Seven years at the Prussian court

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I MY EARLY DAYS AT POTSDAM .

. 29

Chapter I

I LEFT this country just seven years ago to enter the service of the Princess Frederick Leopold of Prussia, who is sister of the German Empress and sister-in-law of the Duchess of Connaught, and who is thus closely related to the chief reigning houses of Europe.

I obtained my situation by answering an advertisement which appeared in one of the London papers for a dresser to a German lady. No more particulars were given in the advertisement. I was at that time in the employment of the late Duchess of Northumberland, and I answered the advertisement in the hope, not so much of bettering myself (for I was very happy with Her Grace), but because I wanted to travel. I had been already to Italy and France, but never to Germany.

A few days after I had answered the advertisement I received a letter in reply to mine, asking me to call on a Mrs. Sherenstein at the Hans Crescent Hotel in London.

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Sherenstein was the name which the Princess Frederick Leopold assumed when staying in London incognito — as she very often did. Of course, I had no idea of her identity when I went to see her, but I had not been long in her presence before I guessed that she was probably a royalty. Another lady was in the room with her — the Baroness Knesebeck, her lady-in-waiting, as I discovered — and this lady, obviously a person of rank and good breeding, was so deferential and ceremonious in her manner towards Mrs. Sherenstein that it did not require much astuteness to guess that the latter was probably of Royal rank.

Mrs. Sherenstein was a tall woman, with a type of face I should call severe. Her nose was prominent, her eyes dark and intelligent, and her mouth suggested great determination. She received me graciously. She was standing near the fireplace when I was shown into the room ; she shook hands with me, and asked me to be seated. Her lady-in-waiting, who was seated at a writing-table, bowed to me.

The Princess asked me a few very ordinary questions (she spoke English perfectly) as to whether I was strong, how long I had been with the Duchess, and what was my religion.

After talking to me for about five or six minutes she said something to her lady-in-waiting and then left the room.

The Baroness, an extremely well-attired lady, some years younger than the Princess, then talked to me for a little while. She spoke with a much more marked German accent than the Princess.

A week later I received a brief letter from Berlin from the Baroness Knesebeck, referring to our interview in London, saying that the Princess Leopold of Prussia would engage me on the terms arranged, and requesting that I should leave for Berlin on the following Wednesday.

I arrived in Berlin near midnight, and was met by an elderly manservant in the Princess's employ. I had been instructed to stand in a certain place at the station, holding my handkerchief in my hand. The man came up to me and said my name, Edith Keen. I nodded, and then followed him to a brougham, with the Royal arms on the door, that was waiting outside the station. The man could not speak a word of English, and was one of the gloomiest-looking persons I had ever set eyes on. It was a depressing arrival . But worse was to follow.

I was driven to the Prince's castle in Berlin. The family were not in residence (they were at their castle at Potsdam, where I went next day), and the only light in the place was a small one in a side hall, by which I entered. The door was opened by another elderly servant, who apparently expected me. He carried a lantern in his hand and led me down a long corridor, then down some flights of stone steps, and along a stone passage all in darkness.

Stopping at a door, he opened it and motioned me to go in. For a moment I hesitated. I felt a wild desire to rush away, and an overpowering wish to get out once more into the open air. I looked at the old manservant. His expressionless, withered face filled me with a vague terror. I felt like some trapped animal. I walked into the room. It was a small apartment with stone walls. In one corner was a bed; there was a mat on the floor and a heavy round oak table in the centre, on which was an old circular brass candlestick.

The old man lighted the candle, said something ill German which I supposed was good-night, and then left the room, shutting the door after him. To this day I have never forgotten the feeling of hopeless despair that came over me as I heard the door shut, and listened to the old man's steps echoing down the stone passage. I was dead tired, hungry, and more unhappy and frightened than I had ever felt in my life before. I cried myself to sleep.

The next morning I was awakened at six o'clock by some one knocking at my door, who told me I was to leave for Potsdam in half-an-hour. I arrived at the Prince's castle at Potsdam at about half-past seven, when I had a very good breakfast. A regular English breakfast — fried eggs and bacon, fish, toast, marmalade and coffee. The meal was served to me in a large room on the first floor overlooking a wide expanse of park and wooded uplands.

After breakfast I was shown upstairs to a room that was to be my home for the next seven years. At the top of the staircase the manservant who was behind me carrying my luggage came to a standstill. I did not know which way to turn and could not understand why the servant should stand drawn up stiffly to attention like a soldier on parade; then, looking down the corridor, I saw a young girl of about nineteen or twenty standing at a cookingstove, engaged apparently in making cakes.

