It is to the part played by Prince Bismarck in selecting the
attendants and tutors of the present emperor that must be ascribed the
strained relations that notoriously existed between the kaiser and his
mother during the few years immediately preceding and following his
accession to the throne; while there is no doubt whatsoever that the
last eighteen months of Emperor Frederick's so prematurely-ended life,
were saddened and embittered by the feeling that a conspiracy was
on foot to prevent his succession to the throne on the ground of the
incurable malady from which he was suffering--a conspiracy in which
some of the principal participants were members of his household and
physicians who had been forced upon him by his father at instigation
of Prince Bismarck.
If I mention this, it is not so much with the idea of evoking a very
painful chapter of the history of the Court Berlin, as it is for the
purpose of explaining, and in a measure of excusing, the charges
of unfilial conduct brought against the present emperor, and which
contributed so much to his unpopularity both at home and abroad during
the early years of his reign.
I have related in a previous chapter how William, while a boy, was
snubbed by his parents, and treated with considerable strictness.
His father, like so many good-looking giants, utterly free from
affectation and pose, believed that he saw in his eldest boy a
tendency to posture, a forwardness of manner, and a disposition
towards pride of rank, amounting to arrogance, which it was necessary,
at all costs, to repress. Prince William, therefore, was constantly
receiving setbacks, often of a most humiliating character, from his
parents, and I am sorry to say that this practice of regarding him as
a presumptuous youth whom it was necessary to check, extended to other
European courts, so that poor William can not be said to have had an
altogether enjoyable time; and in this connection it is just as well
to state that the Prince of Wales and his other English relatives,
took their cue from his mother in their treatment of him, a
circumstance which he has neither forgiven nor forgotten. Indeed the
notorious absence of cordiality between the Prince of Wales and his
imperial nephew of Berlin originates with the snubs which the
British heir apparent, in his capacity of uncle, felt it necessary to
administer to William, when the latter was a lad, and even when he had
reached manhood.
Yet it would be unfair to ascribe any undue blame in the matter to the
parents of Emperor William. The responsibility must rest rather
with those people with whom Prince Bismarck, acting through the old
emperor, surrounded the young prince. The mission of these nominees
of the chancellor was to counteract the influence of the then crown
prince and crown princess over their eldest son, and this was achieved
by setting the boy against his parents. Every direction or command
given by Frederick or by his consort to their son was made the subject
of critical discussion by the personages with whom Bismarck had
surrounded him, until the latter became convinced that the judgment of
his parents was at fault in almost everything that could be imagined,
and that all their views, political as well as social, were thoroughly
out of keeping with Prussian traditions and German patriotism.
This in itself was bad enough: but what made matters infinitely worse,
was that whenever William was subjected to any reproof or discipline
by either his father or mother, those composing his immediate
_entourage_ at once impressed upon the royal youth that he was the
victim of the most gross and unpardonable injustice, that both
his father and mother were inordinately jealous of his striking
individuality, that the unmerited severity to which he was subjected
was brought about by their consciousness that his intellect was
superior to theirs, and that his ideas were too thoroughly Prussian to
constitute anything but a serious danger to their English liberalism.
The effect of influences such as these upon a high-spirited and
impulsive youth, at the time entirely devoid of experience or of
knowledge of the world, may readily be conceived. It naturally led to
an increase of what his parents regarded as his presumptuousness and
forwardness of manner, and consequently to a growth of their severity
towards him. He, on the other hand, became more and more embittered
by the unduly harsh and rather unjust treatment to which he was being
subjected by both his father and his mother.
The persons in attendance on the imperial family, with the conspicuous
exceptions of Count Seckendorff and Countess Hedwig Brühl, were
careful to fan the embers of bitterness rankling in the bosom of young
William whenever any opportunity offered, and thus it happened that
when Emperor Frederick, while still crown prince, was discovered to be
suffering from that cancer of the larynx which ultimately carried him
off, the relations between parents and son were so strained as to give
rise to the very widespread belief that William was the ally of his
father's enemies, and a participator in the disgraceful conspiracy
which ensued for the purpose of barring him from succession to the
throne on the ground of his fearful malady.
