CHAPTER IV
MY UNPLEASANT YOUTH
Father hard to get along with – Royal imaginations – Kings cursing other kings – Poverty and pretense – Piety that makes children suffer – Up at five to pray on cold stones – Chilblains and prayer.
Castle Wachwitz,
March 11, 1893
.
It occurs to me that, if this is intended as a record of my life – somewhat after the fashion of the
Margravine
of Bayreuth's Memoirs – I ought to tell about my girlhood.
Let me admit at once that my marriage to the Crown Prince of Saxony was, politically speaking, a stroke of good luck. My father, the Grand-duke of Tuscany, had been deprived of land and crown ten years before I was born, and, though he likes to pose as a sovereign, he is, as a matter of fact, a mere private gentleman of limited resources, whom the head of the family, the Austrian Emperor, may coax or browbeat at his sweet pleasure. If papa had been able to save his thronelet, I have no doubt he would be a most agreeable man, open-handed and eager to enjoy life, but instead of making the best of a situation over which he has no control, he is forever fretting about his lost dignities and about "his dear people" that don't care a snap for his love and affection. This makes him a trying person to get along with, – mention a king or prince in the full enjoyment of power, and father gets melancholy and calls Victor Emanuel, the second of his name, a brigand.
He seldom or never visits his
confrères
in the capitals of Europe, but when I was a girl our gloomy palace at Salzburg saw much of the ghosts of decaying royalty. The Dukes of Modena and Parma, the King of Hanover, the
Kurfurst
of Hesse, the King of Naples and other monarchs and toy-monarchs that were handed their walking papers by sovereigns mightier than themselves, visited us off and on, filling the air with lamentations and cursing their fate.
And, like papa, all these
ex'es
are ready to fly out of their very skins the moment they notice the smallest breach of etiquette concerning their august selves. If they had the power, the Imperial Highnesses would execute any man that called them "Royal Highness," while the Royal Highnesses would be pleased to send to the gallows persons addressing them as "Highness" only.
And papa has other troubles, and the greatest of them, lack of money. Poverty in private life must be hard enough, but a poor king, obliged to keep up the pretense of a court, is to be pitied indeed.
Add to what I have said, father's share of domestic unhappiness. Mother is a Bourbon of Parma, serious-minded and hard like my father-in-law, and almost as much of a religious fanatic.
Oh, how we children suffered by the piety of our mother. There were eight of us, myself the oldest of five girls, and seven years older than my sister Anna. Yet this baby, as soon as she could walk, was obliged to rise, like myself, at five o'clock summer and winter to go to the chapel and pray. The chapel was lighted only by a few wax candles and, of course, was unheated like the corridors of the palace. And like them it was paved with stones. Many a chilblain I carried away from kneeling on those granite flags.
And the stupidity of the thing! Instead of saying our prayers we murmured and protested, and as soon as we were old enough we slipped portions of novels in our prayer-books, which we read while mass was said. That trick was not unfraught with danger though, for mother's spies were always after us, and the bad light made reading difficult.
I am sure that if mother had found us out, she would have whipped us within an inch of our lives.
CHAPTER V
A FIERCE DISCIPLINARIAN
Diamonds used to punish children – Face object of attacks – Grunting and snorting at the royal table – Blood flowing at dinner – My brother jumps out of a window.
Castle Wachwitz,
April 1, 1893
.
Nothing of consequence happened since my last entry, and I continue the story of my girlhood.
Her Imperial Highness, my pious mother, had a terrible way of punishing her children. The face of the culprit was invariably the object of her attacks. She hit us with the flat of her bony hand, rendered more terrible by innumerable rings. The sharp diamonds cut into the flesh and usually made the blood flow freely.
The court chaplain at Salzburg was a peasant's boy without manners or breeding of any kind. While the least violation of etiquette or politeness on the children's part was punished by a box on the ear, or by withholding the next meal, mother overlooked the swinishness of the chaplain simply because he wore a black coat.
