rich patron ; for 
 these sentinels carry sharp cartridges, and if they shoot 
 and they often do so on windy provocation they fire to 
 kill. 
 
 I cannot remember now whether the public honouring 
 by the Emperor of a sentinel, who, while on duty, shot 
 down some poor wretch, happened previously to Mr. Van- 
 derbilt's unsuccessful attempt to visit the royal domain, or 
 not. In that case, his Majesty called the offender to the 
 front, shook him by the hand, and assured him of his royal 
 grace, saying : " I am proud to commend you as an 
 obedient and courageous soldier ; such devotion as yours 
 will always meet with my highest approval," or words to 
 that effect. But I do know that the meeting was earnestly 
 discussed in the imperial family and the castle about a 
 month later, after the Emperor had delivered his famous 
 speech at the swearing-in of the Potsdam recruits. There 
 are two versions of that address. The one which the 
 majority of newspapers printed at the time, reads : " Chil- 
 dren of my guard, you are now my soldiers mine, body 
 and soul ! You have sworn to obey all my commands ; 
 you must follow my rules and my advice without grumbling. 
 
38 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 It means that, from this day on, you durst know but one 
 enemy, and that enemy is my enemy. And if I command 
 you some day and may God grant that I am never driven 
 to this extremity if I command you, I repeat, to fire 
 upon your own relatives, your sisters and parents perhaps, 
 remember your oath ! " 
 
 That version is terrible enough ; but, compared with 
 the original draft of the speech, which I happen to have 
 seen on the Kaiser's desk, the words actually said may 
 be almost characterised as tame. 
 
 There it was, in William's tall, forcibly-rounded hand : 
 
 " Recruits ! Remember that the German army must 
 be as ready to fight enemies that may rise in our midst, 
 as foreign foes. To-day, disbelief and malcontent are 
 rampant in the Fatherland to a heretofore unheard-of 
 degree ; consequently, I may call upon you at any time to 
 shoot down and strike to the ground (niederstechen) your 
 own relatives father and mother, sisters and brothers. My 
 orders in that respect must be executed cheerfully and with- 
 out grumbling, like any other command I may issue. You 
 must do your duty, no matter what your hearts' dictates 
 are. And now go home and attend to your new duties." 
 
 I came upon this document quite accidentally, the 
 Empress having ordered me to fetch from the desk in the 
 Kaiser's study the calendar whereon his Majesty's engage- 
 ments in and out of town are registered if I am not mis- 
 taken, my august mistress desired to know the date of the 
 Torgau jubilee (November 25) and the precious com- 
 position was written on blank spaces between the dates I 
 had to examine. " Monstrous ! " I thought, reading over 
 for the second time what William had the folly to indite 
 and not wit enough to keep to himself ; my heart trembled 
 with anxiety for both country and Emperor. And to 
 think that he memorised this murderous self-apotheosis 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 39 
 
 within earshot of his wife, and with his innocent babies 
 sleeping above ! And I involuntary keeper of a state 
 secret ! 
 
 It troubled me a good deal during the night, but next 
 morning's news quickly took the load off my shoulders, for 
 her Majesty remarked that the Kaiser was much pleased 
 with the impression his speech had produced that of 
 striking terror into the hearts of Socialists and others 
 opposed to the imperial will. 
 
 " But does not your Majesty fear misinterpretation on 
 the part of the over- zealous ? " I asked ; " the papers are 
 filled with reports about brutalities in the army, and about 
 the overbearing conduct of the military at all times. At 
 the unveiling of the Schloss Fountain in Berlin, I even 
 heard a rumour that a Mr. Vanderbilt came near being 
 shot while driving toward the Neues Palais." 
 
 That was a lighted match into a powder-barrel ! Her 
 Majesty caused inquiries to be ma.de at once, and mean- 
 while got all her ladies together to discuss the exigencies 
 of the case. Of course, in their opinion, it would not 
 matter much if an ordinary mortal is killed by a sentinel ; 
 but the richest man in the world ! that was another thing. 
 Would, in such a contingency, the United States declare 
 war against Germany ? 
 
 The Countesses Bassewitz and Brockdorff wished it 
 would, for they have relatives in the navy ; but when I 
 suggested that the Yankees might prefer to take it out 
 of German commerce, her Majesty became thoughtful. 
 
 " I have heard the Kaiser remark that the Vanderbilt s 
 could cripple the finances of the entire universe," she 
 said ; "if that sentinel had shot him, his brothers and 
 heirs might drive our, good Miquel to suicide." 
 
 While we were talking, Kammerdiener Nolte arrived 
 with the information of the Vanderbilt incident mentioned 
 
40 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 in the beginning of this chapter, and additional news that 
 Court - marshal von Mirbach had especially advised the 
 millionaire that it was impossible to view the palace at the 
 time, owing to the presence of the Empress. 
 
 Revenons a nos moutons after this excursion into the 
 realms of state secrets and troubled finance. The Neues 
 Palais, I tried to explain, is but rarely open to the public, 
 and those fifty-eight rooms, of a total of two hundred, 
 inhabited by their Majesties, are, as a matter of course, 
 closed against intruders at all times. If, however, the 
 ordinary run of visitors were permitted to view the private 
 apartments of the imperial couple, they would quickly 
 come to the conclusion that, like a good paterfamilias, 
 the Kaiser allows his wife to keep for herself all bibelots 
 and curios, magnificent Boules and quaint rococos, which 
 past generations of royal Hohenzollerns have hoarded up, 
 and likewise the most beautiful pieces of furniture and 
 treasures of art newly acquired with the first William's 
 amassed fortune. 
 
 \J The Kaiser's upstairs study is a large, lofty room, 
 and, being the rostrum from which the Empire and the 
 whole world in general are addressed (who knows not the 
 date line : " Given at the Neues Palais " ?), I may be 
 pardoned for describing it in detail. The walls of this 
 historic chamber are hung with light-green damask, faded 
 to such an extent as to make the stuff look shabby in 
 spots, and the furniture is upholstered in the same material ; 
 net curtains, through the open-work of which green 
 ribbons run, frame the windows, two in number, while 
 the silk over-curtains are drawn back for the greater part 
 of the time. Near the door leading into the reception- 
 room rises one of those immense black marble mantels 
 that we encounter everywhere in the castle a fact further- 
 ing the suspicion that the builder, economically inclined 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 41 
 
 Frederick II., ordered them by the gross at a discount. 
 There is a small bronze clock on the mantel between two 
 candelabra, just as if this was the parlour of Herr Rechts- 
 anwalt Schmidt, or Frau Schlachtermeister Schultze, 
 and near the fire-place is the Emperor's writing-table, a 
 big, clumsy walnut affair with machine-turned feet, and 
 trimmings such as may be found in any well-regulated 
 household in 'Germany. The Berliner calls this monster 
 of stilted inelegancy " Diplomat's Desk," for what special 
 reason I do not know. When the Kaiser sits here, 
 he has his back toward the windows, while to the 
 right of him mighty folding-doors lead into a dressing- 
 room, which in turn connects with their Majesties' joint 
 sleeping apartment. 
 
 The hangings of the lower wall opposite the mantel 
 are hidden behind two immense Boule chests of drawers 
 with grey marble tops, specimens of the original Charles 
 Boule's handiwork, according to the register in the Court- 
 marshal's office. They have a veneer of tortoise-shell 
 backed by gold bronze, and the wood is as hard as iron. 
 One of these chests the Kaiser turned into a sort of pigeon- 
 hole for his official correspondence. 
 
 The tops of these beautifully-modelled antiques, as 
 well as that of the ugly Berlin-made desk, are literally 
 covered with marine views, charcoal sketches, and photo- 
 graphs of beautiful women, framed and unframed. As 
 is well known, both their Majesties have a passion for 
 photography ; but while her Majesty collects photographs 
 indiscriminately, the Kaiser shows a decided partiality 
 for those of charming women. True, he honours men 
 in the service of the Court or government, or of social 
 renown, quite frequently by requests for pictures ; but 
 on receiving them he invariably shuts them away where 
 the flies cannot get at them, while portraits of handsome 
 
42 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 princesses and other fair ones who made an impression 
 upon the imperial mind are everywhere in William's rooms 
 figures large and small, in all sorts of costumes, or even 
 distinguished by an absence of such ; plain pictures, silver 
 prints, in colours or painted over ; personal gifts, in- 
 scribed with sweet sentiments, or the output of art stores. 
 
 Among the likenesses regularly found on the Emperor's 
 writing-table, no matter whether he is at home or in his 
 private car, or visiting with relatives and friends, is one 
 of the Duchess of Aosta, nee Letitia Bonaparte, remark- 
 able for the fact that her Imperial Highness's overflow- 
 ing bust is uncovered except for a collar of pear-shaped 
 pearls. For this portrait the Kaiser professes a special 
 liking, because, he says, it reminds him of a certain master- 
 piece representing Letitia's great-grand-aunt, the Empress 
 Josephine. " Don't you think it does ? " he once, after 
 a lengthy dissertation on the point, asked his wife, who 
 cordially detests her cousin of Aosta. 
 
 " Maybe," answered her Majesty ; " but Josephine 
 might have exposed herself with impunity, for, I under- 
 stand, she had breasts of wax." 
 
 Another picture of the Duchess, usually found on the 
 Emperor's desk, is on more conventional lines, but, like 
 the first, it exhibits Letitia's magnificent arms and fine 
 hands to perfection. The significance of this will be 
 shown in another chapter, where the Kaiser's relations to 
 the fair sex are discussed. 
 
 Other picture favourites of his Majesty are the Grand 
 Duchess Vladimir, Lady Dudley, that " little Marie of 
 Edinburgh," whom William admires so much on account 
 of her motherly labours in the interest of a Roumanian 
 dynasty ; the Princess of Wales in Court dress, her finely 
 chiselled shoulders laden with jewels ; and Fraulein von 
 Bocklin, daughter of the Prussian General. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 43 
 
 This young lady figures occasionally in living pictures, 
 arranged by members of the Court society for charity 
 purposes, and, with her rich Titian hair, big blue eyes, 
 and chaste figure, is, perhaps, the most beautiful German 
 girl of the period. The Kaiser likes her best in antique 
 Greek costume, and Fraulein von Bocklin is under orders 
 to send to his Majesty a specimen copy of every photo- 
 graph she has taken. 
 
 I have almost forgotten to include in the above list 
 the beautiful Countess Goertz, of whom more later. 
 
 In front of a sofa with metal feet and frame stands a 
 marqueterie table of many-coloured woods inlaid, and of 
 very unique Holland design, which, needless to say, is 
 an inheritance from the great Frederick, who seems to 
 have been the only Prussian King endowed with a sense 
 of the truly beautiful. 
 
 To complete the inventory of the room, which is far 
 from luxurious, or even cosy, it is but necessary to mention 
 three or four armchairs, a big pier-glass with a marble con- 
 sole between the windows, a crystal chandelier hanging 
 from the gilded ceiling, and a lounge with a profusion of 
 loose cushions. The lounge, by the way, is worthy of 
 kings " that have no use for dressing-gowns," as the 
 Court-marshal of William I. once wrote to an enterprising 
 tailor who had presented his late Majesty with an elaborate 
 morning-wrapper. It is far too narrow and short to accom- 
 modate even so small a man as the Kaiser, and recalls the 
 benches in the Sans Souci picture-gallery, which were built 
 with the idea of producing the greatest possible amount of 
 discomfort, so that the King's pages occupying them might 
 not fall asleep. 
 
 A richly gilded folding-door connects the study with a 
 reception-room, which latter is chiefly notable for the air 
 of inoccupancy pervading every nook and corner of the 
 
44 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 great barn-like apartment. As a matter of fact, the Kaiser 
 uses it merely for a passage-way to the adjoining Marble 
 Hall, where presents and newly bought stuffs for decora- 
 tion, pictures or furniture, are placed on exhibition until 
 their Majesties decide where they shall go, while visitors 
 and friends are usually received in the lecture-room on 
 the ground-floor, so called because there ministers of state 
 and others deliver verbal reports, or take orders on current 
 business, and listen to his Majesty's sublime conceptions 
 of things. 
 
 The upper room is sparsely furnished with arm-chairs 
 and sofas, perhaps a hundred years old, but none the 
 more valuable on that account ; for neither the multi- 
 coloured pattern of the damask covering nor the carved 
 frames exhibit refined taste or originality. As in most 
 rooms of the castle, the wall and window hangings are of 
 the colour of the furniture, and the chandelier and mantel 
 like those in the study. 
 
 How well I remember this now neglected room when 
 not so many years ago, during the life- time of the then 
 Crown Prince, I was a guest at the palace. That happy 
 royal couple, Frederick William and Victoria, used it as 
 an antechamber to the Marble Hall, and in those days 
 the walls were draped with the grand tapestries that 
 Napoleon had presented to the Crown Princess. That 
 before her withdrawal from the castle Empress Frederick 
 removed the gobelins and shipped them to her palace 
 Unter den Linden, is but one of the many reasons why 
 the son does not like his thrifty mother. Indeed, history 
 repeats itself constantly in the highest as well as the lowest 
 strata of society. The Smith and Brown families are " all 
 torn up," because, at the apportioning of the estates, 
 Aunt Sarah or Cousin John grabbed an old clock or silver 
 teapot which Uncle Charles had coveted. The young 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 45 
 
 Kaiser admires tapestry, ii he need not buy it himself, 
 and thought his mother might leave the French Emperor's 
 gift where it showed to great advantage. Very naturally, 
 Victoria held a different view, and, presto ! , animosities 
 scarce buried raised their heads again. If her Majesty 
 had not been so quick about it, William might have en- 
 forced against his own mother the law providing that 
 articles of decoration attached to the walls cannot be 
 taken away by tenants. 
 
 / We now retrace our steps to the study, and from there 
 enter the Kaiser's dressing-room, treading all the while 
 on the thickest and heaviest of carpets, irrespective of 
 the season of the year, for the Kaiser detests the pro- 
 verbially slippery parquet of the Court, though, according 
 to a saying in vogue in Berlin, such a state of mind 
 bespeaks an inherent inability to maintain one's equili- 
 brium in most things. William, you must know, is never 
 quite sure of his legs, the left one, as stated, being liable 
 to give way at any time when his Majesty's mind is not 
 concentrated upon posing physically as well as mentally. 
 There are, besides, even with a character so continuously 
 on the alert as William II., hours in the day when he likes 
 to unbend and throw off that dignity of demeanour for 
 which his public and semi-public appearance is noted ; 
 when he becomes a plain aristocrat like the one whom he 
 takes for pattern in all things, who became plain " Fritz " 
 or " Pantagruel " after midnight, when" the friends of his 
 Muse were expected to help the conqueror-king to forget 
 the weight of greatness for a couple of hours. 
 
 Though personally I could no more imagine the Kaiser 
 associating with a lot of cynics and mountebanks, such as 
 Frederick kept to while away hours of leisure, than I 
 would expect him to attend a state ceremony in undress, 
 or with his mustache drooping, I can assure you, that 
 
46 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 in the seclusion of his chamber, he is a very different man 
 from the one that even the members of his titled house- 
 hold know. 
 
 ^JThat he ordered his own living rooms carpeted through- 
 out is against all tradition at the Berlin Court ; but as 
 nobody, who is anybody, invades his sanctum, why should 
 he trouble ? The small soirees, musicales, and receptions 
 are invariably held in the Empress's apartments, or the 
 semi-state-rooms of the parterre floor. On these occa- 
 sions the Kaiser considers himself the chief guest ; he 
 is the cynosure of all eyes, the pole-star that social and 
 political navigators must for ever consult to avoid wreck ; 
 there the drill-ground echo : " Attention ! " perpetually 
 dins in his ears : " Attention to your arm," " Attention, 
 your Majesty, your leg is giving way." 
 
 The strain must be awful ; and I am sure, when the 
 Kaiser in his speeches continuously refers to the labours 
 of his position, he thinks of this martyrdom inflicted by 
 his physical shortcomings, rather than of the many hun- 
 dred miles he puts between himself and respectable ennui 
 at his fireside, though wishing the public at all times to 
 think he is fairly killing himself so that " every peasant 
 in the kingdom shall have a fowl in his pot on Sundays." 
 
 The Kaiser's dressing-room is situated directly above 
 Emperor Frederick's death-chamber, which latter now 
 serves as a sort of corridor, from necessity rather than 
 irreverence, I should add, for, when the Neues Palais was 
 built, passage-ways leading to its great chambers were 
 forgotten for the most part, as King Frederick quarrelled 
 with the architect and finished the castle according to 
 his own unprofessional notions. The hangings, furniture- 
 coverings, and carpets are like those of the study, green 
 or red respectively, and here, too, the damask is much 
 the worse for wear in many places. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 47 
 
 As the windows of the chamber overlook the barracks 
 of the Lehr und Wehr Battalion, his Majesty, by simply 
 putting his head out of the window, could alarm the 
 garrison at any hour of the night or day ; but, strange 
 to say, this fancy never struck him, though he often travels 
 half the night to chase some poor regiment in a wayside 
 town or fortress out of Morpheus's and Heaven knows 
 whose arms at unearthly hours. 
 
 In a small alcove opposite the windows stands a single 
 brass bedstead with spring and horse-hair mattresses, whose 
 English arrangement of sheets, blankets, and chamois 
 cushions gives the servants perpetual cause for grumblings. 
 To the left of the alcove is the door leading into their 
 Majesties' joint bedroom, while on the other side a large 
 closet, built in the wall, contains the Kaiser's body-linen, 
 not much of it. All the historical half-dozen shirts a 
 Prussian monarch or prince is entitled to are there, but, 
 horribile dictu, the article is innocent of cuffs, a commodity 
 William attaches with the aid of buttons and pulleys, like 
 any poor lieutenant. Of socks, never above a dozen pairs 
 are in use, half-yellow, half-brown, and, like the under- 
 wear, of lisle thread ; but the Hohenzollern house laws 
 evidently impose no restriction as to handkerchiefs, which 
 seem to come by the gross, all, like the shirts, drawers, and 
 socks, inscribed with " W " and the royal crown. 
 
 While the modern articles of furniture heretofore men- 
 tioned are of the most ordinary description store-goods, 
 and not the most expensive, either his Majesty's wash- 
 stand is of truly royal dimensions and elaborateness, 
 occupying the best part of the rear wall at the side of 
 the mantel. It is made of light wood, with an imposing 
 marble top and shelves, decorated with handsome crystals 
 and silver boxes, carafes, brushes, and jugs. Was ever 
 King of Prussia, or a Holy Roman Emperor of German 
 
48 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 nationality, so well fixed in respect to toilet requisites ? 
 And would William be that wonder of neatness to all the 
 people in his employ, if it were not for his English mother ? 
 Such questions are constantly agitated in the palace among 
 the servants as well as the officials, for the laundresses, 
 and especially the maids who attend to the royal chamber, 
 carrying up three flights of stairs the oceans of hot and 
 cold water his Majesty requires continuously during the 
 day till late at night, regard William's passion for cleanli- 
 ness as little short of crime, and the Court-marshal has his 
 hands full pacifying the overworked and discharging the 
 sulky, particularly those dragging the Empress Frederick's 
 name into the discussion. 
 
 " I should think myself in heaven," said my mistress 
 some time ago after reading a magazine article to the effect 
 that even the bedrooms of moderately-priced American 
 apartment houses are provided with running water, hot 
 and cold " I should think myself in heaven if such were 
 arranged for my husband's and my use, not to mention 
 the children's, and I am the Kaiserin," a Kaiserin, she 
 might have added, whose revenues are sequestrated to 
 ostentation. Still, we must not be thought to be un- 
 progressive at the Prussian Court. Compare Voltaire's 
 wash-bowl in the Monkey and Parrot Room of Sans Souci 
 with the corresponding commodity on the Kaiser's table : 
 a finger-bowl to an English bath, and yet scarce one 
 hundred and forty-five years have passed since the French 
 poet's arrest in Frankfurt. 
 
 There are basketfuls of sponges, and skin-brushes by 
 the score, on the marble shelves, but not a sign of toilet 
 waters or colognes, V-M. S S oap serving all needed purposes 
 for the bath as well as occasional ablutions and shaving. 
 And, with the persistency that is William's chief charac- 
 teristic, he not only uses the article himself, but insists 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 49 
 
 on its presence on the toilet-stand of every member of his 
 household. 
 
 The Kaiser credits his clear complexion and the posses- 
 sion of a remarkably white and smooth skin to the fact that 
 he has used soap of a particular brand since earliest child- 
 hood. And, considering the several constitutional ailments 
 he is subject to, this simple means has indeed done wonders, 
 for, though William is usually pale, his skin is ever clear 
 and wholesome, like that of an eminently healthy person. 
 
 To the luxurious washstand his Majesty's bath furnishes 
 a formidable contrast, being an ordinary zinc tub, painted* 
 But the most astonishing thing about it is its peculiar 
 situation. Let those who consider themselves Fortune's 
 graceless children because their neighbour's house or 
 carriage or wife or diamonds are their neighbour's, take 
 courage in the thought that Germany's Kaiser, twice a 
 King, as many times a Grand Duke, eighteen times a 
 Duke, three times a Margrave, once a Burgrave what- 
 ever that means nowadays twice a Prince, nine times a 
 Count, and fifteen times a Seigneur, besides being a Bishop, 
 bathes behind a curtain in a stuffy corridor, the connect- 
 ing-link between his dressing-room and the conjugal bed- 
 chamber. That this statement almost challenges belief, 
 I am not the last to appreciate, but can only reiterate 
 its truth. And, when you come to think it over, is it more 
 startling than the story relating to King Leopold's bath 
 in the Potsdam Stadt Schloss ? 
 
 Court-marshal Liebenau was all in a flutter when, in 
 August, 1890, his Belgian Majesty came to return the 
 Kaiser's visit to Ostend, for his colleague of Brussels had 
 informed him that the sovereign gentleman was addicted 
 to the daily bathing habit, and demanded a hot bath at 
 that. There was, at that time, only one royal palace 
 available in town (the Kaiserin objected to entertaining 
 
 D 
 
50 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Leopold at her own house), and this, the Stadt Schloss, 
 contained but a single bath-room, which, to further com- 
 plicate matters, is attached to the bridal suite where 
 Prussian princesses pass their first night of matrimonial 
 bliss. To lodge the old debauchee in that sacred apart- 
 ment, which only once before had been defiled by a man 
 who was not a bridegroom at the time of occupancy, by 
 Napoleon I., was out of the. question, and if a cabinet 
 was fitted up with the regulation German bath-tub and 
 stove, the King would certainly poke fun at the ante- 
 diluvian arrangement. 
 
 What, then, could be done ? 
 
 At last Liebenau hit upon a plan. He set up a modern 
 enough bath that was fed by a cold-water tap, and placed 
 under one end of it a row of gas-jets intended to heat the 
 water in the tub. Should his Majesty find the bath too 
 warm, calculated the official, with true native acumen, he 
 can moderate the heat by turning on the cold reservoir. 
 
 Now, Leopold had enjoyed the previous night's festivities 
 very much, and observing, in the morning, that his slightest 
 wishes in regard to bodily comfort had been anticipated, 
 he rose in right good humour. Stepping buoyantly into 
 his bath at the cool end, and turning round, he sat himself 
 down at the other, which, the gas having just been turned 
 off, 'was nothing short of a furnace with the red-hot coals 
 removed. 
 
 At the same moment an unearthly yell rent the castle 
 from Marble Hall to scullery ; the sentinels, marching up 
 and down before the great gate, called out the guard, and 
 dozens of officials and servants ran to the King's suite 
 of apartments, thinking that his Majesty had been attacked. 
 At last, the cries not ceasing, Herr von Liebenau, together 
 with the housekeeper and the King's adjutant, took 
 courage and burst into the bath-room, where they found 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 51 
 
 his Majesty dancing an impromptu Highland fling, and 
 war-whooping alternately in French and German for 
 liniments and cold-cream. What he said to the Court- 
 marshal became known only after the latter's dismissal 
 and disgrace, for the servants who heard his Belgian 
 Majesty read him the index of Brehm's " Animal World " 
 never dared repeat the all-highest's observations during 
 Liebenau's official life. 
 
 As a further consequence of the incident, it might be 
 recorded that King Leopold did not ride to the parade 
 held in his honour that morning, but viewed the cere- 
 monies from his window. 
 
 If business or pleasure prevents the Kaiser from taking 
 his dip in the morning, he either bathes in the afternoon, 
 or before or after supper ; the stove must be lit at all 
 times, day and night, and a tablet of soap is consumed 
 on each of these occasions. After stepping out, the Kaiser 
 applies to his body several gallons of cold water, in which 
 sea-salt has been dissolved, baling it rather laboriously from 
 a vessel near at hand. 
 
 Besides a barber's chair, several armchairs, and the 
 furnishings already described, the dressing-room contains 
 little worth mentioning, except a rare photograph repre- 
 senting her Majesty in a travelling-wrap ; this was taken 
 in Venice in 1890, alter the imperial couple's return from 
 the Orient, and has never been published ; but although 
 it does not flatter the Kaiserin, none of her good-looking 
 pictures are visible, while, on the other hand, all tables, 
 consoles, and chests of drawers bear witness to the Kaiser's 
 vain passion for seeing himself pictured, all being literally 
 covered with photos showing his Majesty in every variety 
 of costume at the manoeuvres, on the parade-field, hunt- 
 ing, sailing, or making his entry into seme town or village 
 amid the loyal shouts of the populace. 
 
52 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 A prince like the Kaiser, who owns a set of uniforms 
 for each of the three hundred and odd Prussian regiments, 
 horse, foot, and artillery, besides the ones appurtenant to 
 the Bavarian, Wurtemberg, and Saxony contingents, not 
 to mention the Austrian, English, Russian, Roumanian, 
 Spanish, Turkish, and Swedish armies that enrolled his 
 name as colonel, general, or field-marshal the proprietor 
 of such an official wardrobe needs, of course, most ex- 
 tensive store-rooms for his multi-coloured, tasselled, and 
 gold-laced treasures, and that they are magnificently cared 
 for goes without saying. 
 
 Space forbids minute description of the interesting 
 collection, which, moreover, can never be complete, as 
 the European military Minotaur, feeding on seven millions 
 of men annually the original in the Cretan labyrinth was 
 satisfied with seven youths and an equal number of virgins 
 keeps on expanding ; in other words, as new types of 
 uniforms and arms are constantly invented and added. 
 
 And when I say that the Emperor owns uniforms of 
 all Prussian and almost an equal number of foreign regi- 
 ments, not forgetting, by the way, that he is lord of the 
 sea in Germany, Great Britain, Russia, and Sweden 
 dignities that carry with them cocked hats, broadswords 
 and daggers, blue cloth, and silver and gold lace galore 
 I do not refer to the garments alone, but include all the 
 ornaments, badges, sashes, side-arms, caps, helmets, czakos, 
 busbies, czapkas, burganets, sabres, cuirasses, shoulder- 
 points, knots and epaulettes, silver cords, belts, cartridge- 
 rases, and laces, belonging to gala, full, and semi 
 accoutrements. 
 
 All these innumerable and expensive accessories a 
 single pair of shoulder-knots often costs more than the 
 uniform itself must be on hand and ready for use at 
 any given time, as bright and as good as new. Do you 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 53 
 
 begin to understand why the Emperor is for ever unable 
 to make both ends meet with an income of sixteen million 
 marks per year ? How times have changed with these 
 Prussian kings ! 
 
 The great Frederick's entire wardrobe was " sold to a 
 Jew for three hundred Thalers," and among the lot were 
 the identical coat, breeches, and boots he wore at Rossbach. 
 When, to come down to our own period, the late William I, 
 desired to be photographed in the uniform of the Garde 
 du Corps, one of his officers had to lend him a cuirass, 
 his Majesty refusing to go to the expense of buying one. 
 And these monarchs won more battles than the present 
 Kaiser has earned, or even offered, racing-cups. 
 
 As Lafayette raised a frigate and crew at his own ex- 
 pense to assist the young American republic, so could 
 William equip the marines of a first-class battle-ship, or 
 the officers of ten army corps, from his wardrobe without 
 being reduced to nakedness. He owns, besides those 
 alluded to, scores of costumes adapted to various sports, 
 numberless uniforms of yacht clubs in Germany and 
 England, and last, but not least, an astounding array of 
 plain clothes, with accompaniments of hats, gloves, ties, 
 canes, shoes, buttons, and scarf-pins, which for each suit 
 are especially selected, forming part of the garment, as 
 it were ; but this over-abundance of things is far from em- 
 barrassing the young megalomaniac, who, quite to the con- 
 trary, enriched the olla-podrida of this rainbow hecatomb 
 of organised vanity, tinselled in spots and real in others, 
 where the lion's skin edges the fox's and the hare's, by 
 a new and original effort, called " hunt uniform," hideous 
 in cut and colour, and which is occasionally bestowed 
 by royal warrant upon some much-envied nobleman as a 
 mark of special favour. 
 
 To sum up, I will mention that the Emperor's foreign 
 
54 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 
 
 uniforms alone occupied, in 1895, two immense rooms ; 
 perhaps an approximate idea of the extent of the clothes 
 in stock can be gathered therefrom. In the Neues Palais, 
 only regimentals in constant demand are kept, and these 
 fill an imposing hall, separated from the dressing-room by 
 folding-doors. 
 
 A Kammerdiener is in constant attendance there from 
 early morning till night, so that the Kaiser is able to 
 change his uniforms with the same celerity as his mind. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 HOUSE REGULATIONS WILLIAM II. AS A FAMILY MAN 
 WILLIAM II. AND M. HERBETTE, THE FRENCH AM- 
 BASSADOR. 
 
 ONE day, in the winter of 1892, when the Court was estab- 
 lished in Berlin, I undertook to present to her Majesty 
 " the all-submissive " compliments of the Countess Brock- 
 dorff, asking leave to be excused from second breakfast. 
 
 " Tell her Excellency that she has my permission, and 
 with pleasure, and that nothing would suit me better 
 than to have her and the whole lot of them stay away 
 from my table all the year round," said Auguste Victoria, 
 with a haughty shrug of the shoulders. 
 
 Being one of the " lot," I was surprised and vexed at 
 this outburst. " If that remark was intended seriously, I 
 beg to offer my resignation," I said, " and I am sure the 
 Countess and other associates and all functionaries will 
 follow suit, seeing that, for some unknown reason, we 
 have had the misfortune to incur your Imperial Majesty's 
 displeasure." 
 
 "No, no ! " cried the Kaiser in ; " I am very fond of 
 you, and there is not one in the suite whom I dislike ; 
 but, Countess, can you not see that a woman, even though 
 she be an Empress, wants her husband to herself once in 
 a while ? 
 
 " I have begged his Majesty a thousand times to take 
 at least one meal besides breakfast alone with me and 
 the children ; I reminded him of the happy family life 
 
 55 
 
56 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 in his own father's house, where, except when guests were 
 present, the Crown Prince and Princess and all the chil- 
 dren occupied one table, while the suite sat at another. 
 So both master and retinue enjoyed perfect freedom at 
 this pleasantest of meetings ; but the Kaiser will not 
 hear of it. To compare his Court with that of his parents 
 is as ridiculous as to liken the establishment of some petty 
 contemporary prince to that of Louis XIV., he says." 
 
 " According to the Duchess of Orleans, Charlotte Eliza- 
 beth of Bavaria, the Grand Monarque would have no one 
 at his table but members of the royal family," I observed. 
 
 The Empress rose excitedly. " Is that authentic ? " 
 she cried. 
 
 " Your Majesty will find it in the Duchess's memoirs, 
 and no doubt, also, in some of her letters to the first 
 Queen of Prussia, kept in our archives." 
 
 " I am under great obligations to you for this infor- 
 mation," said her Majesty, holding out her hand, which 
 I kissed ; " my good Knesebeck shall look the matter up 
 to-day at once. Do not fail to send for him, I beg of 
 you, when going out. But," continued the royal lady, 
 and the expression of her face fell, " will the Kaiser care 
 one way or another ? You know he thinks it due to his 
 position to maintain a certain state at all times ; and 
 so our meals the few we have together are made semi- 
 public functions by the presence of officials and strangers, 
 while my poor children are perpetually kept upstairs and 
 hardly see their father." 
 
 Her Majesty's complaint is only too well founded, 
 With the exception of first breakfast, all meals in the 
 palace are presided over by the marshal du jour, either 
 Baron von Lyncker or Herr von Egloffstein, while two 
 imperial adjutants, Grand-mistress von Brockdorff, two 
 ladies of the Court, and one of the Kaiser's and the 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 57 
 
 Kaiserin's chamberlains are bound to attend. Besides, all 
 members of their Majesties' titled entourage have the 
 entree to the royal board, and are expected to avail them- 
 selves of this prerogative as often as possible, whether on 
 duty or not. 
 
 That, under the circumstances, the sociable features 
 are lost sight of and the stately character of the affair 
 becomes emphasised, is self-evident, the more so as there 
 are always guests, their number varying between two and 
 fourteen, or even twenty, on ordinary days. 
 
 The house regulations provide that a list of invited 
 persons be presented to the Empress and her ladies early 
 every morning, so that they can dress accordingly ; but 
 my experience shows that it will never do to wear 
 anything but one's semi-toilettes at table, whether the 
 bulletin announces a brace of nobodies or half-a-dozen 
 ministers and ambassadors, for, at the last moment, his 
 Majesty may bring in the Chancellor, some sovereign or 
 prince travelling incognito -, or a whole host of fine-looking 
 young officers whom he may have come across on one of 
 his rides or outings, or who happen to report at the palace 
 about meal- times. His habit of issuing these invitations, 
 however, does not necessarily imply that William is a 
 hospitable man ; maybe he does not care a snap of his 
 fingers for the individuals dragged to the gilded chair of 
 ennui by " all-highest command " ; he invites these gentle- 
 men merely because they promise diversion, either by 
 reason of their personality, or by information or gossip 
 in their possession and anything to escape the monotony 
 of our daily surroundings, is the Kaiser's continuous prayer. 
 
 If his wife and her ladies are embarrassed, so much 
 the worse for them. As to the cuisine, it is its business 
 to be prepared for emergencies. But one must study the 
 face of the Court-marshal, when five or ten minutes before 
 
58 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 dinner or supper time half-a-dozen, or twice as many, 
 extra covers have to be laid, to appreciate the amount 
 of labour that these imperial surprise parties call for. 
 
 It is not a mere matter of lengthening or broadening 
 a table, and increasing the quantity of plate, crystal, and 
 silver, but frequently the entire order of the seats must be 
 changed, each guest, save one, being entitled to triumph 
 over the other by reason of his patent of nobility, his rank 
 in the army, or on account of the orders and decorations 
 he may possess. Think of the work involved, of the danger 
 the Major-domo is running ! I can assure the reader that 
 no official of Emperor William's Court " would die of 
 ennui if unable to fill up his or her time with ceremonies," 
 Goethe notwithstanding. Our Court-marshals, above all, 
 must have memories of unusual capacity, patience enough 
 to stock a hospital, and some common sense besides, and 
 even then mistakes are sometimes made. 
 
 There was Count Perponcher, old Emperor William's 
 perennial grand-master, for instance. Of the two first- 
 named qualifications this dignitary was possessed to a 
 marked degree ; only in the latter virtue did he prove 
 deficient on one historical occasion, when, during Czar 
 Alexander's visit to Berlin, in 1888, he seated Bismarck 
 at a state banquet among the scions of the lower nobility, 
 giving precedence to a lot of nonentities because their 
 names figure in the second part of the Almanach de Gotha, 
 while the Chancellor's is in the third. 
 
 His Grace did not say a word in protest at the time, 
 but when, a year or so later (in August, 1889), Emperor 
 Francis Joseph returned the newly made Kaiser's visit, 
 he took his revenge. Not only was Count Eulenburg, 
 Perponcher's successor, politely ordered to place the Prince 
 where he belonged, opposite the two Emperors, but to 
 further emphasise his position at Court and in the state, 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 59 
 
 Bismarck chose to come two minutes after their Majesties 
 and all the august company had been busy with their soup. 
 
 Eulenburg and the rest of the goldsticks were pale with 
 terror and indignation, but Bismarck cut short their timid 
 remonstrances with a haughty : " Quod licet Jovi, non licet 
 bovi ; " in polite English : Calm yourself, no ordinary 
 mortal will dare imitate Jupiter's audacious step. 
 
 These repasts at the Berlin Court, whether of the noon, 
 evening, or night order, are, as intimated, the very re- 
 verse of convivial, and are not very elaborate as to menu, 
 either, for listless weariness hangs over the majestic board 
 like a black pall, checking every individual effort. The 
 women sit as if encased in the tightest of corsets up to 
 their throats, the men 
 
 " a wooden, pedantic race, 
 
 In every motion displaying 
 
 The same right angle, and in the face 
 
 A frigid conceit betraying. 
 
 They sit about stiffiy, as though upon stilts, 
 
 Stuck up as straight as a needle, 
 
 Appearing as if they had swallowed the stick 
 
 Once used as the best means to wheedle. 
 
 Yes, ne'er has entirely vanished the rod; 
 
 They carry it now inside them." HEINE. 
 
 But this starchy demeanour is not confined to the 
 retinue and guests ; Emperor and Empress, sitting oppo- 
 site each other, are as ceremonious and formal as any of 
 the rest of the company who hang upon the " all-highest " 
 eyes and lips with such assiduity as to preclude enjoy- 
 ment of the things set before them. 
 
 " Three weeks' table duty suffices to ruin any one's 
 digestion," is a saying at Court, and, it might be added, 
 "it's enough to spoil one's savoir-vivre too." In the 
 fashionable restaurant at the Hotel de Rome, in Berlin, a 
 little old man was pointed out to me by a friend from 
 
60 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 the provinces. " I am astonished," said my escort, " that 
 they allow so ill-mannered a person in this place." 
 
 " You mean the white-haired and beribboned gentle- 
 man in the corner ? " 
 
 " The same, who swings his toothpick so furiously." 
 
 " Why, it is Count , chamberlain to the Empress 
 
 Frederick." 
 
 " Really ? And who may be the gentleman with him 
 who strokes his long mutton-chops over his soup-plate ? " 
 
 " That is President, formerly Minister, von Puttkammer." 
 
 " But they behave like pigs. Do they learn that at 
 the royal table ? " 
 
 " Nonsense ; in the presence of their Majesties they 
 are under such awful restraint, that, off duty, they let 
 themselves loose, like boys escaped from boarding-school, 
 drink out of their saucers, and wipe their mouths on their 
 sleeves." 
 
 The guests and attendants at table are in gala or 
 demi toilet, most of the younger officers being as tightly 
 corseted as the ladies, while all the men wear the narrowest 
 of uniforms, that scarcely allow them to breathe. Add 
 to this feeling of physical distress the overpowering 
 anxiety of preparing for the supreme moment when the 
 Kaiser or Kaiseriri shall address one of them, or give 
 the signal for laughter, and it will be obvious at once 
 that taking pot -luck with Prussia's royalty has its 
 drawbacks. 
 
 But the most miserable person of the glittering assem- 
 blage is 'she who wears the costliest gown, the biggest 
 diamonds. At meal-time the Kaiser chooses to make 
 a display of his conversational gifts, or his wit ; and 
 Auguste i Victoria knows only too well that she cannot 
 rival the one, and that the other is out of her reach. So 
 she sits quietly, addressing little nothings to her ladies 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 61 
 
 in an undertone from time to time, while painfully alert, 
 that none of his Majesty's jokes and innuendoes escape 
 her. 
 
 William seldom speaks to his wife directly, except to 
 say that he likes or dislikes her costume ; and if she asks 
 questions, he answers in a tone that forbids further con- 
 versation ; quite frequently he does not reply at all, 
 turning his left ear toward the Empress and affecting not 
 to hear her. 
 
 As such moments, when pride and love must rage 
 in her bosom, we all feel deeply for her Majesty. Some- 
 times she appears ready to cry in the face of everybody ; 
 but the woman in her must for ever give way to the Queen, 
 and so she swallows her mortification, sits still, and smiles, 
 her little grey eyes languidly fixed on the husband so 
 eager to shine as a humourist. 
 
 Ah, the sorry attempts at jesting that guests at the 
 royal board must endure ! By reeling off any absurdity 
 that may come into his head, the Kaiser tries " to put 
 life into the company," as he calls it, and his remarks, 
 usually addressed to one of the adjutants, provoke peals 
 of laughter, as a matter of course, as soon as the author 
 gives the cue for hilarity by accentuating the end of his 
 speech with a roar. The person spoken to must pay 
 back in the same coin, and, naturally, does his best, for 
 his Majesty admires nothing so much as the gift of re- 
 partee. But for all that, the rejoinder is frequently as 
 weak, or weaker even, than the pleasantry that occasioned 
 it. It is one thing to be a lord among wits, and another 
 to be a wit among lords. 
 
 " Why is my big brother like the Fliegende Blatter 
 in a foreign country ? " asked Prince Henry of a small 
 circle of sympathising relatives during a recent visit of 
 our Court in Kiel. 
 
62 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 All the highnesses, royal and otherwise, gave it up. 
 
 " Because," quoth Henry, " he is always sure of raising 
 a laugh whether he offers something witty or inane. So 
 it is with the Fliegende Blatter. It has a reputation for 
 being funny, and, where German is not understood, is 
 applauded indiscriminately." 
 
 Supper at the Court is no more entertaining than the 
 midday meal : the same stiff-necked formality, the same 
 strain after effect ; the Kaiser endeavouring to be his 
 own merry- Andrew, the rest of the company dull for the 
 most part. As to the Empress, she remains as impassive 
 as ever, smiling in her subdued manner ; only her corsage 
 is considerably lower, and she wears an extra handful or 
 two of jewels. An extreme decollete is her Majesty's strong 
 point ; but, despite allurements of toilet and the assiduity 
 with which her charms are set off, William cannot be 
 induced to remain in his wife's presence a minute longer 
 than courtesy demands. As soon as coffee is served (at 
 Potsdam this is done in the so-called Tassen Zimmer, an 
 apartment modelled in the shape of a cup and the furni- 
 ture of which is so constructed as to assist that illusion), 
 the Emperor takes himself off with his men friends and 
 attendants and repairs to the billiard-room, where he 
 sits for hours, with one leg on the table, swinging the 
 other to and fro, while his adjutants and guests entertain 
 him with imitations of music-hall and circus people, small 
 talk, and droll stories of the coarsest grain, reeking with the 
 fume of the drill-grounds and the barrack-mess. 
 
 This love of risque stories is a Hohenzollern failing ; 
 contemporary writers agree that Frederick the Great 
 shunned woman's society because it obliged him to bridle 
 his tongue and observe the ordinary decencies of life ; 
 the " romantic " Frederick William IV. was a trafficker 
 in classical and modern pornographic literature, and the 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 63 
 
 present Kaiser's grossness of speech is notorious enough 
 to find an echo in the imperial nursery. 
 
 An incident like the one concerning the wicked Teckels, 
 mentioned in another chapter, is at all times sure of royal 
 appreciation. William will talk for weeks about it, and 
 neither his friends nor the dignitaries of state with whom 
 he comes in contact are spared the recital, including 
 disgusting details. Indeed, three-quarters of the time 
 when the public imagines William to be wrestling with 
 problems of the day he sits on the billiard-table in the 
 described attitude, with his adjutants and the chief 
 members of his military and civil households standing 
 around him, smoking cigarettes and telling stories, and 
 listening to tales affecting personages of the Court and 
 society here and abroad. 
 
 And while this lascivious tattle is carried on, her 
 Majesty sits, perchance, in the Cup Room, magnificently 
 gowned, knitting shapeless little woollen caps for orphan 
 asylums, and talking religion and cheap charity schemes 
 to her grand-master, Baron Mirbach, or to the much- 
 beloved von der Knesebeck. What contrasts ! what dis- 
 simulation ! I often thought to myself, when, being in 
 attendance upon her Majesty, the echo of sneering allusions 
 to a friend's or acquaintance's wife or daughter wafted 
 past me through the door of the billiard-room, left ajar 
 by some lackey with his tray, or opened by the Kaiserin's 
 order, that she may feast her eyes on the husband she 
 loves so well. The head of the nation, whose unceasing 
 industry is the talk of the Continent, vainly trying to 
 kill time with buffoonery ; the sovereign lady, " mother 
 of the poor," working penny caps in a gown the cost of 
 which would keep for ten years the poor boy or girl for 
 whom the knitted thing is intended, and assure the little 
 one a splendid education. 
 
64 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 It is a saying at Court : " Give the Kaiser an up-to- 
 date rendering of the * Merry Jests of King Louis XL,' 
 and you will receive a standing invitation to accompany 
 him on his Northland trips ; tell him something more 
 indelicate than the ' Tattle of the Nuns of Poissy,' and 
 he will book you for an ambassadorship ; " and that is 
 no exaggeration, as will be seen in the chapter on William's 
 boon companions. 
 
 The Kaiser's inclination for the ludicrous even intrudes 
 itself into " business of state " ; for, as he considers his 
 ministers but royal servants of high degree, so are Court 
 functions regarded by as him quasi affairs of government. 
 
 " When I have to stand three or four hours to see a 
 few thousand persons pass by, I like to get some fun out 
 of it, if possible," I heard him say to Court-marshal Count 
 Eulenburg, when the latter reported, at the New Year's 
 reception of 1896, that some six thousand persons had 
 made application for the grand Couy, the German Draw- 
 ing-Room, 
 
 " At your Majesty's command," answered Eulenburg 
 promptly; and, as the little blonde courtier withdrew, 
 the Kaiser turned to the Empress : " What is this devil 
 of an Eulenburg up to ? I asked him to make the Schleppen 
 Cour endurable, and he positively smiled assent. I hope 
 he will not hire a troop of the great unwashed to mas- 
 querade before us in the guise of Socialist deputies." 
 
 The Court-marshal had, of course, no thought of forcing 
 things, but shrewdly surmised that, among the thousands 
 of new-comers anxious to make their first bow before 
 royalty, and among the old friends ready to pay their 
 respects at the beginning of the season of festivities, some 
 one, of a surety, would furnish food for amusement. 
 
 As it happened, one of the persons to be presented 
 was a Countess von Arnim, nee Countess von der Schulen- 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 65 
 
 berg, who is exceedingly short-sighted. Eulenburg knew 
 her infirmity, and was, perhaps, thinking of it when 
 smiling acquiescence to William's proposition. At any 
 rate, contrary to custom, he let her Ladyship proceed to 
 the throne unguided, and she bravely passed both their 
 Majesties without obeisance. 
 
 Everybody stared, and I confess myself to having 
 felt extremely uncomfortable ; but, happily, the Kaiser, 
 remembering his Court-marshal's promise, overlooked the 
 slight to his dignity. 
 
 " Adieu, gnddige Frau ! " his sharp voice rang out 
 " adieu, and no matter if you have the advantage of us." 
 
 At the same moment, the poor Countess, who had 
 meanwhile reached one of the embrasures of the windows, 
 bowed to the ground, thinking that by this time she stood 
 in front of the throne, and then, hearing the Kaiser's sar- 
 castic remark, promptly swooned. 
 
 Next day, at noon, she reported to Countess Brockdorff 
 to submit her excuses, and was astonished to learn that 
 his Majesty had given orders to invite her to dinner. 
 
 " The Kaiser wants to have more fun with me ! " 
 cried poor Arnim. 
 
 " Not at all ; he desires to thank you for the diversion 
 offered during that tedious ceremony." 
 
 " I vouch for that," said Eulenburg, when "appealed to, 
 " and, in proof of his Majesty's gracious feelings, I extend 
 the invitation to include Madame's charming daughter." 
 He added : " Whoever amuses the King cannot be too 
 well treated." 
 
 And,' as a matter of fact, the Countess and Fraulein 
 were nearly smothered with kindness by their Majesties ; 
 I do not know of any persons, comparative strangers, who 
 were so well treated at Court as these ladies. 
 
 The Grand Cour of 1897 was likewise relieved by a 
 
 E 
 
66 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 ludicrous incident. On that occasion a Fraulein von 
 Bonin had essayed to represent a lily ; and not only her 
 entire dress, including the train, was made to bear out 
 that idea, but on each side of her coiffure two Easter 
 lilies rose high above her, nodding to and fro with every 
 movement. 
 
 "Good Lord!" said the Kaiser soito voce, but so loud 
 that the chamberlain on duty could hear it, as this 
 
 botanical wonder passed by, " I hope B (naming one 
 
 of his brothers-in-law) won't see her. He might take it 
 for an allusion to the pretty calf-coloured antlers his wife 
 is growing on his forehead." At this, the Empress, who 
 does not like the lady alluded to, burst out laughing, and 
 it took the imperial couple some minutes to regain their 
 composure. 
 
 That in the feverish hunt after amusements and ex- 
 citement, family life at the German Court, of which the 
 contemporary press makes so much, is a delusion, goes 
 without saying, though, to accuse William of neglecting 
 his Frau, in the ordinary sense of the word, would, per- 
 haps, be unjust, for he keeps up appearances in a general 
 way, and I have reasons to believe that he loves his wife. 
 Yet he has a knack of forgetting her very existence when- 
 ever he thinks he is better off alone, which, I know, is 
 extremely painful to Auguste Victoria. 
 
 And the worst of it is, this fixed idea of complete self- 
 sufficiency grows stronger and stronger with him as his 
 egotism gradually develops into egomania. With all that, 
 however, he is not an unkind husband, albeit his actions 
 often imply great lack of conjugal gentleness and gene- 
 rosity. It is merely his boundless love of self that claims 
 ascendency in his every action, no matter whether ' it 
 affects the best friend he has in the world or his worst 
 enemy. As in those awful days at San Remo, when he 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 67 
 
 claimed, as representative of the old Emperor, precedence 
 over his afflicted mother on the way to the village church, 
 so he uses his present supreme position as a club to in- 
 timidate all directly depending upon him into a state 
 of quiet, but utter, submissiveness. And this has been 
 going on so long that the Empress, on her part, has become 
 used to it, and would think it queer, indeed, if this state 
 of affairs were changed.. 
 
 As to the children, they are there for dynastic pur* 
 poses, to learn and to grow up ; what more can be re- 
 quired ? Her Majesty's complaint, that they hardly see 
 their father, is true ; seldom, if ever, do the youngsters 
 appear at table, and the reports of their governor as 
 to conduct and progress in learning must suffice, time 
 for personal consultation or a friendly talk not being 
 available. 
 
 " I am afraid the Kaiser will never take interest in 
 the children until they actually enter military service," 
 said the Empress to me, after I had read to her an article 
 reporting his Majesty's speech on the occasion of Prince 
 Adalbert's entry into the navy (June 24, 1894). Of course, 
 I politely disagreed with her Majesty on that point, but 
 at the same time could not help thinking it would be a 
 good thing if these fears were realised. Imagine a father 
 taking his ten-year-old stripling by the hand, and, after 
 presenting him to a regiment of grey-beards, battle-worn 
 and noted for their education and courage, say to them : 
 " This moment, when Prince Adalbert becomes one of you, 
 is of the most eminent importance to the entire history 
 of the Fatherland." Who would blame a boy, after that, 
 for overbearing conduct and disinclination for study ? If, 
 at the age of ten, he be a historic personage, to whom old 
 and tried men must look up as to an idol, a moulder of 
 the nation's destinies, what is the use of further effort ? 
 
68 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Elagabalus became Roman Emperor at the age of fourteen, 
 yet had to wait four years before he was recognised as 
 a god. 
 
 To come back to our own times, compare William's 
 eulogy of his son with the speeches the Kaiser's grand- 
 father and father delivered at his own introduction to 
 the army, on February 7, 1877, when, having reached 
 his eighteenth year, he became a lieutenant in the First 
 Guards. 
 
 Said the old Emperor : " The service expected of thee 
 will require many functions that may appear petty and 
 unnecessary in thy untried eyes. But thou must learn 
 to understand that there is nothing trivial in doing one's 
 duty, and that each stone in the construction of our army 
 must be well hewn and thoroughly anchored, if the grand 
 edifice shall stand. And now I commit thee to thy labours, 
 which fulfil as thy superiors dictate." 
 
 And the father, afterward Emperor Frederick, said : 
 
 " I am proud that my son is privileged to commence 
 his military studies in the First Guards, and I congratu- 
 late him on his good luck. He ought to be proud to wear 
 your uniform, and I commend him to your good graces, 
 my comrades." 
 
 While not particularly loving toward his wife, the 
 Emperor honours her with excessive jealousy, and is beside 
 himself with rage if a man-servant, ever so innocently, 
 looks at her Majesty when she is dressed in a decollete 
 costume. As Napoleon bounced M. Leroy, the Worth of 
 his times, for complimenting Marie Louise on her fine 
 shoulders, so William deals unmercifully with officials and 
 servants who venture to look at his wife. 
 
 One day in the beginning of December, 1889, while 
 the Kaiser was on the way to Dessau, her Majesty went 
 to bed early in the afternoon out of sheer chagrin, because 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 69 
 
 she had not been allowed to accompany her husband, and, 
 while reading a novel by lamp-light, she was disturbed by 
 a stealthy noise at the door. 
 
 It made her sit up in eager expectation. Could it 
 be possible that the Emperor had reconsidered his de- 
 cision, and had returned to take her along as first pro- 
 mised ? Auguste Victoria prepared to look very charm- 
 ing ; but who shall describe her terror, when, instead 
 of the expected husband, the black curly head of a 
 man-servant, bearing a load of fire-wood on his shoulder, 
 appeared, and cautiously spied about to see if he might 
 enter. 
 
 The Empress gave a scream of rage and agony, while 
 a crash, as if a hundred-weight of sticks had come to 
 the ground, and hurrying footsteps, told the fate of the 
 transgressor. 
 
 A second later the luncheon of Kammerfrau von Haake, 
 and of the wardrobe and chamber women eating in the 
 maids' ordinary downstairs, was disturbed by incessant 
 ringing of the electric bells from the royal apartment. 
 It was at once evident that her Majesty was pressing 
 her hand against the row of electric buttons at her bedside. 
 What could have happened ? Had fire broken out, and 
 was the Kaiserin in dire distress ? 
 
 The women ran to the bedroom, despatching several 
 lackeys they met on the way to notify the house-marshal, 
 chamberlains, and Court-physicians, as they expected to 
 find their mistress half-dead at the very least. When 
 they burst into the room, however, they quickly per- 
 ceived that their apprehensions were exaggerated : the 
 august Lady was not hurt, nor was she in any visible peril, 
 but, instead, sat up in bed shaking with indignation. " A 
 thief, or at any rate a man, entered my room stealthily," 
 cried her Majesty, gasping for breath. " The matter must 
 
70 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 be fully investigated, and his Majesty must be informed 
 at once. Let the intruder be arrested and brought to 
 justice without delay." 
 
 The unhappy quartet of servants, von Haake, Schwerdt- 
 feger, Gleim, and Schade, were speechless. " It would 
 kill his Majesty to receive such a despatch," suggested 
 the Kammerfrau at last, and the Empress decided to 
 consult with her grand-mistress, Grafin Brockdorff. 
 
 I happened to be in the Countess's apartment when 
 Frau Schade and Frau Gleim came to report in breathless 
 monosyllables. 
 
 " A man in the Kaiserin's chamber impossible I " cried 
 Brockdorff, adding : "It will cost us our positions if his 
 Majesty hears of it/' 
 
 " Maybe the Kaiserin has been dreaming ; she had 
 cold pork for second breakfast," I put in. 
 
 " No, it is really true, others besides her Majesty have 
 heard his steps," said Frau Gleim. 
 
 At this moment, Madame von Larisch, mistress of 
 the household, entered to know the cause of the uproar 
 that was shaking the palace to its foundations. "If 
 you will wait here for a little while, you shall hear it all," 
 said Grafin Brockdorff, already in the corridor. Return- 
 ing after fifteen minutes, her Excellency walked right 
 over to where I was sitting with Frau von Larisch, and, 
 assuming her most haughty tone, addressed her in these 
 words : " By command of her Majesty, I have to an- 
 nounce to you the * all-highest ' disfavour. I think it 
 would be best if you packed your Siebensachen (rags) and 
 left at once." 
 
 Madame von Larisch drew herself up. " Your Excel- 
 lency," she said, " I demand an explanation." 
 
 " Your Ladyship shall have it and without delay. Her 
 Majesty distinctly commanded me to take off your head, 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 71 
 
 c reissen Sie ihr den Kopf ab? and I have merely given 
 the implied meaning of the * all-highest ' words." 
 
 " But what is it all about ? " I saw that it was high 
 time to interfere between the two ladies, who had never 
 shown much love for each other. 
 
 "While her Majesty was in bed," said the Countess^ 
 with much deliberation, " one of the fire-place attendants 
 entered with a load of wood, and the Kaiserin blames 
 Frau von Larisch for the intrusion ; this after I had 
 succeeded in demonstrating to the august Lady that the 
 man must necessarily be innocent, for he could not know 
 that her Majesty was in the house. However, Kammer- 
 herr von der Knesebeck had to telegraph the whole inci- 
 dent, with all details, to Dessau.*' 
 
 Several hours later the whole palace knew that Johann, 
 the wood-boy, had been instantly dismissed without com- 
 pensation for his loss of pension, and a bad " character '* 
 into the bargain. Frau von Larisch, to everybody's 
 surprise, went unpunished, while next morning an auto- 
 graph letter from his Majesty arrived, commanding that 
 henceforth no male servant should enter the joint bed- 
 room or the Kaiserin's dressing-room, all the work, in- 
 cluding wood and water carrying, taking up of carpets, and 
 the like, being thrown upon the maids. 
 
 This incident has a sequel, for, her Majesty being as 
 fastidious about girls in her room (when the Kaiser is 
 present) as William is about man-servants, she is now 
 obliged to make her own fire in the grate on chilly 
 mornings whenever her husband is at home. What a 
 parody on royal state this the Empress-Queen getting 
 up in her " nightie," and in the cold and damp, to light 
 her own fire ! Verily, truth is stranger by far than fiction ! 
 
 Although very partial to courtly splendour and fes- 
 tivities, which cause a conflux of people, the Kaiser hates 
 
72 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 nothing more than the fetes which etiquette compels him 
 to hold annually in the Berlin Schloss ; he hates them 
 principally because that magnificent pile, appearing so 
 formidable from the outside, and which was designed 
 for Brandenburg society at the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century, is entirely inadequate to the accommodation of 
 the many thousands nowadays privileged to dance attend- 
 ance upon, and actually dance, eat, and drink with the 
 Kaiser and Kaiserin. 
 
 Of course there is always room for the sovereign, no 
 matter if his company be packed like sardines ; the dis- 
 comfort of his guests does not trouble him, either, but 
 the ocular demonstration of the unsuitableness of his 
 house does ; it sorely aggravates him to be reminded of 
 the fact that he is not rich enough to build reception- 
 rooms equal to the demands of the times. 
 
 " If my ancestors could afford to construct this castle, 
 why should not I erect one suitable to my requirements ? " 
 he argues, forgetting the fact that not the Hohenzollerns 
 but the Prussian people, paid for the Schloss and were 
 all but bankrupted in doing so, the builders, Elector 
 Frederick and the first two Kings of Prussia, meanwhile 
 promising to pay back the millions wrung from their 
 pockets when their alchemist had succeeded in making 
 yellow metal. So the castle was finished under false pre- 
 tences, and the necromancer, being unable to keep his 
 word, was hanged all of which happened one hundred 
 and seventy-five years or more ago. 
 
 The winter fetes at the Prussian Court are institutions 
 in their way, the splendour of which the favour or dis- 
 favour of the monarch may enhance or reduce, but even 
 the sovereign's enmity such as William bears to these 
 festive entertainments cannot blot them out. To do 
 that would seem too much like breaking with time- 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 73 
 
 honoured customs and taking away the perquisites of 
 two mighty classes in the state : the trades-people's profits, 
 and the aristocracy's chief opportunity for disporting its 
 few remaining hereditary privileges. Only in case of 
 Court mourning, or great national disasters, may the 
 list be curtailed, and never was a Prussian King more 
 eager to take advantage of these means of escape than 
 William is. 
 
 i-> When, on January 4, 1896, his grand-uncle, Prince 
 Alexander of Prussia, died, his first words were : " Now 
 we may rid ourselves of the company of our unknown 
 friends, the sweet public, for this winter at least," and 
 Grand-master Count Eulenburg was straightway ordered to 
 recall the invitations for carnival and abandon the engage- 
 ments with purveyors, and so forth, already entered into. 
 Yet one cannot mourn a relative of the seventh or eighth 
 degree for ever, and the Kaiser all the more readily con- 
 sented to give one more ball before the end of the season, 
 as the municipal council of Berlin at that time was par- 
 ticularly obstreperous, and as it was expected that by 
 a lavish expenditure of money flowing into the people's 
 coffers its good offices could be gained. So, when almost 
 everybody had given up the hope of dancing and supping 
 "j|at the Kaiser's," several thousand ladies and gentle- 
 men were made happy by receiving the well-known 
 " commands." 
 
 Then came that affair with Ambassador Herbette, the 
 political side of which is public property. The representa- 
 tive of La Belle France objected to the intimacy that 
 had sprung up between the Kaiser and the French naval 
 attache, M. de Grancey. " If you understand your busi- 
 ness, you must know that you are nothing but a well- 
 paid and highly ornamental spy," he is reported to have 
 said to de Grancey ; " how can you serve your country 
 
74 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 in that capacity, if you allow yourself to be bamboozled 
 by imperial favours and dazzled by the monarch's amiable- 
 ness and charm of speech ? " 
 
 To the Emperor, who had asked him as a personal 
 favour to desist from his resolution to procure M. de 
 Grancey's immediate recall, the brave Herbette made 
 answer : " ParUeu, your Majesty, I insist upon doing 
 my house-cleaning in my own way/' 
 
 These two speeches are matters of historic record, in 
 substance, if not literally, and I may add that the above 
 version is from the Kaiser's own lips ; I was present 
 when his Majesty reported the case to the Empress. What 
 the world does not know, is the double meaning of the 
 Frenchman's allusion to house-cleaning. An ambassador, 
 like other great lords, has two families, a personal and 
 an official one. De Grancey belonged to the latter, and 
 Herbette disowned him as soon as so extreme a measure 
 seemed called for. But by that time stories of the Kaiser's 
 weakness for the beautiful Madame Herbette had reached 
 the ears of her husband, invariably the last individual to 
 hear a rumour of that kind. 
 
 In the present case, scant secrecy had been observed ; 
 frequenters of Pariser Platz, where the Embassy is located, 
 had noticed the Emperor's phaeton and pair in front of 
 the hotel for half-hours at a time day by day, and had 
 talked about it, first to curse William's apparent zeal 
 in running after the Frenchman ; afterward, when they 
 had learned of the existence of a beautiful woman 
 in the mansion, to smile approvingly and wish the 
 sovereign success on his excursions into the enemy's 
 camp. 
 
 At Court, the ice had been broken by a remark of 
 the Princess of Meiningen, who said one day, when the 
 Kaiser's love for France was discussed : " Yes, and I 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 75 
 
 understand he has the good taste to be wanting in re- 
 spect to a Frenchwoman of esprit, whom we all know ; " 
 but, as far as my information goes, neither her Royal 
 Highness nor those beer philosophers in the Linden cafes 
 possessed a shadow of proof to back up their abominable 
 tattle. There was probably nothing at all in this talk, 
 yet, whether there was or not, Herbette decided to stop it. 
 When the invitations for the Court ball arrived, he accepted 
 with a few polite phrases, but three days before the affair 
 came off he caused Madame to send her regrets, saying 
 that his Excellency alone would be able to do himself 
 the honour to attend the ball. 
 
 House-marshal Baron von Lyncker happened to have 
 business in the Kaiser's study when the perfumed note 
 bearing the ambassadress's initials in silver arrived. " His 
 Majesty," he says, " tore open the letter, and, scanning its 
 contents, exclaimed : ' Advise Eulenburg that the ball is 
 off. He must at once recall the invitations/ 
 
 " At your Majesty's orders," said the dutiful Herr von 
 Lyncker ; " but as the greater part of the delicacies for 
 the buffets are already in the hands of the chefs and 
 pastry-cooks, while the sweetmeats were delivered a few 
 hours ago, what is youi Majesty's pleasure with respect 
 to these goods ? " r 
 
 The Emperor had listened with every indication of 
 impatience. 
 
 " Never mind, the stuff that cannot be used in the 
 house may be sent to the hospitals," he said when the 
 House-marshal had finished. Then, walking straight up 
 to him and staring with flaming eyes into space, the 
 Kaiser continued : "Do you know why I disappoint these 
 several thousand invited persons at the last moment ? 
 Because I cannot permit Herbette to again set foot in 
 my house. He wants to come, but he shall not. Indeed^ 
 
76 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 
 
 I would rather see this Schloss in ruins than spend an 
 evening with him in the same room." 
 
 He read Madame Herbette's letter a second time, 
 and, acting as if a sudden thought had struck him, 
 added : " The news that de Grancey is to go has just 
 been confirmed. It is a direct insult and scandal. I will 
 not rest until Herbette is made to leave Berlin." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE ROLE OF THE BISMARCKS THE EMPEROR AND THE 
 CZAR LIEBENAU, MAJOR-DOMO OF THE PALACE 
 
 THE EMPEROR'S PASSION FOR TRAVEL. 
 
 THE Kaiser has many nicknames ; Reise-Kaiser, Gondola- 
 Billy, Wilhelm-der-P16tzliche (William-the-Sudden) being 
 the most common ; but the people of the palace call him 
 Der Einzige (The Only), with apologies to Frederick the 
 Great, who also enjoyed that title, though for vastly 
 different reasons, The Only, now that Liebenau is gone. 
 
 Major von Liebenau was a man after William's own 
 heart, his double in more than one respect. 
 
