Was there really a bond of love and confidence between them? There is no hint of this from William’s pen, either as a schoolboy or in retrospect. Was he really shy and awkward? Hintzpeter suggests that he was becoming alarmingly autocratic. His head was filled with romantic notions and he was still in a haze of ecstasy over the newly created German Empire. About this time, he accompanied his father and mother to England to stay with his grandmother. Shortly after his return, the Queen cautioned her daughter not to keep William’s circle too narrow. Perhaps she, too, had thought him a bit imperious, for she regretted that he did not come into contact more often with ordinary people — military training would not suffice. Apparently the Crown Princess misunderstood her mother’s meaning, for the Queen wrote again. “I… wish just to touch on your answer to my observations and hopes respecting Willy. The vehemence with which you speak of ‘the horror of low company’ would make it appear as though I had advocated it! What I meant (but what I fear your position in Prussia, living always in a Palace with the ideas of immense position of Kings and Princes, etc.) is: that the Princes and Princesses should be thoroughly kind, menschlich, should not feel that they were of a different flesh and blood to the poor, the peasants and working classes and servants, and that going amongst them, as we always did and do, and as every respectable lady and gentleman does here — was of such immense benefit to the character of those who have to reign hereafter. The mere contact with soldiers never can do that, or rather the reverse, for they are bound to obey and no independence of character can be expected in the ranks…”[38] Queen Victoria’s words did not have much effect at the time but three years later they bore unexpected fruit. When William was fifteen an announcement was made which astonished the Prussian aristocracy. William and his brother Henry would move to Cassel and attend the state-run grammar school. They would do their lessons with ordinary boys. Even today royal princes are seldom sent to state schools, so it is not difficult to imagine the indignation the plan drew from the privileged world of 1874. The aging Emperor protested angrily and Bismarck raised his hands in sharp disdain. The Crown Princess was to blame. This obviously was an English notion. As usual she was trying to force the practices of her native land upon the Prussian way of life. Nothing could have been farther from the truth, for the English aristocracy — much less its royalty — would have been just as shocked as the Prussians at the thought of a prince attending a state school. The idea had originated with George Hintzpeter, and it had taken him months to persuade the Crown Princess to accept it.
Hintzpeter was convinced that the only cure for William’s growing arrogance was to mix with middle-class boys. He must learn that although he occupied an exalted position many of the sons of professional people were more gifted intellectually than himself. Competition on a serious scale was essential, and might induce a more humble approach to life. William himself was appalled by the plan. “I was not exactly pleasantly surprised. For now I… was to be given into the hands of new teachers, and now, all at once, was to learn with strange boys in a public school, was to compete with them — and to come out lower on the lists!”[39]
William and his brother soon found themselves plunged into an odd mixture of pomp and simplicity. Hintzpeter got it into his head that they must hike to Cassel like “travelling students.” He accompanied them and for hours they climbed over mountains and marched through valleys, arriving in the town looking like tramps. The Emperor was expected the same day, which was all part of Hintzpeter’s plan. “We entered Cassel in a peculiar fashion, in deliberate antithesis to the public imagination,” he recorded pompously in his diary. “We cheerfully sat in the enclosure for yeomen on the bowling green of a coachman’s beerhouse, partaking of sour beer and hard bread. It was raining, and I held my umbrella over the lunch to prevent the beer becoming still more watery, for we needed strengthening after a hard march. Then we heard the whistle of an engine, and by this knew that at that moment the Emperor was arriving in Cassel in triumph, in a comfortable saloon car, honoured, extolled, well-dined, in complete enjoyment of a hard-earned position after a lifetime’s work; while Prince William, having quite insufficiently breakfasted, with tired legs and empty stomach, walked to Cassel and entered Cassel in the true manner of a travelling student. And this moral sermon was fully exemplified in word and deed. So as not to be with the Emperor in Cassel we wander about in the surrounding country, obtain, with difficulty, a cup of coffee in some pleasure grounds, wherein we blissfully soak a pocketed crust of bread…”[40] After this, the tutor and the two princes walked to the large palace on the main street which was to be their home. The porter, dressed in a splendid uniform, refused to believe they were who they said, and only let them in after protracted argument.
Hintzpeter’s attempts to democratise Prince William were not altogether successful. Although he quickly adjusted himself to his new life and soon enjoyed the games and rivalry, he refused to shed his condescension. Apparently it did not matter, for his tutor wrote that “his school-fellows soon found out, in spite of an ever-tactful reserve which forbade all familiarity, he could be, and actually was, a very good fellow…”
Hintzpeter was not the right person to deal with William’s pompousness. Heavy and unimaginative, he lacked the humour necessary to jostle him out of his pretentiousness. Indeed, he himself had a tendency to treat trivial matters with ridiculous solemnity. Once Bismarck, who was curious to know what sort of a man was instructing Prince William, honoured him with a talk.