One of the chaplain's most offensive habits was to grunt and snort when eating. On one occasion my brother Leopold gave a somewhat exaggerated imitation of these disgusting practices at table, whereupon mother, blind with fury, for she thought a priest could do no wrong, struck Leopold in the face, causing the blood to gush from his lacerated cheek.
Father immediately rose from table and savagely turning upon mother said, "Understand, Madame, that as a sovereign and head of the family I will have no one punished in my presence. If I think punishment necessary, I will inflict it myself in a dignified way."
Mother immediately began to cry. She always had a flood of tears ready when father offered the slightest reprimand. Afterwards she upbraided father and us, the children. If it were not for her incessant prayers, she said, and for the Christian life she was leading, God would have destroyed the Tuscans long ago, and she wasn't sure that either of us would attain Paradise except for her intercession with the Almighty.
This and similar scenes and incidents disgusted me with religion early in life. Myself and all my brothers and sisters hated the very sight of the court chaplain who licked our mother's boots, while heaping punishments and indignities upon us.
At one time my brother Leopold didn't know his catechism. "I will teach your Imperial Highness to skip your lessons," said the court chaplain. "Kneel before me and read the passage over ten times as a punishment."
Leopold promptly answered: "I won't."
"Yes, you will, Imperial Highness, for such are my orders," cried the court chaplain.
Leopold said doggedly, "I kneel before the altar and before the Emperor, if he demands it, not before such as you."
"Suppose I call on your Imperial Highness's mother and ask her to forbid you to mount a horse for a month or so?" queried our tormentor.
Horseback riding was Leopold's chief pleasure, and the chaplain had no sooner launched his threat, when Leopold opened the window and apparently jumped out. As the school-room was situated in the third story, the teacher thought his pupil dead on the pavement below, but Leopold was merely hanging on to the stone coping and shutters. That gave him the whip hand over the teacher. "I will let go if you don't promise not to inform mother," demanded the twelve-year-old boy.
"I promise, only come in," moaned the teacher.
"Promise furthermore there shall be no punishment whatever for what I did and said."
"None whatever, your Imperial Highness."
"Swear it on the cross."
The chaplain did as ordered and Leopold crawled back to safety.
Leopold is a good deal like me, and has been in hot water more or less all his life.
When I was a girl of fifteen, he defended my honor at the risk of the fearful punishments my mother had in store for those children that wouldn't buckle down to the chaplain, but that is so sad a chapter of my girlhood days I cannot bring myself to put it down today.
CHAPTER VI
LEOPOLD DEFENDS MY HONOR AT HIS PERIL
Punished for objecting to familiarities – Awful names I was called – Locked in the room with wicked teacher – Defend myself with burning lamp – My brother nearly kills my would-be assailant.
Castle Wachwitz,
April 2, 1893
.
I want to finish with evil recollections. Maybe I will be able to forget them, when I have done with this narrative. My mother, as pointed out, had more confidence in our rascally court chaplain than in her own children, and was far more concerned about the chaplain's dignity than ours. She never hesitated to doubt her children's veracity, but regarded all the chaplain said as gospel truth.
About two weeks before Easter, 1885, the time when I was just budding into young womanhood, the chaplain began to pay me a great deal of attention. The lessons he gave me to learn were insignificant compared with those of my brothers and sisters, and it mattered not whether I came to school prepared or otherwise. The strict disciplinarian had all of a sudden turned lenient. He began to pat my hair, to give me friendly taps on the shoulder, and never took his eyes off me. I was too young and innocent to see the true significance of his strange behavior, but I woke up suddenly and ran crying to my mother, telling her what had happened.
"I won't take another lesson from that man, unless my lady-in-waiting is present," I sobbed.
"You are a malicious, lying, low-minded creature," hissed my mother, at the same time striking me in the face with her big diamonds. "It's mortal sin to throw suspicion on so holy a man, and I will not have him watched."
