The Kaiser

by Virginia Cowles

  However, worse was to come. The Old Schloss seemed luxurious compared to the New Palace at Potsdam and the country house at Bornstedt into which the Prince and Princess soon moved. The appalling discomfort remained a vivid memory to Vicky all her life; even forty years later when she described conditions to her daughter, Sophie, she wrote with emotion. “I must tell you, when I was a young thing, Berlin was an awful hole. No drainage, fearful pavements, awful smells. I spent the first year without W.C., baths or water to be got at, no cupboards for my clothes, my things had to all remain in boxes. The servants horrified me by their dishonesty and impertinence, their rough, untidy, dirty ways, their disobedience. A lady was nothing, not to be listened to… 1000’s of dead bats I found in one big empty room, and bugs by the 100’s. The beds I begged all to have burnt, but they were not… Every drop of water was fetched for every bath and for the kitchen etc. by soldiers, a battalion of men. At Bornstedt (a house near Potsdam) when we first took it, no farm servant had ever had a mattress or sheets or blankets! They never undressed to go to bed, but kept on their clothes and enormous leather boots! — never washed and had no place to have meals, but sat and ate anywhere in the yard, stable or on the staircase”[10]

  Luckily for the Princess the old King became so mad that Frederick’s father was appointed Regent at the end of 1858, and during the following year she was able to unpack and introduce some method and hygiene. However, the dirt and the lack of plumbing were not her only worries. No matter how hard she tried, she could not get used to the stiffness of Prussian etiquette and the interminably long ceremonies. By comparison Queen Victoria’s court seemed positively abandoned. To Vicky, the rigid emphasis on trivial details appeared ridiculous and provincial. Once the Queen rebuked her for sneezing during a ceremony and she replied tartly: “But I have a cold, Ma’am.” The Queen snapped back that it made no difference; no one was permitted to sneeze in front of the Sovereign. And Vicky could not resist saying acidly: “We do not have customs like that in our Court at home.”

  Another ordeal was the strange hours of the meals. There was no such thing as the English dinner party. In Prussia dinner took place in mid-afternoon, and the evening meal at eight was merely tea. Even the German-born Countess von Hohenthal refers to “these ghastly hours and modes of feeding.” “1 could never achieve satisfactorily,” she wrote, “the early dinner by daylight in full evening dress. The crude white lights streaming in at the windows used to blind and tire me and many a time I have had to leave the table in a half-fainting state. The afternoons were passed by the victims of these barbarous customs in a state of coma, almost unable to move, and certainly to occupy themselves…”[11] Vicky found a sympathetic ear when she complained to Wally of the Prussian habit of dinner guests gargling into their finger-bowls; and she developed an almost psychopathic loathing for Prussian boots. Why could none of the gentlemen ever appear in civilian attire?

  On the whole these were minor irritants. What the Princess missed most of all was intellectual freedom and its natural companion, good conversation. English society had a vitality which was lacking on the continent. This was due to the fact that the British aristocracy was constantly revitalized by the creation of new peers drawn from the middle classes — the best brains in politics, industry, and the arts. The Prussian aristocracy on the other hand was static. Since Prussia had not yet begun to industrialise it was composed entirely of Junkers, who not only owned the land but dominated the civil service and the army, the only two dignified occupations open to them. Society drawn exclusively from these limited spheres was not apt to be lively; of course there was a group of middle-class intellectuals who might have added some spice, but as most of them were radicals they were regarded as beyond the pale.

  Since the Princess herself was a radical and a free-thinker she found the company of the Junkers stultifying. They were narrowminded and censorious and she wrote her mother that “the very approach of a Tory reactionary seems to freeze me up.” One of these reactionaries was the towering, shaggy-haired diplomatist, Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck had remained in prominence ever since the revolutionary days of 1848 when he had stemmed the liberal tide by his passionate defence of autocracy and feudalism, and above all of Prussian supremacy. “We all desire the Prussian eagle to spread its guardian and governing wings from the Memel to the Donnersberg,” he had cried, “but free we will see him… not sheltering under the levelling vultures from Frankfurt… Prussians we are and Prussians we will remain.” He had written the King such hysterical letters of support at the time that the old man — a die-hard himself — was slightly embarrassed and catalogued him as a red revolutionary, smacking of blood, only to be employed when the bayonet reigns without reservation.” However, when the old, reactionary Frankfurt Diet was restored in 1850 the King thought better of Bismarck and sent him to Frankfurt as Prussia’s representative. Thus he was launched on a diplomatic career. A few years later he was transferred to St. Petersburg, then to Paris.