I went up to her and asked her the way to my room, to which she took me at once. She was the Princess Victoria Margarethe of Prussia, the eldest child and only daughter of the Prince and Princess Frederick Leopold. The rigid rules of the Prussian Court forbade the servant to pass the Princess, and that was why he stood at the head of the staircase.

It was really in the service of the young Princess that I had been engaged, although I did not learn that until I saw her. We were fated to become very close and good friends, and I have nothing but the kindest and most pleasant recollections of her, though she is a German.

The family consisted of the Prince and Princess Leopold, their daughter and three sons, the Princes Frederick Karl, Frederick Seigesmund and Frederick Leopold.

Klein Glienicke, the residence of the Leopolds, was one of a number of Royal castles scattered about Potsdam.

It was constructed in a curious and what seemed to me to be a very inconvenient manner.

On the first floor were situated the Princess Leopold's boudoir and dressing-room, and to reach these you had to go through a suite of rooms consisting of a drawing-room, dining-room and musicroom, or else through the servants' quarters. The bedroom and boudoir of the Princess Victoria Margarethe were situated directly over her mother's apartments, and the young Princess to reach her rooms had also to go through the servants' quarters or through her mother's rooms. As the Princess Leopold was not the sort of person who at all liked to have her privacy invaded when she was in her boudoir or dressing-room, even by her daughter, the Princess Margarethe usually went through the servants' quarters when going to her rooms; her friends who came to see her had, of course, to do this also, for the Princess Leopold would on no account allow any one outside members of her own family to enter her rooms.

But these rather curious arrangements were, as I soon learned, by no means the only curious thing about this Royal establishment. The character, disposition and general conduct of its master and mistress were decidedly curious, but I was at Klein Glienicke some little time before I became fully acquainted with all the eccentricities of the Prince and Princess Leopold.

The front entrance of Klein Glienicke opened directly on to the little village of Glienicke inhabited by the tenants and pensioners of Prince Leopold; at the back of the house was a stretch of flower gardens large enough to be called a park, and across the roadway in front was another large private park. It was very, very private, indeed, for no one was on any account allowed to enter it except the Leopolds and members of their family.

There was also an entrance to this park by a tunnel that ran under the roadway separating the park from the Schloss. The use of this tunnel was strictly reserved for the sole and exclusive use of Prince Leopold, who would on no account ever walk across the roadway. This was but one of the eccentricities of this curious Prussian Prince.

About the gardens at Klein Glienicke were a number of beautiful large fountains. I noticed, however, that they were never playing ; after I had been at the Schloss about four months I learned the reason for this. They were only set playing on one day in the year, the birthday of Prince Leopold's sister, H.R.H. the Duchess of Connaught. I was told that on one and never-to-be-forgotten occasion a newly arrived gardener, who had neglected to properly and thoroughly master the rather lengthy list of rules and customs that prevailed at Klein Glienicke, set the fountains a-playing on a day that to most people would no doubt have appeared to be a suitable one for an aquatic display of the kind — a scorching hot day in early June — but ere the fountains had been at work ten minutes the luckless gardener learned that in setting these fountains playing he had committed an almost unpardonable offence. He expiated it, I believe, by a week's confinement in his house; but that was a small punishment; it was what Prince Leopold said and the manner in which it was said that nearly frightened the poor gardener to death. Never again were the fountains set playing except on July 25.

It was, of course, a graceful compliment to his sister to whom, by the way, the Prince was much devoted, that he should allow the fountains to be set playing only on her birthday, but I could not help sometimes wondering what the Prince would have done if the birthday of Her Royal Highness had fallen, say, on January 25, when, as a general rule, the frost would have rather interfered with the working of the fountains.

The gardens at Klein Glienicke, by the way, were planned and designed rather in accordance with English ideas. Some years before the outbreak of war Prince Leopold followed the example of his cousin, the Kaiser, and got a head-gardener from England who, unluckily for himself, is now enjoying German hospitality at Ruhleben in company with the Kaiser's gardener.

The Princess Leopold, I must say, went to considerable trouble to keep the man from being interned ; she went even so far as to send a telegram to the Kaiser at the front on the subject, but the mihtary authorities are supreme in such matters in Germany, and the Kaiser either could not or would not interfere with their decision; indeed, the Kaiser's own gardener, as I said, was interned.

Most of the furniture at Klein Glienicke was purchased in England, a fact about which the Leopolds were rather proud.

