own time, and it is in no sense derogatory to her to say that it was
certainly not a happy time. In the plastic arts she had not the talent of
her two brilliant daughters, the Empress Frederic and Princess Louise.
It is true that her sketch-book was the constant companion of her
holidays, and illustrated the diary of her travels; but her execution
did not go much beyond the boundaries of the school-girl’s album. The
painters whom she chose to employ as portraitists—Winterhalter, Landseer,
Von Angeli—were unluckily chosen. She admired and patronized Leighton,
but she would not hear of being painted by Millais or Watts. Music was
her delight, and so it was with Marie Theresia; both ladies loved the
Italian school, both were themselves gifted with lovely voices and
had been well trained. Indeed, in the Hapsburg family the talent was
hereditary; all the older members of it were capable musicians, and
Charles the Sixth would himself accompany their chamber music on the
harpsichord.
Mrs. Moffat quotes a letter of Marie Theresia, in which she writes: “As
for dramatic music, I confess that I would rather have the slightest
Italian thing than all the works of our composers, Gaisman, Gluck and
others. For instrumental music we have a certain Haydn, who has good
ideas, but he is just beginning to be known.” Strange words, coming from
the Sovereign of the capital which was to be the home, above all others,
of the greatest composers of the world. Mozart she knew as a child of
six, when he sat upon her lap to play, and, tumbling down, was picked up
by the little Archduchess Marie Antoinette, to whom in gratitude he at
once proposed marriage!
The tender care and loving kindness with which Queen Victoria treated all
those, from the highest to the humblest, who were in any sense dependent
upon her, is a matter of common knowledge. She shared in their joys, she
sympathized with their sorrows, interesting herself in all the everyday
changes and chances of their lives. The unclouded happiness of her own
all too brief married life had penetrated her soul with the belief
that nothing could compare with the bliss of a loving union. This she
showed even in a case where a young man in whom she took a deep interest,
and for whom she had destined what would have been a very advantageous
marriage, disappointed her by making an unsuitable match. Her answer to
one who spoke unkindly of this was characteristic and touching. “After
all,” she said, sweetly excusing him, “perhaps they loved one another.”
That in her mind was obviously the essential.
The account of the marriage of the Austrian Empress’s favourite tirewoman
is worth recording, not only as showing a parallel to this sweetly
indulgent nature of our Queen, but also as giving us a curious picture of
the formalities of the old Court of Vienna.
Upon her maidens the Empress spent an almost motherly care. When not
on duty they might go out, but must tell Her Majesty whither they were
bound, and then an Imperial carriage was placed at their disposal; when
not on duty, they were always allowed to receive visitors—even men, but
their names must be submitted to their mistress, and the privileged
swains must be of unblemished repute. It was in that way, during the
Seven Years’ War, when the detested Prussian Drill-Sergeant Frederic was
pushing forward and yet further forward in Moravia and was besieging
Olmütz, that Charlotte made the acquaintance of Herr von Greiner, at that
time a secretary in the Bohemian-Austrian Chancellerie. He was accepted
as a suitor, but must wait till he could offer his wife a better position.
In spite of what her daughter says, Charlotte, unless her portraits
wickedly malign her, was no beauty, and she was tocherless to boot; but
she was clever and the favourite protégée of the Empress. What could
not a capable man of business in the public service hope from such an
alliance? We are told that, doubtless in view of this advantage, there
had been many suitors for her hand, but the Empress had always stood
in the way. Charlotte was in terror lest in this case also she should
interfere. She was too useful to her mistress to be lightly spared. There
was nothing for it but patience.
Meanwhile, in the year 1765 the Court moved to Innsbruck for the marriage
of the second prince, afterwards the Emperor Leopold II., and there
suddenly the Emperor Francis fell a victim to an apoplectic stroke. The
Empress was stricken dumb with grief. She could not weep, but passed the
night in spasmodic sobbing, till at last in the morning the doctors, who
were alarmed at her condition, bled her, and then the merciful tears came
and brought relief. Charlotte was ordered to cut off all her mistress’s
hair, and in her dress, as well as in the furniture of her apartments,
the widow put on the trappings of woe. Of the beauty that largely
remained to her, since her husband was no longer there to see, she took
no account. On every 18th of August, the day of his death, she remained
shut up in her room, confessed, fasted, and passed the day in sad
remembrances, in prayer and in pious exercises. If the stones of Windsor
Castle could prate, they might tell just such a story.
