MY LIFE AT COURT BECOMES UNBEARABLE
Laughter a crime--Disappointed Queen lays down the law for my
behavior--Frederick Augustus sometimes fighting drunk--Draws sword
on me--Prince George would have me beaten--To bed with his boots on.
DRESDEN, _January 5, 1895_.
Ever since the Shah left I have been the object of criticism, suspicions
and down-right attacks by the pretty family I married into. These pages
witness that I tried to conform to the absurd notions and comply with
the narrow-minded idiosyncrasies of the Royal Wettiners. I give it up.
It can't be done, and I won't make another effort at pleasing my
relatives-in-law, who adjudge laughter a crime and the desire to make
friends a bid of lewdness.
Prince George invented the phrase, "Louise is over-desirous to please,"
and Queen Carola paid me a state visit to acquaint me with the new
indictment.
"Good gracious," I said to Her Majesty, "is that all? I thought of being
accused of 'sassing' the Archangel Gabriel. As to desire to please,
that's exactly what ails me. I love to please. I love to see people
happy. I love to make friends."
"My dear child," said the Queen, "you haven't the slightest notion of
royal dignity. You talk like a _cocotte_. It's a Princess's place to be
honored, to be held in supreme esteem."
Poor old woman! She was never pretty, never was made love to, never had
admirers, legitimate or otherwise; she thus became impregnated with the
fixed idea that to be fair and to be loved for one's fairness is
frivolous, if not altogether reprehensible.
* * * * *
_March 10, 1895._
Frederick Augustus drinks. He says I drive him to drink by my attitude
towards his beloved family. What the beloved family does to me doesn't
count, of course.
Drinking was one of the vices of his youth. Love for me cured him of the
dreadful habit. As this love wanes, the itch for alcohol increases.
I can't do anything with him when he is drunk, and at such times I am
afraid of him. He both nauseates me and frightens me. Sometimes he comes
home "fighting drunk." The fumes of wine, beer and _Schnapps_, mixed
with tobacco, upset my stomach and I try to avoid his coarse embrace as
any decent woman would.
What does this royal drill-ground bully do? He unsheathes his sword and
threatens to cut my liver out, unless I instantly doff my clothes and go
to bed with him.
Prince George's evil counsel wasn't powerful enough to procure me
beatings, but my husband's military education, his love of discipline,
backed by alcohol, thrusts a sword into his hand, and, if I refuse to
comply with his atrocious demands, I am liable to be treated like so
many "mere" civilians that are sabred in the public streets for refusing
to do some spurred and epauletted blackguard's bidding, or entertain his
insults.
If the Socialists, who are forever railing against these self-same army
poltroons, only knew it! An Imperial Highness threatened like a small
"cit" with a four-foot sword in the hand of a drunken Royal Highness and
dragged to a couch with no more ceremony than a street-walker passing a
Cossack barracks!
The howl that would go up in the Diet, or the _Reichstag_, the fulminant
denials by prince and king and government! And if I really did get hurt
in one of these fracases, Frederick Augustus would be sure of a "severe
reprimand" by father and uncle, and perhaps by the Kaiser, too, but
would that heal my wounds, would it save me from death? Would it even
prevent Prince George from saying that I myself was to blame?
No, no, I like a whole skin and prefer an embrace to a sword-thrust any
day, like my ancestress, the Queen of Naples, who consummated the
marriage forced upon her on the spot and in sight of the army rather
than have her head cut off. Too bad she was hanged in the end despite
her complacency.[5]
Indeed, if Frederick Augustus shows the mailed fist, I don't stand on
ceremony, but I do wish he would take his boots off.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: Joanna I, Queen of Naples, a pupil of Petrarca and in many
respects an enlightened ruler. She issued the first laws and regulations
regarding prostitutes. Hanged by order of King Louis of Hungary, after
her defeat in battle, July, 1381.]