discover others more precious in her own soul. I do not want her when
she is grown up to pounce with avidity upon all the beautiful objects of
luxury she can get so easily. I want her then to be free from what other
girls dream about, because her dreaming will be of more importance than
the common dreams of girlhood.... Then Wilhelmina will love her duty
because the austere side of life will prove more attractive to one who
has learned to grasp at the real meaning of human efforts and aims.”
Notwithstanding all her mother’s efforts, the child’s strong will still
manifested itself on many occasions; the little Princess could not lose
entire consciousness of her rank and her rights. Any attempt to veil her
personality under the disguise of an incognita enraged her, and she
thought this habit, current with sovereigns, to be a kind of
humiliation, and a dreadful blow given to truth. Wilhelmina hates
falsehood in words as well as in action. The necessity or convenience of
travelling incognita she failed to comprehend.
At nine years of age, during her sojourn with her maternal aunt, the old
Princess of Wied, Queen Emma sent the young heiress to the Hollander
throne on a few hours’ trip with a little cousin and their respective
governesses. Deeming official pomp inadvisable in the circumstances, she
told the ladies who accompanied the children to travel exactly like all
the tourists they should meet on the banks of the Rhine, and not to
betray the real quality of the small personages under their charge. “If
the people were to know my daughter,” said the Queen, “your journey
would be spoiled, and, besides, we should have to order special trains,
lose a good deal of time, and you could not be back before late evening.
So be very careful, and do not allow Wilhelmina to enter into
conversation with any one--she would immediately say who she is....”
The ladies promised to obey, and at the beginning of the excursion all
went off very well. The little Princesses enjoyed themselves immensely,
and as the party numbered several persons they contrived to have a
carriage to themselves till they reached a small station where they had
to alight and wait for another train. This incident, and the necessity
of awaiting on the platform the arrival of a train, which was completely
new to her, puzzled Wilhelmina immensely. Some suspicion of the truth
began to dawn upon her. She had never in her life left a carriage before
arriving at her destination, where she would be greeted by hundreds of
eager faces. But now----! She poured angry questions on the ladies who
accompanied them. “What is amiss, is there an accident?” Her
_gouvernante_ felt embarrassed. “No, Princess--only the train is rather
late, I am sorry to say....” But she had not time to finish her
sentence. Quick as lightning Wilhelmina had darted to the spot where the
station-master stood, and addressing him in sharp, peremptory tones,
said: “I am afraid, sir, that you are negligent in your service. I am
much displeased, and I am not accustomed to wait. If it is thus when I
am one of the travellers on this line, how much must others have to
complain! Please take care that this does not happen another time.”
The station-master stood aghast. There was something so peremptory, so
dignified, so self-confident in the tones of the little girl that he
instinctively took off his hat. “I am the Princess of the Netherlands,
sole heiress to the throne,” added the child with a proud toss of her
fair head. “But I forgive you,” and she gave the bewildered man her hand
to kiss, while the ladies who had from afar watched the scene, rushed
up, though feeling themselves unable to thwart her.
When the train dashed into the station, Wilhelmina with royal demeanour
stepped into a carriage, and the incident having been related on all
sides, she was respectfully cheered and saluted by the crowd while she
stood at the window graciously waving her handkerchief to them. The rest
of the journey became a real royal progress. “Do not be angry with me,
mamma,” said Wilhelmina when Queen Emma, hearing all about her
daughter’s rash conduct, was inclined to chide. “You see we must not
cheat those who meet us out of the pleasure they derive from the mere
fact of winning smiles and nods from us. If we cannot do more for them
we can at least bestow our presence upon them. I am sure that
station-master and all the tourists are happy because I spoke to them or
saluted them, whereas had I been completely obedient what would they
remember now of the little girl who took a trip on the banks of the
Rhine!...”
The death of the King proved a great blow to the maturing nature of his
much loved little girl. My father, who had the honour of representing
his Sovereign at the royal funeral, often recalls how when paying his
official visit to kind and gentle Queen Emma, he was moved by the
woe-stricken face and red eyes of the new little Queen as he met her
young Majesty in one of the halls of the Palace.
