Royal Higness

by Thomas Mann

  Several of the country’s orders were bestowed on the Prince who had just come of age, including the Albrecht Cross and the Great Order of the Grimmburg Griffin, not to mention that he was confirmed in the House Order whose insignia he had possessed since his tenth birthday. Afterwards came the congratulations in the form of a processional Court, led by the fawning Herr von Bühl, after which the gala-breakfast began in the Marble Hall and in the hall of the Twelve Months.

  The foreign princes were entertained for the next few days. A garden-party was given in Hollerbrunn, with fireworks and dancing for the young people of the Court in the park. Festive excursions with pages in attendance were made through the sunny country-side to Monbrillant, Jägerpreis, and Haderstein Ruins, and the people, that inferior order of creation with the searching eyes and the high cheek-bones, stood on the kerb and cheered themselves and their representatives. In the capital Klaus Heinrich’s photograph hung in the windows of the art-dealers, and the Courier actually published a printed likeness of him, a popular and strangely idealized representation, showing the Prince in the crimson mantle. But then came yet another great day—Klaus Heinrich’s formal entry into the Army, into the regiment of Grenadier Guards.

  This is what happened. The regiment to which fell the honour of having Klaus Heinrich as one of its officers was drawn up on the Albrechtsplatz in open square. Many a plume waved in the middle. The princes of the House and the generals were all present. The public, a black mass against the gay background, crowded behind the barriers. Cameras were levelled in several places at the scene of action. The Grand Duchess, with the princesses and their ladies, watched the show from the windows of the Old Schloss.

  First of all, Klaus Heinrich, dressed as a lieutenant, reported himself formally to the Grand Duke. He advanced sternly, without the shadow of a smile, towards his father, clapped his heels together and humbly acquainted him with his presence. The Grand Duke thanked him briefly, also without a smile, and then in his turn, followed by his aides-de-camp, advanced in his dress uniform and plumed hat into the square. Klaus Heinrich stood before the lowered colours, an embroidered, golden, and half-tattered piece of silk cloth, and took the oath. The Grand Duke made a speech in detached sentences and the sharp voice of command which he reserved for such occasions, in which he called his son “Your Grand Ducal Highness” and publicly clasped the Prince’s hand. The Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, with crimson cheeks, led a cheer for the Grand Duke in which the guests, the regiment, and the public joined. A march past followed, and the whole ended with a military luncheon in the castle.

  This picturesque ceremony in the Albrechtsplatz was without practical significance; its effect began and ended there. Klaus Heinrich never dreamed of going into garrison, but went the very same day with his parents and brother and sister to Hollerbrunn, to pass the summer there in the cool old French rooms on the river, between the wall-like hedges of the park, and then, in the autumn, to go up to the university. For so it was ordained in the programme of his life; in the autumn he went up to the university for a year, not that of the capital, but the second one of the country, accompanied by Doctor Ueberbein, his tutor.

  The appointment of this young savant as mentor was once more attributable to an express, ardent wish of the Prince, and indeed, as far as the choice of tutor and older companions was concerned, whom Klaus Heinrich was to have at his side during this year of student freedom, it was considered necessary to give a reasonable amount of consideration to his expressed wishes. Yet there was much to be said against this choice; it was unpopular, or at least criticized aloud or in whispers in many quarters.

  Raoul Ueberbein was not loved in the capital. Due respect was paid to his medal for life-saving and to all his feverish energy, but the man was no genial fellow-citizen, no jolly comrade, no blameless official. The most charitable saw in him an oddity with a determined and uncomfortably reckless disposition, who recognized no Sunday, no holiday, no relaxation, and did not understand being a man amongst men after work was done. This natural son of an adventuress had worked his way up from the depths of society, from an obscure and prospectless youth without means, by dint of sheer strength of will, to being, first school teacher, then academic professor, then university lecturer, had lived to see his appointment—had “engineered” it, as many said—to the “Pheasantry” as teacher of a Grand Ducal Prince, and yet he knew no rest, no contentment, no comfortable enjoyment of life.… But life, as every decent man, thinking of Doctor Ueberbein, truly observed, life does not consist only of profession and performance, it has its purely human claims and duties, the neglect of which is a greater sin than the display of some measure of joviality towards oneself and one’s fellows in the sphere of one’s work, and only that personality can be considered a harmonious one which succeeds in giving its due to each part, profession and human feelings, life and performance.

  Ueberbein’s lack of any sense of camaraderie was bound to tell against him. He avoided all social intercourse with his colleagues, and his circle of friends was confined to the person of one man of another scientific sphere, a surgeon and children’s specialist with the unsympathetic name of Sammet, a very popular surgeon to boot, who shared certain characteristics with Ueberbein. But it was only very rarely—and then only as a sort of favour—that he turned up at the club where the teachers gathered after the day’s work and worry, for a glass of beer, a rubber, or a free exchange of views on public and personal questions—but he passed his evenings, and, as his landlady reported, also a great part of the night, working at science in his study, while his complexion grew greener and greener, and his eyes showed more and more clearly signs of overstrain.

