Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz

by John Van der Kiste

  In January 1874 Queen Victoria’s second son Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, married Marie, the only surviving daughter of Tsar Alexander II, and Vicky and Fritz were among the royal guests invited to St Petersburg. It was Vicky’s first visit to Russia, and she did not like the country, deciding she was ‘profoundly thankful’ she did not have to live there; ‘over the whole of Russia there seems to me to hang a dull, heavy, silent melancholy very depressing to the spirits!’8 Nevertheless she got on well with the Tsar, who presented her with a glittering diamond and ruby bracelet as a memento of the occasion. Several months after their return Bismarck suggested that she had gone with the purpose of persuading the Tsar to conclude an Anglo-Russian alliance against Germany, and a grateful Tsar had presented her with the jewellery for this very reason. Though Emperor Wilhelm had the sense to exclaim that he did not believe it for a moment, he still regretted that he had allowed his daughterin-law to accompany her husband to St Petersburg.9 The whispering campaign against her was so firmly established among the Anglophobes and anti-liberal court circles that many others accepted the slander without question.

  The ever more oppressive atmosphere of Berlin drove husband and wife increasingly to Bornstädt, away from spiteful gossip and the all-pervading aura of the Chancellor, to the joys of country life and friendly villagers who formed their impressions of the couple not on gossip and calumny but on what they saw at first-hand. Vicky always preferred fresh air and found court functions increasingly difficult to endure. She had never managed to master her overwhelming shyness, found it difficult to make small talk and much preferred good conversation on the wide range of subjects which interested her to the malicious gossip that other German princesses relished.

  Her children were always welcomed by their English grandmother on visits to Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral. The younger ones loved these holidays almost as much as their mother did, and she had particularly high hopes for Waldie, in whom she saw something of the Prince Consort with his love of animals and interest in science and geology. Of all Queen Victoria’s grandchildren, he was the most keen when it came to looking for minerals and fossils on the Isle of Wight. When they were there he proudly collected fragments of fossilized coniferous wood, ammonite, and an iguanadon’s tooth, which Vicky carefully labelled and deposited in the museum at the Swiss Cottage where she had played and learned to cook during childhood. Yet it was on one of their English visits that the little imp gave Queen Victoria a nasty fright. Working in her room one evening she looked up from her papers to see the beady eyes of a small crocodile leering at her, and her screams brought the whole household running. Waldie had let his pet crocodile ‘Bob’ out of its box, and order was not restored until he rescued the wandering pachyderm, helpless with laughter as he did so.

  Vicky was touched that the Queen never forgot her grandchildren’s birthdays, marking the occasions with gifts of ponies, or family heirlooms for the future such as candlesticks, silver plate or jewellery. The Emperor and Empress ignored their birthdays, so Queen Victoria’s thoughtfulness was appreciated all the more. Emperor Wilhelm displayed more fondness to them than the increasingly distant Empress, but he was a thrifty soul and his family obligations stopped short of sending presents.

  The Queen did not always show the same affection at this time for the children’s parents, and on several of their visits to England after 1871 they were reduced to staying at the Prussian Embassy, or at Sandringham. Fritz, she informed her private secretary Sir Henry Ponsonby in 1874, was ‘rather weak & to a certain extent obstinate not conceited but absurdly proud, as all his family are, thinking no family higher or greater than the Hohenzollerns.’10 Nine years later, writing to her granddaughter Victoria, Alice’s eldest child, she complained that he and Vicky were ‘not pleasant in Germany’, but ‘high & mighty there’.11 That her son-in-law and daughter were destined to succeed to an imperial throne while she was a mere Queen was sufficient cause for jealousy, even after her declaration as Empress of India in 1876.

  The happy family circle was not destined to remain so much longer; almost imperceptibly, the forces that would set Willy against them were at work. In January 1873 ex-Emperor Napoleon died in exile at Chislehurst in Kent. Remembering the happy times she had known at the glittering French court, and touched by his pathetic downfall and disease-racked last years, Vicky was deeply upset. Willy found her emotional reaction hard to understand, as he recalled how desperate she had been when his father had gone to war against France. He asked Hinzpeter, whose careful choice of words made his charge believe that his mother was committing treason by mourning one of Germany’s most notorious enemies. The idea took root in the impressionable boy’s mind, and over the next few years he took all his confidential problems to the governor, whom he regarded as his best friend. This pleased Hinzpeter as, like many other German men with old-fashioned views, he disliked Vicky because she was a woman whose brains made him feel inferior.

