little after noon, were kindly greeted by an American lady who saw
that we were strangers. "The Emperor lives on this street," she said;
"and if we hasten, we may see him when he comes to the window to
review his Guards." Soon we were before the palace on Unter den
Linden, a substantial-looking building facing the north, with an
eastern exposure. The Imperial standard was floating over the palace,
denoting the presence of his Majesty. The room on the ground floor,
northeast corner, of the palace is the one used by Emperor William I.
as his study; and one back of this was his bedroom, containing the
simple iron cot which was the companion of his soldier days, and which
remained the couch of his choice to the end of life. At "the historic
window" we often saw him. Every day at noon, and sometimes long
before, the crowd began to gather in the street opposite this window,
for a sight of his Majesty when he came for a moment to review his
Guards at a quarter to one. It was touching to see the devotion of the
people, standing patiently in all weathers; mothers and fathers
holding up their children that they might catch a sight of the
idolized Kaiser. Rarely did he disappoint them. As the military music
of the guard drew near, and the tramp of the soldiers fell on the
pavement before the palace, the aged man would appear at the window in
full uniform of dark blue with scarlet trimmings and silver
epaulettes, returning the salutations of the guard, and bowing and
waving his white-gloved hand to the people, then retiring within the
shadow of the lace curtains. Sometimes the cheering broke forth anew
as he was lost to sight, and the welkin was made to ring with the
Kaiser-song, or some hymn of Fatherland, until he indulgently appeared
again, bowing his bald head, his kindly face lighted up with a smile.
In full-front view he did not look like a man in his ninetieth year.
Many a man of sixty-five or seventy looks older. When he turned, the
side view revealed that his form was not erect; but only when he
walked with a slow movement could one realize that this soldier of
perfect drill--this courtly gentleman--was one who had seen almost a
century of life. His earliest memories were of privation and hardship.
In his young boyhood the First Napoleon held Berlin in his grasp, and
the family of the King, Frederick William III., fled to Königsberg.
The beautiful and noble Queen Louise and her two little boys,
afterwards Frederick William IV. and William I., wandered at one time
in the forests, and made their food of wild berries. They amused
themselves by making wreaths of _cornblumen_,--blue flowers answering
closely to our "bachelors' buttons,"--which grow wild everywhere in
Germany. Thenceforward the _cornblumen_ were dear to the young
princes, and they were "the Emperor's flowers" to the end of his
Imperial life. So devoted was he to the memory of his mother, that
when in his later years he saw a young girl whose striking beauty of
face and form reminded him of Queen Louise, he persuaded her to allow
her portrait to be taken, that it might remind him of the mother whom
he remembered in her youth. This beautiful portrait is bought, by many
Germans even, as that of Queen Louise, and may be known by a star over
the forehead. The finest actual portrait of this Queen which we saw
was, at the time of our visit, in the Old Schloss at Berlin, and
showed a mature and lovely woman, every inch a queen. The exquisite
reposing statue, by Rauch, in the Mausoleum at Charlottenburg, over
her grave, is well known by copies.
The life led by the aged Emperor was simple and methodical to the
last. Rising at half-past seven, he breakfasted, looked over his
letters and papers, and was ready by nine or half-past nine to begin
his reception of officials or other callers, which lasted till after
midday. After lunch, he usually drove for an hour or so in the
afternoon, often accompanied by a single aid, bowing right and left to
the populace, who thronged for a look and a smile. His plain military
cloak enveloped him in cold or rainy weather, and his was often one of
the plainest equipages on the brilliant street. "I do not think," said
General Grant, after having visited the Emperor, "that I ever saw a
more perfect type of a soldier and a man. His Majesty went off into
military affairs. I was anxious to change the subject, as I had no
interest in the technical matters of war. But the Emperor held me to
the one theme, and we spoke of nothing else. I fancied Bismarck
sympathized with me, and would have gladly gone off on other subjects,
but it was of no use. The manner of Bismarck toward the Emperor was
beautiful,--absolute devotion and respect. This was my one long talk
with the Emperor. I should call him the embodiment of courage, candor,
dignity, and simplicity; a strikingly handsome man."