  The authorities had been moved, shortly after his return from the “Pheasantry,” to promote him to head master. Where was he going to stop? At Director? High-school Professor? Minister for Education? Everybody agreed that his immoderate and restless energy concealed imprudence and defiance of public opinion—or rather did not conceal them. His demeanour, his loud, blustering mode of speaking annoyed, irritated, and exasperated people. His tone towards members of the teaching profession who were older and in higher positions than himself was not what it should be. He treated everybody, from the Director down to the humblest usher, in a fatherly way, and his habit of talking of himself as of a man who had “knocked about,” of gassing about “Fate and Duty,” and thereby displaying his benevolent contempt for all those who “weren’t obliged to” and “smoked cigars in the morning,” showed conceit pure and simple. His pupils adored him; he achieved remarkable results with them, that was agreed. But on the whole the Doctor had many enemies in the town, more than he ever guessed, and the misgiving that his influence on the Prince might be an undesirable one was put into words in at least one portion of the daily press.…

  Anyhow Ueberbein obtained leave from the Latin school, and went first of all alone, in the capacity of billeter, on a visit to the famous student town, within whose walls Klaus Heinrich was destined to pass the year of his apprenticeship, and on his return he was received in audience by Excellency von Knobelsdorff, the Minister of the Grand Ducal House, to receive the usual instructions. Their tenour was that almost the most important object of this year was to establish traditions of comradeship on the common ground of academic freedom between the Prince and the student corps, especially in the interests of the dynasty—the regulation phrases, which Herr von Knobelsdorff rattled off almost casually, and which Doctor Ueberbein listened to with a silent bow, while he drew his mouth, and with it his red beard, a little to one side. Then followed Klaus Heinrich’s departure with his mentor, a dog-cart and a servant or two, for the university.

  A glorious year, full of the charm of artistic freedom, in the public eye and in the mirror of public report—yet without technical importance of any kind. Misgivings which had been felt in some quarters that Doctor Ueberbein, through mistaking and misunderstanding the position, might worry the Prince with excessive demands in the direction of objective
science, proved unfounded. On the contrary, it was obvious that the doctor quite realized the difference between his own earnest, and his pupil’s exalted, sphere of existence. On the other hand (whether it was the mentor’s or the Prince’s own fault does not matter) the freedom and the unconstrained camaraderie, like the instruction, were interpreted in a very relative and symbolical sense so that neither the one nor the other, neither the knowledge nor the freedom, could be said to be the essence and peculiarity of the year. Its essence and peculiarity were rather, as it appeared, the year in itself, as the embodiment of custom and impressive ceremoniousness, to which Klaus Heinrich deferred, just as he had deferred to the theatrical rites on his last birthday—only now not with a purple cloak, but occasionally wearing a coloured student’s cap, the so-called “Stürmer,” in which he was portrayed in a photograph issued at once by the Courier to its readers.

  As to his studies, his matriculation was not marked by any particular festivities, though some reference was made to the honour which Klaus Heinrich’s admission bestowed on the university, and the lectures he attended began with the address: “Grand Ducal Highness!” He drove in his dogcart with a groom from the pretty green-clad villa, which the Marshal of his father’s household had leased for him in a select and not too expensive square, amid the remarks and greetings of the passers-by, to the lectures, and there he sat with the consciousness that the whole thing was unessential and unnecessary for his exalted calling, yet with a show of courteous attention.

  Charming anecdotes of the signs the Prince gave of interest in the lectures went about and had their due effect. Towards the end of one course on Nature Study (for Klaus Heinrich attended these courses also “for general information”) the Professor, by way of illustration, had filled a metal shell with water and announced that the water, when frozen, would burst the shell by expansion; he promised to show the class the pieces next lecture. Now he had not kept his word on this point at the next lecture, probably out of forgetfulness: the broken shell had not been forthcoming—Klaus Heinrich had therefore inquired as to the result of the experiment. He had joined in asking questions of the professor at the end of the lecture, just like any ordinary student, and had modestly asked him: “Has the bomb burst?”—whereupon the Professor, full of embarrassment at first, had then expressed his thanks with glad surprise, and indeed emotion, for the kind interest the Prince had expressed in his lectures.

  Klaus Heinrich was honorary member of a student’s club—only honorary, because he was not allowed to fight duels—and once or twice attended their wines, his Stunner on his head. But since his guardians were well aware that the results the influence of strong drink had on his highly strung and delicate temperament were absolutely irreconcilable with his exalted calling, he did not dare to drink seriously, and his comrades were obliged on this point too to bear his Highness in mind. Their rude customs were judiciously limited to a casual one or two, the general tone was as exemplary as it used to be in the upper form at school, the songs they sang were old ones of real poetry, and the meetings were, as a whole, gala and parade nights, refined editions of the ordinary ones. The use of Christian names was the bond of union between Klaus Heinrich and his corps brothers, as the expression and basis of spontaneous comradeship. But it was generally observed that this use sounded false and artificial, however great the efforts to make it otherwise, and that the students were always falling back unintentionally into the form of address which took due notice of the Prince’s Highness.