 A lieutenant in the First Guards, he attracted the 
 then Prince William's attention by the same character- 
 istics that, it is claimed, at one time cemented the friend- 
 ship between the heir to the German crown and the young 
 man destined to inherit, besides Varzin, the Chancellorship 
 of the Empire, the Presidency of the Prussian Ministry 
 of State, and all the rest of his father's dignities. * William, 
 Herbert Bismarck, von Liebenau a triumvirate of ambi- 
 tion, libertinage, and insolence 1 
 
 It was in the winter of 1886 and 1887, when William 
 studied statecraft in the foreign office under Count 
 Herbert's tutelage, that Liebenau got his real foothold 
 in the princely menage, then established in the Marble 
 Palace, which he ruled with a high hand. At the same 
 time the heir to the crown was revelling in the charms 
 of divers queens of tragedy, comedy, and the ballet, con- 
 
 77 
 
78 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 nee ted with the royal play and opera houses. For the 
 young wife these were indeed unhappy days. 
 
 How often she has poured the story of her mortifica- 
 tion and disappointment into mine and the Countess 
 Brockdorffs ears ! Poor Princess ! she had been brought 
 up to the sober truth that royal women must get used 
 to dividing their husband with others, and bowed her 
 blonde head under the historic bane not with the worst 
 of grace. What rent her heart was William's cynical 
 way of regarding woman's supreme duty and highest 
 honour motherhood, 
 
 " I don't want to be looked upon exclusively as a 
 means for propagating the royal race," she cried once; 
 " but, under Count Bismarck's teachings, the Prince seems 
 to have forgotten that I possess any of the qualities of a 
 woman besides that of child-bearing," 
 
 Fearful lest her Royal Highness's hatred of Count 
 Herbert might lead her to rash remarks in the presence 
 of the old Emperor and her husband, with both of whom 
 young Bismarck was persona grata? I tried to intervene 
 by suggesting that he was not altogether a bad man, 
 having fought with distinction in the French war. 
 
 " Yes, yes, I have heard that ad nauseam" interrupted 
 August e Victoria impatiently ; " he is said to have re- 
 ceived three balls, and since then has made three of our 
 sex extremely miserable that person in Bonn, who 
 caused the duel; the poor Princess Carolath, and my- 
 self." 
 
 Countess Brockdorff, who then, as now, held the post 
 of grand-mistress, flared up at this : " I must not suffer 
 your Royal Highness to class yourself with these females," 
 she said ; " it is morbid excitement that consumes you." 
 
 After that, I thought it my duty to inform the Princess 
 Imperial of the state of affairs. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 79 
 
 " Myself and husband," she said, " know all about 
 this vicious Herbert and the evil influence he has over 
 our son, but," and her Imperial Highness lowered her 
 voice, " there is bound to be a change in a few years, you 
 know, and the Kaiser that will be is determined to clear 
 the decks (reinen Tisch zu machen)" 
 
 When Victoria said this, the old Emperor was nearly 
 ninety years of age, and though the first signs of Frederick's 
 terrible illness had already manifested themselves, no one 
 dreamed of the quick and awful end. However, the 
 sovereign lady kept her word, as far as it was possible 
 for her to do under the painful circumstances that 
 attended her husband's reign, and no matter how often 
 Prince Bismarck deputed his son to transact business 
 with Frederick during the ninety-nine days, he was as 
 often sent away and ordered to tell the Chancellor that 
 his Majesty desired to confer with no one but his Grace 
 in person. 
 
 "It is the death-knell of the Bismarck dynasty," Count 
 Seckendorf used to say when about to deliver one of these 
 messages to the haughty secretary. 
 
 The fall of the Bismarcks is a matter of history, but 
 that the present Empress played a decisive part in it, 
 few, if any, writers have an idea. It is true, Auguste 
 Victoria dreaded her husband's parting with the Prince, 
 but feared even more the constant intimate relations 
 between William and Herbert ; and she once succeeded in 
 striking his name from the list of guests on the Northland 
 trip, giving his place to her " uncle," Count Waldersee, 
 who assiduously worked against the Iron Chancellor's 
 interests during the journey. Count Herbert, however, 
 was invited to accompany the Kaiser to England and on 
 the Oriental tour, mainly, it is rumoured, on account of 
 his boast that, as Secretary of Foreign Affairs, he would 
 
8o PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 find ways and means to open the doors of the Sultan's 
 harem to his Majesty. 
 
 Whether Herbert made such insane promises I cannot 
 say ; enough that my mistress believed he did, and per- 
 suaded Countess Waldersee to believe it also. Her Ex- 
 cellency, you know, is a most pious woman, and Herbert 
 necessarily figured in her inventory of proscribed persons 
 with a big " H," as Baron yon Mirbach put it. (The 
 German word for Hades, like the English, commences 
 with an " h "). 
 
 How the two august ladies worked for the downfall 
 of the hated man : a few pin-thrusts here, an allusion 
 to the old Chancellor's ambition to set up a throne beside 
 the throne there ; " Crown-Prince Herbert," " Woman- 
 beater Herbert," " Son of his father," and what not ? 
 And in the end : " Down goes the mantle, and the Prince, 
 he follows." 
 
 Of the old Chancellor, guilty of two unpardonable 
 sins, that of possessing undoubted popularity, far ex- 
 ceeding the Emperor's, and a hearty disinclination to 
 accommodate himself, after years of supreme rule, to the 
 part William intended for him of this " obstreperous 
 servant " the Kaiser had been tired for a long time, and 
 the separation enforced in March, 1890, was nothing if 
 not premeditated. Indeed, the Kaiser's inviolable in- 
 tention to dismiss the " old man," as he called him, was 
 expressed as far back as October, 1889, the repository 
 of imperial confidence at that time being no other than 
 Czar Alexander. 
 
 The Czar was the last of the great monarchs to repay 
 the Kaiser's visit, and was frosty and ceremonious in the 
 extreme upon his arrival a circumstance which, strange 
 to say, filled the Empress with joy. 
 
 "Thank God," she said to the Countess Brockdorff 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 81 
 
 and myself, while waiting for the dinner signal, " if the 
 Czar's ill-humour continues, there can be no more talk 
 of that betrothal," meaning the contemplated engage- 
 ment between the Czarowitz and her Majesty's sister-in- 
 law, Princess Marguerite of Prussia. 
 
 Well, the ill-humour did not continue it vanished 
 after the Czar had had a long talk with Prince Bismarck ; 
 the Kaiser was pleased outwardly, but extremely mortified 
 that the Chancellor, not himself, had brought about the 
 change. 
 
 " This Bismarck is for ever assuming his sovereign's 
 functions," he growled, and, in order to have Alexander's 
 ear exclusively, he hurriedly arranged a hunting expedi- 
 tion in the royal forest at Eberswalde. 
 
 On this occasion the pourparlers about the betrothal 
 were renewed, and according to the Empress, who was 
 disturbed at the prospect of losing another relative in 
 the realms of the Greek Church progressed favourably 
 at first, but, unfortunately for his own great designs and 
 luckily for the Kaiserin's pious scruples, his Majesty could 
 not constrain himself to follow up his success by the 
 premature announcement, made strictly sub rosd, that he 
 intended to dismiss Bismarck at an early opportunity. 
 
 As Alexander could see only the forerunner of grave 
 complications in such a course, our northern guest grew 
 visibly cold on the last day of his visit, and thereafter 
 confined himself to evasive answers when the betrothal 
 was mentioned. 
 
 While this proves beyond doubt that the parting with 
 the Chancellor was long premeditated, I am quite sure, 
 from remarks made at different times by my royal mis- 
 tress, that the Kaiser had no notion whatever of getting 
 rid of Count Herbert too. Only the gross coercion used 
 against the " old man " on the one hand, and, on the 
 
 F 
 
82 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 other, the fact that Bismarck, when making the historic 
 appeal to the Empress Frederick " his last stand " 
 learned that the petticoat camarilla had worked against 
 his son as diligently as the Kaiser's increasing querulous- 
 ness and thirst for independence opposed retention of 
 office by himself, this aggravating circumstance alone 
 forced resignation upon the Count. With respect to the 
 meeting in the old Kronprinzen-Palais Unter den Linden, 
 I know for a certainty that his Majesty's mother, when 
 refusing to interfere on the Chancellor's behalf, spoke 
 unreservedly of the evil influence which Herbert had 
 exercised upon her son, and recited how much the Empress 
 had suffered by it. These facts, Auguste Victoria, though 
 otherwise not given to adulation of her mother-in-law, 
 has often mentioned. 
 
 After that, persons of delicacy quickly recognised 
 the only course left open to Herbert; but the Emperor, 
 swayed by his own likes and dislikes and looking neither 
 to the right nor left, gave his former friend an opportunity 
 to insult him. 
 
 " And what will you do ? " he asked the Secretary of 
 State. 
 
 " Follow my father," answered Herbert, with fine 
 spirit. 
 
 So much for the Herbert Bismarck intermezzo. Lie- 
 benau, though more the Kaiser's alter ego than the Count, 
 was never on terms of intimacy with William, who selected 
 him as Major-domo, when, after his marriage, the princely 
 household was established, for the same reason that, in 
 1897, prompted his nomination of a general of cavalry 
 for the position of Reichs Postmaster, viz. : because he 
 was a good driller, a disciplinarian of the sort that does 
 his master's bidding without the slightest thought of the 
 feelings of others. An official reputed to carry out 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 83 
 
 orders unflinchingly and, if need be, unscrupulously, 
 is very apt to attract a man of William's arbitrary 
 temperament. 
 
 There was still another point speaking in von Lie- 
 benau's favour. At the time William's household was 
 established, his Royal Highness's income was a little 
 over 10,000 per year, a mere bagatelle, considering the 
 pretensions of both master and mistress ; but the Court- 
 marshal, coming from a family in which the Prussian 
 saying, " Golden collar Stomach hollow," has had prac- 
 tical demonstration through generations of uniformed, 
 spurred, and sabred vaingloriousness and misery, pro- 
 mised to carry on the stewardship that would have been 
 moribund in most other hands, to a nicety promised 
 it, and kept his promise. He did more. During the 
 first two or three years, at least, he managed to set aside 
 for the personal use of the Prince all the money needed. 
 Later on, debts were contracted ; they were not of 
 Liebenau's making, though. 
 
 But, while ingratiating himself with William's house- 
 hold and, in fact, with the entire royal family for the 
 old Emperor, as well as the Crown Prince and the young 
 man's uncles and aunts, held very decided opinions on 
 the subject of his Royal Highness's money-spending pro- 
 clivities this "mounted beggar," as the late Empress 
 Augusta called him, proclaimed his natural inclination 
 for the noble art of browbeating by regulating his con- 
 duct toward the house officials and servants in every 
 respect after his master's example. As stated, he was 
 not a member of Prince William's inner circle of friends ; 
 but his Royal Highness's intimacy with Count Herbert, 
 whose sentiments toward women were notorious, sufficed 
 as a cue for Liebenau's official intercourse with the Princess. 
 Outwardly loyalty itself (I doubt whether a more loquacious 
 
84 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 reciter of courtly phrases and of assurances of respect 
 and humility ever addressed a royal lady in our days), 
 nothing seemed to give this intriguer more satisfaction 
 than to refuse, on the plea of expenditure, whatever the 
 future Empress expressed a wish for in the way of food 
 or petty luxury, not on the daily list. 
 
 " Think of it, Countess," she said to me one morning 
 in the spring of 1888, " this Liebenau refused me a glass 
 of Madeira for second breakfast, claiming his budget 
 would not permit such extravagance when we are alone, 
 there being hardly enough to set the table as it ought 
 to be set when the Prince himself is present. 
 
 " ' My appropriation scarcely warrants the purchase 
 of expensive wines for his Royal Highness's own con- 
 sumption,' he had the impudence to tell me. I nearly 
 choked with anger." 
 
 When William became Crown Prince, Liebenau re- 
 tained his position at the head of the largely augmented 
 household ; but, on assuming the throne, the Kaiser kept 
 him on the anxious bench many weeks before the rank 
 and title of Chief Grand-marshal of the Court and House 
 was bestowed on the ex-captain of the Body-guard Bat- 
 talion. Yet, no sooner had his highest ambition been 
 realised, than Liebenau began to outroyal royalty. He 
 established a reign of terror at the palace, as William 
 had done, to a certain extent, in some departments of 
 government ; but, while the Kaiser waited until May, 
 1891, before promulgating his boast and threat : " There 
 is but one master in the Reich none other will I tolerate " 
 (in the speech before the Rhenish Provincial Diet), 
 Liebenau at once made it clear to everybody in the im- 
 perial household that he was the real King's lieutenant, 
 vested with absolute power, from whose decisions no 
 appeal could be had. And that was not idle talk, 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 85 
 
 for in domestic affairs the Kaiser listened to no one but 
 him. 
 
 Never was monarch so hungry for popular applause 
 as William during the first two or three months after 
 Bismarck's dismissal. Ever since the old Chancellor had 
 thundered his proud " We will meet again ! " into the 
 teeth of imperial disgrace, William had flitted from banquet 
 to review, to festivities at the opening or closing of schools, 
 to laying of corner-stones, launching of yachts and 
 steamers ; he had paid court to all princes suspected of 
 Bismarckian sympathies, had made conciliatory addresses 
 to the Reichstag, had appealed for friendly support in 
 Konigsberg, and had even gone out of his way to honour 
 his well-hated grandmother by a special state dinner on 
 the occasion of her birthday ; in short, he had done 
 everything in his power to dissuade the German people 
 from too much Bismarck discussion and to gain adherents 
 to the imperial cause. 
 
 Although the regime of the alter ego came to an end 
 half-a-dozen years ago, his influence is still felt at Court 
 and even in the affairs of state, and if, sooner or later, 
 judgment must be passed on the Kaiser's mental con- 
 dition, the Liebenau bacillus deserves special investigation. 
 It was Liebenau's reckless hard taskmastery which nourished 
 and upheld the Kaiser's notion that he can make the im- 
 possible possible, that his word suffices to put seven-league 
 irons on a tired horse and double and treble his people's 
 capacity for work. Another imperial idiosyncrasy, stimu- 
 lated by Liebenau, was William's passion for travel, 
 that guaranteed the Chief Court-marshal either consider- 
 able perquisites when accompanying his Majesty, or, if 
 left behind, untrammelled dominion at home. I happen 
 to have kept a record of the Kaiser's jaunts under the 
 Liebenau administration, and in the following give a list 
 
86 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 of the official visits paid by his Majesty from August, 1888, 
 to May, 1890, leaving out hunting-trips and others of a 
 private character. 
 
 William went to Stockholm and Copenhagen, Frankfurt, 
 Stuttgart, Munich, Vienna, Rome, Hamburg, Leipzig, 
 Breslau, Stettin, Biickeburg, Oldenburg, Wilhelrnshafen, 
 Schwedt, Weimar, Brunswick, Dresden, Osborne, Sandown 
 Bay, Aldershot, Carlsruhe, Strassburg, Metz, Minister, 
 Minden, Hanover, Schwerin, Athens, Dessau, Darm- 
 stadt, Worms, Bremen, Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Altenburg, 
 Konigsberg, altogether stopping and holding Court in 
 thirty-seven different cities and towns in Germany and 
 abroad, many of which were visited three or four times, 
 and all within the short space of a year and ten months. 
 
 To find excuses for this almost perpetual absence from 
 the seat of government (Count Shuvaloff, at that time 
 Russian Ambassador in Berlin, told me the Czar Alex- 
 ander III. used to say there was only one similar case 
 in history, that of Charles XII., " the Madman of the 
 North " ; continuing : " Wait a while, and, like Charles, 
 he will some day send his boot to preside at the state 
 council ! " which was not half bad for an autocrat) to 
 quiet public opinion on the score of these incessant junket- 
 ings, all sorts of excuses are invented by William and 
 his suite, as once before mentioned ; he goes away " to 
 take a bird's-eye view of politics, and to come back un- 
 biased by partisan preferences " ; if he neglects to look 
 up the King of the Belgians, " our African possessions 
 may be wiped out " even quicker than Eugene Richter 
 wishes it ; a month's sea- voyage affords the Kaiser a 
 much-wanted " opportunity for studying his inner man," 
 and who would deny the necessity of such an under- 
 taking ? 
 
 But the real motive that prompts these journeys is 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 87 
 
 the morbid restlessness of which the Kaiser is possessed, 
 and that scourges him, a crowned Ahasuerus, from town 
 to city, over seas and mountains. 
 
 The Kaiser's adjutants, military and civil secretaries, 
 or representatives of the various cabinets, body-physicians, 
 valets, wardrobemen, keeper of the silverware, cellarer, 
 master of the horse, coachmen, grooms, mouth-cooks, 
 kitchen employees, and the host of chasseurs and flunkies 
 who accompany him on each trip, are so well trained in 
 handling the endless accessories and baggage, that an 
 order to get ready at an hour's notice neither surprises 
 nor disconcerts them. If the tour or outing on which 
 they are about to enter has been under consideration for 
 some time, a printed itinerary is furnished to the chief 
 of each department, but quite frequently not one of the 
 men is able to learn anything beyond the hour of de- 
 parture. 
 
 The Kaiser, you know, addresses his attendants only 
 in monosyllables, and does not even take the trouble to 
 speak distinctly. To ask repetition of a sentence, or to 
 put any question whatever, would be an unheard-of breach 
 of etiquette, so there remains nothing to do but to take 
 chances and work ahead in the dark, the more so, as the 
 adjutants often know no more of his Majesty's intentions 
 than the small stable-boys who go with every imperial 
 party to assist at tennis. 
 
 Especial secrecy is observed if the destination is some 
 town or fortress in the far west or east of the Empire, 
 where, after a night of travel, the war-lord intends to 
 mount at five or six o'clock in the morning, and, attended 
 by trumpeters and a formidable suite, ride through the 
 streets alarming the garrison. If the wardrobe-master 
 on duty suspects that the journey is on an errand of that 
 kind, he exhausts every possible means of solving the 
 
88 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 mystery, and more than once have I aided the poor fellow 
 by trying to learn from the Empress what was wanted. 
 Sometimes, though, even her Majesty is kept in ignorance. 
 
 The wardrobeman's anxiety will be better understood 
 when I mention that William makes it a rule to always 
 wear the uniform of the principal regiment garrisoned in 
 the place visited ; the attendant unable to draw from 
 among the baggage the military dress desired would 
 quickly find himself dropped from the salary list. 
 
 When, in addition, it is stated that a cavalry uniform, 
 for instance, consists of fourteen distinct parts, the reader 
 may gain an idea of the work involved by these sudden 
 journeys, for one uniform would of course not do ; there 
 must be three or four in reserve, and also civilian and 
 hunting dress. 
 
 In a similar predicament to the wardrobeman is the 
 stable-master. Will an infantry, cavalry, or artillery 
 horse be wanted ? for his Majesty rides a different breed 
 of animal with each body of troops. Every time in- 
 formation is withheld in the manner described, six horses, 
 two of each kind, must be taken along for his Majesty, 
 besides consignments of carriage-horses and vehicles and 
 numerous mounts for the suite, all of which increases the 
 cost of railway journeying enormously, for, though most 
 of the German railways are property of the state, the 
 Kaiser has to pay mileage like any other individual. 
 
 The imperial train generally pulls out of the station 
 at ten o'clock at night, as the Kaiser never allows business 
 to interfere with his own convenience, and if, for some 
 reason or other, he wants to rise earlier than usual, he 
 retires soon after supper to make up for time that will 
 be lost. Furthermore, the train must proceed at the 
 slowest possible rate, so that the " all-highest's " sleep 
 be not disturbed. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 89 
 
 That the saloon-train is furnished with all the luxuries 
 imaginable a rolling palace containing reception, dining, 
 bed, bath and toilet rooms, kitchen, scullery, and stables 
 need hardly be explained ; the only things lacking 
 are accommodations for the servants, who, valet and 
 hostler alike, must sleep in chairs or on the floor. 
 
 At five o'clock, or earlier, a cup of tea is served to the 
 monarch, the bath and toilet follow, and then breakfast, 
 which latter is served with much more state and with a 
 greater variety of food than at home. So fortified and 
 refreshed, the Kaiser and his paladins mount at dawn, 
 and, preceded by buglers, gallop into the city "to kill 
 the soldiers' and, incidentally, the citizens' morning 
 sleep." 
 
 One of the imperial adjutants, whom I dare not name, 
 as it would ruin this gentleman's chances of advance- 
 ment, describes the mode of procedure at the alarming of 
 the garrison of the fortress of Posen as follows : 
 
 " During breakfast, and on our ride to the inner town, 
 his Majesty talked of nothing but of the ' stupid faces ' 
 the commander and officers, suddenly roused from sleep, 
 would make, and drew some rather risque pictures of 
 the consternation and discomforts bound to follow the 
 signals, so that one of our party remarked : ' These pro- 
 vincial petticoats will not thank your Majesty for making 
 war on them.' 
 
 " ' Pshaw ! ' said the Kaiser, ' what matters that ? 
 The devotion of my brave blue coats, some of whom I 
 will aid to escape without paying their bills, will recom- 
 pense me for any loss of admiration in those quarters.' 
 
 " By this time we had been admitted, after giving 
 the parole of the day," continued my informant, " and 
 presently our trumpeters' blasts and the sharp clang of 
 our horses' hoofs resounded in the main street. Posen, 
 
90 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 though only half Polish, has seen so many sieges, insur- 
 rections, and kindred revolutionary doings, that warlike 
 activity has no terror for her citizens ; a coup de main in 
 broad daylight would no more disconcert them, I believe, 
 than a good-sized shower. Windows were opened and 
 shut as we cantered along, men, women, and children in 
 night-dresses casting hasty glances at the strange caval- 
 cade through half-raised Venetian blinds. Now and again 
 a military person, semi-dressed, or semi-naked if you will, 
 drew himself up into regulation attitude, hand raised to 
 the side of his head ; one might imagine hearing his naked 
 heels strike together. Proceeding at a rapid rate, we 
 encountered several small troops of soldiers bound for 
 the drill-grounds ; but the Kaiser ordered them to fall 
 behind, while their officers gave the report to the adjutants. 
 On Wilhelm Platz the Emperor had the satisfaction of 
 stopping two cavalry horses which, while being saddled, 
 heard the signal and ran off to take their places in array ; 
 altogether we made an awful lot of noise and provoked 
 'more. 
 
 " Meanwhile, we had reached the principal hotel, and 
 there, at one of the upper windows, was a well-known 
 face, adorned by fierce blonde mustachios, peeping out 
 between two lithe figures in white the one a popular 
 coryphee of the Berlin Royal Opera House, the other the 
 ingenue of the theatre on Gendarmen Markt. 
 
 " ' What do I see ? ' cried the Emperor. c This looks 
 as if my ballet and players had preceded us to Posen.' 
 
 " ' It is the first instance that these two branches of 
 art appear on terms of camaraderie? remarked Adjutant 
 von Moltke, and everybody laughed. 
 
 " The surprised Adonis, Baron von X , Rittmeister 
 
 of the Body Hussars, was invited to the Emperor's circle 
 at the banquet in the officers' mess that followed the 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 91 
 
 parade, and his Majesty amused himself royally at his 
 expense, as, indeed, he treated the whole expedition as 
 a huge joke, arranged to afford him a novel entertain- 
 ment." 
 
 Travelling is such a mania with the Reise-Kaiser, that, 
 when business of state or the fact that there is nobody 
 or nothing to visit forbids his going abroad, he occasionally 
 spends a night in his railway carriage, stalled at Wildpark 
 Station, only five minutes from the Neues Palais, on the 
 plea that on the following morning he must be in Berlin 
 at some unearthly hour. 
 
 In the early part of the summer of 1895, he indulged 
 in this queer pastime with increasing regularity, until one 
 night in June, when, about to drive to the station from 
 some festivity held at the Marble Palace, the Kaiserin 
 took courage to threaten an invasion of his bachelor 
 quarters, which, she insisted, must possess some special 
 attraction. As her Majesty was not quite wrong in this, 
 William desisted from following his inclination then and 
 for several months, his compliance being all the more 
 ready as the Empress was in an interesting condition. 
 But her Majesty's interference was not only justified, it 
 was likewise well-timed, for just then there was under 
 way a formidable conspiracy among the royal servants, 
 who, underpaid as they are and nourishing a sneaking 
 spirit of insurrection, had conspired among themselves 
 to inform some member of the opposition (with a view of 
 interpellating the Minister of Railways in the Reichstag) 
 of the fact that his Majesty was in the habit of using a 
 public depot for his sleeping apartment. In that way, 
 they expected to get even with William for compelling 
 them to spend so many nights in their clothes. Of course 
 the legislative body has no business to inquire into the 
 sovereign's manner of spending his nights, but the public 
 
92 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 
 
 was doubtless very much interested in the accompanying 
 circumstance that, when his Majesty chooses to repose at 
 Wildpark Station, traffic is seriously interfered with in 
 order that his sleep be not disturbed. 
 
 " Over a hundred officials and workmen stay awake 
 to-night to facilitate the Kaiser's fad for occupying his 
 car," said Count Eulenburg to me one evening, at the 
 end of May, when the Kaiser was setting out for his 
 wheeled boudoir. 
 
 " Impossible ! a hundred persons ? " 
 
 "A hundred or more the lists have gone through 
 my hands. Reflect a moment on the work involved : 
 Freight-trains must be side-tracked, and passenger-trains 
 are compelled to reduce their speed, while the ordinary 
 signals, steam-whistling and ringing of bells, have to be 
 abandoned, and the number of employees doubled, to 
 forestall mishaps." 
 
 If disgruntled servants had told this story to Liebknecht 
 or Bebel, the inevitable discussion might have seriously 
 interfered with his Majesty's enjoyment of the Wilhelm 
 Canal opening festivities then about to take place. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE EMPEROR'S LOVE OF TRAVEL (continued) THE COURT 
 
 OF DENMARK WILLIAM II. AND FRANCIS JOSEPH 
 
 HIS HISTORICAL BLUNDERS. 
 
 WILLIAM stays at home when there is no one to visit, I 
 said in the preceding chapter, and I may add that willing 
 victims of imperial travelmania grow scarcer year by 
 year. How well I remember the Kaiser's return from 
 his first Northland trip in the summer of 1888, when he 
 spoke most exultingly of his visit to Copenhagen, and 
 how he had succeeded in wheedling King Christian and 
 Queen Louise. 
 
 " They can be of great service to me with Alexander " 
 (the Czar), he said, " and I promised to stay with them 
 a couple of days every year on my way to or from North- 
 land." 
 
 All of us around the royal board, officials and guests, 
 looked at one another in astonishment, for the poverty 
 of the reigning family of Denmark is notorious. Indeed, 
 almost everybody at Court had heard the Kaiser, at one 
 time or another, quote Field-marshal Count Moltke's obser- 
 vation in one of his famous letters to his brother Adolph : 
 
 " Poor King of Denmark ! The founder of a new 
 dynasty, he began his reign by losing one-half of the 
 realm I Sweeping reductions were inevitable in the Court 
 and administration ; indeed, it is doubtful if this state 
 can continue to exist as an independent kingdom." 
 
 93 
 
94 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Besides, it was an open secret that the Czar, when 
 visiting his father-in-law, paid for his accommodation like 
 the millionaire he was for his and for that of all his rela- 
 tives making Denmark their summer home and rejoicing 
 in the annual family reunions. The Kaiser knew that ; 
 he had even obtained a corroboration of the stories in 
 Stockholm, as it turned out by-and-by ; was he, then, 
 determined to become one of the Czar's pensioners, or did 
 he not care whether he embarrassed his venerable brother 
 of Denmark, half of whose inheritance Prussia swallowed up ? 
 
 Reference to the minutes of the journey reveal the 
 fact that at the state dinner in Castle Amalienborg, the 
 Kaiser, answering King Christian's toast, literally said : 
 " I submit my sincerest thanks for your Majesty's wel- 
 come, and hope that I may be permitted to visit your 
 Majesty frequently in the same way." 
 
 It was the last toast spoken that evening, and the 
 members of the Kaiser's suite do not know whether the 
 implied question was honoured by an invitation in private. 
 Certain it is, however, that his Majesty had no further 
 occasion " to eat the Danes out of house and home," for, 
 although the Court of Copenhagen was annually advised 
 of his Majesty's contemplated northern trips, it always 
 acknowledged the notification in such cold terms that 
 any wish to follow it up by a promise to call and take 
 pot-luck was eo ipso forestalled. 
 
 My mistress, in whose circle the Fredensborg family 
 reunions were repeatedly discussed, explained her husband's 
 continued neglect to join them by saying that the in- 
 creasing volume of business made it necessary for his 
 Majesty to pass by Copenhagen ; but I have it on the 
 authority of a high official in the Russian Embassy during 
 Count ShuvalofFs administration, that Czar Alexander 
 distinctly refused to be disturbed in his retreat by " that 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 95 
 
 young man," while, at the same time, the Danish Minister 
 in Berlin hinted that Queen Louise was not well enough 
 to stand the excitement of such visits, that brought back 
 to her all she had suffered since the events of 1864. But 
 that economical questions have something to do with it 
 as well as politics, cannot be denied. The Emperor's 
 suite, you must know, is seldom less than sixty head 
 strong, even when he travels in semi-state. Imagine that 
 gang, with appetites whetted by a sea-voyage, descending 
 upon the little island Court, which, though not ashamed 
 to exhibit its cocoa-nut matting in the royal corridors 
 and its crazy little oil-lamps before the immensely wealthy 
 Russians, must brush up and go to no end of expense 
 to make as good a showing as possible before these shoddy j 
 Berliners. Besides, the Kaiser always expects that some 
 military or naval display will be especially arranged for 
 him. 
 
 But not only poor kings, like Christian, object to these 
 imperial invasions ; at Rome and Vienna, not to mention 
 the small German courts, the cry, " The Prussians are 
 coming ! " is as sure of causing a panic in what is styled 
 " highest circles " as in the nurseries of France, where 
 the echo of 1870 to 1871 is still in use as a means of 
 intimidation. 
 
 On February 21, 1895, the Kaiser returned in high 
 dudgeon from Vienna, whither he had gone unexpectedly 
 to attend the funeral of the late Archduke Albrecht. 
 Albrecht had been a good hater of Prussia all his life, and 
 if his ideas had prevailed twenty-seven years ago, Austria 
 would have fallen foal of the Prussian rear and flank ; 
 only Moltke's incredible swiftness of mobilisation baulked 
 that plan. This eventuality had been repeatedly dis- 
 cussed in the press, and, in view of the circumstance, 
 Emperor Francis Joseph was loath to invite the Kaiser 
 
96 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 to the funeral. But William refused to acknowledge the 
 tact displayed by his brother monarch. " Here," so ran 
 his calculations as depicted in some of his remarks made 
 before leaving " here is an event upon which the eyes 
 of the world will be riveted for a day at least a pompous 
 funeral where one may cut an important figure as the 
 only live war-lord ; besides, many political questions call 
 for discussion with Francis Joseph just now. Would it 
 not be absurd to miss this opportunity for combining 
 pleasure, pardon, spectacular display, with business ? " 
 
 William rushed off to Austria pell-mell, but not with- 
 out having previously instructed the overseer of the official 
 scribes, Herr von Tausch, the same who figured in the 
 criminal courts in 1897, to proclaim from the house-tops 
 that the German Emperor had magnanimously forgotten 
 all about the late Archduke's evil intentions, and had 
 gone to pay his imperial respects to the dead foe. 
 
 The first effect of this fanfaronnade was the withdrawal 
 from the obsequies, of the dead man's brother-in-law, 
 the Bavarian Prince Regent. Luitpold, as a near rela- 
 tive, had no ambition to take second rank, walking behind 
 William. The Hofburg officials were thrown into the 
 utmost confusion. The place of chief mourner had been 
 reserved for Emperor Francis Joseph ; now there were 
 two sovereigns to be treated with equal distinction. So 
 all arrangements were upset, and the Austrian monarch 
 himself was most seriously embarrassed. However, the 
 funeral passed off without a hitch ; but William soon 
 found that Francis Joseph, deeply chagrined at the 
 absence of his cousin, was not in the humour to talk 
 politics. He would neither argue the election of Faure, 
 nor the question of the renewal of the Triple Alliance. He 
 even refused to express an opinion on the rumours concern- 
 ing Count Kalnoky's resignation, which was then imminent. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 97 
 
 This the Emperor himself reported on coming home, 
 blaming, at the same time, everybody but himself for 
 the rebuffs experienced. What he did not tell (the Empress 
 learned of it later through her brother, who had it from 
 the Princess Philip of Coburg) was that Francis Joseph, 
 surely the mildest and most hospitable of men, treated 
 the Kaiser with so much coolness that his Majesty left 
 his apartments in the Hofburg and took up his quarters 
 with Count Philip Eulenburg, at the German Embassy, 
 where"' the object of the visit was lost sight of at an in- 
 formal dinner enlivened by songs and dances which hired 
 vaudeville stars and the ambassadorial troubadour himself 
 performed. 
 
 And that happened a year after William had called 
 Francis Joseph, in a speech delivered at the Austrian 
 Navy Casino in Pola, " my best friend, with whom* I am 
 united in sincerest friendship, and who is my most loyal 
 companion in arms." Finally, the King of Saxony had 
 to act as peacemaker between the two Emperors. 
 
 When the news reached Berlin, in the middle of 
 November, 1889, tnat Dom Pedro had been deposed, Duke 
 Giinther of Schleswig circulated a story to the effect that 
 the Kaiser received the information with the remark : 
 " Too bad ; I had just thought of paying him a visit." 
 The responsibility for this anecdote I must leave to his 
 Highness. 
 
 After the bustle occasioned by his Majesty's prepara- 
 tions for travel, life in the Neues Palais, which is never 
 brilliant, but often spectacular, becomes duller and more 
 insipid than ever. Entertainments are completely aban- 
 doned, and economy is the word heard on every side. 
 The Court and House-marshals give strict orders that 
 expenses be cut all round ; a number of the servants are 
 shipped to Berlin, so that their board wages, to which 
 
 G 
 
9 8 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 they are entitled while in Potsdam, may be saved ; only 
 flowers from the royal gardens dare be used for decoration, 
 while great loads are bought from different purveyors 
 during the Kaiser's residence at home, and, finally, the 
 expenses of the cuisine are reduced two-thirds, because 
 the Empress, out of sheer ennui, falls in with the pre- 
 vailing rule by taking her meals privately with the 
 children. 
 
 All of a sudden, sometimes, his Majesty bursts anew 
 into the midst of our humdrum existence, having left his 
 friends abruptly, or his contemplated business unfinished ; 
 occasionally, it is said, press criticism brings him back 
 earlier than anticipated. Hence he employs a day or so 
 despatching the most urgent affairs of state, and immedi- 
 ately sets the ball of courtly entertainments rolling. He 
 may order a dinner of a hundred covers or more for next 
 day, and again, while that is in progress, invite his guests, 
 or part of them, to accompany him on a yachting expedi- 
 tion on the Havel lakes. 
 
 Gun-charger Riger, who, in his gold-embroidered chasseur 
 dress, stands behind the Kaiser's chair on festive occasions, 
 often conveys a brief command of that kind to the House- 
 marshal on duty in this fashion : " His Majesty's yacht 
 Alexandra and so and so many auxiliary yachts must 
 be ready at such and such an hour," usually at four or 
 five, if the meal began between one and two. 
 
 To facilitate this imperial wish, telegraph, telephone, 
 and mounted messengers must be plentifully employed 
 in an effort to drum together officers and crew, hire vessels, 
 and secure a band. Furthermore, the personnel of the 
 coffee and tea kitchen and confectionery has to be 
 sent to the steamer with their outfit, for each of the 
 five meals to which their Majesties are accustomed must 
 be served punctually under all circumstances. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 99 
 
 Promptly at the hour named, the marshal on duty 
 " submits " that carriages are waiting to bring their 
 Majesties and the company to the embarking-place, and, 
 before the vessel leaves, the official takes heart to ask 
 his master where he commands that supper shall be 
 served. 
 
 Maybe his Majesty answers, carelessly : " Pfauen Insel," 
 or, " Park of the Marble Palace," " at eight." 
 
 The first is a small wooded island in the Havel, con- 
 taining a sparsely-furnished royal villa that affords a 
 certain amount of space, but little else, for the accommoda- 
 tion of guests. The castellan of the estate or castle selected 
 for the invasion is now hurriedly informed, and the stable- 
 master sets about, getting ready ten or more so-called 
 kitchen vans to transport all that is necessary : refrigera- 
 tors and hot-closets, table-linen, basket fuls of silver and 
 plate, china and crystal, wines, meats, vegetables and 
 delicacies, lamps and candelabra, and a thousand and 
 one accessories. All these things are under the care of 
 certain officials and servants, and, the staff being thoroughly 
 organised, the whole train is equipped in an incredibly 
 short while arid starts for its destination, the Court- 
 marshal following in his carriage to superintend the arrange- 
 ments on the spot (that is, if the Kaiser has not meanwhile 
 made up his mind to go elsewhere). 
 
 Oh, the fickleness of the great ! In the summers 
 of 1895 and 1896, especially, the places of rendezvous 
 were changed with alarming frequency, and before the 
 cavalcade started for a certain castle or park, the men 
 usually offered to lay wagers that upon their arrival they 
 would find a telegram ordering supper in some other lodge 
 or villa, or on the borders of some lake five or ten miles to 
 the south, or east, or west, as the case might be. Once 
 they were chased in this manner from Charlotten Hof 
 
ioo PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 to the Baierische Hauschen in Wildpark, and from there 
 to the Entenfang, far out in the royal hunting-grounds. 
 The Entenfang is a romantic spot, such as young lovers 
 might select for a picnic ; but imagine the tumult and 
 work which the impromptu establishment of a royal table 
 of from twenty to one hundred covers must occasion, 
 when the nearest castle or royal villa is ten miles off. 
 The vans had to be sent back to the Neues Palais for 
 tables, chairs, carpets, and a little tent for the toilet, while 
 the nearest military post furnished field cooking-apparatus, 
 and a dozen or more horses were driven lame travelling 
 to and fro with heavy loads. The damage caused by 
 broken crockery, crystal, and ruined furniture also reached 
 a high figure. 
 
 Foreign visitors at our Court frequently wonder how 
 it is possible for one man to give employment to three 
 hundred and fifty horses in driving and riding, as the 
 Emperor does. The story of these whimsical excursions 
 explains that point, for, aside from the horses needed 
 for the. service, carriages must be sent to fetch their 
 Majesties and suite and company from some distant place, 
 perhaps, while others are collecting the ladies and gentle- 
 men in Potsdam and neighbourhood, or from incoming 
 trains, who have been ts commanded "to be present at 
 supper at some place where at the time stipulated no 
 sign of life exists. 
 
 At twelve or one o'clock in the morning, when the 
 imperial master, his titled suite and his friends, have 
 forgotten, in several hours' sleep, all about the forty-five 
 minutes of entertainment that kept a small army of men, 
 women, and beasts on the run since dinner, the vans 
 and carry-alls return to the palace, often awakening many 
 a noble lord and lady who wonder that any living creature 
 dare disturb their august slumber. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT ibi 
 
 Whether they dare or not, they do. It is a way they 
 have of getting even with " their betters." 
 
 When the Kaiser is at home, his conversation per- 
 petually turns on the subject of future outings, and his 
 secretaries and adjutants are kept busy scouring the papers 
 for items that promise excuses for a visit to one place or 
 another. As soon as an opening is discovered, the Court- 
 marshal must find ways and means to secure an invita- 
 tion for the Emperor, and to that end either the military 
 authorities, the Landrath (chief of a county), or some 
 Prince or aristocrat living in the neighbourhood, receives 
 instructions, which in many cases are most eagerly fol- 
 lowed, for William's presence in any place, not his capital, 
 is a guarantee for no end of advertisement ; sometimes, 
 though, it is quite difficult to persuade the municipal 
 authorities, these worthy men being afraid of the cost of 
 the undertaking. 
 
 If neither cities nor country districts, neither the North 
 German Lloyd nor the Hamburg Line, neither the ship- 
 yards nor yacht or hunting clubs at home or abroad, hold 
 out allurements, the Kaiser, quickly resolved, makes oppor- 
 tunities for travel or display. 
 
 He observes, for instance, that it is so and so many 
 
 years since the Regiment received an honoured flag. 
 
 " Let's grant it a new set of colours," says William, and 
 presently parades, religious ceremonies, speechifyings, 
 dinners, and tattoos are in the air. Or, ah 1 regiments 
 being provided with flags, his Majesty feels " graciously 
 pleased " to bestow on one or another " ensign ribbons," 
 an act yielding as much in the way of spectacular splendour 
 as the other. 
 
 In contrast to the Empress, William is not a religious 
 person, but, like her Majesty, firmly believes that godli- 
 ness does very well for common people. With that idea 
 
102 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 in mind, he inaugurated his crusade for the building of 
 churches, leaving to Auguste Victoria's initiative the 
 task of collecting the necessary funds. For his part he 
 is interested only in the corner-stone-laying and the open- 
 ing of such edifices. 
 
 "We have built fifteen churches in Berlin alone since 
 1890," said William, in the course of a dinner at the Berlin 
 Schloss, some time ago. 
 
 " His Majesty means he drove thirty times a la Dumont 
 to commencement and finishing celebrations," whispered 
 my neighbour, the then Secretary of State for Foreign 
 Affairs, Baron von Marschall, imitating the persiflage of 
 his South German home, where it is the fashion to refer 
 to a bevy of ten girls as " twenty bosoms." 
 
 Provided nothing better offers itself, the Kaiser is 
 even content to assist at church ceremonials of the sort 
 described in the provinces ; " they bore him awfully," 
 says Baron von Lyncker, " but he finds opportunity for 
 making a speech there, and a little newspaper notoriety 
 is likewise sure to follow. And one must be thankful 
 for small favours in these democratic times." That the 
 Kaiser allows no war or other monument to be unveiled 
 without personally participating in the act, hardly requires 
 comment. 
 
 In a preceding paragraph, I referred to the easy com- 
 plaisance with which the aristocracy submits to the Kaiser's 
 wishes. William, indeed, seems to have cowed the flower 
 of German nobility into a condition that once prevailed 
 in France, when the dignitaries of the crown fought among 
 themselves as to who should have the honour to hand 
 his Majesty a clean shirt or remove his dirty boots. Let 
 me give one instance among many. 
 
 On October 24, 1894, the Kaiser's "Song to ^)gir" 
 was performed at a matine'e in the Royal Opera House, 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 103 
 
 which the Prince and Princess of Wied attended, together 
 with their Majesties. 
 
 The Prince is a man in the fifties, belongs to one of 
 the proudest families in Europe, and besides is the brother 
 of the Queen of Roumania and an uncle of the Queen 
 of Holland ; yet every time the big audience waxed en- 
 thusiastic over his Majesty's alleged masterpiece, this 
 old man with silvery hair rose respectfully from his seat 
 and bowed low before his nephew, keeping up the farce 
 all through the performance without William in any way 
 restraining him. 
 
 And this reminds me, by way of contrast, of a con- 
 versation at which I was present some time previous to 
 that public exhibition of senile adulation. 
 
 " Tell me, honestly, who helped his Majesty compose 
 this frightful ' Song to ^Egir ' ? " 
 
 " State secret. Your Royal Highness must certainly 
 excuse me this time," and Adjutant Count Moltke looked 
 up helplessly into the beautiful eyes of the Emperor's 
 sister. 
 
 " As my big brother remarked the other day to the 
 Burgomaster of Thorn : ' I can be very disagreeable if 
 need be,' " said the Princess of Meiningen. " Now, Herr 
 Major, answer pit and pat, I command you." 
 
 " His Majesty composed the song." 
 
 " That is the official version, I know ; what I am 
 interested in, is to find out how he did it." 
 
 " At the piano, your Royal Highness." 
 
 " Since when does his Majesty play ? " 
 
 " He has the finest ear for music, that your Royal 
 Highness will not deny. He struck the keys with one 
 finger, and, if you promise not to give me away, your 
 humble servant had the honour of putting the all-highest's 
 composition on paper." 
 
lo^ PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 " Thanks, awfully," said the Princess, and, turning 
 to her lady-in-waiting, Fraulein von Ramin, now Madame 
 von Brochen, she added : " Not a word of this to any- 
 body ; our dear Moltke must not be punished for amusing 
 us." And, once more addressing the adjutant, she con- 
 tinued with her usual mocking laugh : "I will now tell 
 you how it was done, you innocent. The Emperor was 
 strumming the piano with one finger, when a certain blonde 
 giant about your size stepped behind him, and, striking 
 the keys, gave life to a musical composition he, the giant, 
 had half perfected in his head. The air pleased his 
 Majesty, and he added a note here and there. And, as 
 the thing progressed, my big brother said : ' This would 
 be an excellent accompaniment to Eulenburg's northern 
 legend. Call him at once.' When the troubadour ap- 
 peared, all three of you set to work on this frightful piece 
 of clap-trap, and, as you correctly reported, the honour 
 of putting the composition on paper fell to you as the 
 only capable musician of the trio the composition, I 
 said, not the all-highest one." 
 
 This lively colloquy occurred a few days after the 
 much-disputed air had been performed at a concert in 
 honour of a deputation from the British Royal Dragoons 
 visiting Berlin to congratulate their new chief, the Kaiser, 
 and it gives the true story of the birth of that song. For 
 the orchestration, it may be added, Professor Albert Becker, 
 of Berlin, is responsible ; he received the Hohenzollern 
 Cross in acknowledgment. 
 
 Besides clearing up the " ^Egir " mystery, the above 
 affords an interesting illustration of William's mode of 
 work. He has talents, undoubtedly, but they are creative 
 only in giving work to others, the product passing for his 
 own in the end. As Herren von Moltke and Philip Eulen- 
 burg are the real authors of " his " " Song to ^gir," so 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 105 
 
 Professor Knackfuss, in Cassel, composes his cartoons, 
 though being credited only with their technical execu- 
 tion. The late Court chaplain Frommel used to write 
 the imperial sermons delivered with so much eclat on the 
 deck of the yacht Hohenzollern ; officers of the military 
 household prepare William's lectures, and the artist Karl 
 Saltzmann paints his landscapes and marine views. 
 
 To shield their master from the accusation of fritter- 
 ing away his time in useless dilettanteism, the German 
 official press occasionally prints historic reviews purport- 
 ing to show that the Hohenzollerns of all ages have been 
 among the most gifted of mortals authors, poets, musicians, 
 artists. Especially to Frederick William the First's clever- 
 ness as a painter, constant reference is made, although 
 any one acquainted with the history of the Prussian Court 
 might be aware of the untenableness of that claim. This 
 gentleman, the father of the great Frederick, wrote his 
 royal signature upon a good many canvases, it is true, 
 but few of the pictures attributed to his brush were really 
 his. As a matter of fact, instead of being the Apelles 
 of the Brandenburg dynasty, its first noted painter, he 
 started the fashion of counterfeiting, of which his son 
 became past-master. His scheme was to employ poor 
 artists by the year, and to let them paint daubs of all 
 sizes and subjects. These he adorned with his name, 
 adding a little colouring here and there into the bargain, 
 and sold at high prices to flatterers and enemies, as the 
 case might be, for in those days the modes of punish- 
 ment at the disposal of a Majesty were manifold and 
 curious. 
 
 A cunning knave this second King of Prussia, and 
 his august example was not entirely lost upon his successors, 
 as the case under consideration shows. But, in weighing 
 the plentiful boasts of imperial achievements upon the 
 
io6 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 scale of sober judgment, there is still another point to 
 be noticed : William's daily programme I remind the 
 reader of Count Seckendorfs witty delineation of his 
 Majesty's labours hour by hour precludes in itself the 
 undertaking of any great amount of serious work on the 
 Kaiser's part. Having for ever one foot in the stirrup 
 and planning new diversions before another is fairly under 
 way, how should this alleged jack-of-all-trades find time 
 for the literary, musical, and artistic pursuits credited 
 to him ? There are geniuses who accomplish a pro- 
 digious amount of work by turning night into day ; but, 
 with all my experience in the royal household, I am at a 
 loss to account for the newspaper statements setting forth 
 that now and again the Kaiser spends half, or three-quarters 
 of the night, studying state papers or working out great 
 projects in the interest of public concern. 
 
 In the first place, his constitutional aversion to sitting 
 still for a considerable time is against night-work, even 
 supposing, for argument's sake, that the day's or even- 
 ing's amusements did not tire out the Kaiser so completely 
 as to make it impossible for him to give the necessary 
 attention to important business ; moreover, his love of 
 sleep would stand in the way. After supper, or at the con- 
 clusion of the night's entertainment, the Kaiser invariably 
 retires as speedily as possible, for " M or gen wieder lustig" 
 thinks his Majesty, with Jerome, the late King of West- 
 phalia. And to persevere in a round of pleasures and 
 excitement it is essential to husband one's strength. 
 
 Many will disagree with the statements made, I know. 
 Having heard so much to the contrary, people are natu- 
 rally disinclined to have their ideas upset. Still, to defend 
 myself against accusations of inaccuracy or exaggeration, 
 I need but quote certain notes from my diary covering 
 the period from August, 1893, to August, 1894. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 107 
 
 Of the three hundred and sixty-five days, the Kaiser 
 spent away from his official residence one hundred and 
 ninety-nine, devoting himself to the army on twenty- 
 seven days, and employing sixteen days in duties of 
 representation. One hundred and fifty-six days were 
 consumed by hunting- trips, sea-journeys, and visiting. 
 
 Now to the one hundred and sixty-six days when his 
 Majesty was " officially " at home. Seventy-seven of 
 them were pleasantly passed in shooting, boating, yacht- 
 ing, or other out-door exercise in the neighbourhood of 
 Potsdam or Berlin, while of the remaining eighty-nine 
 days, each twenty-four hours were diversified by banquets, 
 corsos, concerts, theatrical performances ; by receptions, 
 reviews, or speech-makings. The number of miles covered 
 by the Kaiser either in his saloon-carriage or on board 
 ship during the period mentioned, amounted to three- 
 quarters of the earth's circumference. 
 
 A dozen members of our Court society were discussing 
 the above facts, furnished to settle a bet between Princess 
 Frederick Leopold and her brother, Duke Giinther, at a 
 musicale given by the widow of the Red Prince in her 
 palace on Leipziger Platz, when Princess Aribert of Anhalt, 
 a sprightly young Englishwoman, remarked : " Granted 
 his Majesty cannot ply the fourteen trades and arts im- 
 puted by some historians to Peter the Great, no one will 
 gainsay that he is a brilliant speaker and an adept in 
 military science." 
 
 " Of his rhetorical qualities," replied our graceful 
 hostess, who at that time had special reasons for quarrelling 
 with her grand-nephew, " foreigners, even those under- 
 standing German as well as you, my dear, can hardly 
 form a proper estimate. For myself, I think the Kaiser's 
 speeches neither distinguished for elegance of diction nor 
 for originality. The most offensive sameness pervades 
 
io8 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 them, and not infrequently they abound in misstate- 
 ments." 
 
 I could have furnished her Royal Highness at least 
 one very good reason for the faults pointed out : these 
 speeches are of the Kaiser's own making. 
 
 Only very rarely will his Majesty take the trouble to 
 jot down minutes, as he did with the address to the re- 
 cruits mentioned in another chapter, and even then it is 
 done more to assist memory in following out a certain 
 line of thought, than to retain dates and figures. More- 
 over, I doubt that he thinks it necessary to do so. A 
 person who, relying merely upon his musical ear, and with- 
 out having had instruction in singing, or being able to 
 play an instrument, gets up in a stately gathering to sing 
 a ballad abounding in difficult passages, is certainly the 
 quintessence of self-reliance. 
 
 And that is exactly what William did at Castle Schlitz, 
 in May, 1894, with Count Goertz as accompanist, the bold- 
 ness of the exploit before an audience distinguished for 
 artistic accomplishments being none the less pronounced 
 on account of the fact that the air was alleged to be his 
 own composition. 
 
 Of the performance, Countess Goertz spoke to the 
 Empress in most enthusiastic terms ; but, to quote 
 William, " her Ladyship is a woman so beautiful that 
 to expect sense from her would be hoggish." 
 
 That on the same occasion his Majesty acquitted him- 
 self quite well as Kapellmeister, conducting the band, a 
 military one, which had been thoroughly drilled in per- 
 forming the " Song to ^Bgir," is not astonishing. With his 
 ear for music and a little attention to technique, it would 
 have been difficult, indeed, to lead so perfect an orchestra 
 into blunders when every man knew that his slightest 
 mistake would be followed by professional disgrace. 
 
 V 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 109 
 
 Some months after the exploit in Schlitz, his Majesty 
 and a great number of friends were hunting near Castle 
 Letzlingen, the band of the Saltzwedel Lancers furnish- 
 ing the table-music. At that time, the official papers 
 reported : " The Kaiser again proved his eminent musical 
 talent by conducting the grand march from * Aida.' " 
 One of the party, General von Haenisch, however, tells 
 me that this is riot true. The Kaiser took up the baton 
 to lead the " Hohenfriedberger " and Count Moltke's 
 " Rider's March," compositions of quite a different calibre 
 to Verdi's great work, and which, besides, the band could 
 have played in the dark and with eyes closed. 
 
 Much as one might be inclined to look upon this sort 
 of coxcombry as a harmless affectation liable to wear off 
 in the course of time, its real purport is too glaring to 
 be overlooked ; this parading with plumes borrowed and 
 stolen, the many bids for popular applause through news- 
 paper adulation smacking of the methods of the press 
 agent, William's public lecturing and preaching, his 
 coquetting with the stage and letters, all is but part of 
 a system carefully pieced together to uphold the pretence, 
 of imperial omniscience and omnipotence. 
 
 "As to the Socialists, leave them to me ; that's what 
 I told Bismarck a dozen times," said the Kaiser at supper 
 on May 14, 1889, after the famous audience granted by 
 him to a party of strikers ; "I will settle them single- 
 handed." And more than eight years later, toward the 
 end of July, 1897, when he was on his way home from 
 Norway, he kept the wires hot for three days, demanding 
 Miquel, Prince Hohenlohe, and other friends to arrange 
 for him a meeting with Bismarck, that he might ask the 
 ex-Chancellor's advice concerning the re-introduction of 
 the old Bismarckian Socialistic laws, which the govern- 
 ment allowed to pass out of existence after the first Chan- 
 
no PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 cellor's dismissal. And as in 1889 and 1890 the whole 
 palace was moved to sympathise with the poor labouring 
 man, who needed enlightenment and justice such as William 
 alone knew how to provide and administer (perish the 
 thought that the Iron Chancellor ever possessed the slightest 
 aptitude for dealing with the labour question !), so we 
 were recently drilled to return to the abandoned maxims 
 and help the Kaiser eat his own words, a practice he 
 indulges in so frequently that I think his memory is be- 
 coming defective, as otherwise his inordinate vanity would 
 never permit him to acknowledge defeat. 
 
 To return to the observations of Princess Frederick 
 Charles. There is, among the numberless speeches and 
 sayings reported of the Kaiser, not one pithy remark 
 that has become a by-word in every-day speech or in 
 letters. In all this dreary wilderness of imperial verbosity, 
 we find no mot that outlived the hour of its birth, and 
 the Kaiser's observations, as . a general thing, are too 
 commonplace and insignificant even to permit dressing up. 
 Other important persons are made to say clever things, 
 often without their knowledge or consent, but William's 
 friends and admirers scour his speeches vainly for a peg 
 upon which to hang some witticism, or some flash of 
 genius that might eventually be credited to the royal 
 tattler. The Emperor, who claims to be a student of 
 the older French literature, probably got far enough in 
 Rivarol to learn that "it is an immense advantage to 
 have never said anything." The sentence following, 
 namely : " but one should not abuse it," he must have 
 overlooked, for he certainly does abuse the privilege. And 
 in a twofold manner too : he keeps on saying nothing, 
 and misquotes history at the same time. I have not 
 kept a minute account of the missives, but, if memory 
 serves me right, I should say that fully one-third of the 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT in 
 
 mysterious anonymous letters that caused the great Court 
 scandal of which I will speak presently, contained caustic 
 references to the Kaiser's assassination of historical facts. 
 
 Thus, during the Christmas season of 1894, her Majesty's 
 holiday humour was seriously disturbed by an epistle 
 hauling the Kaiser over the coals for a speech he had made 
 in Kiel, at the swearing-in of recruits, and which referred 
 to the battle of Vercella (101 B.C.) as having been fought 
 " between Germans and Romans " (mistake No. i), and 
 wherein " the Romans were vanquished " (mistake No. 2) 
 " by the enemy's superior valour " (mistake No. 3). 
 
 After pointing out half-a-dozen other errors, the writer 
 of the anonymous note, doubtless a woman, suggested 
 that Auguste Victoria buy her husband a small reference- 
 library ; at the same time the correspondent thanked 
 " William-the-Sudden " for having garbled history in 
 order to pay homage to the arms of ancient France, " for," 
 said this writer, " the barbaric tribe which opposed the 
 Romans at Vercella were not Germans, but Cimbri, or 
 Gauls ; that is, they belonged to the same family as the 
 French of to-day." Similar anonymous notes addressed 
 to her Majesty emptied the vials of sarcasm over the 
 composer of the " Song to ^Egir," which latter, it was 
 pointed out, was not a god of the sea, but a miserable 
 landlubber, who never had so much as a sniff of the ocean. 
 
 The Empress used to turn over these epistles to her 
 husband, with an aching heart ; but if her Majesty, like 
 most of her friends, hoped that these missives would make 
 William more careful in the future, her expectations were 
 not realised, for the Kaiser goes bravely on blundering 
 and exposing himself to ridicule. So he improvised, at 
 the unveiling of the Kaiser Wilhelm monument in Cologne, 
 in July, 1897, an appeal for the enlargement of the navy, 
 taking his text from "the figure of the ancient sea-god 
 
H2 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 JEgir embellishing a medallion at the foot of this proud 
 statue." 
 
 It happened, however, that the image referred to did 
 not represent -ZEgir, but " Father Rhine," who resembles 
 his heathen colleague in everything save the bunches of 
 grapes that rest upon his locks. Of course, in the uni- 
 versal hilarity provoked by this quid pro quo, the Emperor's 
 appeal went for naught. 
 
 That young English Princess whom we met in the 
 palace on Leipziger Platz brought up the question of the 
 Kaiser's singular adeptness for the military, most in- 
 opportunely. It is in bad taste to speak of the delinquent 
 in the hangman's house. The widow of the Red Prince, 
 greatest of Hohenzollern strategists since the Seven Years' 
 War, did not cite this truism to her young relative ; but 
 the list of military blunders she proceeded to lay at the 
 war-lord's door proved that she had the proverb in 
 mind. 
 
 " Field-marshal Count Blumenthal," she said, " who, 
 as chief of the Crown Prince's staff in the wars of 1866 
 and 1870, plucked the laurels that made the Kaiser's 
 father appear almost as great a general as my own husband 
 Blumenthal used to complain that he was ever obliged 
 to prod Frederick to action. In war, the man of ripe 
 and ready judgment is the most successful ; but the late 
 Emperor was slow at thinking, and even more dilatory 
 when he came to act. 
 
 " With his son (William II.), just the opposite holds 
 good. If that young man has ever been able to resist a 
 sudden impulse to any deed, no one in or out of his family 
 has heard of it. Some years ago he made his wife chief 
 of the Pasewalk Cuirassiers, and designed a uniform for 
 her. As commander of this crack regiment, Auguste 
 Victoria is entitled to the insignia of a general ; but the 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 113 
 
 Emperor, unthinking as he is, bestowed upon her lieutenant's 
 epaulettes. Think of it a lieutenant leading a regiment 
 before the war-lord in parade, a lieutenant presiding at 
 the state banquets in the officers' mess ! On another 
 occasion, when the Russian craze had hold of him, he 
 issued an order compelling the officers of the General 
 Staff to attend desk-work in riding-boots. They did so 
 for a day or two ; but, finding it impossible to continue 
 their studies in this heavy accoutrement, combined among 
 themselves to disobey the command and resume ordinary 
 foot-gear. 
 
 " But the most thoughtless of all his military blunders 
 was his cabinet order creating your Highness's grand- 
 mother " (and the old Princess bowed with a mock courtesy 
 toward the Englishwoman), " Queen Victoria, Chief of 
 the First Dragoons." 
 
 " Young Mrs. Aribert," as Louise of Anhalt is familiarly 
 called at Court, started up, and seemed to be struggling 
 for words. 
 
 " Tut, tut ! " appeased her Royal Highness the little 
 fire-brand, placing one hand on Louise's knee, " no dis- 
 respect to her Majesty, I assure you. The stupidity was 
 all on my grand-nephew's part. He named the First- 
 Dragoons ' Queen of England Dragoons ' just one hundred 
 and eighty-two years, less two months and twenty-nine 
 days, after the union between England and Scotland went 
 into effect and the realm became officially known as Great 
 Britain." 
 
 Everybody in the room sat speechless for a while, 
 until Princess Aribert said, half-pleadingly : " But, dear 
 aunt, the change in the nomenclature that eventually 
 had to be made caused, no great havoc, I trust." 
 
 " Oh, no ! " replied the Princess, " his Majesty did not 
 suffer the least inconvenience on account of that error; 
 
 H 
 
H4 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 
 
 but the nation who had to pay double for the initials 
 attached to the shoulder-straps and on the helmets doubt- 
 less felt greatly edified by the blunder, and so did the' 
 officers who for similar reasons were several thousand 
 marks out of pocket." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE KAISER'S AMUSEMENTS THE MENZEL FESTIVAL 
 
 BOTH Majesties, as mentioned in a previous chapter, 
 being indifferent talkers, after-dinner entertainments at 
 the Prussian Court are not of a very lofty sort ; indeed, 
 I am not stretching the point when I say that ennui begins 
 to hang heavily upon all present in the gilded salons as 
 soon as the coffee is brought in, unless the Kaiser happens 
 to lecture, or chooses to exhaust his stock of humorous 
 remarks ; in that event it becomes every one's duty to 
 appear, at least, interested and edified. 
 
 To diversify things a bit, we frequently arrange " rebus 
 competitions," a form of amusement in which the simple* 
 minded Empress takes great delight, while the Kaiser, 
 who not only tolerates the " twin sister of charade " in 
 his own house, but has introduced the game into the army 
 officers' casinos, takes active part in the sport either for 
 the purpose of drawing attention to some smart idea that 
 has entered his head, or merely for the sake of hearing 
 himself talk. 
 
 Whether, as Princess Charlotte suspects, it was owing 
 to the fact that she is known to " hate rebuses," or 
 whether it was intended as a tribute to her fame as a wit, 
 I do not know ; but the future Duchess of Meiningen 
 was, until quite recently, forced to contribute more often 
 to the pictorial pastime of the Court than any other 
 member of the royal family or the household. 
 
 Now it happened, at an evening reception at the Berlin 
 
 Schloss, in the winter of 1896, that her Highness was 
 
 s 
 
n6 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 called away from an animated conversation she was carry- 
 ing on with half-a-dozen young officers. She responded 
 languidly and with ill-grace, and, turning to me, whispered : 
 
 " I will teach them a lesson to-night. Their Majesties 
 ought to know better than to draw me into any such 
 sewing-society frolic. Ah, yes," she added, changing her 
 tone, " I came prepared for the ordeal, but had no idea 
 that the audience would include his Majesty. I warn you, 
 brother, that one of your wondrous ideals may be shattered, 
 if you insist upon the exploitation of my poor riddle." 
 
 " Never mind, Lottchen, if you amuse us, all shall 
 be forgiven." 
 
 " Then send for the copy of the Journal Amusant 
 which I saw on your desk." 
 
 The lively boulevard sheet which contained a grotesque 
 review of the salon was brought in, together with a number 
 of scissors that had likewise been ordered, and her Royal 
 Highness instructed several of her uniformed friends to cut 
 out certain pictures, which she pasted on a sheet of white 
 paper, adding one or two pencil sketches with her own hand. 
 
 " Here we have the enigmatical representation of one 
 of the most interesting figures in history," she began, in 
 the voice of an auctioneer. " You all know the person. 
 One of our greatest poets has immortalised the subject 
 in a stirring drama, while the figures in the rebus are all 
 taken from the epitaph erected to the person's memory 
 by a fine English wit." 
 
 Their Majesties, the Princesses and Princes, and all 
 the lords and ladies crowded around the table, greeting 
 her Royal Highness's words with rounds of applause. 
 
 " But what do these caricatures stand for ? " asked 
 the Kaiserin, inclining her fair head toward the array of 
 printed and hand-drawn images. 
 
 " At your Majesty's command," courtesied Princess 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 117 
 
 Charlotte, and, taking up her fan, the sprightly young 
 woman pointed out each figure, labelling them in suc- 
 cession as follows : " Here we have a man-at-arms or 
 woman-at-arms (who would know the difference ?) ; secondly, 
 the image of a saint ; thirdly, that of a witch ; fourthly, 
 that of a lusty young fellow ; fifthly, that of a sweet 
 maiden ; sixthly, that of a harlot ; No. 7, the periwig of 
 a judge, indicating the law ; No. 8, the emblem of the 
 Republic ; No. 9, the Archangel Gabriel alarming the 
 garrisons of the world on judgment-day." 
 
 Everybody set to guessing, and everybody was highly 
 astonished when, in the end, a correct answer not forth- 
 coming, her Royal Highness announced the solution of 
 the rebus : Joan of Arc. 
 
 " Clever, very clever ! " cried the Emperor ; " it is a fact 
 that the sex of the reputed heroine has been in doubt." 
 
 " I have read somewhere that this virgin was blessed with 
 several children," remarked the Duke of Schleswig dryly. 
 
 " But what has this type of a cocotte to do with the 
 story ? " And her Majesty indicated one of the Journal 
 Amusant sketches. 
 
 " If you will let me quote an epitaph from ' Historical 
 Rarities,' to which I alluded, the connection will become 
 clear at once." 
 
