The Courts of Munich and Old Germany
Each time I have stayed at the Court of Vienna I have regretted that I
did not know Louis II personally. When I first saw him he had already
taken refuge in his dreams and his dreamlike castles.
Like Rudolph, he had been seized with a great mistrust, not of humanity,
but of those who directed human affairs. He did not, like Rudolph, find
a way of escape in suicide. Louis II created for himself a paradise
of art and beauty, where he endeavoured to lose himself, away from his
people, whom he loved, and by whom he was loved in return.
I once caught sight of him in the park at Munich sitting alone in his
state carriage, escorted by rather theatrical outriders. Behind the
bevelled plate-glass windows framed in gold, he sat imposing and
motionless.
He was an astonishing apparition, one which the crowd saluted without
his seeming to take any notice.
After his extravagances the Court, forced to economize, easily adopted a
more or less bourgeois existence.
I rejoiced to see the patriarchal customs of the Regent, Prince
Luitpold. I had not then much experience of politics, and only saw the
surface of things. The impatient insubordination of Bavaria to Prussia,
from which a more intelligent and less divided Europe might have derived
so much advantage, escaped me. I only saw in the Regent a character out
of one of Topfer's stories.
He devoted the greater part of his time, even in his old age, to
physical exercises. Shooting and swimming were his favourite pastimes.
He bathed every day all the year round in one of the large ponds on his
estate in Nymphenburg. And when he was not shooting he was walking. His
outward appearance gave no indication of his rank. I met him one autumn
day in Vienna in one of the little streets off the Prater behind the
Lusthaus; he was in his shirt sleeves; his coat and top hat were hanging
on the point of the walking-stick which he carried over his shoulder. He
seemed happier than a king.
His inseparable companion, a poodle no less shaggy and hairy than his
master, accompanied him. They looked exactly like one another. At a
distance a nearsighted person might easily have mistaken the dog for the
Regent and the Regent for the dog.
Louis III, his son and successor, inherited his father's simple tastes,
which he believed he could simplify still more. But excess in anything
is a mistake. His abuse of simplicity was practically his only way of
making a mark in contemporaneous history. History will not preserve
the memory of this mediocre King of Bavaria, but it will remember his
unfashionable clothes, his concertina trousers, his square boots with
rubber heels and his wrinkled socks, by which he wished to demonstrate
his democratic tastes. He would have done better to have recollected
that the duty of a king is to raise the man in the street to the level
of the throne, and not to let the king descend to the level of the man
in the street.
He was not popular, owing to his bad taste. In vain he paraded his love
of beer, coarse jokes, sausages and skittles. The Bavarians remembered
Louis II as a good king, and at the same time as a grandly spectacular
king.
People are flattered when a king who is a king unbends to them, but if
he looks like a carter they experience no pride in seeing him drive the
chariot of State as if it were a cart.
The Court of Bavaria, which had slightly retrieved its former position
before 1914, fell between Scylla and Charybdis when the Crown Prince of
Bavaria and the Man of Berlin played with the thunderbolts of war. The
Wittelsbachs vanished like smoke in the defeat of Prussian ambitions.
They might still have been at Munich if they had furthered legitimate
Bavarian ambitions, and judged them from the exclusive point of view of
the political and religious needs of their country.
It must be recollected, however, that the German thrones were
threatened. Neither the rigid discipline of Berlin, the go-as-you-please
rule of Munich, nor the mixed systems which existed between these two
extremes could have kept up the anachronism of worn-out forms which the
people instinctively rejected by paying more attention year by year to
Socialism and Republicanism.
The German kings have vanished. It is not impossible that they may
return; if not the same, others, perhaps better qualified to rule.
Nations are restricted in their choice as to the methods of government.
Monarchy is the form which pleases them, or rather which they tolerate,
more often than any other. Monarchy originates from the family
principle, which is an eternal principle. The true king is a father.
Monarchy may be reborn in Germany and elsewhere, but its powers will be
modified and restricted by the times. As it existed in Germany it has
been condemned to extinction by reason of its archaism.
The Church alone has the privilege of not becoming obsolete, by the
constant return of mankind to an immutable doctrine. Monarchies become
obsolete owing to men of the same blood, the same name and the same
race who aspire to exist uninfluenced by the constant changes of the
conditions of life. When they fall exhausted, then comes the time of the
Republic. But because the family principle is the foundation of social
existence, and because a Republic favours the individual rather than the
family, the Republic in its turn disappears and Monarchy reappears. Such
is the way of the world.
