Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria

by Theo Aronson

  At Charlottenburg Palace, in which the new Emperor and Empress had taken up residence, the Prince of Wales – together with other dignitaries in Berlin for the funeral – was received by the Kaiser. Fritz looked deceptively well. 'In full uniform with quick steps, dignified and upright as usual, he went to meet everyone,' claimed Vicky. All were 'astonished to see him like that after all they had heard'. But Bertie was not taken in. Although Fritz did not look ill, he was much thinner and was quite unable to speak. He had, moreover, 'a hunted, anxious expression, which was very distressing to see'.

  Vicky was delighted to welcome her brother. In the past, the two of them had not always been in accord, but maturity, and Vicky's present plight, had improved their relationship. 'To have dear Bertie here,' wrote the Empress to her mother, 'was a great comfort.'

  The Prince of Wales attended the funeral service and took part in the procession from the cathedral to the mausoleum at Charlottenburg. Chief mourner was Prince Wilhelm, as the new Kaiser was not strong enough to brave the bitter weather. Forced to stand by his window to see the magnificent cortège wind its way through the Tiergarten, Fritz scribbled a note to Dr Mackenzie. 'That is where I ought to be,' he wrote as he watched the proudly strutting figure of his son behind the hearse.

  While in Berlin, the Prince of Wales received Prince Bismarck at the British Embassy. The extraordinarily enthusiastic reception given to the Chancellor by the crowd outside brought home to Bertie something of the great man's popularity. It was obviously to Bismarck, and not to the new Kaiser, that the people were looking for guidance.

  Four days after the funeral, the Prince of Wales was reporting to the Queen at Windsor. His news was hardly reassuring. 'I am determined . . .' wrote the Queen in her Journal after he had left, to visit dear Vicky and Fritz, if only for a day.'

  2

  Some six weeks later Queen Victoria arrived in Berlin to pay her promised visit to the new German Emperor and Empress. She was on her way home from a holiday in Florence. The visit was being made in the face of violent opposition on the part of Prince Bismarck and his circle. The Chancellor, assuming that the Queen was coming to force through a marriage of one of Vicky's daughters to a Battenberg prince of whom Bismarck disapproved, had been determined to keep her away. Whether the Chancellor really objected so strongly to the proposed match or whether he feared that the Queen's presence would encourage the Emperor and Empress to dismiss him from office, was uncertain. He certainly did everything in his power to stop her coming.

  The projected marriage, he announced heatedly, would unite France and Russia against Germany (the Battenberg Prince was anti-Russian); it would estrange England; the German government resented this 'foreign interference' in her affairs; the Queen would be faced with hostile demonstrations in Berlin. Who could say to what friction, both national and international, the Queen's visit to Berlin might not lead?

  This artificially created furore Queen Victoria dismissed as 'absurd'. Russia, she declared firmly, did not care a straw about the marriage; the whole fracas was simply a nefarious plot on the part of Bismarck, Prince Wilhelm and their 'cercle vicieux' to undermine the position of the Emperor and Empress and to keep her from visiting them. In any case, she herself did not favour the Battenberg marriage and had already told Vicky this. 'How Bismarck, and still more Wilhelm, can play such a double game is impossible for us honest, straightforward English to understand,' she declared. 'Thank God! we are English!' She was determined to go to Berlin.

  To Berlin, therefore, she went. The visit was a tremendous success. Despite the campaign of vilification in the German press, the Queen was vociferously welcomed when she arrived on 24 April 1888. At the sight of that plump but imperious figure, all traces of hostility melted and she was met, reported her somewhat astonished ambassador, by 'dense crowds and hearty cheers'. The Queen herself was impressed by the 'great crowds, who were most enthusiastic, cheering and throwing flowers into the carriage'. The people, she claimed, were 'very friendly'.

  The situation at Charlottenburg Palace was distinctly less encouraging. Although Fritz looked well, he spent almost all his time in bed. Dr Mackenzie told the Queen that he could not last for more than a few weeks. When Sir Henry Ponsonby, the Queen's private secretary, assured the Empress that her husband was looking better, her eyes filled with tears. 'No, he is not really better,' answered Vicky, 'but it has done him a temporary good to see Mama.' The Empress herself was in a pathetic state. She looked, thought her mother, 'careworn and thinner' and was liable to burst into tears whenever she was alone with the Queen. 'Her despair at what she seems to look on as the certain end is terrible,' noted Victoria.

