KINGS AND QUEENS
I HAVE KNOWN
[Illustration:
_Photo by Mandy, Bucharest_
HÉLÈNE VACARESCO]
KINGS AND QUEENS
I HAVE KNOWN
BY
HÉLÈNE VACARESCO
[Illustration: colophon]
WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON AND NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS
45 ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1904
TO THEIR IMPERIAL AND ROYAL MAJESTIES
THE KINGS AND QUEENS, TO THEIR
IMPERIAL AND ROYAL HIGHNESSES THE
PRINCES AND PRINCESSES WHOSE NAMES,
VISAGES AND WORDS ARE HERE CELEBRATED
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK IN TOKEN
OF DEEP GRATITUDE FOR ALL THE
PERSONAL KINDNESS THE AUTHOR HAS
RECEIVED FROM THEM
HÉLÈNE VACARESCO
CONTENTS
QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ROUMANIA (CARMEN SYLVA) _Page_ 1
KING EDWARD VII. 51
QUEEN ALEXANDRA 69
THE EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA 89
THE GERMAN EMPEROR 117
THE CZAR AND CZARINA 143
MARGHERITA DI SAVOIA, DOWAGER QUEEN OF ITALY 167
KING VICTOR EMMANUEL III. AND QUEEN HELENA 185
QUEEN MARIA CHRISTINA AND KING ALFONSO XIII. OF SPAIN 213
WILHELMINA I., QUEEN OF THE NETHERLANDS 235
THE SOVEREIGNS OF SERVIA 255
THE POPE LEO XIII. 277
QUEEN VICTORIA 291
INDEX 317
ILLUSTRATIONS
Hélène Vacaresco _Frontispiece_
Queen Elizabeth of Roumania (Carmen Sylva) _Facing page_ 1
King Edward VII. and Queen Alexandra " 51
The Emperor of Austria " 89
The German Emperor " 117
The Czar and Czarina " 143
Margherita di Savoia, Dowager Queen of Italy " 167
King Victor Emmanuel III. and Queen Helena " 185
Queen Maria Christina and King Alfonso XIII. of Spain " 213
Wilhelmina I., Queen of the Netherlands " 235
The Pope Leo XIII. " 277
Queen Victoria " 291
[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ROUMANIA (CARMEN SYLVA)]
QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ROUMANIA
(CARMEN SYLVA)
As far as the other Queens and Royal Princesses mentioned in my writings
are concerned, I have had the honour of approaching them only at times
when prepared for any striking impressions they might make. I carried
into their presence a heart eager to receive all the emotions of the
moment and a spirit aglow with desire to note as much, hurriedly as
possible, from what might pass during such thrilling interviews. I have
met almost all the reigning sovereigns of modern Europe and their
Consorts, and have much to relate about them, since I soon became a keen
observer of every Court I stepped into; yet, whatever I have said or
thought of Kings and Queens I have known is derived from the experience
of some transitory event, and gathered in the strained mood into which
we are apt to fall whenever something extraordinary happens to us.
On the other hand, the image of the Queen of Roumania has shed a
radiance over my whole life. From my earliest childhood, all that is
good and noble and true I have learnt to revere from her words and in
her eyes. The beauty of nature and of human labour, the careful study of
my own soul, piety, the joy dwelling in forms of harmony and grace, I
have gathered from her as with generous hands she threw her thoughts
like flowers in my path. To her I am indebted for my brightest hours, as
for the love that lies hidden in days of gloom.
Were “Carmen Sylva” only a Queen and not a poet too, the study of her
personality would prove a difficult task even to me who have spent so
much time by her side and who am more intimately acquainted with her
ideas and pursuits than her other biographers can be. These last are
innumerable, but, different as each appreciation of their wonderful
subject may appear, though they have seen her from widely varying
standpoints, the same enthusiasm, sincere and thrilling, animates all
their descriptions. And every one of these images is true, because
Elizabeth of Roumania is an individuality so multiplex that almost any
historian can offer at least an acceptable clue to the problem presented
by such a soul. For instance, some are used to considering her in the
light of a romantic Princess whose mistake it is to be, in our
matter-of-fact century, a dreamer and a theorist as elusive as her own
tales of the fairies that haunt the vine-clad mountains near the Rhine.
Others have been accustomed to compare this all-absorbing Queen with the
refined, cultivated ladies of the Italian Renaissance who still enthral
our imagination as we read about their grace, their love of beautiful
poems and pictures; the fluent talk and harmonious verse whereby their
Courts were rendered centres of intellectual activity. There is a third
picture of her, where she is depicted in a wild yet familiar attitude,
scouring the wide forests of the Karpathian mountains and listening with
mingled delight and awe to the torrents amidst the rocks. And not one of
these sketches, not one of these interpretations is untrue, because the
Queen of Roumania in some degree resembles them all; she might even
suggest a much larger number of illustrations and prove each of them to
be a genuine portrait.
