THE ETERNAL FEMININE
Even the women, many of whom are honorary colonels to regiments,
must keep in trim for the great parade days of autumn and spring.
Many of these female colonels appear in uniform, riding at the
head of their regiments. They sit on side saddles, however, and
wear skirts corresponding somewhat in colour with the uniform
coat and helmet of the regiment of which they are the honorary
proprietors.
German female royalties are rather inclined to set an example of
quietness in dress. They seldom wear the latest fashion and never
follow the exaggerated modes of Paris. Even their figures are of
the old-fashioned variety--pinched at the waist. While in the
Tiergarten in the morning I saw many good horses, but only one
fashionably cut riding habit. Many of the others must have been
at least twenty years old, as the sleeves were of the Leg of
Mutton style, fashionable, I believe, about that number of years
ago.
Many German noblewomen shoot and are quite as good shots as their
husbands. I was quite surprised once on a shooting party to meet
an elderly princess whose grey hair was in short curls and who
wore a coat and waistcoat like a man's. She shot with great skill
and smoked long Havana cigars!
When German women get out of the country they very quickly
imitate foreign fashions and extravagances of dress. The Czarina
of Russia, for example, a German Princess, is very fond of
fashions, and a friend of mine who had three audiences with her
during the war tells me that on the occasion of his first
audience she was dressed in black and received him in a room
where yellow flowers were massed. On the second occasion she was
in grey and the flowers were pink. At the third audience her
dress was purple and the flowers were of lilac and white.
There is one good thing about the king and aristocratic system.
The position of women in the social scale is fixed by the
husband's rank. There is, therefore, none of that striving, that
vying with each other, which so often exhausts the nerves of the
American woman and the purse of the husband. The German women
give their time and attention to the "Four K's" that, in a
German's eyes, should bound a woman's world, "Kaiser, Kinder,
Kirche, Kuche" (Emperor, children, church and kitchen).
The successful business man of New York or Chicago or San
Francisco is surprised to find how docile and domestic the German
woman is--no foolish extravagance, but a real devotion to husband
and home, a real mother to her many children. She matches that
short epitaph of the Roman matron--"She spun wool; she kept the
house."
When I came to Germany I found, on studying the language, that
there was no word in German corresponding to "efficient." I soon
learned that this is because everything done in Germany is done
efficiently, and there is no need to differentiate one act from
another in terms of efficiency. But the German man could not be
as efficient as he undoubtedly is, without the whole-hearted
devotion of the German woman.
German girls are given a good, strong, sound education. They
learn languages, not smatterings of them. They are accomplished
musicians. Domestic science they learn from their mothers. They
are splendid swimmers, hockey players, riders and skaters.
During our first winter in Berlin we spent many afternoons at the
Ice Palace in the Lutherstrasse, an indoor ice rink much larger
than the one in the Freidrichstrasse, the Admirals Palast, where
the ice ballets are given and the graceful Charlotte used to
appear. The skating club of the Lutherstrasse was under the
patronage of the Crown Prince and was one of the very few meeting
places of Berlin society. The women were taught to waltz by male
instructors and the men by several young women--blonde skaters
from East Prussia. I tried to improve my skating and spent many
hours making painful "Bogens" or circles under the efficient eyes
of a little East Prussia instructress. Afternoon tea was served
during the interval of skating and one afternoon a week was
specially reserved for the Club members.
One of my young secretaries used to go occasionally to Wannsee,
near Berlin, to play hockey with a German friend; as the young
men were nearly all in the war, girls made up the majority of
each team. My secretary reported that those German girls were as
strong, as enduring and as skilful as the average young man.
Girls of the working classes, instead of flirting or turkey
trotting at night, make a practice of going to the Turnvereins,
to exercise in the gymnasiums there. If the members of the German
lower classes only had the opportunity to rise in life what would
they not accomplish! So many of them are very ambitious,
persistent, earnest and thrifty.
Of course, female suffrage in Germany or anything approaching it
is very distant. First of all, the men must win a real ballot for
themselves in Prussia, a real representation in the Reichstag. In
the Germany of to-day, a woman with feminist aspirations is
looked on as the men of the official class look on a Social
Democrat, something hardly to be endured. And this is in spite of
the fact that the nations to the North, in Scandinavia, freed
women even before America did.
The most beautiful woman in Berlin society is Countess
Oppersdorff--the mother of thirteen children. She is not German,
but was born a Polish Princess Radziwill.
The chief lady of the Imperial Court is Countess Brockdorff. She
is rather stern in appearance and manner, and rumour has it that
she was appointed to keep the good-natured, easy-going Empress
to the strict line of German court etiquette, to see that the
Empress, rather democratic in inclination, did not stray away
from the traditional rigidity of the Prussian royal house.
Countess Brockdorff is a most able woman. I grew to have not only
a great respect, but almost an affection for her. At court
functions she usually wears a mantilla as a distinguished mark
and several orders and decorations. We had three women friends
from America with us in Berlin whom we presented at Court. All
were married, but only the husband of one of them could leave his
work and visit Germany. The two other husbands, in accordance
with the good American custom, were at work in America. Countess
Brockdorff spoke to the lady whose husband was with her, saying
to her, "I am glad to see that your husband is with you," an
implied rebuke to the other ladies and an exhibition of that
failure to understand other nations so characteristic of highly
placed Germans. With us, of course, a good-natured American
husband, wedded as much to his business as to his wife, permits
his wife to travel abroad without him and neither he nor she is
reproved in America because of this.