 " Provided it is not too, too " lisped the Empress, 
 
 who dreads her sister-in-law's devil-may-care spirits ; but 
 the Kaiser, anxious to hear the rest, told Lottchen to 
 proceed, which she did with evident relish. These were 
 the lines quoted : 
 
 " Here lies Joan of Arc; the which 
 Some count saint, and some count witch ; 
 Some count man, and something more; 
 Some count maid, and some a whore; 
 Her lifers in question, wrong or right ; 
 Her death's in doubt by laws or might 
 
n8 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Oh, innocence ! take heed of it, 
 How thou, too, near to guilt doth sit 
 (Meantime, France a wonder saw : 
 A woman rule, 'gainst Salic law !) 
 But, reader, be content to stay 
 Thy censure till the judgment-day ;. 
 Then shalt thou know, and not before, 
 Whether saint, witch, man, maid, or whore? 
 
 His Majesty never proposed the game at his own house 
 after this, at least not when the Princess of Meiningen 
 was in the party. 
 
 " We must draw the line somewhere ; she demoralises 
 our young officers," says the Empress. And " I don't 
 care if I do ; virtue in a soldier is a word void of sense," 
 is Princess Charlotte's merry rejoinder. 
 
 Countess Wartensleben, a descendant of the lady of 
 that name who became famous as maftresse en litre of the 
 first King of Prussia after the latter's impotency had 
 been a subject of diplomatic correspondence for some 
 time Countess Wartensleben tells me another rebus in 
 which the Emperor figured. 
 
 It appears that his Majesty, at the conclusion of a 
 banquet arranged in his honour by the officers of the Body 
 Cuirassiers, in Breslau (September n, 1890), proposed 
 his favourite means for killing time, and forthwith con- 
 structed the following rebus : 
 
 KAISER 
 
 WILHELM 
 
 o 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 119 
 
 It was too deep for the " talent " present some fifty 
 or sixty officers and finally the Emperor condescended 
 to explain the mystery. 
 
 " Why, it means : Verdict by Emperor William " (the 
 joke hinges upon the similarity of the German words 
 Uhrtheil, that is, part of a clock, viz., the pendulum, and 
 Urtheil, viz., verdict). 
 
 All applauded wildly, all except one ; instead of ad- 
 miration, the handsome features of Rittmeister Count 
 Wartensleben exhibited traces of a sneer. 
 
 " You have a different solution, Count," exclaimed 
 William ; " I see it in your face." 
 
 " I had one in mind, your Majesty ; but, after the 
 Kaiser has spoken, my poor explanation cannot be of the 
 least account." 
 
 " Still, I must have it. Speak up." 
 
 " I beg your Majesty to absolve me from that duty." 
 
 " I command you to proceed." 
 
 Wartensleben bit his lips. " As your Majesty knows, 
 I am a Mecklenburger," he said ; "I learned my Fritz 
 Reuter by heart. The rebus reminds me of a passage in 
 6 Durchleuchting,' ' He goes this way, he goes that 
 way.' " 
 
 Ominous silence fell upon the assemblage after this 
 blunt speech. " My husband said that you could hear 
 the Colonel shake in his boots," reported Madame von 
 Wartensleben when she described the scene to me. Luckily 
 the Kaiser chose to treat the matter as a joke. " If that 
 is to be an allusion to my title of Reise-Kaiser, yours is 
 not a bad idea," he said, gathered up his drawing and 
 threw it under the table. 
 
 " He goes this way, he goes that way " an animated 
 pendulum swinging freely under the action of a mind 
 that rambles more or less incoherently from one topic to 
 
120 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 another, its ideas overthrowing each other this Wartens- 
 leben (or his Reuter) has a clearer notion of the Kaiser's 
 character than all the rest of his critics. 
 
 Princess Frederick Charles's caustic remarks, quoted 
 in another chapter, have acquainted us with some of the 
 more serious consequences of William's unbridled impetu- 
 osity ; here follow some examples of less importance, 
 that, at the same time, are more pleasant to contem- 
 plate. 
 
 In the middle of February, 1892, when the Kaiser 
 held Court in the Berlin Schloss, as usual in winter, I was 
 about to read the newspapers to her Majesty one fine 
 morning when, unfolding the parcel of our daily literary 
 allowance, I came across a copy of the Berliner Kleines 
 Journal organ of ces dames, that, of course, is strictly 
 tabooed in the imperial apartments ; somebody had 
 smuggled this sheet into Auguste Victoria's sanctum 
 doubtless for a well-defined purpose. Among the society 
 notes was a marked paragraph, which at once attracted 
 her Majesty's attention, and she ordered me to read it 
 before I had time to ascertain its contents. 
 
 It turned out to be a story connecting the name of 
 the Emperor's adjutant, Herr von Huelsen, with that of 
 the only daughter of General von Lucadou as a matri- 
 monial possibility. 
 
 " Incredible ! " cried the Empress ; " Herr von Huelsen 
 may be a Count some day, and that young woman's mother 
 is descended from a French tailor's family." 
 
 " A very rich tailor's, though," suggested Fraulein von 
 Gersdorff. 
 
 "Very likely," said the Empress, somewhat piqued, 
 " considering the prices these Paris modistes charge." 
 Then, turning to me, her Majesty continued : " Be good 
 enough to take the paper to his Majesty's study, and 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 121 
 
 place it on his desk, so he may find it upon his return. 
 This scandal must be nipped in the bud." 
 
 When I reached the imperial antechamber, the Kaiser 
 had just come in from parade, and, observing the paper 
 I had in my hand, inquired, in his customary impulsive 
 style, what it meant ? 
 
 " My all-highest mistress desired me to put the Kleines 
 Journal upon your Majesty's desk. It contains a refer- 
 ence to Herr von Huelsen." 
 
 " To Huelsen ? Let me see." After reading the first 
 line or two, he turned to the chasseur, who was standing 
 at the door waiting to relieve him of his riding-boots and 
 heavy sabre. " Fetch Adjutant von Huelsen at once." 
 
 I was about to withdraw, but the Emperor stopped 
 me. " Come into my room for a moment," he said, in 
 his most gracious style. " You shall be present during 
 Huelsen's examination, and then report to her Majesty." 
 
 The Kaiser sat down upon the sofa, and studied the 
 paragraph word for word. Presently, Major von Huelsen 
 came to ascertain the master's pleasure. 
 
 " Why don't you marry Fraulein von Lucadou ? " said 
 the Kaiser, looking up from the paper with a smile that 
 expressed good-natured surprise. " You have good uses 
 for her money, I should reckon, and in this case I promise 
 to say, with my ancient colleague, ' Non olet.' ' 
 
 " Begging your Majesty's pardon, I cannot marry that 
 young lady." 
 
 " And why not, if I approve of the match ? " 
 
 Von Huelsen reddened as he answered, with a side 
 glance at me : " Her mother is up in arms against me ; 
 your Majesty remembers that little affair with the actress 
 Meyer ? " 
 
 " I do, of course ; but the old woman must not raise 
 objections on that account, which gave my Body Hussars 
 
122 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 a most dashing private. Tell me, honestly, do you want 
 the girl ? " 
 
 " Your Majesty," said the Major, with spirit, " I would 
 marry a negress if my Emperor approved of it.*' 
 
 "That white slave shall be in your arms this very 
 day, my word on it." And, addressing me, his Majesty 
 continued : " Pray, Countess, inform her Majesty that 
 everything has been arranged satisfactorily, and that she 
 must prepare for an early wedding banquet in Bellevue 
 Strasse." 
 
 Twenty minutes later the Kaiser ascended the stairs 
 leading to General von Lucadou's bel e'tage, his chasseur, 
 carrying a beautiful bouquet of white roses, following. 
 
 As it happened, Fraulein von Lucadou was celebrating 
 her birthday and the splendid residence was en fete ; but, 
 preparations for an influx of guests notwithstanding, the 
 Emperor's unannounced visit threw the big household 
 into confusion a condition most favourable to his Majesty's 
 purpose. To begin with, he congratulated Fraulein von 
 Lucadou before the assembled guests on her betrothal 
 to his adjutant, and then drew the " Generalin " into a 
 corner to extol to her the virtues of her future son-in- 
 law. 
 
 " But," gasped the old lady, in whose bosom pride and 
 anger fought for supremacy, " our daughter has not my 
 consent. In fact, your Majesty's congratulations are 
 based upon a false presumption. Even the General has 
 not seriously considered Herr von Huelsen's wooing." 
 
 " Pshaw ! the General will obey orders every time," 
 bristled up his Majesty ; " and as for you, gnadige Frau, 
 I hope you will waive your objections when I tell you 
 that Huelsen is just the man for your daughter." 
 
 Of course, Madame von Lucadou had to give in, and 
 soon afterward the wedding was celebrated with great 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 123 
 
 pomp, the Kaiser and Kaiserin, by their presence, lending 
 additional splendour to the ceremonies and the banquet. 
 
 In this case, as in most other unimportant issues, where 
 the fascination of the imperial name holds good, or where 
 an " all-highest command " addressed to official or semi- 
 official persons, is law, the Kaiser gained his point, and 
 for weeks afterward spoke exultingly of his " taming of 
 the shrew," for as such, Madame la Generate has a well- 
 deserved reputation. As for Herr von Huelsen, though 
 the Emperor's interference gained him a rich and hand- 
 some wife, his troubles had only begun. His mother-in- 
 law, nee Sehstern-Pauli, with whom the Lucadou fortune 
 originated, gave to the young couple a beautiful residence 
 adjoining her own palace, furnishing it magnificently ; but 
 as, at the same time, she insisted upon staying with her 
 daughter from early morning till late at night, this splen- 
 did home soon resembled a very warm place in Herr von 
 Huelsen's eyes, the " hottest on or under the earth," 
 he assured me in a burst of confidence. 
 
 " Tell the Kaiser of the wretchedness his Schadchen- 
 industry carried in its wake he must take pity on his 
 favourite," I advised the disconsolate Benedict. 
 
 " Not for a million, your Ladyship ; he is capable of 
 driving stante pede to Bellevue Strasse to demand an ex- 
 planation." 
 
 However, the story of poor von Huelsen's sorrows 
 finally reached the Emperor's ears, and he sent his adjutant 
 to Vienna as military plenipotentiary, after first conferring 
 upon him the title and name of Count Haeseler, which 
 had become extinct by the death of the adjutant's maternal 
 grandfather, the last of the noble house. 
 
 A great many diplomatic appointments are made in 
 that fashion under William II., as will be shown in the 
 
 1 Professional match-maker.. 
 
124 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 chapter devoted to the Kaiser and his personal friends. 
 A whim, a word, a woman that is not even " well born," 
 according to ultra-German notions these three W's suffice 
 to raise anybody, though he may be a nobody, to a position 
 of international importance in the German Empire of 
 to-day. 
 
 Not long ago I was reading to their Majesties from 
 the collection of letters which the Duchess of Orleans, 
 Princess Palatine, addressed to Queen Charlotte of Prussia 
 at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and to which 
 I alluded in a previous chapter. 
 
 " I know of many great events that historians have 
 attributed to policy or ambition, but which originated 
 from most insignificant trifles," said the confidante of 
 Louis XIV. in one of her long, gossipy epistles. " Louis, 
 for instance, retired from the present war against Holland 
 solely for the purpose of returning to that old Zottel (demi- 
 rep) of a Montespan and to pursue once more his nightly 
 revels in her foul embraces." 
 
 The Empress shuddered, and told me never again to 
 read from " Madame's " letters at random, as I had been 
 doing under orders previously given ; " Herr von der 
 Knesebeck will make extracts and selections from the 
 Duchess's writings for future use," she said, beaming 
 sweetly on the pious chamberlain. 
 
 " I cannot conceive your object in wishing for an 
 abridged edition of these letters," remarked the Kaiser, 
 who seemed to be annoyed at the idea ; " the Duchess 
 had certainly the grand airs of one born in the purple, 
 though her language is that of the period blunt, even 
 coarse at times. Still, with all that, her letters must 
 be read in their entirety. A God-fearing censor, such as 
 your Knesebeck here, would probably have eliminated 
 the passage we just heard, though it is one of the grandest 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 125 
 
 and most characteristic in her hundred or more letters 
 in the Potsdam and Charlottenburg archives. 
 
 " The Duchess takes pains to show that the morals of 
 the French Court are distasteful to her ; she rails against 
 the King's mistress, she even seems to deplore the abrupt 
 ending of the hostilities, but has not one word of criticism 
 for the King's Majesty. Reverently and silently she 
 acquiesces in the all-highest decision : the King pleased 
 to do a certain thing, therefore it behoves the subject 
 to submit to his will in silence. That is as it should be. 
 This one paragraph is worth whole volumes of theoretical 
 teachings on the doctrine of Kingship by the grace of 
 God. If its general contents did not make it unfit for 
 such use, I would have it inserted in all the Readers and 
 similar school-books." 
 
 The Menzel festival in Sans Souci (June, 1895) was 
 likewise arranged by the Kaiser on the spur of the moment. 
 During a conversation dealing with the artist's forth- 
 coming eightieth birthday, somebody had remarked upon 
 the treatment Menzel suffered at the hands of Frederick 
 William IV. 's Court-marshal, the late Count Keller, who 
 did not even deign to answer his request when Menzel 
 asked to be allowed to see Frederick the Great's historical 
 Music Room by candle-light previous to putting the finish- 
 ing touches to his celebrated painting, " The Flute Concert 
 at Sans Souci." 
 
 " Maybe he was frightened at the prospect of furnish- 
 ing a couple of dozen wax candles," sneered the Duke 
 of Schleswig. 
 
 " More likely he knew nothing of Menzel's growing 
 reputation," suggested Vegas, the sculptor. 
 
 The Emperor overheard the last words, and joined 
 her Majesty, who was holding petit cercle in the Tassen 
 Zimmer. 
 
126 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 " Are you prepared to say that my grand-uncle's chief 
 marshal failed to recognise the genius of the foremost 
 Hohenzollern painter ? " he asked sharply. 
 
 " I would not like to libel a dead man," answered 
 Vegas, "but appearances are certainly against the Count. 
 I have it from MenzeFs own lips that the Court-marshal 
 refused him all and every assistance when he was painting 
 his scenes of life in Sans Souci. The rooms of the chateau 
 were accessible to him only to the same extent as to any 
 other paying visitor or the hordes of foreign tourists, 
 and he had to make his sketches piecemeal, gathering 
 corroborative and additional material in museums and 
 picture-galleries." 
 
 Quick as a flash the Kaiser turned to Count Eulenburg. 
 " I shall repay the debt Prussia owes to Menzel," he 
 spoke, not without declamatory effort. " We will have 
 the representation of the Sans Souci flute concert three 
 days hence. Your programme is to be ready to-morrow 
 morning at ten. Menzel, mind you, must know nothing 
 of this ; merely command him to attend us at the Schloss 
 at supper and a musical evening." And, turning round, 
 he said to her Majesty : " You will impersonate Princess 
 Amalia, and you, Kessel" (Adjutant von Kessel, then 
 Commander of the First Guards), " engage all your tallest 
 and best-looking officers to enact the great King's military 
 household." 
 
 Again the Kaiser addressed Count Eulenburg : "Be 
 sure to have the best artists of the Royal Orchestra per- 
 form Frederick the Great's compositions, and let Joachim 
 be engaged for the occasion. Saying this, he took her 
 Majesty's arm, and, bidding his guests and the Court a 
 hasty good-night, strode out of the apartment. 
 
 Count Eulenburg had scarcely opened his mouth to 
 pronounce the usual phrase : " Ladies and gentlemen, 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 127 
 
 their Majesties have no further commands for you to-night," 
 when Countess Brockdorff and myself were summoned to 
 the Kaiserin's dressing-room. Her Majesty was pacing 
 the floor. " Help me think ! " she cried ; " where shall 
 I get a costume in so short a tune ? Even if we tele- 
 graph to Vienna this very hour, the dress could not be 
 finished and reach here in due season," 
 
 I found it difficult to remain patient with my mistress ; 
 " As the miller pointed out to Frederick the Great, that 
 there is a Chancellor's Court in Berlin, so I might suggest 
 to your Imperial Majesty that the capital affords some 
 very respectable cos turners, and that the satin and velvet 
 necessary for the over and under dress can be procured 
 at any shop Unter den Linden," I remarked. 
 
 " Her Ladyship is right," said Countess Brockdorff, 
 "but" this malicious woman would sooner think of 
 flying than praise somebody without a " but " to offset 
 her own note of approval " but, as you know, the Kaiser 
 desires her Majesty to represent a historical personage noted 
 for her fondness of silver and gold embroidery. The under- 
 dress and the train of the costume must be richly orna- 
 mented. How will you accomplish this in so short a time ? " 
 
 " With her Majesty's permission," I answered, " 1 will 
 once more cite an example from Prussian history. When 
 the victorious King ordered the ceremony of swearing 
 allegiance in Breslau at twelve hours' notice, the only 
 cloth of state on hand for covering the throne and canopy 
 was of the Austrian variety ; that is, sprinkled with two- 
 headed eagles. ' Never mind,' said the King, * cut out 
 one head and the Prussian bird of prey is ready.' So we 
 might overhaul her Majesty's chests of laces and precious 
 embroideries and, I am sure, obtain material enough for 
 a dozen costumes, and without cutting off anybody's 
 head," I could not constrain myself to add. 
 
128 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 My advice was followed on the spot, and the Kaiserin 
 personally accompanied Countess Brockdorff and myself 
 to the wardrobe-rooms, while next morning, by the earliest 
 train, the grand-mistress and Frau Gleim repaired to 
 Berlin to continue the investigation in the Schloss. On 
 the evening of the fete day, the Empress herself admitted 
 that my over-confidence had been justified by the results 
 attained. 
 
 To tell the truth, Auguste Victoria never looked better 
 than in the picturesque costume of the royal Abbess of 
 Quedlinburg, though she is really the last person in the 
 world resembling Amalia, who, at the period depicted, 
 " was as beautiful as an angel, and the most joyous and 
 affable King's daughter ever described in old patrician 
 literature." Her Majesty's dress consisted of a petticoat 
 of sea-green satin, richly ornamented with silver lace of 
 antique pattern, and an overdress of dark velvet em- 
 broidered with gold and set with precious stones. On her 
 powdered hair, amplified by one of Herr Adeljana, the 
 Viennese coiffeur's, most successful " creations," sat a 
 jaunty three-cornered hat, having a blazing aigrette of large 
 diamonds in front, the identical cluster of white stones 
 which figured at the great Napoleon's coronation, and 
 which he lost, together with his entire equipage, in the 
 battle of Waterloo. 
 
 In her ears her Majesty wore pearl ornaments repre- 
 senting a small bunch of cherries. Like the aigrette, they 
 are Crown property, and that Auguste Victoria thought 
 well enough of the jewels to rescue them from oblivion for 
 this occasion was certainly most appropriate. 
 
 Make a note of it, thou up-to-date reader, historic 
 romance is not dead, as some of our novelists would fain 
 make us believe ; that graceful offspring of love and lore 
 merely slumbers in a moth-proof cedar chest, and, on 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 129 
 
 rare occasions, steps gaily forward to recall to the minds 
 of the initiated memories of ancient splendour. 
 
 Know, then, that those priceless gems in her Majesty's 
 ears belonged at one time to the great Frederick's lovely 
 mistress, La Barbarina, as Rosalba Camera's famous pastel 
 of the dancer in the Dresden gallery, and furthermore a 
 large painting which hung for nearly a century and a half 
 in a water-closet of the grey Schloss on the Spree, prove. 
 According to an old-time inventory, the canvas had been 
 placed in that unseemly environment by all-highest order, 
 to " the Frauenzimmer's lasting shame," when, in 1748, 
 King and ballerina quarrelled. And that despicable mode 
 of punishment, worthy of a century that tolerated the 
 most loathsome personal uncleanliness while striving for 
 artistic perfection, remained in force until the Schloss 
 was partly rebuilt by the present Kaiser. The canvas, 
 a work of Vanloo, is now stored with a lot of rubbish in 
 Castle Bellevue, in the Thiergarten. 
 
 Barbarina's jewels in the Prussian Crown treasury ! 
 How they got there would certainly be a most interest- 
 ing question to solve. Was it the warrior-Leander's " good 
 pleasure" to tie a string to his presents, or did Barbarina 
 share the fate of Voltaire after dismissal, and she was 
 overtaken on the road to the frontier by Prussian hussars 
 (as the French philosopher was on his way to Switzerland) 
 and robbed of the negotiable souvenirs of royal favour ? 
 
 The Kaiser himself came to inspect our masquerade 
 before we entered upon our short drive to Sans Souci. 
 All the ladies wore costumes resembling that of her 
 Majesty flowered silk petticoats, velvet overdresses puffed 
 up at the hips, coloured silk stockings, and satin slippers 
 with high, red heels a l,a Duval and silver buckles ; also 
 towering coiffures set off by ostrich-tips. In this fetch- 
 ing dress, as a lady of the Court, Countess von Bassewitz, 
 
 I 
 
1 30 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 looked so uncommonly well that the Kaiser, who is not 
 used to such surprises in his wife's entourage, let his eyes 
 rest upon her graceful figure and pretty face for quite 
 a while, until her Majesty impatiently proposed a hurried 
 departure. 
 
 The Kaiser wore the cuirassier uniform of the great 
 Frederick's period, a highly ornamented dress that suited 
 the war-lord, who was painted and powdered to perfec- 
 tion, extremely well, especially as Wellington boots, a 
 very becoming wig, and his strange head-gear really and 
 seemingly added to his figure, while his usually stern face 
 beamed pleasantly under the powder and rouge, laid on 
 by expert hands. 
 
 At the grand portals of Sans Souci their Majesties were 
 ceremoniously received by Colonel von Kessel, who was 
 uniformed like the Emperor and had under his command 
 a company of giant grenadiers clad in the old-time blue 
 and red coats, long white leggings reaching above the 
 knees, and gilded tin helmets backed with scarlet on 
 powdered wigs. 
 
 The scene of Menzel's picture, Frederick's Music Room, 
 is the second apartment on the right after the dining-hall, 
 which forms the centre of the chateau. 
 
 We found it brilliantly lit up with wax candles, too 
 luminous to represent the original of the masterpiece, and 
 certainly far more resplendent with light than the miserly 
 King would have permitted, of whom it is reported that 
 he compelled his Queen and the Queen-Mother to await 
 his coming in the White Hall of the Berlin Schloss previous 
 to the great state functions, by the light of a single taper. 
 Not until Frederick himself appeared among the guests 
 and officials, durst the candles on the chandeliers and 
 candelabra be lit. 
 
 Like other members of the Court and society, I had 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 131 
 
 heard a great deal of William's predilection for stage 
 management, but never had had occasion to witness the 
 exercises of this particular gift on the Kaiser's part. 
 Imagine my surprise when, suddenly, I found myself in 
 the midst of a full-dress rehearsal ! 
 
 In one corner of the room, huddled together like a 
 flock of frightened sheep, stood the artists engaged for 
 the occasion. All wore the eighteenth-century Court 
 costume long-skirted vests and silk or velvet coats, 
 coloured satin breeches, buckled shoes, and imposing 
 allonge perruques. 
 
 " Attention ! " cried the Kaiser, and he began to call 
 out their names without taking the trouble to affix the 
 customary " Herr," while an imperious gesture of his 
 gloved hand assigned each man to his post. 
 
 At the historic grand piano, which was once enlivened 
 by the slender fingers of Princess Amalia, perhaps the 
 greatest virtuoso of her time, a middle-aged artist was 
 placed, whose make-up resembled the features of Philip 
 Emanuel Bach, Frederick's accompanist. To his right 
 the Kaiser posted a viola-player, representing Franz Benda 
 of by-gone days, and behind them came two performers 
 on the violoncello, and finally two violinists. 
 
 The great King was impersonated by a small, thin man 
 of noble countenance, who held between his fingers an 
 exact counterpart of Frederick's favourite flute. 
 
 Having placed these geritlemen in position, the Kaiser 
 had a copy of Menzel's painting brought in, and pointed 
 out the figure each represented. " Now, first violin," rang 
 out his drill-ground voice, " give more attention to holding 
 your head " The piano-player must turn his face a 
 
 little^sideways " " The 'cellists must bend down a bit ! " 
 
 " That is right ; now all remember that vou are ex- 
 pecting your cue from the royal soloist." 
 
132 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Turning from the musicians, his Majesty called out : 
 " Where are Quanz " (Frederick's music-teacher), " Graun " 
 (the composer), " and Maupertuis ? " 
 
 Three actors from the royal play-house responded. 
 
 " You have studied your parts ? " said the Kaiser 
 inquiringly ; " well, then, proceed to your various corners, 
 and do not take notice of any one in the room. Play your 
 parts as if you stood on a real stage, with the Kaiser in 
 his box." 
 
 In the same manner the ladies of the Court were 
 ordered about, and the Empress herself did not fare better. 
 
 " Countess Bassewitz ! " shouted the royal stage- 
 manager, as if he were addressing a coryphee, " please 
 remember that the Margravine of Baireuth, whom you 
 have the honour to represent, was not only noted for 
 beauty and grace, but also for her truly royal airs." 
 
 Her little Ladyship blushed and moved uneasily on 
 the red silk sofa where she sat with Countess Camas, whom 
 Frederick used to call his chere maman. 
 
 Behind the chair of Madame von Camas, the Kaiser 
 put an officer, a somewhat awkward young man, who 
 had to change his position half-a-dozen times before it 
 suited his Majesty, and then came the most difficult task 
 of all the placing of the Empress. 
 
 We ladies had studied the part of Princess Amalia 
 with her Majesty incessantly for the last twenty-four 
 hours, but Auguste Victoria seemed utterly unable to 
 enter into the spirit of the tableau. Seeing her failure, 
 she affected physical reasons for her nervousness, while 
 everybody saw with regret that the Kaiser's imperious 
 manner had completely disconcerted the royal lady. In 
 his Majesty's eyes this novice was the least satisfactory 
 of all ; she neither " understood how to hold a fan, nor 
 how to look interested," and the scene was becoming 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 133 
 
 very painful, when, to everybody's relief, House-marshal 
 Baron von Lyncker appeared and announced that Pro- 
 fessor Menzel's carriage was approaching. Thereupon the 
 Emperor left at once to assume his character as Frederick 
 the Great's Adjutant-General in the vestibule. We all 
 breathed freer now, especially as Herr von Lyncker, the 
 stage-manager substitute, made us feel quite easy in our 
 parts by a few words of approval. 
 
 Menzel had meanwhile alighted at the grand entrance, 
 and ascended the stairs, wondering at the display of old- 
 time military. The little old man wore shabby evening 
 dress, and an overcoat over his arm, and his surprise knew 
 no bounds when Colonel von Kessel stepped forward to 
 welcome him with a ceremonious speech. When, how- 
 ever, von Kessel having " spoken his piece," the Kaiser 
 himself marched up solemnly in his strange uniform, hat 
 in hand, the artist perceived at once that he was to be 
 the victim of an ovation and with much dignity submitted 
 to the ordeal. For such it turned out to be. William, 
 unknown to all except the master of ceremony, had 
 imitated his ancestor in one more respect, and there was 
 no Voltaire to wash this King of Prussia's " dirty linen." 
 
 As Prince Bismarck put it (I owe the anecdote to the 
 great Chancellor's physician and confidant, Dr. Schwen- 
 ninger), " he stepped into the lowest department of 
 literature, occasional poetry, and bombarded the helpless 
 master with forty stanzas of alleged verse in which the 
 deeds of Prussia's kings and the masterpieces that com- 
 memorate them were extolled with a prosiness that sounded 
 like an after-clap of William's Reichstag and monument 
 orations." 
 
 The length, if not the dulness, of the discourse had, 
 however, one good effect : it gave Menzel ample time 
 to formulate a fitting reply, and, bowing low at the con- 
 
134 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 elusion of the tirade, he said, with perfect sang-froid : 
 " I believe I have the honour of addressing Adjutant- 
 General Baron von Leutulus, and I beg of your Excellency 
 to submit to his Majesty, the King, my sincerest thanks 
 for this unexpected honour." 
 
 The artist having entered into the spirit of the thing, 
 the Kaiser's impromptu farce proceeded smoothly. First 
 of all carne the obligatory review of the guards, who had 
 to go through some old-time exercises ; then Baron von 
 Lyncker ordered the mixed company in the Music Room 
 Empress, ladies-in-waiting, actors, officers, and fiddlers 
 to assume the poses and duties assigned to each in- 
 dividually. 
 
 The master was allowed to contemplate the prototype 
 of his chef-d'oeuvre for a little while before he took his 
 seat ; but soon the Emperor, sitting by his side, gave 
 the signal to the musicians, who intonated Frederick's 
 flute concerto, doubtless the finest composition that 
 emanated from the great King's prolific pen. 
 
 Later on, the players performed a piano concerto by 
 Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, the young and en- 
 thusiastic gentleman who is credited with having been 
 the lover of Madame Recamier and Madame de Stael at 
 the same time (Napoleon threatened to shut him up with 
 the latter in some lonely castle, and exhibit their offspring 
 at the country fairs as horrible examples of the union of 
 pedantry with bottomless conceit), and finally Joachim 
 fascinated us all with a noble rendition of Sebastian 
 Bach's masterpieces. 
 
 We supped in the Marble Hall, whose superb cupola 
 rests upon sixteen white pillars from Carrara, but the 
 Kaiser's attempt to establish a " round table " resembling 
 that of his ancestor was a failure. It is easy enough to 
 arrange a mummery money and a little tailor's wit 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 135 
 
 will do for that ; but it is quite another thing to copy 
 a Voltaire " eloquent as Cicero, witty as Pliny, and as 
 learned as Agrippa"; a La Mettrie, a D'Argens, an Algarotti, 
 or even a General Quintus Icilius. And it takes more 
 than royal birth and fine jewels to impersonate a Princess 
 Amalia, and more than beauty of face and a pair of grace- 
 ful shoulders, such as the Countess Bassewitz possesses, 
 to represent the witty Margravine ! 
 
 While their Majesties and the company, after supper, 
 were admiring the illuminated fountain, then the latest of 
 novelties, I went once more into the Music Room, where 
 the wax lights were burning at low ebb. 
 
 This, then, had been the theatre of Frederick's love- 
 making ; here reigned the sole queen of his heart, the 
 only woman whom he loved after ascending the throne, 
 as all contemporaries, from Abbe Denina to Voltaire, 
 assert. 
 
 Portraits of this famous beauty between high mirrors in 
 silver frames were all around the room Venus-Barbarina 
 coquetting with Pygmalion ; Pomona-Barbarina yielding 
 gracefully to the masked demi - god ; Diana-Barbarina 
 slumbering while pretty nymphs mount guard over her ; 
 Barbarina embraced by Apollo ; Barbarina and Pan ; 
 Barbarina, the genius of Love ; Barbarina the woman, 
 clad only in her surpassing grace, her supernatural loveli- 
 ness, her glorious black hair unsullied by powder, her 
 breasts and limbs radiant with the voluptuousness of 
 southern youth ! 
 
 Antoine Pesne, painter to the King, expended all his 
 genius as a colourist of the schools of Giorgione and Titian, 
 all his true artistic intensity of feeling, on these canvases, 
 which happily saw the light before the renaissance of 
 the yellowish Rembrandt tint, that annoys the lover of 
 art in the majority of portraits of a somewhat later period. 
 
136 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 
 
 Pesne was first and last a portrait-painter ; but the King's 
 desire to see the beloved woman in all sorts of attitudes, 
 in classical garb and without, gave his magic brush a 
 far wider field. Henceforth he devoted himself to com- 
 posing grand mythological scenes in which La Barbarina 
 formed the central figure, and where unblushingly he with- 
 drew the veil from the charms of her person. 
 
 I was contemplating these reminiscences in silent 
 reverie when the door opened and the Kaiser came in 
 with little Menzel. 
 
 " I have a mind to engage Angeli to paint her Majesty's 
 picture in the costume of Princess Amalia," said the 
 Emperor. " What do you think of it ? " 
 
 " Angeli is painter to many emperors and kings," 
 replied the professor, and I saw him smile diplomatically 
 as he moved his spectacles to get a better view of the 
 allegorical canvas on the left wall that exhibits the nude 
 figure of the famous mistress in its entirety. 
 
 " I am glad you agree with me on that point," said 
 the Emperor, impatient to execute the idea that had just 
 crossed his mind. " I will telegraph to him to-night." 
 
 And when, five minutes later, Menzel bent over my 
 hand to take his formal leave, I heard him murmur in 
 his dry, absent-minded manner : " Pesne Angeli 
 Frederick the Great William II. ! " 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE KAISER AS FINANCIER HIS NIGGARDLINESS THE 
 KAISER AS ARCHITECT THE FALL OF CAPRIVI 
 HOHENLOHE, CHANCELLOR. 
 
 " HAS anybody heard of the projected English tour of 
 the Meiningens ? " asked his Majesty at dinner in the Berlin 
 Schloss one afternoon in February, 1892. 
 
 Herr von Egloff stein responded. He had heard the 
 Hereditary Prince say that he and the Princess intended 
 to accept an invitation of Queen Victoria to Windsor 
 Castle. 
 
 " But the cost ! " exclaimed the Kaiser ; " it will be 
 at least ten marks a head for their Highnesses every day 
 they are absent." 
 
 Next day, at second breakfast, the Emperor's menu 
 card, on which his Majesty had sketched "the future 
 south front of the castle with the surrounding territory," 
 was handed around the table. 
 
 " I am glad to announce to you," he said, after all 
 had expressed due admiration, " that I have perfected 
 my plans for the improvement of the Schloss. After 
 abolishing the popular amusement of looking into the 
 Kaiser's windows " (his Majesty referred to the dismantling 
 of the houses on the Schloss Freiheit, where now the 
 monument of William I. stands, and which was formerly 
 occupied by a row of decrepit old houses and shanties 
 whose inhabitants had a very good view of the imperial 
 apartments opposite) " after routing the sweet public 
 across the way, I have decided to erect another barrier 
 
 137 
 
138 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 between myself and publicity. As the sketch shows, 
 terraces will be built adjoining the south front of our 
 palace, and they will extend far enough to place within 
 the royal precinct that part of the castle square that lies 
 between the Schloss and the great fountain. These 
 terraces," added the^Kaiser, with a self-satisfied laugh, 
 " will at the same time serve to deaden some of the noise 
 from the incessant traffic." 
 
 " Will the city be willing to sacrifice the space ? " 
 asked the Prince of Saxe-Altenburg. who was the guest 
 of honour that day. 
 
 " If I permit the razing of the old houses between 
 Breite Strasse and Kurfiirsten Briicke, certainly," re- 
 plied the Kaiser, who was still smiling. 
 
 " But the scheme, if pushed to such length, will in- 
 volve an outlay of twenty millions," warned the Minister 
 of the royal house, Herr von Wedell. 
 
 " Maybe, more or less." The Emperor said this with 
 a frown, but immediately resumed his semi-bantering 
 tone, and added, lightly : " Perhaps I will authorise your 
 Excellency to arrange another Schloss Improvement 
 Lottery, or to take up a loan that holds out large premiums, 
 as they do in Austria and Servia." With that he turned 
 to his neighbour, the Countess Brockdorff, whom he detests 
 and ordinarily treats with the severest indifference, and, 
 by way of changing the subject, told her a rather risque 
 story of a little boy, who, being disturbed in the night, 
 asked his father what was the matter. The father's reply 
 is too well known to be printed here. 
 
 "Oh, bother the brother!" cried Johnny; "make 
 me one of those rabbits with pink eyes." 
 
 Poor Brockdorff nearly fainted, and looked helplessly 
 around the table, while the Emperor slapped his knee and 
 seemed ready to burst with laughter. "It is the very 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 139 
 
 latest," he said to his Highness of Saxe ; " got it from 
 Kotze ! " (then still a master of ceremony) ; "he heard 
 it from his wife, who learned it from Schrader " (another 
 master of ceremony, who was subsequently shot and killed 
 by his colleague in the famous duel), " and Schrader credits 
 it to Otero." 
 
 That is the Kaiser all over ; it worries him to think 
 that any of his relatives should spend ten marks, and 
 he disposes of ten or twenty millions of public moneys 
 as if they were old bricks or oyster-shells ; in fact, 
 the Kaiser has no notion whatever of the value of the 
 "yellow boys." 
 
 Among the many strange facts in this volume, William's 
 remark concerning the Meiningens' trip to England is 
 certainly not the least astonishing, coming from a man 
 who is almost continuously on the road the heir and heiress 
 to a Duchy, paying a visit of state at Windsor Castle, 
 covering their combined expenses with a paltry one 
 pound a day ! The surmise is too ridiculous to require 
 analysis ; but it might be just as well to state here that 
 the Prince of Meiningen is a very rich man, although the 
 t>ulk of his fortune is still in the hands of the reigning 
 Duke and the latter's third wife, the former actress Helen 
 Franz, called Baroness Heldburg. He lives, if not in 
 splendour, in the style befitting his station, and his wife 
 s certainly the best-dressed woman at Court. 
 
 On their travels the princely pair are always attended 
 }y a suite of from fifteen to twenty people, all of whom, 
 ;he Emperor thinks, can be provided with transporta- 
 ion and incidentals for twenty marks per day ! That her 
 Majesty of England sent a very large cheque to the Prince 
 )f Meiningen to defray the expenses of his visit, as I happen 
 ,o know, does not alter the case one whit, for William was, 
 ind is probably up to this day, ignorant of the fact. 
 
140 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 "It is merely a matter of mistaken identity," said 
 " Lottchen's " husband, when the Prince of Saxe reported 
 the conversation to him ; " William thinks I am one of 
 my gamekeepers, as he once mistook Bismarck for his 
 chief bootblack." 
 
 That was certainly a charitable view to take ; but it 
 does not coincide with the facts. The cold, precise truth 
 is that the man striving for absolute power in Germany 
 and in Prussia, whose combined annual budgets reached 
 the sum of three thousand one hundred and forty 
 millions of marks in 1896, has, as already pointed out, 
 no head for figures. 
 
 It is clearly a deficiency in William's mental make-up : 
 as some people lack the sense of locality, so the Emperor 
 happens to be destitute of a proper comprehension of 
 values. Units or tens, three, seven, or eight naughts, 
 his Majesty recognises a distinction between these factors 
 in one respect only. To quote once more Prince Stolberg, 
 who, as is well known, soon tired of the job of " standing 
 off Peter and owing Paul " : "I think I have done as well 
 as anybody can with such a pupil of economics. I made 
 him understand that the Reichstag people deal with 
 millions, while we at Court must be content with using 
 tens and hundreds and even thousands, if it comes high." 
 
 This seems to be the only mathematical rule that has 
 taken root in William's brain, and, agreeable to Stolberg's 
 admonitions, he appears to have set himself a limit of 
 three or ten marks for every-day use, and of fifty or one 
 hundred marks for high days and holidays, so to speak. 
 This applies, of course, to personal disbursements only, 
 the requirements of the household, the travelling, repre- 
 sentation, and amusement budgets being regulated by 
 his grand officers and according to certain rules. 
 
 How well I remember the flutter and pleasant anticipa- 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 141 
 
 tions I experienced during my first Christmas season at 
 the Prussian Court. Not that I nursed great expectations 
 on my own behalf (I have been royalty's favourite all 
 my life, and received many precious gifts from the old 
 Emperor and Empress, as well as from my present master 
 and mistress, in the days of my prosperity) ; but I felt 
 for our faithful servants, whose lives, though spent in a 
 palace, are harder in many respects than those of the 
 general run of employees, or even of comparatively poor 
 people. In their gorgeous liveries and tidy house-dresses 
 they look suave and contented enough to the occasional 
 beholder, but their lot is scarcely as happy as their serene 
 faces indicate ; neither do their wages correspond with 
 their silver-edged clothes of fine material. Off and on 
 I have heard of cases of poverty, even of destitution, in 
 their families, for which they dared not ask relief in the 
 most likely place, of their master or mistress, who caused 
 it to be known once and for all that they must not be 
 annoyed by their servants' personal concerns. 
 
 It is a hard rule, I argued, but may be imperative 
 with so large a staff of people. In this bountiful Christ- 
 mas season, surely, their Majesties would make up for it. 
 Picture, then, my amazement when I heard the Emperor 
 say to her Majesty, at the beginning of Holy Week : "I 
 have cautioned Miessner (a privy councillor, who administers 
 the royal purse) to pay the customary ten marks only 
 to those servants lackeys and maids who wait upon 
 me personally. It will be well for you to instruct Baron 
 von Mirbach similarly, or you will run the risk of feeing 
 a whole tribe of men and girls who are merely second or 
 third assistants to your own people." 
 
 William's valets, I heard later on, received fifty marks 
 from their imperial master as Christmas gratuity ; all 
 his other attendants, men and women, had to be content 
 
142 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 with the customary ten marks " for gingerbread," as the 
 pourboire is styled at Court. 
 
 " And that is the only Trinkgeld the Kaiser dispenses 
 all the year round," complained the wife of one of the 
 wardrobemen, who does my plain sewing ; " outside of 
 Christmas, his Majesty never seems to have a pfennig 
 for his body-servants. Although himself continuously in 
 want of stimulants (he often drinks four or five egg cognacs 
 in the course of the day), it never strikes him that his 
 overworked attendants might feel like stepping across 
 the way to the canteen and ' crook an arm,' with your 
 Ladyship's permission." 
 
 Occasional beggars that accost him on his rides through 
 Potsdam or Berlin receive three marks from the Emperor, 
 and a like sum is appropriated every Sunday for the 
 benefit of the contribution-plate ; his adjutant hands him 
 the coin before he steps into his carriage going to church ; 
 beggars must report at the royal stables for their mite. 
 
 Whether this tardy generosity is an evidence of hard- 
 heart edness, as people in the royal service claim, or whether 
 the Kaiser's unlimited egotism is to blame, I would not 
 like to decide ; perhaps both work together, perhaps 
 Count Stolberg's advice has something to do with it, while 
 the Kaiser's inability properly to judge monetary values 
 remains the prime factor. To emphasise this latter point 
 let me give one more anecdote. 
 
 William, who is nothing if not a slave to tradition, 
 has revived a habit of several of his ancestors, namely, 
 to stroll out of his palace gate as an ordinary mortal once 
 a year, on Heiliger Abend (Holy Evening, the night before 
 Christmas), when he dons the most subdued civilian dress 
 his wardrobe affords, and when no adjutant, or any one 
 of the body service, is allowed to follow him a general 
 order that, however, does not apply to the secret police. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 143 
 
 which is made acquainted with the Kaiser's every out- 
 door move beforehand, and has its guardian angels about 
 wherever and whenever he is in the open. 
 
 " The war-lord, masquerading as a sub-officer on leave," 
 as his brother-in-law of Meiningen once described him on 
 a similar occasion, walks through the park behind the 
 Neues Palais toward Sans Souci and often rambles beyond 
 the gates of the ancient chateau, wishing a " Merry Christ- 
 mas " to and distributing small gold pieces among needy 
 persons he encounters. 
 
 It was originally a novel amusement for the Kaiser 
 and a profitable one for the poor men and women who 
 happened to attract his attention when his pockets were 
 still lined ; that is, while his charity fund of two hundred 
 marks, divided up into fourteen gold crowns and three 
 double crowns, lasted ; and courtiers and others near 
 William, having the higher interests of the monarchy at 
 heart, used to rejoice in this solitary manifestation of 
 royal good-will, that helped to re-cement the bonds be- 
 tween king and people, those bonds growing further and 
 further apart in our democratic times, when the most 
 conspicuous representative of kingship has seemingly for- 
 gotten that there is anything in common between him and 
 the rest of mankind. 
 
 " Will it please your Majesty to go on your usual 
 Santa-Claus expedition this evening before the trees are 
 lit ? " asked Court-marshal Count Eulenburg at second 
 breakfast on the day preceding Christmas of 1894. 
 
 " Most certainly," replied the Kaiser, " and, by the 
 way, direct Miessner to furnish me with silver coins, in- 
 stead of gold, this time fourteen Thalers and three or 
 four five-mark pieces. You see," he added, addressing 
 himself to the Empress, " I have been thinking about 
 this giving away of crowns and double crowns ; some 
 
144 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 poor devil, whom I try to benefit, might arouse suspicion 
 when he offers my Christmas present in payment. That 
 element of distrust and danger I will circumvent by spend- 
 ing only Thalers among my needy friends hereafter." 
 
 " How thoughtful of you," lisped the Empress, 'de- 
 vouring her husband with admiring glances. 
 
 " Your Majesty thinks of everything," said the 
 Countesses von Brockdorff and von Bassewitz unisono. 
 And " Of everything, particularly his pocket," whispered 
 
 my neighbour, Count M , mockingly. For my own 
 
 part, I was in hopes that the Kaiser might reconsider the 
 matter and arm himself with the full quota of two hundred 
 marks in silver before he started out ; but when he came to 
 take leave of her Majesty, he drew from his overcoat pocket 
 the shabby little amount he had decided to spend, fifty-seven 
 marks in all, brand new silver pieces each one of them. 
 
 " The poor are in luck to-night," he said, " Miessner 
 selected the brightest Thalers in his treasury, they are 
 really very pretty," and the Kaiser laughed as the hapless 
 Princess Lamballe may have laughed as she exclaimed : 
 " If the poor have no bread, let them eat pastry." 
 
 As little as I would be inclined to charge the young 
 beauty who gave her head for Marie Antoinette's friend- 
 ship, with heartlessness, so little do I agree with Count 
 
 M 's uncharitable surmise, that the Kaiser resolved 
 
 upon the change from crowns to marks for reasons of 
 economy. On the contrary, the probabilities are that he 
 did not consider the losses his poor would suffer or the 
 saving on his own part, for one single moment, his in- 
 ability to judge values rightly precluding such a course. 
 
 This strange state of mind is not without pathological 
 interest, of which more later ; but as a secondary cause 
 the practice of bringing up young princes in complete 
 ignorance of money-matters must be held responsible. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 145 
 
 Royal parents seem to think that to deprive their 
 sons up to the day of their majority of a decent amount 
 of pocket-money is the surest, nay, the only way to keep 
 their boys from becoming spendthrifts. 
 
 In Prussia, the princely youth is allowed a few Thalers 
 per week, of which the minutest accounting is demanded, 
 and which and that is the worst feature he may not 
 even manage in person, that privilege being reserved for 
 his governor or Court-marshal. The practice has worked 
 havoc immeasurable with us, as well as with others ; but 
 there seems to be little hope that this doltish idea, worthy 
 of its avaricious progenitor, Frederick William I. of Prussia, 
 will be abandoned soon. 
 
 True, young Hohenzollerns are not liable to be flogged 
 
 nowadays for spending a few pfennigs unnecessarily, as 
 
 Crown Prince Frederick was when he gave a royal servant 
 
 eight Groschens for bringing his dog from Potsdam to 
 
 Wusterhausem, a distance of twenty miles (his father 
 
 beat him " for having no more sense than to pay a man 
 
 who merely performed his damned duty ") ; but even so 
 
 wide-awake a woman as the Empress Frederick insisted 
 
 upon bringing up the heir to the throne without giving 
 
 him a chance to acquaint himself with the power, the 
 
 temptation, the misery, and the joy that the possession 
 
 of ready money carries with it. As the holes in the Greek 
 
 philosopher's toga denoted vanity rather than contempt 
 
 of worldly opinion, so the patches on a youthful Hohen- 
 
 zollern's trousers indicate not Spartan frugality, but a 
 
 false notion of the principles of economics. Our Princes 
 
 are not taught that it is necessary to economise in order 
 
 to be liberal ; they are merely deprived of things they 
 
 like good clothes and cash in obedience to a hoary 
 
 delusion that has peopled the thrones of Europe with 
 
 spendthrifts or niggards for the past century. 
 
146 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 I have heard the former Court-marshal von Liebenau 
 say that William, when at college, never had a copper 
 over and above his expenses, all of which were disbursed 
 by him, Liebenau. 
 
 "When he entered active service, that old bane 
 penury hovered over the lieutenant, captain, and colonel ; 
 his entire income was made over to me every month or 
 quarter, and as it was always spoken for in advance, my 
 young master even aspired in vain for a pocket-piece, 
 a double gold crown." 
 
 We now return to that twenty-million project launched 
 with so much self-satisfied complacency " between soup 
 and fish." On the eve of its birthday for we learned 
 by-and-by that the Kaiser, who picked up the idea in 
 a rambling memorial of his grand-uncle, the mad Frederick 
 William IV., and, after adopting and fathering the plans, 
 made haste to parade them before the visiting Prince 
 and the Court as his own and as something brand new 
 at supper, the same day, William brought forward many 
 fresh arguments in favour of his grand schemes. 
 
 The municipal council, he explained, if it were not 
 entirely composed of Socialists, could not offer any objec- 
 tion to his plans, " no matter what the cost," for he meant 
 to give the terraces over to his sons as a play-ground. 
 Wedell must argue that the terraces would offer a for- 
 midable bulwark against the plans of anarchists. And as 
 a final trump : " We will promise to prolong the annual 
 stay of the Court at Berlin at least one month or six 
 weeks." 
 
 During the next week or so, at luncheon, dinner, and 
 supper, at receptions, concerts, and balls, the Court talked 
 of nothing but the projected castle improvements, and 
 the Kaiser never wearied of explaining his plans to visitors 
 privately, and to a roomful of guests and attendants 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 147 
 
 collectively. Then, suddenly, a change of base was de- 
 creed. The terraces were hurled from their imaginary 
 pedestals, and in their stead the ever-ready imperial pencil 
 pictured to us the Schloss situated on a green peninsula, 
 and surrounded by majestic waters on three sides. Accord- 
 ing to this latest plan, Schinkel's classic Academy of 
 Architecture was to be levelled, and Schinkel Square 
 dropped fifty feet, to make room for a splendid lake five 
 acres in circumference, the waters of which were to wash 
 the feet of William the First's gigantic monument. 
 
 The scheme looked uncommonly well on paper, and 
 his Majesty experienced small difficulty in finding theo- 
 retical supporters for his sublime projects ; but, unfor- 
 tunately, the matter got into the newspapers even before 
 preliminary negotiations with the city authorities had 
 been opened, and a storm of indignation, ridicule, and 
 defiance broke loose. 
 
 " Not a pfennig for these baundrrische " (construction- 
 mad) " schemes, not an inch of city property," began a 
 press article, which I was obliged to read to her Majesty a 
 few mornings later ; and " the times are past when nations 
 build palaces for spendthrift sovereigns," wrote some- 
 body, who desired to remain nameless, to William in a 
 letter postmarked Berlin, W., the fashionable quarter ; 
 " we pay the King of Prussia a salary nowadays, and he 
 has to get along on it as well as any other official, unless, 
 like an army officer, he married a woman with money." 
 
 The protests from the provinces were not less vigorous. 
 It appears that the minister of the royal house, for some 
 time past, had endeavoured to persuade the authorities 
 of Hanover, Cassel, and Wiesbaden, where royal theatres 
 are established, to release the exchequer from its obliga- 
 tion to furnish a subsidy for the maintenance of these 
 institutions. " The royal Princes," wrote the eloquent 
 
i 4 8 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Herr von Wedell, "are growing up, and funds for their 
 education, their proper maintenance, clothes, and so forth, 
 must be set aside. In view of this increase of his obliga- 
 tory expenses, his Majesty has reluctantly consented to 
 a curtailment of such outlays as come under the head of 
 contingent charges," and so forth. 
 
 Well worded, was it not ? this appeal on behalf of 
 one's six boys ; but the Hanoverians, Casselers, and 
 Wiesbadeners refused to be bamboozled. They stood upon 
 their rights, and when, in the course of events, the Kaiser's 
 great building plans were divulged, they congratulated 
 themselves upon their firmness, with many disrespectful 
 allusions to the baby act that had failed. 
 
 And the end of it all ? The scandal assumed such 
 proportions that there was nothing left but a complete 
 backdown. 
 
 On the Qth of March it was announced at luncheon 
 that his Majesty had gone to Hubertusstock, where he 
 does most of his sulking, and in the afternoon Minister 
 von Boetticher got up in the Diet and quieted public 
 opinion by a few well-set lies. 
 
 " Those grand building projects," he said, " have never 
 had any existence except in the brains of hungry penny- 
 a-liners and ambitious architects. Nobody at Court has 
 ever dreamed of their realisation. In fact, they have 
 never been discussed in the all-highest presence." 
 
 "The greatest fools are always the greatest liars," 
 Prince Bismarck laughingly remarked to Duke Johann 
 Albrecht of Mecklenburg, when his Highness related the 
 facts to him. 
 
 " Do you refer to Boetticher or ? " 
 
 " To Boetticher, of course ; am I not his sworn enemy, 
 according to the newspapers ? " replied the old Prince ; 
 " to Boetticher." he repeated, " who prophesied Caprivi's 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 149 
 
 fall, and, to save his own neck, had to lie publicly and 
 shamelessly, a thing I have never done during my long 
 official life." 
 
 Another deadly parallel of the extreme in the Kaiser's 
 character, similar to that exemplified by the Meiningen 
 and the building-project matters, might be drawn by 
 placing the reported reduction of his Majesty's Christmas 
 charity in juxtaposition to his contemplated appropriation 
 of certain public moneys entrusted to his keeping. 
 
 I refer to the so-called " Imperial Disposition Fund," 
 intended to afford relief to Prussian and German veterans 
 of the wars and in case of great national disasters. As its 
 name implies, the right of bestowing grants out of the 
 three million marks, annually set aside for the purposes 
 specified, is vested in the sovereign reason enough for 
 William, who recognises no obligation that conflicts with 
 his " all-highest " pleasure, to regard the money as a sort 
 of augmentation of the civil list, in the same way as he 
 takes the naval phrases, " his Majesty's cruiser," " his 
 Majesty's torpedo," &c., literally. 
 
 To convey a thorough understanding of this matter, 
 we shall have to go back to the events of March, 1892. 
 It was my imperial mistress who, after the withdrawal 
 of Count Zedlitz's common-school law, persuaded von 
 Caprivi to remain in office. 
 
 " Votre petite guerre est finie" said the Emperor to her 
 Majesty at supper on March 28, " and you have not been 
 luckier than Madame Eugenie. Rest assured, though, that 
 I will not be in the market again for any of Uncle Christian's 
 ultra-Christian plans. No, we will not go to Cumberland 
 Lodge a second time ! " 
 
 Her Majesty grew pale and blushed violently in rapid 
 succession. Her bosom heaved, and some of the wine in the 
 glass she was raising to her lips spilled over her superb gown. 
 
150 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 " I do not quite understand, Willie," she said at last, 
 lisping painfully in her agitation. 
 
 " Beg your Majesty's pardon," was the Kaiser's sarcastic 
 reply ; "I thought everybody knew by this time that I 
 had to withdraw the Volksschulgesetz and turn Zedlitz 
 adrift. My government was fast becoming the laughing- 
 stock of Europe with this Augustenburg sort of legislation, 
 as Bismarck styles it." 
 
 " The old enemy of our house " whimpered Auguste 
 
 Victoria. 
 
 " You are mistaken in your surmise : I am not quoting 
 from the Hamburger Nachrichten. The Prince expressed 
 himself thus toward your uncle Waldersee, pointing out 
 at the same time the risks I was running in advocating a 
 law liable to be associated in public opinion with petticoat 
 and family influences.*' 
 
 I did not hear the whole of the above conversation, 
 and lost the rest of it altogether, as, by the Empress's 
 request, William lowered his voice after this last sally ; 
 but her Majesty repeated it word for word when we ladies 
 attended her in her dressing-room later on. " The Kaiser 
 chooses to put all the blame for this failure upon myself 
 and my family," she said, amid a flood of tears ; " but, 
 by all that is holy to me, I swear, neither my uncle, nor 
 I personally, had anything to do with the launching of 
 the VolksscTndgesetz. Prince Christian, it is true, has 
 endeavoured to impress his Majesty with the importance 
 of his religious duties as summus episcopus, and the two 
 gentlemen have had conferences about the best ways and 
 means to combat disbelief and atheism in Germany, but 
 I am convinced that my uncle never ventured advice on 
 matters of legislation. He merely tried to rouse my hus- 
 band's interest in divine matters, as any ardent follower 
 of the Lord should do. The Volksschulgesetz as such was 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 151 
 
 the Kaiser's own creation, though some of the ideas in- 
 corporated in it might have come from across the channel." 
 
 " Your Majesty should not have minded the Kaiser's 
 ill-humour," I ventured to say ; " the attitude of Parlia- 
 ment and the press naturally angered him and " 
 
 " I know, I know," interrupted Auguste Victoria ; 
 " I can forget everything but the words : ' We will not 
 go to Cumberland Lodge a second time.' It was there, 
 at my uncle's seat, that William and I fell in love with 
 each other." 
 
 The Kaiser slept, on the night that followed Count 
 Zedlitz's enforced resignation, in his little private bed- 
 room, and next morning departed for Hubertusstock 
 before her Majesty had arisen. That was enough to paint 
 our gilded salons an ashen grey, in which the children, 
 her Majesty's ladies, friends, and attendants, vanished as 
 if behind a cloud. Auguste Victoria refused to be com- 
 forted : her husband had left her in a fit of irritation ; 
 the sovereign lady was seemingly incapable of tuniing 
 her thoughts from the disquieting subject. In the midst 
 of her lamentations, a despatch arrived from Queen Victoria, 
 which I was ordered to decipher. "It is reported here 
 that Capri vi will resign. Let it be averted at all hazards. 
 It would be nothing short of a calamity just now," tele- 
 graphed the Kaiser's grandmother. 
 
 " I will drive to the Chancellor at once," cried the 
 Kaiserin, so great was her respect for Queen Victoria's 
 political wisdom ; but the Grand-mistress, Countess Brock- 
 dorff, succeeded in dissuading her from so extraordinary 
 a step by referring to the lack of precedents and sundry 
 scruples of etiquette. Finally, it was agreed that her 
 Majesty should write to Caprivi ; and all of us the 
 Kaiserin, Countess Brockdorff, Fraulein von Gersdorff, 
 and myself worked out drafts for the important 
 
152 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 epistle, with the understanding that the best of the four, 
 containing certain points upon which we had settled, 
 should be adopted and sent off after her Majesty had copied 
 it. Of course, a lot of ink was spilled uselessly, and a 
 still greater amount of time wasted, in discussing the 
 merits of our various attempts ; but in the end a reasonably 
 appropriate paper was pieced together, whose leading 
 passages read as follows : 
 
 " Pray do not leave the Kaiser in the lurch, and thus 
 commit the country to an uncertain future now that the 
 relations between the Crown and its first officer have once 
 more strengthened, and most things that fell into a chaotic 
 condition after Bismarck's retirement are being straightened 
 out." 
 
 Herr von der Knesebeck carried the letter to Wilhelms 
 Strasse, and brought back the reassuring message that 
 his Excellency considered it a great honour to obey her 
 Majesty's command, and that he would wait upon the 
 Kaiser in Hubertusstock the same evening. 
 
 The rest is history : Caprivi consented to remain in 
 office, and the Zedlitz incident was no longer mentioned 
 at Court. 
 
 All this, it will be remembered, happened in March, 
 1892. Two years later, the Empress thought quite differ- 
 ently about a change in the Chancellorship. By that 
 time she had grown more and more isolated on the throne, 
 with a husband always absent, if not physically, mentally, 
 and the members of the royal family becoming estranged 
 from her Court one after another. The necessity of having 
 a relative in a commanding position near her, a man of 
 her own caste, who understood her, an equal upon whom 
 she could lean, became more imperative every day. 
 
 Waldersee it could not be. " Ah ! if we had only 
 Uncle Chlodwig with us." How often was this pious wish 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 153 
 
 on my mistress's lips during the first half of the year 
 1894 ! " He is such a grand seigneur," she used to say, 
 " and as mild and temperate as a good priest ! What 
 an example he would be for my children ! " 
 
 "He is also credited with an unusual amount of 
 tenacity," I remarked on one of these occasions. 
 
 " You do not consider that a fault, Countess ? " Her 
 Majesty had assumed a supercilious tone, but quickly 
 added, in an anxious voice : " It is, of course, out of the 
 question that he should offer opposition to his Majesty as 
 Bismarck did, and as this Caprivi is doing." 
 
 " I don't know about that. He told his former sove- 
 reign, King Louis of Bavaiia : * I possess all the attributes 
 of birth and rank that any king in Christendom may lay 
 claim to.' " 
 
 This intelligence did not please the Kaiserin, though 
 her own mother is a Hohenlohe ; but her scruples on that 
 score had evidently worn off, or she had forgotten all about 
 the incident, when the Kaiser, on October 25, upon his 
 return from the memorable visit to Liebenberg, Count 
 Philip Eulenburg's country-seat, asked her to write to 
 Strassburg and " probe her uncle as to his willingness 
 to accept the Chancellorship." As the German says, she 
 was immediately " fire and flame for the project," and, 
 after finishing her letter to the Emperor's lieutenant in 
 the Reichslande, she sat up half the night scribbling to 
 her mother, sisters, brother, and her relatives in England 
 to tell them of Uncle Chlod wig's " good luck " and her 
 own happiness at the contemplated ending of the " crisis," 
 which, by the way, had come so suddenly that the royal 
 ladies and gentlemen, or at least some of them, were com- 
 pletely taken by surprise. As the Duchess Frederick 
 Ferdinand of Gliicksburg put it, in her letter of reply : 
 " We were just congratulating ourselves upon the vote 
 
154 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 of confidence William bestowed upon Caprivi on Tuesday, 
 October 23 (it was reported in our Moniteur, the Eckern- 
 foerder Zeitung, last night), when your Job's message came 
 to hand." 
 
 " There," said her Majesty, as she handed the bundle 
 of envelopes to Herr von der Knesebeck, " I have in- 
 formed everybody that my husband will have peace here- 
 after, the chief cause of his anger and irritation, a querulous 
 and obstreperous servant, being sent back into obscurity." 
 
 Needless to say, the Kaiser could not wait until an 
 answer to Auguste Victoria's letter arrived from Alsace. 
 Next morning, a Friday, Herr von Lucanus, Chief of the 
 Civil Cabinet, went to Caprivi, demanding, in the Kaiser's 
 name, his immediate resignation, and when the General 
 had complied with the request, William began telegraph- 
 ing to Uncle Chlodwig, requesting him to accept. 
 
 The old Prince answered that he would leave the de- 
 cision to his wife, who knew him best. If " Marie " 
 thought the state of his health permitted an increase of 
 his labours at his great age, he would follow the King's 
 call. And " Auguste wants you. Be at the Schloss 
 to-night," read Wilhelm's urgent rejoinder. 
 
 We ladies of the Court were kept informed of these 
 high political carryings-on by the Emperor himself, who 
 ran in and out of her Majesty's rooms constantly in those 
 eventful days. " I have just learned that your aunt Marie 
 is summering at Aussee " (with these words the Kaiser 
 entered her Majesty's study shortly before tea-time) ; 
 " send her a despatch saying that the Fatherland has a 
 right to demand this sacrifice of her. I need Hohenlohe ; 
 he is the only man who can bridge over the present crisis." 
 
 The Emperor's commission, his confidence, made her 
 Majesty unspeakably happy. "It is one thing to be 
 a Queen, and another to reign," she said, proudly, when 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 155 
 
 William had left, after correcting and partly rewriting her 
 despatch. 
 
 Who could have withstood this electric campaign ? 
 Hohenlohe capitulated after forty-eight hours of prod- 
 ding and promising, and on the 3oth of the month their 
 Majesties thanked Princess Marie in a joint telegram far 
 her patriotism and disinterestedness. 
 
 The palace now once more became a place where one 
 could eat and sleep in comfort, go to bed at stated hours, 
 and set about one's morning toilet without fear of being 
 called away at the most inopportune moment to decipher 
 despatches, run errands completely out of one's sphere, 
 or help to dry the royal mistress's tears. The Kaiser, proud 
 of his victory, the assertion of his self-will, gave himself 
 over to the usual round of pleasures the chase, all sorts 
 of unveiling and dedication ceremonies, the theatre, visit- 
 ing, and military display ; the Empress made it her 
 business to appear happy and contented. She had been 
 allowed to play a political part, the threads of a great 
 state intrigue had rested momentarily in her hands ; her 
 ambition to become a second Queen Louise might not be 
 unattainable after all. But we propose, and our dear 
 relations dispose. Hohenlohe had not been in office a 
 week when the fifty-six other Hohenlohes (you find them 
 enumerated in the Almanack de Gotha), fortified and 
 backed by their one hundred and sixty-odd grandmothers, 
 mothers, aunts, wives, and daughters, began pestering 
 the Court, and finally their Majesties themselves, with 
 allusions to the great discrepancy between their kinsman's 
 modest stipend as Chancellor and his former salary as 
 Emperor's lieutenant in Alsace a difference of a round 
 hundred thousand marks per annum. 
 
 " It is impossible, from the family's standpoint, to 
 permit such a sacrifice without indemnification.'* 
 
156 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 " The Prince belongs, above all, to his kindred, whose 
 glory and prosperity he is bound to help to increase." 
 The latter phrase seems to be a free translation of the 
 semper Augustus of the Roman imperators. " How can 
 he be expected to live up to his duties as chief of the first 
 branch of the younger line of the Hohenlohe-Waldenburg- 
 Schillingsfiirsts if he throws away a fortune every year 
 of his life ? " 
 
 " Uncle Chlodwig," so ran another line of argument, 
 " is not a gay bachelor, but a father and grandfather, an 
 uncle and cousin times innumerable. Dozens of Hohen- 
 lohes, besides his own children, depend for part of their 
 income, at present or after his death, upon the noble old 
 man, and to all these the enormous curtailment of salary 
 is nothing short of a calamity." 
 