  It was during this phase, when he was in his middle forties, that he first met the Princess Royal. He had received the news of her engagement to Frederick with reservation as he did not want British democratic ideas infecting Prussia. “If the Princess can leave the English women at home and become a Prussian, then she may be a blessing to the country,” he remarked guardedly to a friend. But when he met her he sensed that she was an opponent. At first he did not realise how deep her political convictions lay, and that her hostility sprang from the role he had played in 1848. He wrote in his reminiscences that he was startled to find that she did not approve of his character. “Even soon after her arrival in Germany, in February 1858, I became convinced, through members of the Royal House and my own observations, that the Princess was prejudiced against me personally. The fact did not surprise me so much as the form in which her prejudice against me had been expressed in the narrow family circle — ‘she did not trust me.’”

  The Princess did not worry about Bismarck. To her he was just another Junker reactionary. She made contacts of her own with the intellectuals in Berlin and even took private lessons in science and mathematics. She had unlimited energy; she painted and sculptured, wrote poetry and organised musical glee clubs. The Prussians looked askance, for they believed that women should occupy themselves with husband and children and not meddle in the great world. She sensed the disapproval and at times was overcome with longing for her father. “You don’t know,” she wrote to her brother, the Prince of Wales, “how one longs for a word from him when one is distant.” Instead, she had to content herself with letters. Every week she sent Prince Albert a long dissertation on politics or philosophy — and sometimes on her own emotions. He gave her constant reassurance. “That you should sometimes be oppressed by home-sickness is most natural. This feeling, which I know right well, will be sure to increase with the sadness which the reviving spring and the quickness of all nature that comes with it, always develops in the heart.”[12] The weekly letters were not enough. Albert was dissatisfied unless he could exchange visits with his daughter every few months. The June after her marriage he spent six days with her in Berlin; and later in the summer returned to pay a second visit with Queen Victoria. The following year the Princess made two trips to England and the third year Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made a long visit to Coburg where all their relations gathered.

  The Queen’s relationship with her daughter was of a different nature, less exalted and more exacting. She wanted to know every detail of the Princess’s life. She instructed the Maids of Honour to write her regularly and the Countess Walpurga remembers warnings from the Princess: “Don’t tell Mama that.” The Princess herself wrote to her mother once and sometimes twice a day. Baron Stockmar thought the Queen’s demands insatiable and even harmful. After a visit to Berlin, he complained to Lord Clarendon that “the Queen wishes to exercise the same authority and control over her that she did before her marriage…”[13] This was unfair. Victoria’s chief concern was to help her daughter t
hrough a difficult period, but Baron Stockmar was not the only person to complain. Soon Prussian critics were whispering of the dangers of “petticoat rule.”

  The Princess’s first child was named Frederick William Victor Albert, and known as Prince William. Queen Victoria was hurt and irritated at not being able to attend the christening. A cabinet crisis prevented her from leaving England, and her daughter wrote that it was impossible to postpone the date of the ceremony, which took place a week after William was born. “Never,” wrote the Queen to her Uncle Leopold, “have I been so bitterly disappointed about anything as this… It is a stupid law in Prussia, I must say, to be so particular about having the christening so soon.”[14] The Princess wrote to her mother that she had promoted her trusted English maid, Mrs. Georgina Hobbs, to the post of nanny, and was organising her nursery on strictly English lines. The Queen and the Prince did not see their first grandchild until they made a trip to Coburg when he was twenty months old. Anything that belonged to Vicky was perfect in Albert’s eyes and the Queen eagerly reflected her husband’s sentiments. The poor maimed little arm was not mentioned, even in her diary. She could not bear to refer to it for she knew how distressed Vicky was by the child’s infirmity and how she still consulted new doctors, although they always said that nothing could be done. “Our darling grandchild was brought,” she wrote, “such a little love! He came walking in at Mrs. Hobbs’ hand, in a little white dress with black bows and so good. He is a fine, fat child, with a beautiful white soft skin, very fine shoulders and limbs, and a very dear face, like Vicky and Fritz, and also Louise of Baden. He has Fritz’ eyes and Vicky’s mouth, and very fair curly hair. We felt so happy to see him at last.”[15]

