Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz

by John Van der Kiste

  Though she and Fritz had sent over most of his papers to England in the last twelve months and burnt others, she was advised to ask Queen Victoria to return everything only a month after Fritz’s death. Friedberg, one of the few men still loyal to her, convinced her that it was essential to prove to the government that in doing so she had not removed German state property. Back came the numerous boxes from England to Berlin, but Fritz had left them all to Vicky in his will. When Friedberg was obliged to inspect them, he confirmed that they were not state documents but personal papers for her to do with as she liked.

  Her wish to have documentary evidence to put the record straight was prompted by a pamphlet war which soon broke out. Less than a month after Fritz’s death, a broadside was written by Bergmann and Gerhardt (but significantly excluding the more politically liberal Virchow), defending themselves and attacking Mackenzie for not consenting to an immediate operation on the then Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm’s throat. Two weeks later an article appeared in a government paper stating that Kaiser Friedrich had declared he would not ascend the throne if it could be proved that he was suffering from an incurable illness, and claiming that those close to him, namely his wife and Dr Mackenzie, had tried to deceive him as to his real condition.

  Rather against his better judgement, Mackenzie was persuaded to answer it with his angry book The Fatal Illness of Frederick the Noble. On publication in October 1888 it was an instant success in terms of sales; 100,000 copies were bought in Britain within a few days, and a similar print run was commissioned by the German publisher who outbid more than thirty rival firms to issue a German translation, but his entire stocks were confiscated by the imperial police. To Vicky this was ‘a perfectly despotic proceeding worthy of St Petersburg’.7 Its popularity cost the author dearly, for in London he was censured by the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons for airing sickroom secrets in public. Most of his detractors were jealous or resentful fellow physicians who thought him too keen to advertise himself, and few if any of them had made an effort to read the German pamphlets against which he was attempting to vindicate himself.

  The medical controversy was nothing to the affair of Fritz’s war diary. After the Franco-Prussian campaign he had showed some of his writings to Heinrich Geffcken, a friend from university days and now Professor of Political Science at Strasbourg. With his approval Geffcken had copied extracts for his personal use, and by September 1888 he was so angered by the continued posthumous attacks on his late sovereign and friend that he published them in the Deutsche Rundschau. At last the public were made aware of their late Emperor’s nationalist beliefs, his passionate desire for German unification, and his role in the founding of the German Empire, especially in the face of Bismarck’s hesitation. Geffcken was arrested and charged with treason, but no case could be brought against him and he was released from prison three months later. Nevertheless it marked the beginning of a savage witch-hunt against the late Emperor’s partisans, derided as conspirators against the welfare of Germany. Roggenbach, Morier and others suffered similar persecution, their houses were broken into, and their private correspondence seized. Morier, now ambassador to St Petersburg, was accused of having betrayed military secrets from the then Crown Princess of Prussia to one of the French commanders in 1870, thus enabling the French to inflict heavy losses on the German forces in a surprise attack during the Franco-Prussian war. Sadly he received no support in defending himself against this libel from Sir Edward Malet, the British ambassador in Berlin, who in his eagerness to prove accommodating to the new regime was evidently prepared to sacrifice Morier’s reputation on the altar of Anglo-German relations.

  With a few notable exceptions, most of Vicky’s relatives in Germany had unhesitatingly thrown in their lot with Kaiser Wilhelm and Bismarck. Though she still cordially disliked the new Empress, her sister-in-law, the wayward Ditta fawned on her elder brother; she and her husband Bernhard told others it was their mother’s fault that Wilhelm and Dona had not been permitted to take their rightful places at Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, as she had prevented Wilhelm from representing his grandfather. The Duke of Saxe-Coburg, a fervent disciple of Bismarck, sanctioned (if he did not actually write) a couple of anonymous pamphlets accusing her, Fritz and Queen Victoria, as well as Morier, of treason against Germany and colluding with France during the Franco-Prussian war.

