SECRET MEMOIRS
William II and Francis Joseph
VOLUME I
[Illustration: _WILLIAM II EMPEROR OF GERMANY_
_From Life_]
SECRET MEMOIRS
OF THE
COURTS OF EUROPE
William II
_Germany_
Francis Joseph
_Austria Hungary_
BY
MME. LA MARQUISE DE FONTENOY
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
ILLUSTRATED
1900
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
The essential qualifications for an author of such a work as the
present are an actual acquaintance with the persons mentioned, an
intimate knowledge of their daily lives, and a personal familiarity
with the scenes described.
The author of William II. and Francis-Joseph, sheltered under the _nom
de plume_ of Marquise de Fontenoy, is a lady of distinguished birth
and title. Her work consists largely of personal reminiscences, and
descriptions of events with which she is perfectly familiar; a sort of
panoramic view of the characteristic happenings and striking features
of court life, such as will best give a true picture of persons and
their conduct.
There has been no attempt to trammel the subject,--which embraces
religious, official, social and domestic life,--by following a
strictly sequential form in the narrative, but the writer's aim has
been to present her facts in a familiar way, impressing them with
characteristic naturalness and lifelike reality.
To this task the author has brought the habits of a watchful observer,
the candor of a conscientious narrator, and the refinement of a
writer who respects her subject. Hence she presents a true, vivid
and interesting picture of court life in Germany and Austria. If such
merely sensational, and too often fictitious, unsavory tales as crowd
the so-called court narratives expressly concocted for the "society"
columns of the periodical press are not the most prominent features
of the present work, it is because they receive only a truthful
recognition and place in its pages.
WILLIAM II
AND
FRANCIS-JOSEPH
CHAPTER I
"If only Emperor William would be true to himself--be natural,
in fact!" exclaimed Count S----, a Prussian nobleman, high in the
diplomatic service of his country, with whom I was discussing the
German Emperor a year or so ago. Then my friend, who had, a short
time previously, been brought into frequent personal contact with his
sovereign, in connection with his official duties, went on to say:
"There are really two distinct characters, one might almost say
two personalities, in the kaiser. When he is himself he is the most
charming companion that it is possible to conceive. His manners are as
genial and as winning as those of his father and grandfather, both
of whom he surpasses in brilliancy of intellect, and in quickness
of repartee, as well as in a keen sense of humor. He gives one
the impression of possessing a heart full of the most generous
impulses,--aye, of a generosity carried even to excess, and this,
together with a species of indescribable magnetism which appears to
radiate from him in these moments, contributes to render him a most
sympathetic man."
"But," interposed an Englishman who was present, "that is not how he
is portrayed to the outer world. Nor is that the impression which he
made upon me and upon others when he was at Cowes."
"That is precisely why I deplore so much that the emperor should
fail to appear in his true colors," continued Count S----. "All
the qualities which I have just now ascribed to him are too often
concealed beneath a mantle of reserve, self-consciousness, nay,
even pose. During my recent interviews with his majesty, whenever we
happened to be alone, he would show himself in the light which I
have just described to you. But let a third person appear upon the
scene--be it even a mere servant--at once his entire manner would
change. The magnetic current so pleasantly established between us
would be cut through, his eyes would lose their kindly, friendly
light, and become hard, his attitude self-conscious and constrained,
the very tone of his speech sharp, abrupt, commanding, I would almost
say arrogant. In fact he would give one the impression that he was
playing a rôle--the rôle of emperor--that he was, in one word, posing,
even if it were only for the benefit of the menial who had interrupted
us. But when the intruder had vanished, William would, like a flash,
become his own charming self again. That is what made me exclaim just
now, 'if only the kaiser would be true to himself!--be natural, in
fact.'"
"I fully agree with you, my dear S----," I remarked, after a short
pause. "If the emperor has remained anything like what he was prior
to his ascension to the throne, your estimate of his character is
correct." And I went on to relate a little incident which occurred on
the occasion of my first meeting with the emperor many years ago.
This meeting took place on that particular spot where the empires of
Germany, Austria, and Russia may be said to meet, the frontier guards
of each of those three nations being within hail of one another.
The great autumnal military manoeuvres were in progress, and a merry
party, including a number of ladies, were riding home from the mimic
battlefield. We passed through a narrow lane, bordered on each side by
groups of stunted willows and birch trees, under the sparse shadow of
which nestled a few cottages painted in blue, pink, or yellow, in
true Polish fashion. Suddenly our progress was arrested by terrifying
screams proceeding from one of these hovels. Several of us were out of
our saddles in an instant and rushed in at the low door.
