special mission to rome—berlin in process of transformation—causes of prussian militarism—lord and lady ampthill—berlin society—music-lovers—evenings with wagner—aristocratic waitresses—rubinstein's rag-time—liszt's opinions—bismarck—bismarck's classification of nationalists—bismarck's sons—gustav richter—the austrian diplomat—the old emperor—his defective articulation—other royalties—beauty of berlin palace—description of interior—the luxembourg—"napoleon iii"—three court beauties—the pugnacious pages—"making the circle"—conversational difficulties—an ecclesiastical gourmet—the maharajah's mother.
the tremendous series of events which has changed the face of europe since 1914 is so vast in its future possibilities, that certain minor consequences of the great upheaval have received but scant notice.
amongst these minor consequences must be included the disappearance of the courts of the three empires of eastern europe, russia, germany, and austria, with all their glitter and pageantry, their pomp and brilliant mise-en-scène. i will hazard no opinion as to whether the world is the better for their loss or not; i cannot, though, help
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experiencing a feeling of regret that this prosaic, drab-coloured twentieth century should have definitely lost so strong an element of the picturesque, and should have permanently severed a link which bound it to the traditions of the mediæval days of chivalry and romance, with their glowing colour, their splendid spectacular displays, and the feeling of continuity with a vanished past which they inspired.
a tweed suit and a bowler hat are doubtless more practical for everyday wear than a doublet and trunk-hose. they are, however, possibly less picturesque.
since, owing to various circumstances, i happen from my very early days to have seen more of this brave show than has fallen to the lot of most people, some extracts from my diaries, and a few personal reminiscences of the three great courts of eastern europe, may prove of interest.
up to my twentieth year i was familiar only with our own court. i was then sent to rome with a special mission. as king victor emmanuel had but recently died, there were naturally no court entertainments.
the quirinal is a fine palace with great stately rooms, but it struck me then, no doubt erroneously, that the italian court did not yet seem quite at home in their new surroundings, and that there was a subtle feeling in the air of a lack of continuity somewhere. in the "'seventies" the house of savoy had only been established for a very few years in their new capital. the conditions in rome
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had changed radically, and somehow one felt conscious of this.
some ten months later, the ordeal of a competitive examination being successfully surmounted, i was sent to berlin as attaché, at the age of twenty.
the berlin of the "'seventies" was still in a state of transition. the well-built, prim, dull and somewhat provincial residenz was endeavouring with feverish energy to transform itself into a world-city, a welt-stadt. the people were still flushed and intoxicated with victory after victory. in the seven years between 1864 and 1871 prussia had waged three successful campaigns. the first, in conjunction with austria, against unhappy little denmark in 1864; then followed, in 1866, the "seven weeks' war," in which austria was speedily brought to her knees by the crushing defeat of königgrätz, or sadowa, as it is variously called, by which prussia not only wrested the hegemony of the german confederation from her hundred-year-old rival, but definitely excluded austria from the confederation itself. the hohenzollerns had at length supplanted the proud house of hapsburg. prussia had further virtually conquered france in the first six weeks of the 1870 campaign, and on the conclusion of peace found herself the richer by alsace, half of lorraine, and the gigantic war indemnity wrung from france. as a climax the king of prussia had, with the consent of the feudatory princes, been proclaimed german emperor at versailles on january 18, 1871, for bismarck, with all
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his diplomacy, was unable to persuade the feudatory kings and princes to acquiesce in the title of emperor of germany for the prussian king.
the new emperor was nominally only primus inter pares; he was not to be over-lord. theoretically the crown of charlemagne was merely revived, but the result was that henceforth prussia would dominate germany. this was a sufficient rise for the little state which had started so modestly in the sandy mark of brandenburg (the "sand-box," as south germans contemptuously termed it) in the fifteenth century. to understand the mentality of prussians, one must realise that prussia is the only country that always made war pay. she had risen with marvellous rapidity from her humble beginnings entirely by the power of the sword. every campaign had increased her territory, her wealth, and her influence, and the entire energies of the hohenzollern dynasty had been centred on increasing the might of her army. the teutonic knights had wrested east prussia from the wends by the power of the sword only. they had converted the wends to christianity by annihilating them, and the prussians inherited the traditions of the teutonic knights. napoleon, it is true, had crushed prussia at jena, but the latter half of the nineteenth century was one uninterrupted triumphal progress for her. no wonder then that every prussian looked upon warfare as a business proposition, and an exceedingly paying one at that. everything about them had been carefully
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arranged to foster the same idea. all the monuments in the berlin streets were to military heroes. the marble groups on the schloss-brücke represented episodes in the life of a warrior. the very songs taught the children in the schools were all militarist in tone: "the good comrade," "the soldier," "the young recruit," "the prayer during battle," all familiar to every german child. when william ii, ex-emperor, found the stately "white hall" of the palace insufficiently gorgeous to accord with his megalomania, he called in the architect ihne, and gave directions for a new frieze round the hall representing "victorious warfare fostering art, science, trade and industry." i imagine that william in his dutch retreat at amerongen may occasionally reflect on the consequences of warfare when it is not victorious. trained in such an atmosphere from their childhood, drinking in militarism with their earliest breath, can it be wondered at that prussians worshipped brute-force, and brute-force alone?