As soon as the nature of the disease from which Frederick was
suffering had been ascertained, his opponents, Prince Bismarck first
and foremost, dug out from the most remote recesses of the family
archives of the house of Hohenzollern an obsolete and forgotten law
barring from the succession to the throne of Prussia any prince of
the blood who was afflicted with an incurable malady. Of course,
the original object of the statute in question was to enable the
elimination from the line of succession of princes afflicted with
hopeless insanity, or some such disease as would prevent them from
administering the government, thus rendering the institution of a
regency necessary. In one word, the purpose of the measure was to
prevent such a situation from arising in Prussia as prevails now in
Bavaria, where, since 1886 the throne has been occupied by a lunatic
prince, who was incurably insane for many years before his accession
to the crown, and whose dementia takes that peculiar form, which is
described in the Bible as having overtaken Nebuchadnezzar. King Otto
of Bavaria imagines himself to be alternately a quadruped or a bird,
and when he is not browsing on leaves and grass in the gardens of his
prison palace at Fürstenried, under the impression that he is a sheep
or goat, he will stand on one leg in the centre of a shallow pond,
firmly convinced that he is a stork, occasionally flapping his long
coat-tails in lieu of wings, and greedily attempting to devour any
frogs or tadpoles that may come within his reach, unless prevented by
his attendants from doing so.
There have been, alas! numerous cases of insanity in the reigning
house of Prussia. Old Emperor William's elder brother and predecessor,
King Frederick-William IV., spent the last few years of his life
under restraint, hopelessly insane, his brother and ultimate successor
administering the government as regent. The late Princess Frederick
of Prussia was afflicted like her brother, the last Duke of
Anhalt-Bernburg, with a peculiar kind of lunacy which took the form of
an invincible objection to clothing of any kind whatsoever; while one
of her two sons, Prince Alexander, who died only a few months ago,
suffered from a species of good-natured imbecility, which led him
to offer his heart and his hand to every woman or young girl that
he encountered, no matter what her age, or looks, or rank, sometimes
making as many as thirty or forty offers of marriage in the same day!
The above-mentioned law was created for the purpose of preventing a
prince thus situated from ascending the throne of Prussia, but the
family statutes evoked by Prince Bismarck and his followers certainly
never contemplated the deprival of a prince of his hereditary rights
of succession to the throne because of some physical ailment or
infirmity. This would have been entirely contrary to the spirit and
ethics of the monarchical system of the Old World; as will be readily
seen when attention is called to the fact that both the late King of
Hanover, and the present reigning Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz,
were absolutely and totally blind at the time they succeeded to their
present thrones.
Prince Bismarck took the view, however, that the statute in question
was sufficient to bar "Unser Fritz" from succeeding to his father, if
it were once medically admitted that his malady was incurable, or if
curable, that it was liable to permanently destroy the vocal chords,
thus abolishing forever the power of speech.
Prince Bismarck declared that in a matter of such extreme importance,
where the succession to the throne, and the life of the heir apparent
were at stake, the surgeons and physicians should be selected by the
State--that is, by himself--and that their verdict should be final.
Chief among the medical experts whom he nominated for the purpose, was
the celebrated German surgeon, Professor von Bergmann, who is as famed
for his skill in the use of the knife as for his fondness in applying
it in cases where it might possibly be dispensed with. Having
convinced himself that the malady from which Crown Prince Frederick
suffered was a cancer, he decreed that the only manner of saving the
life of the illustrious patient was the extremely dangerous and almost
certainly fatal operation of removing the entire portion of the larynx
that was affected. This, as stated above, would have left the crown
prince dumb for the remainder of his days, and according to the
views of Prince Bismarck would have barred him from succession to the
throne.
It is related in court circles at Berlin, that Professor Bergmann was
on the point of operating upon the crown prince unknown to the crown
princess, and under the pretext of making a very radical examination,
for which anaesthetics were necessary, when, he was prevented at the
very last moment by her imperial highness. It is even stated that she
tore the instruments from his hands, and turned him out of the room
with the most bitter and cutting reproaches. Whatever may be true in
this bit of court gossip, it is certain that a fierce quarrel did take
place between the crown princess and the great surgeon, and that the
cause of this quarrel was the decision taken by the latter to operate
upon the crown prince as the only means of saving his life.
[Illustration:
_THE CROWN PRINCESS AND PROFESSOR VON BERGMANN_
_After a drawing by Oreste Cortazzo_]
The crown princess thereupon summoned to her assistance Sir Morel
MacKenzie, the greatest throat specialist in England, who throughout
his long career was consulted by all the leading singers and orators
of his day. MacKenzie came to Berlin, examined the crown prince,
and utterly rejected the diagnosis of Professor Bergmann, and of the
German physicians. He declared that the affection of the larynx, while
cancerous, would not be bettered by using the knife, at any rate at
that time, and that he believed the malady to be curable by treatment.