No living Sovereign may be said to fill the modern world with so much
curiosity and admiration as does the Crowned Poetess, who will always to
herself as well as to others remain a startling and divine enigma, a
sweet and dolorous mystery. Endowed with every virtue that soars high in
the domain of spiritual strength, the Queen is yet weak as a new-born
infant when she has to struggle in the realms of reality. Thence
terrible misunderstandings are apt to arise between her and those who
judge her after their own custom of reducing spiritual processes to
material action. The Queen is supposed to be good by nature, blind to
evil by instinct, generous and forgiving in a spontaneous, facile way:
few guess the real grandeur of such goodness, or from what warm source
of human love and celestial aspirations the blindness and forgiveness
spring. Every heart lies bare before the clairvoyant eye, the quick,
observant spirit, and severe struggles and long reflection are necessary
for one who can succeed in giving to the result of moral labour so much
apparently intuitive candour that it passes for that inborn, unwitting
kindness to which no gratitude seems due. Every human soul may be called
a silent battle-field; the artist’s duty is to find the victors and the
dead; and in my survey of the Queen’s inward conflicts I have ever found
indignation and desire of vengeance defeated, while sympathy, pity, and
every quality that can make a woman royal daily triumphed in her breast.
The existence of Carmen Sylva in every moment of her busy days is
divided between two conflicting forces, for ever waging war as to which
shall obtain the upper hand. First, her calling as a poet with the
fervent attachment she feels for every art and for an artist’s life,
then her duties as a queen. Hence while endlessly craving after leisure
and daydreaming, she is obliged to bestow unceasing attention on her
words and smiles, her every gesture; full of desire to run headlong in
the track of her imagination, she chafes under the necessity of
restraint and must show indifference to all that most attracts her. And
this everlasting strife, this enforced duality, has always prevented
complete adoration from being accorded her by those who want her to be a
perfect queen, as by those who wish her to be wholly given up to
poetical talent. The freedom of her tastes and opinions is in violent
contradiction with the quiet manners, the subdued tones she is obliged
to assume, and thus, bound to control the strongest and most audacious
emotions, the Queen of Roumania is a living prey to the mingled elements
of Fate.
No one will ever be able to tell whether queen or artist has suffered
the more in this extraordinary blending of situations. Does the crown,
besprinkled with a shower of rubies and diamonds, which once belonged to
Josephine, wife of Napoleon I., weigh too heavy on her head, that she
should take it off with such a sigh of relief, passing her slight hands
through her hair as if to remove all trace of the massive symbol while
yet her forehead is flushed from the exertion of wearing it? How often
have I seen that crown rest on the bureau in her dressing-room, after an
official dinner-party or ball; how often have I wondered whether its
owner reproached it for keeping her so long from the cool peace of her
private apartment! And then I have imagined the Queen also at times
turning her wrath on the white sheets of paper and the long slender pen,
of whose beckoning she has been aware while occupied in distributing her
smiles amongst the expectant crowd gathered to witness one of those
spectacles of pomp and dignity which they are ever happy to gaze upon.
How often have I seen that splendid crown and the humble pen lie side by
side in companionship so close that I could scarce remember they were
bitter antagonists, whose imperious demands filled a Queen’s soul in
turn with anguish and with awe. One special evening the Queen said to
me:
“Oh, if that crown could only speak, what tales it would tell of the
brief but splendid reign of Napoleon the Great, and of the thoughts of
his Creole Empress, as her coquettish fingers lifted the ruby circlet to
her brow!”
“Nay,” thought I, “if that crown could speak it would forget Josephine
Beauharnais and the Tuileries and entertain us with tales of Carmen
Sylva. Then perhaps we might realise that the artist would have been
less ardent in the end had she not as Queen been perpetually conscious
of robbing the hours that might have been given up to the pen; that the
Queen would have possessed less grace and majesty, were not her every
endeavour stimulated by the knowledge that in accomplishing her task she
was sacrificing a part of her very being.”
The Queen’s childhood was indeed a sad one, and on this period of her
life she is apt to dwell, the tears often streaming down her cheeks as
she recalls those dark days of trial and despondency. Weary years of
seclusion by the side of her sick brother and her dying father did much
toward developing the faculties of her wonderful imagination; but the
anguish, the feverish expectancy of joys that never came, all the glory
and trials of a crowned consort, all the secret drudgery and apparent
triumphs of her exalted place--none have been able to work an essential
change in the mind of the Queen. She remains still the impetuous, dreamy
girl she was in her native castle by the banks of the Rhine, the
childish princess who ran on the career of her fancies as fast as the
waters carried past the windows of her palace the fleet boats whence
laughter and music floated on the wind. To this moment the light in her
eyes is as fresh and pure as in those days when her mother called her
“my wild rose,” and marvelled to discover how far the daring young
spirit had travelled into the realms of fairy lore or history, and how
glowing were the impressions caught by her youthful love of poetry and
research.
The early home of Princess Elizabeth of Wied was, as I have said,
darkened by the shadow of death. Her little brother Otto was slowly
fading before her eyes, cut off from all the joys of his age by the
awful malady with which he was born; while her father, the last roselike
tint that dulls the sky before the sun is set, lingered on, and though
growing more weary and feeble every day, still poured upon his child the
treasures of his clear intellect and gentle heart. The soft splendour
and hidden martyrdom of his gradual decline overspread all the days of
her youth. “The image of my father,” says the Queen, “stands immortal in
the memories of every hour; when I remember my girlhood I cling to him
yet. I cannot turn my head towards the past without seeing him. I thrust
aside the branches of the big trees that surround our summer home. I
perceive the big white house as it glimmers amidst the foliage, and I
am ready to run from one open window to the other and cast a hungry
glance into each familiar room; but there is one window where I must
ever stop, one spot to which my glance is chained. My father’s
window--my father’s room! There he sits; his thin bluish hands are
resting on his knees or on an open book, but his eyes wander far away or
look deep into my own. The image of my father fills all the past for me.