 A third batch of correspondents bluntly stated that 
 " inasmuch as Hohenlohe had consented to accept the 
 Chancellorship to please the Emperor, his Majesty was 
 in honour bound to make good his pecuniary losses." 
 
 Epistles of this sort kept Auguste Victoria in a turmoil 
 all through the month of November, the Emperor having 
 refused to be disturbed by these screechings, after perusing 
 one or two of the kind which showed conclusively whence 
 the wind was blowing, as his Majesty expressed himself. 
 Thereafter letters postmarked Waldenburg, Rauden, Bar- 
 tenstein, Haltenbergstetten, Budapest, Lublinitz, or from 
 any other city or place where the " damned curmudgeons 
 reside," had to be delivered to the Kaiserin, whether 
 addressed to William personally or not, the occasional 
 absence of the well-known crest, with its tailed quad- 
 rupeds and crowned fowl, making no difference, " as some 
 princes and noblemen are not above borrowing a neigh- 
 bour's seal " when they have reason to believe that their 
 letters, if recognised, may go unnoticed. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 157 
 
 The adjutants du four left billets-doux of that kind by 
 the handful morning after morning at the Empress's 
 rooms, and her Majesty's morbid curiosity, a character- 
 istic strongly developed in lonely women and the Em- 
 press is lonely even in her children's midst and sur- 
 rounded by a houseful of friends her loneliness made 
 her not only notice these grievances and accusations, but 
 study them, ponder over them. Only once have I seen 
 my mistress unconcerned when thus employed at the 
 suggestion that Uncle Chlodwig needed a big salary, such 
 as he had possessed and lost, in order to live in the style 
 befitting his rank. 
 
 " Uncle Chlodwig a pauper ! " she cried. " That is 
 news, indeed; a poor man owning residential palaces in 
 several capitals, and castles and country-houses all over 
 Germany and in Austria ! " 
 
 " Of course, the statement is ridiculous," said Baron 
 von Mirbach ; " but it is a fact, nevertheless, that his 
 Grace has been sorely disappointed with respect to his 
 Russian properties, or rather his wife's Russian inherit- 
 ance, the Wittgenstein domains. The law prohibiting 
 foreigners from holding property in Russia has forced 
 him to dispose of many miles of territory at ruinous 
 prices." 
 
 " I know," said the Empress, " and am glad that the 
 Kaiser promised to intervene with the Czar on that 
 account. ' Nicky,' I am sure, will arrange matters satis- 
 factorily." 
 
 " The Prince's relatives seem to know nothing of such 
 an understanding," I remarked. 
 
 " Of course not," replied her Majesty, " for it is a 
 state secret which, when I come to think of it, I should 
 have more respected. But now that it is out, let me 
 add that my husband's promise to secure a favourable 
 
158 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 settlement of those Russian affairs did more than all 
 other arguments toward persuading the Prince to accept 
 the Chancellorship." 
 
 This one-sided correspondence would probably have 
 died out after a while for lack of argumentative fuel, if 
 for no other reason, and the matter of the Chancellor's 
 salary would have been forgotten, if, all of a sudden, 
 the hydra of the anonymous letter had not raised its 
 head again. 
 
 Herr von Kotze, the Imperial Master of Ceremony, 
 suspected of flooding the Court with unspeakable accusa- 
 tions through nameless letters, had been released from 
 custody July 5, and the lascivious pasquinades his 
 alleged fabrications which regularly arrived throughout 
 the time of his detention, had ceased coming for months. 
 
 " Your Majesty ought really not to be so hard on 
 Hohenlohe on the salary question, considering that you 
 have but to ask your wife's mother about the good uses 
 Hohenlohe is making of his wealth. Indeed, if it had not 
 been for ' Cousin Chlodwig,' the Duchess Adelaide and her 
 children, among them the present German Empress, might 
 have gone hungry many a day while the Augustenburger 
 was fighting" (on paper) "for his throne," This letter 
 the Emperor found in Berlin, November 15, on the eve 
 of the day when he made that rema'rkable speech at the 
 swearing-in of recruits, wherein he told those green boobies 
 (in defiance of common-sense and grammar I translate 
 literally) : "by donning the King's coat you have become 
 something aristocratic," 
 
 William often expresses opinions of that sort, and I 
 should not be surprised if in his heart of hearts he fully 
 believed that his uniform turns the average rustic lubber 
 into a person of distinction, and places him above the 
 rank of citizen. What a blow it must have been to him 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 159 
 
 to learn on top of that speech that his wife's mother, his 
 wife herself, at one time were beneficiaries of the man 
 whom he had just created chief servant ! 
 
 That evening the princely couple of Meiningen, Duke 
 Gunther and the hereditary Princess of Hohenzollern, 
 took supper at Court, and to these relatives the Kaiser 
 showed the letter just received. 
 
 " You are not going to send Leberecht back to Linden 
 Strasse " (the military prison), said Princess Charlotte, 
 who is intimate enough with Kotze to call him by his 
 Christian name. 
 
 " Your fool-friend has no part in my meditations just 
 now," answered William gruffly. " I am thinking about 
 ways and means to stifle this new scandal. The report 
 whether true or not is immaterial that the German 
 Empress's mother accepted charity from a Hohenlohe 
 must not be allowed to spread, and I see but one way 
 to prevent it : those salary-grabbers must be appeased ; 
 the income of Emperor's lieutenant must be restored to 
 the Chancellor." 
 
 Thus far the Emperor had spoken in a loud, almost 
 vehement manner, so that the ladies and gentlemen, stand- 
 ing at a respectful distance, lost not a syllable of his 
 tirade ; but as he proceeded he lowered his voice, and 
 I do not believe that the rest of his speech was under- 
 stood by anybody outside of the royal circle, for, acting 
 as lady du jour on that occasion, and as, besides, I was 
 waiting to hand my mistress a mouchoir before we went 
 to table, I was nearest to his Majesty, and, though my 
 hearing is good, I failed to catch a word of what he said 
 in confidence. 
 
 The import of it all I learned, however, the same 
 evening, without solicitation on my part, from one of 
 the royal guests, who whispered, as we stood listening 
 
160 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 
 
 to the music : "I begin to believe those rumours charging 
 
 my " (the Emperor) " with having made inroads upon 
 
 the Guelph Fund, seeing that he means to seize upon 
 the Dispositionsfond to repay Hohenlohe for advances 
 made to his mother-in-law." 
 
 " What does your Royal Highness mean ? " 
 " That the Kaiser told us to-night he was resolved 
 to grant Hohenlohe an annual augmentation of his salary, 
 amounting to one hundred thousand marks, out of the 
 fund appropriated by the Reichstag for the benefit of 
 crippled soldiers, widows, and orphans, and of the victims 
 of fire, storm, and other elementary misfortunes." 
 " Impossible ! It would be malfeasance." 
 " A robbery ; just so, gnadige Grdfin, if if a semi-de- 
 mented person could be guilty of crime." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE DISPOSITIONSFOND AFFAIR THE KAISER AND THE 
 PRUSSIAN GUARDS THE GUELPH FUND 
 
 LIFE at Court ran in smooth channels for some weeks 
 following the little family party just described ; the 
 coroneted graphomaniacs who had embroiled the imperial 
 couple in the nastiest sort of family dispute stopped 
 writing after firing one more broadside of admiration 
 and excuses, instead of distrust and calumny as before, 
 and the political horizon being unusually tranquil, the 
 Kaiser and Kaiserin gave themselves up to the pleasures 
 of the season, his Majesty hunting and speechifying, dining 
 out, and enjoying little trips, the Empress knitting and 
 sewing for the orphan asylums and making other pre- 
 parations for Christmas. " Uncle Chlodwig " was now a 
 frequent guest at the Neues Palais, and his relations with 
 William were seemingly of the best, although it struck 
 me that the young Kaiser treated the old man in a rather 
 patronising way, as if he meant to insinuate : " Remember 
 what I have done for you, and that, like a true benefactor, 
 I have acted promptly and without fuss." 
 
 Toward the end of the month another anonymous 
 letter, this time addressed to her Majesty, was received. 
 It prophesied grave troubles, " for," said the writer, " the 
 Dispositions fond affair is known to the press," but, as 
 nothing relating to it was printed during the next four 
 or five days, her Majesty concluded that a hoax had been 
 practised upon her. On December 6 occurred the great 
 Reichstag scandal : the Socialistic members refused to 
 
 161 
 
162 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 rise from their seats when the house honoured the sove- 
 reign by a huzza. 
 
 I thought her Majesty would fall ill with indignation 
 and rage when the matter was first brought to her atten- 
 tion; but, contrary to expectation, we found the Kaiser 
 calm and dignified. " If this demonstration," he said, 
 in the course of the evening meal, " was aimed at me, 
 it was a failure; it did not reach the tips of my boots. 
 On the other hand, the Socialistic rabble has trampled 
 on the dignity of the Reichstag wantonly and maliciously, 
 and for this the Reichstag must demand satisfaction. 
 As for my government, the occurrence is water for our 
 mills. It means the success of the Umsturtz Vorlage " 
 (the anti-revolutionary bill). 
 
 All agreed upon this point as a matter of course, and 
 therewith the incident was set at rest, we thought, so far 
 as the Court was concerned ; but, unfortunately, the Kaiser 
 changed his mind as to the impersonality of the target, 
 After repeating the temperate and statesmanlike inter- 
 pretation of the incident above quoted to Herr von 
 Letzow, Baron von Buol, and Dr. Biirklin, the presidents 
 of the Reichstag, who called at the Neues Palais on 
 Sunday. December 9, he ordered Prince Hohenlohe, by 
 an autograph note, indited twenty-four hours later, to 
 ask permission of the Reichstag to prosecute the Socialist 
 leader Liebknecht for Use - majeste then and there, the 
 consent of that body being necessary, as the constitution 
 guarantees to members of Parliament immunity from 
 arrest during sessions. 
 
 There was much groaning in the palace when the 
 Reichstag refused to create so dangerous a precedent. 
 The Kaiser characterised the unfavourable vote by saying 
 that the nation's deputies were suffering, " one and all, 
 from Rothe Ruhr " (bloody flux), " and therefore could 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 163 
 
 not be at their Emperor's service " ; but the graver con- 
 sequences of this useless stirring up of opposition developed 
 somewhat later, and the Emperor, Hohenlohe, and the 
 Court all suffered in consequence.' 
 
 There appeared, shortly before the holidays, in the 
 Berlin Post, known as the organ of the foreign ministries, 
 an entrefilet, purporting to correct a paragraph printed in 
 an obscure Socialistic sheet, that hinted darkly at a con- 
 spiracy between Kaiser and Chancellor to defraud a 
 public fund, and, with the clumsiness that distinguishes 
 the official fault-finder, the Post " dumped the child with 
 the bath-water," as Bismarck used to say. It denied 
 the conspiracy, and then calmly told the damning truth 
 of the matter ; namely, that his Majesty, in recognition 
 of Prince Hohenlohe's distinguished services, his patriotism 
 and disinterestedness, had been " graciously pleased to 
 grant him an extra subvention of one hundred thousand 
 marks from the charity fund at his disposal." Now the 
 Post, an afternoon paper, is usually not delivered at the 
 Neues Palais until next morning, but that night a stray 
 copy found its way to the adjutant's room, and his 
 Majesty appeared at the supper-table with a darkened 
 brow. He was most ungracious toward her Majesty, and 
 all the ladies, myself included, were treated to sarcastic 
 remarks that often approached downright rudeness. 
 
 " A thunder-storm is gathering I wonder who will 
 be hurt ? " remarked my neighbour, Herr von Egloff stein, 
 sotto voce. At that moment the chasseur handed the 
 Kaiser a letter bearing a great official seal. 
 
 "There," said his Majesty to the Empress, after per- 
 using the missive, " your uncle thanks me for my good 
 intentions, and relinquishes, at the first blast from the 
 enemy's camp, the fortune I threw into his lap. But," 
 he added, rising and casting an inquisitorial look around 
 
164 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 the table, " I will find out who bears tales from my own 
 house to dirty newsmongers, if I have to people Linden 
 Strasse prison as Spandau was peopled at the time of the 
 Trosqui conspiracy." l 
 
 The Kaiser left the dining-room without offering his 
 arm to the Empress, and as her Majesty followed him to 
 inquire the meaning of the scene, we of the service (there 
 were no guests that evening) were free to hold an im- 
 promptu talk among ourselves. 
 
 Adjutant von Moltke, who had read the Post, explained 
 the situation. 
 
 " Great God ! " cried Countess Brockdorff, " his Majesty 
 thinks one of us played informer in the Dispositions fond 
 matter." 
 
 " But this is the first we hear of it," said Mademoiselle 
 von Bassewitz. 
 
 " It is the newest sort of news to me," shrieked Fraulein 
 von Gersdorff. 
 
 " As her Excellency knows," I said, looking straight at 
 the grand-mistress, " her Majesty received an anonymous 
 letter threatening an expose, such as has occurred now, 
 two or three weeks ago." 
 
 " I remember," replied Madame von Brockdorff slowly. 
 
 " But," cried Count Moltke and Herr von Egloffstein, 
 with one voice, " why didn't you ladies report this to 
 his Majesty ? The scandal, if not avoided, might have 
 been nipped in the bud." 
 
 " It was the grand-mistress's office to give information 
 of that kind," I said ; an opinion in which the gentlemen 
 upheld me. 
 
 While we were still conversing, her Majesty returned. 
 
 1 A mysterious plot, in which a lady-in-waiting to Frederick the Great's 
 mother, Madame de Blasphil, was involved ; she escaped the ignominy of being 
 put on the rack only by a miracle. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 165 
 
 Her eyes were red, and she was evidently labouring under 
 great agitation. Calling Countess Brockdorff to her side, 
 she began to talk to her in the most earnest manner, 
 while the rest of us stood about aimlessly, helplessly. As 
 Madame Carette says in her Souvenirs intimes de la cour 
 des Tuileries : " The presence of the sovereign forbids, 
 as a matter of course, every attempt at unchecked con- 
 versation." How much greater is the strain when the 
 royal mistress, to the knowledge of all present, is suffer- 
 ing from her husband's displeasure, and the courtiers 
 themselves are under a grave charge of suspicion ! When 
 her Majesty, long before the usual hour, bade us a half- 
 hearted good-night, a feeling of relief came over me ; but 
 the relaxation did not last long, for when I reached my 
 apartments I found a printed notice under the door 
 an order to " appear before the Royal Audit eur in re 
 Anonymous Letters, next morning at 8 A.M." I prepared 
 to go to Berlin, where all such examinations take place, 
 by an early train, and was not surprised to tind the 
 court-yard gay with the equipages of my colleagues and the 
 numerous other Court officials about to embark on the 
 same errand. Together we made up quite a party, filling 
 all available first-class railway carriages, and the Berliners, 
 seeing us drive down the Linden an hour later, must have 
 wondered at the sudden invasion, though surely no one 
 suspected that all these elegantly dressed women, these 
 gentlemen in showy uniforms and beribboned dress-coats, 
 had left their luxurious couches at an unearthly hour to 
 answer the summons of the modern Vehme. 
 
 A Vehmgericht indeed, secret, unlawful, tryannical. 
 We will treat of it later on in the chapters devoted to the 
 nastiest Court intrigue of modern times, the anonymous 
 letter scandal. For the present, it will suffice to say that 
 the judicial inquiries neither yielded the name of the person 
 
166 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 who revealed the Emperor's secret, nor afforded the least 
 hint as to his or her identity. 
 
 After this excursion into the realms of high politics, a 
 milieu which I meant to avoid in these papers, but whose 
 allurements I cannot escape at all times, we will return 
 to the subject : the Kaiser as a financier. 
 
 The preceding pages have pictured to us William 
 seriously concerned about the light-hearted fashion with 
 which a royal relative seemed to squander a dozen or 
 more twenty-mark pieces, and simultaneously calling for 
 an outlay of from ten to twenty millions to promote some 
 useless building extravagances. Again, we have observed 
 how he reduced his modest Christmas charity fund two- 
 thirds, while at about the same time Prince Hohenlohe's 
 salary was increased in equal proportion. In both in- 
 stances William robbed the poor (or intended robbing 
 them), to the advantage of the enormously wealthy, first 
 of a hundred and forty-three marks, the second time of 
 one hundred thousand marks ; twice in succession he was 
 guilty of actions that, as pointed out, bespeak at once 
 hard-heartedness, egotism, and the lack of certain mental 
 faculties. 
 
 And worst of all, these are not isolated cases, the 
 results of caprice or ill-temper ; but all through the public 
 and private life of the Emperor confusion in matters of 
 finance is noticeable, like the proverbial red thread in 
 the British marine, or red tape in our own government 
 affairs. 
 
 Who has not read of William's thundering philippics 
 against luxury in the officers' corps of the army ? " The 
 Prussian lieutenant, captain, and colonel must find supreme 
 satisfaction in a frugal life. To live above one's income 
 is the source of all social evil. Only the commanding 
 generals have * duties of representation ' to fulfil, and 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 167 
 
 their Excellencies shall not spend more for the purpose 
 than the state appropriation permits," are stock phrases 
 of his pronunciamentos issued from time to time. And 
 as a variation of the stories on patched Hohenzollern 
 trousers, the official telegraph bureau never fails to add 
 the interesting information that the chief war-lord suffers 
 the red facings of his uniform to be renewed several times 
 before he throws away a coat. 
 
 Such is the theoretical side of the question ; now to 
 the practical. 
 
 In order to see whether his .commands are strictly 
 obeyed, the Kaiser invites himself to breakfast at the 
 casino of some regiment every little while, announcing 
 that he will pay ten marks for his and his suite's enter- 
 tainment, not a penny more. 
 
 Now, the managers of these institutions know that his 
 Majesty has his preferences as to wines and victuals, and 
 the imperial Court-marshal is only too ready to enumerate 
 them to the anxious. So French champagne of the highest 
 grade, costly Rhine wines and Burgundy, imported cordials 
 and cognacs, are bought, also game and fresh sea-food, 
 which latter is a luxury with us. Furthermore, the 
 exterior and interior of the club building are decorated, 
 and often partly renovated, " and when, after all these 
 preparations, the lavish outlay made, the imperial master 
 departs with his corporal's guard of attendants " (when 
 he has to pay for them he never brings more than half 
 a dozen gentlemen), " and, on taking leave, remarks, with 
 self-satisfied emphasis : ' You see, my dear colonel, ten 
 marks is quite enough for anybody to spend on his stomach ; 
 I have had a very good breakfast ' (or dinner), ' indeed, 
 for that amount at your house,' you should study the 
 faces of the subaltern officers," say the Kaiser's adjutants. 
 " Count Eulenburg," they argue to themselves, " will send 
 
i68 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 the governing board sixty or seventy marks within the 
 next three months to pay for the exact number of seats 
 occupied by the imperial party, while we poor devils will 
 have to pay for the Piper, or Roederer, and the other 
 delicacies, out of our monthly pittance next week." 
 
 As a matter of fact, it costs a regimental mess from 
 five hundred to fifteen hundred marks every time the 
 war-lord tries its ten-marks' menu (according to the 
 decorations and renovations deemed necessary), and the 
 officers have to make up the difference. There have been 
 times when the pleasure of feasting the sovereign cost 
 the lieutenants of the Potsdam garrison one-tenth part 
 of their pay for several months in succession, and when 
 the uniformed gar$ons of these pretty young fellows had 
 to go without their more than modest wage in consequence. 
 But that is not all. The Kaiser's adjutants report from 
 time to time stories of wrecked lives lives of army men 
 who were lured upon the path that kills, by the all- 
 highest example, or in consequence of William's casino 
 visitations. 
 
 It is a mistake to think that the majority of officers 
 serving in the Prussian Guards are wealthy men ; a good 
 many are sons of high officials, endowed with mighty 
 titles joined to a diminutive salary, who can give their 
 boys but very scant assistance. Of course, these handi- 
 capped nonages desire to shine with the rest, and working, 
 as it were, under the eyes of the imperial chief, endeavour 
 to attract his attention. Now, there is only one way for 
 a subaltern officer to secure this boon under William II., 
 viz., to dress smartly, for the Emperor is known to pick 
 the best-accoutred man out of a hundred any time. 
 
 But if one aspires to be the Beau Brummel of the ball- 
 room, the hunting-field, the club, the drill and parade 
 grounds, credit with the regimental wardrobe-master is 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 169 
 
 Soon exhausted. Tailors demanding enormous profits as 
 an offset against the risks involved have to be employed, 
 and from them to the " Jew " is but one step. According 
 
 to this recipe, Count von R , a dashing Rittmeister 
 
 of the Body Hussars, was ruined, and Herr von L , 
 
 of the First Guards, kept him company, with hundreds of 
 others of lesser note. 
 
 Herr von L 's mother, widow of a privy councillor, 
 
 who made her son a yearly allowance, besides keeping a 
 family of several unmarried daughters, out of a pension 
 of forty-five hundred marks, came to me in the fall of 
 1896, requesting an audience of her Majesty, and when, 
 according to instructions, I inquired after the nature of 
 her business with my mistress, she confessed, to my utter 
 consternation, that she intended to petition the Empress 
 to use her influence toward keeping the Kaiser away from 
 
 the military casinos. Of course, to let Madame von L 
 
 come near Auguste Victoria was entirely out of the ques- 
 tion under the circumstances ; but while, as a lady of 
 the Court, I did my best to dissuade her from her purpose, 
 as a woman I could not close my ears to that poor 
 mother's arguments. 
 
 " My son's pay," she said, " amounted, as you probably 
 know, to one hundred and seventy-five marks per month, 
 of which all but forty marks were deducted for wardrobe 
 account, representation and benefit funds, board and 
 lodging, &c. Out of these forty marks and half as much 
 again my own modest contribution Walter had to pay 
 for his suppers, his tobacco, his car-fare, his amusements 
 and incidentals, and, though it was hard work, he managed 
 to keep within his income until his Majesty began to 
 invite himself to the casino. After the Kaiser's first visit, 
 my boy had to contribute fifteen marks toward the cost 
 of the entertainment, and, to reimburse himself, borrowed 
 
170 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 a double gold crown from a comrade. In the course of 
 the next month, his Majesty repeated his costly visit, 
 and my boy was bled a second time. Then, after paying 
 his comrade, he retained just five marks out of his pay, 
 while a month of hunger and humiliation was staring him 
 in the face ! Soon afterward, Walter found himself 
 struggling in the clutches of the usurer, and within six 
 months " (they have not much patience with us penniless 
 bureaucrats) " his disgrace was gazetted. And believe 
 me," added the broken-hearted mother, " my son's case 
 is not an exceptional one ; other promising young lives 
 have been wrecked in the same way, and the ruin of 
 hundreds of officers who judge the commanding chief by 
 his deeds rather than by his words is but a question of 
 time. 
 
 " For their sake, for the sake of their mothers and 
 
 sisters," concluded Madame von L earnestly, " I 
 
 am seeking audience with the Empress. I want to throw 
 myself at her Majesty's feet, picturing to her the perils 
 to which our sons are exposed by coming into personal 
 contact with the Kaiser. I will say to her : * His Majesty 
 is certainly actuated by the highest motives, but the 
 splendour of his presence, the gorgeousness of the enter- 
 tainments provided for him, are apt to befool ambitious 
 young men by deceiving them as to their own insigni- 
 ficance, and by lightening their sense of the responsibilities 
 they owe to themselves, their family, and their country.' ' 
 
 In this connection, an observation by General von 
 Kessel, then commander of the First Guards, deserves 
 mention. " If his Majesty wants to see his officers well 
 dressed, he should stop eating them out of pocket-money 
 at their casinos. They cannot afford to play the host 
 and pay their tailors at the same time," said the dashing 
 adjutant when the imperial party returned from the 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 171 
 
 manoeuvres in the early fall of 1895. Herr von Kessel 
 referred to his Majesty's criticism of the dress of certain 
 officers of the Breslau Cuirassiers, a body of troopers from 
 whom William demands hospitality on all occasions. 
 
 In February, 1897, I had the honour of receiving the 
 Princess Frederick Charles of Prussia at the Berlin Schloss, 
 her Royal Highness calling during the Empress's absence. 
 She was delighted to find everybody out. " I came to 
 speak to their Majesties with respect to the anniversary '* 
 (the festivities in honour of the late Kaiser Wilhelm's 
 one hundredth birthday), she said ; " the letter of invita- 
 tion prescribes costumes of the end of the eighteenth 
 century, and I desired to explain to his Majesty why I 
 cannot comply with such a request. To your Ladyship 
 I mention the true reason without hesitation, but, of 
 course, it would have been painful to me to plead poverty 
 to my nephew, he is so hard of comprehension " (begriffs- 
 stutzig) " in such matters. However, if the truth must be 
 told, I am not rich enough by far to spend ten thousand 
 marks on a costume serviceable for one occasion only, 
 and, consequently, must decline to attend, much as I 
 regret it, unless the Kaiser permits me to appear in the 
 regulation ball-dress." 
 
 When I delivered this message to his Majesty, he 
 scanned my face for a second or two in blank amaze- 
 ment as if he thought I was joking. Then he laughed. 
 " Absurd ! " he cried, " a Princess of Prussia unable to 
 buy a few frocks ! I see Madame, my aunt, is getting 
 to be a niggard in her old age. But she must have her 
 will ; my Herr * grandfather was always very fond of 
 the Princess, and we cannot do without her on this 
 
 occasion." 
 
 1 The Kaiser never fails to preface references to his grandfather or his father 
 by the appellation of "Herr" 
 
172 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 During a reception held at the Schloss, on the evening 
 of the same day, Princess Radziwill spoke of the great 
 difficulties that many army officers, invited to the festivi- 
 ties, experienced to procure the necessary costumes. 
 
 " These gentlemen have had a month's time to pre- 
 pare for my pageant, and I would advise none to be at all 
 laggard in complying with my commands," said the 
 Kaiser haughtily. " If there are not enough tailors and 
 embroiderers in Berlin, the work can be sent to other 
 cities." 
 
 " With your Majesty's permission, it is not the lack 
 of hands and needles, but the scarcity of ' dough,' 
 or as her Royal Highness, your Majesty's sister, says 
 ' mint-drops,' that interferes. A great many of the 
 younger officers, especially, can ill afford to spend six or 
 seven hundred marks on a uniform that becomes absolutely 
 useless after a few hours' wear." 
 
 " And where did your Grace acquire all this valuable 
 information," resumed the Kaiser, bowing formally and 
 accentuating each word with a semi-sarcastic sneer. 
 
 " Anywhere, everywhere ! They talk of nothing else 
 in the salons and clubs." Princess Marie's French blood 
 was up. " I felt like repeating to him what Pauline 
 Metternich told the Empress Eugenie : ' I was born a 
 grand dame, and I allow no one to ironize me,' " she said, 
 afterward, to Countess Brockdorff, who remonstrated with 
 her for losing her temper. 
 
 His Majesty merely shrugged his shoulders at the 
 Princess's blunt speech. " If it is necessary to clothe my 
 guests, as well as to feed them, I will appropriate twenty 
 thousand marks to help your impecunious friends to pay 
 for their costumes," he said, and at once changed the 
 subject. The promise had, however, been heard by every- 
 body in the assemblage, and as all of us numbered at least 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 173 
 
 one poor relative or friend among the four hundred officers 
 commanded to the festival, it is not strange that the affair 
 gained wide publicity. The news seemed to spread 
 throughout Berlin and Potsdam like a piece of local in- 
 telligence heralded in all the penny-dreadfuls. On the 
 strength of it, the young roues of the Union Club doubled 
 their stakes, and, the same night, " William-the-Bounti- 
 f ul's " health was drunk in numberless mess-rooms and 
 beer-halls by youthful members of the aristocracy and 
 army men whose greatest care had suddenly and un- 
 expectedly been lifted off their shoulders by the Kaiser's 
 words lifted to descend again, its weight doubled by 
 chagrin and disappointment, in the course of a few weeks, 
 for, to quote one of his Majesty's nephews, the heir-pre- 
 sumptive to a tiny throne, " the twenty thousand marks' 
 pledge proved to be an illusion, if not something worse 
 a snare ! Being assiduously published by the Kaiser's 
 entourage and members of the Court, it served its purpose 
 admirably. 
 
 " With reimbursement guaranteed, as they thought, 
 the officers commanded to the tableaux vivants spared no 
 expense in their costuming. The most magnificent silks 
 and velvets, the costliest gold and silver embroidery, were 
 worn by everybody, rich and poor. ' We don't mind 
 paying a couple of hundred marks ourselves in excess of 
 the Kaiser's allowance,' argued those whole-souled young 
 men. 
 
 " The result was the happiest for William : a display 
 gorgeous and luxurious far above expectations. And 
 when it was over, the Emperor expressed his all-highest 
 satisfaction, and went hunting. He had seemingly for- 
 gotten about the twenty thousand marks, and no one 
 dared remind him of his promise." 
 
 As Lord Burghley said to Queen Elizabeth : " Those 
 
174 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 who would make tools of Princes are hie tools them- 
 selves ! " 
 
 Court and society had not yet ceased talking of this 
 exhibition of bad faith, when the Kaiser startled the 
 whole country by another incident bearing on finance to 
 a certain extent. As his brother Henry was about to 
 embark for the Queen's Jubilee in the man-of-war Koenig 
 Wilhelm, his Majesty sent him a despatch expressing 
 regret that he had no better ship to give him, " because 
 those unpatriotic scamps in the Reichstag refused me 
 the necessary funds " these being the same " scamps." 
 by the way, who consented to increase the regular naval 
 budget fifty per cent, during the first seven years of 
 William's reign, besides granting two hundred and seventy- 
 nine millions of marks' worth of extraordinary marine 
 credits. 
 
 Again that confusion as to monetary matters, of 
 which we have already had numerous startling examples. 
 " Whether you place the nought before or after the figure, 
 it's all the same to his Majesty," said Prince Stolberg. 
 The Reichstag, permitting the naval budget to swell from 
 twenty-seven millions per annum under William I. to 
 fifty-five millions under William II., suffers the ignominy 
 of a public scolding, exactly as if its members had decreed 
 sweeping reductions instead. 
 
 There was a great deal of speculation in the public 
 prints and in political circles as to the authenticity of 
 the despatch quoted, and the majority of courtiers even 
 inclined at first to the belief that Prince Henry had over- 
 stepped his authority when he read the imperial message 
 before his officers, and thereby caused its publication, for 
 the Prince, though tolerably good-natured and not bright, 
 has the reputation of a mischief-maker, and it would be 
 just like him to set Parliament bv the ears at his 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 175 
 
 brother's expense if .there was the slightest warrant for 
 doing so. 
 
 However, one of the Kaiser's adjutants told me at 
 least a week before the scandal became public that his 
 Majesty had promised himself and them a " kladderadatsch " 
 (a great hullabaloo) " previous to his brother's sailing," 
 without intimating, however, in any way, wherein the 
 hubbub would consist. Of course, that exonerates Prince 
 Henry ; his Royal Highness evidently followed orders, 
 " performed his damned duty," as they say in Prussia ; 
 but, granted the Kaiser created this opportunity for in- 
 sulting the Reichstag in a moment of anger, that would 
 not explain the several palpable inconsistencies of his 
 message the setting aside of all Parliament has done for 
 his marine plans ; the nonsense of the assumption that 
 an appropriation made in January or February would 
 permit the placing in service of a battle-ship, or a number 
 of them, one or two months later ; and, thirdly, the 
 obvious untruth that a better ship was not available. 
 
 I will pass over the first-mentioned contradictions of 
 well-known facts to avoid repeating suggestions of a patho- 
 logical nature; number two comes under the same head- 
 ing, considering that this idle talk emanated from a man 
 of affairs, well schooled in naval matters. The third point 
 is the most interesting, because the most novel. 
 
 The Emperor's assertion that the Koenig Wilhelm was 
 the only serviceable vessel at his disposal I shall not 
 attempt to deny, as the Kiel and Wilhelmshaven shipping 
 lists prove it utterly false and unwarrantable, but I shall 
 recall a conversation between the Kaiser and little Prince 
 Adalbert that occurred a month or so previous to the 
 despatch scandal. Young Adalbert, despite his tender 
 years, is a lieutenant in the marine, and his governor has 
 taught him to exhibit interest in naval matters on all 
 
176 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 possible occasions. So, when he heard his father speak 
 of " Uncle Henry's " forthcoming trip to " Grandma 
 Victoria," he said quickly : " Will you let uncle have the 
 Hohenzollern ? " 
 
 The Kaiser, who had been very pleasant at luncheon, 
 and whose humour had continued in a happy mood while 
 we were sipping our coffee in the Tassen Zimmer, suddenly 
 changed his tone. Assuming the style of a severe pre- 
 ceptor, he made the frightened boy leave his mother's 
 knee and " stand at attention." 
 
 " Under which title does the Hohenzollern rank in the 
 marine lists ? " he demanded. 
 
 " His Majesty's Aviso, the yacht Hohenzollern, at the 
 Kaiser's exclusive disposal," reported the tiny lieutenant. 
 
 " Well, then," said the Emperor, " understand, sir, no 
 subject shall assume the Kaiser's privileges." 
 
 His Majesty had spoken so severely and with such 
 excessive emphasis that the little Prince became frightened 
 and had to be conducted from the room, while the small 
 assemblage of officials and guests sat about dispirited, a 
 feeling of unrest having replaced the previous joviality. 
 
 "No subject shall assume the Kaiser's privileges," 
 it was more than a rebuke ; it was a declaration : Every- 
 thing for William, the best, the most expensive that 
 money can buy, a glut of everything, and as in the 
 days of Louis XIV. if there be anything left after the 
 king had his innings, well and good, the rest may come 
 in for their share. Under le roy Soleil, " the rest " stood 
 for the government of France ; at the Berlin Court, it 
 means the Empress, the children, the royal relatives, and 
 the Court generally. 
 
 I shall have occasion to speak at length upon the 
 finance of this royal establishment ; may it suffice to say 
 here that there are no appropriations for the different 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 177 
 
 sections of the household which are not subject to drafts 
 by the imperial master. Prince Stolberg, who ought to 
 know, once ventured the opinion : " The Kaiser would 
 as lief gobble up our pension or salary appropriations 
 as " 
 
 " As the Guelph Fund ? " inquired Duke Gunther. 
 
 " Your Highness is pleased to jest," replied the grand- 
 master quickly, and then, changing his tone to one of 
 semi-raillery, he continued : " Forty-eight millions of 
 marks ! No one could spend such an amount." 
 
 " Oh, yes, my brother-in-law could," laughed the Duke, 
 with a mysterious air. 
 
 The above conversation, reported to me by an ear- 
 witness, took place in May, 1894, during the festivities 
 attending the prize-shooting of the officers of the Second 
 Guards, in Potsdam, and this was, to my knowledge, the 
 second time Gunther of Schleswig brought up the matter 
 of the Guelph Fund. 
 
 The Guelph Fund represents the sequestrated fortune 
 of King George of Hanover, or his heir, the Duke of 
 Cumberland, and its history is interesting. After annex- 
 ing the kingdom of Hanover in the summer of 1866, 
 Prussia restored their private fortune to the deposed 
 Guelphs by the convention of September 29, 1867, but 
 there was a string, or rather a steel cable, attached to 
 this apparently voluntary act of restitution. Pointing 
 out that the poor blind man whom he had vanquished 
 might utilise his money to raise an army against victorious 
 Prussia, Bismarck, with the consent of the Diet, seques- 
 trated the private property of the' royal Hanoverians a 
 second time, pleading that its annual interest was needed 
 to ward off the Guelph party's secret intrigues and strata- 
 gems in the German and foreign press. 
 
 So the Guelph Fund became the Reptile Fund a 
 
 M 
 
178 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 golden trough out of which the friends of the government, 
 or its leading men, fed for twenty-six years ad libitum, 1 
 there being no public accounting, the Chancellor laying 
 a list of disbursements before his Majesty at the end of 
 each year, after which act the receipts were destroyed. 
 
 When, a year or so after Bismarck's dismissal, the 
 Kaiser desired to re-establish agreeable relations with 
 Queen Victoria, he instructed Caprivi to pffer restoration 
 of the Guelph Fund on condition that the Duke of Cumber- 
 land formally renounced his rights to the crown. The 
 stipulation was accepted to William's great surprise, it 
 is said but as an offset, the fatal string was brought 
 into play a second time, and not the fortune itself; its 
 annual interest only was handed over to his Royal High- 
 ness at Gmunden. Court gossip fixes upon the Kaiser's 
 unwillingness to give up so large a fortune to which he 
 might have recourse occasionally (his own inheritance 
 of forty million marks having been squandered within 
 four years after his father's death) as the principal cause 
 of this renewed breach of faith, but, quite naturally, no 
 one has ever been able to verify this statement. Nor 
 do I know of a person who succeeded in tracing even a 
 solitary million on its way to the Kaiser's pockets from 
 the Wilhelmsplatz or Festungsgraben, where the Ministries 
 of Finance for the Reich and Prussia are located. The 
 only parties in possession of the true facts are, besides 
 the Emperor. Count Caprivi, Prince Hohenlohe, Herr 
 von Miquel, Minister of Finance, and Baron Wedell, 
 Minister of the Royal House, and neither of these gentle- 
 men is in the habit of giving away his master's secrets 
 to ladies of the Court. Duke Giinther, on the other hand, 
 if his allusions are not attempts at beating about the 
 
 1 Among other things, the Duke of Cumberland was made to pay the debts 
 of Minister von Boetticher's father-in-law. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 179 
 
 bush in the hope of entrapping the game he is after, 
 may have got an inkling of the affair through his sister, 
 the Empress, who can keep nothing from him, or from 
 his relatives in Vienna, notably the Princess Philip of 
 Coburg, who in her turn probably received the news from 
 the Duke of Cumberland himself, though the latter's autho- 
 rity might well be questioned, unless it grounds upon 
 exact data given out at Marlborough House. The heir 
 to the English crown, you must know, sometimes has 
 earlier and closer information about matters concerning 
 the Berlin Court than anybody connected with it, for he 
 is, above all, the confidant of the Empress Frederick, 
 while the Princess keeps him posted on everything that 
 transpires at the Courts of St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, 
 and Athens, those centres of anti-Prussian, if not anti- 
 Wilhelm, politics. Under these circumstances, the feeling 
 of self-satisfied prognostication that swelled the bosom 
 of the knowing ones may well be imagined, when, in the 
 spring of 1897 (almost three years after the reported talk 
 between Duke Giinther and Prince Stolberg), the following 
 story went the rounds at the Neues Palais : 
 
 The Prince of Wales, it was whispered, had written a 
 letter to King George informing him that the Kaiser 
 gulped down (that was the word employed) the whole 
 of the Guelph Fund, advising his brother-in-law at the 
 same time to use the information as he saw fit (Greece 
 was then hard pushed by William), but, unfortunately, 
 " Uncle Bertie," instead of sending it to Athens direct, 
 forwarded his missive to Copenhagen for approval by 
 his mother-in-law, and Queen Louise, most innocently 
 you may be sure, caused the noble conspiracy to 
 leak out. For, in a burst of confidence, her Majesty 
 showed the letter to Princess Valdemar, the same 
 sprightly daughter of La Belle France who stirred up 
 
i8o PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 the imbroglio between Bismarck and Czar Alexander not 
 so many years ago. 
 
 That Marie d'Orleans - Bourbon, on her part, was 
 unable to constrain her triumph at the hope of seeing 
 Germany's Kaiser humiliated, is, perhaps, not to be 
 wondered at, for her Royal Highness detests the Emperor 
 as heartily as she adores France. So, with true feminine 
 acumen, she sat down and telegraphed the sweet morsel 
 broadcast to all royal Wilhelm-haters, or Princes that 
 she considered sympathisers, and all wished the under- 
 taking Godspeed all except Cousin Ferdinand of Bul- 
 garia. This queer individual, eager to oblige the Kaiser, 
 is said to have betrayed the confidence reposed in him, 
 and informed his Majesty, hoping thereby to gain William's 
 eternal gratitude. 
 
 The rest is soon told. William's threat to openly 
 place himself on the Sultan's side, conveyed in a personal 
 letter to King Christian, which, strange to say, was 
 countersigned by Prince Hohenlohe, made the would-be 
 conspirators scatter in all directions, and immediately 
 upon its receipt at the Danish Court, Albert Edward's 
 message to the King of the Hellenes was given to the 
 flames in the presence of the German Minister. There- 
 upon the diplomatic side of the incident was declared 
 closed, yet to his Uncle Bertie the Kaiser is said to have 
 written a furious letter intimating that he would demand 
 a personal explanation from him during his the Prince's 
 summer visit to Homburg, a menace which, apparently, 
 did not disturb his Royal Highness in the least, for, 
 instead of a direct reply, there arrived at the Neues Palais, 
 a week or ten days later, a newspaper clipping, under 
 seal of Marlborough House, announcing that in the coming 
 season his Royal Highness intended to take the waters 
 of Marienbad ; and on the margin was scribbled in 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 181 
 
 German an inelegant, but whole-souled, invitation to 
 the imperial nephew, the like of which has once before 
 been extended to a German Emperor, namely, by Goetz 
 von Berlichingen, who answered Maximilian the First's 
 order to surrender in the same vulgar fashion. 
 
 The Guelph Fund story, as intimated, is palace gossip, 
 no more, no less, gossip that originates with the ladies 
 and gentlemen in attendance upon their Majesties, no 
 
 one knows exactly how. Countess B happens to 
 
 learn of an important secret event through her Majesty's 
 ill-temper or confidences, and, again, a hint may be 
 dropped at dinner or supper coram nobis by the Kaiser 
 himself, whose tongue not infrequently runs away with 
 his head. To-day one of the Emperor's adjutants may 
 have a good story to relate that, without involving a 
 breach of faith on the gentleman's part, gives the key 
 to a perplexing situation, while letters from other courts, 
 the tattle of princely visitors, correspondence of high 
 aristocrats or statesmen, a ministerial crisis, a sudden 
 lapse in the routine of royal employment, as a visit post- 
 poned or a " headache to order," complete the chain of 
 evidence that linked together of its own accord, as it 
 were, and in the end reveals hidden springs of action and 
 private views and motives of individuals affording a better 
 analysis of the minds of historic personages than a whole 
 library of ordinary contemporaneous accounts, written by 
 mere outside spectators, who faithfully copied each other. 
 
 I repeat, I cannot vouch for the truth of the Guelph 
 Fund report as I do for other strange facts in these 
 volumes that came under my personal observation, for 
 all the evidence I was able to collect on that point is of 
 the hearsay variety and there are very good reasons 
 why this should be so ; but I have, besides, one strong 
 bit of circumstantial evidence : Prince Hohenlohe has 
 
182 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 been holding office against his will for three years or 
 longer because he cannot step out until the Guelph Fund 
 affair is settled, that is, until the capital "'of that great 
 fortune is once more intact. This I have from an authori- 
 tative source. 
 
 We now return to the Koenig Wilhelm despatch. 
 While the press of the entire world was engaged in a 
 heated discussion as to the genuineness or the apocryphal 
 character of the message, his Majesty enjoyed himself 
 hugely at the commotion he had caused. 
 
 " Der Hieb hat gesessen " (that was a blow from the 
 shoulder), are words he addressed to every visitor at 
 Court in those days, without prefacing his extraordinary 
 remark by even an allusion to the matter he had in mind. 
 And to General von Buddenbrock, the same gentleman 
 whose hussars were decimated at Josefstadt (in 1866) 
 by Prussian batteries, he said : " Of course the telegram 
 is authentic. Why should I not tell my brother what 
 I think of those scamps ? Though I care not to abuse 
 them face to face when they are guests at my house, I 
 propose to speak my mind privately," and, anticipating 
 his Excellency's question, whether the publication had 
 been intentional or not, he continued : " I am right glad, 
 too, my brother made use of my words promptly and 
 without sentimental ado." 
 
 Here we have almost as many contradictions as sen- 
 tences : Personally his Majesty does not want to insult 
 the Reichstag ; his denunciations were of a private nature, 
 and he wishes them proclaimed from the house-tops! 
 Whether such a state of mind indicates merely morbid 
 impulsiveness, or a dangerous confusion of sentiments 
 and ideas, is a question I asked of a renowned medical 
 professor of the Berlin University, one of the late Em- 
 peror's physicians, who occasionally visits the Schloss. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 183 
 
 The great man weighed the matter in his mind for a few 
 moments, and then replied evasively : 
 
 " One riddle is worth another, Madame la Comtesse. 
 I am told that on the day of Princess Victoria, the 
 present Empress's, ceremonious entry into the capital, 1 
 the Kaiser, then Prince William, marched his battalion 
 of infantry from Potsdam to Berlin (a distance of twenty 
 miles) for the avowed purpose of startling his bride by 
 his prowess. On the road, many of the soldiers became 
 exhausted, but the captain, who was on horseback, as a 
 matter of course, arrived in first-class condition, and ever 
 since has been boasting of this particular feat ' a par 
 force march on the wedding eve.' Now, as a matter of 
 fact, William did not walk ten paces on that occasion, 
 and, furthermore, the thing came off fully twenty-four 
 hours before his bride's garter was distributed. The 
 Kaiser's boast of ' planting his victorious standard upon 
 the fortress after a Sheridan's ride,' is, therefore > as un- 
 warrantable as it is ridiculous. Still, this is one of his 
 stock anecdotes which he relates at all weddings graced 
 by the imperial presence. 
 
 " In this case," concluded the great physician, " im- 
 pulsiveness, the spontaneous desire to do something extra- 
 ordinary, doubtless led to the conception of the idea 
 the rest is utter confusion." 
 
 Certain members of the opposition have characterised 
 the Kaiser's action (in June, 1897) of ordering the Konigs- 
 berg pioneers to make for him a number of improve- 
 ments in Theerbude forest by building cottages and sheds 
 as " confounding mine and thine," and " as malfeasance 
 worthy of a satrap who recognises no distinction between 
 the state's and his own individual resources " ; but this 
 exploit, though calling in question his boasted concern 
 i February 26, 1881. 
 
184 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 for the working-classes, did his Majesty less harm with 
 the Germans than his refusal, a month or so after the 
 awful holocaust of royal and aristocratic women at the 
 Paris bazaar, to extend a helping hand to the victims 
 of the great floods in Wurtemberg. For the foreigners 
 " his " Dispositions/and yielded promptly a four-nought 
 contribution, together with a hysterical telegram of con- 
 dolence ; the South German allies, who contribute 
 toward the fund, got neither money nor sympathy, 
 and in consequence the mail of both their Majesties 
 was again heavy with anonymous letters, some of them 
 illustrated. 
 
 Such caricatures ! Among others was a cartoon, in 
 colours, that represented the Kaiser kneeling before the 
 bed of Madame la Republique, and pouring gold into her 
 naked lap out of a bag marked " The Reich's Dispositions- 
 fond for the Benefit of German Veterans, Widows, and 
 Oprhans," and almost every one of the nameless corre- 
 spondents pointed out that the Emperor had never been 
 guilty of a generous act lacking in theatrical possibilities. 
 Still, the worst feature of these letters was their origin. 
 They were evidently not of the scandal-mongering sort, 
 of which mention has been made, but expressions of 
 righteous indignation, of honest opinion, forced to anony- 
 mity by the prevailing draconic laws against lese-majeste. 
 
 " What a blessing these people calculate but one-half 
 of the truth," I thought, when the Empress turned some 
 of the epistles and cartoons over to me, that I might 
 help her shudder " at a nation's ingratitude." If, like 
 myself, they had heard William say, after mailing " his " 
 ten-thousand-franc cheque their money to the French 
 capital : " That brings me nearer to Paris a hundred 
 miles ; if such opportunities continue, they will send a 
 special train to Berlin to carry me to their Exposition," 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 185 
 
 the rage of these critics might have assumed a more 
 dangerous form than the one adopted. 
 
 There is, after all, more method in the secrecy that 
 hedges round a throne, and likewise a greater amount 
 of shrewd circumspection in the publicity accorded to a 
 King's words and actions by paid and voluntary scribes, 
 than most people imagine. In May, 1897, for instance* 
 all the newspapers commented upon some rather trite 
 remarks the Kaiser had made in Wiesbaden about so-called 
 charity bazaars, "whose receipts are eaten up by the 
 cost of the entertainment, and where the poor are cheated." 
 These observations were heralded as something entirely 
 new, and when, a month or so afterward, the Empress 
 announced a flower corso for the benefit of the Potsdam 
 " Krippe," and invited society on condition that, in 
 obedience to his Majesty's wishes, the decorations be less 
 lavish than usual, while the money thus saved be handed 
 over for the charitable object in view, Court-marshal 
 Count Eulenburg, as well as we ladies, who have more 
 or less to do with the Kaiserin's toilet, expected to receive 
 orders to keep the preparations for the festival within 
 certain limits. But the very opposite happened. August e 
 Victoria selected the costliest of all the Vienna toilets 
 proposed, a superb cream-coloured gown, and instead of 
 going out in two coaches, as formerly, four were placed 
 into service for the royal family, not counting those of 
 the Court-marshals, equerries, chamberlains, and dames 
 of the palace. 
 
 At the corso, which was held in Potsdam, near the 
 " Russian colony," her Majesty's carriage, containing, 
 besides herself, Prince Joachim and her little daughter, 
 was nearly hidden under a load of Marechal Niel roses, 
 imported from France and Holland at a tremendous out- 
 lay ; the Princes Adalbert, Augustus Wilhelm, and Oscar 
 
186 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 
 
 rode in a landau lavishly decorated with white carnations, 
 the Crown Prince and Prince Eitel Fritz in a phaeton 
 made gay by ten thousand red pinks and ribbons, and 
 the floral embellishments of the Kaiser's coach represented 
 the colours of Schleswig-Holstein. 
 
 The other royal and aristocratic participants in the 
 pageant had likewise taken care to shine by sovereign 
 disregard of the imperial injunction against extravagance, 
 but to their credit it must be said that nearly all of 
 them sent very considerable sums to the " Krippe " next 
 day, " savings out of our decoration fund," as their per- 
 fumed missives to the august lady-protector modestly 
 declared. 
 
 And their Majesties ? William and his Queen had 
 no occasion to remember their high-sounding proclama- 
 tions, seeing that a purveyor's bill of several thousand 
 marks for the embellishment of the royal carriages was 
 staring in their faces. Heretofore royal gardeners had 
 attended to the corso decorations, there being always 
 an abundance of flowers in our parks and hothouses ; 
 but, with that contrariness which now and again distin- 
 guishes the Kaiser's actions, he ordered that the work 
 be entrusted to a high-priced Berlin florist, at the very 
 instant when saving was the prime object of the hour. 
 
 Hence tears and lamentations in the Empress's apart- 
 ments, most unroyal frowns on the Kaiser's brow, while 
 the papers were echoing both Majesties' praises for arrang- 
 ing charity entertainments, " every participant of which 
 contributes to the benefit." 
 
 The " Krippe " got nothing from the Neues Palais 
 that season, but what matters that so long as the press 
 applauds ? 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE EMPEROR'S LOVE OF SHOOTING HIS BOON 
 COMPANIONS 
 
 WHILE his Majesty inflicts his costly presence upon the 
 nobles and rich officials of Berlin and Potsdam accord- 
 ing to his whims and preferences for society, and following 
 the course of such events as birthdays, weddings, house- 
 warmings, and similar domestic affairs in the families 
 of the aristocracy, his visits to the hunting-grounds of 
 friends in all parts of Germany are matters of routine, 
 as he looks upon the utilisation of the country's pre- 
 serves as a regalism in the old feudal sense, as his sove- 
 reign right. 
 
 When his Majesty goes to a shooting, he seldom stays 
 longer than two days, the cost of his entertainment being 
 between forty and fifty thousand marks, and one need 
 but glance at the preparations on the host's part to 
 appreciate the enormity of the outlay, which, moreover, 
 is vastly larger at the first visit. The country residences 
 of our Prussian grandees, you must know, are, as a 
 general thing, quite innocent of sanitary arrangements, 
 and often several rooms must be entirely rebuilt and 
 furnished with running water before his Majesty will set 
 foot in the house. Now, an unsophisticated reader might 
 think that to plead old-fashionedness would scare away 
 William and save one's money, but that is a wild mis- 
 calculation. If the Emperor scents a full game-bag on 
 any baronial domain, he will invite himself to the feast 
 sans phrase, and not until all arrangements have been 
 
 187 
 
i88 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 completed, and when it is too late to raise objections of 
 the nature intimated, does the Court-marshal put in the 
 standing claims of his master : A bedroom similar in all 
 respects as to size and appointments to the Kaiser's own 
 chamber at home, brass bedstead, horsehair mattress, 
 an enormous wash-stand, windows and doors secured by 
 endless numbers of curtains and here corner the rub 
 a connecting-room with the latest paraphernalia of the 
 bath. 
 
 " Mark Twain has written many funny things about 
 the German and his tub, or the absence of the latter," 
 said Court-marshal Count Eulenburg to me, after meeting 
 the American ^ humourist at a dinner given by General 
 Verdy du Vernois in the winter of 1891 ; " but he could 
 surpass himself if I were free to give him only part of 
 the correspondence I have had with our nobility on the 
 subject of providing adequate bathing requisites for his 
 Majesty. How they struggle and twist and squirm 
 against the introduction of this novelty, which, they claim, 
 would destroy the harmonious appearance of rooms that 
 for three hundred years were untouched by the mode. 
 One gentleman, in the province of Prussia, tried to evade 
 the obnoxious obligation by impudently suggesting that 
 he dared not offer his Majesty a bath after one night's 
 journey, as it involved the insinuation of excessive dirti- 
 ness on his guest's part. 
 
 " While I sympathise with many of his Majesty's 
 hosts, who can ill afford to entertain the most luxurious 
 monarch of the age," continued the good-natured grand- 
 master, " I am as adamant as the proverbial rocker de 
 bronze when asked to tolerate aristocratic principles of 
 that sort. If the Kaiser's travels served no other purpose 
 than that of promoting cleanliness, his time would be 
 well spent." 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 189 
 
 Subscribed and agreed to, Herr Graf, but these so- 
 called novelties are really the least costly items of an 
 imperial visit, even if Berlin plumbers have to be im- 
 ported into remote corners of the kingdom to execute 
 your commands. Luxurious bedroom furnishings, the 
 carpeting throughout of spacious country residences, some- 
 times ordered if William honours one of his subjects in 
 midwinter, are items of expenditure of far greater magni- 
 tude, though scarcely the beginning of the end. 
 
 I do not agree with a certain Pomeranian squire who 
 complained that the Emperor's first visit cost him twenty 
 thousand marks more than Prince Pless paid for the 
 pleasure of harbouring the sovereign because he had to 
 build a carriage-road to the railway station, ten miles 
 off, that highway will endure and benefit coming genera- 
 tions when the Baron " and the proudest " (and costliest) 
 " moment of his life " are long forgotten ; but to force 
 one's entertainer to provide a four-in-hand one of the 
 implied conditions of every royal visit comes dangerously 
 near sowing the seeds of extravagance. 
 
 And those Potemkin villages ! That nothing may 
 grate upon the imperial feelings, the Herr Graf or Fuerst 
 compels his peasants to whitewash and paint farmhouse 
 and hovel for miles around and sometimes pays for the 
 beautifying out of his own pocket. Furthermore, he 
 must furnish greens and flags to decorate the streets, 
 engage numerous torch-bearers to light up the highway 
 on the eve of the arrival and during the nights of the 
 visit, and employ four hundred to five hundred beaters, 
 at the very least, a week or longer. For his Majesty is 
 not content to shoot the game on his friend's domain ; 
 his host, if he loves his peace, will hire all the hare, deer, 
 or roe for a dozen German miles in the neighbourhood 
 and let them be driven into his own preserves. Of course, 
 
190 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 the dislodged game does not remain voluntarily in its 
 new environment, and must be kept from running away 
 by continuous beating up ; sometimes, too, great numbers 
 are trapped in other parts of the province and carried 
 to and kept in thickets on the spot selected for the chase, 
 to be released when the great slaughter is at its height. 
 
 While outside preparations of this kind eat up tens 
 of thousands, those for the inner man are not less costly. 
 The Kaiser seldom brings fewer than twenty gentlemen, 
 and even more servants, all of whom must be lodged 
 and fed and horsed, and do not forget that a royal flunky 
 in a strange house pretends to be almost as much as his 
 master. Treated a la Kommiss, after the barrack regimen 
 at home, he impudently demands the best of everything 
 when stopping elsewhere, and generally succeeds in ob- 
 taining it. 
 
 That for the Emperor himself and his titled entourage 
 nothing is too good that money can procure, goes with- 
 out saying. The great caterers of Berlin and Paris send 
 their choicest wares beforehand, all the delicacies of the 
 season, and the next to follow ; under the load of mighty 
 barrels branded in many languages, groan the ancient 
 cellar-beds of oaken beams, and mysterious bottles with 
 dirty labels tell of old vintages and lynx-eyed connoisseurs, 
 while the family cook, who is good enough all the year 
 round, is dislodged to make room for experts in every 
 known branch of culinary art, " lent " by the great hotels 
 and world-famed restaurants of the capital. 
 
 And what says William to this splendid hospitality, this 
 lavish, almost reckless, expenditure for his benefit ? 
 
 If everything go off according to programme, if game 
 be plentiful, the weather fine, his bath and the cooking 
 better than at his own house, he will remark, on leaving : 
 " Be assured, gnddige Fmu" or (naming the host 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 191 
 
 without prefix of courtesy or title), " I have enjoyed 
 myself exceedingly ; and if one thing gave me more plea- 
 sure than the other, it was the fact that you made no 
 fuss, asked the Kaiser to take pot-luck with you, so to 
 speak. That is as it should be. Like Eberhardt im Barte, 
 I desire to be free to visit my people without causing 
 them the least trouble or expense." 
 
 But if weather or wind, the elements above or those 
 below (in the kitchen), go against the imperial grain, if 
 the populace's shouts of welcome do not seem hearty or 
 loud enough, or if one of the other guests exhibits greater 
 skill in bringing down game than the Emperor, William 
 simply orders his carriage, drives back to the house, and 
 goes to bed. That has happened in the course of years 
 once or twice at each of the baronial seats visited, 
 for, if one may say so without committing crimen ICBS& 
 Majestatis, there are still some things completely oblivious 
 to his Majesty's claims of omnipotence game and guns. 
 
 " Moderation, the virtue of which Princes stand in 
 such urgent need, is never found in passionate hunters, 
 who experience an irresistible impulse to pursue the game 
 and a cruel and bloody delight in killing." This passage 
 in her Majesty's copy of Frederick the Great's " Anti- 
 macchiavell," [ which the young Princes are allowed ^to 
 handle freely, is hidden, the margin of the page contain- 
 ing it being pasted to the next, as if by accident. 
 
 And not satisfied with indulging his passion in the 
 field, the Kaiser must needs surround himself at all times 
 with trophies of his skill as a death-giver ; the most 
 prominent object in his study is a long table, covered 
 with green cloth, containing the antlers of the roebucks 
 killed by him in the course of the year, while under the 
 
 1 Her Majesty's private library consists of the works of Frederick the Great, 
 those of Moltke, in German and English, a Bible, and a few pious books. 
 
192 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 table, and all around on the floor, are the bigger antlers 
 of slain deer. Ministers of State delivering reports upon 
 the reception of which hinges the fate of government 
 measures, of peace or war, or, perchance, the life of some 
 doomed man appealing to the King's grace, must be for 
 ever prepared to be interrupted by a " Look at this ten " 
 (or fourteen) " ' ender ' ' (meaning antlers with the given 
 number of branches) " the prime stag among a battalion 
 I mowed down at Rominton," 
 
 While the members of his Majesty's staff assert that 
 the monarch is never in better humour than after suc- 
 cessfully playing some trick upon a friend, it shall not be 
 denied that he is very agreeable company if he has half 
 a mind to be. He loves a merry jest at a stag party, 
 knows the art of making pleasant conversation, sings, 
 badly, it is true, but nevertheless entertainingly enough 
 among friends ; enjoys good music, and is a clever hand 
 at any game billiards, skat, poker, and what-not ? and, 
 better still, he never allows the stakes to go above a 
 pfennig (half a farthing) a point. If Diana has smiled 
 upon him, and the host showed a lucky hand in the selec- 
 tion of the menu, he usually orders his portfolio of photo- 
 graphs to be brought in after dinner, and, leaving 
 everybody a choice of pictures, inscribes his name, together 
 with the date, and often some cheerful words of remem- 
 brance, on a dozen or half a hundred pasteboards, as the 
 case might be. 
 
 Aside from his hunting companions, his Majesty has 
 few friends and no intimates. Though Herr von Helldorff, 
 Baron Manteuffel, and Count Douglas are sometimes so 
 designated, there is nothing in their relations to his Majesty 
 to justify the assumption. At the palace the triumvirate 
 is called " the Kaiser's most submissive political General 
 Staff," because William uses these gentlemen as cat's- 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 193 
 
 paws sometimes, as clubs on other occasions, when the 
 conservatives cannot be brought to book in any legiti- 
 mate way. They breakfast or dine at Court quite fre- 
 quently, and are favourably regarded by the Empress, 
 but on the whole their reception, while never lacking in 
 cordiality, is official in character. Conforming to Chester- 
 field's advice, these gentlemen " made themselves neces- 
 sary," but the Kaiser is not always eager to do business, 
 as the record of his occupations mentioned in another 
 chapter shows. Herr von Helldorff, besides, has some- 
 what lost caste since his Majesty adopted his vacillating 
 policy in respect to Bismarck. During the first three 
 months of the year 1890, while the old Chancellor was 
 kept away from Berlin through all sorts of machinations 
 that made it patent to everybody at Court that he was 
 about to be shelved (his son Herbert was the only one 
 who failed to understand thej situation), while these in- 
 trigues were being spun, Herr von Helldorff was a daily 
 visitor at the palace, and, to judge from remarks the 
 Empress let fall in our circle off and on, he played a 
 decisive part in the conspiracy that discrowned the great 
 man. Whether he informed the Emperor that Bismarck 
 had become addicted to morphia and was unable to think 
 connectedly, I cannot tell, but his Majesty mentioned 
 the rumour at luncheon one day after having been closeted 
 with both the agrarian chieftain and Dr. Hinzpeter the 
 whole morning. The Kaiser's old preceptor Hinzpeter, 
 by the way, was never so prominent at Court as when 
 Bismarck's star was on the wane. We saw him flit in 
 and out of the Kaiser's study at all times of the day 
 and in the evening, and quite often he installed himself 
 in his Majesty's apartments as early as eight o'clock in 
 the morning, even before William had breakfasted. But 
 this friendship was too thick to last, the more so as Dr. 
 
 N 
 
194 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Hinzpeter himself placed a stumbling-block in the way 
 of his ambition to live at Court by his marriage to Made- 
 moiselle d'Harcourt, ex-governess to the Emperor's sisters. 
 So Hinzpeter was packed off to Bielefeld, and the castle 
 and Neues Palais knew him no more. 
 
 Until the spring of 1892, Judicial Councillor Kunze 
 was another of the Kaiser's untitled friends, and he had, 
 perhaps, more influence over William than all the rest, 
 seeing that he aspired to become his Majesty's Hofjude> 
 or financial agent. Kunze manipulated the ruinous Schloss 
 Freiheit Lottery, mentioned in the eighth chapter, and 
 was at the bottom of the colossal building projects, having 
 a game of some sort in petto to meet each proposed extra- 
 vagance. However, as soon as these schemes threatened 
 to compromise the Kaiser, their plebeian advocate was 
 dropped as a " designing and even dangerous person," 
 and since then I have seen William pass his old-time 
 friend, who was half -doubled up by the most submissive 
 of bows, without taking the slightest notice of him. That 
 does not signify, however, that Kunze is lastingly dis- 
 graced. On the contrary, if the " difficulties of the ex- 
 chequer " continue, he is almost sure to be restored. 
 
 Among men of his own caste and age, William has 
 had but one intimate, the late Rudolph of Austria ; but 
 the pleasant relations between these young men, based 
 upon mutual likes and dislikes, came to an abrupt end 
 some four years previous to the Archduke's awful death, 
 discord arising in the summer of 1885 when Prince and 
 Princess William were spending several weeks at their 
 Imperial Highnesses' country-place near Vienna. From 
 this outing the Princess returned all of a sudden and 
 post-haste to Potsdam, while her husband went on an 
 impromptu tour of military inspections in the provinces. 
 
 And the reason ? 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 195 
 
 Princess Philip of Coburg, sister of the Archduchess 
 Stephanie, told me that William, returning in her brother- 
 in-law's company from a stag party late one evening, 
 proposed the game of changer les dames, which, her Royal 
 Highness insists, is " quite common " among German 
 officers. Rudolph is said to have been agreeable, but 
 when William entered the Crown Princess Stephanie's 
 room, her Imperial Highness made a tremendous uproar, 
 causing Auguste Victoria to awake, and " (I am still 
 quoting Princess Philip), " thus the pretty scheme was 
 spoiled." 
 
 Next morning the young wives got together ; but 
 as each charged the other's husband with instigating the 
 devilish plot, the happy family party was bound to break 
 up, and their Highnesses separated without saying good- 
 bye. Such, at least, was common report at the Court 
 of Empress Augusta in Coblentz, where I happened to 
 be at the time. 
 
 As for the rest, it will probably never be known which 
 of the royal gentlemen incited the other to the act ; 
 maybe both were drunk, and agreed upon the dictum 
 of Prussian army men : " Unter Kameraden isfs ganz 
 egal " (literally : " Among comrades it's the same thing ") 
 as a good joke. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 TREATMENT OF SERVANTS BY THEIR MAJESTIES IMPERIAL 
 HOUSEKEEPING 
 
 NOON at the Neues Palais. 
 