Needless to add that his opinion was reviled in Germany as that of
a charlatan, and that the Teuton specialists declared that the crown
prince was doomed to certain death within six months, unless the
operation was performed.
Fearing that some further attempt might be made at Berlin to operate
upon her husband without her knowledge, or in spite of her opposition,
the crown princess took him off to England, and from thence to
the Tyrol, from which place they eventually migrated to San Remo.
Meanwhile, the German newspapers, that is to say, those which were
believed to be receiving their inspiration from Bismarckian sources,
were filled with abuse of the crown princess, who was charged openly
with being willing to sacrifice the life of her husband rather than
her chances of becoming German Empress.
Meanwhile the crown prince became worse and worse, and while at San
Remo had several fits of agonizing suffocation, to which he almost
succumbed, and from the worst of which he was virtually saved by
the late Dr. Thomas Evans, of Philadelphia, who displayed the utmost
devotion and intelligence of treatment in the case of the imperial
sufferer.
It was at this juncture that one of the most dramatic scenes which can
be imagined took place in the antechamber of the illustrious patient.
The crown princess received letters which informed her that Prince
Bismarck had submitted to the old emperor, then himself near death, a
decree for signature, transferring the succession of the throne from
Crown Prince Frederick to the latter's son, Prince William, a decree
which, by the by, the old emperor could not bring himself to sign.
Furthermore, she learnt through the same sources that one of the
principal members of her household at San Remo, in fact, one of the
chamberlains in attendance, was sending daily reports of the most
venomous character to Berlin, and to Prince Bismarck particularly,
about everything that went on around the unhappy crown prince. Not a
thing was said, not a thing done, not a change for the worse or the
better in the condition of the hapless crown prince, that was not
instantly reported to the chancellor, in a sense most detrimental and
inimical to the imperial couple at San Remo. This traitor in the camp
owed his appointment to the imperial household to Prince Bismarck, but
by his charming manners, his professions of loyalty and of devotion,
and his denunciations of Prince Bismarck, and of the latter's policy
and ways, had completely captured the confidence of both the crown
prince and crown princess.
Empress Frederick has inherited from her mother, Queen Victoria, a
singularly fiery temper. Her passionate anger when she realized
the base treachery to which her sick husband and herself had been
subjected in their time of cruel tribulation and trouble can only be
imagined by those who have the privilege of knowing her, and the scene
that took place between herself and the offending chamberlain was not
merely dramatical, but tragical in its fierce intensity.
It was very shortly after this that the old emperor died. If Prince
Bismarck entertained any further hopes of preventing the accession of
Crown Prince Frederick to the throne, they were frustrated by Prince
William, who declined to be a party to any such conspiracy. Indeed, in
spite of all that has been said to the contrary, I am firmly convinced
that William at no time took any part, either directly or indirectly,
in the Bismarckian plot to oust his so sadly afflicted father from his
rights to the crown. But, on the other hand, it is certain that he was
suspected by his parents and relatives of being privy to the scheme,
and that he was treated with still greater hostility and lack of
affection by them than previously, which naturally served to embitter
him more than ever before.
Emperor Frederick's reign lasted not quite one hundred days, and
throughout that period a conflict may be said to have raged around the
bedside of the dying man. Both he and his wife, aware how brief his
tenure of the throne was destined to be, were bent on inaugurating
some of those liberal reforms and popular measures which had been the
dream of their entire married life, and which they wished to see put
in force, as a lasting memorial of that monarch who figures in German
history to-day as "Frederick the Noble."
Prince Bismarck, and all the leading statesmen of Prussia, it must be
admitted, ranged themselves against the imperial couple in the matter.
They expressed profound pity for the dying emperor, but they denounced
the empress with the utmost virulence for taking advantage, as they
described it, of his condition to endow Germany with some of the most
pernicious features of English political life, which, while all very
well for Britons, were destined to prove disastrous in the extreme if
applied to Prussia. The fiercer the opposition, the more resolute did
both the emperor and empress become in their determination to attain
their aim, before death once more rendered the throne vacant; and
the position of William, who was now crown prince, became even more
difficult than it had hitherto been. His political sympathies were, it
is impossible to deny, with Prince Bismarck and his followers, and he
could not with his training and with the influences by which he had
been surrounded, ever since he had left school, but disapprove of
the measures which his father and mother wished to adopt. This very
naturally added to their distrust of him, and while they lavished
every token of affection upon their other children, he was treated by
them more as a political adversary and a personal foe than as a friend
or a son.