Queen Emma was then in the prime of womanhood and honoured by all for
her wisdom and graciousness. To me her features are familiar, as well as
her heart, and I have always heard her praised in our home, because we
learned to know, during our parents’ stay in Holland, all the beautiful
qualities of a firm, straightforward nature. While her mother was daily
learning to unravel the mysteries of a statesman’s duty, little Queen
Wilhelmina became more and more absorbed in her lessons; she worked hard
from dawn to twilight, and as she already spoke French, German, and
English fluently, she was taught the history of all these nations in
their own language. The philosophy of history was the branch of study
that Queen Emma was most anxious her young daughter should know, and
they often discussed together the thrilling incidents and characters
whose appearance mid the pages of her school-room books made the
Princess’s cheeks glow and her eyes shine. On these occasions Queen Emma
always found means to illustrate the past with examples from the
present, and then very subtly she would initiate the future Sovereign of
the realm into the secrets of modern diplomacy and the laws and
constitution of her country. In this special study Queen Wilhelmina also
had many professors, who at first felt quite embarrassed in talking of
such serious matters to a mere child; but they soon understood that the
little girl had been reared in an atmosphere of serious thought and
labour, and noted how rapidly she followed them through the intricacies
of their science.
Her subjects were well aware that their beloved little Queen was toiling
hard in order to be able to rule them one day with care and ability, but
it always brought them a joyful relief to see her sauntering gaily
through the streets of The Hague by the side of her English governess,
Miss Winter. When Miss Winter first took her pupil under her guidance
(Miss Winter enjoyed Queen Emma’s full confidence, justified it, and to
this day is treated like a friend by both the Queens) she had great
hesitation as to the title by which she should call her Royal pupil. A
too ceremonious title was completely out of the question, and on the
other side Miss Winter declared she might feel awkward or discourteous
were she obliged to call the Queen by her name. Wilhelmina herself found
a solution to the problem. “Call me _darling_,” said she, “and I hope
to deserve the name.”
Every one knows how proudly the Hollander nation watched the childish
Queen bloom into charming girlhood till that day, blessed among all
days, when she took the solemn oath to be a good Queen to them. “I have
prayed two nights and two days before my coronation,” said Wilhelmina,
“I hope God will help me. I have not asked from Heaven anything for
myself. I have asked the Almighty to send happiness to my people through
me.” In such a chastened spirit she approached the holy table and
stretched out her little hand across the big Bible, with a clear,
distinct voice pronouncing the sacred vow.
Court etiquette is very severe in Holland, and Queen Wilhelmina desires
that it should be maintained thus. She holds that the democratisation of
monarchy only can prevail when sovereigns open their souls to new ideas
and not their Courts to new customs, and though she leads a very quiet
private life, pomp and ceremony are never forgotten when the moment
comes for her to appear in public. She often says that to respect
traditions is an indirect but true manner of honouring the dead who have
created them through centuries of toil and labour.
“I wish I could make a love-marriage,” said she to her mother when
approached on this subject, to which her own thoughts had never before
reverted. “Although I have already made a love-match--I mean my deep
union with my people--I should like to marry a young Prince, like the
princes of ballads and fairy tales.”
“Life is neither a ballad nor a fairy tale,” answered her mother. “But
you will be allowed to choose, and if your choice is a good one----”
Prince Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin is a distant relative of the young
Queen’s relatives, and the two had often met. Wilhelmina’s heart,
perhaps unwittingly, already clung to his image, and it was his name she
pronounced first when asked to speak out her desires. As in Queen
Victoria’s case, Wilhelmina had to act in an open and independent way,
but she knew well the nation would approve her decision, because they
had placed all their confidence in her. So the news of her betrothal was
hailed in every Hollander home as if the daughter of each family had
become a bride, and every one talked of her happy look when she went to
meet her future husband on the day of his arrival and of his tender gaze
as it settled on the bashful young Queen. “May her hearth be a happy
one, may little children soon gather round her knees.” This was the wish
uttered by every tongue on the brilliant wedding-day when the gentle
wife took the place of the radiant Queen.