Afterwards the Crown Princess asked him casually what the Chancellor had said. Before he felt able to reply, he drew up a draft of the conversation and sent it to Bismarck asking if he had quoted him correctly. Needless to say, he received no acknowledgement.
During the three years William and his brother spent at Cassel, Hintzpeter arranged a weekly dinner party to which he summoned distinguished men from different walks of life. His object, he explained, was to mix the “classes,” and he dubbed his parties “conciliation dinners.” These occasions were not gay; the guests stood about stiffly, conscious that they were in the presence of their future ruler. And William, far from inhaling a spirit of equality, was so pleased by the awe his presence inspired that he became more arrogant than ever.
Hintzpeter wrote the Crown Princess regularly and often complained of William’s laziness. Considering, however, that the boys had to do two hours of homework before breakfast, and lessons went on until eight at night, this weakness had little opportunity to develop. The final examinations came in January 1877, a few weeks before the Prince’s eighteenth birthday. He passed tenth in a class of sixteen. Now the moment had arrived for his brother to enter the navy, and for him to do six months’ military service before proceeding to Bonn University. He returned to Berlin for his birthday celebrations. He learned that his Prussian grandfather was planning to bestow upon him the Order of the Black Eagle. He also learned that his English grandmother was making arrangements to send him the Grand Companionship of the Bath. He told his mother flatly that this would not do. He made such a fuss that she finally wrote to Queen Victoria pointing out that the Emperors of Russia and Austria, and the King of Italy, had already sent the Prince the highest orders at their disposal. The Order of the Garter, she urged, was the only one that would suffice. “Willie,” she added, “would be satisfied with the Bath, but the nation would not.”[41] Queen Victoria gave way and sent her grandson the Garter.
“It is impossible to find two nicer boys than William and Henry,” commented the Prince of Wales in 1878. The Crown Princess, however, was having trouble with William. He was studying Jurisprudence and Political Science at Bonn University, and when he came home for the holidays she was startled to find how dogmatic and aggressive he had become. He knew best about everything, and even began to quarrel with his parents over politics, sometimes making wounding and offensive remarks. The fact that he was deeply religious only seemed to make matters worse, for his religion was based on a conviction that God had person
ally selected him as heir to the German throne; and since he was deeply favoured, he also must be deeply endowed. Vicky wrote to her younger sister Alice, who was married to the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, and lived only a few miles from Bonn, and asked her to keep an eye on him. Perhaps she could make him less intractable.
Prince William enjoyed the university but formed no close friendships, for, just as at Cassel, he was always mindful of his high position. He lived in a palace with a governor and a retinue of aides and entered into student life with a mixture of pleasure and condescension. Moral questions caused him no difficulties, as Hintzpeter’s Calvinism, with its neat simple answers, had stamped his mind. He was a tremendous prig. He objected to gambling and tried to make his fellow students curtail their drinking habits. When he learned that his close friend, Prince Rudolf, son of the Austrian Emperor, was leading a promiscuous life, he turned his back on him. “I was forced to notice in the course of years that he did not take religion seriously… Nor could I help becoming aware of other faults of character so much as to destroy my original confidence, and we drifted further and further apart.”[42] Even Paris incurred his disapproval. He visited the city for the first time in the autumn of 1878; and although he was impressed by the museums and churches, and went up in a balloon from the Tuileries, delighting in an “indescribable view,” he found the levity of the French uncongenial. “The feverish haste and restlessness of Parisian life repelled me,” he wrote in his memoirs. “I never wanted to see the French capital again.”
Princess Alice welcomed William as one of her own family. She was a dumpy, homely little woman of thirty-five, almost the complete opposite of Vicky. Not particularly interested in politics, she was unambitious and placid, and inclined to regard royalty as a bit of a joke. Her family consisted of five daughters and one surviving son. She brought them up not by theory but according to the dictates of her heart. They were jolly uninhibited children and adored their mother. The two eldest, Elisabeth (known as Ella) and Victoria,[43] were only fourteen and fifteen years old when William came to Bonn, and did not find him sympathetic. “They disliked his restlessness and complained that his rapid changes of mood made him an impossible companion. At one moment he would want to go rowing, then it would be riding, or a game of tennis, always eager to show how proficient he was in spite of his crippled arm. He would rein in his horse, or throw down his racket in the middle of a game, and order them all to come and listen to him reading the Bible. Whether he was riding, playing games, or reading, he wanted his cousin Ella to be near him, always his brilliant eyes followed her movements, and when she spoke he was silent, listening to every inflection of her voice.”[44]
When William was in his last term at Bonn a tragedy overtook his aunt’s household. Her four-year-old daughter Alix, nicknamed Sunny, and one day to be known as the grim unsmiling Czarina of Russia, caught typhoid fever. The child recovered but the disease raged through the family. Three-year-old Marie died, and finally, when all the others were mending, Princess Alice, worn out from nursing her children, came down with the fever herself, and succumbed. Vicky was shattered by the news and Queen Victoria found it “almost incredible and most mysterious” that beloved Alice had been called to Albert’s side on the very anniversary of his death.