He was so learned that he believed many extraordinary things which make
the ignorant man shrug his shoulders and laugh. He believed in miracles
because creation and humanity were alike miracles to him. He felt
humbled and dazzled before the power of life and the power of God, and,
like a man seated at the confluence of two dashing rivers, he was placed
between life and immortality, and looked upon everything with serenity
and faith. At twilight the mighty forest would endeavour to sleep and
forget the departure of the sun: then it was that he would call me to
his side and talk to me. I watched his pallid face become whiter and
whiter, like a cool stream where the moon is about to rise. On each of
his sunken features death’s sign was announcing that his frail being
belonged to the tomb; but the calm strong spirit triumphed openly over
death. How distinctly one could note that my dreamy, delicate Father
came from an ancient race who thus completed in a being rich in thought
and dreams, its long lineage of those who had won distinction through
great actions and gallant deeds. His blue eyes and his movements,
graceful and flexible as those of a reed, revealed that he came from
those old Border families who embody in their members all the strength
and charm of their native Rhine. And his soul also resembled in beauty
and vigour the light vine-crowned hills whose harmonious lines are
reflected in the glittering river. My father was a real Rhenan
Prince--not one of those princes history loves to celebrate, a lord
eager to conquer and possess, but a prince who desired the realms of
Heaven beyond all earthly good or earthly ambitions. In a land where the
past survives only in the form of the horizon and the cities spread
among the hills, he was like the last tendril of that past, and on the
summit of his soul he bore the supreme flowers whose soft perfume had
been accumulated by generations of heroes. In the wide range of thought
he produced what his forefathers had produced in the domain of action.”
Princess Elizabeth’s mother was the eldest daughter of the Duke of
Nassau, and sister to the present Duke of Luxembourg and the Queen of
Sweden. Pretty, lively and intelligent, she had been brought up in the
gay Court which flourished in that smiling land justly called the Garden
of Germany. Its remains may still be found in the castle of Biebrick, a
kind of German Trianon, once the centre of lively parties and
entertainments; but since the departure of its sovereigns it rises like
a phantom, and seems to weep on the border of a deserted park, relating
to the Rhine, that sighs in turn, all the festivities of the past. Very
soon after marriage the life of pretty Princess Marie of Wied knew
sorrow and trouble. After the birth of her eldest son and daughter
Elizabeth, another son was born, a charming child, who from the hour of
his birth was claimed by pain and suffering: he bore on his frail body
an ever-open, ever-bleeding wound, and frequent operations were needed
to prolong his martyred life. Queen Elizabeth has written a few tragic
pages in which she relates the short life of the little Prince Otto, and
the simple pathos of the narrative has given the book a high place
amongst works dear to humanity as well as to art. Surely Prince Otto was
a little saint. In all that Queen Elizabeth recalls when she tells of
his oft-repeated tortures, his blankets ever soaked in blood, and his
frame always shivering from contractions and pains, there is not a word
which does not speak of patience and faith. The reader vibrates with
revolt against Nature who could so cruelly mingle the sound of repressed
sobs and deep grief with the gentle prattle of an infant over his first
toys; who could bid the age of careless pleasure and happiness be for
him the age of despair, though the child himself never despaired nor
murmured reproach against his fate or his God.
Princess Elizabeth thus saw citadels of grief rise one after another and
wall her in on all sides. She contemplated them with eyes full of
eagerness and tender curiosity, just as she watched the Rhine, and
regarded the tall forests and the beautiful legends of their soil. But
the accumulation of early sorrows in a youthful soul is like the mass of
leaves that covers the ground in autumn: under the thick stratum of dead
foliage, the sap of hidden plants is fermenting, waiting to spring forth
in stems and blossoms. The perfume of spring mingles with the moist dull
odour of decay, and when the April wind brings sunlight and shower, the
dead leaves are pushed aside by the vigour of the blossoms that have
grown under them. Thus a gush of sunlit breeze swept through the
existence of Princess Elizabeth, and darkness and despair were for a
time forgotten while her energy awoke to new life. Her maternal aunt,
the Grand Duchess Helena of Russia, suddenly decided to take care of the
distant young niece whom she equally pitied and admired.
“Send me your dear child,” wrote the Great Duchess to the Princess of
Wied. These words proved the Open Sesame which revealed a new world to
Princess Elizabeth, and bore her far away from the dreary circle of home
troubles.
“I cried bitterly as I took leave of my father, and he also shed tears,
but mine were tears of hope, whereas he well knew that he would never
see me again on earth. He liked the Great Duchess Helena, and he was
charmed with my prospects of seeing new places and new faces; but his
eyes looked a last farewell upon me as I tore myself from his trembling
arms, and a long time passed before I could get over the sad
impression.”