Among the other ladies attendant on the Empress are Fräulein von
Gersdorff, whose cousin is a lawyer practising in New York, and
Countess Keller. There are other ladies and a number of maids of
honour and all of them are overworked, acting as secretaries,
answering letters and attending various charitable and other
functions, either with the Empress or representing her. One of
the charming maids of honour, Countess Bassewitz, was married
during the war to Prince Oscar, the Kaiser's fifth son. This
marriage was morganatic, that is, the lady does not take the
name, rank and title of her husband. In this case another title
was given her, that of Countess Ruppin, and her sons will be
known as Counts Ruppin, but will not be Princes of Prussia.
There is much misunderstanding in America as to these morganatic
marriages. By the rules of many royal and princely houses, a
member of the house cannot marry a woman not of equal rank and
give her his name, titles and rank. But the marriage is in all
other respects perfectly legal. The ceremony is performed in
accordance with Prussian law, before a civil magistrate and also
in a church, and should the husband attempt to marry again he
would be guilty of bigamy.
I gave away the bride at one of these morganatic marriages, when
Prince Christian of Hesse married Miss Elizabeth Reid-Rogers, a
daughter of Richard Reid Rogers, a lawyer of New York. Prince
Christian has an extremely remote chance of ever coming to the
throne of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, but nevertheless and because
of the rules of the House of Hesse-Barchfeld, he cannot give his
rank and title to a wife, not of equal birth. The head of the
House, therefore, the Grand Duke of Hesse, conferred the title of
Baroness Barchfeld in her own right on the bride, and her
children will be known as Barons and Baronesses Barchfeld.
When Prince Christian and his wife go out to dinner in Berlin, he
is given his rank at the table as a member of a royal house, but
his wife is treated on a parity with the wives of all officers
holding commissions of equal grade with her husband in the army.
As her husband is a Lieutenant, she ranks merely as a Lieutenant's
wife. On the same day that Miss Rogers and Prince Christian were
wedded, Miss Cecilia May of Baltimore married Lieutenant Vom
Rath. I acted as one of Miss May's witnesses at the Standesamt,
where the civil marriage was performed, while the religious
marriage took place in our Embassy. Lieutenant Vom Rath is the
son of one of the proprietors of the great dye works manufactories
known as Lucius-Meister-Farbewerke at Hoehst, near Frankfurt a. M.,
where salvarsan and many other medicines used in America are
manufactured, as well as dyestuffs and chemicals.
In my earlier book I described presentations at the Royal
Prussian Court in Berlin, especially the great court called the
"Schleppencour," because of the long trains or Schleppe worn by
the women. All the little kingdoms and principalities of the
German Empire have somewhat the same ceremonies. In Dresden, the
capital of Saxony, a peculiar custom is followed. The King and
Queen sit at a table at one end of the room playing cards and the
members of the court and distinguished strangers file into the
room, pass by the card table in single file and drop deep
courtesies and make bows to the seated royalties, who, as a
rule, do not even take the trouble to glance at those engaged in
this servile tribute to small royalty. I suppose that the excuse
for this is that it is an old custom. But so is serfdom!
There are in Germany many so-called mediatised families,
so-called because at one time they possessed royal rank and
rights over small bits of territory before Napoleon changed the
map of Europe and wiped out so many small principalities.
At the Congress of Vienna these families who lost their right of
rule, in part compensation, were given the right to marry either
royalties or commoners; so that the marriage of a Prince of
Prussia with a daughter of one of these mediatised houses would
not be morganatic. The girl would take the full rank of her
husband and the children would inherit any rights, including the
rights to the throne possessed by him.
Thus the beautiful young Countess Platen, shortly before we left
Berlin, was married to von Stumm, the very able Under Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs. While she became on her marriage
Baroness von Stumm, nevertheless, if she had married the son of
the Kaiser, she would have taken his rank and her children would
have inherited all rights and titles possessed by their father.
This is because the Platens, although bearing only the title of
Counts, are a mediatised family.
It is noteworthy that in Berlin women of that blonde type with
regular features, which we believe is the German type, are very
rare. This type is to be found perfected in Scandinavia,
although a few specimens exist in Germany. Looking over a Berlin
theatre I have often noticed the predominance of brown and black
hair.
There is always some one higher up to whom German women must
curtsy. All women, whatever their husband's rank, must curtsy to
a Royal Prince. Unmarried girls curtsy to married women and kiss
their hands. Men, on meeting women, always kiss their hands.
Berlin is certainly the gossip headquarters of the world. Some
years ago the whole town was invaded by a mania for anonymous
letter writing, and when the smoke had cleared away few were left
with unriddled reputations.
It is the fashion of the present court, however, to be very
puritanical. No such little affairs are going on publicly, as
have occurred in the annals of the Hohenzollern family. For even
the old Emperor William, grandfather of the present Kaiser, had
numerous love affairs. The tree is still pointed out near the
Tiergarten where he met Princess Radziwill every day.
And the Chancellor's palace was once the home of another royal
"friend."
The Foreign Office was at one time the home of the Italian
dancer, La Barberini, the only woman who ever for a time enslaved
Frederick the Great. I discussed affairs of state with von Jagow
and Zimmermann in the very room where she gave her supper
parties.