  Her husband's illness, however, was merely one of the many difficulties with which Vicky had to contend. Chief amongst these was the behaviour of Prince Wilhelm. Relations between mother and son were as bad as ever. 'William,' complained the Empress to her mother, 'fancies himself completely the Emperor – and an absolute and autocratic one.' He was, she said, 'in a "ring", a côterie, whose main endeavour is, as it were, to paralyse Fritz in every way'.

  The Queen claimed that she had no words to express her 'indignation and astonishment' at the conduct of Prince Wilhelm. He and his 'odious ungrateful wife', Dona, should be packed off on a long journey.

  Vicky's political difficulties were as bad as her domestic ones. Her husband's régime was simply a travesty of what they had once planned.

  Because of his helpless state, the Emperor had been obliged to confirm Bismarck in office. There had been nothing else that he could do. Since then the Chancellor had lost no opportunity of asserting his authority. Even Frederick Ill's most moderate attempts at reform were nullified or ignored by Bismarck. No one dared give Fritz any help or encouragement. Even the members of his entourage worked against him by repeating to Bismarck exactly what the Chancellor wanted to hear: that the Emperor was weak, apathetic, little better than a corpse. All the Emperor's schemes for the gradual identification of the throne with liberalism rather than conservatism came to nothing. However strongly he might feel, he could insist on nothing for fear of Bismarck handing in his resignation and leaving him with a situation with which he would not have the strength to cope.

  Worse than the Chancellor's high-handed treatment of the Emperor was his persecution of the Empress. Realizing that in her he had a more formidable opponent, he did everything he could to whip up public feeling against her. Readers of the Bismarck-controlled press were reminded that die Engländerin was always ready to sacrifice German to British interests. To her, he claimed, the Kaiser was 'as dependent and submissive as a dog, you'd hardly believe to what extent'.

  And if it was not Bismarck himself who was reviling the Empress, it was one of his, or Prince Wilhelm's, adherents. The reactionary Count Waldersee claimed that the Empress now ruled the land and when a liberal politician tried to refute this allegation in the Prussian parliament, he was simply howled down. The fact that the Empress always had to be present to speak on behalf of her dumb husband seemed to confirm the view that she was now the power in the land. She was very quick, it was said, to point out to his visitors how well he was looking; she hoped thereby to give the impression that his reign – under her influence – would be a long one. She was accused of forcing him to make public appearances, of plying him with wine and other stimulants to get him through these occasions, of not caring one jot that the effort left him utterly exhausted. It was even whispered that she was demanding that the Emperor should appoint her Regent. To this suggestion her son lost no time in replying that not the Hohenzollerns, nor Prussia, nor the German Reich would allow a woman to rule over them.

  The deplorable situation in Germany was summed up by Colonel Swaine, the British Military Attaché in Berlin. 'We are living in sad times here in Berlin . . .' he wrote in April 1888.'It seems as if a curse had come over this country, leaving but one bright spot and that is where stands a solitary woman doing her duty faithfully and tenderly by her sick husband against all odds. I
t is one of the most tragic episodes in a country and a life ever recorded in history.'

  The visiting Queen Victoria did what she could to alleviate her daughter's suffering. By her prestige, her assurance and her sound common sense, the Queen brought a breath of fresh air into the embittered atmosphere at Charlottenburg. She sat talking to the Kaiser; she listened to her daughter's tearful outpourings; she gave Wilhelm some grandmotherly advice. Appreciating the prickliness of his nature, she did not scold; she merely asked him to be more considerate towards his mother. This Prince Wilhelm, who always stood in awe of his grandmother, promised to do.

