King and the Queen enter, the Queen dressed in the rich costume of a
rustic matron, but on her lithe form the vestments took on an appearance
of Byzantine pageantry, and she looked more like an Empress than a
wealthy Roumanian dame. No one would guess that her day’s task was not
begun at that moment, nor could she have seemed more animated, more
interested in the conversation of her neighbours at table, had she,
instead of being awake with the lark, but just finished her toilet and
commenced the irksome duties of hostess and Queen.
Two hours later, dressed in a short mountain costume of dark green
velvet, she is scouring the pine-clad heights around the castle, running
along the steep paths with step so light that it sometimes proved
difficult to follow her. She would wander along the deep arcades of fir
and hazel-trees, try to run as fast as the torrent, and taunt its
laughing waters; then, when her forces were well-nigh spent, she would
sit down on a well and gather us around her. Then she would open wide
the portals of her soul, and speak of life and of all the people she had
known and loved. Once I remember she told us about her first meeting
with the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, who afterwards became her close
friend.
“I was newly married and very shy. We went to pay a visit to the Emperor
at Buda Pesth, in the old castle he inhabits when in his Hungarian
capital. I was feeling quite miserable at the prospect of meeting the
lovely, brilliant Empress, and I dared not lift up my eyes when her
husband took me to her. When at last I did look, I discovered that the
beautiful lustrous eyes were gazing into mine with an expression of
timidity and distress equal to my own, and we smiled on guessing our
common plight, and at once fell into easy talk. I liked her strange
words and her strange ways, and she came to see me here. Just imagine,
when she arrived at the station and saw the crowd that was waiting for
her, she would not alight from the train! She hated fuss, and the King
had to insist. Then when she saw our little horses--you know the dear
yellow creatures that look exactly like the palfreys of Odin and
Thor--she exclaimed:
“‘I’ll go on foot. I am afraid to go with those horses; I am afraid of
driving in a carriage.’
“‘But the castle is a long way off.’ ...
“‘It does not matter.’
“I smiled to see this brave horse-woman terrified of my sturdy ponies,
but on foot we had to go, followed by all the people, and feeling quite
dismayed at giving our Imperial visitor such a welcome. Yet she liked it
better than she would have done a gorgeous train.”
After the strolls in the mountain forests we would return to the
castle, and then the Queen would assemble us in the music-hall, a lofty
chamber, solemn and peaceful as a cathedral, where she read verse or
prose aloud to us, and made the organ thrill beneath her fingers. Her
ladies in dazzling attire would sit in an erect yet dreamy position on
the high wooden chairs, listening till the rich sounds entered their
hearts and made them images of fervour and rapt attention.
“To-day I will have nothing to do with all the others; to-day I belong
to Beethoven,” she would say. “Can you understand his remaining so open
to human passions when he was so near to God?” Then after Beethoven had
given us the keenest pangs of his genius, Carmen Sylva would take up a
book, and in her mellow, harmonious tones let stanza after stanza drop
on our delighted ears. And the evenings of these glorious days were calm
and sweet. They brought us moments Carmen Sylva consecrated specially to
each of us in turn. She encouraged us to speak of what was nearest to
us, our homes, our family affairs, our hopes and difficulties; she
guided and counselled us; she drew us out so that each in turn could
have sworn that the Queen had been peculiarly touched by her
conversation.
Court life and society have such an established reputation for scandal
and intrigue that they seem beyond redemption, and this much I must
admit, that in Carmen Sylva’s _entourage_ falseness, backbiting and
ill-will are ever at work and ever finding a new victim. Carmen Sylva
is perfectly aware of everything that takes place around her; she is
awake to the slightest manifestation of spite amongst her companions,
but she holds her head high above the abyss whence the angry murmurs
arise, and by dint of appearing to ignore the presence of evil, she
succeeds in destroying its near effects. She is by no means naturally of
a forgiving disposition, but her reason and the rectitude of her heart
have taught her that a Queen cannot exhibit rancour without descending
to the same level as those who have merited her anger. She has achieved
a victory over herself in never punishing an offence inflicted by
jealousy amongst those she loves, but she tries hard to enlighten the
weakened conscience as to its failure and to punish the guilty only by
showing them how disgraceful are their faults. In acting thus, Carmen
Sylva seems to indicate that she has to deal only with refined natures
and high characters merely a little spoilt by pride or envy. This, alas!
is not always the case.