At length the end came. The pitiful sufferings of "Unser Fritz,"
uncomplainingly and patiently borne, were brought to a close by a
death which in his case must have been a longed-for release; and
within an hour afterwards, William, the present emperor, had
startled his subjects and the entire civilized world, by taking an
extraordinary step, which for a long time afterwards served as a theme
for the denunciation of unfilial character hurled against him both
in Germany and abroad; this step being the giving of an order to the
effect that the guards placed at all the entrances of the Palace of
Potsdam, in which his father had breathed his last, should be doubled,
that a cordon of troops should be drawn around the park walls, and
that no one should be allowed to enter or leave the palace without his
permission.
While there is every reason to believe that this measure was suggested
to him by Prince Bismarck, yet it must be admitted that it was to a
certain extent justified by the circumstances. Emperor Frederick
was known to have kept a most exhaustive diary throughout his entire
married life, dealing day by day with all the political questions of
the hour, the secrets of the Prussian State, the incidents of court
life, etc., just as they occurred. From a German point of view it
was a matter of the most extreme importance that this collection
of diaries should not be permitted to leave Prussia, or to reach a
foreign country, for it would practically have meant the placing at
the mercy of a foreign land all the state secrets of Prussia during
the previous thirty years. Emperor William and Prince Bismarck had
both been led to believe that Empress Frederick had made arrangements
to have these books conveyed to England by Sir Morel MacKenzie, whom
they both disliked as much as they distrusted him. The idea that
these volumes should be in the care of MacKenzie, even during the
twenty-four hours journey separating Berlin from London, was to them
quite intolerable.
Before many hours had elapsed, however, the measures were relaxed. It
was discovered that the diaries were no longer in the palace, and that
they had been taken over to England either knowingly or unknowingly by
Queen Victoria on the occasion of her visit to Potsdam, when she came
to bid adieu to her dying son-in-law.
Let me add that some time later, after a considerable amount of
explanation and negotiation, Queen Victoria, of her own accord,
returned the cases containing Emperor Frederick's diaries to her
grandson at Berlin, with the seals unbroken, taking the very sensible
ground that inasmuch as there were many Prussian state secrets
therein contained, their place was in the archives of the House of
Hohenzollern, rather than in England.
Emperor William has never forgotten the course adopted by his
grandmother in the matter, and by his manner towards her has
repeatedly shown since then that he feels how greatly he can rely
upon having his actions appreciated with perfect impartiality and all
absence of prejudice at Windsor.
Empress Frederick was naturally deeply offended by the precautionary
measures adopted by the emperor on his father's death, and saw therein
a new and most insulting indication of his unfilial conduct towards
herself. Nor were the relations between the mother and the son
improved, but on the contrary rather aggravated by the presence of the
Prince of Wales at Berlin. The latter remained in the Prussian capital
for a number of weeks after the funeral of Emperor Frederick, and the
English newspapers, which had been most outspoken in their criticisms
of the young emperor's attitude towards his parents, did not hesitate
to declare openly that if the prince was continuing his stay in
Berlin, it was for the purpose of championing the interests of his
favorite sister, and of protecting her from the insults of her son,
and of the latter's mentor and chief counsellor, Prince Bismarck.
There were all sorts of troublesome questions cropping up between the
mother and the son during the first few months of her widowhood, many
of which were inevitable; for certain courses of policy upon
which Emperor Frederick had embarked were disapproved by the young
sovereign's constitutional advisers. Then, too, it would appear that
Frederick III. had taken advantage of his brief tenure of power to
unduly favor his wife and his younger children at the expense of the
Hohenzollern family property in a manner that was not in consonance
with the traditions of the reigning house. It was also whispered
that the late emperor had lent a very large sum of money to his
brother-in-law, the Prince of Wales, and it was further asserted that
the then minister of the imperial household had preferred resigning
his post to countenancing such a use of the money belonging to
the Hohenzollern family. There was the question, moreover, of the
distribution of the palaces. While William was perfectly ready to
permit his mother to keep her residence at Berlin, he felt that he
was entitled, as emperor and chief of the family, to the new palace of
Potsdam, the finest of the lot, and the only one roomy enough for the
abode of a reigning sovereign. It was, therefore, necessary that he
should have possession thereof. His mother, on the other hand, took
the ground that inasmuch as it had been her principal home throughout
her married life, that nearly all her children had been born there,
and that it was in many respects a creation of her husband's, she
ought to be allowed to retain it. Of course the emperor had his way,
and this but served to increase the bitterness, particularly when
he issued an order to the effect that its old name of "Neues Palais"
should be restored in the place of "Friedrichskron," which had been
given to it by the widowed empress during her husband's brief reign.