It was all extremely good — very heavy and solid — but in the general arrangements of the rooms there was an almost complete absence of daintiness or of light touches or pretty effects.

In nearly all the great German houses that I have been in, with the exception of the Saxe-Coburg- Gotha's castle at Gotha, I have observed the same thing : a hard, bare effect, often unrelieved even by any attempt at floral decoration.

The only tastefully arranged room at Klein Glienicke was the Princess Margarethe's boudoir, which looked bright and pretty with its coloured cretonnes and plentiful display of photographs, among which were autographed pictures of her aunt, H.R.H. the Duchess of Connaught (in all the rooms at the Schloss there was, I think, a photograph of Her Royal Highness), the German Empress, the Kaiser, the Princess Christian, and the wife of ex-king Manoel, who before her marriage was one of the most intimate girl friends the young Princess had.

Not only did the Leopolds furnish from London, but usually they had all the work in the way of repapering and painting at their different residences done by a London firm.

Half-a-dozen men from a well-known London firm of house decorators came over to carry out some work at Flatow Schloss, a residence of the Leopolds in West Prussia, which they visited for a short while every summer, a little while before the outbreak of war.

The men are in Germany still, for they were all interned after the outbreak of war, and the work they came to carry out, I believe, still remains uncompleted.

The Princess Leopold had the poorest opinion of German goods and German tradespeople, as, indeed, most well-to-do Germans have. The Princess often remarked that in most German shops the goods were about on a par with the manners one encountered there, and that both were very bad.

Klein Glienicke is separated from all the other castles about Potsdam by that very picturesque river, the Havel ; on the Potsdam side of the river are Marmor Palais, the summer residence of the Crown Prince; Sans Souci, an unoccupied castle; Neues Babelsburg, also unoccupied; the Villa Leignitz, the residence of the Prince August Wilhelm ; and the Kaiser's residence, the Neues Palais.

The Neues Palais was about three miles from the Leopolds, and the Marmor Palais was about a quarter of an hour's walk from Klein Glienicke.

I often walked over to the Marmor Palais, the grounds of which were open to the public whether the Crown Prince and Princess were in residence or not. There were two well-laid-down lawn-tennis courts at the Marmor Palais; lawn tennis fe was a game about which the Germans became very keen during the last ten years.

When the Crown Princess was at Marmor Palais she frequently gave small afternoon tennis parties, and men whose names have become rather well known in England since the outbreak of war have been her guests on these occasions.

Von Jagow, the German Foreign Secretary, and Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, both good players of the veteran class, have played at the tennis courts at Marmor Palais, and so has Lieutenant von Tirpitz, the son of the Admiral, who is now a prisoner in England.

The Kaiser, of course, often played lawn tennis at Marmor Palais, but as His Majesty must always win the games in which he takes part, they cannot be very interesting to the other players. I once asked a lady at the Imperial Court if it would be contrary to etiquette to win a set from the Emperor. " No," was the reply, " but it would be contrary to reason ; only a mad person would do such a thing."

Often American and English friends of the Crown Princess who were staying in Berlin were guests at her lawn-tennis parties at the Marmor Palace.

The uninhabited Schloss Neues Babelsburg was B 17 rather an interesting place. It was built by the Kaiser's grandfather, William, and was supposed to be a copy of Windsor Castle on a small scale. I heard a rather curious story about this Schloss, the Crown Prince was once made a prisoner there for nearly two days.

There were several versions of this story current at Potsdam, but as far as I could gather, what actually happened was this : the Crow^n Prince went with an officer, who had newly joined the Prussian Guards Regiment at Potsdam, to show him the castle. The Prince and the officer went into one of the upper rooms to look at a table on which Frederick the Great had carved his name, and while the two were looking at the table they heard the heavy oak door of the room close behind them, and the Prince and his companion were made prisoners. After being confined for nearly two days some chance visitors to the castle, passing by the room where the prisoners were, heard rappings at the door. They stopped and then heard faint shouts for help. The caretaker of the castle was quickly summoned, but he declared he had no key of the door of the room in which the prisoners were. A couple of carpenters were then sent for; they soon arrived with their tools, and in a few minutes the Prince and his companion were at liberty, but in a semi-starved condition, and so weak that neither could walk. They were, indeed, in much the same state apparently, as that to which the Germans have reduced EngHsh prisoners of war.