 Forty hungry women and girls, some old, many young 
 and comely, hanging about the back-stairs of what is 
 intended for the most magnificent royal Court of the day ! 
 Most of them are munching black bread, scantily spread 
 with lard, while from tin bottles they partake of long 
 draughts of cold chicory masquerading under the name 
 of coffee. One or two proudly exhibit a hunk of salt 
 pork, but many in the crowd depend entirely upon the 
 charity of their colleagues or the good nature of the 
 liveried servants, who receive either full board, or 
 eat at the canteen, established in connection with the 
 Marstall. And these women, wearing washed-out calico 
 dresses all the year round and a twenty-four by forty- 
 inch shawl barely covering their heads and breasts in 
 winter, are imperial and royal employees, as well as her 
 Majesty's natty maids and the porters and chasseurs in 
 gold and silver laden dress, the only difference being that 
 these maids and flunkies are engaged by the year, while 
 the women are employed by the month, i.e., during the 
 residence of the Court in Potsdam. 
 
 But what about the Biblical crumbs that fall from 
 the rich man's table ? There are none. The allowances 
 for the royal board are cut so fine as to just suffice for 
 their Majesties, the entourage, and the guests ; and when 
 
 the Kaiser invites extra company at the last moment, 
 
 196 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 197 
 
 the courses are hurried to cover up the shortening of 
 rations, and frequently some of the visitors are " skipped " 
 as if by accident. Of the royal guests, many leave the 
 flower-strewn table as hungry as the scrub-girls do their 
 nooks and corners after the noon recess. 
 
 The women hail from Potsdam or the surrounding 
 villages, and work in the castle from 6 A.M. to 6 or 8 
 P.M., many walking an hour or more to and from their 
 destination. They are employed in the apartments of 
 the adjutants, of the ladies and gentlemen of the Court, 
 in the servants' quarters, and in the kitchens, at cleaning 
 and scrubbing, wood and water carrying, &c., but our 
 two-hundred-room palace affords neither a place where 
 they may cook a scanty meal nor a room where they 
 can eat and rest. 
 
 " They get their wages what more do they want ? " 
 answer the House-marshals, when we ladies pity the un- 
 fortunates, and we have to subside for fear that those 
 we try to befriend may in consequence lose their liveli- 
 hood such as it is under the protecting wing of the 
 imperial eagle. 
 
 " They have their wages," two marks per day for 
 twelve or fourteen hours' work, and even in the coldest 
 winter the Court seldom removes to Berlin before 
 Christmas cannot get a cup of coffee or a plate of soup 
 from the crowned master, though it is self-evident that 
 none of the women have time to go home for dinner 
 during recess. 
 
 A person of my rank runs against this class of ser- 
 vants on rare occasions only ; but accident leads me into 
 the lower regions of the palace once in a while, and it 
 gives me a shock every time to see these pariahs of our 
 splendid Court fighting hunger and cold with food devoid 
 of warmth, behind doors and staircases where the wind 
 
ig8 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 whistles the international anthem of poverty. After 
 witnessing their distress and hearing their complaints 
 once, I never went into the souterrain without issuing an 
 order on the canteen for so and so many pea or lentil 
 soups. The gratitude of these women is heart-rending. 
 
 When it is remembered that " the difficulties of the 
 exchequer " occasionally interfere with the Kaiser's and 
 Kaiserin's predilection for cleanliness I recall the fact 
 that their Majesties are sometimes unable to obtain clean 
 sheets for their bed the statement that the royal ser- 
 vants, men and women, are kept exceedingly short in 
 respect to towels and bed-clothes will surprise no one. As 
 a matter of fact, the allowance for the first-named article 
 is two per week ; the bed-linen is changed every month. 
 And at the same time the liveried retainers are supposed 
 to be paragons of cleanliness ! 
 
 One evening, when we were talking in her Majesty's 
 dressing-room of the vagaries of Prince Frederick Leo- 
 pold, the Countess Bassewitz remarked that his Royal 
 Highness compelled his valets and the chasseur, who 
 serves him at table, to bathe two or three times a 
 day, morning, noon, and night ; that is, always before 
 they come into personal contact with him. 
 
 " That is extravagant," said her Majesty ; " but 
 persons of our rank cannot insist too strongly upon the 
 daily bath for their attendants." 
 
 " If there are enough bath-rooms ! " I could not resist 
 the temptation to throw out this hint. 
 
 " Well," said the Kaiserin, " I suppose there is a suffi- 
 cient number in our palaces, at least here and in the 
 Schloss." 
 
 " I beg your Majesty's pardon," I spoke up ; " here, 
 as well as in Berlin, we have but two bath-rooms for 
 servants one for the men, one for the women." 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 199 
 
 The Empress gave me a startled look. " Two bath- 
 rooms ? " she gasped. 
 
 " T-w-o," I repeated ; " and not only the people of 
 the body-service, but all the liveried and uniformed men 
 and women in the palace coachmen, fourriers, chasseurs, 
 and heads of the household departments are expected 
 to use them." 
 
 " Meine Liebe" said the Empress, in her haughtiest 
 tone, " you are evidently misinformed," and, rising from 
 the arm-chair, she shook off her dressing sacque with a 
 little shudder, as if to repel an unclean sensation. " I 
 do so hate to speak of matters of that kind," she added, 
 dismissing us with a curt bow. 
 
 What would her Majesty have thought if I had con- 
 tinued in my revelations, gathered at random during my 
 long connection with the household, for the scarcity of 
 bath-rooms is not the most disgraceful evidence of penury 
 at the Prussian Court, by far. The two eighteen by 
 thirty-six inch huckaback towels given out every Saturday 
 must suffice for the casual bath as well as for the every- 
 day ablutions. The servants' wash-bowls are little tin 
 affairs, holding less than three pints ; foot-tubs and 
 pitchers are tabooed, together with other conveniences. 
 But that is not all. The toilets for the servants are 
 located on the back-stair landings, which are lighted by 
 kerosene lamps day and night, and one closet must do 
 for every twenty-six persons. If the palace is ever visited 
 by an epidemic, the air will be laden with " I-told-you- 
 so's " in high and low quarters. 
 
 A command of the Emperor or the Empress alone 
 can change this disgraceful state of affairs. When a 
 courtier draws the attention of those in authority to the 
 matter, it is but to hear the old refrain : " No money." 
 " All the department treasuries are empty." What, 
 
200 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 then, becomes of the fifteen millions and a half which 
 the Kaiser reserves per annum for the maintenance of 
 himself and family ? So far as the money is not mort- 
 gaged beforehand or absorbed by the expenses for travelling, 
 entertaining, her Majesty's toilets, the building craze and 
 other crazes, the expenses of the Court or Courts swallow 
 them. The Berlin Schloss, you must know, is always 
 kept ready for immediate occupancy, all servants being 
 at their posts and all fires lit. " See the ogre that de- 
 voured twenty-five millions ! " were the damnatory words 
 hurled at Marie Antoinette and her fat husband as the 
 royal chariot rolled into Paris on October 6, 1789, " escorted 
 by hunger and rascality." 
 
 Twenty-five millions ! fuel for the revolution of the 
 end of the eighteenth century, but not a patch on the 
 expenses of the German Court of to-day ! Since William 
 II. came to the throne, the Prussian people have paid 
 one hundred and sixty millions of marks into the civil 
 list, and of these, one hundred millions were expended 
 to keep up the pageant of superficial splendour that goes 
 to make the Court. For one thing, the salary list is 
 enormous, not on account of many-naughted items as 
 much as because of its prodigious length. There are, 
 altogether, some fifteen hundred persons on it, fully two- 
 thirds of whom have to be clothed and fed, as well as 
 paid. The great officials are not provided with uniforms 
 or dress, it is true, but receive very considerable allow- 
 ances for that purpose, and also table-money, if for some 
 reason or other they are not invited to or stay away from 
 the meals. All the employees, moreover, are entitled to 
 mileage and board fees if taken on a junketing. 
 
 When I asked Madame von Larisch to increase the 
 scanty allowance of linen given to my servants, the house- 
 keeper answered : "I would like to, but cannot, as funds 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 201 
 
 for labour and material in the wash-kitchen just suffice 
 for a stipulated amount of laundry. Half-a-dozen extra 
 towels per week would upset calculations." 
 
 " But if I furnish the soap ? " 
 
 " Your Ladyship is very generous, but the employees 
 of the wash-kitchen have all the work they can do now, 
 and the Court-marshal's office says it is impossible to 
 increase the staff. Besides, we have not the material 
 in stock. When the household linen is given out on 
 Saturdays, the presses are as empty as the proverbial 
 nutshell." 
 
 The prevailing penury even reaches to the steps of 
 the throne. Can you imagine an Empress being in need 
 of a couple of toothbrush-holders ? Well, Auguste Victoria 
 wanted some for a week and longer, and could not get 
 them. It happened in December, 1894, and I refer to it, 
 not as something extraordinary, but merely to illustrate 
 a point. At the time mentioned her Majesty had seen 
 some fancy toothbrush-holders in the bedroom of her 
 sister, Louise Sophie, wife of Prince Frederick Leopold. 
 Her Majesty inquired where, they had been bought, and, 
 on coming home, ordered me to procure a couple. As 
 Herr Nolte was going to Berlin, I instructed him to bring 
 them along. Next morning, her Majesty asked why the 
 holders had not been procured. Herr Nolte was called in. 
 " I tried to get an order from Herr Baron von Mirbach," 
 reported the man, " but, there being no funds for such a 
 purpose, he sent me to Count Eulenburg. His Excellency, 
 despite my respectful protest, insisted that the matter must 
 go through the usual routine, and sent me away." 
 
 " Routine and what may that be ? " asked the Em- 
 press impatiently, after Herr Nolte had been dismissed. 
 
 "The Court-marshal's office," I made answer, "will 
 forward a letter to the store demanding an estimate of 
 
202 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 the article wanted. Then the royal porcelain manufac- 
 tory will be asked whether the price is fair or not, and, 
 that being settled, the various chiefs of departments will 
 be required to furnish the money, each, of course, trying 
 to ' unload ' upon the other. In this way from six to 
 ten days will be spent." 
 
 " But I will have the things to-day," said the Empress. 
 " Notify the fourrier to send for them." 
 
 I did so then and there, and repeated the order every 
 morning for an entire week, but only on the afternoon of 
 the tenth day after her Majesty's visit of discovery in 
 Glienecke were the holders produced. It had taken all 
 this time to scrape together twelve marks necessary to 
 procure the much-coveted articles, and her Majesty had 
 made twelve separate and distinct rows about the matter. 
 
 Scenes and annoyances like the above, growing out of 
 the chronic want of funds, are, however, not limited to 
 demands for extraordinary expenditure. We go through 
 the same farce every time a piece of china or glass in 
 one of the bedrooms is broken, for the Prussian Court 
 has no duplicates of such necessary articles as wash- 
 pitchers, bowls, pails, soap-dishes, or water-bottles. When 
 one of these things in the Kaiserin's chamber, for in- 
 stance, is smashed, Frau Schade must carry the pieces 
 to the Haushofmeister, who lays them before the House- 
 marshal, who lays them before the Court-marshal, who 
 lays them before the treasurer. 
 
 Then the treasurer authorises the making of an esti- 
 mate to replace the articles, the two marshals counter- 
 sign the document, and the Haushofmeister sends a waggon 
 into town to fetch it, or orders it sent from Berlin. Of 
 course, all this takes time ; often several days are spent 
 in winding and unwinding red tape, and in the interim 
 her Majesty has to get along as best she can without a 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 203 
 
 glass for her tooth-water sometimes, and on other occa- 
 sions without that piece of furniture which the Duchess 
 of Orleans described as essential to life's true comfort. 
 
 So much for our difficulties at home ; but poverty 
 stares the German Empress in the face even when she 
 travels with her immense suite of ladies and gentlemen 
 in waiting, marshals, equerries, masters of the hounds, 
 valets, chamberlains, treasurers, her overseers of the plate, 
 gun-chargers, mouth-cooks, and the cloud of footmen, 
 couriers, coachmen, and grooms. Ever since I can re- 
 member, the Kaiserin has never owned enough trunks 
 to carry, besides her toilets, the linen for the imperial 
 bed and bath rooms, 1 and that despite the fact that the 
 Court is almost continuously on the road. 
 
 Count Herbert Bismarck, returning from a trip to 
 England in 1892, set abroad a story that the Prince of 
 Wales kept away from Berlin because he could not get 
 any of his people to accompany him, which is, of course, 
 nonsense, and was probably never intended to be taken 
 seriously ; but it is a fact that during his Royal Highness's 
 last official visit to our Court, in March, 1889, his em- 
 ployees, from valet down to groom, were constantly brawl- 
 ing with Herr von Liebenau on account of what they 
 described as " starvation diet." When the typical German 
 breakfast, consisting of coffee, milk, two rolls, a diminu- 
 tive pat of butter, and two pieces of sugar, was sent in 
 to the valet, he demanded steak and eggs in addition, 
 and so did the footmen and grooms. These protests were 
 treated with silent contempt by Herr von Liebenau, but 
 when the noon meal called forth similar criticisms, he 
 threatened to inform his Royal Highness of the men's 
 " unruly behaviour." 
 
 1 Her Majesty always carries an entire outfit of household linen along with 
 her on her travels, unless she is visiting royalty. 
 
204 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 
 
 " By all means, do so," replied the Englishmen ; " that 
 is what we want. Our master will then engage board for 
 us at a hotel. That is the kind of gentleman he is." 
 
 And so the battle waged merrily on ; only one bottle 
 of beer was allowed to the foreigners, and they asked 
 permission to provide their own drinks ; they refused to 
 eat cold pork and potato-salad for supper, and when told 
 that it was her Majesty's favourite dish, their remarks 
 approached dangerously near to lese-majeste. Altogether 
 Albert Edward's men had a very hard time of it at the 
 Schloss, and Herr von Liebenau cursed them, in the 
 presence of her Majesty, " as the hungriest and most 
 impudent set of menials " he ever encountered. 
 
 " If they stay another week," he vowed, " my whole 
 force will be demoralised, and I should not know where 
 to obtain money enough to fill their ravenous paunches. 
 I beg your Majesty's pardon, but that is the only expres- 
 sion that fits the situation." 
 
 To conclude, confusion and red tape, extravagance and 
 penury, go hand in hand at the Prussian Court ; the pre- 
 ponderance of these incongruous qualities is felt in all 
 departments of the service. 
 
 The young Princes, whom the nation furnishes with a 
 lieutenant's salary beginning with their tenth birthday, 
 must disburse the wages of their body-servants out of 
 this meagre allowance ; but when, a short while ago, Herr 
 von Wedell protested against a million marks appropria- 
 tion for reconstruction experiments, such as above de- 
 scribed, the Kaiser silenced him with the words : "I 
 thought you liked to be Minister of the Royal House." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE ANONYMOUS LETTER SCANDAL THE VON KOTZE 
 AFFAIR 
 
 IN November, 1892, a succession of horrible anonymous 
 letters threw consternation into our Court circles. Almost 
 no one was spared. Every one, or nearly every one, 
 holding official or personal relations with their Majesties, 
 as well as the Emperor and Auguste Victoria herself, was 
 made the target of the vilest insinuations. To put 
 the dots on the i's, as the French say, I should 
 certainly have to borrow the phraseology of Dr. 
 von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia sexualis and some 
 of the vile language used in the prison-wards of 
 the Salpetriere. The writer seemed to have access 
 to a library containing minute descriptions of all the 
 viciousness enacted since the time when Jupiter loved 
 Ganymede, Queen Semiramis made love to a horse, and 
 Caesar " was regarded as the husband of all wives and 
 the wife of all husbands." And with this encyclopaedia 
 of wickedness at his elbow, he selected to-day one abomin- 
 able morsel, in a week's time another, ten days later a 
 third, shaped them into direct and distinct charges, and 
 launched them forth against this or that unhappy woman 
 in succession. 
 
 Four hundred of those anonymous communications had 
 been surrendered to the prosecution, headed by the late 
 Baron von Richthofen. That number probably comprised 
 the fifth part of the letters actually distributed. The 
 overwhelming majority of the recipients were ashamed 
 
 205 
 
206 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 to acknowledge the fact, as the correspondent was in the 
 habit of trotting out old and long-forgotten skeletons, 
 mauling over half-healed sores, and telling of nasty or 
 dishonourable actions, some of them true, others invented. 
 And who would blame a person, so vilely attacked, for 
 giving the poisonous rag to the flames without calling 
 a jury to sit on the contents ? No matter how far-fetched 
 a charge, and how conclusive its refutation, some little 
 thing the shadow of a doubt always cleaves to the 
 accused innocent. Besides, in matters where family 
 honour is concerned, loyalty, like charity, begins at home. 
 Once, when his Majesty was railing against a friend of 
 his sister Charlotte, who flatly refused to turn over to 
 Baron Richthofen an anonymous letter, I took the liberty 
 of pointing out this maxim to him. 
 
 " I know of one loyalty only that to the King of 
 Prussia," was William's stern rejoinder. 
 
 Magnificently said, your Majesty, but, seeing that the 
 King of Prussia, the present incumbent of the title at 
 least, thinks himself so far above criticism as to be alike 
 invulnerable to calumny and to just accusations, why 
 should his subjects risk their character to help him to 
 run down a traducer whose power for evil he denies ? 
 And again : the correspondence did not always concern 
 the person addressed, but frequently related to the passions, 
 the failings, or the misfortunes of others an intimate 
 or an enemy. " It would be a felony to turn this letter 
 over to the police, or even to disclose its contents to 
 yow," said my colleague, Countess Bassewitz, one morning 
 when I was in her apartment and the lackey, who had 
 gone to the porter for her mail, brought in one of the 
 abhorred communications. And her little Ladyship threw 
 the thing, scarcely read, into the fire. 
 
 I tried to stop her. " His Majesty, who is sure to 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 207 
 
 learn of the arrival of the missive, may ask you for it at 
 luncheon," I expostulated. 
 
 " He cannot, for he has just started on the way to 
 Liebenberg, and if he did, I would resist him, for the 
 letter contained the vilest charge that can be brought 
 against a married woman and her best friend's husband. 
 And all the parties, all four of them, I count among my 
 closest acquaintances ! " 
 
 The anonymous writer sometimes told truths with 
 terrible directness ; at other times he delivered himself 
 of a mixtum compositum of the Simon Pure and of fancies 
 that made it difficult to separate the grain from the chaff ; 
 occasionally he would sacrifice a pure girl to his ribald 
 appetite for mischief-making. Yet courtier after courtier 
 was deservedly dragged to the pillory. Indeed, Mon- 
 tesquieu's characterisation of society under Louis XIV. 
 and Louis XV. as " ambition allied to idleness, baseness 
 wedded to haughtiness ; as the incarnation of the desire 
 to become rich without work ; as lickspittleness ; as 
 hatred of truth ; traitorship and perfidiousness ; as 
 sophism, and contempt for public duties ; as fear of 
 virtuous princes, and as interest in the King's vices," 
 this terrible indictment fits our present conditions as 
 if it had been written yesterday, instead of a hundred 
 and fifty years ago. And how could it be otherwise ? 
 William's surpassing weaknesses limitless vanity, de- 
 spotic inclinations, and unrestrained egotism are echoes 
 of the " Vetat, c'est moi " and " apres nous le deluge " 
 theories of centuries ago albeit more authentic and 
 it is death for a courtier, or for a minister of state, not to 
 cater to these idiosyncrasies. Besides, the German noble 
 and idle classes are not one whit better, in point of 
 morality, than those of England, of France, or Russia. 
 In one respect they are worse, I think : they are, with- 
 
208 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 out exception, infinite tattlers. Though flattering myself 
 with the endowment of fair capacities of observation, 
 and though I keep my eyes open as I go along, Berlin 
 society women, I confess, have frequently astonished 
 me by information concerning my master and mistress 
 that I would never dream of noticing, though the affairs 
 mentioned happened under my very nose. And Kaiser 
 and Kaiserin are as bad as the rest. All memoirs of 
 royalty agree that august personages are impassioned 
 gatherers of small gossip ; the two Napoleons, the 
 Alexanders, the great Frederick, Joseph II. and Louis XV., 
 the Regents of France and of Great Britain, all had 
 their Poellnitzes and Fouches, but inherent craftiness, 
 at the same time, kept them from compromising their 
 own thoughts or the conclusions they drew from the in- 
 formation received. My mistress is perhaps too little 
 sophisticated to follow these examples ; besides, being 
 a lonely woman, she feels the necessity of an exchange 
 of thoughts. With the Emperor, it is impulsiveness 
 that gets the better of his dignity all the time. His 
 faculties of conception act like piston-rods driven by a 
 powerful engine in perpetual motion, as it were and 
 he can never resist the temptation to inform those around 
 him of the current of his ideas. When he decides to 
 change an old friend for a new, to dismiss one official or 
 advance another, he wants all the world to know it ; he 
 wants to strike terror to, or evoke surprise in, the hearts 
 of the whole people. 
 
 The campaign of defamation in question has been 
 laid at the doors of a duo, a male and female. Un- 
 doubtedly two persons of opposite sexes the female in 
 the lead, so far as actual work was concerned started 
 the crusade, and to that pair belongs the discredit of 
 having plunged a score of innocent people, among them 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 209 
 
 half -grown boys and girls, into wretchedness ; but they 
 did not remain alone in this business long. Their ex- 
 ample bred a host of imitators. At the New Year's re- 
 ception of 1894, one of the party conveying the Empress 
 Frederick's congratulations told me her Majesty had 
 said that one-half of the Court society was now writing 
 anonymous letters to the other half, and vice versa, and 
 for that reason she would never again live in Berlin for 
 any length of time. And that was not merely one of 
 her Majesty's pungent Briticisms that pass for mots in 
 Berlin, but the sober truth. Not only was the number 
 of missives sent out beyond the physical power of two 
 pairs of hands, even admitting that one of them wielded 
 a typewriter with all the paraphernalia of carbons and 
 stylus-pens, the range of topics touched upon was too 
 varied and comprehensive for any brace of scoundrels 
 to handle. Their Majesties' doings and the carryings- 
 on of the Hohenaus and Kotzes were of course public 
 property, so to speak, in our circle ; to comment on their 
 actions was easy enough ; but that the intimate affairs of 
 the von Miillers, the von Schultzes, and the von Meyers 1 
 were treated with equal alacrity proved that the passion 
 for epistolary blackguardism had become contagious, and 
 that the Emperor's mother was right, or pretty nearly 
 right. If the genius of Anarchy had started out to de- 
 stroy the nation's great by carrying discord and hatred 
 into their midst and by setting one powerful family 
 against the other, he could not have assailed the natural 
 opponents of lawlessness with greater prospect of certainty 
 and despatch. But while all suffered under the reign 
 of terror- the guillotining, the fusillading, and noyading 
 of reputations none underwent crueller torments at the 
 
 1 Names that in Germany are as common as Brown and Smith in English- 
 speaking countries. 
 
 O 
 
210 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 hands of the vilifier than Auguste Victoria and her cousin 
 morganatic. I must admit, though, that her Majesty's 
 chagrin at the initial letters was not of long duration. 
 Their form, of course, nauseated the woman, and their 
 text wounded the wife in her, but the baseness of the 
 undertaking itself did not seem to impress the sovereign 
 lady, and from the very beginning she was of opinion 
 that the perpetrator would, nay, must, escape. I often 
 had it on my tongue to inquire into the reason for this 
 assumption, but etiquette forbade. 
 
 In the beginning of 1894, when hundreds of pens were 
 busy composing scurrilous notes, my mistress received 
 several missives that completely unnerved her, although 
 their contents did not refer to escapades on the part of 
 the Emperor, but, on the other hand, were inventions 
 so stupid as to be almost pitiable. I dare hint at only 
 one of the lot a photograph representing a naked female 
 with her Majesty's face and features, and at her side 
 Court-chaplain Stoecker in puris naturalibus, save for 
 his well-known clerical bib. The letter that accompanied 
 this beastly cartoon purported to explain why Charles 
 the Ninth's soldiers called the biggest cannon the French 
 boasted of " La Reine Mere. 9 ' x 
 
 This reflection upon her platonic friendship for the 
 bigoted and ambitious parson threw my poor mistress 
 into a fever from which she recovered only after a week 
 or ten days, when the Kaiser's silence demonstrated that 
 he had not been treated to a facsimile of the cartoon. 
 As a matter of fact, though, the copy intended for 
 William had been intercepted by General von Scholl, 
 who, without telling what he knew, persuaded the Em- 
 press, in the course of time, to drop Stoecker and forego 
 
 1 The Queen-Mother referred to was Catherine de Medici, notorious for her 
 amorous adventures. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 211 
 
 all interference on his behalf. So the anonymous became 
 indirectly responsible for the complete annihilation of 
 the once puissant preacher. 
 
 But while the highest in the land were pestered, their 
 closest friends did not escape, particularly the women 
 who were just then fighting for supremacy in William's 
 affections. Indeed, the letter-writing fiend was respon- 
 sible for most of the occasional spats between Countess 
 Fritz and Madame von Kotze, for he kept each rival 
 posted on the other's triumphs or discomforts. To-day 
 Madame von Kotze was apprised that Fritz Hohenau 
 did not pay for all the diamonds his wife wore at the 
 Grand Cour, and to-morrow Charlotte had it, on the best 
 of authority, that William was more than Godfather to 
 her Excellency's infant. And the photographic assaults 
 these pretty ladies suffered ! Countess Fritz as Sporus * 
 beloved by Caesar was one of the milder cartoons. 
 
 The letters and pictures addressed to these parties 
 were turned over to Baron von Richthofen, and a royal 
 auditeur was especially charged with collecting evidence 
 in the matter, he, like the President of Police, being vested 
 with the power of inquirendo. Like the mouchard of the 
 French-detective story, this worthy was always " on the 
 trail " of the villain, but never approached near enough 
 to lay hands on him, at least not on the right party. 
 Lastly, the Kaiser engaged Herr von Tausch, his own 
 press-Cossack^ 1 to act as rechercheur under hLs personal 
 guidance, and to the discretion of this trio the members 
 of the royal family, the entourage, and everybody associated 
 with our Court and the highest ministerial circles were 
 delivered up, bound hand and foot, and gagged besides, 
 if you please. 
 
 1 Sporus was a Roman lad whom Nero metamorphosed (as far as possible) 
 into a woman and publicly married. 
 
 2 The German for press-agent. 
 
212 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 That one's letters were committed to the inquisitorial 
 board was really one of the minor hardships ; the oral 
 examinations were odious, though conducted in a digni- 
 fied manner, but not infrequently part of the evidence 
 became public property, viz. : when Herr von Tausch 
 thought it well to give information to the press, and such 
 bad faith was intolerable. It was this disloyal policy 
 a freak developed by William's Lombroso studies that 
 drove so many great families to withdraw from Court. 
 The princely houses of Stolberg and Carolath, the Duke 
 of Sagan, Herr von Tiele-Winckler, the Maltzans, Per- 
 ponchers, Harrachs and others had no ambition to see 
 their palaces fired so that William might boil a couple of 
 eggs in the ashes of their good name. 
 
 For the whole inquiry, strictly speaking, turned on 
 the everlasting theme of " insult to Majesty." 
 
 " Eine Rotte vaterlandsloser Gesellen " (a band of un- 
 patriotic scoundrels) his Majesty's favourite term for 
 characterising his enemies had dared to carry its in- 
 trigues to the steps of the throne (William would never 
 admit that they had invaded his very bedroom) ; ergo, all 
 society must rise to rid him of these nuisances. That the 
 paladins upon whom he called were quite busy defending 
 their own firesides, and were forced to leave their families 
 unprotected while they followed his invitation ; that, more- 
 over, by placing their correspondence at his disposal, they 
 jeopardised their wives' and daughters' fair names, their 
 own and their sons' honour what mattered that ? Some- 
 body had interfered with the master's pleasure ; it was in 
 the nature of things that everybody else should suffer. 
 Besides, there had arisen a contingency, the existence of 
 which was suspected by a few in the inner circle only : 
 the authorship of many letters, especially those sent out 
 the first twelvemonth, had been traced to a member of 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 213 
 
 the royal family. If one or more of his imitators were 
 brought to bay, the tracks of the original anonymous could 
 be covered up for good. 
 
 During all this time the intrigues between his Majesty's 
 favourites, females and males, and between the English 
 and anti-English factions at Court, continued, and 
 naturally, Countess Fritz and Madame von Kotze stood 
 in the first battle line. They fought separately and in- 
 dividually. It was a private feud, though, as the hus- 
 bands of both women were counted Anglomaniacs. As 
 for William, he was strictly impartial. Enjoying the good 
 things both Herr von Kotze and the younger Hohenau 
 provided for his delectation, he honoured both gentlemen 
 with his distinguished friendship, possibly giving to the 
 Kotze menage the benefit of his company more often than 
 to the other, for purely personal reasons. Kotze, you 
 must know, is the very type of a man after William's 
 heart. In his agile and pleasing presence he combines 
 von Hahnke's suppleness with von Plessen's devotion to 
 duty and von Scholl's bonhomie. There probably never 
 was an hour in his life, full of airy nothingnesses, when 
 he would not have risked his soul for the King. He gave 
 his services to the Court gratis, and spent hundreds of 
 thousands per annum to entertain his Majesty. In short, 
 he lived for the royal master only. I remember meeting 
 him Unter den Linden one fine morning, his cousin, Count 
 Haeseler, commander of the Fifteenth Army Corps, being 
 my escort. 
 
 " My dear Leberecht," cried the General, after the 
 usual greetings, " why, by all the saints, do you wear a 
 grass-green cravat ? " 
 
 ' You forget, cousin," replied Kotze, with an injured 
 look, " a green cravat is most appropriate to-day. His 
 Majesty went a-hunting this morning." 
 
214 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 And all of a sudden it was whispered that this humble 
 servant of the fetich royal he who would have worn 
 couleur de caca de Prince Royal with as much avidity 
 as couleur de chasse the amiable viveur, distinguished 
 comrade, officer of splendid record for integrity and loyalty, 
 it was rumoured that this man, noted for a certain 
 amount of horse-sense, but an ignoramus on all topics 
 unconnected with the humdrum existence of a man of 
 fashion, that Kotze, who was no more addicted to the 
 pen than to overalls, was the anonymous graphomaniac 
 for whom we had been searching so long. One fine morn- 
 ing the report was on everybody's lips, no one knew who 
 first uttered the calumny. 
 
 It was Hervey, author of " Memoirs of the Court of 
 George II.," who gave form to the truism : 
 
 " Slander, that worst of poisons, ever finds 
 An easy entrance to ignoble minds," 
 
 and he had been a politician and courtier long enough 
 to get to the root of Court intrigues. Exclamations such 
 as : " Pst ! Kotze will hear you," " I let it out to Lebe- 
 recht, it will be in the anonymous letters to-morrow," 
 became all at once as common at our Court as " your 
 Majesty," " your Excellency," or " gnddigeste Grafin." 
 Only in the presence of the Kaiser and Kaiserin were the 
 accusers silent, so far as my immediate observation went, 
 at least. Later on I learned that the " mobbing " of 
 Kotze started in William's most intimate circle, and, more- 
 over, that the lying stories affecting his integrity were 
 spread by some of the Kaiser's right-hand men in a 
 clandestine manner. Whether his Majesty sanctioned 
 this or not, personally he kept up a show of most gracious 
 affection for the persecuted, and whenever my mistress 
 hinted at the expediency of dispensing with Herr von 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 215 
 
 Kotze's services, he overruled her cavils by a flood of 
 praise for " loyal Leberecht." 
 
 " Why," he said on one of these occasions, " it would 
 be impossible to dismiss him now. I have just reinstated 
 him in the army. As you well know, I like to surround 
 myself with persons of military rank, and, to facilitate this 
 with respect to Leberecht, I made him Rittmeister z. D. 1 
 Besides, think of the scandal his fall would create. He is 
 brother-in-law, cousin, and uncle to half the nobles of the 
 realm, my Kammerherr and my friend." 
 
 And four Sundays later, when the whole Court was 
 assembled in the state apartments of the Schloss, await- 
 ing their Majesties, in whose suite we were to attend the 
 formal corner-stone-laying for the new cathedral, General 
 von Hahnke's adjutant appeared unexpectedly in our 
 midst, and walking up to Auguste Victoria's master of 
 ceremony, invited him to come outside. Taking the 
 captain's entrance for the signal of their Majesties' coming 
 (we had left them in Potsdam that morning), we ladies 
 advanced toward the great staircase, at the head of which 
 we saw Kotze in earnest conversation with the Chief of 
 the Military Cabinet. 
 
 " Are you not going ? " I whispered, in passing. 
 
 " No," he answered, with a strange tremor in his 
 voice ; " please make my excuses to Countess Brockdorff ; 
 I shall be detained." 
 
 Ten minutes later the news spread that, upon receiving 
 proof of Kotze's perfidy by means of a report delivered to 
 him while on the way to Berlin, the Kaiser had signed a 
 
 i Herr von Kotze left his regiment, the Guard Lancers, some ten years ago 
 with the character of chef (fEscqdron a. Z>., which means "retired." The term 
 z. D. (zur Disposition) infers that an officer is still connected with the army, 
 though not in actual service, being, as it were, at the disposition of his superiors, 
 who call upon him when occasion demands. The important point of this is that 
 an officer "z. D." is responsible to the military courts only, while the officer 
 " a. D." is subject to ordinary civil jurisdiction. 
 
2i6 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 warrant for his arrest in the Furstenzimmer of Potsdamer 
 Bahnhof, and had sent von Hahnke ahead to apprehend 
 the culprit so as to avoid meeting him at the festivities. 
 That these details were correct I learned in the course 
 of the evening from Baroness von Reischach, nee Princess 
 Ratibor, wife of Empress Frederick's Court-marshal. Her 
 Grace had it from her brother Franz, Major in the First 
 Guard Dragoons and one of Kotze's most outspoken 
 enemies. 
 
 Prince Franz, a middle-aged bachelor, had sprung into 
 sudden prominence of late he and his ablaiits, Herr 
 von Schrader, the Kaiser's master of ceremony. Baron 
 Schrader, it was soon learned, had denounced his col- 
 league to the investigating board, and finally had brought 
 formal charges against Kotze, submitting them to his 
 Majesty on the morning of the cathedral celebration. 
 General opinion at Court and in society was, of course, 
 against the accused man. I say " of course," for distrust 
 is a plant of rapid growth in an atmosphere where the 
 praise of the lord's doings is one's best recommendation. 
 
 Her Majesty professed to be entirely unnerved by the 
 shock ; " she would never get over having associated so 
 long with vile traitors ; " she had had " her misgivings," 
 though. The Kaiser, on his part, struck heroic attitudes. 
 He had " saved society," " thanks to his initiative, the 
 homes of the nation's nobles were once more secure ; " 
 and the members of the royal family and the aristocracy 
 hailed the lord-protector 1 On Sunday and Monday, nota 
 bene ! 
 
 There was also some sentimental by -play Madame 
 von Kotze on her knees before William in the billiard- 
 room of the Neues Palais, while her Majesty and the 
 children were playing at hide-and-seek in the garden out- 
 side. Auguste Victoria had an excellent view of the 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 217 
 
 proceedings : a beautiful but wretched woman imploring 
 her powerful friend's mercy for her husband about to be 
 sacrificed that another might go free ! William proud 
 and adamant, as if he had never leaned upon the beautiful 
 arm raised to him in anguish ! 
 
 "It is of no use, gnadige Frau. Justice must be ad- 
 ministered. He shall be treated like any common criminal." 
 
 Then a shriek, a fall, and the children cried as if with 
 one voice : " What is papa doing to Auntie Kotz-e ? " 
 
 " You have no Aunt Kotze," said. the imperial mother 
 cruelly, and motioning to the servant, standing at a re- 
 spectful distance, gave orders that madame's carriage be 
 brought round into the Sandhof, the other side of the 
 palace, from where the lady should depart. At the same 
 moment, Adele von Haake emerged from the door-windows 
 of the billiard-room, announcing that the Ceremonien- 
 meisterin had rallied and begged to be received by her 
 Majesty. 
 
 " Her Ladyship must apply in writing to my grand- 
 mistress tell her that I " And the Empress ran off, 
 followed by the puzzled youngsters. 
 
 But while the unhappy wife and favourite drove home 
 toward Berlin (she had not the courage to take the train 
 for fear of being recognised), her avenger stalked into 
 the palace-yard in the shape of a letter-carrier, bringing 
 missives in the dreaded imitated print for both Kaiser 
 and Kaiserin and many dignitaries. "Anonymus redivivus " 
 paid his compliments to their Majesties and their Excel- 
 lencies, and called them names for being so stupid as to 
 incarcerate such an innocent, a man whom only petty 
 spite or gross incompetency could connect with a crime 
 that called for much ready wit and a dare-devil spirit 
 excusable only "in the highest spheres, if not the all- 
 highest." 
 
218 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 " Take my word for it," concluded each epistle, " before 
 three weeks have passed, ' Loloki ' will be obliged to open 
 Kotze's prison doors and beg him, by all that is sacred to 
 the royalist, to hold his tongue." 
 
 If the anonymous correspondent, by the letters mailed 
 twenty-four hours after the Ceremonienmeistefs arrest, had 
 hoped to benefit poor Kotze, this calculation went wide 
 of the mark, the Kaiser ridiculing what he called " an 
 attempt at impudent bamboozling." 
 
 " Pshaw," cried this doughty student of criminology, 
 at dinner, " what a threadbare trick ! The last of my 
 ' Schutzmanner ' could have foretold that the guilty one 
 would endeavour to mislead the prosecution by some such 
 means, for, of course, he has an accomplice." 
 
 Quick as a dart, Auguste Victoria took up the thread. 
 " That horrible woman ! and she asked me for an audience 
 only this morning." 
 
 " I did not say that I suspected Madame von Kotze," 
 shouted the Emperor across the table ; and I thought 
 better of him for this flash of magnanimity, though his 
 discourteous manner was painful to behold. 
 
 In the evening we were treated to an exposition of 
 the " evidence." The late Herr von Schrader reviewed 
 a dozen or more instances where the anonymous letters 
 had referred to affairs known only to Herr von Kotze 
 and one other party, either one of their Majesties or some 
 high functionary. 
 
 " If that be the case," whispered the Princess of Mein- 
 ingen, with whom I was sitting, "why does not William 
 arrest himself or my sweet sister-in-law ? " and, address- 
 ing the Kaiser, she said : " If knowledge of a certain fact 
 be an element of incrimination, why are not all who were 
 in possession of it prosecuted ? If Herr von So-and-So 
 spoke to Leberecht about a matter which, some time 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 219 
 
 afterward, was used by the anonymous, why must Kotze 
 be the guilty one and not the other ? " 
 
 " Because," answered William sarcastically, " your 
 So-and-So left no traces of his felonious doings behind, 
 while Herr von Kotze did." And his Majesty, assisted 
 by an adjutant, produced two blotting-papers which, he 
 said, were found on a desk in the Adelines Casino imme- 
 diately after Kotze had vacated the seat in front of it. 
 " Look at these marks," cried William, in a voice pregnant 
 with turgid solemnity ; " the impression of the word 
 * Loloki ' in imitated Latin print, the brand we all know 
 to our sorrow. What does your Royal Highness say 
 now ? " he concluded, bowing to his sister. 
 
 " That the news is important, if true," answered Prin- 
 cess Charlotte flippantly, but she added, as if suddenly 
 aware that she had gone too far : "I mean, if it can be 
 proved that Kotze used the blotters." 
 
 " He was not only the last, but the only gentleman 
 to sit at the desk on the morning the discovery was 
 made ; besides, more blotters, similarly inscribed, were 
 found in Kotze's private office in the Schloss." His 
 Majesty's face beamed with self-complacency while he 
 made this statement. He acted, every inch, the famous 
 barrister summing up an important case. 
 
 On the half-dozen pieces of blotting-paper and the 
 hearsay evidence alluded to, the prosecution rested its 
 case before the court-martial which presently assembled 
 to try Kotze ; but even this scanty bit of incriminating 
 material was quickly reduced by one-half, the most im- 
 portant half too : the government's expert in handwriting 
 declared that the supposed impressions were made on 
 the blotters with pen and ink, the letters being placed 
 upside down, presumably in order to mislead. This would 
 have been accepted as prima-facie evidence of a conspiracy 
 
220 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 to ruin the defendant by manufactured evidence in any 
 court of law, but the court-martial thought otherwise. 
 It decided to ignore the blotters, and found Kotze guilty 
 on the hearsay evidence alone. 
 
 It all happened on July 5. No sooner had the royal 
 quick-change artist heard of the probable disposition by 
 the military court, than he decided that the Prussian 
 eagle must soar above the biased judgment of those uni- 
 formed toadies. Hence the impromptu decree of release, 
 the royal livery a triumphal chariot in this case and 
 the order to his most exalted civil representative to fetch 
 Kotze from gaol. The royal house had sinned against 
 him the Minister of the royal house must convey the 
 sovereign's regrets. 
 
 That the Kaiser would not sanction the court-martial's 
 findings, so evidently the outcome of parasitism, became 
 known at the palace the same evening. He had dropped 
 Lombroso and suddenly began to talk of the King's " most 
 sacred prerogative," that of administering justice without 
 need of professional jurists and judges. " Peter the 
 Great left only one advocate at home when he came to 
 visit my ancestor," he declaimed, " and this one he pro- 
 mised to hang upon his return after witnessing Frederick 
 William's absolute methods. One cannot do this nowa- 
 days, but I mean to exercise the precious right of revers- 
 ing unjust sentences whenever interference is thrust upon 
 me." One of the Kaiser's adjutants characterised this 
 speech " as a continuation of one delivered to her Majesty. 
 The Kaiserin," he said, " came into the study this morning 
 to offer some slight objection to the special honours designed 
 for Kotze, but his Majesty cut her short by a rhapsody on 
 the blind goddess. His present declaration is for the benefit 
 of the Schrader-Hohenau-Ratibor coterie. The Kaiser will 
 have no more of their accusations and inventions." 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 221 
 
 Indeed not ; and notice was served to outsiders as 
 well. The Reichsanzeiger published a decree, forthwith 
 ordering a new trial by another branch of the army, " the 
 Third Corps." The disowned Guards had to declare 
 Kotze's honour intact, while at the same time the Hano- 
 verian Lancers, to which regiment Baron Schrader be- 
 longed, censured the latter for accusing a brother officer. 
 Now followed a series of duels, in which Herr von Kotze 
 alternately maimed his traducers and was maimed him- 
 self, culminating in the famous Schrader-Kotze combat 
 that left his Majesty's informant on the field, a dead 
 man. 
 
 During all that time, and up to this very day, the 
 Kotzes did not come to Court, though formally invited 
 as of old : Madame von Kotze could never get over that 
 brutal scene in the billiard-room " never, jamais, and 
 if I live a hundred years." And William's little attentions 
 the sending of Easter eggs, of bottles of Steinberger 
 Cabinet, of photographs, all duly advertised in the news- 
 papers worked no change in this attitude of proud un- 
 approachableness. " She demands not only public avowal 
 of her husband's innocence on your part, but that the 
 real culprit's name be divulged, as that seems to be 
 the only way of punishing him ! " 
 
 Rejecting even the possibility of Countess Brock- 
 dorff's participation in the intrigue, suspicion points 
 directly to Duke Giinther as the anonymous. He was 
 imperial Auguste Victoria's only confident, kept her posted 
 about all the Kaiser's carryings-on, and on his part ex- 
 amined into the minutest details of the royal couple's 
 lives in order to trim his sails according to the wind. 
 
 There are hundreds eating the Kaiser's bread, or 
 visiting the palace, who, in their heart of hearts, hold 
 my mistress equally guilty with her brother the late Herr 
 
222 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 von Richthofen was one of them but it gives me pleasure 
 to report that, sifting and resifting the evidence, I failed 
 to discover a single compromising circumstance substan- 
 tiating that charge. Neither was Auguste Victoria an 
 accessory before the fact, as is frequently hinted at in 
 Court society, though her share in the intrigue was both 
 active and passive : her complaints of William's infidelities 
 gave the first impetus to the persecution of Countess 
 Fritz, Madame von Kotze, and others, and her tattling 
 habits furnished, innocently enough perhaps, ammunition 
 for most of the pestiferous bombs. 
 
 That the Kaiser can keep nothing to himself has been 
 already stated, also that he is in the habit of speaking 
 ill of women, and that his adjutants and friends keep him 
 posted in all matters of gossip, the freshest in the market. 
 William, then, supplied Auguste Victoria with all the 
 scandals going, adding his personal observations and an 
 outline of his intentions and decisions ; the Kaiserin 
 furnished the news to Giinther, and Giinther, not to be 
 outdone, related to his sister the small talk about William 
 and his favourites. The ducal store-house of both 
 Majesties' secrets finally utilised them for his own pur- 
 pose : to annoy his sister's rivals and to play tricks on his 
 Majesty. And if there was a surplus, he disposed of it 
 where it would do the most harm : among the intriguers 
 so plentiful in the idle classes. 
 
 The first batch of anonymous letters was intended 
 by his Highness as a sort of ante-carnival joke after a 
 famous revel in Castle Grunewald, but, seeing he hit the 
 bull's-eye, he fired another, a third, a fourth, ten, twenty, 
 a hundred shots in quick succession, all the time persuad- 
 ing himself that he was working in the interest of his 
 much-abused sister. Then imitators arose, first a few, 
 later on a host of them, until, in the end, " one-half of 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 223 
 
 Berlin society was writing scurrilous notes to the other." 
 Ultimately the Duke had to take " leg-bail," and Countess 
 Fritz and Madame von Kotze enjoyed a brief spell of 
 freedom from what seemed to be a perennial annoyance, 
 though there were plenty of good friends left to give them 
 an occasional dig. When his Highness had run to the 
 end of his Cook's ticket, the old game started anew, the 
 letter alleging that Countess Hohenau had interrogated 
 the Kaiser's children about happenings in the imperial 
 bed-chamber having set the ball rolling. 
 
 I confess that it took me quite a long while to get to 
 the bottom of the intrigue ; that some such solution 
 would be forthcoming I had suspected from the beginning, 
 and even if I had been royalty's most trusting toady, 
 the evidence accumulating before my eyes on the one 
 hand, and various hints of my friend, the Princess of 
 Meiningen, on the other, would have disillusioned me. 
 
 But when proofs of Giinther's implication were so 
 abundant, could the Emperor possibly remain non-cog- 
 nisant of the facts ? No, indeed ! but as there were 
 other guilty ones besides Giinther, and as numbers meant 
 safety in this case, William clutched most readily at the 
 seam-rent evidence presented against the Ceremonien- 
 meister. " What you say looks very probable," he told 
 Baron Schrader, according to Princess Charlotte's story ; 
 " continue in your watchfulness and collect all additional 
 proofs obtainable. As soon as anything in the line of 
 direct evidence presents itself, we will seize the scoundrel." 
 
 Those bound upon poor Kotze's destruction then 
 went to manufacture proofs in the shape of the " Loloki " 
 blotters, and the Emperor, magnanimous being, gave 
 Kotze back his uniform. " If Leberecht is the author 
 of some of the anonymous letters," he calculated, " the 
 star-chamber is the place to discuss his crime, and, if 
 
224 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 need be, that of his partner or partners. No matter 
 whom he may incriminate before the court-martial, no 
 one outside the officers acting as judges will be the wiser." 
 
 At his trial, loyal Leberecht did not breathe a word 
 of what he knew against Giinther, denying, moreover, 
 when directly questioned, that he had ever suspected 
 the royal black sheep. 
 
 And now our modern Vicar of Bray turned " Papist 
 Jesuit ! " Changed conditions called for a reiteration 
 of the old faith : Kotze had been grievously wronged ; 
 his Majesty had never thought him guilty ; his accusers 
 had been misled or, worse still, misleading. Down with 
 them, and shame on the biased judges ! 
 
 But, at the same time, his Majesty would not let the 
 real culprit escape. Madame la Marquise de Villemonble, 
 who claimed to be a great-granddaughter of some Due 
 d' Orleans and a Mademoiselle Florence, had been Duke 
 Gunther's amanuensis, putting the pepper and salt, the 
 mustard and cress, into the letters. She was forthwith 
 conducted to the frontier by two trusted members of the 
 political police and warned never to show her face again 
 in Berlin. This piquant little woman had been devoted 
 to the Duke for two years, and had often helped to enter- 
 tain his Majesty ; but now all her protests went for naught, 
 As to his Highness, he was given to understand that he 
 would not be tolerated in Berlin or Potsdam for more than 
 a week at a time. The Emperor would not allow him to 
 open a new establishment in the capital or neighbourhood, 
 and threatened to turn him adrift if he disobeyed. 
 
 The mystery as to who accused Giinther in letters 
 addressed to Countess Hohenau and the police has re- 
 mained as unfathomable as that respecting the identity 
 of the falsifiers of the " Loloki " blotters. The Hohen- 
 ollerns have always been mischief-makers, privately as 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 225 
 
 well as politically, and that trick of the anonymous to 
 affix the heads of persons to be lampooned to lay-figures 
 in disgusting attitudes is but an old idea borrowed from 
 the Sans Souci archives, which report that Frederick the 
 Great ordered scenes painted from the lascivious volume 
 Therese Philosophe, 1 the dramatis persona to be likenesses 
 of his friend d'Argens and the latter's wife, the former 
 dancer Cochois. To both these persons the caricatures 
 imputed the most loathsome, unnatural crimes. These 
 pictures were smuggled into d'Argens's bedroom and 
 hung upon the walls during the couple's absence. The 
 same evening, when the unsuspecting philosopher and 
 his innocent better-half were preparing to retire by the 
 light of a wee taper, the King and his friends suddenly 
 rushed in upon them, each armed with a candelabrum, 
 thereby lighting up the room to perfection and disclosing 
 its strange decorations, which Frederick insisted had been 
 in the place ever since d'Argens's wedding night, and, 
 indeed, formed part and parcel of his conjugal outfit. 
 
 As to the Prussian police, anonymous letter-writing 
 and letter-stealing have figured largely in its history. 
 Under Frederick William IV., it was a toss-up whether 
 the President of Police, von Hinckeldey, or the Prime 
 Minister, Baron Manteuffel, was the most expert mail-bag 
 rifler and slanderer by means of clandestine correspond- 
 ence. These two worthies even went so far as to employ 
 mouchards to steal letters from the King's desk and 
 pockets. One of the documents so secured was a letter 
 from Czar Nicholas, written in August, 1855, in which he 
 said that he would be able to hold Sebastopol if the 
 besiegers were not too hard on Fort Malakoff, the city's 
 only weak point. 
 
 1 The authorship of this vile book has been imputed alternately to the King 
 and to Voltaire. 
 
 F 
 
226 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 
 
 A Prussian policeman sold this invaluable information 
 to one of Napoleon's agents within three days of the 
 receipt of the letter, whereupon the French, on September 8, 
 assailed Malakoff, stormed it, and put an end to the war 
 of the Crimea. 
 
 This excursion into history, though seemingly far- 
 fetched, must not be underestimated, for, now that the 
 originator of the anonymous letter scandal and his acces- 
 sories have either been silenced, neutralised, or dispersed, 
 the historic facts related offer the only lucid explanation 
 for the continuance of the nuisance. The poisonous rags 
 ceased coming for a short span of time toward the end of 
 1894, but the Kaiser's intended holiday present to Uncle 
 Chlodwig from the " Disposition Fund " roused the anony- 
 mous to renewed activity during the Christmas season of 
 that year, and he has kept it up ever since. To mention 
 a recent date, it was that same scribbling fiend who 
 forced Ambassador Herbette to retire from Berlin in 1896 
 by reports of alleged intimate relations between William 
 and Madame 1'Ambassadrice. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE EMPEROR'S RELATIONS WITH HIS MINISTERS HIS EGO- 
 MANIA PARALLEL BETWEEN WILLIAM II. AND LUDWIG 
 II. OF BAVARIA 
 
 WILLIAM II. 's relations with his Ministers form a curious 
 chapter in imperial psychology. The majority have quitted 
 office after a row, like wronged menials in a badly 
 managed household. Indeed, the Kaiser looks upon them 
 as servants, and not only through his divine-right spectacles. 
 From Chancellor to the last of the Secretaries, he treats 
 them as Handlanger. 1 
 
 Almost every day, when the Kaiser is at home, we 
 hear this sort of dialogue at table : 
 
 Her Majesty to the Emperor : * You are going to 
 Berlin " (or Potsdam) " to-morrow ? " 
 
 His Majesty : " Exactly so." (Ironically) " You saw 
 that in the calendar ? " 
 
 The Empress : " Yes, but I thought Uncle Chlodwig " 
 (or Herr Miquel) " was coming with his report." 
 
 Kaiser : "I ordered him to meet me at Wildpark " 
 (or some Berlin station) " at 7 A.M., so that he may read 
 his paper to me on the train." 
 
 And Prince Hohenlohe is seventy-eight years old, while 
 none of his colleagues are below threescore. What limit- 
 less egotism, what contempt for the feelings of others, 
 such an order involves ! In December, 1895, the Kaiser 
 invited the Chancellor to come to Potsdam at an un- 
 
 1 " Unskilled help." In 1897 William designated Bismarck as having been 
 
 his grandfather's Handlanger. 
 
 227 
 
228 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 earthly hour to attend him on a trip to Spandau, where 
 he proposed to exercise some regiments on snow-shoes. 
 While breakfasting in his train, his Majesty would be 
 pleased to listen to an epitome of the leading questions 
 of the day delivered by his venerable relative, who is old 
 enough to be his grandfather. 
 
 " Madame la Princesse is awaiting your Majesty in the 
 saloon-car," reported Count Piickler, at that time imperial 
 travelling-marshal, at the entrance of the station. 
 
 " Princess Hohenlohe ? " said the Kaiser, hastening his 
 step. " Can my Chancellor be ill ? That would be very 
 awkward just now." He repeated the first part of the 
 question when he shook her Grace's hand half a minute 
 later. 
 
 " 111 ? No, thank God, he is asleep," replied Princess 
 Marie, who had just returned from one of her Russian 
 bear-stalking expeditions. This resolute lady (since dead) 
 was then sixty-six years of age. 
 
 " Asleep when his Emperor had commanded him to be 
 by his side ? " 
 
 " Tut, tut, Monsieur le neveu / " Her Grace no longer 
 smiled. " You have not forgotten the conditions under 
 which the Prince lent his services, I hope ? The first of 
 them is that his rank and age be respected. The telegram 
 calling him a man of seventy-five to Potsdam at 7 A.M. 
 in midwinter appeared so little in consonance with the 
 agreement that I thought it bungled in transmission. His 
 Majesty merely meant to ask Chlodwig to have the paper 
 in Potsdam early in the morning, I surmised, and so I 
 brought it to you. It is all right, is it not ? " 
 
 What could the Kaiser do but put on a good face ? 
 *' I am sure my gracious aunt always is," replied he, 
 " though these proceedings are unusual, of course, and 
 discipline you know " 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 229 
 
 " You are joking, William. Such considerations held 
 good with Herr von Capri vi. They are odious among 
 equals. Now will you relieve me of this document ? " 
 
 " I am a thousand times obliged, ma tantc " (the Kaiser 
 raised his voice for the benefit, of his adjutants, who had 
 remained at the door), " and " (speaking still louder) " I 
 am sorry to hear that Uncle Chlodwig is not well. Moltke 
 will attend you to the palace, and I hope to find you 
 there at dinner. Au revoir we have kept the train wait- 
 ing long enough. Dona will be charmed to see you." 
 
 The Empress was indeed glad, especially when she 
 learned that the meeting with " Willie " had passed off 
 so well. I have the minutes of the conversation from 
 her Majesty, on whom, by the way, the sarcasm of her 
 Grace as well as the forced courtesy that characterised 
 the Emperor's remarks were lost. 
 
 The Hohenlohes can do these things, of course, but a 
 Miquel, a Schoenstedt, a Thielmann, a Hammerstein, and 
 the rest, have to obey the most outrageous demands unless 
 prepared to be bounced like drunken valets. In winter 
 the gentlemen must be at his Majesty's disposal from 
 7 A.M. till 12 midnight : in summer he often invites them 
 to report as early as half-past five or six o'clock. If the 
 command appoints the time of the third cock's crow, 
 the poor Excellency has to get up between four and five 
 in the morning, as he must be in grand costume, gold- 
 embroidered coat, hung with orders and decorations, silk 
 stockings, pumps, knickerbockers and sword, for it takes 
 a good hour to get to Wildpark station. 
 
 This is not a daily exercise, of course, for his Majesty 
 likes his sleep as well as any other man ; he keeps such 
 early hours only after returning from long journeys, or 
 when pleasure and military exercises make excessive de- 
 mands upon his time ; but even as an exceptional occur- 
 
230 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 rence it is pretty hard on old gentlemen, used to regular 
 hours and overburdened with business. 
 
 But if not wanted at 6 or 7 A.M., the Crown's foremost 
 councillors are liable to be dragged from their work, their 
 family circle, or their siesta at any other time of the day 
 or evening ; they can never call a single hour their own, 
 seeing that William, who regards reports on matters of 
 the highest political significance as mere entremets, to 
 be hastily swallowed between courses of pleasure, or in 
 the intervals of a tattoo, sends for his dignitaries wherever 
 and whenever he finds himself at leisure or in need of 
 some new excitement. The Chief of the Civil Cabinet, 
 Herr von Lucanus, has told me that fully one-half of all 
 ministerial reports are delivered on railway trains, or in 
 the waiting-rooms of stations. " Part of the other half," 
 he said, " is heard by his Majesty in his carriage ; after 
 others he goes himself, making impromptu calls now at 
 the War office, again at the Chancellery, or at the Ministry 
 of the Interior." 
 
 Herr von Hahnke has regular days for reporting, and 
 as he is right-hand man in all military matters, the 
 Kaiser himself regards the old General's lectures as quasi 
 essential, but that notwithstanding, his Excellency has 
 to fight for every thirty minutes of discourse with his 
 Majesty, just as if he laid claim to time not previously 
 spoken for. If the Kaiser is travelling and Hahnke is 
 in attendance, the latter delivers his reports at any oppor- 
 tune hour ; while William is in his tub, before he gets 
 up in the morning, or after he has retired. If for some 
 reason or other Hahnke is not of the party, he must 
 communicate with the adjutant du jour day by day as to 
 the proper time to run up to Hubertusstock, Rominton, 
 Kiel, or other places to perform his duty. 
 
 Those are trying days for Prussian and German Secre- 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 231 
 
 taries of State, when, as Leberecht Kotze remarked, " it 
 is most appropriate to wear a grass-green cravat." The 
 palace cronies say : "A minister who likes his job will 
 keep an ear to the telephone, one eye upon the clock, 
 and another upon the time-table," when his Majesty hunts 
 in the immediate neighbourhood of the Neues Palais, for, 
 if the weather turns out unexpectedly cold, or if his 
 Majesty has the earache, as is frequently the case in 
 winter, he will abandon the chase, and, nothing else being 
 on hand, devote the time to work. Over the wires fly 
 the words : " His Majesty commands Herr Miquel " (Herr 
 von Miquel now), " Graf von Posadowsky," " the Minister 
 of Agriculture," or " of Railways," to be at the Neues 
 Palais at a given hour. Or a ring at the 'phone, and the 
 momentous " Ich befehle " (the courteous phrase with which 
 William opens every conversation over the wire) throws 
 the state offices on Wilhelm Strasse and Unter den Linden 
 into momentary confusion. 
 
 And when their Excellencies, often four or five of 
 them, and the secretaries bearing the portfolios, arrive 
 at Wildpark, the royal coachman frequently reports that 
 his Majesty has meanwhile changed his mind a second 
 time and has taken to the field, expecting to return in 
 two or four or maybe six or eight hours. So the busy 
 gentlemen trot home again, sometimes to be recalled from 
 Berlin shortly afterward. In the winter of 1896 this 
 happened twice to Herr von Miquel, busiest of mortals. 
 But, though mighty uncomfortable, it is not the most 
 dreaded experience yet ; the worst infliction is an invita- 
 tion to accompany his Majesty from the theatre, or some 
 banquet, after ten or eleven o'clock at night, and deliver 
 a lecture on the train while he softly snores approval. 
 
 On such occasions the Emperor usually wakes up as 
 the train comes to a standstill, and, rubbing his eyes, 
 
232 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 says : "I am entirely satisfied with your proposition, go 
 ahead and press the matter according to the suggestions 
 made ; " or, when rising in bad humour : " Leave your 
 report with my adjutant. He shall go over it and submit 
 its salient points anew. Decision will be rendered when I 
 come back from . Good-night." 
 
 Then he steps glibly into his carriage, and the Minister 
 may retire to the waiting-room to sit down for two or 
 three hours till the night express takes him home. 
 
 Occasionally, too, the Kaiser invites himself to supper 
 at one of his Minister's, giving the victim half an hour's 
 time to prepare for his reception, and informing him that 
 he has " commanded " so and so many other gentlemen 
 to be present. One of these invitations I especially re- 
 member. It took place on January 23, 1892, while we 
 were all busy preparing for the reception of their Majesties 
 of Wiirtemberg, set for the next day. On that evening, 
 Countess Keller and myself attended our mistress in the 
 great dressing-room at the Berlin Schloss, trying on a 
 new gown for the projected banquet, and I was about 
 to withdraw when the Kaiser came in to say that he 
 would not be home for supper. " I have commanded 
 Miquel," (Dr.) "Bender," (Baron) " Manteuffel," (von) 
 " Helldorf, and " (Graf) " Douglas to meet me at " (Graf) 
 " Zedlitz's in about thirty minutes," he said. " I want 
 to give them my views on the opposition to the Volksschul- 
 gesetz and hear what they have to say. At the same 
 time I will order Miquel to promise me to remain in 
 office. His offer of resignation I have declined, at all 
 events." 
 
 " Indeed," sighed the Empress. Her Majesty hated 
 Miquel as the most formidable foe of the pious measure 
 among office-holders. 
 
 When, fifteen minutes later, I drove down the Linden, 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 233 
 
 I found that grand thoroughfare alive with people. The 
 chasseurs and grooms, riding in all directions to drum 
 together his Majesty's evening party from palaces, hotels, 
 and apartment-houses, had alarmed the town in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Schloss, and as my coupe stopped at the 
 Bristol, 1 the mob, recognising the royal livery, burst into 
 cheers, which, however, gave way to " Ohs " and " Pshaws " 
 when my nonentity, instead of the monarch's august 
 person, hove into actual vision. In front of Count Zedlitz's 
 palace stood at least a dozen policemen, and mounted 
 Schutzmanner were riding up and down the left side of 
 the avenue. 
 
 I stepped briskly into the hotel, and had no sooner 
 reached my friend's room, when deafening sounds of 
 " Hochs " and " Hurrahs " called both of us to the window. 
 
 There was his Majesty in a splendid victoria, a new 
 grey overcoat thrown over his General's uniform, the 
 shining helmet adding to his height. " See how he struts 
 and bids for adulation. He reminds me " 
 
 I caught my friend, once a Hofdame to Queen Marie 
 of Bavaria, by the arm. " Pst ! these hotel walls have 
 
 ears." 
 
 Next day the Wurtembergers arrived. Parades, pro- 
 cessions, receptions, and in the evening a gala performance 
 at the Opera House. During the principal intermission, 
 tea was served to their Majesties and the ladies and gentle- 
 men of the Court in the salons adjoining the royal box. 
 
 " These festivities, I trust, do not keep you from your 
 work, William ? " the King of Wiirtemberg was heard to 
 say, as he and the Kaiser retired into an alcove to puff 
 a cigarette. 
 
 " Not at all. I settled beforehand the business liable 
 to interfere with my enjoyment of your society." 
 
 1 Next door to the Ministry of Worship. 
 
234 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 " Not the Volksschulgesetz ? " 
 
 " The very same. Last night I gave the extreme Chris- 
 tians to understand that I shall go with the majority." 
 
 " But Zedlitz ? It means his ruin." 
 
 " Fiddlesticks ! " laughed the Kaiser ; "he perishes in 
 his King's service. Can a Minister die a more beautiful 
 death ? " 
 
 When, after the performance, he had retired to his 
 study to go over despatches a courier from Stuttgart had 
 brought, his Suabian Majesty said to Captain Bieler, his 
 adjutant : " Every conversation I have with the Kaiser 
 heightens my conviction that he is drifting toward the 
 natural outcome of the exaltation of the almighty ego- 
 monomania of pride or grandeur. Here is this Zedlitz, 
 on whom he and the Kaiserin have doted so much, and 
 who drew up the new Volksschulgesetz after his Majesty's 
 dictation. To-night my cousin informs me that he has 
 thrown him overboard, disowned him and his bill, and 
 when I expressed some slight compassion for the poor 
 fellow, he said, in substance : * Dulce et decorum est pro 
 rege mori ! ' Why, Ludwig never went further." 
 
 I am obliged, for the report of this conversation, to 
 my friend at the Bristol, who happens to be a near relative 
 of one of the gentlemen in the Wiirtembergers' suite. In 
 the utterance nothing surprised me more than the allusion 
 to the suicide of Lake Starnberg, and I said so. The 
 Baroness took me up rather sharply. " I reported the 
 King's words," was her piqued retort, " and if they coin- 
 cide with my own views, so much more credit to woman's 
 acumen, I have not acted souffleuse to Konig Wilhelm, 
 I assure you." 
 
 I perceived the Baroness was angered by those doubts 
 of mine, born out of a half-hearted attempt to disbelieve 
 what came so near the truth. To humour her, I asked 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 235 
 
 her about the hapless son of her late mistress. At first 
 her Ladyship refused on the plea of " sparing my patriotic 
 feelings," but consented after a while. 
 
 " I was never more struck by the likeness the Kaiser 
 bears to the late Ludwig in manners and attitude," she 
 said, " than when I saw him alight from his carriage a few 
 evenings ago, and I was going to remark something of 
 that sort when you stopped me : the same grandiose 
 walk and gesture, the same studied pose of the head, face, 
 and eyes, signifying deep thought, evidently with the inten- 
 tion of impressing the multitude ; the resemblance is as 
 extraordinary as it is painful to me." 
 
 k< Permit me," I said, " there is no gainsaying that our 
 Kaiser is theatrical, but to liken him to a maniac on that 
 account is going too far." 
 