Had William fallen in love with his cousin Elisabeth? Meriel Buchanan, the daughter of the British minister to Darmstadt, claims that “there can be little doubt that he was greatly attracted to Princess Elisabeth of Hesse, but it is not certain whether she herself refused his proposal, or whether he ever actually asked for permission to marry her, but, judging from a letter the Crown Princess wrote to her mother, some years later, in which she said that it “had not been considered advisable for him to marry a cousin,” there must at some time have been a question of their engagement… It is known that for several years, even after he had succeeded his father as German Emperor, and after Elisabeth of Hesse had become the Grand Duchess Serge of Russia, he refused obstinately to meet her, never going to see her if she was passing through Berlin, and deliberately keeping at a distance if circumstances forced them to be together on some State occasion. Questioned as to this marked avoidance of his cousin, he sometimes refused to reply, or if he did, said harshly that he could never forget how much she had meant to him in the past and how much he had loved her.”[45]
Not until William was an old man, living in exile in Holland, did he refer to his love for Elisabeth. He then admitted to an American journalist, George Viereck, that when he was a young man at Bonn University he had spent much of his time writing love poems to his beautiful cousin. This unrequited passion helps to explain his sudden engagement, only four months after leaving Bonn and beginning his military career at Potsdam, to “Dona,” the Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein. “Willy has written most touching letters (in his own funny style) about his great happiness,” the Princess confided to her mother in February 1880. Yet William made no pretence of being in love with Dona; nor was Dona beautiful or clever or rich or even thought to be a particularly good match. All that could be said was that William had known her a long time and wished to settle down.
The Crown Princess welcomed the idea. Although Willy was only twenty-one she remembered that her father had approved of early marriage for princes, and particularly for future kings. Apart from this, she hoped that Dona might make her son less intractable. She was worried about William for he seemed to be growing farther away from his parents all the time. He not only showed a marked lack of sympathy for their liberal views but was often boastful and rude. At first she had put his rebelliousness down to youth but now she was beginning to be frightened by the cold, almost cruel streak that she noticed in him. At times he adopted such a patronizing air with his father and was so dogmatic with his mother that they were deeply offended. If only they could make Dona fond of them William might become more amenable. Although she was a dull girl — a rosy-cheeked Hausfrau without a trace of intellect — she was kind and gentle and surely would remind him of the respect he owed his parents.
The wedding did not take place until February 1881, a year after the engagement. In January William came home to prepare for the event and Vicky, like her mother before her, made a great fuss over “last times.” Never again would he sleep in the same house with them, never again in the same rooms! “He thinks me absurdly sentimental to observe this,” she wrote to the Queen, “and says it is all the same to him in what place, or house, or room he lives.”
Chapter 3. The Ninety-nine Days
“I wonder why he [Prince Bismarck] does not say straight out, ‘As long as I live both the constitution and the Crown are suspended;’ because that is the exact state of the matter,” wrote the Crown Princess to Queen Victoria in the autumn of 1881. “He thinks a great central power is necessary and that one will must decide and that the state be everything and do everything like one vast set of machinery…”[46]
Germany was a dictatorship although not nearly so efficient as the dictatorships of the present century. It had some of the paraphernalia of the modem totalitarian state but it also had many loopholes. Bismarck controlled a large section of the press and set it snapping and snarling at whomever he liked, yet some papers served other masters and thus provided an opposition; there were severe anti-socialist laws which enabled the State to confiscate property and even imprison without warrant, yet the Social Democrat party, which promulgated socialism, was legal and increased its vote at each election. There was a rather inefficient secret police system, which sent voluminous intelligence reports to the Chancellor who did not bother to read them.
English people, however, found such practices distasteful, and when Lady Ponsonby, the wife of Queen Victoria’s secretary, visited Berlin in 1882 she was shocked to learn that Bismarck even had spies in the Crown Princess’s household. “I don’t think the Queen realises what an extraordinary state of things exists in Germany in the way of espionage and intrigue,” she wrote her husband.
Sc
arcely a day passed without the Crown Princess inveighing against the corrupting influence of Bismarck and the harm he was doing to the national character. She longed for the power to intervene, but found it difficult to exert the smallest influence as people avoided seeing her for fear of incurring the Chancellor’s displeasure. At times the frustration of her position seemed almost unbearable. When she had come to Germany as a bride, the throne had seemed close. In 1861 the King had celebrated his sixty-fourth birthday and the Queen had remarked resignedly: “We are old people; all we can do is work for the future.” That was over twenty years ago, and the Crown Princess was still waiting for the cue that never came.
The Kaiser Page 5