A MAD KING’S PALACE.
Not being able to drink beer and eat turnip radishes, and the theatres
all being closed, I went off to the mountains and made for
Herrenchiemsee, the lovely lake on which the wide world’s wonder, King
Ludwig’s gorgeous palace, is situated. Weird and woful is the tale of
Bavaria’s mad monarch, Ludwig II. He was cursed with that form of
insanity which is called ‘la folie des grandeurs.’ He rode about in
carriages of eye-dazzling magnificence, the panels of which were
hand-painted by great artists at a cost of a thousand pounds per panel,
and his carriages were always drawn by eight cream-white horses. He
dressed himself up as Lohengrin and sailed about the lonely lakes at
midnight on the back of a mechanical swan. The palace that he built at
Herrenchiemsee is a blaze of golden glory. His bed alone cost £20,000,
and he ruined himself before the palace was half finished. The
magnificence of the state apartments and the famous Hall of Mirrors
beggars description. Only a madman afflicted with the ‘folie des
grandeurs’ would have commenced such a dwelling-place. Everything in it
is real gold, real silver, and real marble, and all of the most
exquisite workmanship. A peacock (if ever a peacock brought ill-luck
this one did) which stands in the vestibule cost £7,500. The interior
decoration of one room alone cost £21,000. For a writing-table in the
royal study the King paid £2,000, and throughout the entire palace the
cost of everything is in proportion. No wonder the King found himself
penniless at last, and his subjects unwilling to supply him with further
funds for his mad extravagance. It was the building of this palace which
led to the terrible tragedy on the Starnberg Lake which filled all the
world with horror.
For some time previous to 1886 the King had exhibited strong symptoms of
insanity. He had retired from active participation in affairs of state,
and lived only for his marvellous private operatic performances and the
building of his peerless palace. It was not exactly a sane thing for a
king to dress himself up as the hero of a Wagner opera and sail about on
a swan’s back, and it was, to say the least of it, odd for him to come
mysteriously at midnight on a golden steamer across the silent lake to
his lonely palace and order all the hundred thousand candles to be
lighted that he might march about it and fancy himself a god.
On the hottest day of a hot week I went to the Starnberg Lake to visit
the scene of the tragedy. Just at the spot where Ludwig dragged the
doctor into the lake on the evening of Whit Sunday and murdered him the
Prince Regent has erected a memorial, and here there burns day and night
a blood-red lamp. Long after night had fallen on the lonely island, and
the dull red ray of that lamp fell upon the silent waters, I sat by the
water’s edge and brooded over the strange, sad story of the Starnberg
Lake.
It was Baron von Lutz, the brother of our own Herr Meyer Lutz, that
master of melody, who for many a long year wielded the merry bâton of
Gaiety burlesque, who really put an end to the mad pranks of Ludwig of
Bavaria. When the King could get no more money to finish his ‘enchanted
palace’ with, he ordered Freiherr von Lutz, the Bavarian
Minister-President, to find him the sum he needed at once. Herr Meyer
Lutz’s brother informed the King that the country was not in a position
to comply with such a demand. Immediately the King wrote to the Baron to
say that unless he sent the sum within twenty-four hours the eminent
composer of ‘Faust Up to Date’ would have to go into mourning for him,
as his head would be cut off. This letter Baron von Lutz at once brought
before the Ministry, and the result was that a Commission sat, and
declared the King to be insane and incapable of managing his own
affairs.
Ludwig was at this time at his castle of Hohen Schwangau in the
mountains. Thither the Commissioners, accompanied by Dr. Gudden, the
Asylum director, repaired, directly Prince Luitpold, the King’s uncle,
had accepted the Regency and authorized the arrest of his nephew. The
Commissioners informed the King he was a prisoner, but others learned
the news also. These others were the men of the mountains, who
worshipped their monarch almost as a god--many of them, indeed,
believing him to be superhuman. These brave fellows, arming themselves
with axes and choppers and guns, came pouring down the mountains, and
swore that they would slaughter the Commissioners and set the King free.
The situation looked so threatening that the King was secretly conveyed
that afternoon to a little castle on the Starnberg Lake, where he could
be more effectually guarded. One night only did the poor mad King spend
there. On the evening of the second day--Whit Sunday, 1886--he went for
a walk with Dr. Gudden and the attendants. He talked so calmly and
rationally that when he said pleasantly, ‘Doctor, must these fellows
follow us about everywhere? It isn’t exactly what I care for,’ the
doctor sent the men back to the castle. The King and the doctor went on
along the edge of the lake alone, and were partly hidden from sight by
the trees. What happened after that no human being can say with
certainty; but it is conjectured that the King, saying he was tired, sat
down on a seat, and invited the doctor to sit beside him. Suddenly the
King sprang up and rushed to the lake. The doctor ran after him and
seized him. The King then gripped the doctor by the throat, gave him a
fearful blow in the face which stunned him, and then held him under the
water till he was drowned. Then, freeing himself from the dead man’s
grasp, he walked on and on into the deep blue lake--on and on until the
quiet waters closed over his head, and his mad dream of splendour ended
in the eternal sleep of death.
No one can look upon the spot where the poor mad King died, and think of
that gorgeous palace which was his glory and his life, and which stands
unfinished to this day, without a pang of pity. It would be easy to
moralize upon it. ‘The vanity of human wishes’ writes itself large on
the quiet waters that lave the foot of the lonely memorial to Bavaria’s
hapless King. I have no doubt I should have moralized had I had time.
But my programme was not mapped out for that sort of thing, and so I
turned sadly away from the melancholy shore, gave one last look at the
dim red lamp and the dying Saviour on the cross, and went quietly to the
landing-stage and took the last boat to the opposite shore, and thence
made my way by train to Munich, where I arrived just in time to pack up,
make a light supper, and catch the Paris-bound Orient express at 1.15
a.m.