But afterwards the flashing splendours of the Russian Court, the
attraction exercised on a glowing imagination by the fresh beauties and
vanities which every hour brought under her eyes, chased the dark
phantoms from her memory. She wrote to her father letters so cheerful
and vibrating with life that when the dying Prince replied his daughter
little guessed how high his pulse beat or how dizzy his brain felt while
he was penning words of encouragement and wisdom.
“This Russia is such a dazzling, interesting country; the light of Asia
seems to dwell upon the Imperial Court,” wrote the Queen, in speaking of
the two winters she spent in Petersburg. “The fairies and the moon-clad
elves I loved so much appeared too shy to haunt my sleep while my waking
hours were filled with such visions of magnificence and power. My aunt
lived in her dead husband’s beautiful palace, the Palais Michel, and
entertained some two thousand persons under her roof, many of whom she
had never even seen. The immense luxury with which she was surrounded in
no way altered her simple tastes or the easy refinement of her manners,
and she held that high personages should live with much outward pomp,
since brilliant pageants and solemn ceremonies give pleasure to the
public, counting as favours bestowed upon them by their sovereigns and
princes. But it was the Great Duchess who taught me to discover all the
misery hidden under the folds of ermine-lined purple, and so convinced
did I become of the truth of what she said, that had I then heard a
prophetic voice say ‘You will be a Queen!’ I should have wept and
trembled in despair. I know some of you may doubt or smile, as you
perhaps believe that young Princesses fill their daydreams with bowing
multitudes, triumphal arches, crowns, sceptres, and royal trains. But
you are mistaken. We possess an instinct that bids us beware. We know
that these things may come, and we are afraid. But in general it is not
Kings’ daughters who become Queens. On the contrary, the less
conspicuous among Royal Princesses are perhaps most exposed to the
perilous fate.... The Great Duchess Helena, the Northern Juno as she was
called, was a singularly strong-minded, good woman. All the practical
qualities which I acquired and have since tried to display, I owe to her
patient teaching; for instance, the unfailing interest I can show in and
extract from individuals whose mere aspect repels and checks good-will.
She has convinced me that no human creature exists who cannot be induced
to speak eloquently, or perform good deeds. When she travelled, our
temporary home at once became a centre of intellectual company and
congenial spirits. With her I visited Paris and the French Court,
Napoleon III. being at that time in the full glow of his splendour. I
attended a great ball at the Tuileries, and saw the lovely Empress enter
the great reception-rooms by the side of the Grand Duchess, who, though
already an elderly woman, looked more regal in her simple attire than
the beautiful woman who walked arm-in-arm with her while murmurs of
adulation and enthusiasm excited by her beauty followed her every step.
‘You are exactly like a rose-bud,’ said the Empress to me in passing,
and although she repeated the compliment to every young girl present,
the amiable words sent a thrill through my heart, as they reminded me of
my mother’s endearing name, ‘My Wild Rose.’ The French Empress left in
my memory a vision of harmony and youthfulness which not all the
following days, when I have thought with pity of her woes, have been
able to efface....”
On her return from Russia Princess Elizabeth of Wied found a tomb under
the glossy lime-trees on the hill overlooking the Rhine. Her beloved
father was dead, and from that moment the pain of his loss has been
intermingled with every moment of her life; she has never kneaded
anything with her hands as an artist which tears for her father’s loss
have not impregnated.
If I were writing the Queen of Roumania’s whole life instead of trying
merely to give a correct idea of her personality, I should be obliged to
follow her step by step. This I have promised her majesty to do one day,
and then I will tell you all that she has endured, and many things I
have heard her say. At Venice one evening while we were both gazing upon
the dim lagoon whence the last slanting rays of the sun were fast
departing, the Queen stretched out her arms towards the horizon, and
said suddenly:
“No, no, no one knows, no one could tell like you what my heart and my
thoughts contain. No one has seen all and felt my sorrows as you have
done. The story of my life, divested of the errors entwined around it by
others, my soul whose emotions and impulses you can note, and whose past
I have shown you--promise me that they will be revealed by you one day,
when the propitious hour arrives. You promise?”
“Yes, madam, be assured I will obey you, so help me God.”
Like a blood-red necklace the purple tinge that darkened the twilight
sky was sinking into the water, and the broad lagoon closed upon the
setting sun. Thus do the waves of my heart hold enclosed the sacred
promise which will one day spring to life and vigour.
I am convinced that Carmen Sylva’s biographers, past, present and
future, will one and all be angry with me for now destroying one of
their favourite illusions, an innocent error, but still an error, which
has been again and again recorded. The Queen of Roumania’s marriage was
no love affair. It is understood, of course, that all royal marriages
are brought about by love, and when some one dares to assert the
contrary he or she is at once accused of heresy. No sooner is a royal
marriage announced than newspapers and magazines start a regular
steeplechase amongst them in associating the projected union with a
medley of anecdotes, and they vie with each other as to which shall be
most fortunate in securing thrilling accounts of the mutual love binding
the happy couple. Why this absurd habit has taken hold of tradition I
have never been able to find out. Do nations really desire to be ruled
only by happy sovereigns and loving husbands and wives? If this idea
does indeed exist, why not rather credit their kings and queens with
virtues or qualities sufficiently attractive to render them capable of
acquiring in the course of their married lives the love that it is not
their lot to gain when they exchange their rings? I can truthfully
assert that I do not know of more than one or two real love marriages
between royal pairs, whereas I have seen many royal couples become
extremely attached and even devoted to each other in the end, and in my
opinion this result is more to their credit than if all the legendary
romances which are circulated on the slightest rumour of an illustrious
betrothal were true. The Queen of Roumania herself is always willing to
relate how she became acquainted with her future husband, and how her
marriage, without being in the least a romance, was from beginning to
end treated in a very matter-of-fact way.