  Dowager Empress Augusta gave the impression of being quite unaffected by her son’s death, and did not allow mourning to interfere with her social programme. Though wheelchair-bound, she still ruled her attendants with a rod of iron and her sharp tongue, keeping up appearances and attending all receptions and parties given in her name as far as possible. She had always spoilt her eldest grandson, and made a point of asking his permission every time she intended to go from one residence to another. In turn Wilhelm and Dona made a great show of asking her opinion on various domestic and procedural matters, making it obvious that to them Vicky’s opinions were not worth knowing. She lamented bitterly that as far as the three of them were concerned she might as well not exist.

  Thankfully there were exceptions to this roll of dishonour. Her widowed brother-in-law Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, had been deeply saddened at the ‘quite incomprehensible’ way the political establishment of Prussia had moved so quickly to efface any memory of Fritz, and assured her that he for one had not altered his political principles; ‘when I can do anything to propagate Fritz’s views I will do so’, adding that he had to take care not to do anything that would bring down reprisals on his duchy.8 His third daughter Irene, now Vicky’s daughter-in-law, had done much to make Henry more amenable to his mother, and he no longer felt obliged to side with his brother against her, against his better judgment.

  Queen Victoria had urged her daughter to come back to England for a visit ever since Fritz’s death. The British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury cravenly suggested it was too soon, and that it would undermine Anglo-German relations, but the Queen retorted that it would be ‘impossible, heartless and cruel’ to prevent her daughter from coming back, and only encourage the Bismarcks and the Emperor in their disgraceful behaviour towards her.9 On 19 November Vicky and her Kleeblatt or trio, Moretta, Sophie and Mossy, arrived in England for three months. Queen Victoria sent the royal yacht Victoria & Albert, with Bertie and his second son George on board, to Flushing to meet them and accompany them on the crossing to Gravesend. Though as a matter of course the Queen normally never went further than her front door when welcoming even her most exalted guests to England, this time she made the journey to Gravesend to meet her daughter draped in crêpe, trembling with grief, a thick black veil concealing the tears running down her face. Her granddaughters on board the yacht were equally overcome when she landed. Nothing was too much trouble for the Queen’s eldest daughter whose brightest hopes had been dashed so tragically, and she hoped that when he heard of this reception Kaiser Wilhelm would be shamed into treating her with more respect when she went home. Two days later there was a family gathering to observe her first birthday since being widowed, with a present table laid out with gifts, as there always had been in her childhood. The Queen’s present was a generous contribution towards a mausoleum for Fritz at the Friedenskirche.

  The Queen had always been ready to make allowances for her firstborn grandchild, but even her remarkable patience with him had come close to snapping after his high-handed refusal to meet the Prince of Wales at Vienna the previous month. She agreed with Lord Salisbury that Anglo-German relations should not be affected by ‘miserable personal quarrels’, but ‘with such a hot-headed, conceited, and wrongheaded young man, devoid of all feeling, this may at ANY moment become impossible.’10 However she knew that there must be no deepening of the rift between mother and son, and while Vicky was in England they had long conversations during which she tried to soften her resentment and anguish. The Queen appreciated, and Vicky realized in her heart of hearts, that Wilhelm was not fundamentally evil, so much as thou
ghtless, weak and easily swayed by others.

  The time she and her daughters spent in England did them much good. ‘It has been a great boon and blessing to me to have been allowed to spend these months here in beloved England with the Queen, whose goodness and kindness and sympathy helps me to bear the heavy burden of bitter sorrow and bereavement laid upon me!’ she wrote to Lord Napier in February. ‘I shall want much strength and courage to live on, now that the light and joy has passed from my life, and its object has gone, its hopes buried. But if it be God’s will I should remain yet in for a while, to struggle on alone, I must try and turn my time to good account, and be what little use I can to my 3 dear girls, left without a father at this age, when they most wanted him!’11

  Slowly but surely she began to regain her perspective, and could even make sardonic jokes about herself. To the end of her days she wore mourning for her husband, and in accordance with German custom she had a peaked cap with two long streamers hanging down the back. One day while in England she met her old friend Lord Ernle; during their meeting she accidentally sat down on one of the streamers and pulled it slightly out of shape. As she straightened it out afterwards she remarked how glad she was that she had not done so in Berlin, as otherwise ‘the whole press would have shouted that I had insulted the national mourning’.12 Nevertheless it was surely the saddest, most difficult journey of her life when she and her daughters had to return to Berlin.