Now that the lovely fair hair, that crown of glory, had been shorn off,
and the Empress no longer cared for her old elaborate toilette, there was
less for the favourite tirewoman to do, and the wedding with Herr von
Greiner was allowed. The future bridegroom was presented to the great
lady, who was surprised to find in him a rather commonplace man, and
said afterwards to Charlotte: “I thought that you would have chosen some
gallant gentleman—a Chevalier.” However, the commonplace man was one in
whom she later recognized a thoroughly honest and capable official, whom
she respected and promoted for his worth.
The year of mourning for the dead Emperor was not yet at an end, and the
Court had laid aside none of the trappings and the suits of woe. But
Charlotte, as bride that was to be, was allowed to dress in colours.
The wedding was celebrated with all the ceremonies which were at that
time prescribed by Court etiquette. It was still the fashion to make
a special function of the betrothal, which in Charlotte’s case was
celebrated eight days before the marriage. On the wedding day she had
to go and show herself in her bridal attire to the Empress, who added
several presents of jewellery to what she was wearing, and lent her a
priceless rope of pearls from the Imperial Treasury, to be returned after
the ceremony, an ornament which was commonly used on such occasions.
The service was held in the private chapel, and the Mistress of the Robes
led the bride to the altar. When the priest came to the place where
the bride is told to answer “Yes,” she was compelled by etiquette to
curtsey to the Mistress of the Robes and ask her permission to do so.
Then the Mistress of the Robes stood up, turned herself round to face the
chapel in which the Empress was, and in her turn curtsied, and in dumb
show asked Her Majesty’s consent. This was also given by signs, and the
Mistress of the Robes, in the same silent way, transmitted the pleasure
of the Empress, who had taken upon herself the duties of mother, upon
which the bride gratefully curtsied, turned to the priest and uttered the
fateful “Yes.”
There is something touching in the way in which the Empress mothered the
orphan whom she had almost kidnapped from the Wolfenbüttel officers.
She surely did not perform her duty by halves! When I read the account
of the wedding ceremony, my mind went back fifty-two years to another
wedding, when in St. George’s Chapel another Queen, recently widowed,
sat in a little gallery and acknowledged the curtsey of her new
daughter-in-law, one of the loveliest brides that ever sun shone upon. At
every step in this sketch of the Austrian Empress we are met by something
that speaks of our own great Queen.
In this wise was the wedding of one of the Imperial handmaidens
celebrated in the days of Marie Theresia. Charlotte, now Frau von
Greiner, entered happily upon her new life. The change from the
excitement and publicity of the brilliant Austrian Court, to the quiet
and narrower society of the upper middle-class, for whom the Imperial
surroundings were a thing of awe and mystery, must have been very
striking. But the bride found her account in it, and, as we shall see,
Herr von Greiner, being a man of quite exceptional talent and artistic
gifts, was able to attract to his house all that was most brilliant among
the literary and musical celebrities of that time.
In the year 1769 Caroline—afterwards Frau Pichler—was born. In the
meantime the Empress had by no means relaxed her friendship for her
mother. The von Greiners were not “hoffähig,” they could not go to court
officially, but Frau von Greiner constantly visited her old mistress
privately, and Von Greiner himself had, as I have said, won the great
lady’s favour, and she not only kept him in her eye for advancement, but
frequently sent for him and sought his advice. With a salary of four
thousand gulden—two hundred pounds, I suppose—and a spacious official
residence, the family was well able to maintain a good appearance,
and Herr von Greiner’s exceptional attainments and artistic gifts as
pastelist and poet made the house a trysting-place for all that was
most notable in literature and music—especially music; for at Frau
von Greiner’s weekly assemblies were frequently seen and heard Haydn,
Beethoven, Mozart, Paesiello and Cimarosa. Painters and sculptors,
poets and authors less known to fame than those great musicians, were
welcome visitors, and the _salon_ became so popular that even a sprig of
nobility—the condescension duly acknowledged—might now and then be found
there. It is curious to see what a hard and fast line Vienna drew (and,
to a certain extent, still draws) between the upper middle-class and the
aristocracy—a line as deferentially recognized on the one side as it was
haughtily imposed on the other. We know how to this day, in an Austrian
ballroom, “die kleinen Komtessen” look with supercilious eyes upon any
would-be partner who may be introduced to them unless his quarterings are
fully satisfactory. The favour in which Frau von Greiner was held in high
quarters had no doubt some effect in bridging over the gulf which was
fixed between the noblesse and the bourgeoisie.