  It was sad that Willy felt unable to talk to his father, as they had been close to each other in the past. Like his brother-in-law Bertie, Fritz took to heart the differences which had prevented him from enjoying an easy relationship with his own father, and with this in mind he had wanted a good relationship with his sons from the start. But another of Bismarck’s schemes had borne fruit; in sending Fritz on representative missions around Europe and beyond, he was keeping him away from his son. The less Willy saw of his father, the more he would look upon him as a stranger as he grew up, and in due course this would make it easier for the Chancellor to turn him against his parents and their politics. It would also foster the impression that the Crown Prince was an ineffectual father, completely ruled by his wife when it came to bringing up the boy.

  Vicky would never deny that she was certainly a demanding parent. Raised by a perfectionist father who had sent her to Prussia to produce a generation of reformers, she saw it as her duty to bring up the future Kaiser in the same image, with qualities she had been taught as necessary for moral and political leadership. Taught never to be satisfied with herself, she would not give up trying to encourage her own children, particularly the eldest and most important, in a similar fashion. She worried endlessly about their health and childhood illnesses, particularly Willy, who like his father was always susceptible to colds and nasal infections. In his case, the damage to his arm, shoulder and left ear had weakened his immunity to such complaints.

  It need hardly be said that the experience of her first confinement had left her with a lasting mistrust of German doctors. This scepticism with regards to their abilities had been compounded when Sigi’s meningitis went unrecognized until it was too late, and from that time onwards, whenever she was in England she consulted English doctors. Back at home in Berlin and Potsdam, she always watched out for things the German doctors might not notice. Unlike their Hohenzollern cousins, Vicky and Fritz’s children were small and thin. She was always sensitive to any criticism of them, particularly of Willy’s deformed arm, and was outraged when Fritz’s cousin, the loud-mouthed Friedrich Karl, said openly that a onearmed man should never be King of Prussia.12

  Vicky and Fritz’s children lived a happy, homely existence as youngsters, which had more in common with the childhood life of Queen Victoria’s children than those of the average Prussian prince and princess of the age. The family spent winters in Berlin, summers in Potsdam, and took family holidays further afield, usually England, in July or August. Like Vicky, her children always keenly anticipated their annual departure for the country. In Potsdam the children rode on horseback with their mother most mornings, and on holidays went for long walks with their father. When he was at home he took his sons rowing or swimming, and when they were old enough all three went hunting together.

  The children always had breakfast with their parents. In later years, the younger ones always came into their parents’ room promptly at 7 a.m. and sat on their bed having tea and toast. Princess Victoria later looked back fondly on this part of her life, during which h
er mother never neglected them even though she always seemed to be active and busy. ‘Every moment that she could spare away from the various duties which devolved upon her was spent with us. She carefully supervised and watched our upbringing both in the nursery and the schoolroom.’13 Poultney Bigelow, the son of an American diplomat and one of Willy’s playmates, thought that no parents could have shown more interest in their children than the Crown Prince and Princess. Willy’s parents were usually there with ‘a smile and kind word’14 when their children ate supper, though the Crown Princess had a sharp eye for napkins not properly tucked in or any lapse in nursery manners.