Before the hearth, where a huge peat-fire was burning, stood a young
peasant woman, her face distorted with agonized grief, and holding in
her arms a bundle of blackened rags. We found that her baby had fallen
into the glowing embers, while she herself was occupied out of doors,
and the poor mite was so badly burned that there seemed but little
hope of its ever reviving from its state of almost complete coma. We
were all busying ourselves eagerly about the child and its distraught
mother, when raising my eyes from the palpitating form of the child,
I caught sight of "Prince William," as the kaiser was then called,
standing near the door, apparently quite undisturbed and unmoved by
this tragedy in lowly life. It even seemed to me in the dim light as
if he were smiling derisively at our efforts to relieve the sufferings
of the little one, and to soothe the grief of its mother. But my
indignation vanished quickly when a slanting ray of the setting sun,
piercing through the grime of the little window, revealed the presence
on his cheek of two very large and _bona-fide_ tears, which had
welled up in his eyes, to which the lad was endeavoring to impart an
expression of callous indifference; and when at last we left the hut
to seek a doctor for the tiny sufferer it was Prince William's own
military coat, none too new, and even, to say the truth, much worn,
that remained as an additional coverlet upon the roughly-hewn wooden
cot, over which the sobbing mother was bending.
"Nobody," I added, "will, therefore, make me believe that Emperor
William has not got a very soft spot in his heart, and that beneath
the mannerisms which he considers it necessary to affect in order to
maintain the dignity of his position as emperor,--those mannerisms
which have given rise to so much misapprehension about his
character,--there is not concealed a very kindly spirit, literally
brimming over with generous impulses, which, if more widely known,
would serve to render the kaiser the most popular, as he is the most
interesting figure of Old World royalty."
It is because Emperor Francis-Joseph and the veteran King of Saxony
are so thoroughly acquainted with his real nature, that they are truly
and honestly fond of him. Both of them old men, with no sons in whom
to seek support for the eventide of lives that have been saddened by
many a public and private sorrow, they entertain a fatherly affection
for William, who as emperor treats them in public as brother
sovereigns, and as equals, but accords to them in private the most
touching filial deference and regard, remembering full well the
kindness which both of them showed to him when he was still the
much-snubbed, and not altogether justly-treated "Prince William." They
on their side are led by his behavior towards them to regard him in
the light of a son. Of course they cannot be blind to his faults, but
they are disposed to treat them with an indulgence that is even more
than paternal, and to see in them relatively trivial defects, due
to the manner in which he was brought up, and which are certain to
disappear with advancing years and experience.
During his early manhood, Prince William was by no means a favorite
either at his grandfather's court or at that of any other foreign
sovereign which he was occasionally allowed to visit. Pale-faced and
delicate-looking, very severely treated by his mother, who is what one
is bound to call _une maîtresse femme_, the boy at seventeen was by no
manner of means prepossessing, and his efforts to assert himself, and
to crush down a good deal of natural awkwardness and timidity added to
his singularly unlikeable appearance.
In those days it could clearly be seen that everything that he did or
said was meant to create an impression of dignity and of grandeur, to
which his physique did not lend itself very easily, and the contrast
between him and his bosom friend the courteous, graceful and dashing
Crown Prince of Austria, was very marked.
Good-hearted and endowed with a great many truly generous instincts
the young fellow was, however, sorely handicapped by his education,
the abnormal strictness displayed towards him at the Court of Berlin,
and also by a continually and most distressingly empty purse. It is a
hard and almost pitiful thing for the heir apparent of a great empire
to find himself often without the necessary amount with which to cut
the figure which his social rank forces him to adopt, and it must have
been especially galling to the overbearing and proud nature of this
boy to be continually obliged to borrow from his friends, nay even
from his _aides de camp_, small sums wherewith to pay his way wherever
he went. Nevertheless his father and mother, then Crown Prince and
Crown Princess of Germany, believed it to be a thoroughly wholesome
thing for the young man to have to humble his pride, should he not be
content with the very small allowance made to him, this unfortunate
idea being, however, the cause of a great deal of bitterness, which to
this day has not completely faded from the heart of the now omnipotent
ruler of the German Empire.
It is undeniable that many eccentricities and false moves on the part
of William II. have been grossly exaggerated and placed before the
public in a false light, showing him up as a conceited, bumptious
and silly person, whereas not only his state of health, but his
_entourage_ should have been blamed for whatever he did that was out
of place. During a great many years the young prince suffered from
what is called technically _otitis media_, namely, a disease of the
middle ear, very painful, exasperating and even somewhat humiliating
to endure, and which he must have inherited in some extraordinary way
from his great-uncle, King William IV. of Prussia, who died insane.
There are certainly some traits of resemblance between this hapless
monarch and the present occupant of the German throne, for in both
there exists and has existed the same exaggerated and narrow-minded
religious beliefs, bordering on mysticism, and also an all-embracing
faith in their absolute and unquestionable infallibility.
It has long since become a well-anchored creed that William II. has
occasional fits of insanity. This is by no means the case, but it must
be admitted that the peculiar malady to which I referred above, and
which is as yet not eradicated from his system, causes him, at times,
days of the most excruciating pains all over the back and side of his
head, and it is scarcely surprising that at such moments the emperor
should act in a way which astonishes the uninitiated. Indeed, William
II. displays extraordinary force of character in suppressing physical
agony, when the duties he owes to the state force him to come forward
when unfit for anything else but the sick room.