  By this time William was not the only child in the nursery. Despite the fact that Vicky had almost died in giving birth to him, and despite her father’s warnings about having children in too quick succession, she produced babies with clock-work regularity. In 1860 a daughter, Charlotte, was born, and in 1862 a second son, Henry. Altogether she gave birth to four sons and four daughters. She created her large family less from a strong maternal instinct than a sense of royal duty. Although she was proud of her children and conscientious about their welfare, in the first years of her married life her interest was centred almost exclusively on her husband.

  Like all Prussian princes, Fritz was in the army, but a less typical Prussian officer could scarcely be found. He was gentle and diffident and disliked the routine and heartiness of military life; furthermore he treated his wife as an equal which was almost unheard of in Berlin. He not only loved her but was enchanted by her flashing intellect and liked to spend long hours discussing complex subjects with her. She, in turn, felt herself indispensable to him. She returned his adoration with a deep devotion tinged by an almost prophetic desire to protect him. She followed him about on tours of inspection, and moved house to be with him on manoeuvres. Sometimes Walpurga Hohenthal felt that she was seeing too few people. “The Princess had at that time a passionate but simple nature… During the whole of those weeks at Berlin she never once went out in the daytime, but used to wait until the Prince came home and then take a drive with him.”[16] But Vicky was blissful in her married life. On her third wedding anniversary she wrote to her father: “Every time our dear wedding day returns I feel so happy and thankful… not a hope has been disappointed, not an expectation that has not been realised…”

  The only demands that could draw the Princess away from Fritz were trips to England to visit her parents and, on one occasion, a special commission for her father. It was a strange request. In 1859 the Prince Consort confided to Vicky that he was worried about the eighteen-year-old Prince of Wales’s development. The boy seemed to have no intellectual interests, and, even more alarming, was definitely pleasure-loving. Albert thought that he might get into mischief unless a stable influence could be brought into his life, and had decided that he must marry young. The difficulty lay in finding a suitable bride. Could not Vicky survey the field and produce the right person?

  The Princess accepted the assignment and when she returned to Germany enlisted Walpurga Hohenthal’s help. The first move on the part of the two young ladies was to attend a large supper party in Düsseldorf, given by the Prince of Hohenzollern, at which every eligible young German princess would be present. The Countess disapproved of the scheme, arguing that the Prince of Wales was much too young for an engagement. Nevertheless, they attended the party, but luckily all the princesses were “too plain to be considered.” “We therefore returned to Berlin having done nothing,” wrote the Countess with relief.

  However, the incident had a sequel. A year later, Walpurga married a British diplomat, Mr. Arthur Paget, who was sent en poste to Copenhagen. The Princess was desolate at losing her beloved “Wally” but the two corresponded regularly. One day a letter arrived saying that the Countess had met an enchanting Danish Princess by the name of Alexandra who might make an excellent wife for the Prince of Wales. The Princess replied immediately, asked Wally to arrange a meeting (with as much discretion as possible) between herself and the young lady at Stretlitz. It took nearly a year before an occasion could be found, and the Countess waited nervously for the Princess’s verdict. At last the letter arrived. “Quite enchanted I returned from Stretlitz and you are the first to whom I hasten to impart my impression. Princess Alix is the most enchanting creature in the world, you did not say nearly enough. For a long time I have seen nobody who pleased me so much as this lovely and charming girl, not to speak of a Princess. I am so grateful to you, dear Wally, that you have arranged all so well… I have never seen Fritz so taken with anyone as he was with her. I have to think of you so continually here in the dear Neue Palais, I feel so sad when I pass your windows where, for two summers, your dear face always looked out with eyes brimful of mischief… The children have grown much, the little boy [Prince William] had a nasty inflammation of the eyes which however, God be praised, is over now, but he still looks pale — not at all well — because, after the much-beloved German system, he has been kept locked up indoors for ages…”[17] On the same day the Princess sent an equally enthusiastic report about “Alix” to her father.