such a nation of heroes must clearly have a capital worthy of them, a capital second to none, a capital eclipsing paris and vienna. berliners had always been jealous of vienna, the traditional "kaiser-stadt." now berlin was also a "kaiser-stadt," and by the magnificence of its buildings must throw its older rival completely into the shade. paris, too, was the acknowledged centre of european art, literature, and fashion. why? the french had proved themselves a nation of decadents, utterly
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unable to cope with german might. the sceptre of paris should be transferred to berlin. so building and renovation began at a feverish rate.
the open drains which formerly ran down every street in berlin, screaming aloud to heaven during the summer months, were abolished, and an admirable system of main drainage inaugurated. the appalling rough cobble-stones, which made it painful even to cross a berlin street, were torn up and hastily replaced with asphalte. a french colleague of mine used to pretend that the cobble-stones had been designedly chosen as pavement. berliners were somewhat touchy about the very sparse traffic in their wide streets. now one solitary droschke, rumbling heavily over these cobble-stones, produced such a deafening din that the foreigner was deluded into thinking that the berlin traffic rivalled that of london or paris in its density.
berlin is of too recent growth to have any elements of the picturesque about it. it stands on perfectly flat ground, and its long, straight streets are terribly wearisome to the eye. miles and miles of ornate stucco are apt to become monotonous, even if decorated with porcelain plaques, glass mosaics, and other incongruous details dear to the garish soul of the berliner. in their rage for modernity, the municipality destroyed the one architectural feature of the town. some remaining eighteenth century houses had a local peculiarity. the front doors were on the first floor, and were approached by two steeply inclined planes, locally known as die
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rampe. a carriage (with, i imagine, infinite discomfort to the horses) could just struggle up one of these rampe, deposit its load, and crawl down again to the street-level. these inclined planes were nearly all swept away. the rampe may have been inconvenient, but they were individual, local and picturesque.
i arrived at the age of twenty at this berlin in active process of ultra-modernising itself, and in one respect i was most fortunate.
the then british ambassador, one of the very ablest men the english diplomatic service has ever possessed, and his wife, lady ampthill, occupied a quite exceptional position. lord ampthill was a really close and trusted friend of bismarck, who had great faith in his prescience and in his ability to gauge the probable trend of events, and he was also immensely liked by the old emperor william, who had implicit confidence in him. under a light and debonair manner the ambassador concealed a tremendous reserve of dignity. he was a man, too, of quick decisions and great strength of character. lady ampthill was a woman of exceptional charm and quick intelligence, with the social gift developed to its highest point in her. both the ambassador and his wife spoke french, german, and italian as easily and as correctly as they did english. the ambassador was the doyen, or senior member, of the diplomatic body, and lady ampthill was the most intimate friend of the crown princess, afterwards the empress frederick.
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from these varied circumstances, and also from sheer force of character, lady ampthill had become the unchallenged social arbitress of berlin, a position never before conceded to any foreigner. as the french phrase runs, "elle faisait la pluie et le beau temps à berlin."
to a boy of twenty life is very pleasant, and the novel surroundings and new faces amused me. people were most kind to me, but i soon made the discovery that many others had made before me, that at the end of two years one knows prussians no better than one did at the end of the first fortnight; that there was some indefinable, intangible barrier between them and the foreigner that nothing could surmount. it was not long, too, before i became conscious of the under-current of intense hostility to my own country prevailing amongst the "court party," or what would now be termed the "junker" party. these people looked upon russia as their ideal of a monarchy. the emperor of russia was an acknowledged autocrat; the british sovereign a constitutional monarch, or, if the term be preferred, more or less a figure-head. tempering their admiration of russia was a barely-concealed dread of the potential resources of that mighty empire, whose military power was at that period absurdly overestimated. england did not claim to be a military state, and in the "'seventies" the vital importance of sea-power was not yet understood. british statesmen, too, had an unfortunate habit of indulging in sloppy sentimentalities
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in their speeches, and the convinced believers in "practical politics" (real politik) had a profound contempt (i guard myself from saying an unfounded one) for sloppiness as well as for sentimentality.