The truth of the matter is that there are but few who can boast of
knowing him well, and the masses as well as the classes both at home
and abroad seem to take a peculiarly keen delight in accepting for
gospel truth any sweeping statements made about him by the press of
all civilized countries.
Although twenty-nine years of age when he ascended the throne on June
15, 1888, he may be said to have been at that time still but a raw
youth, continually kept in the background, and treated more or less
like a child, without any consequence or weight. It is, therefore,
not remarkable that the first years of his reign should have been
signalized by many errors of judgment; for it is not with impunity
that one suddenly releases a person, locked up for years in a dark
room and drives him into dazzlingly-lighted spaces without a guide,
a philosopher, or a friend by his side to lead him on the way.
The mental, as well as the physical optic has to gradually become
accustomed to so complete a change, and this fact was not sufficiently
taken into consideration by all the detractors of the young monarch,
when he, to speak very familiarly, leaped over the saddle in his
anxiety to secure for himself a firm seat on the throne of his
forefathers.
It is well to mention also that Emperor Frederick III., who reigned
alas! but for a few weeks, was positively worshipped by the German
people, and not without cause, for he was undoubtedly one of the
finest personalities of this century. His appearance, his demeanor,
his unaffected dignity, kindness of heart, and loftiness of purpose
were difficult to surpass, and it was a bitter disappointment to his
subjects when death snatched him away before he had had time to carry
out the grand plans and ideas which he had long cherished and reserved
for the time when he would have the reins of government in his own
hands.
Speaking with all kindness and good-will, one cannot but after
a fashion understand the disappointment of the Germans when this
towering military figure, this magnificent specimen of perfect
physical and mental manhood, vanished from their ken, to be replaced
by the slender, pale-faced, somewhat arrogant and despotic young man,
who resembled this father so little.
Emperor William II. is an extremely intelligent personage, in spite
of all that may have been said to the contrary. He thinks for himself
when he has a mind to do so, and, what is more, thinks logically, and
is quite capable of following a thus logically-attained conclusion to
its furthermost point. He feels keenly his enormous responsibilities,
and the tremendous international importance of his position as the
ruler of over 50,000,000 people, for he well knows that any man
wearing on his head the double crown of King of Prussia, and of German
Emperor, is a being endowed with powers which are bound to compel
attention from every point of the European Continent. Being given, as
I have just remarked, that his health and his physique are neither of
them of a kind to aid him in the tremendous task which belongs to him
by right of birth, it is easily explainable that his self-assertive
ways and imperious manners should often be mistaken for posing and
posturing. Moreover, his imperfect left arm--a misfortune which has
been a source of great distress to him ever since his birth--is but
another one of those physical troubles which his pride makes him
anxious to conceal, this only adding to his stilted and repellent
attitude. In spite of all these drawbacks, the emperor fences
exceedingly well, rides with pluck, and even skill, managing to hold
his reins with his poor withered left hand when in uniform, in order
to keep his sword-arm free, and during his visit to Austrian Poland,
which I referred to at the beginning of this chapter, I more than once
saw him with my own eyes, whilst we were riding across country, take
obstacles which would have made a far older and more experienced
hunter pause and reflect on.
Nobody, even the best-intentioned, can deny that Emperor William has
many faults; those are, however, either ignored altogether, or else
exaggerated to an extent that eclipses all his good qualities, by his
various biographers. Very few pen-portraits of royal personages that
pass through the hands of the publishers can be said to present a true
picture of their subject. Either the writer holds up the object of his
literary effort as a person so blameless as to suggest the idea that
he is an impossible prig, or else every piece of malevolent gossip is
construed into a positive fact, his shortcomings magnified until they
lose all touch of resemblance, while every word and action capable of
misrepresentation is construed in the manner most detrimental to his
reputation. In one word, he is either glorified as a preposterous
saint, or else held up to public execration as an equally impossible
villain. Now, in pictorial art, a portrait, in order to present a
satisfactory and successful resemblance to its subject, must contain
lights and shadows. You cannot have all light, or all shadow, but it
is necessary to have a judicious mixture of both. So it is with the
art of biography. If one wishes to give in print a true, and above
all, a human picture of one's subject, it is necessary to mingle the
shadows with the lights. In fact, the former may be said to set off
the latter, and there are many shortcomings, especially those
which the French, so graphically describe as _petits vices_,--small
vices--which, resulting from a generous and impulsive temperament,
serve, like the Rembrandt shadow of a portrait, to render the subject
more attractive to the eye.
It is my object, not to give a definitive biography of either of the
two kaisers, or even a mere record of their _vie intime_, but rather
to present to my readers a series of incidents, full of lights and
full of shadows, showing their surroundings, describing as far as
possible the atmosphere in which they move, the conditions of life
which they are obliged to consider, the temptations to which they
are exposed--and to which they sometimes succumb--and when I have
completed my task I venture to believe that the readers of these
volumes, while they may find the two emperors neither quite so
blameless, nor yet quite so bad as they expected, may nevertheless
experience a greater degree of sympathy and regard for them as being
after all so extremely human.