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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
MY OWN AFFAIRS
[Illustration]
MY OWN AFFAIRS
by
THE PRINCESS LOUISE OF BELGIUM
With Photogravure Frontispiece and Eight Plates
Translated by Maude M. C. ffoulkes
Cassell and Company, Limited
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1921
I DEDICATE
THIS BOOK TO
the Great Man, to the Great King, who was
MY FATHER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
1. Why I Write this Book 1
2. My Beloved Belgium; my Family and Myself;
Myself--as I Know Myself 7
3. The Queen 17
4. The King 27
5. My Country and Days of my Youth 36
6. My Marriage and the Austrian Court--the Day
after my Marriage 54
7. Married 63
8. My Hosts at the Hofburg--the Emperor Francis
Joseph and the Empress Elizabeth 82
9. My Sister Stéphanie Marries the Archduke
Rudolph, who Died at Meyerling 100
10. Ferdinand of Coburg and the Court of Sofia 116
11. William II and the Court of Berlin--the
Emperor of Illusion 132
12. The Holsteins 142
13. The Courts of Munich and Old Germany 154
14. Queen Victoria 165
15. The Drama of my Captivity, and my Life as a
Prisoner--the Commencement of Torture 171
16. Lindenhof 189
17. How I Regained my Liberty and at the Same
Time was Declared Sane 197
18. The Death of the King--Intrigues and Legal
Proceedings 211
19. My Sufferings during the War 231
20. In the Hope of Rest 245
Index 253
LIST OF PLATES
The Princess Louise of Belgium (_Photogravure_) _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Queen Marie Henriette of Belgium 22
King Leopold II of Belgium 32
The Countess Lonyay (Princess Stéphanie of Belgium) 48
Prince Philip of Saxe-Coburg 70
Princess Victor Napoleon (Princess Clémentine of Belgium) 86
The Archduke Rudolph 102
Duke Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein 150
The Duchess Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein 234
My Own Affairs
CHAPTER I
Why I Write this Book
As the eldest daughter of a great man and a great King, whose
magnificent intelligence has enriched his people, I owe nothing but
misfortune to my royal origin. Ever since I was born I have suffered and
been deceived. I have idealized Life too much.
In the evening of my days I do not wish to remain under the cloud of the
false impression which is now prevalent concerning me.
Without desiring to allude too much to the past, and to retrace the
road of my Calvary, I should like at least to borrow a few pages from
my memories and reflections, inspired by events which have destroyed
thrones in whose proximity I once lived. The Emperor of Austria, the
German Emperor, the Tsar of Bulgaria were all familiar figures to me.
Driven to Munich by the War, then to Budapest, taken prisoner for a
brief space by Hungarian Bolshevists, I have survived the European
tempest, and I have seen all those who disowned and crushed me, beaten
and punished.
And I trembled every day for my poor Belgium, so strong in her courage
and her travail, but so unjust to me--oh no, not the _people_--the good
people are naturally heroic and indefatigable. I refer to certain of
their leaders, who have been misled on my account, and who are also,
perhaps, too fond of money. Unjust themselves, they all equally violated
justice by illicit interests which had the appearance of legality, as
well as by the false attitude which appeared merely to be forgetfulness,
but which was actually ingratitude.
My father has not yet had a monument erected to him in the country which
he esteemed so highly; his Government has remembered the follies of
his old age rather than its privileges, and his memory has suffered
accordingly.
But what is past is past. My memory remains faithfully and
affectionately attached to my native land; my sole thought is to love
and honour her.
It is of Belgium that I wish to speak before passing on to the Courts
of Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Sofia, and to the many doings which
these names recall, certain of which deserve better knowledge and
consideration.
I have never entertained any feelings for Belgium other than those of
imperishable affection. The most painful of my reflections during the
horrible war was that she was more to be pitied than I was.