 " Pray do not misunderstand me, Countess," said the 
 lady from Munich, " I do not judge the Emperor by ex- 
 terior signs alone. I take the manifestations of his inner 
 life, his relations to his mother, to his officials, and to his 
 people, his government, his attitude toward and his con- 
 tributions to art, literature, and what not, into consideration 
 as well. And judging him from every conceivable stand- 
 point, I say and repeat : William II. reminds me exceed- 
 ingly of his late cousin Ludwig. To return to the spectacle 
 witnessed from my window, with just such affectation of 
 dignity was the King of Bavaria wont to walk in state 
 processions, or on other public occasions, during the latter 
 half of the seventies, not to speak of the last years of his 
 life, when his dementia had become acute. Then the 
 common horde shouted : 'Ah, every inch a King ! ' just 
 as they do now in Berlin, but those capable of seeing 
 below the surface, and professional men generally, shook 
 their heads and talked of megalomania." 
 
 Under stress of these reminiscences I had to confess 
 
236 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 to myself that, as intimated in these volumes, the Kaiser's 
 actions had often struck me as emanating from a mind 
 not untainted by hereditary disease and not unaffected by 
 egomania. 
 
 " My poor mistress ! " sighed the former maid of honour 
 to Queen Marie, " what a blessing she did not live to see 
 her grand-nephew on the road to destruction ! Though 
 she had become a thorough Bavarian, the glory of the 
 Hohenzollerns was for ever in her pious mind. Indeed, 
 the holy fervour with which her Majesty embraced religion 
 during the last fifteen years of her life had its origin in 
 the all-consuming fear that the rise of Prussia's Kings 
 after the French war might have in it the germ of intel- 
 lectual and moral disaster." 
 
 From a diary she kept at Hohenschwangau during the 
 residence of the Queen-Mother there, the Baroness read 
 to me this pathetic appeal, which, she said, was her late 
 mistress's daily prayer : 
 
 " If it be true, O Lord, that I was the instrument to visit Thy wrath 
 upon the house of Wittelsbach by transmitting the seed of insanity of 
 my male ancestors, let Thy anger be appeased. In the person of Thy 
 servant Frederick William IV., Thou hast taught the proud Hohen- 
 zollerns how transitory is earthly power ; the sorry fate of my own 
 sons will for ever keep before the royal house of Bavaria the awful 
 punishment excessive pride suffers at Thy hands. May the pious lives 
 of Frederick William's successor and my son's administrator atone for 
 past sins, and may the Wittelsbachs and Hohenzollerns of the future be 
 wise, humble, and God-fearing men." 
 
 " Her Majesty then concurred in the opinion of the 
 medical authorities : that her sons inherited the insanity 
 of the Hohenzollerns through her ? " 
 
 " Indeed she did, poor lady ! and this knowledge led 
 her to mortify her flesh and penetrate her soul with cease- 
 less sorrow," replied the Baroness ; " but why do you 
 ask ? I thought that was a matter quite generally under- 
 stood." 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 237 
 
 " Because," I replied, " the Kaiser has a habit of 
 ignoring that fact, and, instead, offers an extract from a 
 letter the Duchess of Orleans wrote to Queen Charlotte 
 in 1710, and which reads : 
 
 " ' Grave suspicions are entertained regarding the children of the 
 Bavarian house : the Elector and his brothers are thought to be the 
 progeny of a crazy Italian doctor, named Simoni. Though it is claimed 
 the doctor went no further than to give the Elector and his wife a 
 strong cordial, promising therewith to increase their family, all the 
 children born after the experiments began are suspiciously like the 
 medical person.' 
 
 ' The madness of this traitorous Latin,' argues 
 William, ' has been bobbing up in the Wittelsbachs time 
 and again, and King Otto is the latest victim of the 
 curse.' 
 
 " I know of course, in a general way, that before the 
 advent of Frederick William the Fourth's niece, the 
 Wittelsbachs were a sound-minded race," I said, in con- 
 clusion, " but was there really no hereditary taint on the 
 father's side ? You who lived for a life-time at the Munich 
 Court are in my eyes a better authority on this question 
 than historians." 
 
 " I have known Ludwig the Second's grandfather and 
 father," answered my friend, " and in my younger days 
 met people who remembered Max Joseph quite well. All 
 were eminently sane men, and of Maximilian's seven 
 brothers and sisters, only one, Princess Alexandra, ex- 
 hibited signs of derangement at a critical period of her 
 life, when religious exaltation got the better of her for 
 a time. King Maximilian had half-a-dozen illegitimate 
 children remarkable for intelligence several of them are 
 alive to-day but those borne him by his Prussian wife 
 Ludwig and Otto went stark, staring mad." 
 
 Queen Marie was the daughter of Prince William of 
 Prussia, son of Frederick William II. and uncle of mad 
 
2 3 8 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Frederick William IV. Her mother was a Princess of 
 Homburg and a blood relative of Marie's paternal grand- 
 father. The Queen was born October 15, 1825, and died 
 May 17, 1889, having passed many years in acute melan- 
 choly. 
 
 This latter fact, as well as the Prussian-Bavarian kin- 
 ship itself, has been carefully covered up for tens of years. 
 Only once, in 1885, I remember reading in the Vossische 
 Zeitung some slight allusion to these data, but as the chief 
 of the political police threatened immediate prosecution 
 for lese-majeste if the offence were repeated, the subject 
 was dropped. And that happened under the first Emperor, 
 when the present Kaiser was seemingly far removed from 
 the throne. 
 
 Had the old Emperor a presentiment of coming events ? 
 Did he, with the wisdom of age, perceive the analogy 
 between his grand-nephew and grandson ? 
 
 There is every probability that he did, for the medical 
 authorities had already decided that Ludwig might have 
 escaped the curse of insanity for many years to come, had 
 power not been thrust upon him so early in life. 
 
 If Kaiser Frederick had lived for twenty or thirty 
 years longer, the catastrophe now threatening William II. 
 might have been averted, for persons with their minds 
 hereditarily tainted may, nevertheless, shape their destinies 
 to some extent. By refusing to feed their inordinate 
 appetite for self-aggrandisement, by rigidly declining to 
 give way to the egotistical impulses consuming them, they 
 may retard the progress of the disease, may even lead it 
 into harmless channels. Perhaps William would have 
 learned to curb his inherent proclivities, if his judgment 
 had been allowed to mature. As it was, both grand- 
 nephews of Frederick William IV. decided upon the opposite 
 course. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 239 
 
 Suddenly elevated by his father's untimely death, 1 
 Ludwig gave himself up to the most extravagant enjoyment 
 of kingly puissance, taking the mediaeval notions of the 
 " roy Soleil " for a standard and acting in a general way 
 as if his petty kingdom were an empire of the vastness of 
 Charlemagne's realm. And the ink of the pamphleteering 
 literature called forth by his tragic end was not yet dry 
 when William plunged into the same abyss, strutting, head 
 tossed in the air, blustering. 
 
 And has he not kept it up ever since with true mad- 
 man's perseverance, braving the ridicule of the world, 
 throwing sound counsel to the winds, and critics, ever 
 so humble, into gaol ? 
 
 The manner of the Kaiser's intercourse with his Ministers 
 has already been noticed. " Unprecedented," said the 
 average reader, no doubt. Pardon : there is an example 
 of such conduct. Ludwig II. treated his Excellencies no 
 less brutally. Like William II., he made it a point to 
 live away from the capital the greater part of the year, 
 thereby increasing his councillors' labours, and, like his 
 cousin, he compelled them to chase after him now to 
 Nymphenburg or to the Bergschloss, to Herrenchiemsee 
 and Linderhof, again to his Renaissance, his Rococo, or 
 Chinese palaces. They were " commanded " to follow 
 him to the highest peaks of the Alps and to the lakes, into 
 the mystic depths of his forests, or to his " blue grotto " 
 always in great gala, delivering reports in the open with 
 bared heads, the dictum : " I am the master, you the 
 menial," being continuously kept before their eyes. And 
 is not William's habit of interrupting Hohenlohe's or 
 Miquel's lectures on government affairs by a " Look at 
 yonder antlers I shot that deer then and there," branch- 
 
 1 Maximilian died in his fifty-first, Kaiser Frederick III. in his fifty-seventh 
 year. 
 
240 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 ing off into a rambling account of some every-da} 7 hunting 
 experience, but a repetition, in another form, of Ludwig's 
 practice to break the monotony of Minister von Lutz's 
 reports by declaiming a hundred verses or so from one of 
 Schiller's dramas ? And the Kaiser's hankering for abso- 
 lutism, his assumption of omnipotence when as head of 
 the Empire he is really the most restricted of monarchs no 
 sovereign at all in the extreme sense of the word bears 
 not this impotent bragging an ominous resemblance to 
 Ludwig's hallucination of being a mighty potentate, auto- 
 crat of a hundred millions of slaves ? 
 
 Professor Quidde, of Munich, sold in June, 1894, one 
 hundred and fifty thousand copies of his pamphlet, 
 " Caligula : a Study of the Insanity of Cesarean Power," 
 which suggested a parallel between the conduct of 
 Tiberius's successor and the German Emperor of to-day. 
 Many of the examples given in the brochure were striking ; 
 with true native profundity, Herr Quidde even unearthed 
 instances in Roman history that might pass as counter- 
 parts of the dismissal of Bismarck and of the squandering 
 of the old Emperor's fortune by William II. ; but, though 
 Caligula is dead these eighteen hundred years and despite 
 the fact that the majority of Quidde's analogies were 
 rather far-fetched, the Germans proved so intent upon the 
 promised explanation of their Kaiser's eccentricities that 
 they allowed the publishers to pick up a fortune in an 
 incredibly short space of time seventy-five thousand marks 
 for Roman history (brought up-to-date) within four weeks ! 
 Mommsen's and Treischke's books do not yield half so 
 much in a decade. All told, half a million copies of the 
 pamphlet were purchased ; in other words, every intelligent 
 citizen of the Fatherland either bought or borrowed it, 
 and all read it ! Is it possible to conceive a more telling 
 proof of the nation's distrust of William's sanity ? And 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 241 
 
 if the great mass of the people is moved to suspect that his 
 much-fawned-upon Genialitdt is a disease of the nerves, 
 how much more so are we members of the Court holding 
 daily intercourse with his Majesty, we who are intimately 
 acquainted with his own and his family history and gorged 
 with the gossip of all royal establishments of Europe, past 
 and present ? 
 
 The reading public sees from time to time paragraphs 
 in the papers setting forth the Kaiser's aspirations to 
 emulate Frederick the Great. Though anachronistic, there 
 is nothing discreditable in such an ambition ; yet members 
 of the household, who, like myself, see William grimacing 
 for half-hours at a time before a mirror hanging by the 
 side of a life-size portrait of Frederick, cannot help feeling 
 deeply apprehensive that behind all this there is more 
 than vaingloriousness. 
 
 At the breakfast given in honour of Prince Augustus 
 of Saxony, in October, 1895, the Kaiser surprised his guest 
 by an invitation to accompany him to Potsdam, where he 
 would show him a portrait of Frederick that resembled 
 him, the speaker, in every line. His Royal Highness is 
 a polite man, and, after beholding Pesne's historic canvas, 
 representing the King in his thirtieth year (about 1743), 
 with round cheeks, luxurious brown hair done up in a 
 queue, and his breast encased in a silver cuirass, he told 
 the Emperor many complimentary things, but from his 
 manner it was evident that he was as little impressed with 
 the alleged likeness as the rest of the company. And small 
 wonder : there is no resemblance whatever between " the 
 last of the Kings who finished off for ever the trade of 
 King " and the most pretentious of his epigoni. As to 
 his Majesty's particular claim, that he has " the eyes of 
 the victor of Rossbach," one need but quote Mirabeau 
 in refutation. In his Histoire secrete de la cour de Berlin, 
 
 Q 
 
242 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 the shrewd French observer says : " Those orbs " (of 
 Frederick) " fascinated one with seduction, or with terror, 
 at the bidding of his great soul." That there exists a 
 resemblance between William's boyish features and those 
 of Frederick, in another painting by Pesne, " Friedrich 
 und Wilhelmina" * as the Kaiser pretends, is equally 
 absurd. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the monarch of the end of the 
 eighteenth century and his successor of the end of the 
 nineteenth have as little in common, outwardly and in- 
 wardly, as the second Ludwig of Bavaria and the four- 
 teenth Louis of France had, and that William, ocular 
 disproof notwithstanding, insists upon imagining himself 
 Frederick's counterpart, is but a phase of his monomania 
 of grandeur equivalent to a hallucination of which his 
 late cousin was possessed. 
 
 In like manner William's Frederick-worship began by 
 easy stages. That, as a boy, passionately fond of the 
 army, he should admire a relative who was one of the 
 greatest generals the world produced, is only natural. 
 That, grown to man's estate, he led every public effort 
 to honour Thomas Carlyle, the architect of his ancestor's 
 fame in the English-speaking world, is commendable. But 
 lo ! he clambers on to the high horse himself which yester- 
 day no one could nde but the man who, single-handed, 
 whipped the whole of united Europe ! The admirer has 
 grown into an imitator, the copyist will be a rival soon. 
 
 "I am a composer like Frederick." " Like the great 
 King, I never wear anything but uniform." " My hatred 
 of England is only equalled by the contempt Frederick the 
 Great bore to the nation of thieves and traffickers," &c. 
 
 1 The original hangs in the castle of Charlottenburg. It represents Frederick 
 at the age of four, beating a drum, and walking at the side of his sister, afterward 
 the Margravine of Baireuth, attended by a Moor. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 243 
 
 The attempts to establish a facial resemblance to 
 Frederick, as well as the oft-claimed intellectual one, have 
 been going on for three years, and of late, spurious pictures 
 supporting this theory are coming to light with alarming 
 frequency ; almost every one of the small Court balls are 
 costume-festivals nowadays at which the Emperor appears 
 in the military dress of Frederick's period, generally as 
 the late King's aide-de-camp ; Frederick's marches are 
 played in the Schloss and palace on all occasions, appro- 
 priate or not, and as a wind-up the Kaiser usually turns 
 Kapellmeister to demonstrate to the professional leader 
 "the spirit in which the composition was conceived," and 
 "how Frederick the Great would have it executed if he 
 were here." And last, but not least, his Majesty has revived 
 and enforces with unwonted energy in such matters the 
 Cabinet order of 1888, commanding visitors at Court to 
 appear in the " Rococo costume * Frederick loved so well," 
 while at the same time the uniforms of the palace guards 
 are gradually changed to resemble those en regie in the 
 latter half of the past century. Now and again William 
 informs his titled household that he has been " graciously 
 pleased to grant " this or that regiment or battalion (it 
 is always one with which he comes into much personal 
 contact) " grenadier caps a la Frederick," " kettle-drums 
 a la Frederick," or " bugles a la Frederick." 
 
 " Frederick held that only the nobility is capable of 
 personal honour " this is William's excuse for calling 
 "vows" and Barons and Graf en "the flower of the 
 nation." 
 
 When, in the beginning of October, 1897, Prince 
 Hohenlohe, by threat of resignation, prevented the Kaiser 
 
 1 When first issued, this order called forth so much protest and ridicule 
 that the Kaiser, par force, allowed it to become a dead letter for the next 
 eight years. 
 
244 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 from offering armed assistance to the Queen of Spain (to 
 counteract the possible intervention in Cuban affairs by 
 the United States), his Majesty talked for three days in- 
 cessantly of " Frederick, who was his own chancellor and 
 parliament of the living, puissant Hohenzollern-initiative, 
 always setting the dogs of war loose before his enemies had 
 time to get over their surprise. 
 
 " But Frederick is not dead, he lives here " (striking 
 his breast), " and his mailed fist will clutch somebody's 
 throat sooner or later," and so on ad infinitum. 
 
 Perhaps it will. But when it does, a paranoia l verdict, 
 such as that which discrowned your Majesty's grand-uncle, 
 in October, 1857, an d your cousin, in June, 1886, will 
 assuredly stalk in the wake of that act. 
 
 The present chronicler has neither the technical know- 
 ledge nor the material at hand to attempt a complete 
 parallel of the cases of Frederick William, Ludwig, and 
 William. That a marked similarity existed between the 
 mental conditions of Queen Louise's son and the Bavarian 
 grandson of William of Prussia is notorious, and that 
 many of Ludwig's idiosyncrasies survive in WiUiam II. was 
 already shown ; but I should be the first person to credit 
 these signs of derangement to the account of mere eccen- 
 tricity if they were exceptional manifestations instead of 
 links in a chain that seems to drag the Kaiser irresistibly 
 to his doom. 
 
 Alas ! that there is such a chain, and twice alas that 
 it should be the one that drew Ludwig below the weeds of 
 the mountain lake ! 
 
 The King of Bavaria's case was diagnosed as exaltation 
 of self-esteem and of craving for grandeur, coupled with 
 limitless egotism and heightened by impulsiveness. He 
 
 1 Paranoia, confusion of the senses, was the medical term used to characterise 
 the condition of both Frederick William IV. and Ludwig II. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 245 
 
 was found to be deficient in judgment, a spendthrift, 
 curious for knowledge and hard-hearted withal ; that is, 
 he possessed singularities so prominent in the Kaiser that 
 their summary strikes one, nolens volens, as an estimate 
 of William's character. 
 
 Examples of the Kaiser's megalomania are numerous 
 throughout the pages of this volume, and the present 
 chapter has furnished some interesting analogies between 
 certain acts of volition on the part of both royal cousins, 
 but nothing short of a methodical comparison of their 
 lives and deeds as kings and men will explain the Kaiser's 
 case. This I will endeavour to give on the basis of my 
 own observations regarding William's sayings, his actions 
 and vagaries, placed in juxtaposition with an account of 
 Ludwig's character and his life and death furnished by 
 the Munich Hofdame. 
 
 To begin with the symptoms of monomania of grandeur : 
 Ludwig's borrowed Fetat c*est moi theories were no more 
 absurd than are William's attempts at out-Muscoviting 
 autocracy and playing the Jack-of-all- trades. 
 
 I remember his Majesty coming down to " second 
 breakfast " one afternoon it was either the 27th or 28th 
 of October, 1894 while the question of who would accept 
 the Chancellorship after Caprivi's dismissal was still pend- 
 ing and the whole country was torn up by doubts and 
 misgivings. " There is a pretty state of things,'' he cried, 
 and all of us expected to hear it announced tnat Uncle 
 Chlodwig had finally refused " here is a pretty kettle of 
 
 fish ! This city of " (naming some small Rhenish town) 
 
 " petitioning to build sewers and proposing to empty, accord- 
 ing to plans submitted, the refuse into the river just above 
 the chief bathing establishment. Of course, nobody in the 
 Home Office saw the terrible mistake, and it took me four 
 hours to correct the drawings and suggest a better plan." 
 
246 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Bothering about the sewage of a secondary town while 
 the Empire is quaking in the throes of a crisis is a pheno- 
 menon of rapid thought, or else an anomaly born of the 
 passion to play Providence. 
 
 The former Minister of Worship, Count Zedlitz, was 
 selected by William for his important office, despite the 
 fact that he had never enjoyed the benefits of a course in 
 college, and the most extensive sphere of administration his 
 new Postmaster-General, Herr von Podbielski, a retired 
 cavalry officer, ever presided over was a stable full of hus- 
 sar horses, for which he bought forage and whose manure 
 he sold at advantageous prices ; yet the Kaiser thought 
 the one a fit superior of a Virchow, a Mommsen, and Helm- 
 holtz, and the other splendidly qualified to succeed the 
 great Doctor Stephan. The why and wherefore he ex- 
 plained a dozen times before all the Court : " because they 
 will receive their instructions from me." Still, Richard 
 Wagner was drummed out of Munich because Ludwig 
 desired to make him his Minister of Finance. 
 
 The Kaiser appears to have inherited the late Ludwig's 
 splendid memory. The Munich Dame of the Court tells 
 how long and successfully her late master deceived the 
 unlearned by feats and well calculated tricks of memory, 
 which many accepted as a heaven-born gift instead of as 
 stigmata, of evidence of the morbid organisation of his 
 brain, and the history of most persons insane from and 
 with Cesarean power records similar phenomena. Tiberius. 
 Caligula, Mohammed Toghlak, and Ivan the Terrible all 
 were afflicted with this same pseudo talent. All of them 
 were ready talkers, knew whole regiments of soldiers by 
 name, and could reel off fifteen hundred or two thousand 
 words of technical slang on any given subject. Indeed, 
 Ludwig's and William's grand-uncle, Frederick William IV., 
 was the rhetorical wonder of his time for a German. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 247 
 
 " What can our brother admire in that wretched 
 Sultan ? " asked the Crown Princess Sophie of her sister 
 of Lippe at the family meeting in Friedrichshof in June, 
 1894. 
 
 Victoria, who might have been a vassal of Abdul Hamid 
 if Bismarck had not interfered and if her first betrothed, 
 the late Alexander of Battenberg, had lived Victoria, 
 not a very bright person, passed the query on to her 
 husband. " He must know, the Kaiser tells him every- 
 thing." 
 
 " William says he likes the Grand Seigneur as the 
 
 \\embodiment of absolutism, as a ruler prepared to rule at 
 
 lithe hazard of seeing one-half of his people dead on the 
 
 ground, that the other half may learn to obey," spoke 
 
 Adolph, impressively ; " that he has told me a dozen 
 
 times. ' If Frederick William IV. had possessed but a 
 
 spark of the spirit that lives in the so-called sick man,' 
 
 he once said, ' 1 should be monarch in the true sense of 
 
 the word to-day, though Berlin gutters might have run 
 
 with blood for weeks in succession during March, '48.' ' 
 
 The Duchess of Sparta covered her face with both hands. 
 " Horrible ! " she sighed. 
 
 " But his Majesty's true convictions," whispered Baroness 
 Reischach " think of the Frankfurt speech." 
 
 " Nonsense," resumed the Prince of Hesse, in an effort 
 to efface what his all too-truthful brother-in-law had said, 
 " our beau-frere Willie merely flatters the Padishah to 
 obtain his Sultanship's permission to visit the imperial 
 harem the next time he goes to Constantinople." 
 
 I am rather inclined to think that the Kaiser's desire 
 to smoke a tschibuk with Abdul Hamid and a thousand 
 
 1 The Kaiser said on August 16, 1888, at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, "he would 
 rather see his forty-two millions of Prussians dead on the battlefield than give 
 up one foot of ground gained by the Franco-German War." 
 
248 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Circassians, with white and black and olive and red women, 
 kadyns and odalisks, is as strong as ever, and that his 
 Turkish policy is in part dictated by this passion ; but 
 that Prince Adolph correctly reported his Majesty's senti- 
 ments with respect to ideal kingship was demonstrated 
 three years after the family reunion in Empress Frederick's 
 castle, namely, in the summer of 1896, when the Kaiser 
 presented Abdul Hamid with a chromo for living up to 
 his conception of " rule by the grace of God." 
 
 His hands red with the blood of forty thousand murdered 
 Christians, the successor of the Prophet received, in June 
 of that year, a coloured photograph representing the im- 
 perial family in a loving group Kaiser and Kaiserin and 
 all the children. " My master," our Ambassador, Freiherr 
 von Saurma, was ordered to say in his presentation speech, 
 "hopes that this simple souvenir may be acceptable to 
 your Majesty as a token of his affection and eternal friend- 
 ship," massacres or no massacres. 
 
 Twice Baron Saurma telegraphed Prince Hohenlohe for 
 further advices on this piece of diplomatic business ; his 
 first telegram seemed to indicate that he looked upon the 
 picture as a belated Easter gift, or something of the sort. 
 On being reassured of its up-to-dateness, he wired he would 
 rather resign than carry out so degrading an act after 
 what had just happened in Constantinople ; but Hohen- 
 lohe, afraid of the terrible scandal sure to ensue, persuaded 
 Saurma to withdraw his threat, and so the presentation 
 took place with due ceremony to both Majesties' pro- 
 foundest satisfaction. 
 
 "Women do not understand these things," was the 
 Emperor's gruff rejoinder when her Majesty objected to 
 having her likeness and that of the children sent to the 
 *' wholesale murderer of Christians." " What do women 
 know about being consequential ? These Armenians were 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 249 
 
 rebels, and my friend, the Sultan, treated them as I would 
 treat a mob opposing my authority, any day." 
 
 " But," pleaded her Majesty, " Herr von Marschall tells 
 me it was primarily a religious riot, the Mussulmans fall- 
 ing on the Giaours and killing them off like so many 
 sheep." 
 
 The Kaiser shrugged his shoulders and smiled. " I am 
 shepherd of the Lutheran Christians in Prussia," he said 
 brutally ; " those in foreign lands must take care of them- 
 selves." 
 
 And a year and a half later he sent Prince Heinrich on 
 " the new crusade, to uphold the Cross and punish the 
 slayers of Christians in China. But, then, his Majesty 
 never dined with the Tientze, the Son of Heaven, and 
 that worthy's Viceroy, Li Hung Chang, when he visited 
 Germany in August, 1896, utterly failed to fulfil William's 
 expectations. 
 
 While insanity of power usually instils an overweening 
 passion for the military in its victims, Ludwig differed 
 from his cousin, the Kaiser, in the point of bellicose pro- 
 clivities. During the last ten years of his life, he scarcely 
 ever donned uniform, but, though trotting and marching 
 and countermarching to the tune of drum and fife had no 
 allurements for the disciple of Richard Wagner, he utilised 
 the army as eagerly as William for purposes designed to 
 heighten the lustre of his personal appearances. 
 
 My friend tells me that the drive-ways and footpaths 
 of the Munich royal park, Englischer Garten, were fairly 
 alive with soldiers, gendarmes, police, and detectives when 
 the King was at home. The public was given to under- 
 stand that the less seen of it the better, and ladies and 
 gentlemen of the Court, known to the officials, had to 
 submit to petty annoyances in the way of identification, 
 warnings, and so forth, at such times as well as the common 
 
250 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 rabble. Ludwig never rode or drove out except like the 
 Shah cavalry in the front, at both sides, and in the rear. 
 
 " Perhaps,'* I suggested, " your poor King suffered from 
 monomania of suspicion, or exaltation of awe." 
 
 This the H of dame denied. " Only during the last 
 twelve months of his life that phase of insanity appeared 
 to trouble him." The Baroness told me of several visits 
 she paid the King in his lonely mountain castles on behalf of 
 her mistress. " Sometimes," she said, " I secured per- 
 mission to gaze upon the all-highest face for a second or 
 two, that I might be the better able to make a minute 
 report to her Majesty. On other occasions I saw Ludwig, 
 unknown to him, as he drove past in his gilded carriage 
 over lonely roads regularly patrolled by pickets of good- 
 looking horsemen attired in the most fetching uniforms. 
 It was evident the mad monarch could not do without 
 the royal pomp of soldateska. Even after his misanthropy 
 had degenerated into positive hatred of mankind such 
 hatred that he was unable to look a person in the face- 
 he would not miss his regiments, to him the representatives 
 of kingly puissance." 
 
 Heretofore Ludwig's soldier-worship has been explained 
 solely on immoral grounds, with divers references to 
 Nicomedes-Csesar ; the above interpretation, which re- 
 search has proved correct, brings it nearer home by 
 identifying it as one of the features of insanity of power. 
 In Czar Paul, one of William's relatives on the side of his 
 father's mother, 1 this element of monomania of grandeur 
 overtopped the rest of his crazes, but even then the son of 
 Soltikof and Catherine did not go further in his military 
 tyranny than William does. Paul is reported to have 
 passed most of his time on the drill-ground ; so does the 
 
 1 The mad Paul of Russia was the grandfather of Empress Augusta, consort 
 of William I. Many of Czar Paul's freaks are revived by William II. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 251 
 
 Kaiser. His biographers tell us that "his mind was in- 
 cessantly occupied with petty regulations about costumes 
 and appearances " ; that he was " continually inventing 
 new dresses and accoutrements for his soldiers." You 
 should hear William preach on the importance of such 
 warlike measures as the length or shortness of a sabre- 
 strap, the pointed or broad form of heels attached to the 
 dancing-pumps of young lieutenants commanded to Court 
 balls, or listen to his tirades against setting the buttons of 
 an undress frock in a straight line themes we people of 
 the Court hear discussed morning, noon, and night. More- 
 over, count, if you can, William's regulations and orders 
 about the cut of pantaloons, the facings of pelisses, and 
 the impression tan boots are sure to make on African 
 savages, and you will think better of that pseudo-Romanoff 
 strangled " because his lucid intervals became shorter 
 week after week." Over the taxpayer's feelings, who pays 
 for the Kaiser's pettifoggery, his endless innovations and 
 alleged improvements, that improve only the bank accounts 
 of army purveyors and are often dropped as suddenly as 
 they are introduced over the sentiments of this beast 
 of burden, steeped in penury, indifference, and political 
 hysteria, I will draw the veil. 
 
 Paul, we are assured, was crazy enough to enforce 
 his clothes regulations even upon civilians, A.D. 1796. And 
 a hundred years later, the Kaiser ordered that all station- 
 masters in Prussia must provide themselves with a speci- 
 ally designed dress-suit, including a toy sword and a plumed 
 hat, to wear when he passes through their town. As the 
 outfit costs from three to four hundred marks, and the 
 majority of the officials receive but three or four times 
 as much per annum, resignation or starvation, or both, 
 became the order of the day. 
 
 That his Majesty tells the ladies of his household what 
 
252 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 they shall wear on festive occasions is tyrannical, but not 
 wholly unreasonable, seeing that he imagines he owns his 
 entourage body and soul, but other women, even relatives 
 of his Majesty, will not take kindly to his expensive sug- 
 gestions. Seldom does a ball or state occasion pass that 
 there is not a gap in the line of our royal dames ; now 
 the Hereditary Princess of Hohenzollern sends " her 
 regrets," again Princess Aribert goes to bed twenty-four 
 hours previous to a costume festival at Court. Even the 
 Hereditary Grand Duchess of Baden declines time and 
 again to help ruin her husband by reckless extravagance 
 of toilets, such as the Kaiser demands his guests to engage 
 in. As a matter of fact, William's passion for having 
 everything his own way is entirely incompatible with reason. 
 There is no art outside of the narrow circle approved by 
 him, no stage and no state craft, unless conducted on rules 
 laid down by him to actors, to parliamentarians, to diplo- 
 mats. His soldiers, his children, the women of his house- 
 hold and of society, his officials and men friends, all must 
 be dressed, or must masquerade, according to his varying 
 moods. 
 
 On returning from a review, the war-lord seldom speaks 
 of the success or non-success of the exercises ; that he 
 caught Lieutenant von X. Y. wearing an overcoat an 
 inch shorter than the regulations stipulate, or a sub-officer 
 attired in pantaloons of his own, instead of those furnished 
 by the regiment, is of far greater importance in the Kaiser's 
 eyes. For these eyes reflect the mere outer film of things 
 correctly enough, but do not penetrate below the surface 
 because the mind directing them works too rapidly to 
 weigh the relative importance of things. 
 
 At the close of the manoeuvre season of 1897, Count 
 Haeseler, the General upon whom Moltke's mantle is 
 supposed to have descended, said to a Reichstag deputy : 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 253 
 
 :t Those mimic battles arranged by his Majesty were 
 magnificent, each ending like that between the fabulous 
 lions, whose tails alone remained on the field ; but as to 
 the burial of the dead (supposing the Kaiser's theories 
 were followed out), I cannot, for the life of me, conceive 
 who would attend to it. Let us assume, for argument's 
 sake, that the nations of the Dreibund march into the 
 field under the chief war-lord's guidance Germans and 
 Austrians side by side, Italians covering the rear. Then 
 let two or three battles be fought, such as we experienced 
 in Bavaria this summer : vast masses of foot launched on 
 top of each other, tambour battant, horse and artillery 
 swallowing hailstorms of bullets with gusto, as if they were 
 Erbswurst soup ! Why, unless our Peninsular friends 
 turned grave-diggers one and all, pestilence would drive 
 them back. It is my humble opinion," concluded Count 
 Haeseler, with a sarcastic smile, " that the dead never 
 entered into his Majesty's calculations." 
 
 In his book, " The Blot Upon the Brain," William W. 
 Ireland, M.D., Edinburgh, says : " They " (the victims of 
 insanity of power) " are easily beaten in the field by generals 
 who prefer what is essential to what is superfluous." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE PARALLEL BETWEEN WILLIAM II. AND 
 
 LUDWIG ii. (continued) 
 
 THAT both royal cousins were possessed of this passion 
 for mummery (uniforms, liveries, masquerades in and out 
 of season) King Ludwig sometimes carried it so far as 
 to dress his servants as Indian Rajahs, and sit down to 
 supper in the open while the thermometer was near the 
 freezing-point this analogous turn of mind in Frederick 
 William the Fourth's grand-nephews may perhaps pass for 
 accidental, be the relation of this craze to insanity of 
 power ever so well founded more convincing are similarities 
 in the lives of Ludwig and William that show a concurrence 
 of opinion in the line of the higher emotions. 
 
 " During the night of October 15, 1885, half-an-hour 
 after midnight," says my Munich friend, with a reference 
 to her diary, " I was called up from bed by the night- 
 watch rapping at my door. With my senses benumbed 
 by sleep, I understood only these words : ' Majesty wants 
 you.' 
 
 " ' Is her Majesty ill ? ' I cried, much alarmed, while 
 pulling on my slippers. By that time my maid had arrived. 
 4 The King has come from Linderhof and wants to see 
 the Queen,' she said. ' He had the candles lit in the re- 
 ception-room by his own servants, and is impatiently 
 walking the floor wondering why her Majesty keeps him 
 waiting." 
 
 " Lieschen told me this while we were running to the 
 Queen's bedroom. In ten minutes our mistress was dressed. 
 
 254 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 255 
 
 In five minutes more I heard the noise of wheels in the 
 court-yard below : the King was driving away. 
 
 " I hastened downstairs to accompany her Majesty back 
 to her apartment. She looked awe-struck, but did not 
 speak a word. Only when I had put her to bed again, 
 and was about to take my leave, she said : 4 Marguerite, 
 I do not want you to retire with feelings of misgiving. 
 The King brought no alarming news. He talked of noth- 
 ing but the weather, and at the moment of departing 
 added : ' To-day, I believe, is your sixtieth birthday. 
 Accept my royal felicitations.' ' 
 
 To compel a sickly old woman to get up in the middle 
 of the night for the pleasure of haranguing her with plati- 
 tudes who but a madman could conceive so preposterous 
 an idea ! " Yet look at the date," resumed the Baroness : 
 " October 15, 1885 ! Only eight months before Ludwig's 
 tortuous career came to a horrible end." 
 
 The speaker recalled numerous instances of the King's 
 cruelty to his mother : how he forced her to vacate the 
 palace she liked best ; how, by ostentatious display, he 
 caused Queen Marie to doubly feel the loss of power and 
 influence ; how, by his parade of hatred and contempt for 
 her relatives, he wounded her sentiments and lessened her 
 popularity in the land three examples out of a hundred, 
 that remind one strangely of the Kaiser's treatment of 
 the Empress Frederick. 
 
 That William dispossessed his mother from the home 
 where she had spent the happiest years of her life, 1 that 
 he gruffly denied her the poor pleasure of assuming repre- 
 sentative social duties during Auguste Victoria's frequent 
 pregnancies ("If my wife is ill, I will be Kaiser and Kaiserin 
 
 1 Immediately after Emperor Frederick III. died, William assumed possession 
 of Castle Friedrichskron, where his parents had lived for over thirty years, and 
 to efface every sign of his father's residence there he dropped the name and 
 reinstated that designated by the builder, Frederick II. : namely, Neues Palais. 
 
256 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 both," were his words), that he is the leader of Anglo- 
 phobia in Germany and the abettor of hundreds of printed 
 insults to the Empress Frederick, are facts as notorious as 
 they are pitiful. 
 
 I have heard these and similar events discussed ; I 
 have seen them wept over in the royal family. " It is his 
 confounded bad heart," voted Prince Albrecht. " Ay, this 
 sort of thing is dictated by meanness, common, everyday 
 cussedness," decided the Hereditary Prince of Meiningen. 
 
 An anonymous letter, purporting to echo the opinion 
 of a renowned foreign authority on affections of the senti- 
 ments, diagnosed the case as the result of power-drunken- 
 ness, and went on to state that, as Mohammed Toghlak, the 
 megalomaniacal Sultan of India, was pleased to kill his 
 brother and exalt his mother, so it was William's good 
 pleasure to give a lift to Prince Heinrich (occasionally) and 
 abuse his parent. 
 
 While unwilling to adopt this extreme view, I must 
 confess that the Emperor's habit of signing his letters and 
 telegrams to his mother and to his wife and children, 
 " Wilhelm, Imperator, Rex" smacks decidedly of insane 
 exaltation of self-esteem. 
 
 With chronicling stories of his Majesty's excessive pride, 
 a diarist of Samuel Pepys' industry could be kept busy 
 ever and anon ; to-day the General Order issued by the 
 Kommandant of Potsdam announces, at the top of its 
 columns, that his Majesty is " graciously pleased to some- 
 times drive a dog-cart " (follows elaborate description of 
 vehicle, horse, and livery, which latter is different from 
 the ordinary one), " he handling the ribbons himself and 
 the Empress sitting dos-a-dos with the groom." " Officers 
 and men," continues the paper, " are cautioned to take 
 notice of the above fact and to be careful to execute the 
 prescribed evolutions when meeting the imperial party, under 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 257 
 
 penalty," and so forth. To-morrow the Kaiser narrates at 
 supper how he whisked Count Gessler off Bornstadter Feld 
 and ordered him to keep to his room for three days, " be- 
 cause his spurs were not of the approved pattern." 
 
 " Graf Gessler ? " queried the Kaiserin " Gessler of the 
 Cuirassiers and of my Body-guard ? " 
 
 " The same. And why did I do it ? I might not have 
 been so hard on him, had he not passed me the other day 
 without saluting when I was in my dog-cart." 
 
 " Surely, he did not recognise our new livery." 
 
 " He ought to recognise his Emperor through a three- 
 inch board ! And, by the way," added his Majesty, " I 
 learned the name of that captain of Dragoons who failed 
 to make front before us near Babelsberg Sunday morn- 
 ing ; it was Freiherr von , garrisoned at , and 
 
 commanded to Berlin to serve on the General Staff. I 
 found that out by sending a description of the delinquent 
 to the colonels of all our dragoon regiments. He is on 
 his way home. Berlin is no place for a donkey of his 
 calibre." 
 
 In the winter of 1895, Lieutenant-Colonel von Natzmer 
 came near losing his head as commander of the Third 
 Guard Lancers on account of the stupidity of a trooper 
 who, being sent on galopin duty in the course of some 
 exercises, mistook the Emperor for a captain of infantry 
 named Kahn, William wearing no shoulder-knots or other 
 insignia on that occasion. Only by offering to distribute 
 photographs of his Majesty in a variety of uniforms among 
 his men did Natzmer save his bacon. The case of under- 
 officer Mohr, of the First Foot Guards, and how he became 
 a sergeant, is also interesting. Mohr was never suspected 
 of " carrying a field-marshal's staff in his knapsack," but 
 nature fitted him with eyes capable of much contrac- 
 tion and dilation of pupils, so that, like a member of 
 
 R 
 
258 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 the genus Felis, he can see in the dark. That, stood him 
 in good stead when he ran across his Majesty near the 
 Berlin Stadt Schloss one wintry evening. Recognising 
 the war-lord at a distance of several paces, he promptly 
 made front, sounding an all-submissive " Good-evening, 
 your Majesty." 
 
 William was elated. There was true loyalty. This 
 fellow, if he had half a chance, would live up to the maxim 
 that a soldier will recognise the Kaiser through three inches 
 of oak. " Who are you, my son ? " 
 
 " Under-officer Mohr of the First Guards, at your Im- 
 perial and Royal Majesty's command." 
 
 " Only an under-officer ? But you have a sweet- 
 heart, I suppose ? " 
 
 " At your Imperial and Royal Majesty's command, 
 yes, the daughter of Feldwebel " 
 
 " Then go to your room, sew on the stripes, and report 
 to your future father-in-law and to the young woman 
 as his Majesty's sergeant. Right about face, forward, 
 march ! " 
 
 Mohr (marching "as if he were going to throw away 
 his legs," as the phrase goes) : " Thanks, a thousand 
 humble thanks ! God save your Imperial and Royal 
 Majesty." 
 
 Another and more dangerous form of the Kaiser's 
 excessive vanity and egomania shows in the current pro- 
 secutions for Use - majeste. For this offence sentences 
 amounting to some three hundred years of imprisonment 
 are imposed by Prussian judges from January to De- 
 cember, and as the courts of the allied German states 
 and statelets follow the lead, it is calculated that, on this 
 score alone, as many years of imprisonment are annually 
 meted out in the Fatherland as there are days in the year. 
 Accordingly, three thousand five hundred years twice the 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 259 
 
 time of the Christian era, lacking a few paltry centuries 
 were wiped out of the lives of some eight to nine thou- 
 sand of his subjects since William assumed the crown, 
 the list of culprits embracing both sexes and all classes 
 of society. And for what ? 
 
 In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred (I quote from 
 public records) for the heinous crime of impeaching the 
 Kaiser's aptitude as a composer, as a ruler, poet, diplomat, 
 or ship-builder ; as a conqueror, orchestra-leader, or ex- 
 pounder of the Monroe doctrine ; as a sportsman, as God's 
 anointed, as a painter, strategist, novel-writer, circus- 
 director, or lawgiver ; as advocate of duellos, as a con- 
 stitutional king, stage-manager, or absolute monarch ; as 
 playwright, huntsman, infantryman, cavalryman, family- 
 man, or maid-of -all- work. The prosecutor's license is 
 practically limitless ; but there are still some knots in 
 his rope that admit of lengthening the line. To let no 
 guilty one escape, it is stipulated, for instance, that insult 
 to Majesty superannuates only after five years. Thus 
 a discharged servant, a faithless friend, or malicious em- 
 ployer may prosecute you in January, 1898, for a remark 
 you dropped (or did not drop) in December, 1893, or, if 
 he prefers, he may blackmail you for that length of time, 
 under threat of informing the state's attorney. And that 
 frequently happens in the Fatherland. 
 
 As to the personalities of the culprits, I will quote 
 from one of the daily bulletins : 
 
 " The wife of a feudal land-owner in Pomerania was * sent up ' for 
 nine months because she remarked that the Emperor might kiss her 
 foot. 
 
 "A registered prostitute in Altona got four months' imprisonment 
 for a similar offence, though her invitation was of a more comprehensive 
 character. 
 
 " Eugen Richter's sally, made in the Reichstag some time ago : 
 ' Yesterday the German Emperor and fifty of the noblest of the nation 
 ran for two hours after an old sow,' a Breslau editor clipped for his 
 
260 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 paper and inserted under the head of { Court News,' adding date and 
 place. The joke cost him his liberty for nine months. 
 
 " In September, 1897, a popular music-teacher, Fraulein Hadwig 
 Jaede, in Stettin, was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for having, 
 in 1893, denounced the * Song to ^Egir ' as a piece of rubbish." 
 
 The poor girl addressed a petition for pardon to my 
 mistress ; but, being afraid to face her husband on this 
 score, the Empress asked Herr von Levetzow, the former 
 President of the Reichstag, to present the matter. 
 
 This is her report of that gentleman's interview with 
 the Kaiser : 
 
 " Herr von Levetzow had no sooner broached the case, 
 than the Emperor interrupted him. ' You think the laws 
 against lese-ma'jeste are too rigidly enforced,' he cried. 
 * Why, you astonish me ! That there are so many prosecu- 
 tions, only proves that the sentences imposed are much 
 too light. If they were not, those outcasts that dare to 
 point the finger of scorn at God's anointed would be afraid 
 to open their mouths. Believe me, as soon as I can find 
 a man, a real man, to take charge of my Chancellors 
 office, I will have him prepare a bill increasing the punish- 
 ment for traitors of this sort.' 
 
 " Of course," concluded her Majesty, " after that, 
 poor Herr von Levetzow had not the heart to press the 
 petition for pardon." 
 
 "Increasing the punishment for lese-majeste ? and at 
 this early date ! " exclaimed Deputy Richter, when the 
 non-success of the venture was reported to him by one 
 of his intimates at Court, " and Ludwig II. proposed 
 a similar course of action only during the last two years 
 of his lunacy ! When he sentenced some lackeys to be 
 knouted to death who had laughed on seeing him gallop 
 around his library, snorting and neighing like a horse ; 
 when he ordered that his Minister of Finance should lose 
 both eyes for refusing to advance him twenty millions 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 261 
 
 to finish his fairy castle of Neuschwanstein ; or when he 
 decided that an adjutant, who had failed to 'render him a 
 particular service, was to famish in the ' black hole ' below 
 the foundations of Linderhof, the King was undoubtedly 
 mad, and only a madman could have expected to see such 
 commands executed in 1885 or 1886 ! During the earlier 
 stages of his illness, even acute monomania of pride and 
 vanity could not induce him to ask severer punishment 
 for victims of the existing laws." 
 
 Meanwhile, the increased punishments have come to 
 pass without resort to legislation. Acting upon his 
 Majesty's suggestion, the courts are of late condemning 
 men and women for criticisms of governmental acts in 
 which the Kaiser takes a special interest, for protesting 
 against the Sedan celebration on the score of peace pro- 
 paganda, for instance, and the lists of offenders comprise, 
 besides members of the aristocracy and prostitutes, little 
 boys and girls who, on account of tender age, are other- 
 wise exempt from criminal prosecution. 
 
 " It is William's sense of divine appointment that makes 
 him look so sharply after criminals of this sort," is my 
 mistress's stereotyped apology when members of the family 
 bring up the matter. Poor lady ! she is not always happy 
 in the selection of her similes. The above one, for in- 
 stance, she used once too often ; namely, on the occasion 
 of a gathering of relatives at the Neues Palais, in October, 
 1897, when the Court was laughing over an act of imperial 
 clemency in the case of a sixteen-year-old nurse-girl from 
 Coblentz, who had been condemned to nine months' im- 
 prisonment for saying she would like to sleep with the 
 Emperor. 
 
 William, by the merest accident, learned of this, and 
 at once pardoned the precocious youngster. 
 
 " She has probably seen me during the manoeuvres in 
 
262 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Rhineland," he argued, curling his mustache, " and devil 
 take me if I blame the wench. Ill-bred as she is, that was 
 her manner of expressing admiration." 
 
 Contrast with this the decision of a Breslau judge, viz. : 
 that a certain Wilhelm Schultze, because he had wished 
 himself in the Hereditary Prince of Meiningen's place 
 (place stipulated), and had said so openly and shamelessly, 
 was not punishable for libel under the law. Argued the 
 judge : " Schultze is an ignorant fellow, and, having great 
 admiration for Princess Charlotte, expressed that feeling 
 after the manner of his ilk. Ergo, I discharge him, with a 
 warning." 
 
 These are exceptions, and not particularly edifying ones, 
 from a cruel rule that recalls the mad vagaries of the crazy 
 Rudolph II., 1 and does more to undermine royalist senti- 
 ment than even the Kaiser's speeches. A friend of mine 
 in the Ministry of Justice has kept a record of the sentences 
 imposed for criticisms of the " Song to ^Egir." He counted 
 three hundred and eleven years, seven months, and fines 
 amounting to nine thousand marks, during 1893, 1894, 
 1895, and 1896. Can you blame his Majesty's adjutants 
 for listening with straight faces to his side-splitting remarks : 
 " Now you will hear my magnificent composition," when, 
 at a banquet in Mohacs, Hungary (September, 1897), the 
 programme announced the song to the sea-god, who in 
 reality was a miserable landlubber. " The Austrian* and 
 Hungarians laughed to kill themselves," reported one of 
 the participants, " but we knew better. If any of our 
 crew had dared to smile assent, he would have been given 
 occasion for kicking himself sooner or later." 
 
 1 Rudolph II., Emperor of Germany, his grandmother was the crazy Juana 
 of Spain, reigned from 1576 to 1612. He was insane on the subject of his 
 imperial dignity, as well as on other subjects, and countless innocent people lost 
 their lives, their liberty, and their fortunes for alleged lack of respect for this 
 crowned madman. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 263 
 
 In connection with lese-majeste, it should not go un- 
 noticed, however, that there are one hundred and forty- 
 eight English square miles in Germany where man, woman, 
 and child may say of the Kaiser what they please, this 
 sanctuary being known as Reuss, short for Elder Branch, 
 while the Almanack de Gotha designates it as Reuss- 
 Greitz-Schleiz-Lobenstein-Eberswalde, with several villages 
 yet to be mentioned. The potentate of this district is 
 Heinrich XXII., a cousin of the Heinrich who, during his 
 wedding-night, was overheard to apostrophise his wife a la 
 main gauche, the circus-rider Loisset : " Oh, Chlo tilde my 
 only ! " whereupon the former queen of the arena responded 
 with delicious pathos : " Oh, Heinrich my twentieth ! " 
 
 (As old Kaiser Wilhelm allowed this story to be 
 published throughout Prussia, the Reuss tyrant at once 
 determined that hereafter no form or manner of black- 
 guardism directed against the Hohenzollerns should be 
 liable to prosecution in his territory, and to this resolve 
 his Grace has nobly stuck all these years since 1879.) 
 
 Newspapers seized for insult to Majesty in all the rest 
 of the twenty-five states and Free Cities, constituting the 
 common Fatherland, are freely circulated in Reuss, ligne 
 ainee ; its 53,787 inhabitants, and visiting strangers too, 
 may shout all they like about William's idiosyncrasies, and 
 Serenissim? dog-tax records abound in such invectives as 
 " Wilhelm " and " Preuss." 
 
 A feature of William's character that recalls some of 
 the darkest days of his late cousin's declining years is the 
 hatred he bears to his servants. Those one thousand ill- 
 paid menials in showy liveries, hanging about the royal 
 residences, are but a "contemptible thieving horde" in 
 his eyes " rascals whom to know by name would be to 
 honour them." When talking to his people needless to 
 say it is always to give a command or ask a question the 
 
264 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Kaiser invariably addresses man or woman : " You there ! " 
 and none of them ever heard that cheap courtesy : " Good- 
 morning " or " Good-evening " from the master's lips. 
 
 My Munich friend tells atrocious stories of the " Chinese 
 ceremonial " en vogue at Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee from 
 1880 to 1886 how the King's servants had to scratch at the 
 wood-work to announce their presence at the door 
 
 " Why that ? " I interrupted. 
 
 " Because the King could tolerate a lackey only if 
 acting the dog that his Majesty thought him to be ! " The 
 Baroness continued : " His valets had to approach him 
 crouching on their stomachs no one wearing the royal 
 livery dared look the King in the face, and, finally, Ludwig 
 even thought the tone of his voice too good for his people. 
 So he conceived the plan of writing his orders on slips 
 of paper and, spitting on them, pushed them under the 
 door for those outside to pick up." 
 
 Of course, nothing like it has yet been introduced at 
 the Neues Palais and Schloss, but Ludwig, too, worked 
 himself up to the frenzy of servant-beating by easy stages. 
 During the initial phases of his malady, he would order a 
 servant who had displeased him to be removed to some 
 lonely manor-house or lodge, there to continue for the rest 
 of his days at an inferior salary and without ever having 
 an opportunity to gaze upon the royal presence again. 
 The same happened to the Kaiser's old body-chasseur 
 Rau, .among other royal employees Rau, who caught 
 his Majesty's coat-tail in the carriage-door and to Rau's 
 successor, who, on a particularly warm winter day, asked 
 whether his Majesty required a lap-robe, instead of placing 
 it in the coach without troubling the master, and to 
 Haushofmeister (Major-domo) von Jurns, because the royal 
 yacht Alexandra could not be got ready so quickly as the 
 Kaiser demanded. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 265 
 
 Like all victims of morbid impulsiveness, a symptom 
 going hand in hand with megalomania, the Kaiser thinks 
 himself above the restrictions of space and time. If he 
 wants a thing, he imagines he has but to say so in order to 
 procure it, whether it be a shirt-stud dropped under the 
 table, or a historical painting for which a dozen square 
 yards of canvas have just been nailed up. 
 
 And this condition of the imperial mind tends to more 
 people's ruin than all the rest of his Majesty's crazy notions, 
 save, perhaps, the one compelling persons to make them- 
 selves invisible on demand. 
 
 The palace regulations stipulate that no servant shall 
 be found in the Emperor's apartments during his Majesty's 
 presence in the castle, sleeping hours excepted. Now it 
 happens sometimes that his Majesty rises at the fifth hour, 
 instead of the seventh or eighth, as announced. What 
 are servants, suddenly confronted by the news of the 
 master's approach while engaged in cleaning, to do ? To 
 drop work means dismissal, and to be seen by his Majesty 
 carries the same penalty with it ; so they run, simply run, 
 trusting to good luck that the evidence of disorder in the 
 rooms may not be noticed. 
 
 My maid, who was formerly attached to the royal 
 chambers, says it is a curious spectacle to see the wood- 
 carriers, firemen, scrubbers, dusters, window-cleaners, and 
 polishers tumble over each other in a wild scramble to 
 elude the master's eye. There must be no noise, no spilling 
 of water, and certain corridors and staircases are to be 
 avoided at all hazards. Suzette herself hid once for three- 
 quarters of an hour in an empty stove, 1 the only place 
 of safety within reach when the Kaiser came upon her as 
 she was about to enter his room. And this sort of hiding- 
 
 1 In the Neues Palais the stoves are lighted from the corridors, and have 
 immense openings. 
 
266 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 place has since become popular in the palace, though it is 
 apt to ruin clothes and house dresses, especially the latter, 
 of white and blue calico, with white aprons and white cuffs 
 and collars. 
 
 " But why did you not crawl out as soon as his Majesty 
 had passed ? " I asked. 
 
 " Because the Kaiser remained in the room to which 
 the stove belonged and the slightest bit of noise would 
 certainly have brought him round to my prison gate. And 
 then Kopf ab " (off goes my head), " as gnadige Frau 
 knows." 
 
 I may be allowed to interpolate here that Prussia re- 
 joices in a peculiar law permitting master and mistress 
 to correct their domestics by an occasional sound thrashing. 
 The statute is an old one, and the Diet has striven to 
 abolish it ever since it, the legislative body itself, struggled 
 into existence. But all attempts met with most vigorous 
 opposition by the government. When the proud privilege 
 of kicking a flunky, or boxing a maid's ears, is up for 
 discussion, the bench of the Ministry is always occupied 
 to the last man, whilst royalist orators give ready support 
 to the official claim that the ancient law is one of the pillars 
 of social order, and that its abolition means nothing 
 short of anarchy. 
 
 Why the state should go out of its way to uphold this 
 cruel and barbarous statute is not easily conceivable to 
 outsiders. Surely, the times are past when it was thought 
 consistent with the dignity of the King of Prussia to have 
 salt-laden pistols at his elbow in order " to hurry up " 
 sluggish pages. Frederick William I. followed that custom, 
 and in one and the same year lamed one man for life and 
 blew another's eyes out. That happened one hundred 
 and fifty or more years ago. Ancient history, is it not ? 
 But history repeats itself. The great Frederick and his 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 267 
 
 puny successor, when punishing servants, never went further 
 than to disfigure their faces by blows with walking-sticks, 
 or the butt end of a sword, yet Karl of Prussia, grand- 
 uncle of the present Kaiser, revived Frederick William's 
 practices and occasionally killed a menial or two a fact 
 which led one of his brothers to remark that, if not a Prince, 
 Karl would surely die by the halter. All of which shows 
 that the Hohenzollerns are dangerous masters ; that 
 cruelty runs in the family, so to speak ; as a matter of 
 fact, terror stalks ahead of William, his people flee, and 
 hide in fireplaces and niches to escape his eye : they do 
 not care to expose themselves to violence ; and what guar- 
 antee is there against a caning, or worse, when the sight 
 of a servant walking up a staircase or through a corridor 
 suffices to throw the master into a violent passion ? 
 
 " Die verdammten Hausdiener " (those accursed flunkies) 
 " lounge everywhere about the palace ; Eulenburg, you 
 must keep them in the kitchen, or cellar, where they be- 
 long," is his Majesty's every-day complaint to his grand- 
 master, when at home. 
 
 " May it please your Majesty, no man or woman enters 
 the residential parts of the palace unless on special duty." 
 
 " Details, my dear Eulenburg, do not concern me, and 
 I will not have them thrown up to me. I tell you, and 
 repeat, that the sight of the lackey is distasteful to me, and 
 it is your business to rid my environment of eye-sores." 
 
 There was " Mother Anna," the wood-carrier. One 
 morning, in the winter of 1889, having deposited her bundle 
 of fire-sticks in the Kaiser's antechamber, she caught a 
 glimpse of his Majesty through the half-open door. He 
 was sitting at his desk, reading a newspaper. " Lord," 
 thought " Mother Anna," " there is God's anointed in his 
 dressing-gown ! Who would have thought that my poor 
 old eyes would ever be blessed by such a vision. And," 
 
268 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 she said to her mates later on, " I stood as still as a mouse, 
 just like a miserable little mouse, and peeped and peeped 
 with frightened yet grateful eyes." 
 
 And while the old women were still gossiping, one of 
 the secretaries from the Court-marshal's office came up to 
 inquire which of them had been on duty in the imperial 
 apartments that morning. 
 
 " I," said " Mother Anna " falteringly. 
 
 " Well, then pack your traps and get your wages. His 
 Majesty will not allow such as you to spy into his affairs." 
 
 Empress Frederick took care of " Mother Anna," giving 
 her work on Bornstadt farm, otherwise she might have 
 famished, for she was seventy when turned away from the 
 Neues Palais. 
 
 But there are rows with the servants even for lesser 
 cause about a cigar-stump, for instance. 
 
 It was, I believe, in February, 1896, when his Majesty 
 warned the Empress and the members of the entourage 
 against " the pilfering lot of hirelings that infest the 
 palace." 
 
 " Nothing is safe," he cried, adding, with a show of 
 severity : " I ought to turn my rooms into a fortress, as 
 did the lord of the Hradschin " (imperial palace in Prague). 
 
 In the afternoon her Majesty sent Herr von der Knese- 
 beck to ascertain when, and of what, the Kaiser had been 
 robbed. Hear his report : " On Sunday night, after the 
 smoker, his Majesty put the stump of an echte " (real) 
 " Havana cigar into an ash-tray in his small toilet-room ; 
 to-day " (Wednesday), " when he desired to finish it, it 
 was gone, and all inquiries among the attendants, Kammer- 
 diener, wardrobemen, lackeys, and chasseurs, proved un- 
 satisfactory. His Majesty therefore concluded that one of 
 the footmen stole the stump, and an investigation is under 
 way." 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 269 
 
 It lasted three days. Then the corpus delicti was found 
 ruined beyond hope of retrieval at the bottom of a 
 refuse-barrel. After seeing it on the dresser for two morn- 
 ings in succession, one of the chambermaids had thrown 
 it away. 
 
 " The Stummel looked so shrunk up," said the reckless 
 hussy, " I thought his Majesty did not want it any more, 
 and, fearing a reprimand for allowing dust-catching things 
 to lie around, I put it into my pail and cleaned the ash- 
 tray." 
 
 The Kaiser likes popular applause, huzzahs, and hocks, 
 but the hurrahers must keep at a distance. Unlike his 
 royal grand-uncle and his cousin of Bavaria, he is not a 
 misanthropist, not yet, but his contempt for everybody 
 beyond the pale of his own set " das verdammte Publi- 
 kum " he calls them increases more and more, particularly 
 as to women. 
 
 Each successive year her Majesty and Count Eulen- 
 burg experience greater difficulty in persuading the Kaiser 
 to permit the customary royal procession at the Opera 
 House ball, held during carnival, and even if he consents 
 to " mix " with the " damned public " on that one occa- 
 sion, he usually backs out at the last moment. In 1895 
 and 1896, William chose to emphasise this contemptuous 
 treatment of his Berliners by persistently keeping to the 
 rear of the royal box, so that very few of the thousands 
 ready to smile upon him got a chance to do so. Does not 
 this remind one of mad Ludwig's saying : " The people do 
 not deserve to see the King " ? 
 
 Quite frequently the Kaiser's unapproachableness has 
 led to most disgraceful scenes. So it happened on Whit- 
 Monday, 1894, that the Kaiser refused to attend the 
 celebration of the Lehr und Wehr battalion, opposite the 
 Neues Palais, unless das verfluchte Publikum was pushed 
 
270 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 farther back, whereupon imperial adjutants, Court and 
 House marshals, and generals galore scrambled off in all 
 directions to have the order attended to. At the bidding 
 of the then Kommandant of Potsdam Herr von Biilow, 
 mounted Schutzmdnner and soldiers on guard used their 
 steeds and muskets freely, and next day our grand-master 
 received over a hundred complaints from ladies of the 
 aristocracy, reporting that they had their feet trampled 
 on by grenadiers and their hats and faces brushed by 
 horses' tails eventualities not on the programme so far 
 as their invitations indicated. 
 
 " These hysterics," as he called the protests, afforded 
 William much amusement and pleased him the more, as 
 they seemed to back up his oft-expressed opinion that 
 women are apt to become nuisances on public occasions. 
 
 " I will have none of them by-and-by," he said, and 
 forthwith gave orders that the number of permits ad- 
 mitting members of the weaker sex to the parade-grounds 
 should be gradually lessened. To the spring parade of 
 1896, held in the Lustgarten adjoining the Potsdam Stadt 
 Schloss, only one hundred officers' wives and daughters 
 were invited, these to have their seats on the terrace. 
 
 The review was set for eleven o'clock, but most of the 
 favoured ladies arrived two hours earlier, whereupon they 
 were told by a police lieutenant, standing at the Schloss 
 gate, that his Majesty had given orders to keep the terrace 
 clear until the very moment he appeared on the grounds. 
 Royal servants then took charge of the women and con- 
 ducted them into a vault-like subway, at the farther end 
 of which was a small door leading to the terrace over dirty 
 steps. 
 
 In this dark, damp, and ill-smelling cellar the ladies were 
 locked up until two minutes to eleven, when they were set 
 free to select places for themselves. I was standing behind 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 271 
 
 her Majesty and little Princess Louise at one of the lower 
 windows of the Palace, in full view of the extraordinary 
 spectacle that now ensued. Their Excellencies and Lady- 
 ships came panting up the steps, pushing and jostling, 
 pawing and clawing each other, to gain precedence or 
 room. Here a dowager countess raised her skirts above 
 the knees to climb over a row of chairs, there the young 
 wife of a commanding general tiptoed along the stone 
 rampart, her train over one arm and exposing an incredible 
 
 expanse of hosiery. Freifrau von L 's lace petticoat 
 
 was torn into tatters in her efforts to win an advantageous 
 place there was no such reckless display of limbs and 
 linen since Borel unbalanced his ladies for " La Bascule" 
 The First Guards, standing opposite, shouted with laughter. 
 Her Majesty was furious. Turning to her brother, she 
 said : " After this you will agree with me, I hope, that 
 the Kaiser's dislike for woman's attendance at military 
 spectacles is well founded. I blush for our soldiers, com- 
 pelled to witness such a sight." Poor lads ! they deserved 
 pity, for the Emperor, enraged at the " damned public's " 
 behaviour, continued the drill half-an-hour longer than 
 usual. 
 
 But the Kaiser's animose notions find expression also in 
 measures of political significance. So he changed the dis- 
 trict of Rominton, where he has a hunting-box, into an 
 Eveless Eden by buying out all the farmers who were 
 either married or employed female help, and the once 
 populous village of Theerbude is nowadays half deserted 
 in consequence. Still, a few petticoats remain there, and 
 his Majesty had a new carriage-road built, enabling him 
 to reach his residence "without running the gauntlet of 
 gaping wenches." 
 
 There are many pages in my Munich friend's diary 
 reporting similar measures instituted, or proposed to be 
 
272 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 instituted, by the late King Ludwig ; but the analogy 
 between the cousins is most striking in the infatuation 
 for the stage, common to both, and in the revelations 
 of their superlative egotism the passion to satisfy their 
 appetites, which was Lud wig's, and is William's, only aim 
 in life. The theatrical bee in their bonnets seems to be 
 the same that buzzed in the head of the late Frederick 
 William IV., when mysticism had not the upper hand 
 in that quarter ; but, whether inherited or not, it is one 
 of the stock fixtures of insanity of power. It cost the 
 Romans under Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Elagabalus 
 thousands of millions. Ivan the Terrible was an actor of 
 no inconsiderable power, and even those poor imbeciles, 
 Charles II. and Don Carlos, offsprings of megalomaniacs 
 rather than power-drunk themselves, were much devoted 
 to the spectacle, though probably preferring a " horse with 
 its bowels gored out, or a Jew writhing in the fire," to 
 high tragedy. 
 
