Royal Higness

by Thomas Mann

  “If your Royal Highness asks me … enormously useful! Immeasurably, incalculably useful—that’s obvious! The directors are in the seventh heaven, they’re getting ready to decorate and illuminate the Spa Hotel! What a recommendation, what an attraction for strangers! Will your Royal Highness just consider—the man is a curiosity! Your Grand Ducal Highness spoke just now of ‘his kind’—but there are none of ‘his kind’—at most, only a couple. He’s a Leviathan, a Crœsus! People will come from miles away to see a being who has about half a million a day to spend!”

  “Gracious!” said Ditlinde, taken aback. “And there’s dear Philipp worrying about his peat beds.”

  “The first scene,” the Fräulein went on, “begins with two Americans hanging about the Exchange for the last couple of days. Who are they? They are said to be journalists, reporters, for two big New York papers. They have preceded the Leviathan, and are telegraphing to their papers preliminary descriptions of the scenery. When he has got here they will telegraph every step he takes—just as the Courier and the Advertiser report about your Royal Highness.…”

  Albrecht bowed his thanks with eyes downcast and under-lip protuded.

  “He has appropriated the Prince’s suite in the Spa Hotel,” said Jettchen, as provisional lodgings.”

  “For himself alone?” asked Ditlinde.

  “Oh no, Ditlinde, do you suppose he’d be coming alone? There isn’t any precise information about his suite and staff, but it’s quite certain that his daughter and his physician-in-ordinary are coming with him.”

  “It annoys me, Jettchen, to hear you talking about a ‘physician-in-ordinary’ and the journalists, too, and the Prince’s suite to boot. He’s not a king, after all.”

  “A railway king, so far as I know,” remarked Albrecht quietly with eyes downcast.

  “Not only, nor even particularly, a railway king, Royal Highness, according to what I hear. Over in America they have those great business concerns called Trusts, as your Royal Highness knows—the Steel Trust for instance, the Sugar Trust, the Petroleum Trust, the Coal, Meat, and Tobacco Trusts, and goodness knows how many more, and Samuel N. Spoelmann has a finger in nearly all these trusts, and is chief shareholder in them, and managing director—that’s what I believe they call them—so his business must be what is called over here a ‘Mixed Goods Business,’ ”

  “A nice sort of business,” said Ditlinde, “it must be a nice sort of business! For you can’t persuade me, dear Jettchen, that honest work can make a man into a Leviathan and a Crœsus. I am convinced that his riches are steeped in the blood of widows and orphans. What do you think, Albrecht?” “I hope so, Ditlinde, I hope so, for your own and your husband’s comfort.”

  “May be so,” explained Jettchen, “yet Spoelmann—our Samuel N. Spoelmann—is hardly responsible for it, for he is really nothing but an heir, and may quite well not have had any particular taste for his business. It was his father who really made the pile, I’ve read all about it, and may say that I really know the general facts. His father was a German—simply an adventurer who crossed the seas and became gold-digger. And he was lucky and made a little money through gold-finds—or rather quite a decent amount of money—and began to speculate in petroleum and steel and railways, and then in every sort of thing, and kept growing richer and richer, and when he died everything was already in full swing, and his son Samuel, who inherited the Crœsus’ firm, really had nothing to do but to collect the princely dividends and keep growing richer and richer till he beat all records. That’s the way things have gone.”

  “And he has a daughter, has he, Jettchen? What’s she like?”

  “Yes, Ditlinde, his wife is dead, but he has a daughter, Miss Spoelmann, and he’s bringing her with him. She’s a wonderful girl from all I’ve read about her. He himself is a bit of a mixture, for his father married a wife from the South—creole blood, the daughter of a German father and native mother. But Samuel in his turn married a German-American of half-English blood, and their daughter is now Miss Spoelmann.”

  “Gracious, Jettchen, she’s a creature of many colours!”

  “You may well say so, Ditlinde, and she’s clever, so I’ve beard; she studies like a man—algebra, and puzzling things of that sort.”

  “Hm, that too doesn’t attract me much.”