  Fritz’s university education had seemed little short of revolutionary in the 1840s, and a proposal to send Willy to the Kassel Gymnasium (grammar school) in 1874 for three years also astonished the court. Contrary to popular belief, the idea was not Vicky’s but that of Hinzpeter, who wanted to bring the boys further under his control and therefore take them away from their parents, suggesting it in such a way that she soon believed it to be of her making. She agreed that it would surely prevent ‘that terrible Prussian pride’ from ensnaring Willy; he must not grow up with the idea that he was of ‘a different flesh and blood to the poor, the peasants and working classes and servants’.15 The Kaiser complained that as the boy was his eventual heir, he should have been consulted first. He wanted Willy to stay in Berlin, to appear at manoeuvres and reviews as his father had done at the same age, and to be in the public eye as much as possible – just what Fritz and Vicky did not want. Yet it had been an error of judgment to keep the plan to themselves, and not let the Kaiser know until so near the time. Vicky did herself a disservice by not admitting that it had been Hinzpeter’s idea in the first place, since the old man had the same unbounded faith in the governor that she did. Either the thought of defying her father-in-law for the sake of what she believed to be right for her son carried her away, or else she knew Wilhelm to be so completely under Bismarck’s influence that he would not believe her if she denied all responsibility. The Empress took their part, which only hardened her husband’s opposition.

  Willy’s confirmation on 1 September 1874 at the Friedenskirche took place after an argument between Vicky and the Emperor. Her eyes were red and she made a great effort to keep herself from trembling as she watched her son calmly listening to long tedious addresses, and answering the forty prepared questions without hesitation or embarrassment. Henry was also going to school in preparation for a career in the navy, and later that week she and Fritz saw the boys leave home, to stay at Schloss Wilhelmshöhe under Hinzpeter’s surveillance and attend their schools as day pupils.

  In April and May 1875 Vicky and Fritz enjoyed a short spring holiday in Italy. They visited King Victor Emmanuel and Crown Prince Umberto, and Vicky’s artistic talent throve under the guidance of Anton von Werner, staying in Venice at the time. It was a rude shock for them when they returned to Berlin in May to find Germany apparently on the verge of war again.

  France had recovered quickly from the recent conflict, paying off her indemnity by September 1873, eighteen months before the date specified in the Frankfurt treaty. The subsequent departure of the last German soldier from occupied territory was soon followed by reorganization of the French army, and representatives of every political party in the country were talking of revenge. When Bismarck learnt that the government in Paris was purchasing thousands of cavalry horses from German stables, he published a decree suspending the export of any more. Shortly afterwards a meeting between King Victor Emmanuel of Italy and Emperor Franz Josef at Venice gave rise to rumours that an Austro-Italian-French coalition was being hatched, and Bismarck’s recent anti-Catholic legislation made the supposed alliance look like a threat to Germany. In April 1875 the Kölnische Zeitung published an article commenting on the threat to European peace posed by the French army and the Venetian encounter. Two more right-wing papers took up the theme, and stock exchanges all over the continent were shaken by the scare. The Grand Duchess of Baden drew the Kaiser’s attention to these articles and he wrote in some anxiety to Bismarck, who disclaimed any connection with the panic. Everything was calm by the time Vicky and Fritz came home, but after previous experiences they knew better than to place trust where it did not belong. In June Bismarck assured Fritz eloquently that ‘he had never wished for war nor intended it’ and blamed the alarm on the press. He wished he could believe the Chancellor, but as Vicky said, ‘as long as he lives we cannot ever feel safe or comfortable’.16 Kaiser Wilhelm wrote personally to Queen Victoria, assuring her that any thoughts of war had been entirely a fabrication by the newspapers, particularly The Times.

  The affair cast a shadow over Fritz’s activities during the summer, including a visit to Vienna for the funeral of ex-Austrian Emperor Ferdinand, his opening of a horticultural exhibition at Koln, and another round of army inspections. He was sufficiently soured for once to complain about having to dash ‘from one (German state) to the other by rail, like a State messenger’ when he wrote to Prince Carol of Roumania that autumn. He was willing to fulfil his duties, ‘but there are limits, especially when one is no longer as young as one was’.17 His hollow existence as a representative at Bismarck’s beck and call was beginning to make him feel old and weary before his time. Even allowing for his delicate health, for him to complain of feeling his age at forty-four, when his father had ascended the throne in his sixties and showed no sign of relinquishing it on the threshold of eighty, was disturbing. In a mood of depression at this time he told Hinzpeter that he felt he would never rule; the succession would skip a generation.18

  In the following year another war scare came from the Balkans. When Slav nationalists rioted in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the summer of 1875, ministers representing members of the Dreikaiserbund agreed to fight if necessary in order to put down the revolt. Russia particularly favoured armed intervention, and the alliance would probably draw Germany and Austria into any ensuing conflict. With outward calm Fritz braved himself for the order to mobilize in a war he dreaded far more than the previous campaigns. The Slavs and Turks were dangerous enemies who thought nothing of stabbing their opponents in the back and torturing rather than taking prisoners; and, worst of all, it could have brought him face to face with British soldiers. Disraeli, his foreign minister Lord Salisbury and the British government distrusted Bismarck as much as they did Russia, whose threatened expansion in the Balkans would be at the expense of British trade routes to India and the far east.