“I am afraid some writers have tried to make us out a very idyllic and
rather ridiculous couple, and I still shudder when I read that old tale
of the staircase, as worn and haunting now as a ghost story. I have
quite lost the courage to deny it, as it has been repeated so many, many
times!... At Berlin, while on a visit to the Queen of Prussia,
afterwards Empress Augusta of Germany, I had just caught a glimpse of
the Prince of Hohenzollern, who is now your King and my husband. Then
many years went past, finding me sad and despondent. My youth had been
blighted by the presence of suffering and death, but my soul felt warm
and rich with such impulses of self-devotion as would have made me an
excellent nurse or an excellent mother. I longed to find some means of
employing my suppressed energies, and lived on in the hope of seeing
more of the world and its struggles. Many princes proposed to me at that
time, but only one amongst all the potentates who sued for my hand
tempted my fancy, though I had never seen him. He was a widower and the
father of many children. Many children--I could immediately satisfy my
heart’s desire.... But my mother was against the match, and the whole
affair was dropped.... The Great Duchess Helena often wrote to my
mother, and I learned afterwards that together they had laid out many
plans for my future of which I was kept in complete ignorance. One day
at Cologne, where we had gone to spend a few hours and listen to a
Beethoven Festival, we met, by _mere accident_, as I was hastily
informed by my mother, the reigning Prince of Roumania, Prince Charles
of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. We were staying that afternoon at the
Hotel du Nord which can be seen as the train crosses the Cologne
station--I never pass on my way to Germany without remembering vividly
every word of the interview there which settled my fate. I was very glad
to meet the Prince of Roumania again, as he had been much talked about
in my presence of late, and I knew he had won his way to the throne
among political perils almost as great as the perils of war. He had
crossed Austria in disguise because the Austrian Government had objected
strongly to his election. In the small garden of the Hotel du Nord,
where the beautiful towers of the cathedral threw their shadows upon us,
I poured eager questions into his ears without even casting a glance at
his refined and regular features, and he patiently answered every one of
my inquiries. He told me about his difficult task, and about the exotic
country that had become his own, its wide plains and savage mountains,
its white-clad peasantry, frugal, grave, and endowed with weird powers
of untaught eloquence and poetry. He spoke long and well, while I
listened breathlessly, rapt in astonishment and delight. He described
the great masters of the land, those boyards, cultivated yet barbarous
in mind and customs, whose souls were alive with the blended charm of
the Byzantine influence and the hot blood of old Latin descent. I envied
the young sovereign who had taken up a sceptre whose maintenance
required as firm a grasp as a sword, and I said to him openly: ‘You are
a happy man.’
“‘And the concert?’ asked my mother as we went up to our rooms. ‘You
were so impatient to go to the concert before we met the Prince.’
“‘The concert?’ I repeated in utter amazement. I had forgotten all about
the concert! ‘O Mother, you can’t guess how deeply interesting, how
thrilling is the conversation of the Prince of Roumania, and how I envy
him his beautiful task! Just imagine, he rules a nation quite new to the
world, but at the same time ancient in blood and history; and he has to
understand them and to make them happy. A splendid mission indeed!’
“‘Well, my child, that task, that mission, might be yours also. The
Prince of Roumania wants to marry you. He has come here with the sole
purpose of meeting you. This is no chance encounter, as you believe. You
have but one word to say....’
“I remained perfectly bewildered for a few seconds, then, as if urged on
by the resistless impulse of my destiny, I answered:
“‘Yes, I will marry him. I will help him and follow him to that
wonderful land.’
“Half an hour afterwards the Prince of Hohenzollern came up to our
private sitting-room. He kissed my hand as he entered, and my lips
trembled timidly for one moment on his bowed forehead. Then he knew that
he was my accepted future husband. This time he did all the talking
himself: I was abashed and silent, but still intent on his every word.
Not one syllable of love, not one stray compliment, was uttered during
those hours whose meaning has since thrown a light over my whole
existence. Ours was no love marriage, but it was a union based on
self-devotion, duty, and a fervent desire to do our best towards each
other and towards the nation that I already loved.
“That very evening the Prince went back to Roumania; he was to return in
three weeks and then take me back with him as his wife. Once he had
gone, the spell was broken. I passed sleepless nights and restless days
pondering upon the step I had so rashly taken, and wondering what the
future would be by the side of one all but unknown to me in an unknown
country, far from all my relatives and friends--so desperately far! I
had seen so little of him. In my memory even his face and his voice were
not clearly engraved, and for hours I studied his portrait and tried to
read his soul in his eyes. What would the descendant of the stern
Hohenzollerns be like in feelings and opinions, and would not mine
startle and even offend him? In secret I was a poet already, and I had
acquired, by frequent communion with clever people in my own home and
the home circle of the Grand Duchess Helena, the liberal ideas of
equality and democracy which nowadays bear the name of Socialism. I
understood how startled the Prince of Roumania might be when he realised
all this, since the chains of tradition were strongly entwined about his
principles and the traditions of his race, so that these reflections
well-nigh appalled me.”