  “But now comes the cream of the business, Ditlinde, for Miss Spoelmann has a lady-companion, and that lady-companion is a countess, a real genuine countess, who dances attendance on her.”

  “Gracious!” said Ditlinde, “she ought to be ashamed of herself. No, Jettchen, my mind is made up. I’m not going to bother myself about Spoelmann. I’m going to let him drink his waters and go, with his countess and his algebraical daughter, and am not going so much as to turn my head to look at him. He and his riches make no impression on me. What do you think, Klaus Heinrich?”

  Klaus Heinrich looked past Jettchen’s head at the bright window.

  “Impression?” he said.… “No, riches make no impression on me, I think—I mean, riches in the ordinary way. But it seems to me that it depends … it depends, I think, on the standard. We too have one or two rich people in the town here—Soap-boiler Unschlitt must be a millionaire.… I often see him in his carriage. He’s dreadfully fat and common. But when a man is quite ill and lonely from mere riches … Maybe …”

  “An uncomfortable sort of man anyhow,” said Ditlinde, and the subject of the Spoelmanns gradually dropped. The conversation turned on family matters, the “Hohenried” property, and the approaching season. Shortly before seven o’clock the Grand Duke sent for his carriage. Prince Klaus Heinrich was going too, so they all got up and said good-bye. But while the brothers were being helped into their coats in the hall, Albrecht said: “I should be obliged, Klaus Heinrich, if you would send your coachman home and would give me the pleasure of your company for a quarter of an hour longer. I’ve got a matter of some importance to discuss with you—I might come with you to the Hermitage, but I can’t bear the evening air.”

  Klaus Heinrich clapped his heels together as he answered: “No, Albrecht, you mustn’t think of it! I’ll drive to the Schloss with you if you like. I am of course at your disposal.”

  This was the prelude to a remarkable conversation between the young princes, the upshot of which was published a few days later in the Advertiser and received with general approval.

  The Prince accompanied the Grand Duke to the Schloss, through the Albrechtstor, up broad stone steps, through corridors where naked gas lamps were burning, and silent anterooms, between lackeys into Albrecht’s “closet,” where old Prahl had lighted the two bronze oil-lamps on the mantelpiece. Albrecht had taken over his father’s work-room—it had always been the work-room of the reigning sovereigns, and lay on the first floor between an aide-de-camp’s room and the dining-room in daily use facing the Albrechtsplatz, which the princes had always overlooked and watched from their writing-table. It was an exceptionally unhomely and repellent room, small, with cracked ceiling-paintings, red silk and gold-bordered carpet, and three windows reaching to the ground, through which the draught blew keenly and before which the claret-coloured curtains with their elaborate fringes were drawn. It had a false chimney-piece in French Empire taste, in front of which a semicircle of little modern quilted plush chairs without arms were arranged, and a hideously decorated white stove, which gave out a great heat. Two big quilted sofas stood opposite each other by the walls, and in front of one stood a square book-table with a red plush cover. Between the windows two narrow gold-framed mirrors with marble ledges reached up to the ceiling, the right hand one of which bore a fairly cheerful alabaster group, the other a water bottle and medicine glasses. The writing-desk, an old piece made of rose-wood with a roll-top and metal clasps, stood clear in the middle of the room on the red carpet An antique stared down with its dead eyes from a pedestal in one corner of the room.

  “What I have to suggest to you,” said Albrecht—he was standing at the writing-table, unconscio
usly toying with a paper-knife, a silly thing like a cavalry-sabre with a grotesque handle, “is directly connected with our conversation this afternoon. I may begin by saying that I discussed the matter thoroughly with Knobelsdorff this summer at Hollerbrunn. He agrees, and if you do too, as I don’t doubt you will, I can carry out my intention at once.”

  “Please let’s hear it, Albrecht,” said Klaus Heinrich, who was standing at attention in a military attitude by the sofa table.

  “My health,” continued the Grand Duke, “has been getting worse and worse lately.”

  “I’m very sorry, Albrecht—Hollerbrunn didn’t agree with you, then?”