Accustomed to find her own emotions in the pure domain of spirituality,
the Queen imagines that in inflicting spiritual punishments or granting
spiritual rewards she has done her best towards ensuring justice. I have
often been the mute and amused spectator of such deeds as have proved
the grandeur of her nature but sorely disappointed those who expected
some material recompense. In the same manner she would act when
displeased. One time a young girl amongst the maids of honour had won
from her Royal mistress, who had been almost a mother to her, marks of
disapproval, and I had often noticed how worried the Queen felt by the
conduct of the unruly damsel. She did not scold but looked grieved,
though this did not suffice to keep the culprit away from the forbidden
ground.
“Oh, I am going to punish her--I have found such a punishment for her. I
am going to be a wicked, wicked Queen.” These words, though said in
mellow tones, made me tremble, as I had never heard her speak thus,
moreover, her Majesty went about with such a mysterious air that I more
than once begged her to spare my young companion, but she only went on
saying tenaciously to the tune of a nigger song: “A wicked Queen, a
wicked revengeful Queen.” My curiosity and my anguish increased. I could
not discover what the terrible vengeance was to be or when the dreadful
day prophesied by the “wicked Queen” would come.
And when it did come, oh, shall I ever forget the humiliation of that
hour! “Here is my vengeance,” said the Queen, and she raised in her
uplifted hands a large sheet of paper. “A letter,” I thought to myself,
“a dismissal, cruel indeed, and harsh,” and tears rushed to my eyes as I
thought of the rash girl, a lonely orphan, who would be torn from luxury
and affection, and sent out again into the dreary world. I waited in
dumb silence.
“I have been sitting up for twelve nights to get it ready sooner and
make it more beautiful. Look.” And she placed the large paper on my
knee. It was an immense piece of parchment on which she had daintily
painted miniature pictures representing scenes from the New Testament:
these formed a frame round the text written in golden letters.
“Oh how she will feel the scourge and bitterness of my wrath,” said the
Queen, “and how she will repent when she finds out that while she was
giving me such dire trouble I was working for her, I was toiling for the
benefit of her soul. This will prove her greatest treasure on earth. It
is the Sermon on the Mount, the Divine lesson preached by our Saviour
himself. But why do you kneel? Yes, the pictures are small, you are
short-sighted.”
“Very short-sighted, Madam, and I must see every one of them,” and I
went on looking at the beautiful painting and the gilded text. The Queen
little guessed that I was kneeling before her own beautiful soul that
now stood revealed in all its splendour before me.
Carmen Sylva, who sometimes laughingly calls herself “Donna Quixota,”
takes a real pleasure in humiliating her enemies by the generosity of
her forgiveness. Thus she says: “I am not as good as I appear, I assure
you. I am exactly like the Pope’s mule in that charming little tale of
Alphonse Daudet. The mule only kicked her foe seven years after he had
inflicted bitter injury upon her. I kick--after seven years’ silence and
sometimes more--but I never kick vigorously. My favourite vengeance is
a very harmless one. I force people to act as they speak, to live up to
their principles; I take every word they say for a sincere expression of
their desires. This means some cruelty on my part, because in our
presence they don not only their best dresses but their most high-flown
sentiments. They give vent to a lot of noble aspirations which are
carefully put aside in everyday life. The most frivolous young dame
pretends she loves solitude, books, and the company of her husband and
children; the ambitious tell me that they simply desire modest incomes
and a place of quiet retirement; so whenever I am able to do so I give
the giddy young woman an excellent opportunity of looking carefully
after her home and spending studious afternoons; I force the ambitious
man to content himself with the joys of the existence whose charms he
described to me.” But the Queen makes a great mistake when she declares
herself capable of hurting a human soul; this I have never seen her do
either by act or word, and she is absolutely good, good to such an
extent that those who feel really attached to her are often wont to be
more indignant with her equanimity than moved by her unspeakable
kindness.