But, had she reflected more deeply than she did at that period of her
betrothed life, Princess Elizabeth of Wied would perhaps have discovered
that there must exist in the soul of Prince Charles ground open to the
influx of democratic feelings. She would have remembered that he was not
only of a lineage high among the highest and proud among the proudest, a
family made glorious by the great events of history; he represented not
only the Hohenzollerns stern and brave, but also the glory and lustre
gathered on modern battle-fields by warriors of humble birth if splendid
renown, and that the strain of commoner French blood flows in the veins
of Roumania’s King. Only a few years before the beginning of the
nineteenth century, his French great-grandmother, Fanny Mouchard, played
a conspicuous and not always dignified part in the French Revolution,
being mixed up with all the riotous people of the time. Her wit and
amiability, however, with the fact of her becoming related to the
Emperor through Josephine’s marriage, won for her a position such as her
birth and conduct alone could never have acquired. She often drove
Napoleon wild with her off-hand manners and _évaporé_ airs, with her
habit of writing verse of her own composition, such as this:
“Eglé belle et poëte hélas! n’a qu’un travers
Elle fait son visage et ne fait pas ses vers.”
That this bizarre heroine should have become the mother of a line of
Kings is one of the marvellous incidents of the epic-comedy played in
France by the Revolution and the First Empire.
Again, the King, through his paternal grandmother, belongs to the
stalwart peasantry of France, whence her finest heroes have sprung. His
grandmother was a Murat, sister of the gallant King of Naples who, as
every one knows, was once a stable-boy in a country inn of the Aveyron
department. That inn still exists, and many are the travellers who stop
there and dream about the wondrous fate of the stable-boy who became a
King, only to die the death of a forsaken man at the Calabrian wells.
Thus the Queen might have been almost sure of her husband’s sympathy.
The great-grandson of Fanny Mouchard could not but love poets and
poetry; the great-grandson of the Aveyron stable-boy must have inherited
from his ancestor the democratic ideals which changed a Revolution into
a Republic and then into an Empire.
Has Elizabeth of Roumania kept the promise registered in her heart on
that early autumn day when she was first acquainted with her future
husband and her fate? Now that so many years have gone by, her subjects,
without a dissentient voice, can answer ‘Yes.’ From the moment of her
arrival in her new country to this hour her life has been a constant
effort, a constant labour of love on behalf of her people. Patiently and
without ceasing she listens to the throbbing of their veins, to the
wants and aspirations of a race she has tried so hard to understand
that she has almost become a Roumanian herself. When she reached the
banks of the Danube, when before her dazzled sight white-clad peasants
made their appearance, wearing carved silver knives in their belts and
big peacock feathers on their high fur caps; when in brilliant costumes
the women rushed forth to meet her, veils thin as the mountain mists
floating round their proud features, and distaffs trembling on their
bosoms; when the gaily attired village beauties danced the national
dances before her to the sound of a rude violin; when dishevelled and
ragged tziganes played tunes a thousand years old, yet fresh with the
eternal youth of innocence, then Elizabeth believed her own life would
be like an eternal _pastorale_. And at once she gave her heart to the
rustic crowds whose welcome was showered upon her, who blessed her
winning smile and her ready curiosity to learn more about them and their
village homes. Remembrance came to her of the fair and simple Queens of
the Iliad, who, seated in the midst of their waiting-maids, kept virgins
and young matrons aloof from evil company or bad thoughts, by teaching
them to weave, to spin, to twist golden and silken threads and sew
stirring devices on banners destined for brave warriors or the altar.
She bore in her mind that thus the ancient Roumanian Princesses and
wives of illustrious boyards had reared around them damsels and dames of
gentle blood, that while the spindle flew and the wind carried the
sound of bugle and church-bells, they had chanted ballads and had kept
alive the memory of their glorious dead; and her poetic soul found joy
in the resurrection of a noble past. No one will ever know or appreciate
the whole extent of the labour that from morning to eve made her stoop
towards the soil from which she drew the secrets of the race, or raise
her head to the sky whence faith and inspiration descended upon her
sacred toil.