On the day when I was being searched by Hungarian Bolshevists at
Budapest I heard one of them say to another--having proved for himself
the simplicity to which I was reduced: "Here is a king's daughter who
is poorer than I am." I have thought of the unhappy women of Ypres, of
Dixmude, of France, Poland, Servia, and elsewhere--unfortunate creatures
without fire or bread through the crime of war, and I have wept for them
and not for myself.
More than one of them, perhaps, envied my position before 1914; little
did they realize that I should have preferred theirs!
Married at seventeen, I expected to find in marriage the joys that a
husband and children can give. I have had bitter proof to the contrary.
Rupture was inevitable where my own intimate feelings were concerned and
those who surrounded me. I was too independent to make use of what was
offensive to me.
Honours are often without honour, however high they may seem to be. Save
for rare exceptions, fortune and power only develop in us the appetite
for pleasure and urge us to depravity. Those whom La Bruyère calls "the
Great" easily lose the knowledge of human conditions. Life is to them
no longer the mysterious proof of the existence of a soul which will be
eventually rewarded or punished according to its deserts. Religion seems
to them only a mask or an instrument.
Led to judge their fellow-creatures through the flatteries,
calculations, ambitions and treacheries by which they are surrounded,
they arrive, through mistrust of human nature, at a state of
indifference to God, and they accommodate His laws to their needs in the
assurance of adjusting themselves with the Creator as they adjust their
doings with their ministers.
When I review the past, and when I am reminded of the various phases of
my unhappy existence, I never despair of ultimately finding a justice
which I have not yet come across in this world; I have always believed
that it exists _somewhere_. If it were not so, things would be
inconceivable.
I owe this spirit of confidence to the lessons I learnt in my infancy,
chiefly from those taught me by the Queen, my mother. "Always endeavour
to be a Christian," she used to say. I could not understand the import
of these words when I was a child, but the misfortunes of my life have
helped to explain them.
Stirred into revolt by humanity in so many ways, I have now submitted
myself to a Superior Will, and I know the happiness of not hating my
enemies. Pardon has always followed my rebellion.
I have never doubted that those who wronged me would be punished
sooner or later on earth or elsewhere, and I have been sorry for my
persecutors.
I have pitied them for their dislike of my frankness, because I am an
enemy of all family and Court hypocrisy--I have pitied them for having
censured my fidelity to one affection, and, above all, I have pitied
their exaggeration of my disregard for that ancient idol--money!
Convinced as I was, and not without foundation, that immense wealth was
to come, not only to myself but to my sisters, I maintained that
our duty was to make full use of our resources. Was it not better to
circulate money and assist trade? This opinion, however, was not shared
either by a husband who was inclined to hoard or by a family who
were afraid of any fresh ideas or customs, and who only saw in the
aspirations of the masses an inevitable and horrible catastrophe against
which they ought to protect themselves by saving as much as possible.
At the same time, when I have been engaged in a struggle I have never
met with anything save cruel treatment on the part of my enemies (first
and foremost by the slanders intended to ruin me in the eyes of the
world), but I have hurled myself at the onset against all the obstacles
which violence and enmity have conceived against me.
Being unable to live and act normally, and compelled by force and
privations to treat what I held as despicable with obedience and
respect, I lacked the means of existence to which I was entitled. The
trouble I took in order to assure myself of my liberty on my native
soil, in the order and dignity for which I had hoped, was nullified by
those who were themselves morally responsible for it. I was compelled
to become a prisoner or a fugitive, taken away and kept away from my
rightful position by difficulties of every description. By these methods
my enemies imagined that I should be more easily deprived of all to
which I had clung.
What would have become of me had I not found a man who devoted himself
to saving me from all kinds of snares and dangers, and who found devoted
beings to second him--many of whom have sprung from the humbler ranks of
life--I am unable to conjecture.
If I have known the wickedness of an aristocracy devoid of nobility,
I have also benefited by the most chivalrous delicacy which has been
extended to me by the populace, and my recognition of this is chiefly
what I wish to write about to-day.
But deep in my heart I have the impelling desire not to allow the legend
which has been created around me and my name to exist any longer.