EARLY MARRIED LIFE
The bridal journey to Berlin was in the nature of a triumphal progress,
and it was well that the Prince and Princess were both young and full of
healthy vitality. At Brussels they were present at a great Court ball
given in their honour, but early the next morning they were again on
their route, and all the way there were receptions, addresses of
congratulations, &c., to be received and answered.
It was probably at Brussels that the Princess received a touching letter
from her father, written on the day after her departure from England:--
"My heart was very full when yesterday you leaned your forehead on my
breast to give free vent to your tears. I am not of a demonstrative
nature, and therefore you can hardly know how dear you have always been
to me, and what a void you have left behind in my heart: yet not in my
heart, for there assuredly you will abide henceforth, as till now you
have done, but in my daily life, which is evermore reminding my heart of
your absence."
Three days later Prince Albert again wrote to her:
"Thank God, everything apparently goes on to a wish, and you seem to
gain 'golden opinions' in your favour; which naturally gives us extreme
pleasure, both because we love you, and because this touches our
parental pride. But what has given us most pleasure of all was the
letter, so overflowing with affection, which you wrote while yet on
board the yacht. Poor child! well did I feel the bitterness of your
sorrow, and would so fain have soothed it. But, excepting my own sorrow,
I had nothing to give; and that would only have had the effect of
augmenting yours."
To Stockmar, whose son, Baron Ernest Stockmar, was appointed Treasurer
to the Princess Royal on her marriage, he wrote:
"Throughout all this agitated, serious and very trying time, the good
child has behaved quite admirably, and to the mingled admiration and
surprise of every one. She was so natural, so childlike, so dignified
and firm in her whole bearing and demeanour, that one might well believe
in a higher inspiration. I shall not forget that your son has proved
himself in all ways extremely useful, and takes and holds his ground,
which, among the Berliners, is no easy matter."
The progress to Berlin was, at any rate, by no means dull; it was marked
by plenty of incident, sometimes not of a pleasant nature. For instance,
when the bridal pair were entertained at a great Court banquet at
Hanover, whether by malice, or more probably by sheer stupidity, the
feast was spread on the very gold dinner-service which had been a
subject of dispute between Queen Victoria and King Ernest, a dispute
which had been decided by the English law officers of the Crown in
favour of Hanover. The Princess Royal, who knew all about the affair,
felt deeply hurt, but she did not allow this to be noticed except by her
intimate entourage.
In Magdeburg Cathedral the crowd became so obstreperous in their eager
desire to see the Princess that shreds of her gown, a dress of tartan
velvet, were actually torn off her back.
Just before Potsdam was reached, the famous Field-Marshal Wrangel, who
had played so great a part in the Revolution of 1848, jumped into the
train. After he had complimented the Royal bride, he sat down on a seat
on which had been placed an enormous apple-tart which had just been
presented to the Princess at Wittenberg, a town noted for its pastry.
Fortunately the old soldier took the accident in good part, and joined
in the hearty laughter which accompanied the efforts of the Princess and
her ladies to clean his uniform.
The whole of the Prussian Royal family assembled at Potsdam to greet the
bride and bridegroom, who made their State entry into Berlin on February
8. It was a fine day, but the cold was of an intensity never before
experienced by the Princess. Nevertheless, she and her ladies were all
in low Court dresses, and, by her express wish, the windows of the
State carriages were kept down, so that the eager populace might be the
better able to see inside.
The drive lasted two hours and ended at the Old Schloss, where the
Prince and Princess found once more the whole of the Prussian Royal
family assembled, headed by the then King and his Queen. As the Queen
embraced the bride, she observed coldly: "Are you not frozen?" The
Princess replied with a smile; "I have only one warm place, and that is
my heart!"
It is a curious fact that on that night of the State entry into Berlin,
when every house, and especially every palace and embassy, was
brilliantly illuminated, the English Legation alone remained in
darkness. This was simply because the gas company had undertaken to do
more than it could accomplish, for gas had never been used for public
illumination in Berlin before that night. Still, the circumstance was
long remembered by the more superstitious of the Berliners.