 At first, Ludwig was a patron of the drama of the 
 most legitimate order : the classics of German literature 
 appealed mightily to his sense of the ideal, and their fore- 
 most interpreters became his companions. One of them 
 was the tragedian Rohde, the other the Wagner singer 
 Nachbaur. They were granted the unheard-of privilege 
 to tutoyer the King, but there was nothing in Ludwig's re- 
 lations to these men that shunned the light of day. The 
 King's faible for the theatrical approached the abnormal 
 only when his enthusiasm for Richard Wagner degenerated 
 into a cult and when his admiration for the romantic Kainz 
 addressed itself to the person, instead of the artist. As 
 Ludwig's brain became more clouded that is, as his insane 
 big-headedness increased and his perverted tastes pushed 
 to the front more brazenly the former patron of " Egmont, 
 the " Maid of Orleans," and " Marion De Lorme " threw 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 273 
 
 classics to the dogs. He would have only such plays on 
 the royal boards as depicted his own dreams of great- 
 ness, that showed him (or the historic types he thought he 
 impersonated) as the embodiment of earthly power, in 
 the role of conqueror, lawgiver, or wrathful divinity, as 
 arbiter of the world and in similar parts. And to obtain 
 the dramatic products wanted, he hired men to join together 
 comedies and tragedies from anecdotes, court scenes, and 
 incidents which he himself furnished ready rabbeted and 
 pared down, as are the walls and roofs and chimneys and 
 window-casings of those Norwegian wooden houses, sent 
 parcelwise all over Europe, 
 
 The Kaiser's taste in matters theatrical has moved along 
 similar lines of idealism, followed by self-glorification. To 
 begin with : Goethe, Schiller, Hebbel, Grillparzer, then 
 Wildenbruch, Lauff, Biittner. 
 
 During the first four or five years of his reign, his 
 Majesty tried to trundle the Thespian chariot alongside 
 his political and diplomatic tally-ho coaches. His In- 
 tendant of the Royal Play and Opera Houses, Bolko Count 
 Hochberg, the same who once came near being brother-in- 
 law to Herbert Bismarck, was a good enough Major of the 
 Reserves, but as to competing with Oscar Blumenthal, 
 Ludwig Barnay, and the late Pollini that was entirely 
 out of the question. " I will let him run the financial end, 
 and look after the artistic department myself," said his 
 Majesty, shortly after the Court left off mourning for his 
 father and grandfather. And he was as good as his word. 
 He read plays, or had them read to him, attended re- 
 hearsals, and helped some of his Prince Wilhelm's ex- 
 favourites to parts to which they were by no means entitled. 
 The programmes were his, the insults offered to modern 
 playwrights were of his making, as was the annual deficit. 
 
 In 1890, Ernst von Wildenbruch, known as the author 
 
 s 
 
274 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 of a tiresome but ultra-patriotic play, " Die Quitzows" 
 sprung into sudden prominence at Court. The Kaiser 
 had at last found a laureate " capable of interpreting 
 Brandenburg-Prussian history in dramatic form " ; through 
 him he would " talk to his people, recalling the Hohen- 
 zollerns' past greatness and foreshadowing deeds of future 
 grandeur." 
 
 Wildenbruch became a regular visitor to the Kaiser's 
 study. They planned and declaimed together ; the author 
 wrote tirades by the yard after the Kaiser's dictation, 
 and William corrected and improved the manuscript. So 
 " The New Master " was born, a drama glorifying the Great 
 Elector and incidentally suggesting that the Emperor was a 
 man of the same stamp. 
 
 It was the first step on the inclined plane. Branden- 
 burg history written by Brandenburgers now became 
 the watchword. For, of course, " Wildenbruch is one of 
 us," l else how would he come by his genius ? 
 
 " At the head of the Wagnerian movement there walked, 
 as is fit, an insane King " (Nordau) William and Ernst 
 arm in arm, lead the avant garde of German imperial 
 letters. 
 
 In the annals of our Court, the winter of 1896-1897 
 lives as the dreadful period of the Emperor's pregnancy 
 with " Willehalm"" Willehalm " being a festival play, 
 conceived and written by the literary Zweibund in com- 
 memoration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of 
 William I. (March 22). There was not a member of the 
 upper household who did not know large portions of it by 
 heart long before its production, so incessantly were the 
 words drummed into our ears. " Mein Herr Grossvater" 
 
 1 Wildenbruch is a grandson of Prince Louis of Prussia and of Henrietta 
 Fromm. The name has previously been borne by the natural offspring of 
 Prussian Princes. - 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 275 
 
 " Wilhelm der Grosse," were the sole topics of conversa- 
 tion by Kaiser and Kaiserin, and his Majesty persisted in 
 giving whole pages of monologue and bits of the dialogue 
 at all times, either to point out passages written by him- 
 self, or to illustrate the beauty of Wildenbruch's versifica- 
 tion improved by him. 
 
 The last ten days preceding the festival William divided 
 between attending rehearsals and instructing the chief per- 
 formers privately at Count Hochberg's Berlin residence. 
 In consequence, my mistress saw little of her husband 
 save at bed-time, when, she told Countess Brockdorfi, he 
 was still full of the grand drama and the trouble he had 
 had with the actors and actresses to make them understand 
 their parts. 
 
 There was Fraulein Lindner, for instance, cast to play 
 the "Soul." She had actually smiled at a certain passage 
 of her monologue. " That made the Kaiser wild," de- 
 clared her Majesty. " * Fraulein Lindner,' he cried, ' by 
 an expression like that, you are liable to spoil my whole 
 play. The German soul, I want you to understand, is 
 grave, stern, tragic almost. Try to picture it as it is 
 written on my own face. Then you cannot help being 
 successful. And as to your costume, it must resemble a 
 train of thought it must be an uninterrupted, flowing 
 line. There must be neither girdle nor corsets.' ' 
 
 " She will look like the soul of a miller's wife, turned 
 into a big bag of flour," said Princess Feodore of Meiningen, 
 who has inherited some of her mother's wit and all her 
 Royal Highness's inclination for mockeiy. 
 
 " Willehalm " was performed, and seven hundred and 
 fifty of the Kaiser's one thousand invited guests fled before 
 the drama was half over. This festival play, dedicated to 
 the simplest of kings, proved nothing short of Byzantinism 
 run wild. As Louis XL, " least majestic in all his actions, 
 
276 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 his manners and his exterior, a most ordinary man, dress- 
 ing like the meanest of the people, who gave audiences 
 seated on a broken-down chair with a dirty cur upcn his 
 knees " as Louis was the first ruler riot a Roman Em- 
 peror to whom the title of " Majesty " was accorded, so 
 had Bismarck's and Moltke's old master divine honours 
 thrust upon him, though certainly the last to have claimed, 
 deserved, or accepted them. 
 
 " Tiresome and grotesque," said the critics ; " mes- 
 chugge " (slightly touched) was the dictum of vox populi, 
 that did not know how near it came to be vox Dei. But 
 his Majesty's friends, who had followed the genesis of this 
 play, shook their heads sadly, and many had resort to the 
 trite phrase : " I told you so." In the Kaiser's deliberate 
 aim to place William I. on unsurpassable heights of great- 
 ness, they recognised the craving for self-glorification that 
 threw Prussia into political chaos in the fifties and bank- 
 rupted the Wittelsbachs twenty-five years later. 
 
 " His Herr Grossvater be blowed it's the present 
 anointed who clamours for recognition as a demi-god," 
 wrote a certain Russian diplomat to St. Petersburg, and I 
 doubt if the situation could have been more tersely 
 expressed. The anonymous correspondents, too, who had 
 become notably reticent since Madame Herbette's depar- 
 ture, revived their notorious practices, quoting whole pages 
 from Quidde's " Caligula " in support of the theory that 
 Cesarean madness sat upon the throne of Frederick the 
 Great. Here are some of their deadly parallels : 
 
 " Caligula used to call his senators up from bed that 
 they might see him dance. * Loloki ' keeps us all night at 
 the Opera House to hear him declaim about his grand- 
 father's impossible virtues and about the superlative states- 
 manship of Bismarck's employer, charging us a fat entrance 
 fee in addition, 1 ' 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 277 
 
 " Caligula was so crazy on the subject of the theatre 
 that occasionally he took part in the performances him- 
 self. ' Loloki ' has not yet appeared on any stage, save 
 informally in the concert-room, as band-master, but he 
 turns good actors into spiritless automatons by his drill and 
 interference, and he writes plays, which is worse." 
 
 " Caligula owned a thousand different showy dresses, 
 and changed his garments half-a-dozen times a day. 
 4 Loloki ' prides himself upon his arsenals full of different 
 uniforms, and wears out a dozen valets per day dressing 
 and undressing him." 
 
 " Caligula was inordinately fond of variety performers, 
 especially indecent ones. Whether he ever commanded 
 army officers and Princes to appear before him in parts 
 such as ' Loloki ' ordered the Hereditary Prince of Sachsen- 
 Coburg-Gotha and officers of the Guard Fusileers to assume 
 at the smoking concert in the Fusileers' mess during the 
 winter of 1896 is doubtful. Suetonius " (the biographer of 
 the first twelve Caesars) " gives no news on that point, but 
 then there were probably no Sisters Barrison in the first 
 half of the first century, so that Caligula missed the trick 
 of seeing a royal Prince disrobe and ride a horse woman- 
 fashion." 
 
 " The Roman Emperor appointed old soldiers to the 
 most important civil offices. Was Podbielski ever any- 
 thing besides ' an old soldier ' before ' Loloki ' made him 
 Postmaster-General ? " 
 
 " Caligula gave all officials of his Court military rank. 
 4 Loloki ' has turned all his goldsticks into martinets." 
 
 <k Caligula forced parents to witness the execution of 
 their children. c Loloki,' in oft-repeated speeches, pre- 
 pares his soldiers for the feast ot shooting down or running 
 through their parents, brothers, and sisters." 
 
 A witty criticism of the Kaiser's ability as a playwright 
 
278 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 
 
 was passed by the Hereditary Princess of Hohenzollern in 
 a letter to a friend : 
 
 " J'ai vu Der Neue Herr 
 
 Helas ! 
 
 Et aprs Willehalm 
 Hola ! " 
 
 In September, Willehalm was followed by another 
 festival play, which the Kaiser wrote in conjunction with 
 Captain von Lauff. Produced at Wiesbaden, in honour of 
 the visit of their Italian Majesties, the drama elicited but 
 pathological interest, where it called not for guffaws or 
 pious, deferential wonderment. And according to some 
 members of the Court society permitted to see William's 
 third (or fourth) yet unpublished play, " Deutscher Michel" 
 that is another changeling out of wind and bombast, sired 
 by egotism, only more loose-jointed, more rambling, more 
 audacious in the treatment of the omnipresent Ego. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 EXAMPLES OF WILLIAM II.'S EGOTISM THE EMPEROR AND 
 LORD LONSDALE THE QUESTION OF L&SE-MAJESTE AND 
 MEGALOMANIA THE EMPEROR'S LOVE OF BEAUTIFUL 
 HANDS. 
 
 GEORGE III. found a louse on his plate at dinner and 
 ordered his whole household shorn, men and women alike; 
 that was brutal, and tyrannical, and every tyrant has in 
 him the making of a complete egoist. In the case alluded 
 to, the egoist turned madman every few years. Yet, when 
 King George first uttered the maxim : " Having no wish 
 save the prosperity of my dominions, I must look upon all 
 who would not heartily assist me as bad men as well as 
 bad subjects," no one had the temerity to say that his 
 excessive love of self was proof of a deranged mind. 
 Frederick William IV. thought exactly like George III., but 
 had not stamina enough to act accordingly. His grand- 
 nephew (Ludwig) was his alter ego in that respect, and his 
 surviving grand-nephew (William), improving on the British 
 ancestor, adopted Caligula's mottoes : " There is but one 
 master, one king," and " Let them hate me, if they but 
 fear me." 
 
 The last phrase he used frequently in his public speeches 
 during the first half-dozen years of his reign ; after the 
 appearance of Quidde's pamphlet, he dropped both, to 
 avoid odious comparisons, and went back to George's 
 petulant screech : " I wish you well ; therefore, if you do 
 not agree with me, as scoundrels and traitors I will flog 
 
 you into obedience," 
 
 279 
 
286 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Long years of acquaintance with the Kaiser have con- 
 vinced me that he is morally irresponsible for many of his 
 countless acts of assumption, injustice, incivility, and brow- 
 beating. He cannot help them. Taking interest in no 
 one but his ego, and viewing society (so far as it does not 
 directly contribute to his momentary comfort) as something 
 not to be reckoned with, he seems to be unconscious of 
 the existence of any one besides himself. 
 
 When he goes riding with his wife, and some accident 
 to her mount or harness delays her Majesty on the road, 
 William proceeds to his destination in the most uncon- 
 cerned fashion, taking his gentlemen, gendarmes, and 
 grooms with him ; neither does he lessen his pace to give 
 her Majesty a chance to catch up with the party. " Dona " 
 has her own gentlemen and ladies. Let them look after her. 
 
 Maybe the Kaiser admires a woman he meets in society, 
 or the wife of a newly appointed official. He will say so 
 without reserve, extravagantly praising her good points, 
 if she has delicate hands or fine bosoms. That the Empress, 
 upon whose good graces a woman's position at Court largely 
 depends, will turn against the favoured one, strike her 
 name from the visitors' list, and give her the cold shoulder, 
 if ever afterward they meet, does not concern him in the 
 least. He seems to think that honour grows again, like 
 hair. 
 
 There was Fraulein von Bocklin, for instance, who 
 came up to the Kaiser's standard of beauty as the central 
 figure of some tableaux vivants, arranged- tor the benefit of 
 the Paul Gerhard Stift, in January, 1891. How he raved 
 about her hands and feet, her arms and shoulders. Photo- 
 graphs of the young lady adorned his study, private bed- 
 room, and the audience-chamber, but Fraulein herself 
 never crossed the threshold of the Schloss or Palais, though 
 Count Eulenburg proposed her for years successively at 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 281 
 
 every festive occasion. Auguste Victoria simply put her 
 foot down, and Frdulein von Bocklin's social success was 
 a thing of the past. Vilma Parlaghy, the painter, ex- 
 perienced something similar. The Kaiser had advertised 
 this woman like a circus, had given her gold medals in 
 opposition to the findings of the Committee on Fine Arts 
 of the Berlin Academy, and, finally, in the winter of 1892- 
 1893, invited her to paint his portrait. She came to the 
 castle, primed for her chef-cFceuvre, but what a surprise I 
 The Empress appeared at her husband's side at every 
 sitting, and watched madame so closely as to make it im- 
 possible for the artist to do herself justice. I have to 
 laugh every time I think of the astonished face Vilma made 
 when I preceded their Majesties into the studio. 
 
 That the Kaiser's egotism leads him to regard all state 
 resources as his personal property has already been men- 
 tioned. Everything is his. " My army," " my navy," 
 " my ports," " my fortresses," " my funds " (meaning the 
 state treasury), " my minister of war," " my chancellor, J> 
 are expressions we hear as often as "my horse," "my 
 boys," or " my speech." In the first week of August, 
 1896, when his Majesty suddenly returned from his North- 
 land trip, an officer of the Feldjdgers, whose name I have 
 forgotten, was invited to second breakfast. " Sehr schnei- 
 dig, this Herr Lieutenant," said William to her Majesty 
 across the table, " but he came near ruining one of my 
 torpedo-boats in trying to catch up with the Hohenzollern, 
 on the way from Maeraak to Bergen. If he damages 
 another of my vessels, he will have to pay for her." 
 
 Last year I heard William say at Wilhelmshohe to his 
 former teacher, Dr. Kius : " Your chief aim must be to 
 inoculate into the rising youth the sentiment that the 
 greatness of the empire depends upon the progressive 
 strengthening of my navy.*' 
 
282 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 There are certainly many reasons why old " Uncle 
 Chlodwig " should be allowed to retire ; but who, outside 
 the inner circle, could guess the chief cause of his re- 
 tention in office ? " The Prince Regent of Bayern and 
 the Kings of Wiirtemberg and Sachsen assume the right 
 to be heard before I select my new Chancellor es ist zu 
 toll" (it's downright madness). "Next, his Grace of 
 Pyrmont will undertake to run my government." This 
 is his Majesty's own explanation, which, of course, does 
 not efface the better and more likely one set forth in a 
 previous chapter. 
 
 William's egotism even betrays itself in his generosity. 
 He was fairly beaming with enthusiasm when he informed 
 the Court, after the Paris Bazaar fire, that he sent his 
 cheque for ten thousand francs to the Relief Committee. 
 " All the world will talk about it can man do more for 
 a national enemy ? " spoke his eyes. 
 
 In the evening, even before the newspapers had the 
 story, a despatch arrived from Count Philli : " They will 
 haul your Imperial and Royal Majesty to Paris in a 
 thousand triumphal cars in 1900 ! " But when, a month 
 afterward, Wiirtemberg was devastated by floods, the 
 Emperor had neither money nor words of sympathy for 
 the stricken ones. And for the military aid, furnished to 
 the inundated Silesians in the fall of 1897, the towns and 
 villages were promptly taxed : so many pioneer troops, so 
 many marks for food, forage, extra pay, and railway fares. 
 The communes protested : " Extra pay is out of the 
 question. What is the use of having soldiers, if they 
 do not come to the citizens' succour freely and without 
 claims for remuneration ? " 
 
 " Don't dispute," wrote back the Minister of War ; 
 " the men did extra work, they deserve extra pay." But 
 if five hundred men are ordered to improve his Majesty's 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 283 
 
 hunting-grounds, as they did at Rominton last year, that 
 is called military " exercise," and compensation is out of 
 the question. 
 
 In August, 1895, the Court moved to Berlin, and it 
 was given out simultaneously that his Majesty's friend, an 
 English gentleman of the highest connections, would spend 
 some time with us ; namely, the Earl of Lonsdale, or Lord 
 Lonsdale as he is usually called, the same with whom the 
 Emperor stayed at Lowther Castle the previous summer. 
 Ah, the stories of English munificence revived by this 
 piece of intelligence ! Our Master of the Horse, Graf 
 Wedel, estimated that the pleasure of entertaining the 
 Kaiser damaged his Lordship's bank account to the tune 
 of a million marks, or more, and Count Eulenburg, who 
 was not very enthusiastic about that English visit while 
 riding to the hounds near Penrith his hunter threw him, 
 and poor Augustus has been suffering from headaches ever 
 since even Eulenburg had only words of praise for the 
 noble Britisher, sentiments which the other gentlemen of 
 his Majesty's suite, Adjutant-General von Plessen and 
 Count Metternich, the latter a Councillor of our London 
 Embassy, fully endorsed. They all expressed a willing- 
 ness to make it as pleasant as possible for Lord Londsale, 
 the only dissenting voice being that of the Empress, who 
 could not forget that Lonsdale had introduced her husband 
 to the many beautiful English women whose praises he 
 sang for weeks after his return. 
 
 Lord Lonsdale's invitation was for the Pomeranian 
 manoeuvres ; but he was to come a week before their 
 commencement, to get a taste of German town and country 
 life. Theatre parties, parades, excursions by land and 
 water, were planned for the amusement of the great man, 
 and everything pointed toward a round of pleasant days 
 up to a few hours before his Lordship arrived. On that 
 
284 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 morning my mistress asked me to inspect his rooms and 
 report to her any possible improvement that the House- 
 marshal or housekeeper might have overlooked. I under- 
 stood that the Englishman was to have Prince Henry's old 
 quarters, and thither I went. To my utter astonishment, 
 I found a number of servants engaged in covering up the 
 furniture and removing flowers and plants. 
 
 " What does this mean ? " I asked of the head footman. 
 
 " His Excellency has just sent word that the lord will 
 be lodged at the Hotel Bristol. So these rooms are to be 
 closed up again." 
 
 " Impossible," I said. " Are you sure there is no mis- 
 take ? Her Majesty knows nothing of it." 
 
 " Gnadigste Grafin may believe me that we asked not 
 once, but half-a-dozen times. Think of the tips we 
 are going to miss. It will be a loss of a thousand marks to 
 us footmen alone." 
 
 Her Majesty did not know what to say to my informa- 
 tion. However, the reception accorded to Lord Lonsdale 
 by the Kaiser and Kaiserin was pleasant enough. 
 
 At the Sedan parade, a few days later, we women of 
 the Court looked in vain for Lord Lonsdale. He was to be 
 in the Emperor's suite, but in the long line of glittering 
 uniforms no foreigner was discernible. Finally, one of 
 our Anglomaniacs discovered his Lordship in the second 
 or third row, halting at some distance behind the Em- 
 peror, the King of Wurtemberg, and a host of small-fry 
 Princes. 
 
 At the state dinner, held in the White Hall at 5.30 in 
 the afternoon, the same distinction of rank was ostenta- 
 tiously upheld ; his Lordship had to sit down with a lot 
 of cheap goldsticks and councillors, and when he came 
 to look over his invitation for the grand tattoo in the 
 Lustgarten, he found it entitled him to standing room 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 285 
 
 on the Schloss terrace. There the proud Englishman 
 stood with some of his friends from the banquet and a 
 lot of officers' wives and daughters, listening to the music. 
 I never would have believed it, had I not seen him my- 
 self. If he had raised his eyes, he could have seen their 
 Majesties of Germany, of Wiirtemberg, and of Saxony on 
 the balcony above, holding tea-cups in their hands. We 
 were having supper in the state apartments. 
 
 I beckoned the House-marshal, Baron von Lyncker, to 
 my side. " Was his Lordship not invited ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " But he is our guest." 
 
 " Y-e-s," drawled the Baron ; " still, here we have 
 several Kings and no end of Royal Highnesses to look 
 after." 
 
 " Surely, the Kaiser will be furious at the oversight." 
 
 " No oversight, I assure you. If his Majesty had 
 wanted him to tea, as well as the banquet, he would have 
 said so. He went over the list with Count Eulenburg more 
 than once." 
 
 In Stettin and during the whole course of the manoeuvres, 
 Lord Lonsdale was treated in the same way as in Berlin : 
 the Kaiser was charming to him when they met, but their 
 meetings were few and far between, his Lordship being 
 always lodged at some distance from his host's head- 
 quarters and depended for his company on anybody but 
 the high-born gentleman who had been his guest at 
 Lowther Castle. He enjoyed the benefits of the imperial 
 livery so far as carriages and mounts went, but the privi- 
 lege accorded to every guest of distinction at our Court 
 regular attendance by Kammerdiener and footmen of the 
 royal service was denied him. And why did the Kaiser 
 set the laws of hospitality at defiance ? 
 
 Shortly be lore the Englishman's arrival in 'the capital, 
 
286 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 William learned from Herr von Zedlitz-Triitzschler, Lieu- 
 tenant in the First Guards, that Lord Lonsdale, when con- 
 versation had turned upon the claims of the European 
 nobility, had remarked that he thought himself quite as 
 good as the King of Wurtemberg. It happened during 
 the stay of the imperial party at Lowther Castle. 
 
 " A simple English nobleman as good as the King of 
 Wurtemberg ! " cried his Majesty. This insult to a 
 monarch was a direct blow at his self-infatuation. His ego 
 was mightily worked up. " Have the goodness to call 
 Moltke." Zedlitz was dismissed with a wave of the hand. 
 
 These were his Majesty's instructions to the adjutant : 
 " Inform Count Eulenburg that during the whole of his 
 stay Lord Lonsdale must be lodged at a hotel. We have 
 room for him neither in the Schloss, nor in the royal castle 
 at Stettin. He is to be treated with the utmost courtesy, 
 of course, but the fact must not be lost sight of that he 
 is a private gentleman, like Mr. Poultney Bigelow, for 
 instance, nothing more. All Court and military officials 
 must be advised of these instructions at once." 
 
 A certain Hamburg editor, who spoke disrespectfully of 
 kingship, was also treated to an exhibition of the Kaiser's 
 holy zeal for avenging affronts upon the royal dignity. 
 Like most of his colleagues throughout Europe, the Han- 
 sastaedter had printed racy accounts of the King of Belgium's 
 escapades. Thunder and Doria ! the paper had scarcely 
 reached Berlin when a suit for lese-majeste was brought by 
 the public prosecutor ! 
 
 " I will prove my assertions," said the journalist. 
 
 " Such evidence is inadmissible ; the intention to hold 
 royalty up to ridicule and contempt alone counts." 
 
 The newspaper man got ten months. It reminds one 
 of Pedro Arbues's dictum : " Innocent or not, let the 
 Jew be fried." 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 287 
 
 It has been charged that the Kaiser's hostile attitude 
 toward Greece during her late war was primarily dictated 
 by his desire to oblige a handful of Berlin and Frankfurt 
 stock-jobbers ; the deal, if there was one, had, of course, 
 nothing to do with the Guelph Fund story, mentioned else- 
 where in this volume, but those in daily attendance upon 
 their Majesties are more correctly informed. If Sophie 
 of Prussia, now Duchess of Sparta, had not become an 
 apostate, and incidentally if my mistress had not insisted 
 upon horseback exercise and wearing awfully tight corsets 
 during her advanced pregnancy, the Empress would pro- 
 bably have gone her full time with the child subsequently 
 named Joachim. As it happened, the boy was pre- 
 maturely born during a fit of passion in which her Majesty 
 indulged upon hearing the news that her sister-in-law 
 was about to embrace the Greek faith. Little Joachim 
 is a weakling, given to epilepsy, and this condition the 
 Kaiser charges to his sister's " bad conduct." Ergo, 
 when her adopted country got into trouble, William never 
 stopped to think that by hostile demonstrations he im- 
 perilled the throne upon which a Prussian Princess was 
 to sit. His insulted self-love alone had a voice in the 
 politics of the day, and its cry was for revenge. While 
 her Majesty, whose Lutheran fanaticism is easily aroused, 
 talked of " God's chastisement about to overtake Sophie." 
 William openly avowed that he meant to bring the Duchess 
 of Sparta to her knees. " I will have no rebels in my 
 family," he said. That, while engaged in the pleasant 
 pastime of correcting an obstreperous relative, he had 
 occasion to serve his friend, the Sultan, was an after- 
 thought no less satisfactory to the imperial Captain 
 Bobadil than the opportunities offered for thrusting a 
 thorn into Czar Nicholas's side, for pulling at the heart- 
 strings of venerable King Christian, for enraging " Uncle 
 
288 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Bertie," and for giving his mother renewed proof of the 
 full extent of her impotence. 
 
 This passion for browbeating, for humbling one's de- 
 pendents, and for striking terror into the hearts of the 
 weak, is one of the characteristics of Cesarean insanity. 
 It moved Caligula to wild laughter when, looking up from 
 table, he observed two consuls on the other side of the 
 board. 
 
 " What may provoke Thy Divinity's mirth ? " 
 
 " The thought that it requires but a movement of 
 my thumb to have your heads take the place of the boars' 
 on yonder platter." 
 
 The craze to " show off " is egoism on its hind legs, 
 a very different brand from the harmless amusement 
 William finds in pronouncing toasts to his grandmother 
 in the words : "I drink to the health of the Queen of 
 Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, Chief of 
 my First Guard Dragoons" or even from the speech the 
 Kaiser made in deposing Count Waldersee as Chief of 
 the General Staff, when he insinuated that, by removing 
 him to the province "where her Majesty, the Empress, 
 first saw the light," royal honours (instead of a slight) 
 were conferred upon him. 
 
 Some of our courtiers excuse all the Kaiser does on 
 the plea of impulsiveness, a condition which they take to 
 be an attribute of genius. 
 
 But woe to others assuming like privileges 1 There 
 was Nicholas, for instance, now Czar of all the Russias, 
 but merely a gay young gentleman when a visitor at our 
 Court on the occasion of Princess Marguerite's wedding, 
 in January, 1893. No wonder a week of state banquets 
 and parades/and parades and state banquets, made him 
 long for less formal amusements. On the evening of 
 January 27, when the Kaiser and Kaiserin and the rest of 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 289 
 
 the nation's great were expecting his Imperial Highness 
 at the palace of Count Schouvalow, then Russian Am- 
 bassador, he sent his regrets, adding that he was enjoy- 
 ing himself so hugely, it would be a shame to break up 
 his party. As we sat down without the guest of honour, 
 William's face was a study : wrath, tempered by sur- 
 prise, was pictured in every line of it. He showed his 
 annoyance, yet seemed to be incredulous of the slight 
 offered. As her Majesty expressed it, he thought for a 
 time it was all a joke ; that any one in his sober senses 
 should dare to affront him, he refused to believe. How- 
 ever, even before Roman punch was served, everybody 
 in the festive chambers knew that the Czarovitch was 
 at Duke Giinther's in the Palais Pourtales, whither he 
 had gone at one o'clock, and where a motley array of rakes, 
 French marquises, and dancing-girls used to convene. 
 They had a great time, those two royal bachelors and 
 their friends, and when, finally, his Imperial Highness's 
 adjutant reminded him that it was necessary to prepare 
 for the supper at the Embassy, Nicholas vowed that he 
 preferred an hour with his Mignon to an eternity with 
 all the German Emperors and Empresses that ever lived. 
 At the concert, I heard Count Schouvalow whisper to 
 his wife : " The Kaiser insists upon reporting this business 
 to the Czar, with all details, the Empress Frederick's 
 protest and my own notwithstanding. As for Duke 
 Giinther, he told her Majesty that he will kick him out 
 of the army." 
 
 The Duke of Schleswig, accordingly, got his walking- 
 papers and Czar Alexander a furious letter complaining 
 of his son's disregard for the decencies of life and de- 
 nouncing his proclivities for vice. But twenty-one 
 months later they carried Alexander to the Peter-Paul 
 Cathedral a dead man, and Nicholas, the slurred and 
 
 T 
 
290 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 despised, mounted the throne of the Northern Empire. 
 The period of uncertainty and anxiety respecting the 
 Russo-German entente, that followed, until at last the 
 Breslau meeting was arranged, must be still fresh in the 
 reading public's memory. 
 
 The other incident alluded to happened at the banquet 
 held in honour of Li Hung Chang at the Neues Palais in 
 June, 1896. Toward the close of the repast, Gun-charger 
 Rieger, on duty behind the Emperor's chair, handed his 
 master a despatch. To tear open the envelope, read 
 the message, and burst out laughing, was the work of a 
 moment. These strange antics they must have been 
 strange indeed in the eyes of a Chinese the Bismarck 
 of the yellow jacket and the three-eyed peacock's feather 
 viewed with wonderment, and William, observing Li's 
 looks, ordered the interpreter to inform the Viceroy that 
 his, the Kaiser's, merriment was caused by the news of 
 an important engagement of marriage. Now Li wants 
 to know everything, whether it be the bottom of a magnum, 
 or a family affair. So he sent word that he would be obliged 
 if his Majesty cared to tell him which of his friends had 
 made a fool of himself. 
 
 In answer the Kaiser handed the interpreter the tele- 
 gram. It announced the betrothal of the Prince of 
 Naples to Princess Helene of Montenegro. 
 
 Soon afterward the dinner came to an end, and Li, 
 still puzzling, heard the Kaiser say a few words to Count 
 Eulenburg which made that gentleman laugh even more 
 immoderately than the Kaiser had done. " See what the 
 joke is, and be sure to get a satisfactory answer at last," 
 demanded the Viceroy impatiently. 
 
 " The Kaiser " this was the answer brought back 
 " told Count Eulenburg that the grandmother of Princess 
 Helene of Montenegro had been a peddler of chestnuts." 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 291 
 
 What his Majesty really said was this : " Der ihre 
 Grossmutter hat noch mit Kastanien auf der Strasse vagirend 
 gehandelt" (This one's grandmother was but a street 
 vagabond, peddling chestnuts.) His Excellency himself 
 is authority for this corrected version, which he related 
 to her Majesty and some of her ladies the same afternoon. 
 
 The news from Rome was an awful blow to my 
 mistress, for up to then she had never given up hope that 
 Victor Emmanuel would marry her sister Feo. The 
 Kaiser's brutal joke helped her over the embarrassing 
 situation. 
 
 " An excellent bon mot," she exclaimed ; " it shall have 
 a place in my diary." 
 
 If the saying had but remained between the covers 
 of that precious volume, the key of which rests on her 
 Majesty's heart ! But it was thought good enough to 
 become a " winged word " among the friends of the im- 
 perial couple, and of course found its way to the Quirinal. 
 Since then the alliance between Germany and Italy has 
 practically ceased to exist. 
 
 As a flash of genius, too, those amiable pick-thanks 
 praised the Kaiser's feat at Darmstadt (November, 1897)* 
 when, standing on the castle balcony with the Czar, he 
 suddenly placed his arm about Nicholas's shoulders, thereby 
 giving Herr Feisler, the imperial photographer-in-ordinary r 
 on watch below, a chance for a sensational snapshot. 
 Feisler promptly turned the negative over to a Berlin 
 speculator, and soon the show-windows offered ocular 
 proof " that the relations between Berlin and St. Peters- 
 burg were of the most cordial character." But when 
 the pictures reached Muscovite dealers, ten days later, 
 a decree of confiscation went forth ; the photographs 
 were pronounced apocryphal, and the official telegraph 
 and news companies received orders to " display this 
 
292 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 piece of intelligence and give wide publicity to the fact 
 that a fraud had been practised upon the public." 
 
 Then there was that greatest of Berlin military spec- 
 tacles, the annual spring parade on the Tempelhofer Feld 
 (June i), which in all sorts of weather attracts Berliners 
 by the hundred thousand, besides tens of thousands of 
 visiting foreigners. Last year (1897) * ne heavens were 
 most"^ considerate, a beautiful, clear sky, neither ex- 
 cessive heat nor annoying dust, the masses promised 
 themselves most elaborate pageants. Everybody was 
 quite sure that not only the usual two, but at least three, 
 passings by of the Guard Corps would take place. But 
 the reverse happened. The troops had no sooner filed 
 by their Majesties once, than the Kaiser delivered a short 
 critique, and that done, trotted off the field, amid ominous 
 silence and facing a most disrespectful populace. By 
 the time the gala cpaches with the ladies of the Court 
 were driven along the lines, however, the public had 
 recovered its voice. 
 
 . " If they can't attend a review together without fight- 
 ing, let her stay at home." " Why did she not get off 
 her horse and into her carriage ? " " Next year we will 
 all bring a box of cold-cream along." With such and 
 similar remarks, coined for our benefit, we were bombarded 
 as we slowly wended our way to the spot where her 
 Majesty's landau was halting. 
 
 " Heavens," I said, " they are talking of the Empress ! " 
 
 " Is it possible ? " replied Countess B , with a little 
 
 shudder. 
 
 When, finally, we caught up with her Majesty's suite, 
 the reason for the abrupt ending of the parade was learned. 
 After drawing up in line, the Kaiser had eyed his wife's 
 uniform and accoutrement critically, and missed the 
 special decoration given her by Queen Victoria, portraits 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 293 
 
 of Victoria and Albert, surrounded by a chain of brilliants. 
 He was furious. " How could you lose that precious 
 jewel ? " he demanded, disregarding the presence of his 
 adjutants ; u next you will drop the Regent l in some 
 gutter, and I shall have to make good the loss." 
 
 "I do not know," stuttered the Empress. " Frau 
 von Haake fastened it to my breast." 
 
 " Haake did ? Well, I just long to give her a piece of 
 my mind ! " And in order to jump on that miserable 
 maid with as little delay as possible, the puissant war- 
 lord cut in two the proudest military review of the year, 
 to which Princes by the score and all the Ambassadors 
 and Ministers had been invited, while half the town had 
 turned out in its honour ! And Paul of Russia was called 
 a madman for running a mile to cane a soldier ! The 
 ornament, by the way, was returned by an honest work- 
 man, who found it in the grass and who got less than 
 the legal 2 fee as reward, and no recompense for his 
 travelling expenses to Potsdam. 
 
 " One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, 
 and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime 
 again." After chasing, Paul-fashion, from the parade 
 to wrangle with a servant, his Majesty sat down to dedicate 
 a number of Bibles for the new Berlin garrison church, 
 inscribing them as follows : 
 
 " I will walk among you and will be your God and ye 
 shall be my people." " Ye shall walk in all me ways 
 which I have commanded you." " Without me ye can 
 
 1 A large diamond, the finest of the Prussian crown-jewels. The crown- 
 jewels are only lent to the incumbent of the throne, who has to make losses 
 good. 
 
 2 In April, 1898, the man brought suit against the imperial treasury on 
 that account. Case yet undecided. 
 
 3 This mot from Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason" (published 1795) seems 
 to be the original of Napoleon's remark after his return from the disastrous 
 Russian campaign : " From the sublime to the ridiculous, there is but one step." 
 
294 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 do nothing." He signed each sentence " Wilhelm, Im- 
 perator, Rex" and omitted quotation-marks, as well as 
 book, chapter, and verse, by which to indicate the origin 
 of the phrases. 1 " They shall stand by themselves as 
 expressions of my royal will," he said to her Majesty. 
 
 In September followed the " divine-appointment " 
 speech at Coblentz, and in December Prince Heinrich's 
 declaration of self-abasement : "I will carry forth the 
 evangel of your Majesty's sacred person ; I will preach 
 it to those who want to hear it and also to those who 
 don't want to hear it." If this be not progressive big- 
 headedness, it would be idle mockery ; yet no one ac- 
 quainted with William and his ways will consider the 
 alternative for a moment. On the contrary, it is a well- 
 authenticated fact that his Majesty has taken Vespasian's 
 death-bed jest " Vae, pitto deus fio " (Methinks I am 
 becoming a god) in brutal earnest from the beginning 
 of his reign. I have now before me a copy of a despatch 
 his Majesty sent to Prince Bismarck from Constantinople 
 on November 9, 1889, all the ladies and gentlemen 
 of the Court, not in the Kaiser's suite on that occasion, 
 having received fac-similes of the message, to keep them 
 posted on the imperial party's progress. 
 
 " We had an excellent voyage from Stamboul," says 
 the imperial navigator, " weather splendid, colour-effects 
 and illuminations on land and sea surpassing anything 
 heretofore known. Yesterday the air was so clear, I 
 saw the peaks and the continent of Pelagomes all at 
 once, a sight which never before greeted mortal 
 eyes." 
 
 Here we find " Prussia's ally of Rossbach and Denne- 
 witz " thus his Majesty usually refers to the Almighty 
 
 1 The phrases are transcribed from Leviticus xxvi. 12; Deuteronomy v. 33; 
 John xv. 5. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 295 
 
 engaged in shifting clouds and manipulating the heavenly 
 lights to give William an unheard-of treat ; but with all 
 that, the Kaiser really indulged in unwonted humility 
 by describing his optics as mortal, for in his e very-day 
 speech, as well as in public addresses, he claims to be 
 all-seeing. Thus he warned the marines at Kiel, on 
 November 23, 1893, to behave when visiting foreign 
 countries, as his " eye was watching them, whether at 
 home or abroad, by day or by night." 
 
 " More wonders," said one of the Emperor's sisters ; 
 " I suppose he will next invite Luna to sleep with him, 
 like a certain Roman Emperor, who regarded himself as a 
 god." 
 
 In the last week of June, 1897, my mistress received 
 most alarming news from Heligoland. " In the course 
 of some manoauvres," said Count Waldersee's cipher de- 
 spatch, " the Kaiser narrowly escaped drowning. For 
 God's sake, beg his Majesty to desist from going to sea 
 in heavy weather." 
 
 As a matter of fact, there had been no naval exercises ; 
 William got a wetting while attempting to cross from 
 the Hohenzollern to the Hamburg Liner Columbia in a 
 raging storm. His unreasonable love for having every- 
 thing his own way led him to attempt the impossible at 
 sea, as Suetonius tells us Caligula did before him. The 
 Caesar, we gather from that chronicler, liked to embark 
 during tempestuous weather, " merely to show his prowess 
 and in order to persuade the masses that he exercised a 
 certain influence over the elements." The people of 
 his household were forced to accompany him, and one 
 of them, named Silanus, was executed for absenting him- 
 self from the dangerous outings. It looks almost as if 
 the fear of sharing Silanus's fate (in moderated form) 
 had something to do with Waldersee's appeal to the 
 
296 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Empress, for " Uncle Alfred," too, swallowed a bucketful 
 of water on the occasion when William got his fill. 
 
 The Kaiser's divine-appointment speech at Coblentz, 
 August 31, was a fitting resume of his claims as God's 
 viceroy, repeated over and over again since that i5th of 
 June, 1888, when, in a "general order," he pronounced 
 the astounding notion that he was " accountable foi the 
 army's honour and success to his grandfather," who was 
 then dead one hundred days. 
 
 That the " Hohenzollerns took their crown from God's 
 altar," and that " they are responsible to no one but the 
 Almighty," how often do we hear this story, how easy 
 would be its denial upon proofs mouldering in royal 
 Prussian archives ! According to these proofs, six million 
 of Thalers and ten thousand stalwart bodies of subjects 
 enlisted, pressed, and stolen were paid and furnished 
 by Frederick I. to the proud Hapsburger before the curtain 
 rose upon the Konigsberg comedy, and even then it was 
 half spoiled by the newly made Queen taking a pinch of 
 snuff just as the ceremonies were at their height ! And 
 the man who conducted the negotiations, bought up the 
 Austrian, the German, the Muscovite, the English, and the 
 Pole, and did not succeed in winning over either the Holy 
 See, France, Denmark, or Sweden, the man who actually 
 forged the bauble for which you, O William, claim 
 heavenly origin, was Kolbe, lover to Countess Warten- 
 berg, the Kurfursfs mattresse en titre (but -not de facto, 
 for very good reasons), a publican's daughter. 
 
 The only really new thing in the Coblentz utterances 
 is the statement that the Kaiser's Herr Grossvater was 
 " born a king, God's chosen instrument," while as a matter 
 of fact the first William's kingship depended upon his 
 predecessor's much-doubted ability to have an heir. 
 
 Happily the couplet proved true which the King of 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 297 
 
 Bavaria 1 is supposed to have addressed to his Prussian 
 brother, and which read : 
 
 " Stammverwandter Hohenzoller 
 Set dent Wittelsbach kein Groller; 
 Zurne nicht ob Lola Montez^ 
 Selber habend nie gekonnt es" 
 
 The mad Frederick William died without issue, and the 
 Kartatschen Prinz (Grapeshot Prince), as William I. was 
 styled by his loving Prussians then, mounted the throne. 
 
 As for Prince Henry's Kiel speech, the criticisms up- 
 braiding the amiable Heinrich for what he said are as 
 little justified as would be a wholesale condemnation of 
 the phonograph for a false note sung into one of Mr. 
 Edison's machines by a music-hall tenor. I know 
 his Royal Highness well, and this very knowledge con- 
 vinces me that the expression " the evangel of your 
 Majesty's sacred person " did not originate with him. 
 " Sacred person," by the way, is a phrase that occurs 
 frequently in the records of the descendants of the mad 
 Juana of Spain, the Roman-German Emperors Charles V. 
 and Rudolph II. Indeed, an anecdote dealing with the 
 latter says that he once admonished his physician, who 
 was trying to locate the imperial patient's stomach under 
 the quilt, by the thundering words : " Stop, you are touch- 
 ing the holy Roman belly." 
 
 To return to Prince Henry. He has never originated 
 anything. A careless, unlettered youth, he spent his first 
 years of manhood as riotously as his slender allowance 
 permitted. To save him from himself, he was married, 
 at the age of twenty-six, to his cousin Irene, an amiable 
 woman, of domestic habits, but without an ounce of 
 esprit. " His father," the late Princess of Hohenlohe 
 
 1 These verses are in reality by Heinrich Heine, and are altogether un- 
 translatable. The meaning is : " Brother of Hohenzollern, never having had 
 use for women, do not blame the Wittelsbach on account of his Lola Montez." 
 
298 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 once said, " was just such a man, but fortunately he 
 had a wife that prodded him on and forced him to acquire 
 knowledge and assume at least a semblance of interest in 
 literature and the fine arts." 
 
 Wedlock made of Henry a thoroughly self-satisfied 
 person ; he was master of his house, and responsible to 
 no one for his likes and dislikes now, except, of course, 
 such as affected the service. But being devoted to the 
 sea, he takes restrictions of that kind as something akin 
 to the inevitable. As to the relations between the royal 
 brothers, they were never hearty and are frequently 
 strained. Princess Irene and my mistress dislike each 
 other, and the men, quite naturally, take their wives' 
 parts. As a subordinate officer, however, his Royal 
 Highness has always done his very utmost to please the 
 Emperor. While in the family circle the Kaiser is gene- 
 rally spoken of as " big brother," " big cousin," and so 
 forth, Heinrich never fails to designate and address him 
 as " Lord of the Sea," or " High Admiral." He consults 
 him about the merest details concerning his command, 
 and professes to be thoroughly happy only when his 
 Majesty approves of his conduct as a mariner. Twice, 
 or oftener, I heard him say to William during his occa- 
 sional visits to Berlin and Potsdam : " Do not forget about 
 that speech of mine for the Marine Club dinner," or, 
 " If you cannot come " (to this or that opening, or naval 
 exercise), " be sure to send me the speech. You can 
 talk it over the telephone and I will have a stenographer 
 ready at the other end to take it down, word for word." 
 Within the knowledge of some male colleagues of mine, 
 the Kaiser, too, was heard to say once or twice : " Now 
 I shall have to telephone the speech Prince Henry is 
 expected to deliver to-morrow. To be the intellectual 
 giant of one's family has its drawbacks." 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 299 
 
 There lives not a man or woman at Court who does 
 not intuitively feel that Prince Henry's speech of Decem- 
 ber 15 was conceived and dictated by the person ad- 
 dressed, from the opening words : " Exalted Emperor, 
 Puissant King and Master, Illustrious Brother," to the 
 closing phrase : " Our sublime, mighty, beloved Kaiser, 
 King and Lord for all times, for ever and ever hurrah, 
 hurrah, hurrah ! " William wrote it word for word, as 
 he did a dozen other tirades inflicted by his brother 
 upon festive and official gatherings, and if I feared not to 
 ruin the careers of some men in office, I could name people 
 of high standing who saw the manuscript. 
 
 In regarding his " mission " of chief arbiter of the 
 world as an evangel, as a revelation of the grace of 
 God to fallen man through him, the anointed mediator, 
 the Kaiser follows a practice established by the majority 
 of, if not by all, victims of insane big-headedness. 
 
 Every once in a while the Palace is startled by in- 
 formation that somebody Bebel, Liebknecht, or Richter 
 will rise in Parliament to denounce the Kaiser in plain 
 and unmistakable language as a madman, or the same 
 intention is imputed to some member of the royal or 
 grand-ducal diets in Munich, Stuttgart, or Carlsruhe. 
 As parliamentary speeches enjoy unlimited immunity, 
 the Kaiser's friends and the various cabinets throughout 
 the Fatherland are ever on the alert to prevent a scandal 
 of that kind, for if the thought now seething in the brains 
 of many were hurled among the masses, the government 
 would -be seriously embarrassed, the Empire's prestige 
 would suffer immensely, and the catastrophe itself might 
 be very much accelerated. It is an acknowledged fact 
 that the discrowning of the Kaiser's mad relatives plunged 
 the one into hopeless melancholia and exasperated the 
 other so as to drive him to suicide, and as William's 
 
300 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 mental condition, in its present aspect, appears to be 
 identical with the initial stages of Frederick William's 
 and Ludwig's disease, everything is avoided that would 
 seem like a repetition of the mistakes made in the treat- 
 ment of those monarchs. 
 
 The poor Empress knows nothing of these sad suspicions 
 and fears ; to her loving eye the Kaiser's increasing eccen- 
 tricities are but flashes of genius that genius of which 
 he likes to talk to her. She even regards lightly or 
 as attributes of a kingly sportsman those physical de- 
 bilities in William and certain traits in his character which 
 pathology includes among the symptoms of insanity of 
 power his tendency to cruelty and his hankering for 
 blood. When I speak of these stigmata here, it is not 
 done in an effort to prove the Emperor insane (such an 
 undertaking would be presumptive on the part of a lay- 
 man) ; I merely desire to complete the picture of 
 William II. as he is, physically and mentally, by setting 
 down facts and recording observations which it was my 
 privilege and misfortune to experience and witness, leaving 
 the reader to draw his own conclusions. 
 
 Doubtless the telegrams to the Empress, following in 
 the wake of all imperial hunting excursions, and announc- 
 ing the number of game killed, are very gratifying from a 
 sportsman's standpoint ; but, considering that William's 
 reign yielded not a single act of pardon, or of humane 
 kindness, these records of blood appear the reverse of 
 harmless. It is one thing to measure strength and wits 
 and the velocity of one's own or one's horse's legs with 
 the beasts of the forest, and another to butcher game, 
 released from the pens, by the hundred, as the Kaiser 
 does every fourth day in the year. The Indian Sultan 
 Toghlak once set out with a large hunting-party for the 
 district of Beiram ; when he arrived in the territory, he 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 301 
 
 told his attendants he had not come to kill beasts, but 
 men, and " without obvious reason," says his biographer, 
 Ibn Batuta, "he began to massacre the natives. After 
 putting the citizens of a large town to the sword, hundreds 
 of others were given over to the Sultan's elephants, which, 
 throwing them in the air, caught them on knives fastened 
 to their tusks, or trampled them under foot to the sound 
 of trumpets and the beating of drums." That is only 
 one historic example of many, where the hunting fever 
 has developed into murderous frenzy. 
 
 During the last five or six years of his life, Ludwig II. 
 used to vary the monotony of his exertions for inventing 
 new building projects by studying minute accounts of 
 battles and other gory happenings, and afterward, his 
 brain aflame with visions of blood, he would fall upon a 
 flunky or chasseur to strangle, bite, cut off his ear, or 
 otherwise maim him. The Bavarians are still paying 
 pensions to royal servants who lost a nose, an eye, a leg, 
 or the use of other limbs, by their master's cruel mania. 
 
 Some time ago the Emperor was boasting that he had 
 killed his fifty-thousandth head of game. " When I 
 think of the number of animals in my forests," he added, 
 " I feel like Frederick the Great at Kolin when he shouted 
 to his squadrons : ' Dogs, would ye live for ever ? ' I 
 hope to double and treble my shooting record during the 
 next ten years. If a King cannot go to war, he must be 
 content with practising in the forest. It keeps one in 
 fighting trim, anyhow." 
 
 I talked about the foregoing with one of the physicians 
 who attended his Majesty's late cousin. " I did not 
 know that the Kaiser was infatuated with the chase," 
 said the doctor, " but might have guessed it, as the char- 
 acter of his speeches portends an unmistakable craving 
 for blood. His constant references to war, his incessant 
 
302 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 admonitions to the army that it must die for him, his 
 abominable, oft-repeated summons to the soldiers to hold 
 themselves in readiness to slaughter their parents, brothers, 
 and sisters with gun, sabre, or lance, are analogous to the 
 ravings I heard from the lips of Ludwig time and again. 
 My late patient frequently spent whole days in devising new 
 tortures for imaginary culprits, and the signing of death- 
 warrants (most of them fictitious) gave him rare pleasure." 
 How the Emperor feels about signing death-warrants, 
 I do not know. I know only that he signs every one 
 submitted to him, and that in all writs of execution, 
 issued since Emperor Frederick's demise, there occurs the 
 phrase : " His Majesty having refused to interfere, the 
 delinquent is to die by the sword," &c. Like most selfish 
 persons, William is hard-hearted, and never pardons any- 
 body, save duellists or officers punished for exceeding 
 their authority. He approves of insane big-headedness 
 even in others. Previous to the William the First cele- 
 bration, many thousand petitions arrived in the Kaiser's 
 mail, but his Majesty, being busy with the preparations 
 for " Willehalm" refused even to see the extracts and 
 recommendations which the Minister of Justice had pre- 
 pared from the papers sent in. "I have no time for 
 miscreants," he said to Herr von Lucanus : " let a few 
 men suffering for defending their honour, sword or pistol 
 in hand, be picked out and I will set them free. As for 
 the rest, they must take their medicine." When Pro- 
 fessor Mommsen declined the title of " Excellency," it 
 was whispered in the Palace that his Majesty's refusal 
 to interfere on behalf of the numerous writers and authors 
 imprisoned for their political convictions prompted the 
 historian ; but, as a matter of fact, Mommsen acted on 
 the score that it would be absurd to accept honours at 
 the hands of a crazy person. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 303 
 
 The Munich medical man already quoted went on to 
 say that consultation with the Emperor's physicians con- 
 vinced him that William was very much like Ludwig 
 in respect to physical ailments and their consequences. 
 " Like the Kaiser, my old master was possessed of an 
 abnormal fear of illness, and the very thought of bodily 
 pains as the result of indisposition, a dental operation, 
 for instance, unmanned him." To his nervous condition 
 the doctor attributes Lud wig's general cowardice. 
 
 But in fact the Kaiser is a courageous man. I had occa- 
 sion to verify that at the review of the Second and Third 
 Guard Lancers on Bornstadter Feld in May, 1892, when 
 his mount, a high-stepping stallion, excited by the pre- 
 sence of so many other horses, bolted twice and could 
 scarcely be kept under rein. The Empress and Prince 
 Henry, who had come over for the day, urged his Majesty 
 again and again to change horses (there is always a second 
 in reserve) ; but he refused to be persuaded, and all of 
 us passed a dreadful hour, expecting every minute to 
 see the sovereign become a victim of his obstinacy. At 
 the Berlin riot of 1891, he displayed a valiant spirit, but 
 at times, when suddenly confronted by danger, his nerves 
 become unstrung, and the Prussian eagle, nolens volcns, 
 flaunts the white feather. 
 
 Members of the entourage who accompanied his Majesty 
 to Proeckelwitz in June, 1892, tell a saddening story to 
 the point. It appears that his Majesty commanded his 
 host, Count Dohna, to fetch him from the station with 
 a double team of royal blacks, which he had admired on 
 a previous visit. William took a seat on the box at the 
 side of his Lordship, who was driving, and everything 
 went well until the drag turned into the village street, 
 where the horses shied at the patriotic chants of a peasant's 
 chorus ; and who would blame them ? Seeing the capers 
 
304 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 of the carrossiers, these harmless folks doubled their en- 
 thusiasm, and to bring matters to a climax one of them 
 waved a flag. Now the leaders rose on their hind legs, 
 the cross-pieces got loose and began knocking against 
 their pasterns, and off they were at a furious rate. Dohna, 
 with keen presence of mind, let the reins of the runaways 
 slip and hung the more forcibly on to those of the shaft- 
 horses, which, of course, tried to follow the others. He 
 let them run for a while, but without entirely losing 
 control, and as they were about to plunge into a bed of 
 harrows, with teeth exposed, he succeeded in checking 
 the team. A gallop of a couple of hundred yards on 
 freshly ploughed ground finished the blacks, and from 
 there to the castle they went steadily. 
 
 The Kaiser put his arm round his host when the 
 horses started off, and when the danger was past pressed 
 Count Dohna's hand, but did not say a word. When 
 the drag arrived at the manor-house, he had to be helped 
 down from his seat. The ladies, who received his Majesty 
 at the door, say that his face was deadly pale and his lips 
 compressed. Their greeting and congratulations he did 
 not seem to observe, but crept to his room, assisted by 
 his chasseur and adjutants. 
 
 When, an hour later, he appeared at dinner, he had 
 not yet recovered his speech, and after vainly endeavour- 
 ing to swallow a spoonful of soup, rose and retired, sup- 
 ported by Dr. Leuthold, who allowed no one to see his 
 patient. The Kaiser missed breakfast, but attended 
 luncheon, still looking pale and haggard. Then, for the 
 first time, he greeted the ladies of the house and spoke 
 a few words to his host, but when a sprightly young miss 
 at table referred to the accident, he bade her keep silence 
 by an imperious gesture of the hand, while a tremor 
 seemed to run through his body. He would not hear of 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 305 
 
 going to the chase, and left next day for Berlin without 
 having fired a shot. 
 
 It is said that the Kaiser had an epileptic fit after 
 retiring from table on the night of the accident ; feeling 
 the premonitory symptoms of grand mal the moment 
 he entered the dining-room, he withdrew after making 
 a show at doing the polite thing. As warnings, in the 
 shape of certain peculiar sensations, up to a short while 
 ago, always preceded his spells, it has been possible to 
 restrict the knowledge of the Kaiser's affliction to his 
 family circle, the highest officials, and to members of the 
 household. 
 
 Aside from the Proeckelwitz case, which lacks con- 
 firmation, as the attending physician, quite naturally, 
 refuses to be quoted, I know of only two incidents where 
 news respecting the Kaiser's sufferings from that dread 
 malady leaked out. In the midsummer of 1891, some 
 two weeks before their Majesties went to England, the 
 Kaiser was found in his dressing-room at the Neues Palais, 
 lying unconscious across a fallen arm-chair, which he 
 had knocked down in toppling over. The chambermaid 
 Amelia discovered her master when, receiving no answer 
 to repeated knockings, she had entered the room in 
 pursuit of her duties. You may imagine the hubbub 
 that ensued. The girl, not satisfied with alarming the 
 men-servants, brought all the women, from Empress to 
 scullion, to the scene by her lamentations. At first the 
 cry went forth that his Majesty had been murdered ; 
 simultaneously the theory of suicide was advanced, and 
 when, finally, the doctors arrived, they found two of the 
 wardrobemen engaged in pouring cognac down the patient's 
 throat. As old cognac of the twenty-five marks a bottle 
 brand is always kept in the Emperor's private rooms to 
 liven him up when he feels faint, the servants thought 
 
 u 
 
3 o6 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 they were doing the correct thing, and were inconsolable 
 on hearing of the danger involved by such heroic treat- 
 ment. However, as at the same time they had opened 
 the Kaiser's locked teeth and pulled his tongue into place, 
 they had done something to relieve the poor man. 
 
 The other attack happened at the Berlin Schloss, also 
 in the Kaiser's own chamber and in the presence of one 
 of his wardrobemen. The attending physical circum- 
 stances were the same, and so was, curiously enough, 
 the explanation to the household by Court-marshal Count 
 Eulenburg : " His Majesty has a peculiar way of throw- 
 ing himself backward into an arm-chair," said his Excel- 
 lency to the heads of departments, who are expected to 
 disseminate the information received at head-quarters 
 among the members of their staff " he throws himself 
 into a chair with full force, and under the circumstances 
 it is not to be wondered at that a fautcuil breaks down 
 under him occasionally." The Emperor himself, after 
 each stroke, talked at table of the verftuchte, worm-eaten 
 chairs that were considered good enough to be placed 
 in his chamber. The idea that any Court-marshal should 
 assign infirm pieces of furniture to William-the-Spend thrift 
 is too preposterous to admit of discussion. Lately, I 
 am told, the Kaiser's malady has taken a more aggravated 
 form, the premonitory sensations having ceased. The 
 falling-sickness comes upon him suddenly nowadays, and, 
 as in the two instances noted, he lapses into insensibility 
 without a moment's notice when grand mal takes hold 
 of him. His Majesty is therefore at present in more 
 imminent danger of suffering injury by the falls peculiar 
 to the disease than ever before, and as a precautionary 
 measure all porcelain vases with cut flowers have been 
 removed from his rooms, the order including even the 
 massive silver receptacles the Empress gave her husband 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 307 
 
 for a birthday present. Two of them, filled with the 
 choicest flowers, stood formerly on the Kaiser's desk, 
 and two more on the centre-table of his dressing-room. 
 My mistress had a good cry when Kammerdiener Brach- 
 witz told her they had been locked away by order of 
 Count Eulenburg, who was acting on the advice of the 
 body-physician. 
 
 All the women the Kaiser ever loved were noted for 
 the delicacy, whiteness, and perfect proportions of their 
 hands. His admiration for Madame Herbette is said to have 
 begun and ended at her slender finger-tips. But since her 
 Majesty's jealousy and the anonymous letter fiends weaned 
 him of woman's society, this fancy, at first a mere weakness, 
 has abnormally increased. 
 
 Affecting a general disregard of women, as has been his 
 wont for the last two or three years, the Kaiser of late 
 flatly refuses to notice any lady he meets in society beyond 
 a mere recognition, unless she has fine hands. If she satis- 
 fies his idea of beauty in this one respect (she may have 
 the nose of a Kalmuck, be chicken-breasted or hump- 
 backed), he will draw her into conversation, compliment 
 her, and, on going away, kiss her hand, once if under fire 
 of scrutinising eyes, half-a-dozen times and oftener when 
 unobserved. I have frequently been obliged to advance 
 silly excuses when hearing his Majesty criticised for wear- 
 ing many rings on his fingers. The truth is, most of those 
 jewels are duplicates of ornaments he noticed on female 
 hands while admiring and fondling them. 
 
 Of course, it is obligatory at Court to wear gloves, and 
 her Majesty, who is not blessed with an exquisitely-shaped 
 hand, insists upon it that this usance be strictly observed, 
 but at supper, after a ball, hop, or concert, the Kaiser 
 always asks certain ladies of his household and of society 
 to remove their gloves. " I have as little use for a gloved 
 
3 o8 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 hand and arm as for a veiled lady in a redingote," he said 
 once. 
 
 " A funny simile, where does the redingote come in ? " 
 Cried Princess Feo of Meiningen. 
 
 " It stands for the arm-covering, Du Naseweis " (you 
 know-all). 
 
 The Kaiser, you must know, while addressing his devo- 
 tions first and above all to pretty hands, is enchanted when 
 a finely modelled arm crowns the chef-d'oeuvre. He is not 
 very generous, but he can be quite munificent when select- 
 ing presents for women with fine hands and arms, even if 
 the gifts are semi-obligatory ones. When brooches or 
 breast-pins are distributed, his Majesty takes no interest 
 in the ceremonies, but rings and bracelets he likes to put 
 on himself. 
 
 One of the titled ladies of the household describes the 
 mode of her " decoration " by the Emperor as follows : 
 " He bade me to be at the Schloss (the Court was staying 
 at Potsdam then), on a certain day at two o'clock in the 
 afternoon. I had to come veiled to prevent possible re- 
 cognition. 
 
 " When I entered his Majesty's private room, he was 
 standing in the middle of the chamber. His face was not 
 so pale as usual. ' Take off your veil and coat,' he said, 
 and until I had complied with his command his manner 
 expressed impatience. I wore a waist with elbow-sleeves 
 garnished with long lace. ' This is excellent,' said the 
 Kaiser, as I pulled off my gloves. He went to the alcove 
 and selected from among several jewel-boxes one of for- 
 midable size. From it he took a bracelet in the form of a 
 snake, and, drawing it out to its full length, placed it around 
 my arm. It extended over the elbow. I thanked the 
 Kaiser, and he kissed my arm again and again between 
 the golden circlets, and what struck me as peculiar," con- 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 309 
 
 eluded her Ladyship, with an innocent giggle, "was that 
 his Majesty held my little finger in his hand all the time." 
 
 Poor, vain creature ! she thought, and she thinks to-day, 
 that she was the premiere of this comedy, and that the im- 
 perial stage-manager shelved it after this one performance. 
 Yet there are dozens of women and girls in Berlin and 
 Potsdam, in Kiel and Breslau and Konigsberg, hugging 
 similar trophies of royal favour, but all are not chatterboxes. 
 
 A little while ago I was admiring a new-fashioned sleeve 
 which had just been perfected in the Empress's millinery 
 rooms. It belonged to an evening demi-toilet, and was 
 slashed in half-a-dozen places on and under the arm. " It's 
 very novel," I said, " but what an amount of work ! These 
 slashes are as carefully sewed as button-holes." 
 
 " Ah," smiled the simple-minded seamstress, " our papa " 
 (meaning the Emperor) " must always have space for his 
 kisses. If you once give him a finger, he wants the whole 
 arm." 
 
 The Emperor never forgets a hand after he has seen it 
 once, a circumstance which keeps her Majesty in a turmoil 
 of jealous rage. Sometimes, when they drive out together, 
 William interrupts her conversation to say : " Dona, look 
 at that woman's hand. I mean the lady who came out 
 of So-and-So's store. It is worthy of a sculptor." 
 
 As the Kaiser watches the women pass, and those at the 
 windows and in carriages, he finds occasion to repeat this 
 sort of comment more than once. Really, one can quite 
 understand the Empress's wrath. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE EMPRESS 
 
 ON November i, 1892, the riding-school of the Berlin 
 Marstall (royal stables) was gay with the women of the 
 Court and society. His Majesty proposed to make this 
 year's Hubertus hunt the event of the season, and all were 
 going to help him do it. Hence the preparations. Some 
 of us had to become used to fresh horses, others were 
 obliged to learn anew the intricacies of the various bugle- 
 calls. Quite unexpectedly the Hereditary Princess of 
 Meiningen walked in with her lady-in-waiting, Baroness 
 Ramin. I saw at once that her Royal Highness had 
 indulged in a lively breakfast, as they say in Berlin, 
 for her face was flushed, and she addressed pleasan- 
 tries to everybody, and even promised to ride a la 
 Florence Dixie if somebody would lend her a pair of 
 breeches. 
 
 " Nonsense ! " cried the Princess of Hohenzollern, nee 
 Princess Bourbon. " Lottchen is bragging, I assure you, 
 ladies ; you all know that she wears the trousers. What 
 more does she want ? " 
 
 "The real article, cousin, the r-e-a-1 article," retorted 
 Lottchen, adding, with a shrug of the shoulders : " what 
 suffices for the menage will not do at all for the manege , 
 especially when such puritan critics as Countess Brockdorff 
 are about." 
 
 Then turning to Mademoiselle von Ramin, she said, 
 loud enough for everybody in the ring to hear : " Now 
 
 310 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 311 
 
 I will show you how my sweet sister-in-law " (meaning the 
 Empress) " mounts." 
 
 She had her horse brought round to a platform reached 
 by three steps, and, ascending laboriously, raised herself 
 on tiptoe and let herself fall into the saddle with a thud 
 that caused the horse to stagger. 
 
 " Just like a majestic sack of flour, is it not ? " she cried. 
 ;< The more pity for the beast." Then she rode off, urging 
 the chestnut to all sorts of caprioles and fancy steps. 
 
 Princess Therese was at her Royal Highness's side like 
 a flash, and as they cantered about, each trying to outdo 
 the other in feats of daring, both laughed boisterously. 
 
 But if courtiers have long ears, Nemesis has legs of 
 corresponding calibre. Indeed, in this case the dread 
 goddess must have worn seven-league boots, for twelve 
 hours after the impertinent words had fallen from privi- 
 leged lips all who had been at the Marstall were quietly 
 informed that ladies were not wanted at the forthcoming 
 outing neither Hofdamen, nor Princesses of the blood 
 royal ! It being the first time that the Meiningen, Hohen- 
 zollern, and Hohenau coterie were taken down publicly, so 
 to speak, the sensation in polite circles was tremendous, 
 and while few quarrelled with Princess Charlotte for what 
 she had said, all agreed that the Empress was right in 
 asserting her position as vigorously as she had done. 
 