The Queen’s constancy to her friends is absolute, no one can undo her
attachments, and she remains faithful to those she loves even when she
has not seen them for years. One of the great secrets of her deep
affection for me--an affection which the Queen has been pleased to call
one of the most fervent in her life--lies in the comprehension I gained
of her peculiar habits of mind. From the very beginning of our
intercourse I understood that the only means of keeping up the warm
interest she showed me lay in the trouble I took to put aside all
personal animosities and never to mention any one in her presence as
having done a bad deed or as being distasteful to me. She has never been
able to suspect me of a pang of jealousy or fit of ill-will towards my
equals or my inferiors. For this effort to resemble her in some way, for
the perpetual strain imposed on my feelings and aversions, I have been
thanked and rewarded a thousand times by the acknowledgment and
appreciation of the Queen.
“I bless you, my child,” she said one day, and she crossed her slim
fingers upon my head, “I bless you because you have never cut off a
single ray of warmth and light that I have poured out of my heart.” And
of this I may truly declare that I am proud, for have I not respected in
the Queen’s soul all the errors of her beautiful altruism, all her
ideals, however dangerous I may have found them, however certain I might
have felt that they were being imposed upon her by impostors and
mischief-doers?
In every life there is generally one predominating misfortune, one
ruling pain in which all other misfortunes take their source, and by
which every intervening pain is fed. The tragedy of Carmen Sylva’s life
dates from a day when the winter dawn was about to gild the roof of the
Royal Palace in Bucharest. The oppressed city was not sleeping, it felt
an infant’s heavy breathing lie on its bosom and the breasts of
thousands heaved with fervent prayer. All the land was praying that the
Royal child might be saved, and the parents spared the awful anguish of
losing her. And in the room where the first glimmerings of the March
morning penetrated, by the bedside of her darling the mother knelt and
whispered: “My God, my God, can’st Thou not spare me the bitterness of
this bitter hour? I know that this is Passion Thursday; all over this
land, with the prayers that go up to Thee for my child’s life, we pray
Thee to remember that on this very day Thou suffered for us and wept as
I now weep, and wiped the drops from Thy brow as I now wipe them from
mine. Wilt Thou take her from me? Must I lose her? My God, my God, Thy
will be done, and yet, and yet it seems too hard.”
And as the mother spoke, the dying child murmured softly: “It is _so_
sweet, so beautiful, Mother dear. I see a garden and all the gardens I
have loved, all the gardens of this darling land, I see them.... I am so
thirsty--bring me water from Sinaïa--show me the tapering towers of the
Cotrocius Church--they are like spiders.... I am so happy. O my darling,
darling Roumania!” And the child went forth into the gardens that she
saw and drank from the source of Eternal Life the cool mountain water
for which she thirsted.
The red tinged hour of dawn had now spread its glory over the bewildered
city. The day was indeed a Passion Thursday, and the nation who were
mourning for their God mourned also over the little child they had loved
so well that no other Royal child will ever reign in our people’s heart
with the same supremacy as did “Little Princess Marie.” The small
vivacious body, whose lightness and glee had been in the eyes of all
like a sun-ray dancing on the water; the pure angelic head where masses
of golden hair rippled; the fragile dwelling of a marvellous bright
soul, were laid to rest on the summit of a hill within Cotrocius Park
where she had loved to play. There in the bosom of the earth, whose
slumber is ever lulled by the distant murmur of the town, a chapel was
built wherein a marble statue reposes showing the rounded limbs, the
small feet whose steps wandered such a short time in the gardens of
life, the eager little hands which gathered so few flowers among the
flowers of earth. On the grassy mound outside a white cross throws its
straight shadow, and on the shadow of that cross Queen Elizabeth’s heart
is crucified. Like the green mould cut in twain by that shadow, her
heart is cut in twain by the form of that simple cross. Her bosom bears
the load of that stone, and the little mound of Roumanian soil where her
child is buried rises high before her eyes, higher than the highest
mountain, till it has hidden all the future from her view.