the berliners of the "'seventies" had not acquired what the french term l'art de vivre. prussia, during her rapid evolution from an insignificant sandy little principality into the leading military state of europe, had to practise the most rigid economy. from the royal family downwards, everyone had perforce to live with the greatest frugality, and the traces of this remained. the "art of living" as practised in france, england, and even in austria during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was impossible in prussia under the straitened conditions prevailing there, and it is not an art to be learnt in a day. the small dinner-party, the gathering together of a few congenial friends, was unknown in berlin. local magnates gave occasionally great dinner-parties of thirty guests or so, at the grotesque hour of 5 p.m. it seemed almost immoral to array oneself in a white tie and swallow-tail coat at four in the afternoon. the dinners on these occasions were all sent in from the big restaurants, and there was no display of plate, and never a single flower. as a german friend (probably a fervent believer in "practical politics") said to me, "the best ornament of a dinner-table is also good food"; nor did the conversation atone by its brilliancy for the lack of the dainty trimmings which
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the taste of western europe expects on these occasions. a never-failing topic of conversation was to guess the particular restaurant which had furnished the banquet. one connoisseur would pretend to detect "hiller" in the soup; another was convinced that the fish could only have been dressed by "poppenberg." as soon as we had swallowed our coffee, we were expected to make our bows and take our leave without any post-prandial conversation whatever, and at 7 p.m. too!
thirty people were gathered together to eat, weiter nichts, and, to do them justice, most of them fulfilled admirably the object with which they had been invited. the houses, too, were so ugly. no objets d'art, no personal belongings whatever, and no flowers. the rooms might have been in an hotel, and the occupant of the rooms might have arrived overnight with one small modest suit-case as his, or her, sole baggage. there was no individuality whatever about the ordinary berlin house, or appartement.
i can never remember having heard literature discussed in any form whatever at berlin. for some reason the novelist has never taken root in germany. the number of good german novelists could be counted on the fingers of both hands, and no one seemed interested in literary topics. it was otherwise with music. every german is a genuine music-lover, and the greatest music-lover of them all was baroness von schleinitz, wife of the minister of the royal household. hers was
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a charming house, the stately eighteenth century haus-ministerium, with its ornate rococo fest-saal. in that somewhat over-decorated hall every great musician in europe must have played at some time or other. baron von schleinitz was, i think, the handsomest old man i have ever seen, with delightful old-world manners. it was a privilege to be asked to madame de schleinitz's musical evenings. she seldom asked more than forty people, and the most rigid silence was insisted upon; still every noted musician passing through berlin went to her house as a matter of course. at the time of my arrival from england, madame de schleinitz had struck up a great alliance with wagner, and gave two musical evenings a week as a sort of propaganda, in order to familiarise berlin amateurs with the music of the "ring." at that time the stupendous tetralogy had only been given at bayreuth and in munich; indeed i am not sure that it had then been performed in its entirety in the bavarian capital.
in the fest-saal, with its involved and tortured rococo curves, two grand pianos were placed side by side, a point wagner insisted upon, and here the master played us his gigantic work. the way wagner managed to make the piano suggest brass, strings, or wood-wind at will was really wonderful. i think that we were all a little puzzled by the music of the "ring"; possibly our ears had not then been sufficiently trained to grasp the amazing beauty of such a subtle web of harmonies. his
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playing finished, a small, very plainly-appointed supper-table was placed in the middle of the fest-saal, at which wagner seated himself alone in state. then the long-wished-for moment began for his feminine adorers. the great ladies of berlin would allow no one to wait on the master but themselves, and the bearers of the oldest and proudest names in prussia bustled about with prodigious fussing, carrying plates of sauerkraut, liver sausage, black puddings, and herring-salad, colliding with each other, but in spite of that managing to heap the supper-table with more teutonic delicacies than even wagner's very ample appetite could assimilate.
i fear that not one of these great ladies would have found it easy to obtain a permanent engagement as waitress in a restaurant, for their skill in handling dishes and plates was hardly commensurate with their zeal. in justice it must be added that the professional waitress would not be encumbered with the long and heavy train of evening dresses in the "'seventies." these great ladies, anxious to display their intimate knowledge of the master's tastes, bickered considerably amongst themselves. "surely, dear countess, you know by now that the master never touches white bread."
"dearest princess, limburger cheese is the only sort the master cares for. you had better take that gruyère cheese away"; whilst an extremely attractive little countess, the bearer of a great german name, would trip vaguely about, announcing to the world that "the master thinks that he could
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eat two more black puddings. where do you imagine that i could find them?"
meanwhile from another quarter one would hear an eager "dearest princess, could you manage to get some raw ham? the master thinks that he would like some, or else some raw smoked goose-breast." "aber, allerliebste gräfin, wissen sie nicht dass der meister trinkt nur dunkles bier?" would come as a pathetic protest from some slighted worshipper who had been herself reproved for ignorance of the master's gastronomic tastes.
it must regretfully be confessed that these tastes were rather gross. meanwhile wagner, dressed in a frock-coat and trousers of shiny black cloth, his head covered with his invariable black velvet skull-cap, would munch steadily away, taking no notice whatever of those around him.
the rest of us stood at a respectful distance, watching with a certain awe this marvellous weaver of harmonies assimilating copious nourishment. for us it was a sort of barmecide's feast, for beyond the sight of wagner at supper, we had no refreshments of any sort offered to us.