  “Thanks, no, I’m in a bad way, and my health is showing itself increasingly unequal to the demands made upon it. When I say ‘demands,’ I mean chiefly the duties of a ceremonial and representative nature which are inseparable from my position—and that’s the bond of connexion with the conversation we had just now at Ditlinde’s. The performance of these duties may be a happiness when a contact with the people, a relationship, a beating of hearts in unison exists. To me it is a torture, and the falseness of my rôle wearies me to such a degree that I must consider what measures I can take to counteract it. In this—so far as the bodily part of me is concerned—I am at one with my doctors, who entirely agree with my proposal—so listen to me. I’m unmarried. I have no idea, I can assure you, of ever marrying; I shall have no children. You are heir to the throne by right of birth, you are still more so in the consciousness of the people, who love you.…”

  “There you are, Albrecht, always talking about my being beloved. I simply don’t believe it. At a distance, perhaps —that’s the way with us. It’s always at a distance that we are beloved.”

  “You’re too modest. Wait a bit. You’ve already been kind enough to relieve me of some of my representative duties now and then. I should like you to relieve me of all of them absolutely, for always.”

  “You’re not thinking of abdicating, Albrecht?” asked Klaus Heinrich, aghast.

  “I daren’t think of it. Believe me, I gladly would, but I shouldn’t be allowed to. What I’m thinking of is not a regency, but only a substitution—perhaps you have some recollection of the distinction in public law from your student’s days—a permanent and officially established substitution in all representative functions, warranted by the need of indulgence required by my state of health. What is your opinion?”

  “I’m at your orders, Albrecht. But I’m not quite clear yet. How far does the substitution extend?”

  “Oh, as far as possible. I should like it to extend to all occasions on which a personal appearance in public is expected of me. Knobelsdorff stipulates that I should only devolve the opening and closure of Parliament on you when I’m bedridden, only now and again. Let’s grant that. But otherwise you would be my substitute on all ceremonial occasions, on journeys, visits to cities, opening of public festivities, opening of the Citizens’ Ball.…”

  “That too?”

  “Why not? We have also the weekly free audiences here—a sensible custom without a doubt, but it tires me out. You would hold the audiences in my place. I needn’t go on. Do you accept my proposal?”

  “I am at your orders.”

  “Then listen to me while I finish. For every occasion on which you act as my representative, I lend you my aides-decamp. It is further necessary that your military promotion should be hastened—are you first lieutenant? You’ll be made a captain or a major straight away à la suite of your regiment —I’ll see to that; but in the third place, I wish duly to emphasize our arrangement, to make your position at my side properly clear, by lending you the title of ‘Royal Highness.’ There were some formalities to attend to. Knobelsdorff has already seen to them. I’m going to express my intentions in the form of two missives to you and to my Minister of State. Knobelsdorff has already drafted them. Do you accept?”

  “What am I to say, Albrecht? You are father’s eldest son, and I’ve always looked up to you because I’ve always felt and known that you are the superior and higher of us two and that I am only a plebeian compared with you. But if you think me worthy to stand at your side and to bear your title and to represent you before the people, although I don’t think myself anything like so presentable, and have this deformity here, with my left hand, which I’ve always got to keep covered—then I thank you and put myself at your orders.”

  “Then I’ll ask you to leave me now, please; I want to rest.”

  They advanced towards each other, the one from the writing-table, the other from the book-table, over the carpet into the middle of the room. The Grand Duke extended his hand to his brother—his thin, cold hand which he stretched out from his chest without moving his forearm away from his body. Klaus Heinrich clapped his heels together and bowed as he took the hand, and Albrecht nodded his narrow head with its fair beard as a token of dismissal, while he sucked his short, rounded lower lip against the upper. Klaus Heinrich went back to the Schloss “Hermitage.”

  Both the Advertiser and the Courier published eight days later the two missives, which contained decisions of the highest importance, the one addressed to “My dear Minister of State, Baron von Knobelsdorff,” and the other beginning with “Most Serene Highness and well-beloved brother,” and signed “Your Royal Highness’s most devoted brother Albrecht.”

  1 I.e., velvet.

  VI

  THE LOFTY CALLING

  HERE follows a description of Klaus Heinrich’s mode of life and profession and their peculiarities.