Of course all these differences of opinion between the mother and the
son were carefully intensified by Prince Bismarck, and aggravated
by the continued presence of the Prince of Wales, who was regarded,
probably unjustly, as largely responsible for the animosity which it
was claimed was entertained and manifested by the imperial widow for
her son. The newspapers took sides in the matter, and the press being
very active, there is every reason to believe, in view of the wide
field of German and foreign journalism over which the influences of
the chancellor extended at the time, that he had a finger, not alone
in the denunciation on the one hand of Empress Frederick as grasping,
mercenary, and too much of an Englishwoman to be a patriotic German,
but likewise in the abuse of Emperor William for unfilial conduct.
Every act of his that could possibly be construed as such, was painted
in the blackest of colors, especially in the English press, manifestly
with the idea of conveying to the kaiser the impression that the
attacks originated with his English relatives, possibly with his
mother herself; and I can recall seeing at the time a story to which
the London papers devoted columns, and which was made the theme of
editorials, the subject of which was that the emperor had sold to a
carpenter the pony-carriage and pony used by his father daring the few
weeks immediately preceding his death, for his drives in the palace
gardens. The story related with much detail about how the pony trap
was to be seen during the week in the streets of Potsdam, laden with
window-sashes, etc., while on Sunday and holidays the seat where
formerly the dying emperor reclined was occupied by the "Herr
Tischlermeister" and his frowsy, vulgar-looking "frau." Yet there was
not a word of truth in this story. The pony-carriage used by "Unser
Fritz" during the closing days of his life is preserved as a species
of sacred relic in the imperial coach-house at Potsdam, while the pony
leads a life of ease, idleness and equine luxury, out of regard for
the fact that it had the honor of drawing the moribund monarch around
the grounds of Charlottenburg and Potsdam. Inasmuch as this precious
story about Emperor William's selling the pony-carriage in question
first made its appearance in a London newspaper, which, as long as
Bismarck remained in office, was regarded as his particular organ in
the British press, being owned by a gentleman bearing a distinctly
German name, there is every reason to believe that the tale in
question originated with some of the journalistic myrmidons employed
by the chancellor, and that its object was to embitter William against
the English, against his British kinsfolk, and, above all, against his
mother.
It is not without significance that the mother and the eldest son have
understood one another only since the dismissal from office of Prince
Bismarck. From that time the relations between the two have been of
the most affectionate and cordial character. Perhaps at first there
was at times a little difference of opinion, owing to the difficulty
experienced by a woman of the imperious character of Empress Frederick
in realizing the fact that her eldest son was no longer "her boy
Willie," to be ordered about and controlled, but that he had become,
not merely emancipated from her control, but her sovereign master,
whose commands she is now forced to obey, and whose wishes she is
obliged to consult and consider. But every year since the fall of
Bismarck has had the effect of bringing the mother and the son nearer
to each other.
The empress seems to have come to the conclusion that she has judged
her son harshly and unjustly, prejudiced by appearances which were
frequently against him; while he, on the other hand, demonstrated to
Prince Bismarck that, while he was grateful to him for his services
to the empire, he found difficulty in pardoning him for the advantage
which he had taken of his--the emperor's--youth and inexperience to
estrange him from both his father and his mother.
If I have repeated in this chapter some history that may be regarded
as ancient, since it dates back to eleven and twelve years ago, it
is for the purpose of relieving Emperor William of much unmerited
reproach heaped upon him, as the most unfilial of royal and imperial
princes in modern times. William has a warm heart, and an affectionate
disposition. He shows this in the happiness of his home life, and by
the tenderness of his devotion to his wife and children. If he was for
a time estranged from his parents, and in particular from his mother,
it was less through any fault of his, or of theirs--I repeat it--than
through the intrigues of Bismarck, and of the latter's friends within
and without the imperial household, who fondly imagined that they were
serving the "vaterland" by keeping the parents and their son estranged
from one another.