soon afterwards rubinstein, on his way to st. petersburg, played at madame de schleinitz's house. having learnt that wagner always made a point of having two grand pianos side by side when he played, rubinstein also insisted on having two. to my mind, rubinstein absolutely ruined the effect of all his own compositions by the tremendous pace at which he played them. it was as
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though he were longing to be through with the whole thing. his "melody in f," familiar to every school-girl, he took at such a pace that i really believe the virulent germ which forty years afterwards was to develop into rag-time, and to conquer the whole world with its maddening syncopated strains, came into being that very night, and was evoked by rubinstein himself out of his own long-suffering "melody in f."
our ambassador, himself an excellent musician, was an almost lifelong friend of liszt. wagner's wife, by the way, was lizst's daughter, and had been previously married to hans von bulow, the pianist. liszt, when passing through berlin, always dined at our embassy and played to us afterwards. i remember well lord ampthill asking liszt where he placed rubinstein as a pianist. "rubinstein is, without any question whatever, the first pianist in the world," answered liszt without hesitation. "but you are forgetting yourself, abbé," suggested the ambassador. "ich," said liszt, striking his chest, "ich bin der einzige pianist der welt" ("i; i am the only pianist in the world"). there was a superb arrogance about this perfectly justifiable assertion which pleased me enormously at the time, and pleases me still after the lapse of so many years.
bismarck was a frequent visitor at our embassy, and was fond of dropping in informally in the evening. apart from his liking for our ambassador, he had a great belief in his judgment and
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discretion. lady ampthill, too, was one of the few women bismarck respected and really liked. i think he had a great admiration for her intellectual powers and quick sense of intuition.
it is perhaps superfluous to state that no man living now occupies the position bismarck filled in the "'seventies." the maker of modern germany was the unchallenged dictator of europe. he was always very civil to the junior members of the embassy. i think it pleased him that we all spoke german fluently, for the acknowledged supremacy of the french language as a means of communication between educated persons of different nationalities was always a very sore point with him. it must be remembered that prussia herself had only comparatively recently been released from the thraldom of the french language. frederick the great always addressed his entourage in french. after 1870-71, bismarck ordered the german foreign office to reply in the german language to all communications from the french embassy. he followed the same procedure with the russian embassy; whereupon the russian ambassador countered with a long despatch written in russian to the wilhelmstrasse. he received no reply to this, and mentioned that fact to bismarck about a fortnight later. "ah!" said bismarck reflectively, "now that your excellency mentions it, i think we did receive a despatch in some unknown tongue. i ordered it to be put carefully away until we could procure the services of an expert to decipher
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it. i hope to be able to find such an expert in the course of the next three or four months, and can only trust that the matter was not a very pressing one."
the ambassador took the hint, and that was the last note in russian that reached the wilhelmstrasse.
we ourselves always wrote in english, receiving replies in german, written in the third person, in the curiously cumbrous prussian official style.
bismarck was very fond of enlarging on his favourite theory of the male and female european nations. the germans themselves, the three scandinavian peoples, the dutch, the english proper, the scotch, the hungarians and the turks, he declared to be essentially male races. the russians, the poles, the bohemians, and indeed every slavonic people, and all celts, he maintained, just as emphatically, to be female races. a female race he ungallantly defined as one given to immense verbosity, to fickleness, and to lack of tenacity. he conceded to these feminine races some of the advantages of their sex, and acknowledged that they had great powers of attraction and charm, when they chose to exert them, and also a fluency of speech denied to the more virile nations. he maintained stoutly that it was quite useless to expect efficiency in any form from one of the female races, and he was full of contempt for the celt and the slav. he contended that the most interesting nations were the epicene ones, partaking, that is,
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of the characteristics of both sexes, and he instanced france and italy, intensely virile in the north, absolutely female in the south; maintaining that the northern french had saved their country times out of number from the follies of the "méridionaux." he attributed the efficiency of the frenchmen of the north to the fact that they had so large a proportion of frankish and norman blood in their veins, the franks being a germanic tribe, and the normans, as their name implied, northmen of scandinavian, therefore also of teutonic, origin. he declared that the fair-haired piedmontese were the driving power of italy, and that they owed their initiative to their descent from the germanic hordes who invaded italy under alaric in the fifth century. bismarck stoutly maintained that efficiency, wherever it was found, was due to teutonic blood; a statement with which i will not quarrel.
as the inventor of "practical politics" (real-politik), bismarck had a supreme contempt for fluent talkers and for words, saying that only fools could imagine that facts could be talked away. he cynically added that words were sometimes useful for "papering over structural cracks" when they had to be concealed for a time.
with his intensely overbearing disposition, bismarck could not brook the smallest contradiction, or any criticism whatever. i have often watched him in the reichstag—then housed in a very modest building—whilst being attacked, especially by liebknecht the socialist. he made no effort to
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conceal his anger, and would stab the blotting-pad before him viciously with a metal paper-cutter, his face purple with rage.
bismarck himself was a very clear and forcible speaker, with a happy knack of coining felicitous phrases.
his eldest son, herbert bismarck, inherited all his father's arrogance and intensely overweening disposition, without one spark of his father's genius. he was not a popular man.