The youthful bride made a very favourable impression on those who saw
her on that first day in Berlin. Her manner was singularly quiet and
self-possessed, and she found a kind and suitable word to say to
everyone. Yet, even so, feeling ran so high in Prussian society, and
especially at the Court, that Lord and Lady Bloomfield, the then English
Minister and his wife, made a point of avoiding the Princess Royal, so
desirous were they of giving no cause of offence to the King and Queen.
Meanwhile, the loving parents in London were kept busy in reading the
accounts, which poured in on them from every quarter, of their
daughter's reception in their new home. Thus, Queen Victoria's sister,
the Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, writes from Berlin on February 17:
"You know of everything that is going on, and how much she [the Princess
Royal] is admired, and deserves so to be. The enthusiasm and interest
shown are beyond everything. Never was a Princess in this country
received as she is. That shows where the sympathies turn to, certainly
not towards the North Pole."
This was perhaps a little too _couleur de rose_, and when Prince
Frederick William telegraphed to his parents-in-law, "The whole Royal
family is enchanted with my wife," Prince Albert's dry comment, in
writing to his daughter, was that the telegraph must have been amazed at
the message. Nor did the anxious father fail to seize the opportunity
for a little sermon. In this same letter, dated February 11, he writes
to the Princess:
"You have now entered upon your new home, and been received and welcomed
on all sides with the greatest friendship and cordiality. This kindly
and trustful advance of a whole nation towards an entire stranger must
have kindled and confirmed within you the determination to show yourself
in every way worthy of such feelings, and to reciprocate and requite
them by the steadfast resolution to dedicate the whole energies of your
life to this people of your new home. And you have received from Heaven
the happy task of effecting this object by making your husband truly
happy, and of doing him at the same time the best service, by aiding him
to maintain and to increase the love of his countrymen.
"That you have everywhere made so favourable an impression has given
intense happiness to me as a father. Let me express my fullest
admiration of the way in which, possessed exclusively by the duty which
you had to fulfil, you have kept down and overcome your own little
personal troubles, perhaps also many feelings of sorrow not yet healed.
This is the way to success, and the _only_ way. If you have succeeded in
winning people's hearts by friendliness, simplicity, and courtesy, the
secret lay in this, that you were not thinking of yourself. Hold fast
this mystic power; it is a spark from Heaven."
Admirable advice in a sense, but unfortunately too general to be of much
service to the warm-hearted, impulsive Princess, before whom lay so many
unsuspected pitfalls. Prince Albert believed, as he had said to his
son-in-law, that his daughter possessed "a man's head and a child's
heart," an allusion to the poet's words, "In wit a man, simplicity a
child." But Prussia was not Coburg, and even from Coburg Prince Albert
had now been away for nearly twenty years. He does not appear at all to
have appreciated either the situation which now confronted the Princess
Royal, or how little adapted she was by her temperament and her training
to meet it.
In the Princess of Prussia (afterwards the Empress Augusta) her English
daughter-in-law ever had a true friend and ally, and during the forty
years which followed, the two ladies were on far better terms than
anyone could have expected, considering how entirely different had been
their upbringing and outlook on life.
For example, Princess Augusta had been taught as a child to _tenir
cercle_ in the gardens of the Palace at Weimar--that is to say, she had
to make the round of the bushes and trees, each of which represented for
the moment a lady or gentlemen of the Court, and say something pleasant
and suitable to each! In this curious but extremely practical fashion
was inculcated one of the most fundamentally important duties of Royal
personages, and it may be suggested with all respect that the future
Empress Frederick would have benefited if she had had some similar
training.
The Princess who was to become Queen of Prussia and the first German
Empress had been brought up at Goethe's knee. She belonged, in an
intellectual sense, to the eighteenth rather than the nineteenth
century. She knew French as well as she knew German--indeed, it is said
that she often thought in French, and perhaps her chief friend, at the
time of her son's marriage to the Princess Royal, was Monsieur de
Bacourt, the French diplomatist to whom the Duchesse de Dino's
diary-letters were for the most part addressed. Among her intimates were
many Catholics, and for many years it was believed in Berlin that she
had been secretly received into the Roman Church. As a young woman she
was full of heart and warmth of feeling, but she soon learnt, what her
daughter-in-law never succeeded in mastering, the wisdom of
circumspection and the painful necessity for prudence. She early made up
her mind to remain on the whole in shadow. While never concealing her
point of view from those about her, she yet never took any public part
in the affairs of State.