But I have been straying far away from the goal which I set before me.
It would be fascinating to follow Frau Pichler’s story, for it is the
story of a woman who lived through stirring times, who was present during
the three attacks upon Vienna, who tells us the one story of courteous
chivalry of the young Napoleon; who heard Haydn, Weber, Mozart, Beethoven
play their own compositions, and, living on till near the middle of
the last century, could compare their execution with that of Liszt and
Thalberg. She knew and rather disliked Madame de Staël, despising her
for tricking out the charms of a woman “fair, fat and forty” in a too
youthful attire; but was charmed by the music of a speaking voice, her
description of which reminds us of Sarah Bernhardt. She corresponded at
least once with Goethe, and was snubbed by the Humboldts, which rankled
not a little. But all this is beside the mark. I am only concerned to
show how to the end the lives of the two great Queen-Empresses followed
similar lines.
Life is like a drawing in black and white, in which, of necessity,
the black predominates. The stronger the drawing, the darker are the
shadows; as in an etching by Rembrandt—the more powerful the life, the
more violent the contrasts. The high lights were high indeed in the
early days of the two august ladies; the deep gloom of the long night of
widowhood, which in each case followed some twenty years of ideal home
sunshine, must have weighed all the more heavily for the glory of the
mornings which had ushered in their young days; for true it is that “the
sorrow’s crown of sorrow is the remembering happier things!” In facing
the inevitable, women sometimes show higher courage than men. Nothing
could be more brave than the way in which these two Queens bowed to the
decrees of fate. The world’s work must be done, though hearts be broken
and the joy of life extinguished. They felt that they had duties to their
people, and they braced themselves to harness. The death of the Prince
Consort was really a far heavier blow to the Queen than that of the
Emperor Francis was to Marie Theresia—or, rather, perhaps I should say a
more searching blow, with much further-reaching consequences. The Queen
lost not only a tenderly worshipped husband and lover, but a mainstay
upon which she leant, an adviser in all matters of State, a guiding hand
in trouble. Marie Theresia lost a husband whom, little as he deserved
it, she loved with all her soul; a man who was all in all to her in her
home life, but who in her public life was a mere cypher, playing no part
in her queendom. It was, therefore, a braver act of devotion for our
great lady in that loneliest of all solitudes, the solitude of a widowed
queen, immediately to take up the threads of her complicated statecraft
without the assistance of her loving helper, than it was for the Empress
to remain as pilot, bereaved indeed, but no more unaided than she had
always been. Both laid aside their personal and poignant grief to devote
themselves to their work. What remained to them of life—a cruel length
of years: in the one case fifteen, in the other forty—was given without
reserve to the promotion of the welfare of the fatherland. Duty was to
them the supreme call, a voice that only became silent in death. Both are
held in grateful and undying memory, for surely no women ever went to
their rest with cleaner consciences or with better claim to be hailed as
good and faithful servants.
THE WALLACE COLLECTION
One day, as I was talking to a friend in my garden of memory, he, looking
round at the fine bronzes by which we were surrounded, remarked what a
pity it was that Oriental art should be so poorly represented in the
Wallace Collection; and how much it was to be regretted that no specimens
of the work of the great Eastern metal-workers and famous potters were
to be found at Hertford House. As a matter of fact, cheek by jowl with
the glories of the English, French, Spanish and Dutch art, there are
only some half-dozen very poor specimens of Chinese cloisonné enamel,
practically no pottery, none of the grand old Chinese bronzes, and not
a single example of the work of such masters as the Japanese Miyochin,
Seimin, To-un, and others, men as famous in their way as Benvenuto
Cellini. It is curious that three men so catholic in their tastes as the
two Lords Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace should have paid no attention
to the art of the Far East.