the second son, william, universally known as "bill," was a genial, fair-headed giant of a man, as generally popular as his elder brother was the reverse. bill bismarck (the juxtaposition of these two names always struck me as being comically incongruous) drank so much beer that his hands were always wet and clammy. he told me himself that he always had three bottles of beer placed by his bedside lest he should be thirsty in the night. he did not live long.
moltke, the silent, clean-shaved, spare old man with the sphinx-like face, who had himself worked out every detail of the franco-prussian war long before it materialised, was an occasional visitor at our embassy, as was gustav richter, the fashionable jewish artist. richter's paintings, though now sneered at as chocolade-malerei (chocolate-box painting), had an enormous vogue in the "'seventies," and were reproduced by the hundred thousand. his picture of queen louise of prussia, engravings of which are scattered all over the world,
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is only a fancy portrait, as queen louise had died before richter was born. he had rauch's beautiful effigy of the queen in the mausoleum at charlottenburg to guide him, but the actual model was, i believe, a member of the corps de ballet at the opera. madame richter was the daughter of mendelssohn the composer, and there was much speculation in berlin as to the wonderful artistic temperament the children of such a union would inherit. as a matter of fact, i fancy that none of the young richters showed any artistic gifts whatever.
our embassy was a very fine building. the german railway magnate strousberg had erected it as his own residence, but as he most tactfully went bankrupt just as the house was completed, the british government was able to buy it at a very low figure indeed, and to convert it into an embassy. though a little ornate, it was admirably adapted for this purpose, having nine reception rooms, including a huge ball-room, all communicating with each other, on the ground floor. the "chancery," as the offices of an embassy are termed, was in another building on the pariser platz. this was done to avoid the constant stream of people on business, of applicants of various sorts, including "d.b.s.'s" (distressed british subjects), continually passing through the embassy. immediately opposite our "chancery," in the same building, and only separated from it by a porte-cochère, was the chancery of the austro-hungarian embassy.
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count w——, the councillor of the austrian embassy, was very deaf, and had entirely lost the power of regulating his voice. he habitually shouted in a quarter-deck voice, audible several hundred yards away.
i was at work in the chancery one day when i heard a stupendous din arising from the austrian chancery. "the imperial chancellor told me," thundered this megaphone voice in stentorian german tones, every word of which must have been distinctly heard in the street, "that under no circumstances whatever would germany consent to this arrangement. if the proposal is pressed, germany will resist it to the utmost, if necessary by force of arms. the chancellor, in giving me this information," went on the strident voice, "impressed upon me how absolutely secret the matter must be kept. i need hardly inform your excellency that this telegram is confidential to the highest degree."
"what is that appalling noise in the austrian chancery?" i asked our white-headed old chancery servant.
"that is count w—— dictating a cypher telegram to vienna," answered the old man with a twinkle in his shrewd eyes.
this little episode has always seemed to me curiously typical of austro-hungarian methods.
the central figure of berlin was of course the old emperor william. this splendid-looking old man may not have been an intellectual giant, but he
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certainly looked an emperor, every inch of him. there was something, too, very taking in his kindly old face and genial manner. the crown princess, afterwards the empress frederick, being a british princess, we were what is known in diplomatic parlance as "une ambassade de famille." the entire staff of the embassy was asked to dine at the palace on the birthdays both of queen victoria and of the crown princess. these dinners took place at the unholy hour of 5 p.m., in full uniform, at the emperor's ugly palace on the linden, the old schloss being only used for more formal entertainments. on these occasions the sole table decoration consisted, quaintly enough, of rows of gigantic silver dish-covers, each surmounted by the prussian eagle, with nothing under them, running down the middle of the table. the old emperor had been but indifferently handled by his dentist. it had become necessary to supplement nature's handiwork by art, but so unskilfully had these, what are euphemistically termed, additions to the emperor's mouth been contrived, that his articulation was very defective. it was almost impossible to hear what he said, or indeed to make out in what language he was addressing you. when the emperor "made the circle," one strained one's ears to the utmost to obtain a glimmering of what he was saying. if one detected an unmistakably teutonic guttural, one drew a bow at a venture, and murmured "zu befehl majestät," trusting that it might fit in. should one catch, on the other hand, a slight
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suspicion of a nasal "n," one imagined that the language must be french, and interpolated a tentative "parfaitement, sire," trusting blindly to a kind providence. still the impression remains of a kindly and very dignified old gentleman, filling his part admirably. the empress augusta, who had been beautiful in her youth, could not resign herself to growing old gracefully. she would have made a most charming old lady, but though well over seventy then, she was ill-advised enough to attempt to rejuvenate herself with a chestnut wig and an elaborate make-up, with deplorable results. the empress, in addition, was afflicted with a slight palsy of the head.
the really magnificent figure was the crown prince, afterwards the emperor frederick. immensely tall, with a full golden beard, he looked in his white cuirassier uniform the living embodiment of a german legendary hero; a lohengrin in real life.
princess frederick charles of prussia was a strikingly handsome woman too, though unfortunately nearly stone deaf.