During the Crimean War, when the whole of the Prussian Court was
pro-Russian, the Princess of Prussia had been pro-English--a fact which
naturally endeared her to Queen Victoria, but which had made her
Prussian relatives very sore and angry. When the Princess Royal arrived
in Berlin as the bride of the King of Prussia's heir-presumptive, the
Crimean War was already being forgotten. Among the Liberals there was
what may be called a pro-English party, and the joyous simplicity and
youthful charm of the Princess silenced criticism, at any rate for a
time.
It must be remembered that the Princess Royal had left a young Court. At
the time of her marriage her parents were still young people--she made
them grandparents when they were only thirty-eight. But the Court in
which she now became an important personage was composed of middle-aged
men and women, with some very old people. There was still living in the
Court circle a lady who was said to remember Frederick the Great. This
was the Countess Pauline Neale, who had been one of Queen Louise's
ladies-in-waiting. She could recollect with vivid intensity every detail
and episode associated with Napoleon's treatment of the King and Queen.
Of great age, too, was the gigantic Field-Marshal Wrangel, who had
actually carried the colours of his regiment at the battle of Leipzig.
Another interesting personality in the Princess Royal's new family
circle was her husband's aunt, Princess Charles, sister of the Princess
of Prussia, who afterwards became the grandmother of the Duchess of
Connaught. She still bore traces of the wonderful beauty for which she
had been famed in the 'twenties, but was, of course, no longer a young
woman.
Not long after the Princess Royal's arrival in Berlin, a German observer
wrote to the Prince Consort: "She sees more clearly and more correctly
than many a man of commanding intellect, because, while possessing an
acute mind and the purest heart, she does not know the word
'prejudice.'"
Less than a month after her marriage, on February 17, the Prince Consort
sent his daughter a letter full of wise warning:
"Your festival time, if not your honeymoon, comes to an end to-day; and
on this I take leave to congratulate you, unfeeling though it may sound,
for I wish you the necessary time and tranquillity to digest the many
impressions you have received, and which otherwise, like a wild revel,
first inflame, and then stupefy, leaving a dull nerveless lassitude
behind. Your exertions, and the demands which have been made upon you,
have been quite immense; you have done your best, and have won the
hearts, or what is called the hearts, of all. In the nature of things we
may now expect a little reaction. The public, just because it was
rapturous and enthusiastic, will now become minutely critical and take
you to pieces anatomically. This is to be kept in view, although it need
cause you no uneasiness, for you have only followed your natural bent,
and have made no external demonstration which did not answer to the
truth of your inner nature. It is only the man who presents an
artificial demeanour to the world, who has to dread being unmasked.
"Your place is that of your husband's wife, and of your mother's
daughter. You will desire nothing else, but you will also forego
nothing of that which you owe to your husband and to your mother.
Ultimately your mind will, from the over-excitement, fall back to a
little lassitude and sadness. But this will make you feel a craving for
activity, and you have much to do, in studying your new country, its
tendencies and its people, and in over-looking your household as a good
housewife, with punctuality, method, and vigilant care. To success in
the affairs of life, apportionment of time is essential, and I hope you
will make this your _first_ care, so that you may always have some time
over for the fulfilment of every duty."
Baron Stockmar had also been watching the details of the Princess's
reception in her new country with anxious interest. He, too, saw the
danger of a reaction, and he wrote a letter to the Prince Consort, in
reply to which the father, after commending the Princess's tact, said:
"The enthusiasm with which she seems to have been everywhere received
exceeds our utmost calculations and hopes, and proves that the people
approved the idea of this alliance, and have found Vicky in herself
answer to their expectations. It is only now, indeed, the difficulties
of her life will begin, and after the excitement of the festivities a
certain melancholy will come over the poor child, however happy she may
feel with her husband. With marriage, a new life has opened for her,
and you would have marvelled at the sudden change and development which
even here became at once apparent.