Sometimes the Kaiser would hold up to the palace window his eldest
great-grandson, now Crown Prince, then a beautiful child of four or
five years; and the little fellow would go through his military salute
of the passing guard with great gravity and propriety, while the
huzzas of the crowd burst forth with renewed zeal. This child was the
favorite of the aged Emperor, and sometimes took liberties with his
great-grandsire which would hardly have been tolerated from any one
else. If it was touching to see the devotion of the people to their
Emperor, it was no less so to see how he trusted himself with them. He
could remember when, with the revolutionary spirit of 1848, the mob in
the streets of Berlin had so insulted him, a prince, that he had fled
for a time from his country. But that he had forgiven and they had
forgotten long ago. The times had "changed all that." Now he lived
daily in sight of the people, with only a pane of glass for a shield.
He loved his people, and they worshipped him with no temporary
oblations. One of the last occasions in which we saw him in public was
that of the spring manoeuvres in the last May-time of his long life.
Some distance south of the Halle gate, the large and finely situated
"Tempelhofer Feld" extends to the suburban village of Tempelhof, which
was once the property of the Knights of Malta, and which still bears
their cross and inscription on its church bells. The intervening
ground has been devoted to the annual parades of the Berlin garrison
for more than a hundred years. It has ample room for evolutions of
infantry, artillery, and cavalry, but a comparatively small space is
devoted to the accommodation of spectators. Only about three hundred
carriages can be admitted, and these are distributed among royal
personages, officials, and a limited number of distinguished or
fortunate visitors. Our application for a carriage place was duly
filed with the chief of the Berlin police a month or six weeks in
advance of the parade, but, after long waiting, word came that there
was no room. By the courtesy and special thoughtfulness of Secretary
Crosby, of the United States Legation, a carriage ticket was placed at
our disposal, after all hope of obtaining the coveted privilege had
been abandoned.
The German Emperor can place, if need be, nearly three million trained
soldiers in the field. All able-bodied Germans are liable to service,
with few exceptions, from the age of twenty to that of thirty-two, and
can in exceptional circumstances be called out up to the age of
forty-two. But the German youth spends only the first three years, of
his twelve of liability, with the colors, the remaining nine being
spent in different branches of the reserve forces. The effective force
in time of peace is about half a million, which is distributed
through the Empire in seventeen army corps, of which the Third has its
headquarters at Berlin. The ordinary strength of an army corps is
about thirty thousand, including infantry, cavalry, and artillery; but
the garrison of Berlin and various extra and unattached troops bring
the number up to fifty thousand or more, stationed mostly in Berlin
and Potsdam. These have their spring manoeuvres at Berlin; and the
special parade, for which every day for two months beforehand seemed
parade-day in the streets of Berlin, was that for which we were so
fortunate as to receive tickets. Nearly every day for a week previous,
his Majesty was to be seen, in his low two-horse carriage, passing
through the Unter den Linden and south through Friedrich Strasse, to
the parade-ground. On this grand and final parade-day the three
hundred carriages of the privileged spectators were in good time on
the ground assigned them, prepared to welcome the Emperor and the
Imperial party as loyally as the soldiers themselves. A deafening
hurrah burst from the throats of all, as his Majesty appeared in a
carriage and drove to his post of observation. Many of his princely
retinue, both ladies and gentlemen, were on horseback; and it was
formerly his custom to review the troops, mounted on his black
war-horse. In spite of a piercing wind which swept over the wide
Brandenburg plains, we hugged our warm wraps, and stood in our
carriages, like all the rest, in eager watchfulness and admiration, as
the evolutions of the most perfectly drilled troops in the world went
forward. The infantry marched and countermarched; plumes of all colors
waved in the sunlight and kept time to the music; uniforms and men
seemed but part of one grand incomprehensible automatic movement;
battle-flags scarred with the history of all the wars fluttered their
tattered shreds in the wind, waking memories of irrepressible pathos
and joy; the artillery rumbled and thundered; the evolutions of the
cavalry were like systematic whirlwinds; and the scarlet Zouaves, the
blue Dragoons, the white-uniformed and gilt-helmeted Cuirassiers, and
the dark Uhlands with lances ten feet long poised in air above their
prancing horses, commingled the "pomp and circumstance of war" without
its pain. Now the infantry come on at double quick, in the step with
which they entered Paris; now the artillery is lumbered across a vast
stretch of the field with a rapidity and precision which almost take
away one's breath; and anon the cavalry seem to burst in orderly
confusion upon the scene, flying in competition, across, around,
athwart, until the cheers and huzzas burst forth anew with, "Hail to
the Kaiser!" "Long live the Fatherland!" It was with joy that the
soldiers received the commendations of their Imperial chieftain on
that field-day, and it was to us a fitting place and moment of
farewell to the great military Emperor.