  On a typical occasion he stepped out of his carriage, walked with cloak thrown back down a short passage through cheering crowds over a pavement which was covered with red carpet, through a laurel-decked house-door, over which an awning had been erected, up a staircase flanked by pairs of candle-bearing footmen.… He was on his way to a festival dinner, covered to his hips with orders, the fringed epaulettes of a major on his narrow shoulders, and was followed by his suite along the Gothic corridor of the town hall. Two servants hurried in front of him and quickly opened an old window which rattled in its lead fastenings; for down below in the market-place stood the people, wedged together head to head, an oblique tract of upturned faces, dimly illuminated by smoky torchlight. They cheered and sang, and he stood at the open window and bowed, displayed himself to the general enthusiasm for a while and nodded his thanks.

  There was nothing really everyday, nor was there anything really actual, about his life; it consisted of a succession of moments of enthusiasm. Wherever he went there was holiday, there the people were transfigured and glorified, there the grey work-a-day world cleared up and became poetry. The starveling became a sleek man, the hovel a homely cottage, dirty gutter-children changed into chaste little maidens and boys in Sunday clothes, their hair plastered with water, a poem on their lips, and the perspiring citizen in frock-coat and top-hat was moved to emotion by the consciousness of his own worth.

  But not only he, Klaus Heinrich, saw the world in this light, but it saw itself too, as long as his presence lasted. A strange unreality and speciousness prevailed in places where he exercised his calling; a symmetrical, transitory window-dressing, an artificial and inspiring disguising of the reality by pasteboard and gilded wood, by garlands, lamps, draperies, and bunting, was conjured up for one fair hour, and he himself stood in the centre of the show on a carpet, which covered the bare ground, between masts painted in two colours, round which garlands twined—stood with heels together in the odour of varnish and fir-branches, and smiled with his left hand planted on his hip.

  He laid the foundation stone of a new town hall. The citizens had, after juggling with the figures, got together the necessary sum, and a learned architect from the captital had been entrusted with the building. But Klaus Heinrich undertook the laying of the foundation stone. Amid the cheers of the population he drove up to the noble pavilion which had been built on the site, stepped lightly and collectedly out of the open carriage on to the ground, which had been
rolled and sprinkled with yellow sand, and walked all alone towards the official personages in frock-coats and white ties who were waiting for him at the entrance. He asked for the architect to be presented to him, and, in full view of the public and with the officials standing with fixed smiles round him, he conducted a conversation with him for five full minutes, a conversation of weighty commonplaces about the advantages of the different styles of architecture, after which he made a decided movement, which he had meditated to himself beforehand during the conversation, and allowed himself to be conducted over the carpet and plank steps to his seat on the edge of the middle platform.

  There, in his chain and stars, one foot advanced, his white-gloved hands crossed on his sword hilt, his helmet on the ground beside him, visible to the holiday crowd on every side, he sat and listened with calm demeanour to the Lord Mayor’s speech. Thereupon, when they came to the request, he rose, walked, without noticeable precaution and without looking at his feet, down the steps to where the foundation stone lay, and with a little hammer gave three slow taps to the block of sandstone, at the same time repeating in the deep hush, with his rather sharp voice, a sentence which Herr von Knobelsdorff had previously impressed upon him. School children sang in shrill chorus, and Klaus Heinrich drove away.

  On the anniversary of the War of Independence he marched in front of the veterans. A grey-haired officer shouted in a voice which seemed hoarse with the smoke of gunpowder: “Halt! Off hats! Eyes right!” And they stood, with medals and crosses on their coats, the rough beavers in their hands, and looked up at him with blood-shot eyes like those of a hound as he walked by with a friendly look, and paused by one or two to ask where they had served, where they had been under fire.… He attended the gymnastic display, graced the sports with his presence, and had the victors presented to him for a short conversation. The lithe athletic youths stood awkwardly before him, just after they had done the most astonishing feats, and Klaus Heinrich quickly strung together a few technical remarks, which he remembered from Herr Zotte, and which he uttered with great fluency, the while he hid his left hand.