Queen Wilhelmina is middle-sized, and very graceful in gait and
demeanour, though somewhat inclined to grow stout. Hers is a very
childish face, where the big, deep blue eyes alone denote serious
reflection and inward strength. Her conversational powers are excellent,
though she cannot be called a great talker. But she knows how to draw
people out, and without questioning she has the knack of learning all
she wants to know. One sees that she struggles hard to keep her dignity
above the genuineness of her nature and to prevent her young soul from
over-leaping the limits assigned to the amiability of a Queen. She is
well read in English literature and loves America, as she feels for that
mighty Republic a sentiment of curiosity mingled with admiration.
“American girls are so pretty and they look so feminine that, were
ultra-femininism to invade all the world, the grace and power of our sex
would be saved by them.”
She was quite charmed with Kruger because he did not look awed by the
mere fact of approaching a Queen, as most people generally are, thus
making the poor Queens and Princesses much more uncomfortable than their
interviewers. She likes to receive as many people as possible and then
to recount their conversation and describe their looks to her husband,
asking him to do the same thing in his turn, as they generally give
their audiences apart, then meet and take tea together before going out
for a daily drive in state. Queen Wilhelmina is not in any degree
sentimental; her every word betrays perfect insight into events and
facts as they are, and her most strenuous efforts are made towards
acquiring a hold over the imaginative qualities which so often become
defects in women compelled to act a leading part in politics and
society.
She prefers nature to art and loves a gorgeous landscape much better
than the rare and valuable pictures she possesses, on account of which
the Royal Palace in The Hague might well be called a museum. In that
palace she suffers nothing to be changed; even when a chair is moved
from its right place her eye is afflicted, whereas in her own apartment
much apparent disorder seems to reign, a disorder which, as Boileau
says, is “un effet de l’art.” Her love for her native country is so
strong that when travelling in Italy, and later in the South of France,
she would never fully allow that the scenery she saw was beautiful
unless she had said beforehand: “Excepting Holland, this place is one of
the prettiest I have gazed upon,” and when away from home she pined
after The Hague, Scheveningen, and Het Loo.
In every way does Queen Wilhelmina deserve the love of her devoted
subjects. She is like the flower of their soil and their history, like
the very emblem of a loyal and valiant country; a gentle face wherein
good spirits and excellent health combine to make a sweet physiognomy;
she is a Queen, strong yet gentle, as all reigning Queens should be. The
distance is immense which separates a Queen Consort from a Queen in her
own right: Wilhelmina is the real type of what a reigning Queen should
be. She is in many points very different from Queen Victoria, nor does
she dream of taking the great Queen as a model, because, as a
strong-willed Princess, she loves to tread a path all her own, and she
cares only to represent her own race and her own people.
She is not--and now I must again refer to Rostand--“a lily reigning over
tulips:” she is herself a tulip, stalwart and splendid, whose high stem
and bright colours shed their glory over the whole realm.
THE SOVEREIGNS OF SERVIA
In the awful light of the most appalling drama, not excepting that of
Meyerling, which has been played in Royal houses for more than two
centuries, the hitherto insignificant personalities of King Alexander of
Servia and his Consort Queen Draga make instant appeal to our
imagination. The lurid glow of disaster and blood now illumines their
memory, and in time, far from sinking into the oblivion which might have
enshrouded them had they died a natural and peaceful death, they will
join those victims of fatality whose stories are the most thrilling in
history or romance. They will sit side by side with Macbeth at the
haunted supper-table, with Hamlet on the terrace of Elsinore, with
Richard III. in the supreme battlefield, with Œdipus, Jocasta, and
Hecuba, on the heights of a terrible destiny--so terrible that all their
faults will be obliterated by the greatness of their sufferings and the
horror of their last moments upon earth.