though the palace on the linden may have been commonplace and ugly, the old schloss has to my mind the finest interior in europe. it may lack the endless, bare, gigantic halls of the winter palace in petrograd, and it may contain fewer rooms than the great rambling hofburg in vienna, but i maintain that, with the possible exception of the palace in madrid, no building in europe
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can compare internally with the old schloss in berlin. i think the effect the berlin palace produces on the stranger is due to the series of rooms which must be traversed before the state apartments proper are reached. these rooms, of moderate dimensions, are very richly decorated. their painted ceilings, encased in richly-gilt "coffered" work in high relief, have a venetian effect, recalling some of the rooms in the doge's palace in the sea-girt city of the adriatic. their silk-hung walls, their pictures, and the splendid pieces of old furniture they contain, redeem these rooms from the soulless, impersonal look most palaces wear. they recall the rooms in some of the finer english or french country-houses, although no private house would have them in the same number. the rooms that dwell in my memory out of the dozen or so that formed the enfilade are, first, the "drap d'or kammer," with its droll hybrid appellation, the walls of which were hung, as its name implies, with cloth of gold; then the "red eagle room," with its furniture and mirrors of carved wood, covered with thin plates of beaten silver, producing an indescribably rich effect, and the "red velvet" room. this latter had its walls hung with red velvet bordered by broad bands of silver lace, and contained some splendid old gilt furniture.
the throne room was one of the most sumptuous in the world. it had an arched painted ceiling, from which depended some beautiful old chandeliers of cut rock crystal, and the walls, which framed
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great panels of gobelin tapestry of the best period, were highly decorated, in florid rococo style, with pilasters and carved groups representing the four quarters of the world. the whole of the wall surface was gilded; carvings, mouldings, and pilasters forming one unbroken sheet of gold. we were always told that the musicians' gallery was of solid silver, and that it formed part of frederick the great's war-chest. as a matter of fact, frederick had himself melted the original gallery down and converted it into cash for one of his campaigns. by his orders, a facsimile gallery was carved of wood heavily silvered over. the effect produced, however, was the same, as we were hardly in a position to scrutinise the hall-mark. the room contained four semi-circular buffets, rising in diminishing tiers, loaded with the finest specimens the prussian crown possessed of old german silver-gilt drinking-cups of nuremberg and augsburg workmanship of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
when the throne room was lighted up at night the glowing colours of the gobelin tapestry and the sheen of the great expanses of gold and silver produced an effect of immense splendour. with the possible exception of the salle des fêtes in the luxembourg palace in paris, it was certainly the finest throne room in europe.
the first time i saw the luxembourg hall was as a child of seven, under the second empire, when i was absolutely awe-struck by its magnificence. it then contained napoleon the third's throne, and
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was known as the "salle du trône." a relation pointed out to me that the covering and curtains of the throne, instead of being of the stereotyped crimson velvet, were of purple velvet, all spangled with the golden bees of the bonapartes. the luxembourg hall had then in the four corners of the coved ceiling an ornament very dear to the meretricious but effective taste of the second empire. four immense globes of sky-blue enamel supported four huge gilt napoleonic eagles with outspread wings. to the crude taste of a child the purple velvet of the throne, powdered with golden bees, and the gilt eagles on their turquoise globes, appeared splendidly sumptuous. of course after 1870 all traces of throne and eagles were removed, as well as the countless "n. iii's" with which the walls were plentifully besprinkled.
what an astute move of louis napoleon's it was to term himself the "third," counting the poor little "aiglon," the king of rome, as the second of the line, and thus giving a look of continuity and stability to a brand-new dynasty! some people say that the assumption of this title was due to an accident, arising out of a printer's error. after his coup d'état, louis napoleon issued a proclamation to the french people, ending "vive napoleon!!!" the printer, mistaking the three notes of exclamation for the numeral iii, set up "vive napoleon iii." the proclamation appeared in this form, and louis napoleon, at once recognising the advantages of it, adhered to the style.
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whether this is true or not i cannot say. i was then too young to be able to judge for myself, but older people have told me that the mushroom court of the tuileries eclipsed all others in europe in splendour. the parvenu dynasty needed all the aid it could derive from gorgeous ceremonial pomp to maintain its position successfully.
to return to berlin, beyond the throne room lay the fine picture gallery, nearly 200 feet long. at court entertainments all the german officers gathered in this picture gallery and made a living hedge, between the ranks of which the guests passed on their way to the famous "white hall." these long ranks of men in their resplendent hofballanzug were really a magnificent sight, and whoever first devised this most effective bit of stage-management deserves great credit.
the white hall as i knew it was a splendidly dignified room. as its name implies, it was entirely white, the mouldings all being silvered instead of gilt. both germans and russians are fond of substituting silvering for gilding. personally i think it most effective, but as the french with their impeccable good taste never employ silvering, there must be some sound artistic reason against its use.