"We, that is, she and I, have, I think, remained, and I believe will
remain, the same to one another. She continues to set great store by my
advice and my confidence; I do not thrust them upon her, but I am always
ready to give them. During this time of troubles she has written less to
me, and communicated the details of her life, and what she is doing,
more to her mother. I had arranged this with her, but I hold her promise
to impart to me faithfully the progress of her inner life, and on the
other hand have given her mine, to take a constantly active part in
fostering it. You may be sure I will not fail in this, as I see in it
merely the fulfilment of a sacred duty.
"What you say about an early visit had already been running in my head,
and I will frankly explain what we think on this subject. Victoria and I
are both desirous to have a meeting with the young couple, somewhere or
other in the course of the year, having moreover given them a promise
that we would. This could only be in the autumn. A _rendezvous_ on the
Rhine--for example at Coblentz--would probably be the right thing. This
does not exclude a flying visit by myself alone, which, if it is to be
of any use, must be paid earlier in the year. How and where we could see
each other I have naturally weighed, and am myself doubtful whether
Berlin is the appropriate place for me. I have therefore come to the
conclusion that I might go to Coburg, and give the young people a
_rendezvous_ there."
The Princess Royal spent her first winter in Berlin in the Old Schloss.
The castle had not been lived in for a considerable time, and to one
accustomed to the even then high standard of English living and hygiene,
it must have seemed almost mediæval in its lack of comfort, and of what
the Princess had been brought up to regard as the bare necessities of
life--light, warmth, and plenty of hot water.
The young couple were allotted a suite of splendidly decorated but very
dark and gloomy rooms; and none of the passages or staircases were
heated. The Princess, who had always been encouraged to turn her quick
mind to practical matters, and who delighted in creating and in making,
found her way blocked at every turn owing to the fact that nothing could
be done in the Old Schloss without the direct permission of the King.
Not only was Frederick William IV in a very bad and mentally peculiar
state of health, but to him and to his Queen any attempt to change or
modify anything in the ancient pile of buildings where his predecessor
had lived savoured of sacrilege. To give one instance, King Frederick
William III had died in the very suite of rooms allotted to the Prince
and Princess, and his children had piously preserved the
"death-chamber," as it was still called, in exactly the same state as it
was on the day of his death. This room was situated next to the
Princess's boudoir, and every time she went to her bedroom or
dressing-room she was obliged to pass through it.
The Old Schloss was widely believed to be haunted, not only by the
"White Lady" but by other ghosts, and the door between the Princess
Royal's boudoir and the "death-chamber" would sometimes open by itself.
One winter evening, the Princess and one of her ladies were sitting
together in the boudoir. The lady, who was reading aloud, raised her
eyes and suddenly saw the door of the death-chamber, which was covered,
like the walls, with blue silk, open noiselessly, as if pushed by an
invisible hand. She stopped reading abruptly. The Princess asked
nervously, "What's happened? Do you see anything?" The lady answered,
"Nothing, ma'am," and, getting up, shut the door.
But it would be absurd to suppose that the Princess allowed the
ungraciousness of the King and the material discomforts which surrounded
her at this time to cloud the beginning of a singularly happy married
life. She threw herself with eager zest into her husband's interests,
and for the time she seemed completely merged in him. Having regard to
the mental equipment and demands of the Princess, it is obvious that she
found in her husband great intellectual gifts. The theory that the
Prince was wholly influenced by his wife, who took the lead in all,
cannot be maintained. He was nine years older than the Princess, who was
little more than a child when they married, and his character and
outlook were formed long before. His uncle, Duke Ernest, testifies on
the contrary, to the influence which the Prince exerted over his wife.