From the collections we naturally passed to discussing the men, and
my friend began asking me many questions about the great legacy, of
which I am a trustee, eager to gather something of the truth out of the
network of fable and falsehood by which it is surrounded. Here is what
I told him. There is, of necessity, some guesswork, but guesswork not
unsupported by a reasonable foundation of fact and probability. The
strange jumble of truth and lies is but one more proof of the danger of
throwing over all those conventionalities which are but so much ballast
to keep straight the family ship. There are plenty of wreckers in the
world, and they are never slack in their dirty work; but, above all, they
love breaking up the big ships.
When the ’seventies were still young, I, being at the time still in
the Diplomatic Service, but “En disponibilité,” became a director of a
foreign railway company, the business of which often took me to Paris,
where our head offices were. One day, on the return journey to London—in
1872—I first met Sir Richard Wallace on board the steamer from Calais.
The Duke of Sutherland, with whom I was travelling, knew him, and so we
became acquainted—I little thinking that one day I should be brought into
very intimate connection with the art treasures which he had inherited
eighteen months earlier. Mr. Scott—afterwards Sir John—then a tall, slim,
very pleasing youth, was with him as his secretary and confidential
friend. Sir Richard was at that time a strikingly handsome man, about
fifty-four years of age, with a very attractive expression, greyish hair,
shaved, like his patron, Lord Hertford, more or less in the fashion set
by the Emperor of the French. We had a good deal of talk, and, later,
I got to know him pretty well. When he was Member for Lisburn, he was
appointed to the Committee of the House of Commons which sat under Mr.
Baillie Cochrane, afterwards Lord Lamington, to consider the question
of new buildings to be erected for the accommodation of the various
Government departments. He used often to come and see me at the Office of
Works, in order to study the different plans, and very warmly took up a
scheme which I put forward, and which, if it had been adopted, would have
saved the country a huge sum of money.
Unfortunately, Sir Stafford Northcote, who was Chancellor of the
Exchequer, was afraid of submitting the first expense to the House
of Commons. He never realized how complete was the trust which the
House placed in him, and so my proposals fell through, to the great
disappointment of Sir Richard Wallace, and to the vastly increased cost
which the country has ultimately had to pay. There has seldom been a more
flagrant case of penny wisdom and pound folly. The value of the land went
up by leaps and bounds, and the patient tax-payer has suffered, as usual,
without a murmur.
My proposal, briefly stated, was to build a chain of Public Offices
between Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square, purchasing such land as
did not already belong to the State. Drummond’s Bank was then pulled
down, and Messrs. George and Edgar Drummond, as a favour to myself, very
patriotically delayed rebuilding for six months, in order to give the
Government time to consider the question. The Public Offices were at that
time housed in a very haphazard manner, and it was evident that some
comprehensive scheme must be initiated. My plan was generally approved,
but it was not adopted owing to the costly timidity of Ministers.
Who and what was Sir Richard Wallace? That is a question which excited
great interest forty-five years ago, an interest which has not altogether
died out even now. That he was the private secretary and _âme damnée_ of
Lord Hertford everybody knew.
How he came to occupy that position, and what led his patron to alienate
from his family in Sir Richard’s favour so much of his great fortune as
was in his power, together with the whole of the art treasures which he
and his father and grandfather had collected during three-quarters of a
century, at a time when beautiful things were to be had for what would
now be considered an old song—that was a mystery to which no one had a
clue, and which only now can be solved with absolute accuracy. Much that
has been suggested is undoubtedly false, based upon conjecture without
any knowledge of such facts as have been brought to light.
[Illustration: RICHARD, MARQUIS OF HERTFORD, K.G.