A messenger was then dispatched to the Neues Palais and the Emperor informed of the discovery that had been made at the Neues Babelsburg. The Emperor and Empress at once drove to the Schloss and conveyed the Prince and his friend back to the Neues Palais. The Prince's sudden disappearance had, of course, caused considerable alarm, and inquiries as to his whereabouts were being conducted throughout Germany when he was found. The whole story of his disappearance and how he was found was kept as strict a secret as possible at the German Court. The mystery of the whole affair lay in the fact that it was impossible to explain how the Prince and his companion had got locked into the room. The heavy oak door was held back by an iron hook fastened in the wall outside the room, the hook going through a ring in the door. Some one must have freed the hook from the ring and deliberately shut the door.

There were two possible solutions of the problem as to who that person could have been. One was the caretaker of the castle who had once been a servant in the employ of the Emperor, who had been dismissed for some petty offence; the other solution was a lady, who rightly or wrongly considered that she had been badly treated by the officer who was with the Prince ; the lady had certainly been seen in the castle grounds on the afternoon of the visit of the Prince and his friend to the castle.

This affair, although it occurred some fifteen years ago, forms still (unless the war has killed the interest in it) a favourite topic of discussion and speculation among the Royal retainers and pensioners about Potsdam.

Sans Souci is another empty Royal castle at Potsdam ; in the drive between Sans Souci and the Neues Palais there are several most objectionable statues of women put up by the Emperor Frederick. These statues are in no sense works of art — ^they are simply crude indecencies ; the Kaiser has frequently been asked to have them removed by people who could venture to make such a suggestion to him and who might be supposed to have some influence with him. The Empress wanted to have them removed; Prince Biilow often urged the Emperor to have them taken away, and even dared to describe them, so I w^as told, as a disgrace to the man who had put them up — but the statues remain, and the reason they do, I believe, is because they afford the Emperor occasional opportunities for the sort of jesting that he likes to indulge in, especially with new comers to the Neues Palais who have never before seen the statues.

The Villa Leignitz, the residence of the Prince and Princess August Wilhelm, is the smallest of the Royal residences about Potsdam. It is about the size of a detached villa in any of the London suburbs rented at about £100 per annum.

The Princess employed a lot of her time in gardening, and she would often sit in her garden in the summer time doing needlework, at which she was rather skilled. She was particularly clever at altering dresses, and in this way extended considerably the life of a good many of her gowns.

The Prince and Princess lived very quietly. The Prince August Wilhelm was generally regarded as the handsomest of the Imperial family, but he was rather delicate and was the only one of the Kaiser's sons who did not enter the army or navy. He was found some sort of position in the clerical department of the Reichstag.

A large part of Potsdam belonged to the Emperor, some of the Royal estate has been in the possession of the Hohenzollerns for a long time, but the greater part of it was secured by purchase by the Kaiser's grandfather, father, and by the All Highest himself.

I heard that shortly after his accession the Kaiser secured about six acres, that is now one of the most valuable parts of the Potsdam property, in a manner that redounded more to his astuteness for business than his kingly honour. The Kaiser was advised by his estate agent to acquire the ground I have referred to, now covered by good residential and business houses; the owner, however, declined to part with it except at a much higher figure than the Emperor was prepared to pay. The owner was a tradesman in Berhn, who had had the ground from some man in settlement of a debt amounting, I beheve, to £250, which was at the time more than the full value that the ground would have fetched in the open market, for land about Potsdam was at that time comparatively cheap. The tradesman, however, believed that in acquiring the ground he had made a good speculative investment, especially as it had been a choice between losing the amount of his debt altogether and taking the land in settlement of it.

The tradesman resolved to stick to his land and did so for five years, until the Kaiser's eyes were attracted to it.

The Kaiser's agent ascertained the figure at which the tradesman had secured it and offered him the same sum, plus five per cent, interest on it for five years. The offer was refused; ultimately the tradesman was offered £400, but £700 was the lowest figure he w^ould accept. The matter then dropped, but a month later the tradesman was served with a notice stating that his land was required for military purposes, and shortly afterwards he received an official offer for it from the German Government of £150.

Now in Germany, I have been told, that when land is required for military purposes the owner is generally well-advised to accept any offer the Government make liim for it — he can, if he pleases, put his own valuation on it and have the selHng price fixed in a court of law — but in nine cases out of ten that is a proceeding that the owner loses by, for usually it results in his having to accept the Government's offer or even a lower one; rarely or never does he get an increase on the original offer. If the owner is an influential person he always gets a good price offered to him; if he is not, the price is usually a low one.