When I met the Queen for the first time, or rather when I first
approached her, I was quite a child. I had often seen her in the streets
of our capital, and on such occasions, though only five or six years
old, I felt a sharp sensation, as of mingled pain and joy, and all my
small being vibrated to the shock. The flashing smile, the tender and
compassionate blue eyes, the thick wavy mass of hair whose movement was
as eloquent as the surging tide, and perhaps also the big white plume of
the _chasseur_ seated at the back of the carriage, floated before me
like a vision of grandeur and delight, whose tracings left deep golden
furrows in my mind. Children sometimes adore secret idols whose forms
loom high above their playthings and dolls, and when playthings and
dolls are quite forgotten, thought of the ruling god or goddess thrills
their memory. At the dawn of my eighth year, having just escaped from an
illness so dangerous that the doctors had given me up and I had remained
as one dead for some hours, the Queen expressed a desire to know the
little girl who during six weeks had filled her parents’ souls with
fear, and interested the whole of Bucharest society, which at that time
formed one large family. With shorn hair and trembling knees that could
scarcely bear the frail load of my meagre body, pulling hard on my
mother’s hand, I mounted the great staircase of the Palace. I had
completely forgotten in delirium and fever the radiant image which had
enchanted my childish drives. How often now do I live again that happy
moment when with panting breath and wild and eager joy that must have
transfigured my pale face, I found the idol and I recognised the object
of my earliest dreams. How clearly I can stir the chords of dormant
sensations and revive the moist perfume of those vast rooms with green
plants climbing along the golden trellis of a screen, or the soft murmur
of the water splashing from a fountain whose waves rippled into a stone
vase and fell among the leaves. But all the vivid hues of hangings and
foliage seemed to concentrate themselves in a tall, slender form that
stood in their midst. The Queen wore a moss-green velvet dress, and
along the bottom of the skirt and round her sleeves and neck ran a
trimming of downy grey feathers which trembled with every movement,
every breath--I can see even now the fluttering of those silvery plumes.
The radiant face stooped towards me; she opened her arms and I flew to
her bosom like a young bird to its nest. Ah! had we known then what a
pledge of deep affection was thus exchanged between the royal lady and
the child that death had almost carried away,--had we known all the love
and the pain lurking in the dim future, would the grasp of my little
hands round her neck have relaxed, would she have ceased kissing my thin
cheeks? Notwithstanding all the pain that that future has brought, I can
with truth say, No! and the Queen’s answer is the same.
I remember every word of that interview, and how charmed she was
because, when she wished to stop the fountain in order that I might hear
the birds sing better, I exclaimed:
“Oh, please don’t! I suppose the dear birds sing only to please the
fountain, and they would feel wretched if its waters were hushed.”
Then the Queen caressed my shorn head, and I told her with tears in my
eyes how my long hair had been cut off with big scissors that made a
shiver run over my skin; that mother had put them under my pillow, and
how I caressed them.
“Never mind,” answered Carmen Sylva, “you are a good little girl, and
good little girls’ hair grows very fast. You will soon get your long
hair back again.”
“But I love it--I won’t have any other long hair because the hair that
has been cut off might be grieved to see me loving other long hair.”
The Queen laughed softly at these words, and murmured: “She is indeed a
poet’s grand-daughter.”
After this visit a long time elapsed before I saw the Queen again; we
went to Paris for my education, and there several years were spent.
When I had arrived at the age of sixteen, however, every summer found us
spending three weeks with the Queen in the Castel Polesch at Sinaïa, a
mansion built by the King, whose aspect presents a startling contrast to
the surrounding landscape. The stern-looking German _schloss_ looks like
a challenge thrown defiantly to the mountains, whose dazzling heights
overtop its turrets. The heavy edifice of grey stone and red brick
proclaims that a strong will rather than artistic taste has been at work
in the depths of the dark Karpathians. Like some mad anachronism, Castel
Pelesch rises in the forest, a seal of taciturn power affixed to the
wild beauty and primitive glory of its surroundings, the seal of the
Middle Ages and the burgraves from whom the King draws his descent. In
the interior the same silent war is waging between the decorations of
the rooms and the personages who inhabit them. The contrast is such as
the Crusaders must have created when in the sunlit palaces of Asia they
strode through glittering halls to the silvery note of a hundred
fountains in their steel armour and tall white plumes.
At that time a sense of logical and refined art was not mine, and to me
the loveliness of the Sinaïa summer dwelling was unsurpassed. Even now,
when I can judge of all its defects, I cannot dwell upon the sweetness
of the spot and the spell it threw upon my mind without feeling again
the thrill of pleasure and gladness with which I traversed its rooms
and gazed upon the rich Rembrandtesque colouring of wood and velvet. On
the windows ballads and fairy tales appear in the deep purple and azure
of stained glass; near by a high waterspout rises and falls, whose voice
is associated with so many emotions and dreams that it seems to sing its
answering song to me. The Queen loved her mountain home, and lightly
paced its crimson-carpeted corridors, lit up here and there with the
twinkle of a golden star on wall or ceiling; her white veil trailing
behind her, beautiful and serene, she would talk in gay tones of the
latest wish of her poet’s or her Queen’s soul.
At the age when youth leads us to the brink of every desire, at the age
of ardent labour and gentle idleness, at the age when every event sinks
into the depths of our being, I became the Queen’s lady-in-waiting and
companion chosen from amongst a large number, and beloved from that hour
as if I had never been beloved before. This implied almost complete
separation from my mother and family, to whom I was fervently attached,
yet I scarcely wept, though I saw them weep, for the Queen’s society,
the Queen’s words, the Queen’s smiles meant all to me. Numberless are
the entertainments, numberless the ties, the aims I have willingly given
up for her, and never have I grudged the moments snatched from what
others thought my duty; I have regretted nothing, for to see and hear
her, to have taken an active part in the activity of such a life, to
this day forms the pride of my existence.