But, armed with desire to be stronger than the strength of her fate,
the Queen has lived on and done her duty as if from that hour all her
hours had not been void of hope and light; as if the smiles fond mothers
lavish upon their children and receive from them again did not sink as
deeply into her wounded flesh as the form of that heavy marble cross
which lies so cold upon her life. She to whom such a portion of human
bliss has been denied, has at least tasted all the savour of heroism and
mute despair. Sometimes it seems to have made her seek the means of
suffering more and more.
“Oh, the first children’s ball at which I presided after her
death--scarcely one year after! Oh, the music of that ball--it whirls
yet in my memory. The pattering of the little feet struck on my heart
like a rain of fire. And I held my arms open and the little children
came to me and nestled in my bosom. Each of them reminded me of her--one
had her way of kissing, another almost spoke with the accents of her
voice; yet in each of them I missed her grace, the smile, the vivacity
which were her own. Oh, I was meant to be a mother! I was created to
create a human creature, to sustain and love a human soul derived from
my own soul. I see nothing in nature or in living beings that is not
destined to be continued and to love itself in another being born of its
own essence.”
We often spent hours, the Queen and I, at the top of the small hill
where the chapel rises, above the gardens open to the last dying blasts
of winter winds or the first warm breezes of summer. On such occasions
the Queen would silently point out a bench to me, whilst she stayed
beside the mound cut in twain by the shadow of the cross. The crows
shrieked madly around us, the din of the city mounted like the murmur of
a lazy sea, and the fitful clamour of bugles and trumpets rose lightly
on the air. In the circular path that winds thrice round the tomb the
Queen walked slowly, looking into her own heart and unravelling the
Past.
“To think that I have been that happy woman who was a mother while she
lived. To think I was almost the same as I am to-day, and I walked
towards her with these same feet that now carry me to her tomb, that I
held her little neck with these same hands that now stoop towards the
dust where she reposes. To think I was that woman I see in the Past who
held her little girl on her knees and showed her the sun and the moon
and the carriages in the streets--I was that woman, and I did not scream
aloud with joy!... Oh! I know she is not here--she is where mystery
abides and supreme bliss, and yet she is here with me, she is in me as
much as in the days when I bore the happy weight of her unknown
sweetness.”
Apart from the sadness ever reigning in her soul, Carmen Sylva is
cheerful, while the force and resistance of her nerves is astonishing.
She brings to bear upon everything that comes in her way a most
astounding amount of interest, pity or enthusiasm. In a word, she
represents the most constant human vibration that womanhood may boast
of. Her powers of absorption and production are equal. When she listens
to music it is wonderful to note on her face the sensations roused in
her soul by the different instruments till she herself becomes a part of
the harmony expressed.
Most of the Queen’s misfortunes have been due to her ignorance or
disdain of the rude realities of life; yet whenever she has had to face
them, she proved a match for circumstances whether dreadful or pleasant.
During the 1877-78 Russo-Roumano-Turkish war she proved an admirable
sister of charity, tending the wounded with the same care as the
professional nurses who aided the surgeons in the dreary hospital wards.
One bright autumn afternoon, as we were sitting round the Queen while
she painted some Biblical scene in a small prayer-book, she was brought
to talk of the days when she first began her apprenticeship as a nurse.
“I was at home anxiously waiting for news from Plevna. All at once some
one rushed in and said: ‘They have arrived!’ ‘Who? New soldiers going to
Plevna?’ ‘No, the wounded, those who have been cured and those who must
die.’
“I immediately understood that my help would be necessary. In a few
moments I had caused all the wine that was in our cellars to be taken to
them, and had my own sleigh piled with counterpanes and pillows and all
I could secure in the way of wrappings. It was a bitter afternoon. The
snow fell in large heavy flakes as our horses travelled swiftly, and the
blast cut our eager, trembling faces.... Oh, the frightful scene that we
saw when we reached the hospital! All the yard was full of carts whence
the poor sufferers were being borne up-stairs--some of them lay on the
steps and moaned--blood was spreading over the newly fallen snow.