The tradesman wisely recognized that it would be useless for him to attempt to obtain a higher price for his land than the value the military authorities had put on it, and he parted with it at the Government figure. Six months later the Kaiser acquired the land for himself from the Government for exactly the figure that the tradesman had been paid for it.

I heard this story told at a political gathering in Berlin, and from all I heard from people about Potsdam it appears to be true in every particular.

It was, of course, at the Kaiser's instigation that the land was requisitioned by the military authorities, who were simply used as the means by which the owner of the land was compelled to part with it at a low figure to the Emperor, who coveted it.

The Kaiser, about Potsdam, at any rate, did not seem to be regarded on the whole as a bad landlord ; there was a system in existence on the Royal estate at Potsdam by which a tenant who got into difficulties could borrow money from a fund at a very low rate of interest and repay it by extremely easy instalments : as a matter of fact, this plan in reality worked quite as much for the benefit of the Kaiser as it did for the welfare of his tenants. Every tenant on the estate had to make a yearly contribution to the fund; the Kaiser subscribed a sum amounting to ten per cent, on the total subscriptions ; but, of course, the fund was practically kept going by the subscriptions of the tenants, and the Kaiser derived all the benefit that accrues to a landlord by tiding a good tenant over a period of financial trouble. However, as far as I could gather, the tenants on the Royal estate regarded the plan as a very excellent one, and its successful working as being largely due to the generosity of the Kaiser.

The Kaiser was the owner of Marmor Palais, the residence of the CrowTi Prince. In connection with the occupation of the Palais by the Prince, I heard a rather amusing story.

The Kaiser agreed to let him have it free of rent until a son had been born to the Prince — until then the Prince had to pay a rent to his father of £200 per annum.

\Mien, a year after the Prince's marriage a son was born, the Kaiser, in response to a telegram of congratulation sent him by the King of Bavaria on the birth of a grandson and heir to the German throne, replied : "I celebrate the occasion by losing £200 per annum, but, nevertheless, rejoice,"

The Glienicke estate was entirely the property of Prince Leopold, who was wealthier than the Kaiser. The Prince was, indeed, the wealthiest of the Prussian Princes, but this was, no doubt, largely due to the fact that he spent what was probably less than half of his income.

The Prince was the most tyrannical landlord that could well be imagined, and was simply detested by his tenants and all his dependents. I shall have much more to say of the Prince later on; it is sufficient to say here that I had not been long at Glienicke before I began to understand the extraordinary dislike — I might almost say hatred — with which both the Prince and Princess Leopold were regarded by nearly everybody who were brought much into contact with them.

One fact, by the way, I discovered soon after my arrival at Klein Glienicke that would have made me leave it at once only for the Princess Margarethe, whom, even in that short while, I had grown greatly to like, and who wanted me very much to stay with her. What I allude to was a sort of detective system that prevailed in this Royal establishment, '^'.where it seemed to be taken as a matter of course that no member of the household could be trusted, not even the few people in it who had been somehow persuaded to remain in it for many years.

There were always at least two detectives, a man and a woman, employed in the household, especially for the purpose of watching and spying on the members of it. Usually they were in the guise of servants. I was never quite sure which of the servants might be a detective; however, I made up my mind not to trouble myself about the matter, but at the same time the knowledge that detectives were in the house created a most unpleasant feeling until I grew accustomed to it.

With the ladies-in-waiting I got on fairly well. The two wath whom I was brought most frequently into contact were the Baroness Knesebeck and Fraulein von Stromberg. The former was chiefly in attendance on the Princess Leopold; the latter acted as lady-in-waiting to the Princess Margarethe.

The Baroness Knesebeck, a lady of about thirtyfour, conformed in her manners, ideas and conversation to the regular type of lady-in-waiting that is to be met with in German Royal households.

I could never imagine the Baroness offending in the minutest degree against the strict, rigid and complicated etiquette of the Prussian Court, a close study of which had probably formed the most serious work of her life.

She was a machine that performed its work day in and day out perfectly. In talking of any matter that related to her duty as a lady-in-waiting she was always extraordinarily clear and explicit; her letters on the same sort of matters were finished examples in the art of clear and courteous expression. Her manners were rather sharp, but dignified, and they were always precisely the same — I never saw the Baroness in a temper and I do not think I ever heard her laugh; she smiled pleasantly at regular intervals in conversation. Her curtsey and hand-shake were the sort of things that could only, I am sure, be acquired by years of practice. She dressed well, at all times, and she was punctiliously careful that her gown should always suit the occasion.