It must, however, be acknowledged that Prince Frederick William,
especially in these early days, agreed with the Princess in regarding
England as a perfect country with a perfect constitution. He was deeply
grateful to her for having left an ideally happy home to become his
wife, and his entire devotion was shown in many ways. Indeed, the only
thing in which the Prince Frederick William of these days seems to have
ever withstood the Princess Royal was in his refusal to give up his
solitary evening walk in the streets of Berlin. The Princess used to go
to bed quite early, and then the Prince would go out and walk about
quite unattended.
Years later, in reference to her domestic happiness, the Empress wrote
feelingly to a friend: "The peace and blessed calm that I ever found in
my home, by the side of my beloved husband, when powerful influences
from outside were first distressing me, are blessings which I cannot
describe."
Some of the conditions of the Princess Royal's new life were undoubtedly
very irksome to her. The tone of the Prussian Court in matters, not only
of religion and politics, but also of etiquette, was very much narrower
than that of the English Court. She seems to have found it impossible to
guard her tongue, to conceal her convictions, or to hold aloof from
political discussion. At "home," as she soon very unwisely began to call
England, she had been used to say everything she thought from childhood
upwards, sure of not being misunderstood, and reticence would have
seemed to her mean, if not absolutely dishonest.
But it is difficult to say when the Prussian reactionary party first
became aware that in the bride of Prince Frederick William they had a
determined and a brilliant opponent. It must, however, have been fairly
early, for it is on record that during that first winter in Berlin "the
very approach of a Tory or a reactionary seemed to freeze her up."
Nor is it easy to see how much the Princess's father, watching anxiously
from England, knew of this. She continued with unabated enthusiasm those
historical and literary studies to which the Prince Consort had
accustomed her, and she wrote him a weekly letter, asking his advice on
political questions. She wrote to her mother daily, sometimes twice a
day, but it was her father's influence which really counted with her,
and that remained quite unimpaired. It is reasonable to suppose that he
attributed whatever seemed to annoy and distress her in Prussian public
life to the still paramount influence of the dying King. But he
evidently did not at any time realise that, though factious persons
might be ready enough to use her in their own interests, no one in
Prussia really wanted to see a Princess dabbling in politics at all.
Thus, we find the Prince writing to Stockmar in March 1858:
"From Berlin the tenor of the news continues excellent. Vicky appears to
go on pleasing, and being pleased. She is an extremely fortunate,
animating, and tranquillising element in that region of conflict and
indecision."
And again:
"Brunnow had reckoned upon Moustier from Berlin, whom he would have had
in his pocket, and through him Walewski. Now he gets the Duke of
Malakoff! He has not yet been able to realise the position, and is by
way of being extremely confidential; it is he alone who has made Vicky's
marriage popular in Berlin, where it was at first very unpopular, and he
weeps tears of emotion when he speaks of her!"
To the Princess herself he wrote also in March:
"You seem to have taken up your position with much tact. The bandage has
been torn from your eyes all at once as regards all the greatest
mysteries of life, and you stand not only of a sudden before them, but
are called upon to deal with them, and that too on the spur of the
moment. 'Oh! It is indeed most hard to be a man,' was the constant cry
of the old Würtemberg Minister, von Wangenheim, and he was right!"
The Prince was generally philosophising, but even so the following,
written a few days later, seems an extraordinary letter for any father
to write to a girl not much over seventeen:
"That you should sometimes be oppressed by home-sickness is most
natural. This feeling, which I know right well, will be sure to increase
with the sadness which the reviving spring, and the quickening of all
nature that comes with it, always develop in the heart. It is a painful
yearning, which may exist quite independently of, and simultaneously
with, complete contentment and complete happiness. I explain this
hard-to-be-comprehended mental phenomenon thus. The identity of the
individual is, so to speak, interrupted; and a kind of Dualism springs
up by reason of this, that the _I which has been_, with all its
impressions, remembrances, experiences, feelings, which were also those
of youth, is attached to a particular spot, with its local and personal
associations, and appears to what may be called _the new I_ like a
vestment of the soul which has been lost, from which nevertheless _the
new I_ cannot disconnect itself, because its identity is in fact
continuous. Hence the painful struggle, I might almost say the spasm, of
the soul."