  Kaiser Wilhelm was desperate to be forgiven and invited to England himself, and with some misgivings the Queen asked him to come the following summer. In the process she had to receive his advisers, many of whom had behaved disgracefully to Vicky. If the widowed Empress felt bitterly hurt at what looked like a change of loyalty, or jealous of her son, she could hardly be blamed. Yet the British government felt obliged to put state expediency before the personal feelings of the royal family by building bridges between England and Germany. Her son and his entourage, who had denounced her and Fritz for being too friendly to England, were now doing exactly the same. It was a cruel reminder of what she had lost, and of what had been denied to her husband. Without him she could not even be an ambassador for the country or empire over which he had reigned so briefly. She had to accept that she was no longer of any significance in diplomatic relations between both countries, and neither Queen Victoria nor the Prince of Wales, the two closest members of her family, were officially obliged to treat her as of political importance, though in private they showed her every courtesy. As she had written on the first evening of her widowhood, ‘I shall disappear as much from the world as possible and certainly not push myself forward anywhere!’13 It was not easy for a German Dowager Empress, the eldest child of the Queen of England, to ‘disappear’. Yet unlike her mother, she was no reigning monarch, but a foreigner ostracized by the political establishment of the day, reminded that she was a foreigner, and not considered an asset to Germany.

  Vicky’s Kleeblatt were an ever-present personal support during these dark days. The news that Sandro had closed an unhappy chapter for them all by his marriage to Johanna Loisinger in February 1889 came as a relief to all concerned, though he was a sick man, destined to die of peritonitis some four years later at the age of thirty-six. By this time Sophie was betrothed to Constantine, Crown Prince of Greece, and Vicky was among those who went to Athens for the wedding on 27 October 1889. The occasion brought sadness to Moretta, whom her mother feared might become an old maid after the thwarted romance with Sandro. Vicky was also deeply affected by the breaking up of the trio, and decided that returning to Berlin straightaway would be too miserable for all of them. Instead mother and spinster daughters went to Rome to spend the rest of the winter. The climate was mild, King Umberto and Queen Margharita treated them like members of their own family, and they were thoroughly enjoying themselves when sad if not unexpected news arrived from home.

  On 7 January 1890 the Dowager Empress Augusta succumbed to influenza, aged seventy-eight. They returned to Berlin for the funeral at once, and Vicky went to see her mother-in-law for the last time, lying in state in the Schloss chapel, her palsied body wrapped in her ermine and gold cloak with a wedding veil on her head. She looked calm and peaceful, even young, Vicky thought; ‘the eyes that used to stare so and look one through and through were closed, which gave her a gentle expression I never saw in life.’14

  The elderly Empress had left her daughter-in-law a characteristically small-minded legacy. During her lifetime Augusta had been the nominal head of the German Red Cross, but had shown no inclination for or interest in the work unlike Vicky, who had every reason to expect Wilhelm to ask if she would take the Empress’s place. It would have been a chance for Wilhelm to fulfil the promise he had made to Queen Victoria during his state visit to England – to do something to please his mama. But Augusta had already offered Dona the position, without telling Vicky. The snub rankled deeply, for Dona knew nothing at all about the work, whereas Vicky herself already had years of experience.

