THE BOGUS PRINCESS
During the War bogus royalties and princesses sprang up like
toadstools. Any young woman with a turn for private theatricals and
a vivid imagination could burst forth as a high-born refugee and get
some one to believe in her and, incidentally, to finance her until she
found a husband from among the officers in one or other of the camps.
The first I remember was a Russian princess who, while staying with a
very influential lady in the Midlands, had become engaged to a certain
temporary officer of large expectations. She was described to me as
beautiful, with a peculiarly Russian type of loveliness, emotional,
as all Russians are, with blue eyes that became easily suffused with
tears, and with a charming flow of broken English. I think it was
the broken English that was her undoing, for she had the ill-fortune
to come into contact with an Englishwoman who prided herself on her
Russian, and would insist upon showing it off to every Russian she met.
Curious to relate, the princess had entirely forgotten her Russian,
and for some reason her parents had neglected to have her taught
French, which is in the ordinary curriculum of well-born Russians.
She accounted for this by vague allusions to the misfortunes of her
family, who had had so troublous an existence that they appeared to
have forgotten to teach her anything but English, and this only broken
English.
It was in the height of the spy mania, and, not unnaturally, the
Russian-speaking Englishwoman jumped to the conclusion that she had to
deal with a German spy and, worse, a German spy who had got herself
engaged to a British officer, and so she came to me. I found that the
princess’s hostess was still ready to go bail for her and could not
bear that her protegée should undergo the humiliation of being called
to Scotland Yard, but I was adamant. Come the lady must. All I could
promise was that she should not be dealt with harshly even if she
proved to be a spy.
There walked into my room a beautifully dressed young woman with a full
outfit of furs, because, I suppose, a Russian princess would not be
Russian without them. Her broken English was certainly not the broken
English of a Russian nor of a Frenchwoman nor of a German nor, indeed,
of any nation that I had yet encountered. It was the broken English of
the English stage; and when I came to look at the lady I was quite sure
that whatever knowledge she had acquired of life had been acquired in
the lower ranks of the profession.
I said:
‘English does not come very easily to you. Shall we talk French?’
‘I not speak French, sir.’
‘But you are a Russian?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And your parents are now in Russia?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And yet you do not speak Russian?’
‘No, sir. Russia I leave many years ago.’
‘Can you describe to me your Russian home?’
‘I leave, sir, when quite a leetle child.’
‘Now,’ I said, ‘I want you to give me the address of your English
mother. You see, in this room one has to drop all play-acting and tell
the truth.’
Her blue eyes filled with tears, but at last, quite faintly, she gave
me an address in London and retired to await the arrival of her mother.
There was no play-acting about this good lady when she arrived. She
was a buxom woman of fifty, who earned her living as a housekeeper and
had two daughters, one in a good situation and the other a young woman
who had become stage-struck at eighteen, and would from time to time
fill the breasts of her mother and sister with silent indignation by
flouncing in upon them in expensive clothes and attempting to patronise
them. ‘I always told her that she’d get herself into trouble if she
went on as she did, and now she has. You just let me see her for five
minutes and talk to her.’ I asked whether she had ever heard that her
daughter was posing as a Russian. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I remember that
one Christmas she got a part as a Russian princess in a pantomime and
had to talk broken English.’
In fact, the war had broken out just in time to give this young lady
an opportunity of continuing her part off the stage. She had had a
glorious time. I was not present at the interview between mother and
daughter, but at the end of it the mother informed me that she had
promised to be a good girl and make a clean breast of it all to her
patroness, and also to the man whom she was about to marry, and I heard
that he, good fellow that he was, married her all the same.
Another young woman who appeared in 1915 aimed higher, and, being
better educated, played her part with more distinction. She was no
less, according to the accounts that first came to me, than a daughter
of Marie Vetsera, the heroine of the mysterious tragedy in which Prince
Rudolf of Austria met his death, and of course I need hardly say that
Prince Rudolf was her father. She arrived from America, and almost
immediately became engaged to a British officer. She was invited to
Scotland Yard for an interview. She did not talk broken English, but
her accent was neither American nor English, and, unlike the Russian
princess, she was possessed of some means. Her story was full of
mysteries and reticences. She could only tell me, she said, what she
had herself been told. Her earliest recollections were of the convent
in America in which she had been brought up. The Sisters would only
tell her that a foreign-looking stranger had brought her there as a
baby, and that her parentage was very distinguished indeed. She must
not ask too many questions. He had invested for her a large sum of
money which she was to enjoy when she came of age. It had been placed
in trust with a firm of lawyers who were under an obligation not to
tell her whence it came. As the years went on there were hints about
the Austrian Royal Family. Prince Rudolf had been mentioned, and then
one day the Mother Superior put her arm round her, and whispered that
her mother had been very unhappy, that the whole thing was very tragic
and, again, that she must not ask too many questions. From this she
inferred the rest--that she was the daughter of Marie Vetsera, born
some time before the tragedy.