  Such was the effect of his presence, of his friendly, alert, and always uncompromising attitude which sometimes produced strange, even comical phenomena in the demeanour of the persons with whom the Prince came into contact. One evening, at a soiree which one of his professors gave, he engaged a guest in conversation—a fat man of some age, a King’s Counsel by his title, who, despite his social importance, enjoyed the reputation of a great roué and a regular old sinner. The conversation, whose subject is a matter of no consequence and indeed would be difficult to specify, lasted for a considerable time because no opportunity of breaking it off presented itself. And suddenly, in the middle of his talk with the Prince, the barrister whistled—whistled with his thick lips one of those pointless sequences of notes which one utters when one is embarrassed and wants to appear at one’s ease, and then tried to cover his comic breach of manners by clearing his throat and coughing. Klaus Heinrich was accustomed to experiences of that kind, and tactfully passed on.

  If at any time he wanted to make a purchase himself and went into a shop, his entrance caused a kind of panic. He would ask for what he wanted, a button perhaps, but the girl would not understand him, would look dazed, and unable to fix her attention on the button, but obviously absorbed by something else—something outside and above her duties as a shop-assistant—she would drop a few things, turn the boxes upside down in obvious helplessness, and it was all Klaus Heinrich could do to restore her composure by his friendly manner.

  Such, as I have said, was the effect of his attitude, and in the city it was often described as arrogance and blameworthy contempt for fellow-creatures—others roundly denied the arrogance, and Doctor Ueberbein, when the subject was broached to him at a social gathering, would put the question, whether “every inducement to contempt for his fellow-creatures being readily conceded,” any such contempt really was possible in a case like the present of complete detachment from all the activities of ordinary men. Indeed, any remark of that kind he met in his unanswerable blustering way by the assertion that the Prince not only did not despise his fellow-creatures, but respected even the most worthless of them, only considered them all the more sound, serious, and good for the way in which the poor over-taxed and overstrained man in the street earned his living by the sweat of his brow.…

  The society of the university town had no time to reach a definite verdict on the question. The year of student life was over before one could turn round, and Klaus Heinrich returned, as prescribed by the programme of his life, to his father’s palace, there, despite his left arm, to pass a full year in serious military service. He was attached to the Dragoons of the Guard for six months, and directed the taking up of intervals of eight paces for lance-exercises as well as the forming of squares, as if he were a serious soldier; then changed his weapon and transferred to the Grenadier Guards, so as to get an insight into infantry work also. It fell to him to march to the Schloss and change the Guard—an evolution which attracted large crowds. He came swiftly out of the Guard-room, his star on his breast, placed himself with drawn sword on the flank of the company and gave not quite correct orders, which, however, did not matter, as his stout soldiers executed the right movements all the same.

  On guest-nights, too, at head-quarters, he sat on the colonel’s right hand, and by his presence prevented the officers from unhooking their uniform collars and playing cards after dinner. After this, being now twenty years old, he started on an “educational tour”—no longer in the company of Doctor Ueberbein, but in that of a military attendant and courier, Captain von Braunbart-Schellendorf of the Guards, a fair-haired officer who was destined to be Klaus Heinrich’s aide-de-camp, and to whom the tour gave an opportunity of establishing himself on a footing of intimacy and influence with him.

  Klaus Heinrich did not see much in his educational tour, which took him far afield, and was keenly followed by the Courier. He visited the courts, introduced himself to the sovereigns, attended gala dinners with Captain von Braunbart, and on his departure received one of the country’s superior Orders. He took a look at such sights as Captain von Braunbart (who also received several Orders) chose for him, and the Courier reported from time to time that the Prince had expressed his admiration of a picture, a museum, or a building to the director or curator who happened to be his cicerone. He travelled apart, protected and supported by the chivalrous precautions of Captain von Braunbart, who kept the purse, and to whose devoted zeal was due the fact that not one of Klaus Heinrich’s trunks was missing at
the end of the journey.

  A couple of words, no more, may be devoted to an interlude, which had for scene a big city in a neighbouring kingdom, and was brought about by Captain von Braunbart with all due circumspection. The Captain had a friend in this city, a bachelor nobleman and a cavalry captain, who was on terms of intimacy with a young lady member of the theatrical world, an accommodating and at the same time trustworthy young person. In pursuance of an agreement by letter between Captain von Braunbart and his friend, Klaus Heinrich was thrown in contact with the damsel at her home—suitably arranged for the purpose—and the acquaintance allowed to develop à deux. Thus an expressly foreseen item in the educational tour was conscientiously realized, without Klaus Heinrich being involved in more than a casual acquaintance. The damsel received a memento for her services, and Captain von Braunbart’s friend a decoration. So the incident closed.

  Klaus Heinrich also visited the fair Southern lands, incognito, under a romantic-sounding title. There he would sit, alone, perhaps for a quarter of an hour, dressed in a suit of irreproachable cut, among other foreigners on a white restaurant terrace looking over a dark-blue sea, and it might happen that somebody at another table would notice him, and try, in the manner of tourists, to engage him in conversation. What could he be, that quiet and self-possessed-looking young man? People ran over the various spheres of life, tried to fit him into the merchant, the military, the student class. But they never felt that they had got it quite right—they felt his Highness, but nobody guessed it.