I ran out of mother's room crying, intending to go to papa, but met the boys in the corridor, who told me that father had just departed for the chase. Then I took Leopold aside and told him everything. He was half-mad with rage and was hardly able to articulate when he rushed to mother's room demanding protection for me.
"I will protect the holy man instead," answered my fanatic mother. "Louise shall be locked in the room with the chaplain while she has her lesson." And my mother actually carried out that wicked design inspired by fanaticism.
Locked in a room with me, the chaplain was sweetness itself, but for a while at least remained at a distance. When he attempted to approach me, I seized the burning kerosene lamp, as Leopold had advised.
"One step more," I cried excitedly, "and I will throw the lamp in your face."
The coward stood still in his tracks, and began whispering to me in a hoarse voice things I hardly understood, but that nevertheless wounded me to the quick. I kept my hand at the burning lamp during the whole hour and was ready to faint when the fiend at last left me.
As the door opened, I saw Leopold standing outside, an enormous dog whip in hand. Without a word he applied the whip to the chaplain's broad face, lashing him right and left. The scoundrel offered no resistance, but fled like the dog he was, Leopold after him through the long corridors, upstairs and downstairs, through the picture gallery and the state apartments, lashing him as he ran, the two of them filling the palace with cries of rage and pain. Only the fact that Leopold stumbled over a footstool, enabled the chaplain to reach his room alive, where he barricaded himself.
CHAPTER VII
PRINCES AND PRINCESSES DANCE TO THE TUNE OF THE WHIP
The result shows in the character of rulers – Why English kings and princes are superior to the Continental kind – Leopold's awful revenge – Mother acts the tigress – Her mailed fist – "I forbid Your Imperial Highness to see that dog."
Castle Wachwitz,
April 21, 1893
.
If my Diary ever fell into plebeian hands, I suppose such stories as the above would be branded as rank exaggerations.
A Queen endangering life and health of her children by a form of punishment otherwise known only in the prize ring.
An Imperial Highness using her diamonds to graft scars on the cheeks of a little girl!
Royal children beaten worse than dogs, deprived of sleep, subjected to cold and damp and, withal, given over, bound hand and foot, so to speak, to the tender mercies of low-minded, unworthy, and even dangerous persons without manners or education.
And, to cap the climax, a Royal maid in the first blush of budding womanhood grossly repulsed and physically attacked when she appeals to her mother for protection; that child locked in a room with her would-be ravisher and obliged to defend her honor by a threat of murder.
Only the uninitiated – men and women living outside the pale of royal courts – will deem such things impossible. Let me tell these happy ignoramuses that all through the nineteenth century the princes and princesses of Europe were brought up to the tune of the whip and of physical and mental humiliation. It was the fashion.
The only eminent monarch of the immediate past – Frederick the Great – was all but flayed alive by his father when a boy and young man, – emulate the second King of Prussia's brutalities and your offspring will be destined for greatness, argued princes.
The first Emperor William of Germany had a gentle mother, my famous namesake; he was always a gentleman. The Russian Czars, Paul, Nicholas I, and Alexander III, were brought up with the knout, their preceptors used the boys at their sweet pleasure. The first turned out a madman; the second a brute; the third his people's executioner.
Czar Paul would run a mile to cane a soldier who had a speck of dust on his boots. My grand-uncle, Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria, sometimes travels tens of miles to box the ears of a member of his family.
Francis Joseph had a cruel bringing up.