it must be reluctantly confessed that the show of feminine beauty at berlin was hardly on a level with the perfect mise-en-scène. there were three or four very beautiful women. countess karolyi, the austrian ambassadress, herself a hungarian, was a tall, graceful blonde with beautiful hair; she
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was full of infinite attraction. princess william radziwill, a russian, was, i think, the loveliest human being i have ever seen; she was, however, much dreaded on account of her mordant tongue. princess carolath-beuthen, a prussian, had first seen the light some years earlier than these two ladies. she was still a very beautiful woman, and eventually married as her second husband count herbert bismarck, the iron chancellor's eldest son.
there was, unfortunately, a very wide gap between the looks of these "stars" and those of the rest of the company.
the interior of the berlin schloss put buckingham palace completely in the shade. the london palace was unfortunately decorated in the "fifties," during the époque de mauvais goût, as the french comprehensively term the whole period between 1820 and 1880, and it bears the date written on every unfortunate detail of its decoration. it is beyond any question whatever the product of the "period of bad taste." i missed, though, in berlin the wealth of flowers which turns buckingham palace into a garden on court ball nights. civilians too in london have to appear at court in knee-breeches and stockings; in berlin trousers were worn, thus destroying the habillé look. as regards the display of jewels and the beauty of the women at the two courts, berlin was simply nowhere. german uniforms were of every colour of the rainbow; with us there is an undue predominance of scarlet, so that the kaleidoscopic effect of berlin was never
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attained in london, added to which too much scarlet and gold tends to kill the effect of the ladies' dresses.
at the prussian court on these state occasions an immense number of pages made their appearance. i myself had been a court page in my youth, but whereas in england little boys were always chosen for this part, in berlin the tallest and biggest lads were selected from the cadet school at lichterfelde. a great lanky gawk six feet high, with an incipient moustache, does not show up to advantage in lace ruffles, with his thin spindle-shanks encased in silk stockings; a page's trappings being only suitable for little boys. i remember well the day when i and my fellow-novice were summoned to try on our new page's uniforms. our white satin knee-breeches and gold-embroidered white satin waistcoats left us quite cold, but we were both enchanted with the little pages' swords, in their white-enamelled scabbards, which the tailor had brought with him. we had neither of us ever possessed a real sword of our own before, and the steel blades were of the most inviting sharpness. we agreed that the opportunity was too good a one to be lost, so we determined to slip out into the garden in our new finery and there engage in a deadly duel. it was further agreed to thrust really hard with the keen little blades, "just to see what would happen." fortunately for us, we had been overheard. we reached the garden, and, having found a conveniently secluded spot, had just
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commenced to make those vague flourishes with our unaccustomed weapons which our experience, derived from pictures, led us to believe formed the orthodox preliminaries to a duel, when the combat was sternly interrupted. otherwise there would probably have been vacancies for one if not two fresh pages of honour before nightfall. what a pity there were no "movies" in those days! what a splendid film could have been made of two small boys, arrayed in all the bravery of silk stockings, white satin breeches, and lace ruffles, their red tunics heavy with bullion embroidery, engaged in a furious duel in a big garden. when the news of our escapade reached the ears of the highest quarters, preemptory orders were issued to have the steel blades removed from our swords and replaced with innocuous pieces of shaped wood. it was very ignominious; still the little swords made a brave show, and no one by looking at them could guess that the white scabbards shielded nothing more deadly than an inoffensive piece of oak. a page's sword, by the way, is not worn at the left side in the ordinary manner, but is passed through two slits in the tunic, and is carried in the small of the back, so that the boy can keep his hands entirely free.
the "white hall" has a splendid inlaid parquet floor, with a crowned prussian eagle in the centre of it. this eagle was a source of immense pride to the palace attendants, who kept it in a high state of polish. as a result the eagle was as slippery as ice, and woe betide the unfortunate dancer
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who set his foot on it. he was almost certain to fall; and to fall down at a berlin state ball was an unpardonable offence. if a german officer, the delinquent had his name struck off the list of those invited for a whole year. if a member of the corps diplomatique, he received strong hints to avoid dancing again. certainly the diplomats were sumptuously entertained at supper at the berlin palace; whether the general public fared as well i do not know.
urbain, the old emperor william's french chef, who was responsible for these admirable suppers, had published several cookery books in french, on the title-page of which he described himself as "urbain, premier officier de bouche de s.m. l'empereur d'allemagne." this quaint-sounding title was historically quite correct, it being the official appellation of the head cooks of the old french kings. a feature of the berlin state balls was the stirrup-cup of hot punch given to departing guests. knowing people hurried to the grand staircase at the conclusion of the entertainment; here servants proffered trays of this delectable compound. it was concocted, i believe, of equal parts of arrack and rum, with various other unknown ingredients. in the same way, at buckingham palace in queen victoria's time, wise persons always asked for hock cup. this was compounded of very old hock and curious liqueurs, from a hundred-year-old recipe. a truly admirable beverage! now, alas! since queen victoria's day, only a memory.