  Willy’s education at Kassel was not an unqualified success. His regular placing as tenth in a class of seventeen did not cure his passion for boasting, and far from treating him as one of them, his fellow-pupils looked up to their eventual ruler and flattered him endlessly. Moreover he had gone there with misgivings about the liberal notions of his parents. To him Bismarck was a hero whose policies of blood and iron had made Germany great; liberalism, so it seemed, had contributed nothing to the birth of the Empire. His history lessons had reinforced his faith in the Chancellor, and Hinzpeter had contributed his share by encouraging him to speak out. The boy had found fault with everything – the headmaster, the curriculum, the ‘lack of Germanism’ – largely for its own sake.

  When it came to persuading her adolescent son as to the merits of her opinions, Vicky could be her own worst enemy. Her constant descriptions of herself as an Englishwoman and a free-born Briton did nothing to help her, particularly when she regularly used such phrases in letters to Willy. England, she told him, was ‘the freest, the most progressive advanced, & liberal & the most developed race in the world, also the richest, she clearly is more suited than any other to civilize other countries!’19 Hinzpeter warned her against this trumpeting of English superiority, but she failed to see that the end result was bound to be a defiant reaction.

  For the time being, however, the volcano lay dormant, and nobody was more eager to help fight Willy’s battles than his parents. He was to come of age on 27 January 1877 and enter the First Regimen
t of Guards as a lieutenant, wearing the highest decorations that Russia, Austria and Italy could offer him. Britain stayed aloof at first, and not without reason. Queen Victoria had invited him to stay at Windsor during the previous autumn, and was so unimpressed with his demeanour that she decided to send him only the Grand Commandership of the Bath. A sulking Willy bullied Vicky into pressing her mother to send the Order of the Garter instead, the best that she could bestow. The examples of the other countries were on his side, as was precedent; his grandfather had awarded the Queen’s three elder sons – the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Arthur, Duke of Connaught – the Black Eagle. Lamely Vicky wrote that he would be satisfied with the Bath, but the nation would not. The Queen saw through this excuse, but hesitated to provoke a family quarrel and reluctantly gave her grandson the Garter. After receiving his Guards commission, he followed in his father’s footsteps and went to study at Bonn, reading eight subjects, including history, science, philosophy and art.

  Ditta was no less of a worry. As a child she had often been naughty and backward. She had got her mother into trouble with Queen Victoria at Balmoral by refusing to shake hands with the Highland servant John Brown: ‘Mama says I ought not to be too familiar with servants.’20 Nor did she improve as she grew up, largely due to the Empress Augusta who petted and encouraged her by the sly method of not discouraging her spiteful remarks against her parents. At sixteen she was a typical Hohenzollern princess of the mould so dreaded by Vicky on her arrival in Prussia; vain, discontented, with an insatiable appetite for malicious gossip and all-night socialising.

  In April 1877, shortly after she and Henry were confirmed, the Kaiser announced her engagement at a family dinner to the Hereditary Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Meiningen, son of Fritz’s childhood friend. He and Vicky were very pleased about the betrothal, and relieved to see her gain her independence, but Catherine Radziwill saw that the foolish and frivolous girl could not have been in love with anyone at the time; she was only marrying in order to escape a family life that was becoming irksome.21 Bernhard was a college friend of Willy, and in the spring all three were riding on the switchback railway in the Pfaueninsel, the royal pleasure-park on the Isle of Peacocks in the river Havel at Berlin, where Fritz had often played as a small boy. Bernard was standing behind her when Willy accelerated the controls for a joke. Terrified, Ditta held on to her brother’s friend, and imagined that she was in love with him.