 Next day it was my good fortune to attend her Majesty 
 at Schloss Stern, the starting-point of the Hubertus hunt 
 in Griinewald, and I must say her appearance was quite 
 the reverse of the picture drawn by the Princess of Mein- 
 ingen. Was it the English hunting-costume that proved 
 so very becoming to the sovereign lady, or was it the pre- 
 sence of the Emperor in his red coat and silk hat, or the 
 recollection of the victory just won ? Auguste Victoria 
 looked fresh and rosy and resplendent as she galloped over 
 
3i2 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 the frozen ground, herself and Countess von Bassewitz 
 being the only ladies in the " field." 
 
 Of course, the whole hunt was arranged with a view 
 to fatigue their Majesties as little as possible, and, accord- 
 ingly, the boar was set free at a point where he could be 
 brought to bay within a quarter of an hour after the start, 
 a programme carried out with surprising promptness and 
 despatch this time. I say this time, for the reader must 
 not run away with the idea that in our sphere promises 
 are always kept or commands always obeyed. As a matter 
 of record, royalty employs in its army of retainers scores 
 of laggards, and while I admit that all-highest personages 
 boast no special virtues entitling them to a higher standard 
 of ethics than Mr. Smith or Mrs. Brown can lay claim to, 
 I must not disguise the fact that they are subject to the 
 same routine of annoyances as yourself and neighbours. 
 
 I remember that on the occasion of a visit to the Neues 
 Palais by the late William Walter Phelps, who was American 
 Minister in Berlin in the early nineties, her Majesty offered 
 to show the baby to this amiable gentleman, and, being 
 on duty, I was requested to fetch the child. 
 
 " May it please your Majesty," I said, bowing low, 
 " unless I am very much mistaken, the Prince drove out 
 with his nurse a couple of minutes ago." 
 
 " That is impossible, Countess," said the Kaiserin. " I 
 distinctly told Mrs. Matcham she must not venture to 
 leave before lunch." 
 
 To make sure, I repaired to the nursery, where I found 
 that my surmise was correct. 
 
 " But why did nurse disobey my instructions ? " ex- 
 claimed her Majesty, when I returned without the child. 
 
 " Begging your Majesty's pardon, she told Countess 
 Brockdorff she knew herself when it was best to take out 
 the youngster." 
 

 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 313 
 
 I had naturally hesitated to make this blunt report ; but 
 the Kaiserin took the English woman's impudence good- 
 naturedly, and turning to Mr. Phelps, with a smile, said : 
 ' You perceive, Mr. Minister, we are all in the same boat 
 with respect to servants. They are the real masters of 
 every household. If you want to see that baby, I shall 
 have to temporise with Mrs. Matcham." 
 
 To return to our subject, the master of the hunt does 
 not always show so lucky a hand as on the occasion de- 
 scribed. The very next year, in 1894, the boar .gave his 
 keepers the slip too soon, and, having gained nearly four 
 minutes' time over the hounds, led them a merry chase 
 through Griinewald toward Spandau, their Majesties follow- 
 ing with the well-peopled " field " that is to say, the 
 latter kept together during the first mile or two, but, later, 
 redcoats began to drop out, until at the Ha-la-lit (" there 
 goes ") scarcely a baker's dozen reported, among them, on 
 his high English hunter, the Emperor, very proud of his 
 achievement, but also (this was a matter of common report 
 at Court) not a little vexed over the faux pas that turned 
 the customary royal pig-trot into something resembling 
 a real live fox-race. 
 
 Kaiser Wilhelm felt, I suppose, that for him to engage 
 in such violent exercise was tempting fate, considering 
 that, while his right arm only is of practical use in the 
 management of the horse, exceptional care must be exer- 
 cised for the protection of the other not an easy under- 
 taking while galloping among trees and through thickets. 
 An overhanging branch, or refractory behaviour on the 
 part of the mount, may be attended by the gravest 
 consequences. 
 
 The Empress, so Countess von Bassewitz told us in 
 the evening, made the gentlemen wait quite a long while 
 before she hove in sight, escorted by her Kammerherr von 
 
314 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 der Knesebeck, who was loud in denunciations of her 
 Majesty's horse, which, he cried, lost his wind alter the 
 first quarter of an hour. 
 
 Exciting as the hunt had been for their Majesties, both 
 Kaiser and Kaiserin missed the best part of the fun. That, 
 as usual when her Royal Highness is around, followed in 
 the wake of Therese Trani, the spouse of the Hereditary 
 Prince of Hohenzollern. 
 
 Madame Therese, a daughter of Louis des Deux Sidles, 
 is the life of every party, whether she visits the petty Court 
 of Sigmaringen and, by her frivolities, causes her royal 
 mother-in-law, a Princess of Portugal, to squirm, or inter- 
 polates her speech with risque German phrases, affecting 
 not to understand the meaning of the words ; whether she 
 takes pot-luck in the mess-room of some Potsdam regi- 
 ment, or encourages her husband's young comrades to drag 
 her along the lawn by her feet in imitation of a practice 
 introduced by a famous ancestress, the Dauphine, Duchess 
 of Burgundy (this latter sport is sometimes carried on in 
 the garden of their Highnesses' villa in Augusta Strasse, 
 Potsdam) ; whether she comes to Court and maddens 
 " Dona " by coquetting with the Emperor, or entertains 
 her neighbours at a state dinner with an account of her 
 first confinement, which unexpectedly occurred at a second- 
 rate Mecklenburg watering-place, while her accoucheuse 
 was in Berlin and the layette, ordered from England, was 
 in the keeping of the custom house ; whether she dances, 
 plays cards, smokes cigarettes, or attends a " churching," 
 there is always something to remember of one's meeting 
 with this lively young woman. 
 
 Herr von Bachmayer rode in Madame Therese's train, 
 too, after that obstinate pig, but he was not alone. Far 
 from it. There were, besides Karl Anton, a host of cavalry- 
 men and sports. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 315 
 
 Her Royal Highness had the best horse, and a start 
 of fifty paces. "Heigh-ho!" "Houp-la!" "Venire a 
 terre ! " she was bound to get to Spandau before their 
 Majesties had passed Hundekehlensee, if she kept it up. 
 Her horse did, but not her Royal Highness. 
 
 When Therese was urging her steed through a clump 
 of trees with overhanging branches, the tragedy of the 
 forest of Ephraim was certainly most foreign to her mind. 
 But history repeats itself. Her Royal Highness's skirt 
 caught in the branches as did Absalom's hair, and she was 
 left suspended, while her long-legged hunter pressed on. 
 The men witnessed the bloodless accident with delighted 
 wonderment, but before they could reach the unhappy 
 King's daughter, she was on her hands and knees, and a 
 wide rent in the seat of her trousers showed where her 
 tailor had skimped the cloth. The skirt was still hanging 
 overhead. 
 
 Now a dozen cavaliers drew rein, and dismounting, 
 assisted Therese to her feet. She struggled. " Non, non ; 
 don't you see I must sit down ? " 
 
 " No," said Hen von Bachmayer, in tones of authority, 
 " Your Royal Highness will stand with your back to the 
 tree, while we will rearrange your skirt in front." 
 
 Sound advice this, and it was quickly followed. 
 
 '" Now will your Royal Highness gaze at the tree for 
 a while ? " suggested the Colonel. 
 
 " Oh, ich habe so Scham / " (" I am so ashamed ! "), 
 faltered the Princess, between giggles. 
 
 " All unmarried men turn about face," cried Hen von 
 Bachmayer. Ours is a well-disciplined army, and the 
 young men obeyed, while Princess Therese turned round, 
 and, standing in the attitude of the Venus de Medici, 
 allowed Karl Anton to draw enough hair-pins from her 
 head to fasten what was left of the skirt on to her waist. 
 
316 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Meanwhile, one of the reserve horses had been fetched, 
 and the merry crowd started off again. In the evening, 
 her Royal Highness returned home in a coupe, secured 
 at Spandau. The story, with all details, as above related, 
 is her own. She told it to her chum, Charlotte of Mein- 
 ingen, adding, with a silvery laugh : " As I heard all those 
 men galloping up to where I was lying, I was reminded 
 of the question the nuns of Brabant put to General 
 Dumouriez " (who commanded the invading French army 
 in 1792) : " ' Quand est-ce, que nous serons viole'es ? ' 
 
 Herr von der Knesebeck's criticism of the royal hunter 
 that failed was not a mere excuse, as might be surmised ; 
 all her Majesty's horses are selected more with reference 
 to handsome appearance and strength than to juvenile 
 fire. Indeed, Auguste Victoria seldom rides one under the 
 age of ten to twelve years, although, as a general rule, a 
 decade is the age-limit for animals in the Kaiser's stables. 
 Moreover, her horses are so perfectly trained and of such 
 lamb-like disposition that, to quote once more the Princess 
 of Meiningen, " they^ill not wink an eye or move an ear 
 except at the most gracious, * all-highest ' command." Her 
 Royal Highness's bit of comedy, depicting the Kaiserin in 
 the act of mounting, is likewise founded on fact : a port- 
 able platform is kept in all the royal stables and parks. 
 
 I have frequently attended her Majesty on horseback, 
 alternating with Frdulcin von Gersdorff and Countess 
 Bassewitz in this pleasant duty, our cavalcade including, 
 besides one of the chamberlains, the saddle-master and 
 one or two grooms, but it always looked to me as if her 
 Majesty was not fond of the sport. I think she practises 
 riding merely to be in the fashion, to exhibit her courage, 
 and because she has an idea that she looks well a la Amazon 
 fallacies all of them. An Empress should command the 
 mode, instead of submitting to it ; fortitude, she might 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 317 
 
 argue, is but a matter of temperament, or apprenticeship, 
 if it comes high ; as for cutting a dashing appearance, that 
 depends entirely upon circumstances. 
 
 We have seen her Majesty radiant with good-nature 
 and looking exceedingly well in her festive hunt-dress as 
 she rode out from Castle Stern, but her every-day habit, a 
 black costume and silk hat, is not at all becoming. And 
 in uniform she looks a perfect fright, not on account of 
 the dress so much as because of her cocked chapeau, which 
 replaces the cuirassiers' steel cap. It is large, of white 
 felt, brim pinned thrice up, the crown bent in and trimmed 
 with white ostrich-tips ; in front an aigrette of brilliants 
 stands out, " fine feathers " all ; but the combination is 
 entirely unsuitable to the imperial lady, who, to make 
 matters worse, is obliged to add a tulle veil to shield her 
 weak eyes from the sun. 
 
 Riding and walking are the only bodily exercises my 
 mistress indulges in, aside from dancing once or twice a 
 year at a certain private ball held at their Majesties' apart- 
 ments in Berlin. These soirees dansantes must not be con- 
 founded with the great Court balls in the While Hall, when 
 all is state and pomp and ennui, and the Emperor and 
 Empress leave the throne only once during the whole course 
 of the evening to say a few official nothings to some Min- 
 ister, Ambassador, or other dignitary. The annual dancing 
 parties are held in the Pfeilersaal, once the salle (Tarnies 
 of Frederick the Great, where his body-guard used to hold 
 forth. The lofty parlour now affords communication be- 
 tween both Majesties' private chambers, one end of it 
 opening into the Empress's salon, where Watteau's cele- 
 brated painting, " The Embarkation for Cytherea," delights 
 the eye. 
 
 A few days before our private ball in the winter of 1893, 
 my mistress told me she was going to trip the light fantastic 
 
3i8 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 in accordance with the Emperor's wishes. " I will there- 
 fore trouble you to examine the barrier of living plants, 
 hiding the musicians, most carefully," she continued, " for 
 I do not want those men to see me. There should be no 
 loop-holes, and if you find it necessary to have a screen 
 behind the shrubbery, order one by all means." 
 
 I suggested that a screen might spoil the airy decorative 
 effect. 
 
 " Maybe," replied the Kaiserin, " and then the Emperor 
 would be displeased. Well, you must make the plants do, 
 but have them so placed as to form an impenetrable wall." 
 
 " I beg your Majesty's pardon," I made bold to remark, 
 " Court history has it that your great ancestress, Queen 
 Louise, was not only passionately fond of dancing, but was 
 fired with the ambition to dance in public. According 
 to reliable chroniclers, she went through many a minuet 
 at the Opera House yonder, while thousands of her loyal 
 subjects looked on and applauded her efforts." 
 
 " Yes, yes, the Kaiser has spoken of these events many 
 times, and Queen Louise's example encourages me as much 
 as anything to take up the practice," mused her Majesty, 
 adding, with spirit : " but all that notwithstanding, I 
 cannot bear the idea of gyrating round under the vulgar 
 eyes of hired attendants and servants. And another thing, 
 Countess, when you hear me order the Court-marshal to 
 fetch a dancer, please see to it that the doors leading into 
 the adjoining apartments are closed, the lackeys remaining 
 on the outside. I will not take a step until told, by a 
 motion of your head, that all is attended to." 
 
 These all-highest wishes were carried out at the soiree in 
 every particular, and at the close of the entertainment I 
 no longer wondered at the purport of it all. Dancing, 
 I fancy, is a natural gift capable of improvement ; its 
 different steps may be laboriously acquired, may even 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 319 
 
 become a matter of memorising, but unless there be talent 
 at the bottom of it, the performance will certainly prove 
 lame and devoid of grace. 
 
 Auguste Victoria was endowed with virtues more sturdy 
 than nimble, and dancing is entirely out of her line ; I 
 dare say she feels it herself, though pride would no more 
 allow her to admit this than her want of efficiency as an 
 equestrienne, her pretensions being the outcome of the 
 divine-appointment illusion, in which the Hohenzollerns 
 believe as earnestly and which they accept as unreservedly 
 as did any Shah or Grand Turk of the eighteenth century. 
 
 " By the Grace of God ! " these five, short words 
 cover a vaster volume of sins against good sense than even 
 charity ! Here we have a sovereign lady who in all re- 
 spects lives up to her representative duties as the consort 
 of a powerful monarch, a woman of fine carriage and fully 
 conscious of her limitations in reference to affairs of state, 
 yet imbued to such an extent with the notion that no one 
 has a right to surpass her in feminine accomplishments 
 as to let this fancy degenerate into a fixed idea. That 
 she aims to be the best dressed, the most dignified and 
 most gracious Queen, the most earnest worker in the cause 
 of the Lutheran Church, are ambitions to be commended ; 
 but why also the best rider, the best dancer ? 
 
 And the ludicrous part of it is, these august personages 
 never dream that their affectations are transparent to the 
 people about them. Thus I was told by the Emperor's 
 Adjutant, Count Moltke, that when, on the occasion of a 
 family excursion on horseback, he pointed out Prince 
 William, praising him for his steady seat, her Majesty 
 said : " Ah, he inherited his horsemanship from me," a 
 remark which caused the Emperor to sniff with impatience. 
 Still, the truth of their mere humanness is often enough 
 brought home to Kings and Queens. 
 
320 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Here are a couple of anecdotes to the point, both 
 dating from Hubertusstock, whither their Majesties retire 
 occasionally, attended by a small retinue consisting of two 
 adjutants, a Court-marshal, a lady-in-waiting, a Kammer- 
 herr, and (this is the height of economy according to 
 Court usages) one body-physician for both husband and 
 wife. 
 
 In October, 1890, the Kaiserin accompanied the Em- 
 peror to an evening's rut-of-hart-shooting in a certain 
 section of the forest, where the imperial Nimrod was so 
 certain of making a big haul that he promised victims of 
 his rifle on all sides. 
 
 The pair drove off with high expectations, the Kaiser 
 in his new " hunt uniform," the Kaiserin wearing a gown 
 of white cloth, silver-braided. But though conditions 
 seemed favourable moon discreetly hidden behind clouds, 
 wind blowing out of eminently correct quarters some 
 strange agency managed to frighten the stags away and 
 out of reach as often as a fine pair of antlers came before 
 William's barrel. The Kaiser allowed himself to be fooled 
 in this fashion three long hours, until, finally, losing patience, 
 he ordered the horses brought around. Getting into the 
 carriage, he noticed an old gamekeeper, who stared at the 
 Kaiserin in a rather disrespectful manner. " What is it, 
 my man ? " inquired the Emperor, who was beginning to 
 suspect the cause of his ill-luck ; " perhaps you can tell us 
 why no confounded deer would come within range this 
 evening." 
 
 " To be sure, Majesty " (the common folk of Germany 
 always omit the " your "), " plain as daylight, that. Any 
 fool knows that animals are frightened by white clothes." 
 
 The remark was so apropos that the Emperor over- 
 looked its rudeness, and, turning to his wife with a mock 
 bow, he exclaimed : " Da hast Du die Proste-Mahlzeit " 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 321 
 
 ("That settles your bacon"), "Dona. In future I 
 shall know better than to take a fashion-plate hunting 
 with me." 
 
 The disgruntled couple arrived at the chalet after mid- 
 night, and I heard the Kaiser say he would take supper 
 alone, meaning in company with his gentlemen only. 
 Whether the Empress knew of this intention, I am unable 
 to tell, but I do know that her Majesty was in a fearful 
 temper during our solitary meal in the boudoir, though 
 the cook had provided her favourite dish : potatoes baked, 
 and cold pork. Everything and everybody was in the 
 wrong, and even the beloved Haake came in for her share 
 of scolding. 
 
 " I forgot all about it, and, of course, none of my ladies 
 knew enough to remind me that I possess not one garment 
 fit for hunting." With these words the Kaiserin wound 
 up a long series of complaints, adding : " Let Lampe be 
 commanded by telegraph to get up a full-skirted hunting- 
 costume of the usual material, with green velvet trimmings, 
 within forty-eight hours/' 
 
 " But his Majesty being so particular as to colour," I 
 ventured to suggest, for the gamekeeper's blunt talk was 
 already known at the castle, '* would it not be better to 
 send a sample of cloth to Frankfurt ? " 
 
 " A good idea," cried our mistress, her face lighting up. 
 " I tell you what you can do, Countess. After his Majesty 
 has retired, get the valet to cut a sample from one of the 
 turnings of his suit and enclose that to Lampe, sending a 
 Feldjager to the railway station with the letter. And be 
 sure to use an envelope with the imprint : * On his Majesty's 
 Service.' That will carry it through by noon to-morrow." 
 
 The sample was secured in the manner directed. Lampe 
 proved equal to the occasion, and her Majesty's season- 
 able equipment arrived by the end of the week, giving 
 
 x 
 
322 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 such satisfaction that ever since it has formed an important 
 part of the Empress's outing wardrobe. The costume is 
 of greenish-grey material, tailor-made, with buttons cut 
 from antlers. With it a small, round, green felt hat, adorned 
 by a tuft of woodcock feathers and a simple green silk cord, 
 is worn, while a tiny couteau de chasse hangs from her 
 Majesty's belt. 
 
 Another occasion where the purple-born were forcefully 
 reminded of the equality of all things human arose during 
 Court mourning for the late King of Wiirtemberg, who 
 died October 6, 1891. To escape tedious ceremonies in 
 honour of that royal reprobate, their Majesties repaired to 
 Hubertusstock shortly after the obsequies in Stuttgart, 
 taking with them even less of a retinue than is customary 
 at this retreat. As the Kaiser hunted all day, and there 
 was absolutely no one for whom she cared to dress up, her 
 Majesty seized the opportunity to wear some of her oldest 
 mourning-dresses, and thus started out one morning in a 
 simple gown devoid of all ornamentation, and wearing a 
 Berlin hat to boot. 
 
 The royal lady intended to take a stroll in the forest 
 all by herself, but, of course, no Queen is ever permitted 
 to do so, her commands or entreaties notwithstanding ; so 
 I went ahead, while a lackey followed her Majesty at a 
 respectful distance. 
 
 The Empress had not been out more than a quarter 
 of an hour when she met the letter-carrier, an old man 
 whose leather bag is filled only on very rare occasions 
 at Christmas and during the Kaiser's occupancy of the 
 castle. As it is a notorious fact that old Friedrich's head 
 swells in proportion to the quantity of mail he handles, I 
 felt some slight apprehension of impending trouble when 
 I observed her Majesty approach this pompous landlubber- 
 martinet. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 323 
 
 " Have you letters for Majesty ? " asked the Kaiserin, 
 imitating the vulgar mode of referring to the King. 
 
 " That way a fool may get caught, my girl," bristled up 
 the veteran, " not a man like me " (he struck his breast 
 so that the bronze medals decorating it began to dance 
 about), " and, besides," he continued, with a leer in his 
 eye, " those black gloves of yours might dirty the beautiful 
 Kaiser-letters." 
 
 " Oh, my husband won't mind that ; give me the 
 letters." 
 
 " Your husband ? Have a care, you dressed-up wench 
 for you don't look smart enough for a Kochin " (cook) 
 " lest I report you for insult to Majesty." 
 
 At this juncture I thought it high time to make my 
 presence known, and as the Leibjtfger, too, arrived on 
 the scene, the zealous postman quickly collapsed, and, 
 throwing himself on his knees, begged the sovereign lady's 
 pardon. Of course, it was granted ; it would have been 
 ridiculous to take the old fool seriously. By her Majesty's 
 command, I gave him a mark that he might drown his 
 terror in a bottle of Schnapps. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE WALDERSEES THE EMPRESS'S FAVOURITES THE 
 BERLIN RIOTS THE EMPRESS FREDERICK 
 
 THE Empress has had a friend ; she has none now. Or 
 one may say she has had two : Countess Waldersee and 
 Pastor Stoecker. The latter is a dead man, politically and 
 socially ; the Emperor himself arranged his funeral, nor 
 was it one of the first class, like Bismarck's or the Chief 
 of Staff's. 
 
 The former Maiy Esther Lee, of New York, has been 
 variously designated in the public prints as a person of 
 most extraordinary influence with their Majesties as a 
 sort of Egeria, appointed to instruct the modern Numa 
 not only with regard to the forms of worship to be intro- 
 duced, but also in general government matters. If the 
 Kaiser bounced Bismarck to rid himself of somebody who 
 had grown to love power and to think himself indispensable, 
 why should he hesitate to drop the Waldersees, man and 
 wife or perhaps I should say wife and man, for Mary 
 Esther is the moving spirit of that house why, I ask, 
 should he scruple to cashier these persons as soon as public 
 opinion endowed them with an importance well-nigh over- 
 shadowing the throne ? 
 
 " The Moor has done his duty : the Moor may go ! " 
 There was no Bismarck to be held in check by fear of the 
 ever-ready successor in 1891 ; exit the all-powerful Chief 
 of Staff ! As to his Countess having ceased to be a 
 necessity to Auguste Victoria there was no reason for 
 temporising on her account. 
 
 324 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 325 
 
 Princess William that was had been in her Excellency's 
 leading-strings, as stated in preceding chapters ; out of 
 the gawky girl the Countess Waldersee had made a lady 
 capable of carrying her own weight and holding her tongue 
 when she had nothing to say. Madame la Marechale 
 also taught her charge though the insincere aspects of it 
 were foreign to her own mind that religion, properly 
 hung to the wind, makes an excellent cloak for insignificance. 
 During the first year after Auguste Victoria's ascension to 
 the throne, Countess Waldersee proved useful, too ; on 
 public occasions and in society she was an infallible coun- 
 sellor, and a much less imperious one than Countess Brock- 
 dorff. Besides, when the latter whispered to her newly 
 made Majesty, everybody suspected her of giving advice, 
 while Madame von Waldersee's tips passed for mere 
 pleasantries. 
 
 But to be for ever reminded of debts of gratitude is so 
 tiresome. I believe no one at Court regarded the removal 
 of the Waldersees to Altona with pleasanter anticipations 
 than my mistress did. I attended the last audience her 
 Majesty granted the Countess. It was painfully formal; 
 probably both women desired it so, each for reasons of 
 her own. To give it a friendly turn, the Kaiserin asked 
 her Excellency, in the end, for her photograph, " as a 
 souvenir of their long acquaintance." 
 
 This latter fact by itself should suffice as a denial of the 
 numberless stories about the intimacy alleged to have 
 existed between my mistress and the General's wife. 
 Intimacy between a Royal Schleswig and the daughter of 
 David Lee, of the United States ! Intimacy between 
 the German Empress, Queen of Prussia, and the wife of 
 Eleonore Hoffmeyer's descendant ! The persons who first 
 gave utterance to that Canterbury tale must have gathered 
 their ideas of her Majesty's character from the tittle-tattle 
 
326 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 of silly women who act as " barkers " at our charity bazaars. 
 At one of these, held at the War Ministry, I believe, I 
 first heard Countess Waldersee spoken of as the " Kaiserin's 
 aunt," a title probably invented for no other purpose 
 than to please her Excellency's own friends. I carried it 
 home with me, and their Majesties adopted it, but not in 
 a friendly spirit. When the Kaiser alludes to the Volks- 
 schulgesetz, that has failed, or similar measures, in conversa- 
 tion with his wife, he sometimes says " thy aunt " or 
 " thy uncle " ; when the Kaiserin speaks of Pastor Stoecker 
 nowadays, maybe she calls him " my aunt's friend " or 
 " my uncle's political bedfellow." That the Kaiser never 
 regarded Countess Waldersee as an equal or a favourite is 
 evident from the fuss he made when he granted her Ex- 
 cellency permission to wear the Queen Olga decoration, 
 given her by the King of Wurtemberg. If he had raised her 
 and her husband to the princely dignity, he could not have 
 shouted louder than he did about this act of cheap courtesy. 
 Count and Countess Waldersee attended most of the 
 Court ceremonies held at the beginning of the present 
 reign, and her Ladyship's fine laces and diamonds were 
 much admired then ; but as soon as Court mourning was 
 over and the noisome fetes at the Schloss and palace were 
 inaugurated, she commenced sending her " regrets," pre- 
 tending to be in failing health. That her Excellency was 
 ever received en famille, or even without running the 
 gauntlet of notification to and from the Court-marshal or 
 grand-mistress, &c., is an invention pure and simple. It 
 is true, however, that Prince and Princess William often 
 visited at the General Staff building during the last year 
 of the old Kaiser's illness, yet their calls were not of a 
 social nature. About that time, William had religion on 
 the brain, and the pious Countess was just the woman to 
 encourage such a craze. 
 
. 
 
 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 327 
 
 If the widow of Prince Noer had remained single, the 
 Kaiserin might have continued to regard her as a friend 
 and relative even after her elevation to the throne, but 
 as Countess Waldersee never. Yet her Majesty likes 
 Count Waldersee as far as she likes anybody outside of 
 her husband, her children and herself, and William likes 
 and fears him at the same time. 
 
 Of the ladies and gentlemen of the service, only one, 
 Herr von der Knesebeck, Vice-Grand-master of Ceremonies, 
 enjoys his mistress's confidence and friendship. After what 
 has been said of Countess Brockdorff, I need hardly mention 
 that this lady is not a favourite. Dames of the Court 
 Fraulein von Gersdorff and Countess Keller are old 
 maids with the faults of their class ; that is especially 
 true with regard to the latter, called " S#-Mathilde " 
 on account of her oft-professed axiom, that anything 
 (Speck, i.e., bacon and the like) is good enough for people 
 who are not Empresses or filles d'honneur. Countess Keller 
 is buyer-in-ordinary to her Majesty, and it is this lady 
 who selects for the house-servants those gorgeous presents 
 cotton petticoats, wash-rags, glass vases, and knitted 
 gloves that grace the palace Christmas-trees. It cannot 
 be denied, though, that she is a thorough courtier. Any 
 impossible thing that her Majesty may order, Countess 
 Keller enthusiastically approves of. " S^c&-Mathilde 
 would rather bite off her tongue than inform her Majesty 
 that a square peg will not fit into a round hole," says 
 Princess Frederick Leopold, and I believe she would. 
 
 Clara von Gersdorff also rejoices in a sobriquet. Old 
 and young in the palace speak of her as Ruhr-Clara (Senti- 
 mental Clara), or Der susse Dusel (Sweet Dizzy). The 
 first nickname has reference to her loud, long-drawn-out 
 mode of speech. If, on leaving her room, she gives orders 
 to her maid through the open door, her voice can be heard 
 
328 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 all over the staircase. The other epithet is supposed to 
 describe her character, which for ever fluctuates between 
 high-soaring idealism and the pettiest of mundane nothing- 
 nesses. She is blonde, carries her forty years well, has a 
 pale, broad face, square shoulders, and walks as if shod 
 with cuirassier boots. 
 
 When I see my mistress in such hands as Keller's and 
 Gersdorffs, I am always reminded of what Walpole wrote 
 about Christian VII. of Denmark : " He is a genteel enough 
 figure, but surrounded by a pack of curs whose interest it 
 is to make him one if they can." Auguste Victoria might 
 have turned out an altogether different woman from what 
 she is, had she not fallen in with narrow-minded, paltry 
 characters the moment she entered upon her new sphere of 
 life in Berlin. 
 
 The Kaiser hates Gersdorff more than the grand- 
 mistress hates and maltreats her with sarcastic references 
 to her figure for no other outward reason, apparently, 
 than because her large, red, and ugly hands offend him. 
 
 If Countess Bertha von Bassewitz were not twenty-three 
 and pretty, she might win her Majesty's love, for she is 
 an agreeable, talented, and high-minded young woman 
 whom everybody likes. 
 
 Baron Mirbach and Count Keller, the Grand-master and 
 Kammerherr, respectively, are stereotyped Prussian officials, 
 cringing before their mistress, and intolerably abusive to 
 all of lesser rank than their own. Herr von Mirbach tries 
 to make himself indispensable by catering to her Majesty's 
 church-building schemes ; but while acknowledging the 
 Baron's talents as a business manager, the august lady 
 is far from liking him as a man. 
 
 Both Keller and Mirbach hate the amiable Bodo Knese- 
 beck, whom the Empress Frederick once called " the only 
 gentleman at her son's Court," but as he is a most de- 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 329 
 
 serving man, besides being a favourite, their intermittent 
 intrigues are of little moment. Before entering upon the 
 service of Auguste Victoria, Baron Knesebeck was the con- 
 fidant of the old Empress Augusta, who left him quite a sum 
 of money ; he is to-day the only non-relative of the royal 
 house who participates in the occasional family dinners. 
 Hen von Mirbach and the House-marshals must order 
 and arrange these affairs, but have to withdraw and make 
 room for their subaltern as soon as the dinner-hour strikes, 
 or " as soon as they have counted spoons and covers," as 
 they say in the palace. This expression dates, so far as it 
 refers to spoons, from Count Moltke's ninetieth birthday 
 (October 26, 1890), when the King of Saxony had to go 
 without soup at the state banquet because he found no 
 spoon at his place, and because it was against etiquette 
 either to ask whether he was not hungry or to send a foot- 
 man to get the missing article. And when, after the spring 
 parade of 1896, some Bavarian officers were to be enter- 
 tained in the White Hall, it was discovered that no seats 
 had been provided for them. House-marshal Baron von 
 Egloffstein had ordered covers for all the Prussians, but 
 the South German allies had been entirely forgotten. The 
 two faux pas nearly cost Egloffstein his position. 
 
 But to return to Hen von der Knesebeck. He spends 
 every other week in her Majesty's service, and is liberal 
 and kind-hearted. Where his colleagues, Mirbach, Keller, 
 Lyncker, and Eulenburg, discredit the Court by their 
 niggardness, he exhibits the savoir-vivre of the old regime. 
 So he gave an organ-grinder, whom her Majesty, during 
 her stay in Sassnitz, in the summer of 1892, had ordered 
 to play a whole morning for the children's benefit, twenty 
 marks. Thereupon that is, when the bills were audited 
 in Berlin cries of terror, amazement, and indignation. 
 
 " A double gold crown to a miserable Dago ! " Baron 
 
330 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Mirbach and Count Eulenburg pronounced such reckless- 
 ness unprecedented, and said they did not know what the 
 Minister of the royal house would do about it. " Really, 
 we cannot pass this bill without special authorisation." 
 
 " If that is so," said Herr von der Knesebeck coolly, 
 " I herewith deposit twenty marks to remain in your 
 Excellencies' hands while the matter is in abeyance. Damn 
 a man who is not willing to risk a trifle to give the Queen's 
 children a good time ! " 
 
 The case is still in abeyance. 
 
 So great is her Majesty's confidence in Herr von der 
 Knesebeck, that, if at all possible, she submits to him every 
 little matter concerning her public conduct, either verbally 
 or in writing. In the course of the year, Empress and 
 chamberlain exchange hundreds of letters, some of the 
 Kaiserin's being five and six pages long. 
 
 Bodo Knesebeck saved the Empress from making herself 
 ridiculous, and from seriously compromising her husband 
 and the government, during the Berlin riots of February, 
 1892. Incidentally the chamberlain saved our mistress 
 from her lord's lasting displeasure on that occasion, which 
 probably counts more with her than anything else. For 
 weeks we had prepared for the great carnival ball of 
 February 25, when the invited gentlemen were to appear 
 for the first time in English Court-dress, an event William 
 looked forward to no less eagerly than a girl does to her 
 debut in long frocks. For the ball, the late King's favourite, 
 premiere ballerina Marie Koebisch-Wolden, had arranged 
 a gorgeous revival of that most graceful dance, menuet a 
 la reine, which was to be tripped before the throne when 
 the evening's festivities were at their height. My mistress 
 meant to surpass all her previous efforts in the matter of 
 personal adornment. 
 
 At last the festive day had come. Early in the morning 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 331 
 
 the entire stock of crown-jewels, all excepting the crown 
 itself, were brought to the royal dressing-room, and her 
 Majesty, Countess Brockdorff, and Frau von Haake spent 
 hours making and remaking new combinations of the 
 stones and ornaments, most of which can be put to various 
 uses, as pins, buttons, buckles, brooches, &c. Then, all 
 of a sudden, the cry ran through the Schloss's chambers ; 
 " Berlin is in revolt ! " 
 
 "There will be no menuet, rather a Carmagnole" 
 lamented the anxious ; " instead of beribboned and be- 
 laced silk coats, the blouse ; in place of honeyed words and 
 pretty toy swords, * pipe in cheek, loaded canes on thigh,' 
 as in the days when they sang ' Vive le son du canon? ' 
 
 Baron Mirbach sent me to my mistress to prepare her 
 for noisy scenes in the neighbourhood of the Schloss. I 
 found the Empress in the room facing the great fountain, 
 running excitedly from one window to the other. In the 
 square below, people were assembling in groups, talking 
 and gesticulating. 
 
 I delivered the message and, of my own accord, added : 
 " His Majesty will not drive out this morning." 
 
 " And if he loves me, he will remain, he must remain 
 with us until this awful revolution is quelled." 
 
 " I entreat your Majesty to be calm," I made bold to 
 say, as Countess Brockdorff kept silent ; " according to 
 the papers, these people want bread and want work ; they 
 have no thought of violence. Besides," I said, " Herr von 
 Richthofen has sent the entire police reserves to the Schloss. 
 There are fifty men at each entrance, and more guarding 
 the cellar-openings and the waterside. All the corridors 
 are patrolled, and a dozen men are on the lookout on the 
 roof." 
 
 " The roof ! " cried the Empress, as if swayed by a new 
 fear. " O Grafin " (this to Countess Brockdorff), " they 
 
332 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 may throw bombs on the roof and destroy us all ! I must 
 go to see the Kaiser at once." 
 
 Second breakfast commenced half-an-hour earlier than 
 usual, and we hurried through its four courses, following 
 their Majesties' example. The Kaiserin's eyes were red 
 with crying, and some minutes before dessert the children 
 came in, a thing that does not happen more than once or 
 twice a year. His Majesty loves his little ones in his own 
 way ; that is, he likes to keep them at a distance. If 
 brought into personal contact with the youngsters, his 
 sense of decorum revolts, and he does not know what to 
 do with them, except to criticise their dress or military 
 demeanour. 
 
 " I am not going on a journey," he said, and, looking at 
 the Crown Prince, added : " You and your brothers have 
 not come to say good-bye ? " The Empress bowed her 
 head and whispered something while the Kaiser leaned over 
 the table, holding his hand to his ear. 
 
 " Dummes Zeug" he said, loud enough for all to hear, 
 and pushed back his chair ; "I am riding out as I do 
 every day in the year ; there is no use making a scene, 
 Dona ! " He kissed some of the children, fondled 
 the heads of the younger ones, and, drawing the Empress's 
 arm through his own, walked out, preceded by the House- 
 marshal and his adjutants. 
 
 When, a quarter of an hour later, the Empress came 
 from his room, she declared : " Thank God, the Kaiser 
 will take his pistols along, one in the right pocket of his 
 trousers, and one in his coat pocket." Then her Majesty 
 led the way to the state apartments, where we took our 
 stand at the windows of the Knights' Hall, to see William 
 ride from Portal V. a few minutes later. 
 
 As he passed, his Majesty looked up, and the Empress 
 followed him along the front of the Schloss through the 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 333 
 
 Black Eagle chamber, the Red Velvet chamber, and the 
 old chapel. As we crossed over to the windows of the 
 picture-gallery, he waved his hand for the last time, and 
 we saw him spur his horse into a quick trot. Only then 
 it was observed that the Emperor was without his ordinary 
 escort of grooms and gendarmes. Merely Adjutant von 
 Moltke and one other military gentleman accompanied 
 him. The Kaiserin was beside herself. " He will be 
 killed, I know he will be killed, and myself and the 
 children will come next. Let us flee from this room, 
 in front of which, as the Kaiser says, kingship was put 
 to the greatest indignities." 
 
 Her Majesty ran to her own apartment, and through 
 the speaking-tube ordered that all her children be brought 
 down at once. She was pale and was trembling. Seeing 
 the jewels, where they had been left in the morning, she 
 began to replace them hastily in the boxes. " Haake," she 
 said, " shall arrange all my own jewellery in like manner ; 
 everything must be packed at once." 
 
 " But to-night's ball ? " suggested Countess Keller. 
 
 " There will be no festival," said the royal lady re- 
 signedly, " or a very different one from that promised ; 
 namely, when the Kaiser is saved, and joins myself and 
 the children at the Neues Palais." 
 
 Countess Keller, in her usual complacent fashion, at 
 once acquiesced. " I beseech your Majesty not to go 
 without me," she shrieked hysterically. " I will pro- 
 tect, and, if need be, die for my beloved Empress." 
 
 Meanwhile, the rioting had been begun in earnest on 
 the Schloss Platz and in the neighbourhood of the Lust- 
 garten. The strikers and out-of works, who had willingly 
 
 1 Standing on the balcony of the Schloss in March, 1848, Frederick 
 William IV, was ordered by the revolting populace to salute the citizens, 
 killed by the soldiery the day before, by taking off his hat, and complied with 
 the request. 
 
334 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 made room for the Emperor when he passed by them 
 who had even doffed their hats and caps at the royal 
 radiance suddenly recollected their self-imposed mission 
 and began to offer trouble to the police. They refused 
 to move on, and threatened the horses of the mounted 
 Schutzleute with violence unless they kept off their toes. 
 As yet, they had not worked themselves up to a state 
 of excitement which menaced the troopers themselves. 
 The rears of the backing steeds formed the base of popular 
 assault. 
 
 " See there, there ! " cried the Empress, " I told you 
 this was a revolution. The crowds are getting thicker 
 and thicker ; they will overthrow the police and then 
 attack the palace. And the Kaiser is away. We must 
 go at once. Our only safety lies in flight." 
 
 " Fetch Knesebeck," I whispered to Mademoiselle 
 von Gersdorff ; " he alone can set our mistress right. We 
 shall all be disgraced if this mad plan is carried out. Be 
 quick, before that toad-eating Keller drives the Kaiserin 
 thoroughly crazy." 
 
 Herr von der Knesebeck appeared after a little while, 
 suave and smiling as usual. He did not exasperate her 
 Majesty by underrating the danger. He pointed out 
 to her that the Schloss was the safest place for herself, 
 her children, and her jewels. " There are about five 
 hundred men, soldiers, Schutzleute, and detectives inside 
 these walls," he argued, " and if an attack were made, 
 fifty thousand others will be on the outside before they 
 begin to batter down the gates, and the gates are the 
 strongest in the Empire. Now let us assume that your 
 Majesty would choose to leave for Potsdam. At least 
 four carriages would be needed to carry your Majesty, 
 the Princes, and the entourage to the station. Then there 
 is the escort. Your Majesty would not like to brave the 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 335 
 
 mob alone, and the royal livery, re-enforced by bayonets 
 or sabres, might exasperate the people. But let us say, 
 for argument's sake, that we get out of Berlin without 
 trouble. If this is a revolution, as your Majesty thinks, 
 it will not be confined to the capital. It will follow us 
 to Potsdam ; and the Neues Palais is to the Schloss 
 what Heligoland is to Gibraltar." 
 
 *' In Potsdam we have the subterranean exit," l faltered 
 out her Majesty. 
 
 " True, and if your Majesty decides to use it, at any 
 time, you will find yourself among your soldiers," said 
 Hen von der Knesebeck impressively, " among your 
 soldiers there as you are under their protection here. 
 
 " And now," concluded the chamberlain, with a little 
 fib, " I see her Excellency is making signs ; matters of 
 toilet demand immediate attention, I dare say." (With 
 a bow) " If your Majesty has anything to communicate 
 to the Kaiser, who, I understand, is to come back by 
 three o'clock, I am at your Majesty's commands." 
 
 " Then you think we are really safe ? " 
 
 " Safe ? " laughed Herr von der Knesebeck, " your 
 Majesty is pleased to joke. Would the Kaiser leave you 
 and the Princes if there was a shadow of danger within 
 ten thousand miles ? " 
 
 Brockdorff, Keller, Gersdorff, Haake, and myself all 
 took up this cue and dwelt upon it and enlarged upon 
 it, and before her Majesty could work herself up into 
 another fit of fright the maids had taken her in hand to 
 begin preparations for the night's ball. When the Kaiser 
 returned, he went at once to the Empress to tell of his 
 adventures with the mob : how he had " cowed the 
 ugliest of the rioters by a single look " ; there had been 
 
 1 This is a conduit leading from the basement of the Neues Palais to the 
 barracks of the Lehr und Wehr Battalion opposite. 
 
336 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 no hostile demonstrations " where he showed himself " ; 
 in some places he had even been cheered. " And " (here 
 his Majesty had a good laugh) " in the Thiergarten half- 
 a-dozen fellows tried to thrust petitions into my hand. 
 Some of them I let run beside me for a good quarter of 
 an hour, and not till they were well-nigh exhausted did 
 I order Moltke to take their papers. Among others, one 
 exceedingly fat person engaged in this exercise, and I 
 thought he would expire as he tried to keep pace with 
 Extase " (William's favourite horse). 
 
 The rest of the evening passed in preparations for the 
 ball, and the feast came off in a blaze of glory. We had 
 our menuet a la reine, while the Berliners danced the 
 Carmagnole to the tune of crashing show-windows and 
 demolished doors, as our guests reported under their 
 breath, when out of ear-shot of their Majesties and the 
 high officials. " I came in a second-class Droschke, and 
 the crowd allowed me to pass without a murmur." said 
 one ministerial councillor, "but my old Excellency had 
 to ask a Schutzmann to take the place of his groom at 
 the Puppenbrucke, and the man of the law was obliged 
 to use his weapon freely to enforce the right of way." 
 
 " I hope there was no blood spilled," said I. 
 
 " Mortal wounds were not dealt. The Schutzleuie had 
 orders to use the flats of their swords only, but there 
 will be many sore heads, nevertheless, to-morrow. Be- 
 sides, all the police stations are filled with prisoners, and 
 about fifty stores bakery and provision stores, most of 
 them have been sacked." 
 
 The situation continued semi-threatening for two days 
 longer, for the newspaper accounts of the dazzling Court 
 fete had been red rags to the mob. From early morn 
 till night angry masses collected about the castle, shout- 
 ing and throwing their arms about, and persons leaving 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 337 
 
 the Schloss on foot were sure to be greeted and followed 
 by derisive grunts. Once or twice gentlemen coming 
 from Court were jostled by the crowd, whereupon the 
 Emperor, who was an interested witness of the scenes, 
 telephoned to Herr von Richthofen to have the Lustgarten, 
 the streets, and the three bridges leading to the castle 
 cleared. In the charges by the mounted policemen and 
 by Schutzleute, fifty or sixty persons received sabre cuts 
 and others were ridden down, the Kaiser standing at the 
 balcony window that saw his grand-uncle's submission to 
 mob law, and viewing the bloody sallies with grim satis- 
 faction. 
 
 On February 27 the children clamoured loudly for an 
 outing. They had been locked in the house for three 
 days, and confinement was telling on the little ones. But 
 her Majesty would not hear of the proposed carriage 
 ride. Only after Major von Falkenhayn had patrolled 
 the streets in citizen's dress to ascertain the popular animus, 
 and reported that the riotous movement had entirely 
 subsided, were the children sent to the Thiergarten in 
 an old carriage, driven by a man in every-day clothes and 
 preceded by similar grooms on horseback, who were to 
 keep well ahead and communicate with the police along 
 the route. The police, by the way, had played a dis- 
 tinguished part in the Emperor's outing on the first day 
 of the riot, too. Several hours before his Majesty rode 
 from Portal V., a thorough Sicherheitsdienst had been 
 arranged along the line William intended to travel : 
 Schutzleute in uniform or civilian dress walked among 
 the rioters, listening to their talk and occasionally packing 
 off an over-loud individual, while others kept the road 
 open and the people moving. Besides, a mounted Sr.hutz- 
 mann was posted on every street-corner to watch the 
 houses and passers-by. And this line of vigilance ex- 
 
 Y 
 
338 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 tended over all parts of the Thiergarten, which, moreover, 
 was traversed by police and detectives in cabs and on 
 fleet horses galloping up and down the bridle-path like 
 private gentlemen. The royal Marstall had sent a hundred 
 grooms to the park to watch over the master and act as 
 galopins for the police lieutenants and captains stationed 
 at different points. The garrison was confined in the 
 barracks, " and, moreover," said Baron Richthofen, to 
 whom I am obliged for these minute statements, which 
 I was to repeat to her Majesty, " and, moreover, the 
 Kaiser had his two six-shooters. But, believe me," added 
 the chief of police, " there was no need whatever of his 
 Majesty's bellicose preparations. If there had been the 
 slightest apprehension of violence, the Kaiser would never 
 have been allowed outside of the Schloss." 
 
 " But if he had insisted ? He has an iron will." 
 
 " Ah," said the Baron, " there are moments in a 
 sovereign's life when his will is of no more account than 
 that of a raw recruit." 
 
 During all these days her Majesty was in such fear 
 and excitement that even Herr von der Knesebeck could 
 not persuade her to abandon the idea of flight altogether. 
 On the morning of the twenty-sixth the Empress had 
 her jewels packed anew, officials had taken charge of 
 the crown-jewels after the ball, and her belongings were 
 kept in a state of preparedness for sudden removal through- 
 out the week. 
 
 To return to the subject of her Majesty's intimates. 
 Among the persons of the household, as pointed out, 
 Herr von der Knesebeck is the only one in whom the 
 Kaiserin places implicit confidence, but at the same time 
 he is not of " sufficient birth " or rank to be regarded as 
 other than a faithful servant. For a Kammerherr in 
 actual service, whatever his qualifications of heart and 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 339 
 
 head are, is little short of a titled flunky. When he is 
 on duty, he must be at his mistress's beck and call the 
 same as the Kammerdiener. If her Majesty drives out, 
 he follows in a second carriage, or, when the children are 
 taken along, in the fourth ; if she visits people, he has 
 to wait at the door of the antechamber ; if she goes to 
 bazaars or the theatre, he trots in front of her or behind 
 her, disbursing her alms, buying her tickets, and seeing 
 that her chair is in the right place ; in short, a Kammer- 
 herr is all but a lackey in name, the only difference being 
 that he wears gold buttons on his coat, instead of silver 
 lace, and carries around umbrellas, opera-glasses, and 
 muffs, instead of wraps and footstools. To a Kammerherr, 
 the Empress does not speak so broadly about being brought 
 to bed as to a Kammerdiener, but she would as soon allow 
 a valet de chambre to smoke in her presence as treat a 
 chamberlain on a footing of equality. And royal valets, 
 mind you, have been regarded with suspicion ever since 
 Louis XV. sent half-a-dozen of them to the Bastile, when, 
 by accident, he overheard a fellow whisper : " Come and 
 let's play with the Duchess of Burgundy." Her Royal 
 Highness was that Dauphine who considered it exquisite 
 fun to have her servants drag her along by her legs in 
 the gardens of Versailles during moonless evenings. 
 
 Among non-royal women, her Majesty at one time 
 looked upon Princess George Radziwill and Countess 
 Goertz with feelings akin to friendship. As before stated, 
 both are French women. The first, ne'e Marie Branicki, 
 is the wife of a former lieutenant of the Garde du Corps, 
 who, during a long residence in Potsdam and Be'rlin, 
 succeeded in accumulating a few million marks of debts. 
 Now the couple hold forth on Prince Anton Radziwiil's 
 Polish domains. Two things drew Auguste Victoria to 
 Princess George. Her Grace was as capable of throwing 
 
340 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 away money as the Royal Highness and Majesty, and 
 both excelled for a time in the matter of bringing forth 
 a child year by year. The Kaiserin married two years 
 before Countess Marie did, in 1881, had a child in 1882 
 and one in 1883, 1884, 1887, 1888, 1890, and 1892. 
 Comtesse de Branicki married in 1883 and had children in 
 1884, 1885, 1886, 1888, 1889, and 1894, four boys and two 
 girls. In some instances they followed each other at inter- 
 vals of ten months. Countess Goertz, too, would come up 
 to Napoleon's sarcastic estimate of "woman's greatness." 
 Married in February, 1876, she had a child in January, 1877, 
 and before the year was up was delivered of number two. 
 With her other four children she allowed herself more 
 time. 
 
 Since the Radzi wills moved from Berlin, Princess 
 Marie's name has never been mentioned at the Palace, 
 and the relations between the Empress and Countess 
 Goertz are strained ever since the Kaiser declared her 
 Erlaucht (Illustrious Ladyship) an eminently beautiful 
 woman. 
 
 Jealousy on the one hand and egotism re-enforced by 
 pride on the other, prevent friendly relations between 
 her Majesty and her relatives on the Kaiser's side. 
 
 Her Majesty's relations to the women of other reigning 
 families are no more cordial, though less fluctuating, than 
 those to her sister and sisters-in-law. Years ago she was 
 intimate with the Queen of Italy, but the betrothal of 
 the Prince of Naples to Helene of Montenegro caused 
 a breach that subsequent entrevues failed to heal. The 
 Kaiserin did try, and tried hard, to gain the friendship 
 of the Czarina ; but her partisanship for the " righting 
 Grand Duchess," as Victoria of Hesse-Darmstadt is called 
 in Court circles, undid all her efforts to appear gracious 
 and obliging to the younger and prettier cousin. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 341 
 
 In the conjugal imbroglio, Alexandra Feodorovna 
 has supported her brother from the start. The Grand 
 Duchess's continued obstinacy and incompatibility of 
 temper, she thinks, would have ceased long ago if the 
 Kaiserin did not uphold the little spitfire. 
 
 Maybe my mistress is guilty of the offence charged ; 
 yet it is safe to assume that she acts out of sympathy 
 with the young wife's peculiar position rather than because 
 she dislikes the Grand Duke, or believes in opposing a 
 husband's authority. 
 
 The Emperor hates family ties ; he is always at war 
 with his mother, sometimes with Prince Henry and his 
 sisters Charlotte and Sophie, and looks upon the rest of 
 his relatives with supreme indifference, as a big New- 
 foundland does upon the small fry of the canine race. And 
 as that seemingly good-natured but au fond knavish 
 quadruped allows pretty toy dogs to play with him and 
 pull him about, so does the Kaiser engage in familiar 
 intercourse, off and on, with Duchess Calma, with her 
 Highness's children, Duke Gunther, and brother-in-law 
 Adolph of Lippe ; but as to her Majesty's mother and 
 Princess Feo, he loathes them. 
 
 The presumption, so frequently heard, that the imperial 
 couple and Empress Frederick could not agree because 
 of the latter' s one-sided love of things English, is on a 
 par with hundreds of inventions dealing with the Prussian 
 Court of to-day, inventions out of Mother Idleness, 
 sired by Ignorance. As a matter of fact, the widow of 
 the gallant Frederick was not half as prejudiced in favour 
 of England as her enemies like to make out. 
 
 I knew Kaiserin Victoria for twenty years and never 
 heard her utter a word of English. She preferred to use 
 German even in her correspondence, and, what is still 
 more remarkable, employed the doomed German script. 
 
342 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 She patronised German industries, loved German art, 
 and surrounded herself with Germans. The Kaiser, on 
 the other hand, cannot conceal his English proclivities, 
 much as he loves to air Anglophobian views for political 
 reasons. He seizes every opportunity for speaking and 
 writing English, and forces his adjutants and courtiers 
 to learn English, no matter at what age they enter his 
 personal service. Herr von Egloff stein was far removed 
 from youth when he became one of our House-marshals 
 three or more years ago, but continues to study his Lindley 
 Murray to this day. 
 
 If possible, the Empress is a more enthusiastic believer 
 in everything English than William ; the whole faculty 
 of native midwives and nurses (not an inconsiderable 
 body in our country) looks down upon her Majesty as a 
 traitress to German womanhood for employing English 
 accoucheuses and nursery-maids ; but she persists, braving 
 the Chary bdis of unpopularity. The imperial children 
 learn English first and German afterward. Her Majesty 
 never speaks a word of German with them until they are 
 five years old. When either of the children's birthday 
 occurs during her absence, she sends her congratulations 
 in English. Most of their clothes come from England, 
 and their pony and donkey carts are made in Great 
 Britain. Is it to be wondered at when the children in- 
 dulge in such remarks as : "It would be queer if these 
 stockings were of fast colour ; they are of German manu- 
 facture ? " Once, when Court-chaplain Frommel admired 
 their hosiery, the Crown Prince and Eitel Fritz expressed 
 themselves in that surprising style. 
 
 Taking all in all, it is quite evident that the lack of 
 sympathy between the two Empresses had its origin in 
 other causes than those popularly assigned. 
 
 In all these years, Auguste Victoria has never loved, 
 

 WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 343 
 
 has sometimes fought, and has always feared her mother- 
 in-law. There are people who assert that the similarity 
 of their characters is one of the chief reasons for the strained 
 relations between Kaiserin Frederick and her son. Both 
 are too conscious of their worth and dignity, too pig- 
 headed, too prejudiced, too much wedded to the " no 
 surrender " policy, to come to an understanding, now that 
 their old differences are well-nigh history. 
 
 " Knowing both her husband's and her mother-in-law's 
 weaknesses, Auguste Victoria ought to have mediated, or, 
 that failing, ought to have done her part toward bring- 
 ing about and preserving amicable relations between the 
 Neues Palais and Friedrichshof on her own account," 
 say the true friends of the relatives-at-war. But she 
 did nothing of the kind. In those awful days of June, 
 1888, when the new Kaiser, attended by the madman 
 Normann, exploited his cruel egotism at his father's death- 
 bed, when he made his mother and his sisters quasi prisoners 
 of state until his search for an imaginary secret testament 
 was completed (England cheated a Prussian Majesty out 
 of an inheritance once, 1 why not again ?) from 9 A.M., 
 on June 15, until after Frederick's funeral Auguste 
 Victoria renounced her rights of wife and mother altogether ; 
 before William's deeds of unprecedented barbarity she 
 relinquished even her womanly feelings. 
 
 If ever wife and mother ought to have stood up for 
 another wife and mother ; if ever woman ought to have 
 thrown the halo of womanly love around another, that 
 was the time ! What did Auguste Victoria do ? She sent 
 expressions of the deepest regret, and said she would come 
 to Friedrichskron as soon as her crape gown was ready. 
 
 1 The Hanoverian joint heritages, the Princess of Ahlden Allodia, about 
 1729. Frederick William I., at' that time, challenged George II. to the famous 
 duel that never came off. 
 
344 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Meanwhile, William had declared the property rights 
 of all the people in the palace Ms palace forfeited for 
 the time being ; as the feudal lord of old seized a bonds- 
 man's personal estate while the body was yet warm, so 
 had the presence of death a father's waxen face no 
 restraining influence over the new master. The late 
 Emperor's, his wife's and daughter's writing-desks, their 
 strong boxes, trinket-boxes, bedrooms, and boudoirs, 
 were submitted to a rigid examination before the owners 
 were allowed access again. And in the midst of the 
 rumpus a four-horse coach brought the new Empress ! 
 
 Kaiserin Frederick had no patience to hear Auguste 
 Victoria declaim. " Send Brockdorff away," she said 
 curtly. And then the proud woman unbent enough to 
 ask, nay, implore, her daughter-in-law to stop William's 
 ravings. " By all that is holy to you," she is said to 
 have exclaimed, " stop that man from desecrating my home 
 and my noble dead. I have appealed to his love, to his 
 sense of decency, to his manliness. It is your turn now. 
 Talk to him with the authority of a wife and mother. 
 He must listen to you. And unless you expect to be 
 treated by your sons as I have been treated by my son dur- 
 ing the last two hours, restrain him, re-establish me 
 as mistress within my own walls, and I will be for ever 
 grateful to you." 
 
 Auguste Victoria went into the library, and returned 
 after a few moments, her face flushed and trembling. " I 
 can do nothing," she faltered out ; " ' Willie ' is here as 
 Emperor, and I cannot interfere with his official business." 
 
 " Then have the goodness to go back to your Marble 
 Palace and play with your children," cried the widowed 
 Empress hotly. 
 
 And the hostilities were reopened. In the interval 
 occasioned by the new Kaiserin's reception, William had 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 345 
 
 informed his mother's officials and servants that he was 
 their master now and that they must obey no one's orders 
 but his own. Thereupon the Dowager Empress : 
 
 " Whoever refuses to carry out any of my commands 
 promptly and willingly, will be instantly dismissed and 
 forfeits his rights to pension." 
 
 Victoria had furnished her Court-marshal with a list 
 of persons who were to be admitted to the house in order 
 that they might have a last look at her dead hero. Only 
 Frederick's personal and political friends were on the 
 list, but William tore it up, and ordered his sentinels to 
 admit all high army officers who called. 
 
 Have ever such scenes occurred in the presence of 
 death ? The new lord's " drill-tenor " cutting short the 
 impassioned speech of an outraged wife and distracted 
 mother ! Entreaties, appeals, threats, on the one side ; 
 cold indifference, scorn, sneering references to the status 
 quo, on the other. 
 
 There was no peace between the reigning Hohenzollerns 
 and the proud Guelph mother, shorn of power, ever after. 
 A resemblance of familiar intercourse was kept up as long 
 as the Empress Augusta lived, but after her death the 
 Kaiser's enmity to his mother became a matter of political 
 significance. German statesmen trimmed their sails ac- 
 cording to its fluctuations, and those of Great Britain 
 followed suit. 
 
 The Empress Frederick and Auguste Victoria had 
 one more momentous meeting since that of June 15 ; 
 namely, in the fall of the same year, when the negotia- 
 tions for the Dowager Kaiserin's removal from Castle 
 Friedrichskron were pending. The older woman strenu- 
 ously opposed her son's claims to the property, first 
 because she herself desired to retain the house where she 
 had lived so long, and, secondly, because she feared William 
 
346 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 would ruin himself in the possession of this castle, whose 
 vastness and splendour offer particular temptations for 
 establishing a Court out of all proportions to the Kaiser's 
 revenues. However, the " August enburger " would not 
 see it in that light. As a matter of fact, she was as eager 
 to branch out a la Versailles as her husband. After three 
 months of widowhood, Empress Frederick left Fried- 
 richskron. She was crying bitterly as she went through 
 the park and halls, taking leave of everything and every- 
 body. " Here I have spent the most beautiful days of 
 my married life, and afterward endured the awfullest 
 hours woman can endure," she remarked to General von 
 Lindequist, then commander of Potsdam. To the officials 
 and servants, each of whom, high and low, she shook by 
 the hand, she said : "If you ever want to see your old 
 mistress again, you must come to Berlin, where I will 
 make you welcome with pleasure. May palsy strike my 
 foot if ever I thrust it over this threshold again." 
 
 As was to be expected from a woman of her Majesty's 
 character, she kept her word. Occasional quasi en- 
 forced visits between their Majesties and Empress Frederick 
 took place on neutral grounds. The Dowager Kaiserin 
 received her son and daughter-in-law in the manor-house 
 of the farm Bornstadt, a mile or so from the Neues Palais, 
 and next day they repaired to the Marble Palace or Stadt 
 Schloss to give her Majesty an opportunity to return the 
 compliment. Empress Frederick was very seldom in 
 Berlin, and had always an excuse ready for declining 
 invitations to official or private festivities held at her son's 
 Court. Even when she lived Under den Linden at 
 Christmas-time, she forewent the pleasure of seeing the 
 children. She had been too sorely wounded to forget 
 and forgive. After the scenes at Frederick's death-bed, 
 she was driven forth from her home, and this insult 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 347 
 
 was quickly followed by another, aimed at her dead 
 husband. 
 
 William and Auguste Victoria took possession of Fried- 
 richskron in May, 1889 ; a few weeks later this name, 
 which Frederick III. had conferred upon the Schloss, 
 was abolished by royal decree and the old, meaningless 
 Neues Palais reinstated. I remember it well. All of 
 a sudden officers of the Court-marshal's office called on 
 the ladies and gentlemen of the Court, demanding us to 
 hand over every scrap of stationery stamped Friedrichs- 
 kron. The confiscated stuff was burned, and we were 
 left without writing-paper for a full week. Her Majesty 
 herself had to write her letters on ordinary blue-lined 
 sheets, bought in a penny shop, as she would not use the 
 official foolscap. 
 
 A third and fourth cause of chagrin to Empress 
 Frederick was the Kaiser's treatment of his brother and 
 sister. Prince Henry was to have had the Villa Carlo tt a 
 in Sans Souci Park, which is Crown property, for a summer 
 home, but the Kaiser gave the house and beautiful gardens 
 to Baron von Lyncker. Next he turned the Meiningens 
 out of their Thiergarten villa, which Emperor Frederick 
 had rented for his daughter and son-in-law with the 
 understanding that the Minister of the royal house pay 
 the rent as long as the Meiningens cared to remain. 
 William no sooner learned of this arrangement when he 
 repudiated it. " I pay the Meiningens' rent ? Not for 
 a day, not for an hour," and the landlord was at once 
 notified that, after the expiration of the lease, at the end 
 of three months, he would receive no more money from 
 the royal treasury. The Meiningens have since lived 
 away from Berlin, 
 
 Empress Frederick's latest quarrel with her daughter- 
 in-law dates from the summer of 1891, when Auguste 
 
348 PRIVATE LIVES OF 
 
 Victoria decided to go to Felixstowe with her children 
 and a suite of fifty persons, and, to secure more spending 
 money, authorised Court-marshal von Eulenburg to de- 
 prive the servants of their allowance of butter for first 
 breakfast and for supper. The Kaiser's menage never 
 allows butter for second breakfast. Now it happened 
 that the servants transferred from Empress Frederick's 
 Court to that of the present Kaiser and Kaiserin were 
 among the first to petition for redress. Ergo the cry of 
 Empress Frederick's enemies, that " the Britisher " was 
 at the bottom of the revolt. 
 
 " I knew nothing about these petty quarrels," said 
 the Dowager Kaiserin, some time afterward, to Countess 
 Wilhelm Hohenau, " but I certainly think that this latest 
 makeshift was most disgraceful. Depriving a servant of 
 his butter is as bad as selling a dead man's false teeth." 
 
 Though the strong-minded English woman was noted 
 for her outspoken criticisms, this remark, aimed directly 
 at Auguste Victoria and coming to her ears in the quickest 
 possible way, created first consternation and later on a 
 demand for reprisals. 
 
 And now let us get to the bottom of the enmity between 
 mother and son and between mother-in-law and daughter- 
 in-law. 
 
 On April 10, 1888, just one month after the reign of 
 ninety-nine days had begun, Empress Victoria the official 
 designation " Empress Frederick " was conferred upon 
 her Majesty after William's accession on that day Empress 
 Victoria drove from Castle Charlottenburg to the Berlin 
 Schloss, having previously ordered Prince Bismarck to 
 meet her. Then and there the Kaiserin informed the 
 Chancellor that Frederick had decided not to leave her 
 (in the event of his death) to the tender mercies of her 
 son. 
 
WILLIAM II. AND HIS CONSORT 349 
 
 " Cherishing no illusions with respect to William's 
 sense of justice, or to his chevaleresque qualities," said her 
 Majesty, " the Emperor orders that seventy-five per cent, 
 of my portion, as well as the dowries of my unmarried 
 daughters and all my daughters' shares in our property, 
 be paid by the Crown treasury now, while the rest is to 
 be held at our disposal, to be paid over the moment my 
 husband dies, and before the new Emperor assumes control 
 of the funds and revenues." 
 
 Bismarck was dumfounded. 
 
 " Here are the Kaiser's orders, signed and counter- 
 signed and sealed. And," added the Empress, " his 
 Majesty enjoins your Grace and all the persons taking 
 official cognisance of this act to the greatest secrecy. I 
 have your word, Prince ? " 
 
 " You have, your Majesty." 
 
 Of this arrangement William never heard a breath 
 until the morning of June 15. 
 
 Those who followed the events preceding Bismarck's 
 dismissal will remember that the Chancellor, before sub- 
 mitting to the Kaiser's request for his resignation, went 
 to the Empress Frederick to ask her intercession. At 
 that momentous interview he reminded her Majesty of 
 the service rendered her two years before. But the 
 Empress merely shook her head : " It is that which stands 
 for ever between me and my son." 
 
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