To the faithful Stockmar the Prince confided his belief:
"As to Vicky, unquestionably she will turn out a very distinguished
character, whom Prussia will have cause to bless."
The Prince's cherished scheme of a visit to Coburg began to take shape,
and he writes:
"My whole stay in Coburg can only be for six days. To see you and Fritz
together in a quiet homely way without visits of ceremony, &c.--I dare
not picture it to myself too strongly. Talk it over with Fritz, and let
me know if I can count on you, but do not let the plan get wind,
otherwise people will be paying us visits, and our meeting will lose its
pleasant private character."
Another letter, dated April 28, is interesting as showing that the
Prince was beginning to perceive some of the difficulties in his
daughter's path:
"What you are now living through, observing, and doing, are the most
important experiences, impressions and acts of your life, for they are
the first of a life independent and responsible to itself. That outside
of and in close proximity to your true and tranquillising happiness with
dear Fritz your path of life is not wholly smooth, I regard as a most
fortunate circumstance for you, inasmuch as it forces you to exercise
and strengthen the powers of your mind."
Nothing that concerned her but was of moment to her father:
"I am delighted to see by your letter that you deliberate gravely upon
your budget, and I shall be most happy to look through it, if you send
it to me; this is the only way to have a clear idea to one's self of
what one has, spends, and ought to spend. As this is a business of
which I have had long and frequent experience, I will give you one rule
for your guidance in it, namely, to set apart a considerable balance
_pour l'imprévu_. This gentleman is the costliest of guests in life, and
we shall look very blank if we have nothing to set before him."
During the first summer of their married life, the Prince and Princess
set up quite a modest establishment at the Castle of Babelsberg, and
this made the Princess very happy.
Seated on a declivity of a richly wooded hill, about three miles from
Potsdam, and looking down upon a fine expanse of water, the little
Castle of Babelsberg commands a charming view of the surrounding
country. "Everything there," wrote Queen Victoria on her first visit,
"is very small, a Gothic _bijou_, full of furniture, and flowers
(creepers), which they arrange very prettily round screens, and lamps,
and pictures. There are many irregular turrets and towers and steps."
It was at Babelsberg that the Princess Royal began to try and see
something of the intellectual and artistic world of Berlin. Neither the
husband nor the wife was under the dominion of the class and caste
prejudices which even now are so astonishing a feature of German social
life, and which were then even more powerful and far-reaching. That the
Prince and Princess should appear actually to enjoy the society of mere
painters and writers and scientists, whether they occupied any official
positions or not, seemed extraordinary and highly improper to the whole
bureaucratic element of Berlin, and must, we can well imagine, have
seriously offended the Prince's father.
It is easy to be wise after the event. No one now can help seeing that
it would have been the truest wisdom for the young Princess to have
rigidly suppressed her natural tastes and intellectual interests, and to
have led a life of the narrowly conventional character which Prussian
princesses were expected to lead. But she was incapable of such
self-suppression, which would have seemed to her deceitful, and the mild
cautions and hints at prudence in her father's letters were pathetically
inadequate to the needs of her critical position. She was herself still
quite unaware of how closely she was being watched and criticised. "I am
very happy," she told a guest at one of the Court receptions, "and I am
intensely proud of belonging to this country."
The more the Princess's social preferences aroused the suspicion and
indignation of the Court world, the more popular she became with the
"intellectuals," unfortunately not a profitable exchange for her as she
was then situated. We become aware of this by a passage in the
_Reminiscences_ of Professor Schellbach, who had been mathematical tutor
to Prince Frederick William. He writes:
"The first words which the Princess addressed to me with the greatest
kindness were, 'I love mathematics, physics, and chemistry.' I was much
pleased, for I saw that the Prince must have given her a pleasant
account of me. Under the direction of her highly cultivated father, who
had himself studied it, Princess Victoria had become acquainted with
natural science, and had even received her first teaching from such
famous men as Faraday and Hoffman. Our beloved Princess soon revealed
her love for art and science, as well as her pleasure in setting
problems of her own. Her Royal Highness at first tried to go on with her
studies in physics and mathematics under my direction, but soon her
artistic work took up the remainder of time which the requirements of
Court life left to her."