Belgrade is situated in one of the most picturesque landscapes in the
world. The Danube and the Save join below the town, which, by people
accustomed to our Occidental cities, might easily be called a village,
although here and there large modern houses rise from the midst of huts
and modest buildings. Dwellings whose strange aspect defies every
attempt at description, straggling cottages adorned with low wooden
balconies, line the streets, where dust, dogs, and pigs are more
abundant than passers-by, and seem more masters of the place than any
human creature. Here and there a low-roofed church adorned with rough
and vivid paintings, a large courtyard teeming with poultry, oxen, and
domestic animals, or an upholsterer’s tiny shop, cuts the line of other
buildings. Upholsterers are more numerous in Belgrade than in any other
town--at any rate, they seem here to play a more conspicuous part--and
the striking feature of the work they achieve is shown in the immense
number of coffins exposed to public view. These by no means contribute
to delights of the eye, and it is with a feeling akin to relief that, as
the driver hurries the jostled carriage along the rough pavement in a
glory of silvery dust, one comes upon the sight of trees and grass and
water.
The park of Topschideri, a beautifully wild garden, almost as rich and
wild as the famous Paradon described by Zola, was the witness of a
tragedy which happened in the Obrenovitch family. It was in these woods
that the predecessor of King Milan was murdered. It appears that this
Prince had given great offence to the Servians by his projected
marriage with Catherine Constantinovitch. This lady was his first
cousin, and the Orthodox religion strictly forbids such unions. The
Prince, determined to brave public opinion, took his bride for a drive
among these woods and was there assassinated by a band of conspirators.
They also wounded Catherine Constantinovitch, but not seriously, for she
afterwards recovered and ultimately married a wealthy Servian. She still
resides in Belgrade, and the recent tragic death of King Alexander and
his Queen must have brought vividly to her mind the romantic
circumstances and terrible end of her first betrothal.
Prince Milan, the nephew of the murdered Sovereign, succeeded to the
throne left vacant by the tragic end of an idyll whose circumstances are
still alive in the minds of the Servians and are yet sung by their
poets.
King Milan’s father was an officer in the Roumanian army--a tall,
handsome, swaggering, kind-hearted, and good-natured soul, who was not
very well off, and never dreamt that his son would one day be a King, as
his first cousin, Miloch, was always expected to have an heir. In the
meanwhile Captain Miloch Obrenovitch, a cavalry officer in the Roumanian
army, had married one of the most beautiful women who ever
existed--Mlle. Marie Catargi. Marie Catargi belonged to a good, though
neither illustrious nor very ancient, Roumanian family. She represented
the finest type of Moldavian beauty, and the classical purity of her
features, the wondrous colour and expression of her large green eyes,
the graceful poise of her small head, and the sweetness of her manner,
are still alive in the conversation of such of her surviving
contemporaries as knew her.
It happened that during the earliest years of my childhood I heard King
Milan’s name so often that he became quite a familiar personage with me
long before I met him. We had had the same governess. Our Scotch
instructress, Miss Allen, had, many years before coming to us,
superintended his education in the Roumanian home of his mother and
maternal grandmother. Thus tales of his natural vivacity and boisterous
habits, of his kind and generous heart, were daily related to us, while
our schoolroom walls were covered with portraits of Prince Milan in his
first boy’s dress, of King Milan at the age of eight in top boots, of
King Milan in Servian costume, and, finally, in the uniform of a Servian
general. But Miss Allen had left him at an early age, and he then passed
into the hands of professors. He was quick-witted, handsome, and clever,
but very much spoilt; well aware, besides, that his destiny was not to
be like that of his cousins. One day we were walking in the streets of
Bucharest--Miss Allen and myself. I was then a girl of about thirteen,
in all the bashful glory of dawning teens, and thinking little of the
fact that my governess’s former pupil was then paying a visit to our
country and our King, when the whirl of a long row of carriages, the
patter of hoofs, the glittering array of a cavalry escort attracted our
attention. We were in front of the palace, and, as is usual on such
occasions, a crowd of curious gazers had assembled to see the Royal
guest enter. King Milan’s equipage stopped in front of the flight of
steps, and he seemed about to enter the palace, when all at once he
turned abruptly round, pushed aside the throng of officers gathered near
him, and, making his way towards us, bowed and said, “Are you not Miss
Allen? I am sure you are. I could not mistake your face, even after so
many years. I have never forgotten you and how you took me to Baneaza,
and how I clung to you because they had told me such terrible wolf
stories, and I was so afraid the wolf would come and spring upon me.”