Surgeons and nurses went from one group to the other. I followed
them.... A little later we had succeeded in establishing a long row of
beds in the upper hall, and here I worked as hard as the others, so that
the wounded soon considered me as a nurse. Rank and etiquette were quite
forgotten. Very often my dress was stained with the same blood that had
been so freely spilt on the Bulgarian plains, and my shoulders were
often sore from uplifting the heads of the dying. O poor, poor children!
How many of them I saw depart; and while I gently crossed their hands on
their bosoms I would think of the anxious mothers and wives awaiting
them in the snowy villages afar off and with weary fingers counting the
days of that woeful winter which took so many heroes away.”
While the Queen was speaking, the glorious beauty of that autumn
afternoon had reached its climax. All around, as far as the eye could
see, light danced upon the sunlit branches and into the dazzling
mountain wells. A strong perfume came from the earth and the trees, and
the force of the Roumanian soil was in that perfume, and while the
Queen spoke it seemed to answer:
“Blessed be thou, O Queen! Can my children ever forget those days when
thou wert a mother to them? Wilt thou ever cease to be thy people’s
Mother, a Queen beloved amongst all other Queens? Blessed be thou for
the red drops that decked the snow-white purity of thy dress, blessed be
thou for the sacred bruises the heads of the dying pressed into thy
gentle bosom. What Queen of the Past or what future Queen will be
through history alike unto thee, O blessed Queen!”
[Illustration:
_Photo by Downey_
KING EDWARD VII. AND QUEEN ALEXANDRA]
KING EDWARD VII
The arrival of a Royal visitor at a foreign Court is always an event of
much importance, especially if, as in the case of King Edward’s visit to
Roumania a few years ago, the illustrious guest be unknown to the august
couple who are to entertain him during several days. Moreover, the
Prince of Wales, as he then was, had chosen a season when the presence
of foreign Sovereigns at our Court was unusual, and the problem was a
hard one--how to make him spend his time pleasantly in the summer
residence of the King? Of course, the usual official programme would
have to be adhered to, but our Queen felt strongly that the Prince of
Wales should be received with some novel form of entertainment, so that
he might carry back with him a pleasing recollection of a country whose
situation and destinies had hitherto been so widely different from those
of all other European nations. Besides, her Majesty was always anxious
to spare her fellow sufferers--that is to say Royal Princes and
Princesses--the monotonous process of seeing the same festivities
everywhere, and thus gathering from their travels little genuine
delight.
On the other hand, we did not know much about the Prince of Wales,
although we had read frequent descriptions of his tastes and habits. But
as we were all aware that a Prince’s character is familiar only to those
who approach him daily, and that there is little reliable information to
be gathered on this subject from newspapers and reports, the heir to the
English throne was quite a stranger to us. No one could tell what kind
of entertainment would be most agreeable to one who had seen half the
world, who had visited India, and spent several months every spring in
the French capital. When asked to give my opinion of the arrangements
made for the Prince’s visit I was much perplexed, and I was reduced to
declaring that to my mind nothing seemed more natural or more courteous
than to pursue the usual course--that is, to offer his Royal Highness as
many excellent dinners and gorgeous luncheons as he could swallow during
his short stay, show him a fair number of military pageants, take him
for as many walks and drives through the beautiful forest as he would
care to undertake, and then close the whole series of receptions by a
big party. Moreover, the weather was sultry, though October was at hand.
The Prince would certainly feel grateful for not being put out by new
arrangements, and would no doubt prefer the familiar, though monotonous,
formalities with which he had been acquainted since his childhood.
The Queen looked daggers at me as I wound up by saying that we should
probably discover also that we were all incapable of inventing anything
new or attractive enough in the way of theatricals, dances, or picnics.
Her Majesty immediately arose and declared that, if the heat had
deprived us of all our initiative and courage, she herself was not
disposed to fall asleep or to allow the Prince to find his sojourn in
Roumania dull and tedious. In vain I argued; in vain I pointed out that
the date of the Royal visit came close upon the day when the Queen was
due at the manœuvres, where the King specially desired her presence; in
vain did I try to prove how delighted the Prince would be by the
surrounding landscape, by the wildness of the rocks and mountains under
their floods of golden sunshine. The Queen’s face wore a look of
determination whose meaning I could guess.