At the Royal Library in Berlin I saw the manuscript of
Les Mémoires de ma vie: la princesse de Prusse, Frederice Sophie Wilhelmine, qui epousa le Margrave de Bayreuth
, – the original, unedited save by the corrections of the authoress. A good many passages of this "most terrible indictment of royalty" reminded me of home. There is even a parallel, or a near-parallel, of my own case just recorded. The Princess Wilhelmina's all-powerful governess was Madame Leti, who pummelled the child "as if she had been her mother." This Leti was undoubtedly a Sadist; to inflict torture, to practice refined cruelties was a joy to her. Not content with whipping the little girl, she added, shortly before her dismissal, some poisonous matter to Wilhelmina's wash water "that gnawed the skin and made my face all coppery and inflamed my eyes." This species of wickedness, at last, resulted in the discharge of Leti, "but she decided to leave me a few souvenirs in the shape of fisticuffs and kicks. She had told my mother that I was suffering from nose bleed and punched my nose whenever she was unobserved. During the last week of her stay at the palace I sometimes bled like an ox, and my arms and legs were blue, green and yellow from her kicks and cuffs. I am sure if she could have broken my legs with impunity, she would not have hesitated a moment to do so."
History and the court gossip of the day afford plenty of precedents for what happened to me and my brothers and sisters in Salzburg. Indeed, Prince Albert, Consort of the late Queen Victoria, was the only royal father of the first half of the century that used the rod in moderation. To my mind that is one of the reasons why English kings and princes are so far superior to the Continental kind.
But to return to Salzburg.
Leopold had it all his own way for a quarter of an hour, as none of the servants would interfere in favor of the hated chaplain and mother was engaged in her oratory in a far away part of the castle. So my brother kicked in the door and went for the cowering brute again, raining stripes on every part of his bloated body, alternately using the whip and the whip-end. Undoubtedly Leopold would have killed him then and there if his boy's strength had not given out. He left him more dead than alive, bleeding and moaning.
I will never forget the spectacle when Leopold came down the stairs after leaving the chaplain's room. I and my brothers and sisters were huddled together behind our ladies in the blue ante-chamber. A dozen or more lackeys stood in the corridor, whispering.
Leopold's face was deathly pale as he descended the stairs, and blood was dripping from his whip, reddening the white linen runners protecting the carpet. He wore his army uniform, that should have saved him from violence at any rate. At that moment I prayed my sincerest that father would come home. I would have thrown myself on my knees and told everything, servants or no servants. But mother came instead.
She was fully informed and she sprang upon poor Leopold like a tigress, knocking him from one end of the corridor to the other with her diamond-mailed fist. It was terrible, and all of us children cried aloud with terror. But the more we cried and the more we begged for mercy, the harder were the blows mother rained upon poor Leopold's face and head. His blood spattered over the white enameled banisters and doors until finally he was dragged out of my mother's clutches by an old footman who placed his broad back between the Imperial Highness and her victim.
Now, it was the rule in our house that the whipped child had to ask our mother's forgiveness for putting her to the trouble of wielding the terrible back of her hand.
Six weeks Leopold stayed at Salzburg after the scene described, and daily my mother urged him to beg her forgiveness. The boy stood stockstill on these occasions, never twitching a muscle of his face and never saying a word in reply. During all these six weeks he waited on mother morning, noon and night, according to ceremony, but never a word escaped him, never did he look in her direction unless actually forced to do so. He played the deaf and dumb to perfection.
Father must have thought that Leopold got enough punishment, for he never mentioned the matter to him and forbade the servants to even allude to the court chaplain. Mother, on her part, placed the chaplain in charge of two skilled surgeons and sent every little while to inquire how he was doing.
On the third day she said to my father at table, that she was going to pay a visit to the court chaplain.
"I forbid your Imperial Highness to see that dog," said my father in an icy voice that brooked no reply. "I will have his carcass thrown out of here as soon as his condition permits."
That was the only time I heard father speak like a sovereign and man.
That Leopold nearly killed the scoundrel, as he promised to do, is evident from the fact that the court chaplain lay in the castle three weeks before he could be transported to a monastery. Some monks – for none of the servants would lend a helping hand – carried him away by night and none of the children ever saw or heard of our tormentor again.
The only sorry reminder of the episode is the estrangement of Leopold and our mother. Though mother tried her hardest to win back the boy's confidence and affection, he remained an iceberg towards her, ceremonious but cold, polite but wholly indifferent.