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the princesses of the house of prussia had one ordeal to face should they become betrothed to a member of the royal family of any other country. they took leave formally of the diplomats at the palace, "making the circle" by themselves. i have always understood that prussian princesses were trained for this from their childhood by being placed in the centre of a circle of twenty chairs, and being made to address some non-committal remark to each chair in turn, in german, french, and english. i remember well princess louise margaret of prussia, afterwards our own duchess of connaught, who was to become so extraordinarily popular not only in england but in india and canada as well, making her farewell at berlin on her betrothal. she "made the circle" of some forty people, addressing a remark or two to each, entirely alone, save for two of the great long, gawky prussian pages in attendance on her, looking in their red tunics for all the world like london-grown geraniums—all stalk and no leaves. it is a terribly trying ordeal for a girl of eighteen, and the duchess once told me that she nearly fainted from sheer nervousness at the time, although she did not show it in the least.
if i may be permitted a somewhat lengthy digression, i would say that it is at times extremely difficult to find topics of conversation. years afterwards, when i was stationed at our lisbon legation, the papal nuncio was very tenacious of his dignity. in catholic countries the nuncio is ex officio head
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of the diplomatic body, and the nuncio at lisbon expected every diplomat to call on him at least six times a year. on his reception days the nuncio always arrayed himself in his purple robes and a lace cotta, with his great pectoral emerald cross over it. he then seated himself in state in a huge carved chair, with a young priest as aide-de-camp, standing motionless behind him. it was always my ill-fortune to find the nuncio alone. now what possible topic of conversation could i, a protestant, find with which to fill the necessary ten minutes with an italian archbishop in partibus. we could not well discuss the latest fashions in copes, or any impending changes in the college of cardinals. most providentally, i learnt that this admirable ecclesiastic, so far from despising the pleasures of the table, made them his principal interest in life. i know no more of the intricacies of the italian cuisine than melchizedek knew about frying sausages, but i had a friend, the wife of an italian colleague, deeply versed in the mysteries of tuscan cooking. this kindly lady wrote me out in french some of the choicest recipes in her extensive répertoire, and i learnt them all off by heart. after that i was the nuncio's most welcome visitor. we argued hotly over the respective merits of risotto alia milanese and risotto al salto. we discussed gnocchi, pasta asciutta, and novel methods of preparing minestra, i trust without undue partisan heat, until the excellent prelate's eyes gleamed and his mouth began to water. donna maria, my italian friend, proved an
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inexhaustible mine of recipes. she always produced new ones, which i memorised, and occasionally wrote out for the nuncio, sometimes, with all the valour of ignorance, adding a fancy ingredient or two on my own account. on one occasion, after i had detailed the constituent parts of an extraordinarily succulent composition of rice, cheese, oil, mushrooms, chestnuts, and tomatoes, the nuncio nearly burst into tears with emotion, and i feel convinced that, heretic though i might be, he was fully intending to give me his apostolic benediction, had not the watchful young priest checked him. i felt rewarded for my trouble when my chief, the british minister, informed me that the nuncio considered me the most intelligent young man he knew. he added further that he enjoyed my visits, as my conversation was so interesting.
the other occasion on which i experienced great conversational difficulties was in northern india at the house of a most popular and sporting maharajah. his mother, the old maharani, having just completed her seventy-first year, had emerged from the seclusion of the zenana, where she had spent fifty-five years of her life, or, in eastern parlance, had "come from behind the curtain." we paid short ceremonial visits at intervals to the old lady, who sat amid piles of cushions, a little brown, shrivelled, mummy-like figure, so swathed in brocades and gold tissue as to be almost invisible. the maharajah was most anxious that i should talk to his mother, but what possible subject of conversation
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could i find with an old lady who had spent fifty-five years in the pillared (and somewhat uncleanly) seclusions of the zenana? added to which the maharani knew no urdu, but only spoke bengali, a language of which i am ignorant. this entailed the services of an interpreter, always an embarrassing appendage. on occasions of this sort morier's delightful book hadji baba is invaluable, for the author gives literal english translations of all the most flowery persian compliments. had the maharani been a mohammedan, i could have addressed her as "oh moon-faced ravisher of hearts! i trust that you are reposing under the canopy of a sound brain!" being a hindoo, however, she would not be familiar with persian forms of politeness. a few remarks on lawn tennis, or the increasing price of polo ponies, would obviously fail to interest her. you could not well discuss fashions with an old lady who had found one single garment sufficient for her needs all her days, and any questions as to details of her life in the zenana, or that of the other inmates of that retreat, would have been indecorous in the highest degree. nothing then remained but to remark that the maharajah was looking remarkably well, but that he had unquestionably put on a great deal of weight since i had last seen him. i received the startling reply from the interpreter (delivered in the clipped, staccato tones most natives of india assume when they speak english), "her highness says that, thanks to god, and to his mother's cooking, her son's belly is increasing indeed to vast size."
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bearing in mind these later conversational difficulties, i cannot but admire the ease with which royal personages, from long practice, manage to address appropriate and varied remarks to perhaps forty people of different nationalities, whilst "making the circle."