  She consoled herself with seizing the opportunity to ‘do good’ and stop herself from brooding by looking after her charities, particularly the founding of a children’s hospital with a sum given her in Fritz’s memory by the citizens of Berlin, and lending her name and presence to fund-raising bazaars in the capital. If she gave the impression of being determined not to be consoled, it was because she intended to keep her husband’s name and ideals before the nation. In a sense, she was in perpetual mourning for the Germany that was never allowed to flourish because of his untimely death, and their dreams that never came to fruition. There could have been little greater contrast than that between her mother-in-law Augusta, who was admittedly sick and disabled by the time she was widowed and had less than two years to live, yet threw off all mourning as soon as possible and conveniently put aside her liberal principles, and Vicky, who held steadfast to her values – and suffered for it. Had Kaiser Wilhelm shown or allowed some kind of respect for his father, it would have eased her path. When her old adversary Bismarck resigned the Chancellorship in anger in March 1890 after a series of disagreements with Wilhelm, she felt no sense of elation, believing he had been dismissed for the wrong reasons, at a time when he could still have been of benefit to Germany and a guarantor of peace throughout the empire.

  Appearances at functions in Berlin were a painful duty. She attended family dinners at the Schloss with great reluctance, as they made her feel so miserable. ‘There are so many things which make one feel so sore, that aggravate and wound one and rub one up the wrong way, that one would wish to run away and hide oneself and let one’s life flow on in peace. . . . No one feels for one or grieves or understands what one is going through. So much is said and talked which one so completely disagrees with and yet it is best to keep one’s opinion quite to oneself.’15 On 21 November 1890 Vicky celebrated her fiftieth birthday, a landmark not even her son could ignore. He gave a luncheon for her at the Schloss, though it was conducted in some haste as the gentlemen in attendance were anxious to get to another Court event immediately afterwards.

  Two days earlier Moretta had been married to Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe, a good-hearted if uninspiring army officer distantly related to the Württemberg royal family. The wedding was overshadowed by an argument between Sophie and her brother. As wife of the heir to the Greek throne, she had announced she would enter the Greek Orthodox Church. In his capacity as head of the family, Kaiser Wilhelm vowed to forbid her to do such a thing, and if she persisted in doing so without his permission she would be barred from setting foot in Germany ever again. He entrusted the task of telling her to Dona, who was enceinte, as he assumed that Sophie would not dare to argue with his wife while she was in such a condition. Sophie firmly told her sister-in-law to mind her own business and was duly banished from Germany for three years.

  Early in 1891 the Kaiser decided it was time to try and improve Franco-German relations. Having alienated Russia over the Reinsurance Treaty, he was faced with the likelihood of an
alliance between two powerful hostile neighbours. He had never revised his unfavourable opinion of France as a nation, and the previous year he had refused to let his mother and sisters visit Queen Victoria while she was in Aix-les-Bains, on the grounds that he was duty-bound to uphold a law passed by his grandfather in 1887 forbidding any prince or princess of the Prussian house to cross the French frontier without the Emperor’s consent. However Vicky had been a regular visitor to Paris, and as a patron of the arts she would be less likely to attract hostility than him. He asked her to go and invite French artists in person to participate in an international art conference to be held in Berlin. When it was suggested by her old friend Count Münster, now German ambassador to France, she was so delighted to have a chance to be of use at last that she did not realize her son was using her to pull national chestnuts out of the fire.

  Accompanied by Mossy, she arrived in Paris on 19 February 1891. A small but vociferous right-wing nationalist group in Paris, eager to make political capital out of her presence in order to discredit Germany, watched her carefully. When she paid discreet visits to Versailles and St Cloud, scenes of happier days in 1855 when she and her parents had visited the Emperor and Empress, but later of national humiliation and defeat for the French, the press claimed she had gone out of her way to insult France. The painters who had accepted invitations to exhibit in Berlin were accused of dishonouring their country, and when the German press replied in kind, feeling between both countries rose to such a pitch that Vicky and her daughter were advised to leave France at once. Though Count Münster had discussed the itinerary with her and accompanied her everywhere, he made no effort to defend her, and joined Kaiser Wilhelm in letting her take the blame for everything. She consoled herself with the reflection that ‘an impertinent set of mischiefmakers who do not represent French public opinion one bit’16 had been responsible, but it was a sad end to what would always remain her last role in representing Germany abroad in even a semi-official capacity.