THE SWEET FAMILY
Husband loving, but family nasty--Money considerations--Brutal
caresses in public--Pests in the family--Awful serenity--Meddle with
angels' or devils' affairs--Father-in-law's gritty kiss.
CASTLE WACHWITZ, _February 24, 1893_.
I have been married some fifteen months and I love my husband. He is
kind, not too inquisitive and passionate. I have better claims to
domestic happiness than most of my royal sisters on or near the thrones
of Europe. Of course when I married into the Saxon royal family I
expected to be treated with ill-concealed enmity. Wasn't I young and
handsome? Reason enough for the old maids and childless wives, my new
sweet relatives, to detest me.
Wasn't I poor? I brought little with me and my presence entailed a
perpetual expense. Now in royal families money is everything, or nearly
so, and the newcomer that eats but doesn't increase the family fortune
is regarded as an interloper.
If I hadn't "_made good_," that is if, in due time, I hadn't become a
mother, my position among the purse-proud, rapacious and narrow-minded
Wettiners would have become wellnigh intolerable. But I proved myself a
_Holstein_. I rose superior to Queen Carola, who never had a child, and
to Maria, Mathilda, Isabelle and Elizabeth, who either couldn't or
didn't. But, to my mind, acting the _cow_ for the benefit of the race
did not invite stable manners.
I wasn't used to them. They hadn't figured in the dreams of my girlhood.
I thought love less robust. I didn't expect to be squeezed before my
ladies. Even the best beloved husband shouldn't take liberties with his
wife's waist in the parlor.
And Frederick Augustus's negligee talk is no less offensive than his
manner of laying loving hands on my person. As a rule, he treats me like
a third-row dancing girl that goes to petition the manager for a place
nearer the footlights. There is no limit to his familiarities or to the
license of his conversation. "_Fine wench_" is a term of affection he
likes to bestow on his future queen; indeed, one of the less gross. He
has the weakness to like epithets that, I am told, gentlemen sometimes
use in their clubs, but never towards a mistress they half-way respect.
My father-in-law, Prince George, is a pest of another kind. While
Frederick Augustus is jovial and rude, George is rude and serene of a
serenity that would make a Grand Inquisitor look gay.
One of my famous ancestresses, the Princess-Palatine, sister-in-law of
Louis the Fourteenth, once boxed the Dauphin's ears for a trick he
played on her, by putting his upright thumb in the centre of an armchair
which her royal highness meant to sit on.
Whenever I behold George's funereal visage, I long to repeat the
Dauphin's undignified offense. I would like to see this royal parcel of
melancholy jump and dance; change that ever-frowning and mournful aspect
of his. Indeed, I would like to treat him to one of the anecdotes that
made the Duchess de Berri explode with laughter.
Frederick Augustus lives in deadly fear of him, and never gets his hair
cut without first considering whether his father will approve or not.
George isn't happy unless he renders other people unhappy. I actually
believe he would rather meddle with the angels' or devils' affairs than
say his prayers, though he is a bigot of the most advanced stripe.
Sometimes when the itch for meddling has hold of him, he cites all the
married princes of the royal house and lectures them on the wickedness
of having no children, winding up by commanding each one to explain, in
detail, his failure to have offspring.
Of course, these gentlemen put the blame on their wives, whereupon the
ladies are forthwith summoned to be threatened and cajoled.
Prince George had the great goodness to approve of my baby and to
congratulate me, also to set me up as an example for Isabelle. When I
return to Dresden I shall be made Colonel of Horse.
Twice has George kissed me,--upon my arrival in Saxony and five days
after the birth of my child. It felt like a piece of gritty ice rubbing
against my forehead.