Many have loved the Queen--some for mere joy in receiving favours from a
queen, some for her clear intelligence, her kindness, her gaiety. I
loved her and love her still for the many hours I have spent listening
to the outpourings of her spirit, watching her daring mind as it soared
from one summit to another, borne on the wings of an imagination vivid
and varied as the hues of a gigantic rainbow. At that time she led an
existence which literally overflowed with activity and of which she lost
not a second: and her splendid health allowed her to indulge in an
exuberant extravagance of labour.
“But your Majesty is an intellectual ogre,” said the great German
sculptor Begag one day to the Queen, and in those few words he expressed
the perpetual cravings for art and emotion which devour the Queen.
At Sinaïa the quantity of work, and especially of writing, she would
achieve far surpassed what even the keenest amongst us could attain to.
Many a time have I found her, at eight in the morning, seated in her
dressing-room before a bureau covered with a huge heap of sheets whereon
her bold writing had traced close lines, the lamp she had failed to
extinguish at sunrise still burning by her side. Near the manuscript
twenty letters would lie filling the grey envelopes on which, disdainful
of royal crown or arms, the simple words “Carmen Sylva” were engraved in
glossy black letters. White and slim in the folds of her snowy garments
the Queen would rise, pass her hand across her brow, as if to chase
away the visions that had arisen there, and with a quick, impatient
gesture, open the double doors that led to the balcony, letting in the
fresh morning breeze, laden with sunshine and pine-wood fragrance. Wide
awake to her duties as a sovereign, she would eagerly plunge her hands
into thick masses of paper newly strewn on the sofa--requests,
entreaties, desires, passionate demands for help, pity, or favour--that
like a flood mounted each morning from the bosom of the nation to the
heart of the august lady who was its ruler’s spouse. With a look of
scrutiny and unwavering concern she would examine and enter into all the
details of the different matters presented for her decision.
“What did the two women you received yesterday afternoon want from me?
Have you been able to discover why one of my ladies looked depressed
while we were having tea, and did you inquire whether the medicine I had
prepared myself and sent to the second footman, who seemed so fagged,
has done him any good? And the porter’s little boy--does he still
suffer? Here is a book with large pictures and nice fairy tales for
him--wait, I will write my name upon it--let him know it comes from
_Mama Regina_--Mother Queenie.... I should just love to play one or two
of Bach’s preludes now, and even to sing a little, but we have so much
work here, and it must be attended to. See ... what does this poor
prisoner require? Liberty, a breath of fresh air, I suppose. Oh! to
think that there are captives on such a day as this, when we drink so
freely of the balmy air!... And this--this is from a widow--so wretched,
so poor--and she has five children--they are actually starving--five
children!”
A sigh, and the Queen turns her head away. I read her thoughts: “Five
children and poverty, and I, who possess palaces and millions, had only
one little child, and it was taken away from me.”
But the saddening reflection is checked, the burning desire crushed, and
the Queen toils through the morning’s work with earnest care. Then
suddenly she rises and steps across the compartment and comes back
again--almost the only morning exercise in which she indulges. And while
thus going to and fro, she stops from time to time, urged by her
artist’s instinct to move here a fold in the drapery, there a pillow on
the arm-chair, or a picture in a bad light, with the result that every
day her apartment wears a different aspect though the furniture remains
the same.
A tray laden with grapes and figs lies on the corner of a massive
_bahut_. The Queen would sometimes pull one or two out of the crimson or
golden bunches and ask: “Don’t you want some? They taste so fresh and
are quite ripe.” Then she returns to her literary pursuits, in which the
thought of making Roumanian folk-lore and Roumanian valour known all
over the world is uppermost.
“I am about to compose a ballad, and think I have caught a beautiful
idea.... A young girl embroiders a red sash for her betrothed, who has
gone to the war. The sash must be so red that nothing in nature can be
redder than it. So she takes the juice of all the red fruits, and the
colour of the flames, willingly yielded up to her. At night an old woman
comes and offers her a liquid as red as the flame and as the juice of
fruit. She drinks it, but lo! at that very hour her betrothed is killed.
The old woman was none other than grim Death, and it was the life-blood
of the brave soldier she gave. But what shall I call the young girl?
Dimistra, or Stana, rather. I cannot find quite the right name for her.
Do search in an almanac, or in Alexander’s legends....”
“Pardon, Madam, but your Majesty will be late. It is almost one.” These
words are demurely said by the Queen’s first maid, as the worthy dame
lifts up the heavy curtains separating the boudoir from the bed-room.
“Nearly one, and we have such a lot of people to lunch! This is
distressing. Run and dress, little girl, and tell all the others to
dress quickly, as I shall myself”; and the Queen disappears in haste.
Through the wide corridors there is a rush and a scurrying, and we do
not stop to breathe till we reach our chambers. Without a second’s
hesitation our maids dash forward, undress and dress us again in the
space of a few minutes. They do their office so nimbly that the
intricacies of Roumanian costumes are speedily vanquished, and we are
amazed to find ourselves fully dressed before the mirrors in the
brilliant garb of village maidens, with spangled skirts and blue
necklaces, while many-coloured flowers dance in our tresses.