_From a bust in the Wallace Collection._
[_To face p. 158._]
Having been a trustee of the so-called Wallace Collections since the
death of Lady Wallace in 1897, and having lived in great intimacy with
Sir John Scott, who was her heir and had been so long the fidus Achates
of Sir Richard, I have come to the conclusion that such evidence as
exists and was known to Sir John, to Lord Esher and others, entirely
disposes of the scandalous story that he was the illegitimate son of Lady
Hertford, and therefore half-brother to Lord Hertford.
The true story, vouched for by people who were intimately acquainted
with the scandals of the first half of the last century, is that Richard
Lord Hertford, when a mere boy, had an intrigue with a Scotch girl of
low birth—Agnes Wallace, afterwards Jackson. The result was Sir Richard
Wallace. As the girl was older than himself, Lord Yarmouth, as he then
was, had been rather the seduced than the seducer, and soon tired of the
whole connection. He was quite willing to pay, but he had no mind to
start in life saddled with the dead weight of an uneducated mistress and
a natural son. Lady Hertford, however, got wind of the affair through
Colonel Gurwood, a brother officer and intimate friend of Lord Yarmouth.
She took a fancy to the child, who responded with an affection that was
almost filial. Lord Hertford, to whom his mother’s slightest wish was
law, took up the boy at her bidding, and educated him until he grew up
and became entirely indispensable. The lad was well known in Paris as
“Monsieur Richard,” Lord Hertford’s shadow and agent, his representative
at auctions and sales of works of art.
The name Richard seems to me to have some significance in confirmation of
the above story. Is it likely that if the child had been Lady Hertford’s,
she should have chosen the name of her eldest legitimate and deeply-loved
son, to bestow it upon an inconvenient accident? To me it seems utterly
incredible. Moreover, would it not have been far more likely that she
should have tried to smuggle away an unnecessary infant of her own than
that she should have dragged the child into all the publicity of the home
about which there had already been too much slanderous gossip? Again,
Lady Hertford was a woman possessed of great wealth in her own right.
Why, if Sir Richard was her son, did she leave the whole of her fortune
to her second son, Lord Henry Seymour, and a mere trifle to the favourite
to whom she was so kind a patroness? Obviously she relied upon Lord
Hertford, as his father, to do everything for him. Not only the facts,
but even the whole probabilities, are against the preposterous and
malicious story that he was her son.
That the old lady was devotedly attached to Sir Richard and made a great
pet of him, and that he returned her affection with interest, was a
matter of common knowledge. I have seen many letters of hers which attest
the fact. When she travelled, he made all the arrangements for her, and
took entire charge of her comfort, his bed being made outside her door
when they slept at inns in the old posting days. He was her devoted
slave, her most faithful watch-dog.
Upon his services as secretary, Lord Hertford, as I have said, placed
entire reliance, but his office was not altogether a bed of roses. The
great man, as a patron, was strict and sometimes severe. Sir Richard,
with a taste for speculation on the Bourse, was sometimes in rather
strait circumstances, out of which his patron helped him, not without
reproof, to the tune of a good many thousand pounds. I have seen a
document showing that Lord Hertford in 1854 paid twenty thousand pounds
on this account through Messrs. Rothschild. There is in the Wallace
Collection a certain engraved crystal tazza of Italian workmanship, a
very lovely little gem. Sir Richard, in his poor days, picked it up for
a few francs in an old sort of rag-and-bone shop in a street in the
neighbourhood of the Temple. Some time afterwards, being rather hard
up, he took it to Lord Hertford and asked him to buy it. “No,” was the
answer, “I won’t have it. I will not encourage your extravagance; you
must learn to be more economical.”
Sir Richard sold the tazza to a dealer for two hundred and fifty francs,
and a year or two later had the luck to buy it back, but he had to pay
ten times the price and more. Often he had hard times enough, as he
himself said when he told the story, but when Lord Hertford died in
1870 his day had come. The fortune which he inherited was in those days
considered colossal. It would look less now compared with the huge riches
of American plutocrats, but in 1870 these were yet in the making. Two
very rich marriages, the second and third marquesses having both married
heiresses, had, in addition to great landed estates, placed the Hertfords
in an altogether exceptional position.