Early in June Prince Albert carried out his plan of visiting his
daughter and son-in-law, but it was at Babelsberg, not at Coburg, as he
had hoped. He was able to report to Queen Victoria: "The relation
between the young people is all that can be desired. I have had long
talks with them both, singly and together, which gave me the greatest
satisfaction."
Prince Albert was, however, shocked to find the King of Prussia in a
terrible state:
"The King looks frightfully ill; he was very cordial and friendly, and
for the half hour he stayed with us, did not once get confused, but
complained greatly about his state of health. He is thin and fallen
away over his whole body, with a large stomach, his face grown quite
small. He made many attempts at joking in the old way, but with a voice
quite broken, and features full of pain. '_Wenn ich einmal fort bin,
wieder fort bin_,' he said, grasping his forehead and striking it, 'then
the Queen must pay us a visit here, it will make me so happy.' What he
meant was, '_Wenn ich wieder wohl bin_.' 'It is so tedious,' he
murmured; thus it is plainly to be seen that he has not quite given up
all thought of getting better. The Prince's whole aim is to be
serviceable to his brother. He still walks very lame, but looks well. I
kept quietly in the house all day with Vicky, who is very sensible and
good."
The Princess had special reasons for being "sensible" at this time, for,
to the great joy of the Prussian Royal family, she was enceinte.
In August Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort paid a visit of some
length to their daughter. The Queen herself describes the visit as
"quite private and unofficial," although she carried in her train not
only Lord Malmesbury, the Foreign Secretary in Lord Derby's Government
(which had been formed in February), but also Lord Clarendon, his
predecessor, and Lord Granville, who had been Lord President of the
Council in Palmerston's Government.
Prince Albert, at any rate, did not neglect the opportunity of studying
the political situation. He wrote to Stockmar a letter highly approving
the Prince of Prussia's political views, while his son-in-law he
described as firm in his constitutional principles and despising the
Manteuffel Ministry, the members of which he met with obvious coolness.
The Berliners gave a hearty reception to Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert, and the Queen declared to the Burgomaster of Berlin that she
felt exceedingly happy there, because she had realised with what love
and devotion everyone was attached to the Royal house and to her
daughter.
She was delighted with old Wrangel, whom she calls a great character.
"He was full of Vicky and the marriage, and said she was an angel."
There was a great deal of sight-seeing, mitigated by charming little
_gemuthlich_ family dinners, and a grand review at Potsdam.
Prince Albert's birthday occurred during the visit, and one of the
Queen's presents to him was "a paper-weight of Balmoral granite and
deer's teeth designed by Vicky." "Vicky gave her portrait, a small oil
one by Hartmann, very like though not flattered, and a drawing by
herself. There were two birthday cakes. Vicky had ordered one with as
many lights as Albert numbered years, which is the Prussian custom."
Her Majesty notes with pleasure the arrival of "our dear, excellent old
friend Stockmar," whose presence, however, by no means gave universal
satisfaction. Indeed, Sir Theodore Martin says frankly that, although
his visit was due solely to his desire to meet the Queen and Prince
Consort, it was viewed with rancorous suspicion by the aristocratic
party, who held in abhorrence the man whom they knew to be the great
advocate for the establishment of constitutional government in Germany.
He was even accused of actively intriguing for the downfall of the
Manteuffel Administration, having, it was said, "brought in his pocket,
all cut and dry from England, the Ministry of the new era."
Stockmar's views of what was needful to raise Germany to her proper
place among the nations were unchanged, but age and infirmity had for
some time made him a mere looker-on. Nevertheless, it is probable that
neither the Queen nor Prince Albert in the least realised how
inadvisable, in the interests of the Princess Royal, was the old man's
visit.
It must not, however, be thought that the Prussians were indifferent to
the Princess Royal's singular personal charm. We have a most interesting
glimpse of this in a long letter written to Queen Victoria by the
beautiful and brilliant Duchess of Manchester, herself a Hanoverian by
birth, who afterwards married the Duke of Devonshire and for many years
held a remarkable position in English society.
