Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess. Fischer Henry William
it be considered, above all, that a member of the proudest Imperial family in the wide, wide world demonstrates, by inference, the absurdity of King-worship!
Of course, whether or not you'll obey the impassioned appeal of the corner sermonizer, who, espying a number of very décolletée ladies passing by in a carriage, cried out: "Quand vous voyez ces tetons rebondies, qui se montrent avec tant d'impudence, bandez! bandez! bandez! vous – les yeux!" is a matter for you to decide.
Seek not for descriptions of ceremonials and festivities in these pages; only imbeciles among kings are interested in such wearying spectacles, intended to dazzle the multitude. The Czar Paul, who became insane and had his head knocked off by his own officers, appeared upon the scene vacated by his brilliant mother, Catharine the Great, with a valise full of petty regulations, ready drawn up, by which, every day, every hour, every minute, he announced some foolish change, punishment or favor, but I often saw Kaiser Wilhelm and other kings look intensely bored and disgusted when obliged to attend dull and superfluous court or government functions.
But for genuine expressions of the royal self consult Louise. Those who think that royalty shapes its language in accordance with the plural of the personal pronoun, sometimes used in state papers, will be shocked at the "négligé talk" of one royal highness and the "rag-time" expressions of others. Louise, herself, assures us over and over again that she "feels like a dog," a statement no self-respecting publisher's reader would allow to pass, yet I was told by a friend of King Frederick of Denmark that he loved to compare his "all-highest person" to a "mut," and I remember a letter from Victor Emanuel II to his great Minister, Count Cavour, solemnly protesting that he (the King) was "no ass."
When the same Danish ruler, the seventh of his name, was asked why, in thunder, he married a common street walker (the Rasmussen, afterwards created Countess Danner), he cried out with every indication of gusto: "You don't know how deliciously common that girl is."
Frederick's words explain the hostler marriages of several royal women mentioned by Louise, as well as her own and loving family's broulleries of the fish-wife order, repeatedly described in the Diary.
It is safe to say that few $15 flats in all the United States witnessed more outrageous family jars than were fought out in the gilded halls of the Dresden palace between Louise and father-in-law and Louise and husband. Threats of violence are frequent; Prince George promises his daughter-in-law a sound beating at the hands of the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess confesses that she would rather go to bed with a drunken husband, booted and spurred, than risk a sword thrust.
At the coronation of the present Czar, at Moscow, I mistook the Duke of Edinburgh, brother of the late King Edward, for a policeman attached to the British Ambassador, so exceedingly commonplace a person in appearance, speech and manner he seemed; Louise has a telling chapter on the mean looks of royalty, but fails to see the connection between that and royalty's coarseness.
Perhaps it wasn't the "commonness" of Lady Emma Hamilton, child of the slums, impersonator of risqué stage pictures, and mistress of the greatest naval hero of all times, that appealed primarily to Louise's grand-aunt, Queen Caroline of Naples, but the abandon of the beautiful Englishwoman, her reckless exposure of person, her freedom of speech, certainly sealed the friendship between the adventuress and the despotic ruler who deserved the epithet of "bloody" no less than Mary of England.
Royal covetousness is another subject dwelt on by Louise. We learn that in money matters the kings and princes of her acquaintance – and her acquaintance embraces all the monarchs of Europe – are "dirty," that royal girls are given in marriage to the highest bidder, and that poor princes have no more chance to marry a rich princess than a drayman an American multi-millionaire's daughter.
Louise gives us a curious insight into the Pappenheim-Wheeler marriage embroglio, and refers to some noble families that made their money in infamous trades; that the Kaiser adopted the title of one of these unspeakables ("Count of Henneberg") she doesn't seem to know.
We hear of imperial and royal highnesses, living at public expense and for whom honors and lucrative employment are exacted from the people, who at home figure as poor relations, obliged to submit to treatment that a self-respecting "boots" or "omnibus" would resent.
Here we have a royal prince of twenty-four or twenty-five subjected to kicks and cuffs by his uncle, who happens to be king – no indignity either to the slugged or the slugger in that – but when a pretty princess gets a few "Hochs" more than an ugly, mouse-colored majesty, she is all but flayed for "playing to the gallery."
"High-minded" royalty robs widows and despoils orphans; re-introduces into the family obsolete punishments forbidden by law; maintains in the household a despicable spy system! Its respect for womanhood is on a par with a Bushman's; of authors, "lickspittles" only count; literature, unless it kowtows to the "all-highest" person, is the "trade of Jew scribblers."
As to manners, what do you think of kings and princes and grand-dukes who, at ceremonial dinners, pound the table to "show that they are boss"?
Louise tells of an emperor at a foreign court ignoring one of his hostesses absolutely, even refusing to acknowledge her salute by a nod. We hear of expectant royal heirs who engage in wild fandangoes of merriment while their father, brother or cousin lies dying.
"Personal matter," you say? "A typical case," I retort.
"Ask the Duc du Maine to wait till I am dead before he indulges in the full extent of his joy," said the dying Louis XIV, when the De Profundis in the death chamber was suddenly interrupted by the sound of violent laughter from the adjoining gallery. And the fact that almost every new king sets aside the testament of his predecessor, – is this not evidence of the general callowness of feeling prevailing in royal circles?
In famine times, the kings and princes of old drove the starving out of town to die of hunger in the fields, and as late as 1772 one hundred and fifty thousand Saxons died of hunger under the "glorious reign" of Louise's grandfather-by-marriage, Frederick Augustus III. And the "Life of Queen Victoria," approved by the Court of St. James, unblushingly informs us that in 1847 "Her Most Gracious Majesty" was chiefly concerned about investing to good profit the revenues of the Prince of Wales, her infant son (about four hundred thousand dollars per annum).
Yet, while Victoria pinched the boy's tenants to extort an extra penny for him, and "succeeded in saving all but four thousand pounds sterling" of his imperial allowance, the population of Ireland was reduced two millions by the most dreadful famine the world remembers!
Before the famine Ireland had a population of 8,196,597, against a population of 15,914,148 in England and Wales, while Scotland's population was 2,620,184.
Six years after the famine Ireland's population was 6,574,278, Scotland's 2,888,742, England and Wales' 17,927,609. Today Ireland's population is less than Scotland's, the exact figures being: Scotland 4,759,445, Ireland 4,381,951, England and Wales 36,075,269.
However, as the waste of two million human lives, the loss of four millions in population, subsequently enabled the Prince of Wales to tie the price of a dukedom3 in diamonds around a French dancer's neck and to support a hundred silly harlots in all parts of Europe, who cares?
According to Louise and – others, royalty is the meanest, the most heartless, the most faithless and the most unjust of the species – that in addition she herself disgraced its womanhood, after the famous Louise of Prussia rehabilitated queenship, is regrettable, but to call it altogether unexpected would be rank euphemism.
If Louise had lived at the time of Phryne, the philosophers would have characterized her as "an animal with long hair"; if he had known her, the great Mirabeau might have coined his pet phrase, "a human that dresses, undresses and – talks" (or writes) for Louise; as a matter of fact, she is one of those "Jansenists" of love who believe in the utter helplessness of natural woman to turn down a good looking man.
Her
The Prince of Wales' revenue is derived from the Duchy of Cornwall, amounting to about half a million dollars per year.