‘I am sorry to interrupt you,’ I said, ‘but Marie Vetsera never had a
daughter. The whole of her history is well known.’
Her eyes filled with tears, and she, replied that she could only tell
me what she had been told. When she left the convent the lawyer had
hinted at the same thing, and had paid over to her the money that had
been placed in trust.
‘The lawyer’s name?’
‘Alas, sir, he is dead, and the firm no longer exists.’
She then asked for advice as to how she should manage about her boy,
then a child of about six. As far as I could gather, she had for some
time been living on her capital, which must in due course come to an
end. Asked what she would do when the inevitable happened, she shook
her head and hinted that she would put an end to herself.
It transpired in the course of the interview that she could speak
French and Polish fairly fluently, and this may have accounted for the
peculiarity of her accent. She had been taught these languages, she
said, in the convent. She would not give the name of the convent, and
therefore all this part of the story may have been invented like the
rest, but it was clear from inquiries that were subsequently made that
by nationality she was American, and that she was certainly not engaged
in espionage.
But the most amazing of all the claimants was a certain _soi-disant_
princess of a royal house who had succeeded in convincing a very large
number of people that she was genuine. She was not in need of funds,
nor had she any object in view except to gain the prestige which
a royal parentage would confer upon her. It was therefore a quite
harmless amusement, and she must have got a great deal of fun out of
it. Unfortunately for her, when she had first laid claim to her rank
there was nothing to show that we were soon to be at war with the
sovereign whom she claimed for father, and when the spy mania was at
its height he came, not unnaturally, under suspicion. It was still more
unfortunate that her own brother was living in this country.
She had worked out the details of her claim with remarkable skill. Her
mother was still living, as well as her two brothers and a sister. It
was impossible to ignore them altogether, and so she told a story of
how she had been confided to the care of her own mother by an Imperial
lady who, for some unexplained reason, wished to keep her birth a
secret. I commend this kind of story to any future claimant of royal
parentage, because when sceptics begin to throw details of your early
life in your face you can say, ‘Quite so, all that happened, only you
were never told the secret of my birth, which is known only to me and
to one or two other people, who are dead.’ All she had to do, in fact,
was to read up all the movements of the Court during the years of her
infancy and childhood, and retail them as a privileged eye-witness.
There sailed into my room one morning the most Imperial-looking person
I have ever seen. Even when sitting in my low armchair there was a calm
and condescending dignity about her that would have impressed anybody.
She had a husband who was on the way to make a fortune, and who was in
attendance to confirm everything she said, and no one was ever more
ready than she to help me over any difficult points, only I must tell
her what they were. My first point was that her reputed mother did not
and could not have had a child at the particular date when she said she
was born. She smiled rather pityingly, and said that no doubt I was not
aware that her mother had spent some months alone at a watering-place
in France at that time, and that it was evident that I did not know how
eccentric she was. As a matter of fact I did, but I also knew a good
deal about the movements of the Imperial lady immediately after the
supposed birth, and they did not at all tally with my visitor’s story.
I took her through her various statements, and as I had no documentary
evidence on the other side to confront her with she left with the
honours of war, but she left me also quite unconvinced.
A few days later I discovered her brother, a composer of considerable
ability and a very striking-looking man with a strong family likeness
to his sister. He was in a state of great indignation against her,
chiefly, I think, on account of the disparagement of his mother which
was entailed by her story. He came fully armed with most convincing
documents--family photographs from the time when they were all children
together, letters written by the lady herself to her family, and
letters from his mother in Switzerland. Among the letters was one
written when the claimant was a girl of seventeen. She and her sister
were at a watering-place, and she retails, with satisfaction, a remark
she overheard about them, that they were _Kaiserlich mädchen_. This
chance remark overheard in a hotel probably put the entire idea into
her head. In appearance she was _Kaiserlich_ to the finger-tips, and
it must have been balm to her soul to extend them to be kissed and to
see the world curtsy to her. She was the daughter of a Jewish bank
manager in a good position. She had been well-educated, and she knew a
number of people who could tell her the gossip of the Court. She could
not have imposed on any one in her own country, but once abroad she
began to expand, and the story had given four or five years of intense
pleasure.