"King, the Saxon Konnig," says Carlyle,--"the man who CAN." And
Emperor William I. was the man who _could_.
* * * * *
"Fritz, dear Fritz," were the last words of the aged Emperor. "Unser
Fritz" was the well-beloved elder brother of the German people. If any
doubt as to the real feeling among the South-Germans toward the
Imperial house had existed in our minds, it was removed as we
journeyed through Saxony, Bavaria, Würtemberg, Darmstadt, Thuringia.
Everywhere, in humble homes, in shops, hotels, and market-places, were
the likenesses of the handsome Kaiser and the open, sincere, manly
countenance of the Crown Prince to be seen. In Berlin the Crown Prince
occupied the palace directly east of that of the Kaiser, separated
from it only by the Operahaus Platz. We had heard him called "the
handsomest man in Europe." Our study of his kindly face from
photographs had revealed manliness enough, but nothing more to justify
this epithet. But as one came to be familiar with his look, his
figure, his bearing, there was full assent to his being called, in
appearance, "the finest gentleman in Europe." The titles and tokens of
honor that had been showered upon him, and which he wore so
gracefully, were his least claims to distinction. He was as great in
true nobility of soul as he was exalted in station, as symmetrical in
character as he was regal in bearing. When he mated with the Princess
Royal of England, he was not even Crown Prince of Prussia, and some of
the English papers asserted that the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria
had married beneath her. But this opinion was easily dissipated, as
the years brought, with increasing honors, development of manly
virtues and graces. A hero in the wars in which his country had
engaged before he reached middle life, and with all the courage of his
Hohenzollern blood, he yet delighted in peace, and was a most humane
and liberal statesman. That thirst for liberty which is quenchless in
the human breast, and which has had as yet small satisfaction in
Teutonic lands, seemed to find sympathy in this enlightened Prince. At
the age of thirty he became the heir apparent to the Prussian Crown,
when the new king, his father, had reached the age of sixty-four. When
he was forty, and his father was proclaimed Emperor of Germany at the
age of seventy-four, Frederick became heir to the Imperial throne. A
most careful and liberal education, grafted on a genial and wise
character, had fitted him to watch the course of events in which,
according to the course of nature, he might be expected so soon to
take chief part. But the years which made his sire venerable passed,
and still he had no opportunity to shape public affairs. Absolutism
feared his influence and that of his liberal and strong-minded English
wife. The prime of life was his; but his best years were behind and
not before him as at the age of fifty-five he filially and devotedly
filled his own place, the loved and loving son of his Imperial father,
whose trusted representative he was on all courtly occasions, the
model husband and father, the accomplished and interested patron of
art and letters, the polished gentleman, the benevolent and devout
Christian. During his last winter of health (1886-1887) he was often
to be seen among the people. Accompanied by the Crown Princess and
their three unmarried daughters, he walked out and in, along the Unter
den Linden, an interested participator, like any other father of a
family, in the Christmas shopping. On one of the culminating days of
the great Reichstag debate, it was Prince William who was seen in the
Imperial box in the Parliament House, while "Unser Fritz" with wife
and daughters were skaters among the crowds on the ice-ponds of the
Thiergarten. This by no means indicated indifference to great
questions of public concern. None knew better the issue, the times,
and the need. But, standing all his mature life with his foot on the
threshold of a throne, with talents and training fitting him to do
honor to his royal line, to his Fatherland, and to the brotherhood of
kings in all lands and ages, he yet knew that while the father
reigned, it was not for the son to reign. He was to bide his time.