CHAPTER VIII
PLANNING TO GET A HUSBAND FOR ME
Dissecting possible wooers at Vienna – Royalty after money, not character – "He is a Cohen, not a Coburg" – Prince who looked like a Jew counter-jumper in his Sunday best – Balkan princes tabooed by Francis Joseph – A good time for the girls – Army men commanded to attend us.
Castle Wachwitz,
April 25, 1893
.
A change of scene. I was eighteen and my parents were anxious to get a husband for me. Royalty marries off its princes at an early age to keep them out of mischief; its princesses as soon as a profitable suitor turns up or can be secured by politics, diplomacy, the exercise of parental wits or the powerful influence of the head of the House.
Sister Anna, now Princess John of Hohenlohe, myself and mother were invited to Vienna. It was my introduction to royal pomp and circumstance. The
Hofburg
, our town lodging, seemed to me the first and also the last cry in sumptuousness – all that was beautiful and expensive in days gone by is there, and all that is new and desirable is there, too; Schoenbrunn, the Imperial summer residence, is a dream of loveliness wedded to grandeur. Between the Emperor and my mother and between her and the numerous archduchesses and archdukes every second word uttered referred to me as the possible wife of someone or another. And that someone was well dissected as to fortune, success in life and political exigencies.
Whether he was good-looking or a monkey in face and figure mattered not. Health, good character, uprightness didn't count.
Has he expectations for gaining a throne? Will he be wise enough to retain that throne? What kind of an establishment will he be able to set up? How long may his parents live, hanging on to the family fortune? – These were the only considerations deemed worthy of discussion.
Three or four of the archduchesses seemed to be acting as marriage brokers for Ferdinand, just elected hereditary prince of Bulgaria, whose mother, Princess Clementine, a daughter of the dethroned King Louis Philippe of France, was reputed to be rolling in gold.
Leopold irreverently called Ferdinand's partisans "
Fillons
" after famous "
La Fillon
," who supplied the harem of our jolly ancestor, the Regent of France, Duke of Orleans, and he insisted that Ferdinand was a
Cohen
, not a Coburg. As a matter of fact, Ferdinand's great fortune is derived from a Kohary, which is Hungarian for Cohen. The original Kohary was a cattle-dealer, who supplied the armies of the Allies during the Napoleonic wars. In this way he accumulated so much wealth that an impoverished Coburg prince fell in love with his daughter and made her his wife, after she exchanged the name of Rebecca for Antonie and the Mosaic faith for that of Rome.
Young and proud and flippant as I was, Leopold's talk filled me with hearty contempt for the "Coburger" long before we were introduced. And as to his ambassador, who was forever dancing attendance upon me, I hated him. Yet the Imperial "
Fillons
" kept up their clatter, and one fine morning Prince Ferdinand was announced.
He wasn't half bad looking, but struck me as too much of a mother's-boy. Princess Clementine seemed to decide everything for him. Anyhow, I wouldn't have him and he marched off again.
I next reviewed, as another Balkan matrimonial possibility, Prince Danilo of Montenegro, a small, thin person, looking like a Jew counter-jumper in holiday dress – Vienna "store-clothes."
Danilo spoke the worst
table d'hôte
French I ever heard in my life, and I told mother I would rather marry a rich banker than this crowned idiot. For once she agreed with me and said his father was only a "mutton-thief," anyhow.
Finally there was talk of King Alexander of Servia, six years younger than I. Queen Natalie, who a few days ago celebrated one of her several reunions with ex-King Milan, spoke feelingly of her "Sasha" to mother, lauding him as the best of sons and the most promising of sovereigns, but the oft-divorced Majesty was less communicative when mother asked how many millions she would pass over to Alexander on his marriage day. That settled "Sasha's" ambitions as far as my hand was concerned. Marry a Balkan King and the
née
Keshko holding the purse-strings!