Germany would be the first to admit this if she possessed any
philosophical sense whatever. It is a popular legend that Germany
possesses the philosophical spirit, and nothing is more invincible than
a legend. But, as a matter of fact, there is no nation on earth at
once more metaphysical and less philosophical than the German nation.
Metaphysics alone help her people to dream and to accept these dreams
for realities. In no way does it lead them to a condition of wise
clear-sightedness.
The German nation has fallen into the pit dug for it by Imperial
Prussia. Every Court, important or otherwise, was convinced that Berlin
and the Hohenzollerns would be masters of the hour.
Certain showy Monarchies, feeling the pressure of a rather frock-coated
Socialism, have tried to accommodate themselves to Social Democracy as
Social Democracy adapts itself to them.
Nevertheless, one saw some maintaining their traditional ceremonial
undisturbed.
Such a Monarchy was the little Court of Thurn and Taxis at Regensburg,
the most picturesque and most amusing Court which I have known.
I have often played skittles at Regensburg; but what a spectacle we
presented! We played skittles wearing our tiaras and our long-trained
gowns. There was etiquette in handling and bowling a large ball. More
than one tiara became insecure, and more than one player groaned in
her jewels, silks and embroideries, not to mention her corsets. Luckily
clothes were then capable of more resistance. If this had occurred
nowadays, when women dress in transparencies which are as scanty as
possible, what would not one have seen?
It must not be thought that this was a chance game of skittles which
I played dressed in full Court toilette. It was the fashion. You did
everything at Regensburg in a procession, preceded by a Master of the
Ceremonies. And because and for all that, as Victor Hugo says somewhere,
it was very droll.
Life at Regensburg was agreeable. The prince and princess entertained
magnificently. The palace lent itself admirably to entertaining, as
it was a superb residence, royally furnished and surrounded by gardens
which were tended with love. The cooking equalled that of the cuisine
dear to the heart of Ferdinand of Bulgaria. The charming part about
it was that the antiquated ceremonial was so well ordered that certain
exaggerations were quickly forgotten in the beauty of rhythm and
arrangement, which recalled the dignity of bygone days.
We went to the races in splendid state barouches, preceded by equally
well turned out outriders. The Count of Stanfferberg, Master of the
Horse, an old Austrian officer, rode at the side of the prince's
carriage, and the gentlemen-in-waiting were so attentive that, had there
been no step to the carriage, every one of them would have supplied the
place with their persons.
If we went to the theatre we went in full dress, preceded by
torch-bearers to the princely box.
An etiquette of this description compelled one to maintain the dignity
of one's station. But the prince and his wife liked this ceremonial;
they only lived to prolong the pomp of past centuries.
It had been said that Princess Marguerite of Thurn and Taxis somewhat
resembled Marie Antoinette. The prince, who believed in the said
resemblance, wished to give his wife a set of diamonds which had once
belonged to the unfortunate Queen of France. He bought them and the
princess wore them. I was afraid that there might be some fatality in
this, but there were no superstitions at the Court of Thurn and Taxis.
The future was seen through rose-coloured glasses, and in order to make
the appearance of the princess suit the historical diamonds the famous
Lentheric was once sent for from Paris on the occasion of a Court ball,
to arrange the princess's hair "à la frigate," and transform her into a
quasi Marie Antoinette, whom one would have been very sorry to have seen
starting for the scaffold.
When the wind of revolution swept over Germany the dethroned princes
were spared this punishment. They departed for foreign countries, and
not for the scaffold. Germany, left to herself and no longer intoxicated
by Berlin, has not massacred a single one of her sovereigns of
yesterday. And this fact alone should rightly afford food for reflection
to all those who speak of Germany without really knowing her.
* * * * *
In the little Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha life was quite different from
that at the Court of Thurn and Taxis. Here nature and art joined hands.
There were no showy processions, no studied etiquette; only a charming
and distinguished simplicity which exemplified the taste of this German
prince of high and human culture--my uncle, the reigning Duke Ernest II,
whose kindness to me I have already mentioned.