Alas! an inscrutable Providence made that time to be crowned only with
the halo of a dawning immortality, a time in which strength and peace
were to be radiated from one anointed by the chrism of pain, and
whose diadem was to shine, not among the treasures of earth, but as
the stars for ever and ever. When the messenger of the fallen Napoleon
III. had brought his unexpected surrender after Sedan, and the flush
of startling victory had mantled even the cheek of the pale and
reticent Von Moltke, had shaken the leonine composure of Bismarck, and
affected the heroic William I. almost to tears, the courtly Frederick
forgot himself and the victory of the cause he had helped to win, in
sympathy for the vanquished foe. The embarrassed general who brought
the surrender of the French had Frederick's instant devotion, and
those first moments of deep humiliation were soothed by the
conversation of the Crown Prince and by kind attentions which all
others forgot to render. With a truth and devotion to his country
which could never be doubted or questioned, he yet had a heart "so
much at leisure from itself" that in the supremest moments of life he
sympathized with friend and foe, as only regal souls can do.
I saw this foremost prince of Europe in the nineteenth century always
and increasingly to admire him, whether in the largest or the
smallest relations of life; whether as royal host entertaining the
sovereigns of Europe and their representatives when that magnificent
assemblage came to greet the ninetieth birthday of his father; dashing
on horseback through the streets of the capital and the riding-paths
of the park; saluting with stately grace his Imperial sire, as he
alone entered the place where the Emperor sat; handing the Crown
Princess to her seat, or going down on his knees to find her Imperial
Highness's misplaced footstool in her pew at church; accompanying his
daughters to places of public amusement and looking upon them with
manly tenderness; or standing with military helmet before his face in
silent prayer, as he entered the house of God to worship before the
King of kings.
My last sight of his Imperial Highness was on one of the latest
occasions of his public appearance in Berlin while in health, in
connection with one of those opportunities of hearing grand music in
which this city excels the rest of the world. It was that most
devotional music ever written,--Bach's Passion Music, rendered once a
year, on the evening of Good Friday, in the Sing Akademie of Berlin.
There was a trained chorus of about four hundred voices, with the
best orchestra in the city, besides solo singers of repute,--one, a
charming alto from Cologne. The simple and touching narrative of the
Betrayal and the Crucifixion was sung as it is written in the
twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh chapters of Matthew, certain phrases
and sentences repeated and adapted to the music, but none of it
essentially changed in form. One of the bass soloists took, with the
tenor, the soprano and the alto alternating, most of the narrative;
and another bass solo took the words of Jesus, whenever these occur in
the sad story. The _arias_ and _recitatives_ were finely given, but no
effect was comparable to that of the grand chorus. The single word
"Barabbas!" sung, or rather shouted, by these hundreds of voices in
perfect time and tune, was overwhelming. Another passage of most
thrilling effect was that in which every instrument and every voice
joined in the deafening but harmonious description of the multitude
who went out with swords and staves in the midnight, to take the
unoffending Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. And one could almost
hear in the music the sobbing of Peter when, after his denial of the
Lord, "he went out and wept bitterly." Another most touching passage
was that representing the love of the woman who anointed the feet of
Jesus. When the shout of the multitude arose in the words "Crucify
Him!" the awfulness was intense. There were times when the audience
scarcely seemed to breathe freely, so strong was the spell, so vivid
the reality of this saddest and most touching of narratives, as
interpreted by this wonderful music. Never but once have I heard the
perfection of choral music. It was one of the grand and solemn ancient
hymn-tunes which are introduced at certain stages of this composition.
I closed my eyes to the brilliance of the scene before me, that the
ear might be the sole avenue of impression. Not the slightest jar or
dissonance revealed any difference in the four hundred voices speaking
as one; there seemed but one great soul pouring forth the vast volume
of the harmony. The mighty cadences rose and fell, breaking in waves
of sound against walls and roof, and must have floated far out into
the night, now soaring in triumph, now sweet and soft and low as the
tones of an Eolian harp; but the voice of hundreds was only as the
voice of one. Three hours and more, with one brief intermission, we
listened, and lived as it were those last sad hours of the Life so
sacred and so majestic, so unutterably full of love. The end came,
when the stone was rolled against the sealed door of the sepulchre,
and the Roman watch was set. No hint of a resurrection was in the
music; but the singers sang, in closing, again and again, in varying
strains, "Good-night, good-night, dear Jesus!"