  The Queen's greatest achievement, however, was the audience which she granted Bismarck. The momentous interview between them took place on 25 April, the day after Victoria's arrival. At the prospect of coming face to face with the formidable old lady, all Bismarck's self-confidence evaporated. He felt sure that he was in for a difficult time. The Queen's aide-de-camp reported him as being 'unmistakably nervous and ill at ease'; he wanted to know exactly where she would be in the Audience Chamber and whether she would be seated or standing. The British aide felt 'proud that this great man evidently realized that he was about to be received by an equally great, or even greater, woman'.

  The meeting passed off admirably. Queen and Chancellor were charmed with each other. The Queen, expecting to meet a monster, was 'agreeably surprised to find him so amiable and gentle'. The Chancellor, expecting her to insist on the Battenberg marriage, was gratified to find that she did not mention the subject. They discussed their one previous meeting, over thirty years before; they spoke about the state of Europe. The Queen appealed to Bismarck to stand by 'poor Vicky' and, for the sake of 'dear Fritz', not to appoint Prince Wilhelm as Regent. They agreed that Wilhelm was painfully inexperienced, although Bismarck believed that 'should he be thrown into the water, he would be able to swim', as he was certainly clever. Queen and Chancellor parted on cordial terms and Bismarck emerged from the interview mopping his brow and exclaiming, 'That was a woman! One could do business with her!'

  If only England would follow the Queen's sensible views, he afterwards declared, Europe would be in a much happier state. Indeed, so impressed was Bismarck by Queen Victoria that he was even prepared to behave towards the Empress with unaccustomed – if temporary – gallantry. At the state dinner that evening he set himself out to be as agreeable as possible. Drawing Vicky's attention to a sweet wrapper which carried her likeness, he unbuttoned his coat and, with a graceful remark, placed the bonbon beside his heart.

  The Queen left for home the following evening. After an early dinner she went to take leave of the Emperor. It was a poignant parting, for both of them must have known that they would never see each other again. For his sake, however, the Queen remained cheerful, 'I kissed him as I did every day, and said I hoped he would come to us when he was stronger.'

  The Empress, too, was determined not to give way to her feelings. She drove with her mother to the station and kept control of herself as the Queen took leave of the various people assembled on the beflagged platform. Only on following her mother into the carriage, where the heartbroken Queen kissed her 'again and again', did she break down. By the time she had returned to the platform to take up her position as the train started up, she was in floods of tears.

  'It was terrible,' wrote the equally anguished Queen, 'to see her standing there in tears, while the train moved slowly off, and to think of all she was suffering, and might have to go through. My poor, poor child. . . .'

  3

  The reign of Kaiser Frederick III lasted for less than seven weeks after Queen Victoria's departure from Berlin. During that time Fritz was able to undertake only one political act of any significance: he insisted on the dismissal of a particularly reactionary Minister. For the rest, it was as much as he could do to sit up for a few hours during the day. Occasionally, if he were feeling stronger, he might be taken for a drive and once, on the occasion of the marriage of his second son, Prince Henry, to Princess Irene of Hesse, he was able to attend an official function. Dressed in full uniform ('so handsome and dignified but so thin and pale', reported Vicky) Fritz got through the ceremony without coughing. But the effort had obviously been too much for him. That night he ran a high temperature and had to spend the following day in bed.

  Yet the Empress persisted in maintaining that he was not really as ill as everyone imagined. That she should always show him a cheerful face was understandable; that she should keep up this insouciance with others seemed inexplicable. To Prince Hohenlohe, who found her 'frank and cheerful' manner astounding, she once said that 'it is perhaps possible that the illness will be of long duration. The expectation of a speedy end has not yet been confirmed'.

  Even Queen Victoria was treated to encouraging reports from her daughter. During the month of May 1888, she was receiving 'very good accounts of beloved Fritz' from the Empress. He was 'gaining strength', he was 'continuing to improve' and, on the last day of the month, a mere fortnight before Fritz's death, Vicky told her mother that Mackenzie had said that the Kaiser might live for six months, a year, or might even recover. The doctor had had the good sense to add that although this was possible, it was not probable.

  On the day after the Queen had received this reassuring report, the Emperor and Empress left Berlin for the Neues Palais, their home at Potsdam. They travelled by steamer up the Havel, and all along the river banks cheering crowds collected to see the Emperor pass by. On arrival at the Neues Palais – the home which Fritz had spent some of the happiest days of his life – he scribbled a note to the effect that he would like the palace to be known, henceforth, as Friedrichskron.