  Vicky was now Crown Princess of Prussia. In January 1861 the mad old King had died and Prince Frederick’s father had ascended the throne as William I. Vicky was approaching her twenty-first birthday and in the full bloom of vitality and good looks. The American historian, Mr. Motley, who met her in Vienna, wrote to his mother: “She is rather petite, has a fresh young face with pretty features, fine teeth, and a frank and agreeable smile… Nothing could be simpler or more natural than her style, which I should say was the perfection of good breeding.”[18] Prince Albert’s heart was filled with pride. “As for Vicky,” he wrote the faithful Stockmar, “unquestionably she will turn out a very distinguished character whom Prussia will have cause to bless.” To Vicky herself he sent congratulations on her twenty-first birthday in November 1861. “May your life which has begun so beautifully expand still further to the good of others and the contentment of your own mind…”[19] A month later Prince Albert was dead of typhoid fever. The blow fell with stunning impact on both his widow and daughter. The Princess was so distraught that she declared hysterically that her life was “over” — much to her husband’s bewilderment. “She is very miserable and has bursts of grief which are painful to witness,” wrote one of her German ladies-in-waiting to Walpurga Paget’s husband. “Her health at present is very good, but I am always in fear that the continual emotions may be detrimental to her… she certainly has the kindest and most devoted of nurses (I may almost say) in the excellent Crown Prince, who seems to think of nothing else but how to try and alleviate her sorrow.”[20]

  The death of Prince Albert was more than a personal loss; it coincided with political events which marked a turning point in the life of Prussia, in the life of Europe, and in the life of the Princess. First of all, the Princess’s determination to express her father’s liberal ideas became
almost an obsession. She was highly strung and impulsive, and now she seemed to lose all poise and discretion. “She was like a ship in full sail,” wrote Walpurga Paget, “when the ballast is suddenly thrown overboard.” And at the exact moment that the Princess moved in one direction, the Prussian ship of state veered and turned the opposite way.

  It is surprising that Vicky did not foresee the likely change of course when her father-in-law, William I, succeeded as King of Prussia. William was even more of a reactionary than his predecessor. Indeed, during the revolutionary days of 1848 he had been bundled out of the country for safety. He believed in the Divine Right of Kings; and in Junker supremacy which meant an army dominated by the Junker class. He loathed all liberals and his first move was to expand the country’s military forces and reorganise them in such a way as to rid them of liberal elements which had crept in over the past ten years. But here he hit a snag. The lower house of the Prussian assembly had a liberal majority, and, although the assembly had very few powers, its one indisputable function was to approve the King’s bills. But what if it did not approve? What happened then? No one knew. The Constitution of 1850 had left this point delightfully vague.

  This was the problem with which William was faced. The upper house, composed of aristocrats, passed his huge financial budget, but the lower assembly, unwilling to see its political supporters expunged from the army during the period of expansion, refused to give its sanction. William I was advised to send for the shrewd, fiercely conservative Otto von Bismarck. If anyone could find a way to thwart the assembly it was he. The King offered him the job of Minister-President of Prussia, but Bismarck saw the chance for real power; he could not accept the position, he said, unless he was given control of Prussia’s foreign policy. After much hesitation, the King agreed and the direction of the nation passed into the hands of a man destined to stand as a breakwater against the democratic tide moving across Europe. Even the King was taken aback by the bluntness of Bismark’s speeches. In his first address to the budget Commission of the assembly, he jeered at liberal ideas and declared: “The great questions of the day will not be settled by resolutions and majority votes — that was the mistake of the men of 1848 — but by blood and iron.”