Having satisfied myself that, whatever else the lady might be, she
was not dangerous to the cause of the Allies, I dropped the case,
thinking that if any exposure became necessary the brother would
bring it about; but one day, to my great surprise, a friend who has a
profound knowledge of Austria, told me that he was satisfied that she
was genuine, and thought it a great pity that she had been subjected
to the indignity of interrogation. I made him a sporting offer. I said
that the lady was probably expecting another interview, that I had
documentary proofs in my possession, and that if he liked I would
invite her to see me again in his presence. He agreed, and asked only
that he might bring with him a personage who has since become very
prominent in Europe.
The interview took place. The lady sailed in as imperially as before.
My companions were presented to her, and she acknowledged their bows
with the slightest nod.
‘Sit down, madam. Since I saw you last some very interesting documents
have reached me, and I want to put them to you. The first are some
family photographs.’
I thought she flushed slightly.
‘Oh, I can see what has happened. You have been in communication with
Mr. K----, who claims to be my brother. Poor man, it has become an
obsession with him.’
I do not think that she was prepared for the family photographs, for
at first she would not admit that the girl of fourteen in one of the
groups was herself. A little later she seemed to think that this was
a false move, for she said, ‘I suppose that is my photograph, but you
see at that time we should have been photographed together because I
had been consigned to the care of Madame K----.’ When she came to her
own letters she was for the first time embarrassed and inclined to be
angry, for she had at short notice to make up her mind whether she
would deny the authorship altogether, or admit it and readjust her
story. I was on pretty sure ground, because it happened that a relation
of mine had been staying in the same house as her Imperial ‘mother’
on an occasion when she claimed to have been present, and that when
her photograph was shown to this lady, she declared that the girl she
saw there was quite a different-looking person. For the first time
her imperial calm broke down. She became very pale and very angry. It
was difficult to say whether fear or anger was the stronger of her
emotions. She admitted the authorship of the letters, and to all our
further questions she would only reply that she was suffering for the
malice of her brother.
For a time I think she dropped her royal pretensions. At any rate, she
dropped the idea of writing a book, which was said to be nearly ready
for publication.
Another case of impersonation was that of the man who called himself
Count de Borch. He was a Polish Jew, well-educated and well dressed,
and he seems to have had a curious fascination for persons with whom
he came in contact. Any mysterious Pole was at that time an object of
suspicion. This man had obtained employment carrying a small weekly
wage with a firm of furniture dealers in London, and yet he was able
to cut a dash at London tea-tables and expensive restaurants. He had a
large circle of hostesses from whom he would have been in a position
to acquire a good deal of information useful to the enemy if he had
tried to do so. He was brought down to Scotland Yard some weeks before
the tragedy which brought his name before the public. The title of ‘de
Borch’ was old and highly esteemed in Poland, and I had been assured
that whatever this man might be he was certainly not in any way
connected with the family. He made a very bad impression upon me. He
fell back upon the usual ruse of bogus claimants. He said that he knew
nothing about his ancestry except what he had been told, that there
had always been a mystery about his parentage because, owing to family
differences, his father was anxious that his existence should be kept
secret until the day when he could come into his own, and so he had
been supporting himself honourably with a firm in London until Poland
was free. It was like a great many other cases at that time. Until some
evidence was forthcoming that a man was engaged in espionage, he had to
be left at liberty under _surveillance_. He was believed to be drawing
sums of money from some of his hostesses to eke out his slender wages,
and it was his social side that was his undoing.
The tragedy in which he met his death was very fully reported at the
time. Captain Malcolm had returned from the Front to find that this
over-dressed and scented person had been trying to break up his home.
He came to Scotland Yard to ascertain his address, but as it is not the
custom to give addresses to callers no information was given. He found
it out in another way, bought a horsewhip, with which to thrash the
man, and gained admittance to his room. In the scuffle that followed
the use of the horsewhip, de Borch was shot dead, but as a loaded
pistol was found in an opened drawer close to the bed it was held that
de Borch intended to use it upon his unwelcome visitor, and Captain
Malcolm was acquitted.