  Even now Fritz insisted on doing as much as his weakened state would allow. He made entries in his diary, he wrote letters, he studied the newspapers, he signed documents, he issued instructions. When the King of Sweden visited Friedrichskron, the Kaiser put on his uniform and received him in correct fashion. It was such instances of her husband's devotion to duty that caused Vicky to be so incensed by the slanders of his enemies. They, who knew nothing of his courage, spoke of him as a listless, bemused, half-imbecile creature, propped up and goaded on by his ambitious wife. There were even wild rumours to the effect that he had already died and that she and her liberal coterie were concealing the fact from the nation.

  An additional anxiety for the Kaiser was the thought of what would happen to his wife after his death. He realized that she could expect very little sympathy from their son Wilhelm. Thus one day, when Bismarck was visiting him, the Emperor had the Empress called into the room. Taking hold of his wife's hand, Fritz laid it in Bismarck's. The dumb and dying man looked from one to the other; both realized that he was committing his wife to the Chancellor's care. Bismarck murmured an assurance to the effect that he would never forget his obligations towards the Empress.

  But Vicky refused to be taken in. She appreciated that Bismarck might harbour a certain feudal loyalty to his master, the Emperor, but she knew that this feeling did not extend to her. How little she trusted him – or her son Wilhelm – was clear from her actions during the last days of her husband's life. She had already seen to it that her own and her daughters' share of her husband's property would be made over before Wilhelm assumed control of the family revenues; now she put into operation a plan which she had been contemplating for some time.

  Determined that the full story of the campaign against her husband and herself should one day be revealed and that justice should be done to their memory, she had to make sure that their private papers did not fall into unsympathetic hands. The only way to ensure this was to smuggle the papers out of Germany. Already, during their visit to England for the Queen's Jubilee the year before, she had deposited three boxes of papers in a safe at Buckingham Palace. Now, on 14 June, she arranged for yet more personal papers to be secreted to England. A Mr Inman Bernard, special correspondent for the New York Herald, was invited to call at Friedrichskron. There he was handed a parcel by Dr Macke
nzie. He was asked to deliver it to the British Embassy in Berlin with instructions for the Ambassador to send it on to Queen Victoria. Presumably this was done, for a few days later the Queen noted that the Military Attaché had arrived from Berlin with some of Kaiser Frederick Ill's papers for her safe-keeping.

  The move had been made just in time. On 13 June the Queen had received a telegram from the British Ambassador in Berlin to say that Fritz was sinking fast. 'The worst is feared within the next twenty-four hours,' he wired. On receipt of this the Queen sent a telegram to her grandson, Prince Wilhelm. 'Am in great distress at the terrible news, and so troubled about poor, dear Mama. Do all you can, as I asked you, to help her at this terrible time of dreadful trial and grief. God help us!'

  Kaiser Frederick III died on the morning of 15 June 1888.'I cannot, cannot realize the dreadful truth,' wrote the anguished Queen on receipt of the news. 'The misfortune is awful. My poor child's whole future gone, ruined, which they had prepared themselves for for nearly thirty years.'

  To her grandson, now Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Queen wired, 'I am broken-hearted. Help and do all you can for your poor dear Mother and try to follow in your best, noblest, and kindest of father's footsteps.'

  Her advice fell on deaf ears. Wilhelm was planning to follow a very different course. The minute his father died, he put a long-premeditated plan into action. The palace was sealed off from the outside world by a régiment of hussars and orders given that no one, not even members of the imperial family, were allowed to leave without a signed permit. Once the palace had been successfully cordoned off, it was thoroughly searched. The new Kaiser was anxious to lay his hands on his late father's private papers; he probably hoped, imagined the Empress, that he would uncover traces of 'liberal plots'. While one of his generals ransacked the late Emperor's desk, the Kaiser himself, in his red hussar's uniform, searched his mother's rooms. They found nothing. The late Emperor's personal papers, for what they were worth, were stored at Buckingham Palace.