King Milan was tall, robust, broad-shouldered, and as he spoke his young
face flushed, while between the sentences he bit his lips and scarcely
waited for an answer. The white feather of his high military casque
threw a soft shadow on his face--there were fun, good-humour and
happiness in his eyes. This was my first vision of him; and later on,
amid rumours of his dashing career, his imprudent actions, his growing
cruelty and love of money, I could but think of him as I had seen him
that day, doing one of those little acts of spontaneous kindness and
courtesy which cast a lustre on a monarch’s life more surely than other
more brilliant deeds.
The second time I met King Alexander’s father was in Carlsbad, the very
year before his death. So much of the glamour and joy of youth had died
out of his features and bearing that I should never have recognised him
had not my parents, with whom he was well acquainted, and who had often
spoken to me of his charm of manner, pointed out to me the still
stalwart figure as he walked towards us between the trees of the park,
where we were seated, taking our afternoon _café au lait_, as is the
habit in Bohemia. He approached, and, in a quiet, smiling way,
immediately asked to be introduced to me. He began a conversation on
literature and art in which, after some remarks which showed that the
King was a keen connoisseur of books, especially poetry, the talk
quickly turned on more particular topics, on the politics of our
respective countries, and finally on the tedium of the life of a King.
With a short ironical laugh he alluded to all the shams and tricks of
the position, saying: “You cannot imagine how delighted I should feel to
be perfectly free. It has always been my dream to lead an independent
life, and I have enough Roumanian blood in my veins to have even
regretted not being able to live in gay and lively Bucharest, and to
roll through its populous streets at the brisk pace of your excellent
horses. I shall never be rid of the trouble and annoyance which are
brought upon an individual by his connection with a throne, even now
that I have succeeded in getting rid of my position. I shall always be
tied to it because of Sacha--I mean my son, the King.” His voice
softened, and the twinkle in the pleasant eye grew tender. “He is a
clever boy, but as short-sighted mentally as he is in the material
sense--and he is almost blind, you know. He has to use the strongest
glasses you can think of. He is too good--he loves to trust people--he
hates to distrust, which I do not; and in our Servian realm I would not
trust any man when he had once crossed my threshold, even though he were
my best friend. Then Sacha has been brought up in such a singular way;
so spoilt on the one hand, so roughly treated on the other. It was
somewhat hard on him to be deprived first of his mother, then of
myself--_un orphélin artificiel_ (an artificial orphan) I sometimes call
him, poor little one. But the people love him well. They have seen him
grow up under their eyes, they have watched him as he became every day
more like them and less like me. Faugh! What a life would be his if he
knew, as I do, how one is obliged to keep awake for nights together--to
plan, to unravel intrigues!”
For a few seconds King Milan’s good-humoured smile vanished, his eyes
took on a more hawkish expression, and lines of bitterness and strong
decision curved about his mouth. But the smile soon returned and the
talk flowed into another channel.
All that evening I could speak of nothing but the ex-King’s charm and
easy erudition, and again all the evil legends and all the whirl of
gossip and slander which had been set afloat in my presence whenever his
name was mentioned vanished completely. The next day, as I was sitting
in the hotel garden, I noticed the same tall form among the trees, not
far from the bench where I was resting. King Milan, after having sent in
his card to the hotel, took a seat near mine. He did not perceive me,
and remained plunged in reverie--one of those sad moods which often
overtake human creatures when in the company of their own souls. A
creeping sense of depression had apparently fallen upon him. His lax
hand let the thick walking-stick fall unheeded upon the gravel. He had
taken off his broad-brimmed hat, and there was so much sadness gathered
on his forehead that an unconscious emotion of pity struck my heart, and
I sat as still as possible for fear of disturbing the day-dream of that
care-stricken man.
Perhaps at that hour some presentiment, some fear for the future of his
beloved son Sacha, the bereaved young King, at Belgrade, far from father
and mother; perhaps some shadow of his own approaching end had fallen
upon that stalwart being, who had loved enjoyment, revelry, and money so
well.