He never tired of spoiling me, and he wished me to feel that whenever
I was at the palace I was a queen. His affection never changed. In his
society and that of my aunt the duchess, who was also very affectionate
and kind to me, I have often forgotten the misery of my marriage.
His stag-hunts in the beautiful country of Thuringia, through forests of
firs and beeches, were for me an intoxicating pleasure.
I followed the duke's lead; he was a good shot and a good horseman; his
years did not trouble him. Often, in the mountains, I rode a white mule,
and the duke remarked on the touch of colour which my mount and I made
in that rustic countryside.
In the evening, when the weather was fine, we dined under the big trees,
which were lit up by well-arranged lanterns. I usually wore a light
dress to please the duke, who also liked me to adorn myself with a
garland of flowers which he himself made up every day, as an act of
delicate homage from the most courteous of uncles.
When I stayed with the Duchess Marie at Rosenau, I also passed many
happy hours. Her daughters were lovely girls. What a radiant apparition
was Princess Marie, now Queen of Rumania! Once seen--she was never
forgotten!
Coburg, the cradle of a family which has given to Europe so many kings
and queens, princes and princesses, Royal and Imperial, has witnessed
numerous gatherings of the present generation. A marriage, an
engagement, or a holiday invariably brought the members of the Coburg
family to their native country. Young and old were happy to return and
forget some of the duties which their position demanded; others were
glad to forget the burden of their studies. Each tried to be himself and
to behave as an ordinary human being.
The delights of a normal existence are very attractive to those who are
deprived thereof by their position and their duties. The general public
has a false idea of royalty. It believes them to be different from what
they are, while, as a matter of fact, they really wish to be the same as
anyone else.
No doubt princes, like William II, are to be met with who think that
they are composed of a different clay from the rest of mankind. They
have lost their heads by posing before the looking-glass and by inhaling
the incense of flattery. They are merely accidents. Any man who suffered
similarly would be just as bad, no matter to what class he belonged.
It is true that the disease would not then have the same social
consequences. Again, Monarchism has become more and more under control
and is practically limited to a symbolic function, since it depended
more on one man than another. It could have been both efficacious and
influential if the prince had possessed personality; but if he possessed
mediocre qualities without serious influence of any sort he was merely
a nonentity. After him would perhaps come a better ruler. But everything
is a lottery, and universal suffrage and the elections of Parliaments
are no less blind than fate.
At Coburg I was brought into close association with the Empress
Frederick, who died with her ambitions unfulfilled, great in her
isolation. She saw with an eye which knew no illusions the Royal and
Imperial crown of Prussia and Germany pass swiftly from her husband to
her son. The egotism and the vanity of the "Personage" aroused in her
more fear than hope. And with what an expression of pity did her eyes
rest on the mediocrity of her daughter-in-law!
The Romanoffs and their relations also remained faithful to Coburg. The
grand dukes the brothers of the Duchess Marie, her sisters-in-law
the Grand Duchesses Vladimir and Serge, who were both beautiful in a
different style, brought with them echoes of the stately and complex
Court of Russia, that Asiatic Court which I always felt was a thousand
miles and a thousand years beyond the comprehension of the present
century.
Amongst other memorable ceremonies which I have witnessed at the cradle
of the family, I have retained the remembrance of the marriage of the
Grand Duke of Hesse with Princess Melita, who became later the Grand
Duchess Cyril. Happiness seemed to preside at the fête. Love had been
invited--a rare guest at princely unions.
I will not say much about the betrothal of poor "Nick" with Alice of
Hesse, which was also celebrated at Hesse.
He who was to become the Tsar Nicholas II, appeared a sad, timid,
nervous and insignificant man, at any rate from a worldly point of view.
His fiancée was distant in manner, absorbed and self-centred. Already
her entourage was concerned about her visionary and rather eccentric
tendencies.
She had replaced Princess Beatrice (who had married Henry of Battenberg)
as Queen Victoria's reader and favourite companion. The Queen desired
the throne of Russia for her granddaughter, and she brought about the
marriage of which I witnessed the betrothal ceremonies. The old Queen
presided. But everything lacked gaiety. If joy appeared to reign for a
moment it seemed nevertheless to be forced. One felt depressed by the
weight of some unknown calamity. Perhaps Destiny wished to warn Alice of
Hesse and Nicholas of Russia of their impending fate.