The Duchess relates how well the Princess Royal was looking during the
manoeuvres on the Rhine, and how much she seemed to be beloved, not
only by all those who knew her, but also by those who had only seen and
heard of her.
"The English could not help feeling proud of the way the Princess Royal
was spoken of, and the high esteem she is held in. For one so young it
is a most flattering position, and certainly, as the Princess's charm of
manner and her kind unaffected words had in that short time won her the
hearts of all the officers and strangers present, one was not astonished
at the praise the Prussians themselves bestow on her Royal Highness. The
Prussian Royal Family is so large, and their opinions politically and
socially sometimes so different, that it must have been very difficult
indeed at first for the Princess Royal, and people therefore cannot
praise enough the high principles, great discretion, sound judgment, and
cleverness her Royal Highness has invariably displayed."
And the Duchess adds, on the authority of Field Marshal Wrangel, that
the soldiers were particularly delighted to see the Princess on
horseback and without a veil.
The Royal visit to Babelsberg came to an end all too soon, and the
leave-taking was tearful and emotional in the extreme. Queen Victoria
wrote with natural feeling, "All would be comparatively easy, were it
not for the one thought that I cannot be with her at the very critical
moment when every other mother goes to her child!"
In October of that first year of the Princess Royal's married life, her
father-in-law became permanent Regent, owing to the continued mental
incapacity of King Frederick William IV. This filled the young Princess
with intense satisfaction, which was increased when the new Prince
Regent declared it to be his intention strictly to adhere to the letter
and the spirit of the Constitution of 1850. The great bulk of the nation
rallied instantly round him, and it seemed as if the gulf between the
House of Hohenzollern and the people of Prussia had been suddenly
bridged. The Manteuffel Ministry fell in the following month, a general
election produced an enormous Liberal majority, and the hopes of the
Constitutionalists ran high. The Manteuffel Ministry was succeeded by
one of which Prince Charles Anthony of Hohenzollern was the President.
From this time forward Prince Frederick William regularly attended the
meetings of the Ministry, and Privy Councillor Brunnemann was assigned
to him as a kind of secretary and channel of communication on State
affairs.
The Princess Royal imprudently expressed to a gentleman of the Court her
satisfaction at the change in the political situation, and her words,
being repeated and exaggerated, gave great offence to the Conservative
party, which was also the party of the King. The Princess's satisfaction
was of course shared by her father, who wrote to the sympathetic
Stockmar a letter showing no prevision of that great rock of Army
administration on which these high hopes were destined to be wrecked:
"The Regency seems now to have been secured for the Prince. We have only
news of this at present by telegrams from our children, but are greatly
delighted at this first step towards the reduction to order of a
miserable chaos. Will the Prince have the courage to surround himself
with honourable and patriotic men? That is the question, and what shape
will the new Chamber take, and what will its influence on him be?"
On November 20, 1858, Prince and Princess Frederick William moved into
the palace in Unter den Linden which was henceforth to be their
residence in Berlin; and on the following day, the Princess's eighteenth
birthday, there was a kind of dedicatory service in the palace chapel,
which was attended by all the members of the Royal House.
[Illustration: HER ROYAL HIGHNESS VICTORIA, PRINCESS ROYAL 1856]
This palace had been the scene of the happy life of the Prince's
grandfather, King Frederick William III, and of Queen Louise. The
intimate and beautiful family life that had filled these rooms was the
best of omens for the young pair, and the Princess Royal was delighted
with her new home. But the palace required to be brought up to modern
standards of comfort, and it was very difficult to have the alterations
approved by the moody and violent King. What he allowed on one day he
took back with hasty blame on the morrow. At last Prince Frederick
William obtained the Royal assent to those alterations which were
absolutely urgent, together with a grant of 350,000 thalers. Among other
improvements was added an eight-cornered "Gedenkhalle" or "Memory-Hall,"
in which were placed the numerous wedding presents of the young pair,
and to these, from time to time, were added other rare and beautiful
objects.