The audience, moved as it seemed by a common impulse, joined in that
last song. The Crown Prince, with the Crown Princess and their
daughters, and the Princess Christian, then on a visit to Berlin, were
in the royal box in the concert-room. With his family and his royal
visitors, Frederick, his voice already in the penumbra of a dim,
unknown, unforeseen, but fateful shadow, took up the strain. "He sang
it through," said a friend to me, who knew him well, "and I could see
that he was deeply touched." There we left the story, as almost
nineteen hundred years ago it was left, on that Friday evening in
Jerusalem, with the full light of the Paschal moon falling on the
closed and silent tomb, in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea.
Two days later, on the evening of Easter Sunday, the Crown Prince
united in the service of the English Church, with his family, in
celebrating the joyous anniversary of a sure resurrection, and during
the same week left Berlin in quest of rest and health. He came not
back until, before another Good Friday, "Unser Fritz" was Emperor of
Germany, and already walking through the Valley of that Shadow in
which he sorrowfully sung of his "dear Jesus," one short year before.
* * * * *
Various estimates have been made of the talents and character of the
third of the three German Emperors of the year 1888, but the record
and the proof of all prophecies concerning William II. have yet to be
made. As Prince William we saw him with best opportunity in the
Imperial box at the Reichstag, where for three hours he listened
intently to the speeches of Bismarck, Von Moltke, and others. A fair
young man, in the heavily ornamented light blue uniform of his
regiment, to a casual observer his countenance bore neither the marks
of dissipation nor the signs of intellectual power and force of
character. But he was only in the late twenties, and "there is time
yet." He is the idol of the army, and the devoted friend of Bismarck.
Not one of all the great concourse of dignitaries at the celebration
of the ninetieth birthday of William I. received such shouts of
adulation from the populace as those which rent the air when the State
carriage passed which bore the Prince and Princess William and their
three little sons. Of the Princess William, now Empress Augusta
Victoria, there was but one opinion. "None will ever know the blessing
which the Princess William has been to our family," once said her
father-in-law, the Crown Prince Frederick. From the throne to the hut,
blessings followed her, a Christian lady, in faithfulness as wife,
mother, friend, and princess, worthy of her exalted place. At a
lawn-party given for the benefit of the Young Men's Christian
Association, in the magnificent old park of the War Department in the
heart of Berlin, Prince and Princess William were present. The
Princess walked up and down, chatting now with one lady, now with
another, in attire so simple that the plainest there could feel no
unpleasant contrast, and in manner so beautiful and genial that we
could forget the princess in admiration of the unassuming lady.
* * * * *
Of the Empress Frederick much has been said, and much invented, since
the days when she left England, a bride of seventeen, to make her
home in a foreign land.
"Is the Crown Princess popular?" I said to a young German lady, in the
early days of our residence in Berlin.
"Not very."
"She is strong-minded, is she not?"
"Yes, too strong," replied the lady.
Perhaps the Crown Princess Victoria did not sufficiently disguise the
broad difference between her birthright as the heir of the thought and
feeling of her distinguished father, "Prince Albert the Good," and the
low plane still habitual to many German women. She has always been an
Englishwoman; and this was the chief charge I ever heard against her,
in my endeavor to reach the real statement of the case. And yet all
agree that she has been devoted to the best interests of the German
people. Everywhere in humane, benevolent, and educational work, we
found the impress of her guiding hand. A German lady, of rare ability,
sweetness, and culture, was one day giving me the pathetic story of
her hopes and efforts for the elevation and education of her
country-women. In the course of the conversation she was led to quote
a remark made to her by the Crown Princess: "You must _form the
character_ of the German women, before you can do much to elevate
them." Is not this in keeping with the profound practical wisdom
which, notwithstanding the puerilities and small femininities which
abound in some of the published writings of England's royal family,
makes their pages still worth the reading, and lets us into the secret
of the true womanliness which, despite all blemishes and foibles,
Victoria, Empress Queen of England, has instilled into the mind of her
daughter Victoria, Empress Dowager of Germany. There is hope for
womankind, when "the fierce light which beats upon a throne" shows
naught to mar the purity of the home-life which has adorned the
palaces and the courts of Germany and of England, so far as these have
been under the influence of the two Victorias.
* * * * *